Tuesday, February 28, 2017

3 Unusual Tactics For Making Your Testimonials More Persuasive

I bet you’ve seen this sort of advice before…

When using a testimonial, you should always:

  • List the customer’s first and last name
  • Include their photo
  • Avoid unbelievable, over-the-top praise

Those are all fine tips to follow, but they’re really just starting points.

Optimizing your social proof requires just as much strategy and testing as improving a headline, hero image or call-to-action button.

Because if you just stick to blindly following ‘best practices,’ you could be missing out on a huge opportunity to squeeze more conversions out of your website or landing page. Here’s why:

Social proof affects different audiences in different ways. The complexity of your offer, the demographics of your visitors and a host of other factors all influence how persuasive your testimonials will be.

And that means you may want to try optimizing them in ways that seem counterintuitive at first.

Or even just plain strange.

I’ll get into more detail about this in a moment. But first, let’s make sure we’re on the same page about what typically makes for a convincing and credible testimonial.

Don’t use testimonials unless you’ve seen these tips…

Plenty of articles have already been written offering great advice for using testimonials. And those tips can generally be summed up as:

  • Include a photo and other details
    Providing the customer’s first and last name, location or any other relevant details makes testimonials more realistic. But an even bigger factor is including a (real) photo of the testimonial-giver. There’s plenty of research to back this up.
  • Use testimonials from people your customers can relate to
    According to implicit egotism theory, we generally trust people who are either like us or who we aspire to be like. And that means strong testimonials are often from folks who reflect how your prospects see themselves.
  • Use testimonials from people with authority (if possible)
    The most powerful testimonials come from people your audience sees as an expert or otherwise having authority. In essence, you’re ‘borrowing’ the positive feelings people have toward these individuals (this is called the Halo Effect) when you get their endorsement.
  • Reinforce a specific benefit
    Emphasis on specific. Vague testimonials that say things like “great experience” or “tremendous value” won’t connect with anyone. And it might even hurt your conversion rate. Instead, testimonials should be used strategically as ‘proof’ to support specific claims you’re making on your pages.
  • OR

  • Quash a serious objection
    Research by MECLABS shows that placing testimonials near sources of anxiety (such as the ‘Add to Cart’ button) can ease objections and improve conversions. Bottom line: don’t just randomly sprinkle testimonials throughout your website. First, consider the role they’re playing on the page.

These tips make sense, right?

And if you’ve been in the conversion optimization game for any length of time, I suspect you’re already familiar with most of them.

Now, let’s dive into 3 lesser-known techniques for making your testimonials more credible, engaging and persuasive.

1) Try ‘long-form’ testimonials

Far too many articles give out generic advice like:

“Always keep your testimonials very short.”

Well, no. Not always.

Short, specific quotes from customers may work fine in certain situations. But sometimes a big, juicy testimonial can provide the exact dose of social proof that your page needs. Why?

For the same reasons that long copy can sometimes be more persuasive than short copy. Long-form sales messages often work great when your product is complicated, your audience has loads of objections or the price-tag is high.

As veteran ad man Jay Conrad Levinson puts it:

“Don’t be afraid to use lengthy copy. Of all the things people dislike about marketing, ‘lack of information’ comes in second, after ‘feeling deceived.’”

The trick is to ensure your long-form copy — or long-form testimonial — is interesting and relevant to your audience. Here’s an example:

Long-form testimonials make up the majority of content on Noah Kagan’s sales page for his How To Make A $1,000 A Month Business course. And some of them run well over 500 words!

Now, these testimonials work like sales copy in a number of different ways. But I want to point out one specific technique that makes them so effective: storytelling.

Several testimonials on the page tell raw, human stories about a problem the person was up against and how they discovered a life-changing solution thanks to Kagan’s course.

Take a look at this example:

Dave’s story kicks off with an emotional (and relatable) problem.

aha-moment-testimonial

He then goes on to tell a story about how the course helped him, eventually building to the ‘climax’ detailing how his life changed afterwards:

monthly-1k-course-testimonial

In fact, some of the most effective long-form testimonials start with an emotional problem.

Here’s a prime example from the Sweat Block homepage, which was optimized by the team at Copy Hackers. This testimonial follows the tried-and-true problem-agitate-solve copywriting formula:

meet-brianna-testimonial

Now, a customer probably isn’t going to just hand you over a problem-agitate-solve testimonial by fluke. You may need to give them some guidance first.

So ask specific questions when requesting a testimonial. Things like:

  • What made you seek out our product/service?
  • What was the exact problem you needed to solve? How did it impact your life?
  • How did our product/service solve this problem? How did it improve your [business/social life etc.]?

But even if you don’t take a problem-focused approach, the key to using effective long-form testimonials is to make sure they tell a gripping story.

One that will resonate with your target audience in a powerful way.

2) Show your warts (really, it’s OK)

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying you should post a testimonial that outright bashes your company.

That’d be weird. And, well, kind of dumb.

But I am suggesting that by leaving some minor ‘warts’ in your testimonials you can convey trust and credibility — if you do it the right way.

One study found that 68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both positive and negative scores. And a whopping 30% suspect faked reviews when they don’t see anything negative at all.

As master copywriter Bob Bly puts it, “showing your warts” can be an effective marketing technique provided you:

  • demonstrate why your product’s weakness isn’t important or
  • show how you’ve designed your product to overcome the weakness

This tactic works because arguing against your own self-interest builds credibility.

In this Unbounce article, marketer and entrepreneur Pratik Dholakiya suggests testing a landing page testimonial that tells people who your product isn’t right for. This might involve including a line like:

“This product isn’t for [so and so], it’s for [so and so].”

The beauty of this approach is that it sends the message you want happy, long-term customers; not just quicks sales for short-term gain.

Some brands have used not-so-shiny testimonials in more creative ways to reinforce a key message.

For example, Ship Your Enemies Glitter used to feature a reviews section that told an unfiltered story about their product — one testimonial even mentioned a customer’s pending divorce.

show-your-warts-testimonials

OK, this is an extreme example.

The point is that people are skeptical of both online reviews and testimonials. But by slipping in a few “warts” (in a strategic way), you can give your social proof a shot of credibility.

3) Make your testimonial the ‘hero’

Got a beauty of a testimonial?

One that’s credible, relatable and aligns perfectly with the goal of your page?

Then don’t bury it way below the fold! Instead, play that sucker up big time in the hero section for every visitor to see.

Emphasizing the right testimonial immediately sends the message to prospects that your product solves problems for people who are just like them.

I used this strategy while optimizing a key sales page for LivePlan, which is a SaaS product that helps entrepreneurs write professional business plans.

Research showed us that many prospects had niggling doubts when they hit the page. They often wondered:

“Will this software work for my specific industry?”

It was a big barrier to signing up.

So we created a landing page that targeted just a segment of LivePlan’s traffic: people who wanted to write a business plan specifically for a café.

But instead of us telling the audience “this works for café entrepreneurs like you,” we wanted to prove it to them by making a relatable testimonial the hero of the page.

So we emphasized a quick story about how café owner Brian Sung used LivePlan to write a business plan faster and with less effort. Then we A/B tested the new page.

Here are the two hero sections we tested:

LivePlan-ABTest

The testimonial-focused variant hauled in a 72% boost in paid conversions, which translated into a 53% increase in revenue (when you consider average order value).

There were a few other variables at play here. But ultimately, I believe that this relatable testimonial proved the hypothesis that LivePlan customers needed to feel confident that the product would work for their industry before signing up.

Other companies have also seen ‘wins’ by playing up testimonials like this as well. For example, Highrise saw a 102% lift in conversions when they tested a giant image and quote from one of their customers.

But again, having the right testimonials is key here. You can’t just pick one at random.

If you know headlines focused on “saving time” convert well, playing up a testimonial about how a customer “saved money” isn’t going to cut it.

Consider your goals and strategy for the page. Then select your social proof accordingly.

Conclusion

It doesn’t matter if you’re dealing with testimonials, user-reviews or client logos — the bottom line is the same:

Social proof affects different audiences in different ways.

Following best practices is a great starting point. But to squeeze the most persuasive value out of your testimonials, you need to consider things like your audience’s level of awareness and their thought sequence as they hit your page.

Now, maybe the 3 tactics outlined here aren’t a great fit for your prospects. That’s fine.

But it is important that you make an informed, strategic decision about how you use any type of social proof.

Because just tossing testimonials randomly on a page isn’t doing your visitors — or your conversion rates — any good.

About the author: Dustin Walker is a copywriter and partner at Good Funnel — a marketing agency that does in-depth customer research to help online businesses fire up their revenue. Follow Dustin on Twitter @dustinjaywalker.

RIP Dmoz: The Open Directory Project is closing

DMOZ — The Open Directory Project that uses human editors to organize web sites — is closing. It marks the end of a time when humans, rather than machines, tried to organize the web.

The announcement came via a notice that’s now showing on the home page of the DMOZ site, saying it will close as of March 14, 2017:

Dmoz was born in June 1998 as first at “GnuHoo” then quickly changed to “NewHoo,” a rival to the Yahoo Directory at the time. Yahoo had faced criticism as being too powerful and too difficult for sites to be listed in.

It was soon acquired by Netscape in November 1998 and renamed the Netscape Open Directory. Later that month, AOL acquired Netscape, giving AOL control of The Open Directory.

Also born that year was Google, which was the start of the end of human curation of web sites. Google bought both the power of being able to search every page on the web with the relevancy that was a hallmark of human-powered directories.

Yahoo eventually shifted to preferring machine-generated results over human power, pushing its directory further and further behind-the-scenes until its closure was announced in September 2014. The actual closure came in December 2014, with the old site these days entirely unresponsive.

Dmoz continued on, although for marketers and searchers, it had also long been mostly forgotten as a resource. About the only surprise in today’s news is that it took so long.

DMOZ will live on in one unique way — the NOODP meta tag. This was a way for publishers to tell Google and other search engines not to describe their pages using Open Directory descriptions. While the tag will become redundant, it will also remain lurking within web pages that continue to use it for years to come.

The post RIP Dmoz: The Open Directory Project is closing appeared first on Search Engine Land.



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Intro to Agile Marketing: Work faster and smarter by changing how you work

Are you struggling to keep pace with rapidly changing customer needs and market demands? Are you slowed down by organizational silos, hierarchies and processes?

It may be time to get agile. More than 90 percent of marketers who have adopted agile marketing say it has improved their speed to market for ideas, products and campaigns.

Join agile marketing expert Andrea Fryrear, and Workfront Creative Director David Lesué, as they explore what it means to be an agile marketer and provide practical tips on how your organization can make the transition.

Register today for “Intro to Agile Marketing: Work faster and smarter by changing how you work,” produced by Digital Marketing Depot and sponsored by Workfront.

The post Intro to Agile Marketing: Work faster and smarter by changing how you work appeared first on Search Engine Land.



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SearchCap: Google site closed, penalty recovery & shopping ads

searchcap-header-v2-scap

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Industry

Local & Maps

Link Building

Searching

SEO

SEM / Paid Search

Search Marketing

The post SearchCap: Google site closed, penalty recovery & shopping ads appeared first on Search Engine Land.



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Sharing is caring: Click share and post-holiday shopping success

google-shopping-cart-2016b-ss-1920

Click share is a key way to gauge the success of your Shopping campaigns. The metric shows you the percentage of total possible clicks you are receiving with your Shopping ads. If you aren’t reviewing this metric on a regular basis, 2017 is officially the time to start the habit.

Incorporate click share into your daily optimizations

Click share can be an incredibly useful metric because it delivers the type of insight that you’re used to receiving from average position in your Search campaigns. Shopping ads can take a lot of different forms, which means that we can’t calculate an average position in the same way as we can for Search ads. Enter click share for Shopping.

By regularly reviewing this metric on your product group tab, you can see how well you’re doing at driving traffic to your site for high-value shoppers. You should use it in concert with impression share.

Impression share tells you how you’re doing at getting your items in front of shoppers looking for your products, while click share tells you how effective you are in winning those shoppers that see your products. A 100 percent impression share, while great, might not reveal anything about your true potential. Here’s one of my favorite sayings from business school:

30 percent of 40 percent is greater than 10 percent of 100 percent.

It’s possible to underperform even with a 100 percent impression share because it doesn’t reflect whether those shoppers chose to visit your site. That’s why click share is such a crucial metric to monitor. And once you’ve started to monitor it, what can you do with it? Why, increase it.

How to increase your click share

There are a few ways to do this. It’s a similar process to Search ads. Exactly like you work to improve your average position, you can take steps to increase your click share for Shopping ads:

1. Increase your bids

An increased bid is often the most effective way to be more competitive in the auction. Review your click share by individual product groups. If there are certain product groups that you want to drive more clicks, look at your bids and increase them where it makes sense.

It’s always a tricky balance between volume and return to maximize profitability. Increasing bids to grow your click share will increase volume — just make sure never to bid beyond the point of profitability. Check out the Bid Simulator to see your potential.

2. Increase the quality and relevance of your ads (which means ‘product data’ in this case)

Your product data is what we use to create your Shopping ad. Take a look through your search terms and see if your product title and description text aligns with the most common user searches. Put the most important details first in your product title, like size, color or brand. Increasing the relevance of your ads can help your ads get better placements and more clicks.

It’s also crucial to use high-quality images for your products. With higher screen resolutions in current smartphones, a high-quality image can be the difference when showing up alongside other competing ads.

3. Opt into the different enhancements for your ads

There are a couple of ways to make your ads even more appealing on the results page. For example, Merchant Promotions allows you to distribute your online promotions with your Shopping ads, including discounts, free gifts and “buy more save more” promotions. You can even add different codes for people to redeem. Product ratings can build trust right on the results page while qualifying customers as they click to your site.

You can use each of these three methods to create better ads that have a better shot at driving interested customers to a purchase.

Going beyond click share

Click share is super-important, and hopefully, now you have taken that to heart. It’s not the only way to take advantage of whatever search volume you’re seeing, though.

Some holiday-friendly strategies still work in non-holiday months. Strategic, time-specific campaigns let you make more specific decisions about your bidding and budgeting. Custom labels can be great for product groups that have peak seasons. If you label them, the stuff that’s currently in season (or that’s about to be in season) can get the attention it deserves. And remember to keep an eye on product status insights to keep items approved.

Conclusion

Click and impression share are liable to change over time based on user search behavior and auction dynamics. Be sure that you aren’t losing click share to your competitors by checking in regularly.

Make click share a part of your regimen for Shopping optimizations. By combining this metric with the insights you’re already getting from impression share, you can understand both how you’re doing in the auction and how you’re doing on the results page itself.

The post Sharing is caring: Click share and post-holiday shopping success appeared first on Search Engine Land.



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Link free or die

Why are we so afraid of links?

Back in the old days of SEO, we loved any link if it was free, even if it was from a spammy scraper site or the lowest-quality directory you’ve ever seen. If we did nothing to get that link, it was a great link. People assumed that all links were beneficial — and that even “bad” links were completely harmless, with no potential to cause damage.

Then we started to get scared… and we nofollowed links. We performed loads of link analysis and reached out to sites that we thought were spammy and asked to have our links removed. Oh, and let’s not forget that time period where we were terrified of exact-match anchors and then built 50 links that all said “Click here.”

I’m surely leaving out other critical changes, but the bottom line is that links freak most of us out, whether we’re building them or they’re being built for our site.

Let’s break down five of the biggest fears and discuss how healthy or unhealthy they truly are.

1. Fear of actively pursuing links

I’m including begging and buying here. Some have the viewpoint that any link that was not editorially given is a bad link. In my opinion, if you waited to only get editorially given links, you’d be waiting a very long time to see any results. It’s an ideal, in my opinion.

People can claim that a successful link-building campaign is not based on money, but in my opinion, it absolutely is. You cannot create an utterly amazing and far-reaching content campaign without a healthy budget unless you just happen to have talented people on your staff who can do it themselves. Even if you create this awesome content that will naturally attract links, you have to promote it — and I don’t just mean tweeting about it.

shout it out

Plenty of content gets pimped via email outreach, for example. Content is sent to parties who might find it valuable, along with a nice, gentle suggestion that you link. To me, that’s not much different from just asking for a link; but to those who preach that all you need is great content to attract links naturally, it’s a whole different ballgame.

I kind of dump this approach into the begging category. You may consider it an editorially given link, though. Are they really that different? Not in my mind; at the end of the day, you saw content and you linked to it.

Do you think Google can tell what your reasoning was for linking? Can they distinguish between whether you came across that content on Facebook and included a link to it in a new post, or whether the agency who created it emailed you about it and said that if you like it, link to it? Nope.

So, is this fear healthy or not? I’d go with not healthy, but with a caveat: you have to really know what you’re doing.

2. Fear of the links you get naturally

This one is also wise in my opinion, as so many people think they cannot possibly be hurt by free links that were just handed to them.

However, this fear can go too far. People will see a link come in from a brand new site where the Domain Authority is 11, and they freak out. Is this going to hurt me? Should I disavow it?

I may be crazy for saying this, but I don’t really worry much about those kinds of links unless they’re coming to me in great numbers and from some spammy niches. If some new blogger who is just starting out decides to link to my site in an article about link building, I’m not going to flip out and ask for the link to be removed, nor am I going to disavow it.

Still, it’s good to audit your backlink profile and ensure that you are disavowing any spammy links. Even if you didn’t pay for them or ask for them, they could still be coming from low-quality sites that could ultimately harm your rankings if not dealt with.

Healthy fear or not? Pretty healthy.

3. Fear of linking out to other sites

I’ve only really encountered this one when we do outreach for clients (and not all that often, luckily). Webmasters will say that linking out is illegal, or that Google will penalize them for it.

Recently, while doing a link review for a client, I was looking at a page from which we secured a great link for a client last year. I remembered that page well because of all the great resources it linked to and how thorough it was. I’d been thrilled to secure a link there.

Today, there are zero outgoing links on that article. Zero. All the info is still there, but you’d have to look up each site on your own. To me, that is absolutely dreadful to do to your users. Some of the most beneficial content out there links out to other resources. This is one fear that I think is completely unsubstantiated.

Healthy? Not in my mind.

4. Fear of linking out without a nofollow

This one is tricky. In Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, they advise doing the following for links that may violate their guidelines:

  • Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the <a> tag
  • Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

Google has added many types of “manipulative” links to their guidelines over the years, though — and I suspect they will continue to add more. As a result, many webmasters now slap a nofollow on automatically.

I have no problem with nofollowed links; if they’re good to send traffic, I’m happy. My main issue is that this sculpting of the web is being done by people who don’t really have much understanding of how the web works. Some of these people are nofollowing links that should not be nofollowed. How is that going to impact rankings when it becomes a common thing to do? Oh, right… we’ll just find another way to manipulate the web.

With paid links and affiliate links, most webmasters do nofollow them. If you’re just editorially linking out to an article on someone else’s site to help make your content better, you don’t need a nofollow.

Healthy fear? Not unless you really do have a good reason that is something other than “it’s the only legal option.”

5. Fear of Google in general

Is anyone terrified of Bing or Duck Duck Go? If so, I’ve never heard about it. They’re all scared of Google. Google will penalize me for building links. Someone will turn me in for building links. Google will take down my site and I will starve to death. People still say these things.

Unfortunately, there’s a reason for that. I’ve seen too many sites get unfairly penalized to think it’s not a possibility, no matter how clean your backlink profile is. And hey, there are more than just link-related penalties!

Healthy fear? YES. I mean, I think people need to do what is right for their own businesses. Maybe you wouldn’t lose your shirt if Google did penalize you. Maybe you really love risk. That’s fine with me. But I do think you have nothing to lose by being at least a tiny bit afraid — or, at minimum, aware — of their power.

penalty

Some might take this all to mean that I don’t like Google or that I’m advocating violating their guidelines. My position is that they have their own rules and if you break them, they have the right to penalize you.

My biggest problem is that by attempting to curb all the link spam, they’ve issued broad guidelines that can penalize sites for doing things that used to be okay, and they will probably add something new that might penalize sites for something that is currently all the rage.

We all need to have some fear. What we don’t need is ignorant terror that makes us ruin the web needlessly.

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Abdul Sattar Edhi Google doodle celebrates Pakistani humanitarian who founded Edhi Foundation

Today’s Google doodle honors the Abdul Sattar Edhi, a man who dedicated his life to providing social services for those in need.

Crediting Edhi with being a “global-reaching philanthropist and humanitarian,” Google says Edhi was born in India but moved to Pakistan soon after it became a nation, founding the Edhi foundation in 1951.

From the Google Doodle blog:

He soon noticed that many Pakistanis lacked shelter, medicine, education, and other essentials, and was moved to help in any way he could. He began by simply asking others around him to contribute time or money, especially when a flu epidemic hit Karachi.

Google reports that the Edhi foundation operates 24 hours a day and offers multiple social services, including homeless shelters and medical care. “Most notably, the foundation operates the world’s largest volunteer ambulance network in Pakistan,” says Google.

Google didn’t share who designed the doodle, but it leads to a search for “Abdul Sattar Edhis.” Here is the full doodle image, highlighting Edhi’s ambulance services.

The Abdul Sattar Edhi doodle is displayed on Google’s U.S. homepage, in addition to a limited number of other international homepages, including Pakistan, UK, Australia and Japan.

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After rare confirmation from Google on site penalty, Natural News is back in Google’s index

In a rare move by Google, Google confirmed that a publisher named Natural News was penalized and deindexed by the major search engine over Google webmaster guidelines violations. In fact, Google’s John Mueller specifically said the site was using sneaky mobile redirect and once that is “cleaned up, the site can submit a reconsideration request through Search Console.”

It seems like they did clean it up and submitted a reconsideration request through Search Console because the site is now back in the Google index. A site command now returns the home page and 440,000 other pages from the site.

It is incredibly rare for Google to confirm when a site is penalized to the press or public. But in this case, the site was claiming it was removed because it was pro-Trump. They started a White House petition against Google and they are still encouraging people to sign the petition even after they have been reincluded in Google’s index.

The site said they would issue a statement at 11am central time today on Google reincluding the site.

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Google recommendations on how to handle day-long site closures for search rankings

John Mueller, a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, wrote a blog post explaining how SEOs and webmasters can handle site outages or closures that last for a day or longer. This is when a webmaster intentionally takes down their site for maintenance, site moves, religious reasons or other reasons.

John offers three options:

(1) Block the cart functionality from Google and your users.
(2) Always show interstitial or pop-up saying your site is offline today.
(3) Switch whole website off for a period of time.

Each option can be handled differently but the easiest option to me seems to be blocking the cart functionality if you don’t want people to buy from your site. This is common for religious practices where they are offline for the Shabbath once a week. They do not want customers to transact with their web site and earn money on the Shabbath.

But some webmasters want to take the whole site offline and offer a warning, such as an interstitial or pop-up with an explanation on why the site is not accessible. Google told those who were worried about this that interstitials for religious purposes are within their acceptable use guidelines. These sites won’t or shouldn’t be hit by the Google interstitials penalty in this case.

When doing this, John Mueller said “the server should return a 503 HTTP result code (“Service Unavailable”).” “The 503 result code makes sure that Google doesn’t index the temporary content that’s shown to users. Without the 503 result code, the interstitial would be indexed as your website’s content,” he added.

Same with turning off the site, but also add these tips to your to do list:

  1. Set your DNS TTL to a low time (such as 5 minutes) a few days in advance.
  2. Change the DNS to the temporary server’s IP address.
  3. Take your main server offline once all requests go to the temporary server.
  4. … your server is now offline …
  5. When ready, bring your main server online again.
  6. Switch DNS back to the main server’s IP address.
  7. Change the DNS TTL back to normal.

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Monday, February 27, 2017

SearchCap: Google Assistant, local finder test & Bing hospital finder

searchcap-header-v2-scap

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Local & Maps

Link Building

Searching

SEO

The post SearchCap: Google Assistant, local finder test & Bing hospital finder appeared first on Search Engine Land.



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[Reminder] Upcoming webinar — Build Your Ultimate Martech Stack

It’s not enough to build a martech stack… you’ve got to build the right stack for your organization. Strategy, efficiency, integration, and resources all play significant roles in martech stack decisions.

Join martech expert Matt Heinz and Linda West, Act-On’s Senior Director of Marketing Services and Operations, as they discuss the stack-building challenges facing marketers and provide practical solutions for how to build the ultimate martech stack for your business.

Register today for “Build Your Ultimate Martech Stack” produced by Digital Marketing Depot and sponsored by Act-On Software.

The post [Reminder] Upcoming webinar — Build Your Ultimate Martech Stack appeared first on Search Engine Land.



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Thinker, Mover, Shaker, Spy: How One Man and His CIA-Backed Company are Changing the Way the Government Collects and Analyzes Your Data

The name Alex Karp may not mean much to you now — but it’s about to. That’s because Alex is the brains behind Palantir, the closest thing to a “killer app” the U.S. government has — a system which allows one to discern meaningful context and insights from a swamp of seemingly meaningless data.

With scraps of what appear to be unrelated information, Palantir can craft intuitive charts, visual graphs and vital forecasts — showcasing ties and links on everything from the locations of wanted criminals to hotbeds of human trafficking.

What does this mean for the rest of us? Everything.

What is Palantir?

The name “Palantir” comes from a fictional stone in the Tolkien universe that allowed the user to see things happening in different areas — much like a crystal ball. This modern version ties together wisps of information to track, monitor and make connections in everything from wars to law enforcement.

A few of Palantir’s more notable moments include:

  • Helping U.S. forces track down and kill Osama Bin Laden
  • Assisting the Marines in Afghanistan by doing forensic analysis of roadside bombs to predict insurgent attacks
  • Sifting through 40 years of documents to convict Ponzi-schemer Bernie Madoff
  • Locating Mexican drug cartel members who murdered an American customs agent
  • Finding the hackers who installed spyware on the Dalai Lama’s computer

How Palantir Works

Emerging from its secretive cocoon of James Bond-like technologies and insights, Palantir is poised to change business as well. Pharmaceutical companies use Palantir to help them analyze and predict drug interactions. Hershey uses Palantir’s technology to help it increase chocolate sales. J.P. Morgan Chase uses Palantir to help it in the fight against mortgage fraud.

Imagine someone using your identity to open a home equity line of credit and siphoning funds to a computer in a cybercafe in Nigeria. Palantir can piece together these connections across data from bills, home and I.P. addresses to help eliminate the problem before it balloons into a massive loss (and a huge headache for whoever has had their identity stolen) — and it can do it all in seconds. Staff at J.P. Morgan Chase estimate that Palantir has saved them hundreds of millions of dollars.

In short, the brainchild of an eccentric philosopher is quickly becoming one of the most lucrative and profitable private tech companies. You may recognize the name of its largest stakeholder too — Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor behind PayPal and Facebook. And Palantir is poised to potentially go public — making Karp Silicon Valley’s newest billionaire and doubling Thiel’s original investment in the company.

But Karm fears the change that money will have on Palantir. An “I.P.O”, he says, “is corrosive to our culture, corrosive to our outcomes”. But at the same time, Palantir has to make money in order to thrive. It seeks out big contracts with major players and counts Democratic strategist James Carville, former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, and former C.I.A. director George Tenet among its advisers.

But what does all of this mean for you?

Big Brother vs. Big Data

One need only look back a few decades to remember that making money and changing the world are often at odds with each other. While still graduate students at Stanford, Sergey Brin and Larry Page wrote that “advertising-funded search engines will be inherently biased toward the advertisers”. Then they founded Google, which makes fistfuls of money off of advertising.

Even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg championed a “society of complete openness” while being incredibly secretive about how it mines the information you share to target ads to you. A search engine and a social network are one thing – but something that can tie everything about you together in seconds – has much more serious and far-reaching implications.

But Palantir knows that privacy concerns about it are not unfounded. Courtney Bowman, a former employee at Google, now works at Palantir as a “civil liberties engineer” — helping lawmakers understand how to use modern technology while keeping privacy safeguards in place. One of Palantir’s features includes a series of safeguards designed to limit who can see what. Another feature includes an “audit trail” to let investigators see that certain rules and regulations with regard to data handling, were followed precisely.

And although these features are wired into the system, using them is not required. “What keeps me up at night is that we have to keep thinking about this as we grow into new marketing and new regions,” says Mr. Bowman. “[a]s you move into higher levels of computing complexity, you can’t retreat into the argument that [the technology of finding hidden things] is neutral.”

With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility

We’ve seen what could happen when commerce and surveillance combine. One Palantir employee pitched a Washington law firm on ways that they could expose WikiLeaks – which included cyberattacks and disinformation.

Although the idea was never formally executed, the pitch papers and emails between the two groups were posted online by hacktivist group Anonymous. Because of the sheer size of Palantir, coming to a consensus on how its service is used can be difficult. According to an article in the New York Times, some employees don’t want Palantir helping Israel because of their position against Palestinians. Palantir still has contracts with the Israeli government. But currently, they are not working with China. Nor are they working with tobacco companies.

At its core, Palantir still has a great deal of finding itself to do. As the company continues to grow, it’s easy to lose sight of its goals as it scales to accommodate massive growth and change. Palantir’s ability to remain steadfast in the face of corruption and very hot, sensitive issues will remain a focus, as will its very difficult decision as to whether or not it should go public.

Still, there’s a great deal of untapped potential for technology like this – especially for marketers. What are your thoughts on this kind of big data mapping and analysis? Do you feel that Palantir is poised to become the next big game changer in commerce much as the Internet was decades ago? Or do you feel it’s more of a fad that will only see limited use outside government, military and law enforcement areas?

Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!

Google Assistant to roll out across newer smartphones

Google is rolling out the Google Assistant to more devices. The announcement coincides with the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, Spain.

Currently available on the Pixel smartphone, Android Wear, Google Home and its messaging app Allo, it will soon be available on Android 6.0 and 7.0 devices.

Google Assistant is essentially an AI-powered successor to voice search. Google Assistant aspires to be conversational and go beyond simple voice query input and text-to-speech playback. However most users won’t see a dramatic difference between Google Assistant and voice search today.

As third party services and transactions (“actions“) are increasingly integrated, Google Assistant experiences could become very different vs conventional search. A recent survey by Stone Temple Consulting found that the majority of users (60 percent) wanted more “direct answers” without having to visit another website. In other words, “answers not links.”

This desire/request and Google’s effort to fulfill it will have significant implications for SEO and third party exposure in search results.

Google says the rollout will start this week to the US market, followed by UK, Canada, Australia and Germany. More countries and languages will be added “in the coming year.”

Virtual assistants are starting to become a critical battleground for Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon. We’re likely to see accelerating development of these services as a differentiator for devices that are increasingly hard to differentiate on the basis of hardware alone.

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5 ways you can improve your new business’s visibility on Google Maps

New businesses need all the help they can get to attract customers, generate revenue and establish themselves to compete with existing companies. And for brick-and-mortar storefronts, being found on Google Maps is key to driving traffic to the business.

Due to the economic explosion in the Plano and Frisco suburbs of Dallas, opening of new local stores is rampant. New commercial developments are being built and filled with shops within a matter of months. This growth also provides the ability to make some interesting Google Map search observations, as comparisons can be made between stores with similar attributes.

I’ll take a look at new restaurants located in the map area below. It’s a less-than-one-mile stretch of a busy road running north to south. The east side of Preston Road is substantially built out and has many established businesses and restaurants that have been there for several years. The west side of Preston Road is very new — all five restaurants there opened between summer and fall of 2016, with one more slated to open this spring.

As you can see, there is a marked difference in Google Map search results for the established restaurants (on the right) compared to the new restaurants (on the left — yep, you can’t see them except for one red dot).

Yet one of those new restaurants is consistently listed in Google Map results for the search term “restaurants” while the other four are not.

Below, I compare the online presence of these businesses to figure out why one shows up in results when the others don’t, and I provide five tips on how you can put your brick-and-mortar business on the map even being the new kid on the block.

The importance of Google Maps to Local Search

Eighty-four percent of consumers perform a search for local businesses. It’s no secret that mobile’s on-the-go capability is key to local search, and nearly a third of all searches performed on mobile devices are related to location. And that number is growing — local search on mobile is growing 50 percent faster than general mobile search.

Google controls 95 percen of mobile search market share. Even if you use Safari on your iPhone to search for “coffee shops near me,” Google’s snack pack results and map show up. According to comScore’s 2016 US Mobile App Report, Google Maps overtook the Google Search app for fourth place in number of unique visitors with over 95 million users. It trails only Facebook, Messenger and YouTube in unique visitors.

That means appearing in Google map results is critical for local businesses. Local search results in Google automatically pull up with a map in the snack pack, and clicking on the request for more places takes you to a Google map based results page. With 90 percent of purchases still happening offline in stores, showing up in Google Map search results is critical to local businesses being found.

The Google Maps problem facing new storefronts

You type your business name into Google Maps, and a nice red pin shows up marking your business in the right spot, and the knowledge graph with your business profile information and reviews is accurate and complete. That means searches in a local map area that match your business category will list you in results now, right? Not always, especially if you are a new business.

There seems to be a perception among SMBs that searches in Google Maps are different than those utilizing the Google search box. It makes sense and is partially true. The intent apparent through a search for restaurants located within a defined geographic area is much more targeted, and thus the results are pared down significantly from a similar search box query that might result in millions of “results.” But the belief that every restaurant on the map will show up on the list of results at some point if you kept scrolling is misplaced.

If a user hits the “next” button for more results (PC) or continues scrolling down (mobile), Google Maps often zooms out and leaves the area of original search, instead providing search results from a broader geographic area. So in my restaurant example, some within the map area are omitted from search results in favor of restaurants up to five miles away.

What made one new business shine on Google Maps

New businesses have it especially tough. About 50 percent of local search ranking factors are related to third-party recognition and interaction with your business. And because we’re talking local search, broad traditional brand reputation even from national franchise brands has limited or even negligible impact. In fact, of the five new restaurants I’m about to compare, all but one have many other locations, and the one new restaurant that consistently showed up in search results on Google Maps has the second fewest locations.

The restaurants I compare are all on the same side of the road (west) within a 1/2 mile of each other and that opened within a five-month period between July and November of 2016. I did not include Menchie’s, a frozen yogurt store. The restaurants are:

  • Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar
  • Costa Vida Fresh Mexican Grill
  • Taziki’s Mediterranean Café
  • Grub Burger Bar
  • McAlister’s Deli

Each of these restaurants has claimed their business profile, provides similar information in their knowledge graphs and has a material number of reviews. I was able to rule out the following Google profile factors as influencing ranking or impacting appearance in search results: dining style, restaurant or business category, number of months in business, number of Google reviews, quality of reviews and images included in the profile. Thus, it seems the difference lies in external signals to Google.

In a search performed in a map area along a one-mile stretch of Preston Road that includes all five of these restaurants, only Lazy Dog appeared on the map as a red dot or icon in search results. If I zoomed in, the other restaurants eventually would appear, but as orange icons instead of red. Some never showed up until I was practically on top of them in the map.

Those restaurants in red icons show up in the list of results that displays when the search is performed (I minimized the list in the above screen shots). Those in orange did not show up on the list. Instead, other more established restaurants, even farther away, appeared as I scrolled down.

Each listing contains useful information for making decisions such as food type, rating and reviews, a short description and hours of operation. Thus, showing up in the search result listing is a big advantage.

Here’s what made the difference for Lazy Dog Restaurant in appearing on the map and in the list even as a new restaurant. These lessons should apply to any business with a storefront that appears in Google Maps.

1. Claim your third-party listing profiles and make sure the information listed is accurate and complete

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Google considers third-party data, even when it has first-hand data from you about your own business. I Googled the restaurant names to see what showed up on their SERP (search engine results page) to find what third-party data Google sees or finds.

One of the page one SERP results for Lazy Dog is its TripAdvisor page with 20 reviews. Grub Burger Bar had individual TripAdvisor reviews show up in search results, but not its main TripAdvisor listing. The TripAdvisor listing is unclaimed, even though there are 15 reviews, and Trip Advisor categorizes Grub Burger Bar as a bar and not a restaurant.

The one restaurant that performed consistently worst in my tests also had not claimed its Yelp profile, TripAdvisor profile or Community Impact (a local newspaper) profile, all of which showed up on page one of its SERP.

Inconsistencies in information or neglecting listings from authoritative sites will hurt the strength of your Google listing.

2. Post frequently on Facebook

Facebook is a valuable signal to Google, with each restaurant’s Facebook page appearing on the first page of its respective Google SERP.

Since its opening in November 2016, which makes it the newest restaurant on this list, Lazy Dog has posted a picture and a short comment on its location-specific Facebook page promoting a special offer, a dish, a drink, an event or a (usually furry) guest every single day. That kind of fresh content and engagement is a positive online signal to Google of the restaurant’s relevance and potential interest to searchers.

The one restaurant that did not have an active Facebook page consistently performed worst in the test searches I conducted. Others had fairly regular posts if sometimes inconsistent in frequency. But my tests showed that as a new business, weekly or even biweekly posts may not help enough.

3. Create location-specific content

Owners of businesses with multiple locations may believe that brand reputation as a whole helps boost search ranking of individual locations. While it might help in other areas, it does not seem to be helpful for local search.

A search for Lazy Dog Plano returns results that are almost all specific to the Plano location (with the exception of one other Yelp result). Similar searches on the other restaurants returned noticeably more results on other locations.

Thus, make sure that there’s plenty of online content that consistently mentions specific location information. For example, a restaurant can create location-specific content on sites with online menus or third-party ordering platforms. Or better, get local media to write content about your location.

4. Make it easy for local media to write about your business

Lazy Dog is the only establishment that has writeups from three well-known Plano media outlets that cover new restaurant openings. One of those writeups is also a more comprehensive article that tells a story and includes many high-quality photos.

Writers for media publishers are busy and often appreciate both ideas for content and resources that help make writing fast and easy. Providing content, stories, quotes, interesting facts and pictures in a package that is easy to digest may help get you a better-written and more complete article about your business.

5. Go deep in building your online presence

Google searches can reveal whether your location’s online presence is robust or thin. Lazy Dog gets mentions of its Plano location six pages deep in SERPs. And none of them are as insignificant as a three-comment Reddit thread that appears on page one of another restaurant’s SERP. That’s evidence Google had few options in finding relevant information on the business — not what you want.

If you look around, you’ll likely find opportunities to be mentioned online, usually for free. There are third-party listings aplenty. Do some searches on your competition and find out where they get mentioned online. Chambers of commerce, local government organizations that support business, community organizations, blogs, coupon sites, industry groups, local guides and publications all often are looking for content.

Any mention of your business in content published by these groups will help much more than an expired Reddit thread.

Closing

It’s important for new businesses to get on the map quickly, both figuratively and literally. Most of the restaurants discussed above did a decent job building their online presence, boosting their Google listing and outperforming even some of the more established restaurants on the other side of the road.

But they remained relatively obscure on Google Maps, and it is clear that with the right moves and some elbow grease, a strong online presence can be accelerated that will provide immediate returns in Google Map search results. And that superior visibility will serve a new business well in trying to establish itself.

The post 5 ways you can improve your new business’s visibility on Google Maps appeared first on Search Engine Land.



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Bing UK now displaying National Health Service data for GP & hospital search queries

According to the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), the publicly-funded national healthcare system has been working with Bing UK during the last year to improve search results for general practitioner and hospital queries.

“Over the last year, we have collaborated with our friends at Bing to provide users with a comprehensive GP and hospital search experience,” reports a recent post on the NHS Choices blog.

The NHS says that queries for “GP in [location]” on Bing UK will now surface a list of local options with information on specific locations, open times and user reviews – all data that has been pulled from the NHS.

Clicking on a result will display more information for the GP’s office.

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Need to get with Google My Business support? Use Twitter!

It’s the end of the month, and that means it’s time for another edition of Greg’s Soapbox! Except this time, it’s not so much me standing on the soapbox and ranting; I’m more standing near it and politely providing helpful advice.

Almost two years ago, I wrote a post here about using Google phone support if you had issues with Google My Business (yes, I’m not linking to the post on purpose). Depending on your particular keyword phrase when you search, that post usually ranks anywhere from #2 to #5 for any variation of “Google My Business support” — and it’s always the highest-ranking non-Google result.

The problem is, while phone support supposedly still exists, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to get to anymore. And, since it’s the highest ranking non-Google answer, a ton of messages come through every month from people who are pointing out that the method in the post doesn’t work anymore.

I wanted to write this month’s post and update everyone on the best way to get support for any problems you might be having with your Google My Business listing.

We all know that Google My Business can be frustrating. All too often, the person with access leaves a company and doesn’t share that access. It’s incredibly difficult to get access to an account once it’s lost.

You might need to update your address, or phone number, or uploaded photos. You’ll definitely need to reply to reviews. Without easily accessible phone support, it doesn’t appear that there are any alternative options.

In reality, there’s a much better support option that most people don’t know about: Twitter support! Simply shoot a quick tweet over to @GoogleMyBiz, and their support team will jump on your request and help you out.

When the service first rolled out, responses were incredibly quick. Now that more people know about it, you might have to wait up to 30 minutes for a response, but once you get a response, they’re amazingly fast at resolving your situation. They’ll ask you to send a Direct Message with full details of your situation, and in almost every situation, the issue will be resolved shortly thereafter.

Big shoutout to Jared, who’s an absolute beast. I know there are other people on the team, but somehow he’s been the one to help with every request I’ve made in the last six months or so.

It’s all US-based, Google employee-staffed support. They won’t follow any sort of script; they’ll simply ask for more details, then they’ll jump in and get you sorted out. If you haven’t used it yet, you need to try it — it’s amazing.

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Google local finder tests cards with horizontal scroll for map search results

Google is now testing a new format for their local search results on mobile when bringing up the Google Maps local finder. The new results are not in a vertical list view but rather a horizontal card style view. The card style view requires you swipe the cards horizontally to see more local results. This is different from the natural scroll up and down for the list view.

Mike Blumenthal published a GIF of this in action:

I am personally not able to replicate this but Google is frequently testing Google Maps and local finder search interfaces. This one is one of the more extreme tests.

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Saturday, February 25, 2017

Ida Lewis Google Doodle marks 175th birthday of ‘America’s Bravest Woman’

Today’s Google doodle marks the 175th birthday of Ida Lewis, a lighthouse keeper once hailed as “America’s Bravest Woman” for the numerous lives she saved from drowning.

As the owner of the Lime Rock Lighthouse in Rhode Island, Google says Idawalley Zorada Lewis made her first save at the age of 12 and continued braving into the Newport harbor’s dangerous, cold waters to save drowning men and women all the way into her sixties.

From the Google Doodle Blog:

A lighthouse keeper required unwavering courage, sheer physical strength, constant diligence, and a willingness to put one’s own life on the line. Ida was so dedicated that supposedly she would rush into inclement weather without shoes or coat so as not a waste a single second. Her life and legacy were not only an honor to research and illustrate, but truly a source of inspiration.

Today’s doodle was inspired by an event that resulted in Lewis being awarded a Gold Lifesaving Medal from President Grant when she saved two soldiers who had fallen through ice in February of 1881. While many of the lives Lewis saved went unrecorded, Google says that day’s events were covered in local newspapers and, at least, one national publication.

Designed by doodler Lydia Nichols, the doodle is a slide show made up of the following ten images highlighting Lewis’ actions and the accolades she received:

The doodle leads to a search for “Ida Lewis” and is being displayed on Google’s U.S. homepage and on a handful of other International homepages.

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Friday, February 24, 2017

SearchCap: AMP in search, search pictures and more

searchcap-header-v2-scap

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • Links to AMP content are showing up outside of search results
    Feb 24, 2017 by Barb Palser

    With several popular distribution apps now linking to Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) content, columnist Barb Palser notes that the format is taking root outside of Google search — likely to provide an optimal experience for mobile users.

  • Search in Pics: Google cigar box guitar, branded airplane head covers & a skateboard
    Feb 24, 2017 by Barry Schwartz

    In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more. Google cigar box guitar: Source: Instagram Google Cloud umbrella: Source: Twitter Google building blocks: Source: Instagram […]

  • The 5 Pillars of Marketing Automation Success
    Feb 24, 2017 by Digital Marketing Depot

    Learn how agencies can use marketing automation to establish a strong foundation for their clients. By taking just a few easy steps, you can ensure they’ll get the most out of the platform from day one. In this white paper from Sharp Spring, you will learn: how to help your clients identify and acquire qualified […]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Industry

Link Building

SEO

SEM / Paid Search

Search Marketing

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The 5 Pillars of Marketing Automation Success

Learn how agencies can use marketing automation to establish a strong foundation for their clients. By taking just a few easy steps, you can ensure they’ll get the most out of the platform from day one.

In this white paper from Sharp Spring, you will learn:

  • how to help your clients identify and acquire qualified leads every day.
  • best practices for nurturing and communicating with leads.
  • tips for educating your clients’ sales reps on marketing automation.

Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download this white paper.

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5 Tips to Creating an Unbeatable Facebook Ad Campaign

Are you sick and tired of losing money on Facebook Ads?

Many advertisers just like you take a swing at a new ad campaign every day, hoping to finally hit the ball out of the park and win the game. They test a myriad of demographics and interests, use a lot of different images, and even tweak their copy over, and over, and over again.

But for some weird, unfair reason, they can’t create a profitable ad. It seems like they are just throwing money out to Facebook’s hands.

It kind of sucks, right?

Now, what if I told you that, with a few tweaks here and there, you could create your first successful ad today?

Because you can.

In this blog post, I will give you three tips that will dramatically change the way you approach Facebook Advertising forever, especially if you’re just starting.

Are you game? Great! Let’s dive right in:

Tip #1: Your Offer Will Make or Break Your Campaign

Let me start by citing the words of the late Gary Halbert—one of the best advertisers of the 20th century.

“Strong copy will not overcome a weak offer but…in many cases, a strong offer will succeed in spite of weak copy written by marketing morons.”

Gary was talking about direct response copywriting, but this principle applies to any advertising. If you have a good offer in place, you have more chances to create an ad that pays off. That’s a fact.

Just think about it.

Which offer is more attractive?

Offer #1

rosegal-facebook-ad

Offer #2

iheartdogs-facebook-ad

Both are great offers. I agree on that. But only one of them appeals to the right emotion.

Can you guess what offer I’m talking about?

You’re right. The second one.

Even though a 50% OFF deal is great, it doesn’t compare to the implied mechanism used by the second offer. The simple fact of feeding seven dogs will entice you to buy the shirt, especially if you are dog lover. You won’t even think you’re buying a shirt. That’s just a plus. In your mind, you’ll be helping seven poor dogs to survive.

And that’s what great offers do.

They sell without selling.

Now, I’m not saying you should start a charity to start selling on Facebook. No. What I’m saying is that you need to find a way to sweeten your offer—and do it in a way people don’t feel you’re selling them something. As Brian Clark says, “great copy doesn’t seem like an ad, it seems like a favor”.

Remember, people don’t like being sold, but they love to buy stuff.

So your mission is to make them feel that buying whatever you’re selling is their idea, not yours. That’s the basic concept I want you to understand.

Think outside the box and go beyond the typical “free shipping on orders over $50” kind of offers.

SaaS companies and information marketing businesses know this (at least the good ones.) They never sell you something. Instead, they offer free trials or give away information and create systems to build trust and entice you to buy the product without even doing any direct selling.

adespresso-facebook-ad

Of course, you can’t take the same approach in e-commerce. But, as an aspiring successful advertiser, your task is to find that compelling offer.

That said, here are a couple tips to do it:

  • Read “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D. — in this book, Cialdini will guide you through the six weapons of influence (reciprocation, commitment, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity) and will show you how advertisers use them to persuade you into doing some things you wouldn’t normally do. This information will help you create more persuasive ads and identify the strategy behind the ad campaigns of your competition.
  • Read as many books on psychology as you can — marketing is simply human psychology in action. The more you know about it, the most effective your offers will be. And though there’s plenty of psychology books in the marketplace, these three will definitely help you start off on the right foot: Made to Stick, The Social Animal, and — of course — How to Win Friends & Influence People.
  • Look at what your competitors are doing and outsmart them — more often than not, you can create an irresistible offer by just analyzing what your competitors are doing, and then offering a “sexier” deal. Burger King, Wendy’s, and McDonald’s are famous for doing this. They continually spy on their competitors’ social media to find their most popular offers, and then create something better.
Wendy’s offer:

Burger King’s offer:

Tip #2: Track Sales, Not Vanity Metrics

Listen:

Clicks and social engagement are important, but what really matters is how much money you make, not how many people share your ad.

Here’s what I mean:

If you’re getting a lot of clicks, it’s easy to get false expectations because your ad is apparently “working.” This is a big mistake – clicks do not necessarily mean it’s a high-performing ad (unless your only goal is to get clicks).

I can’t remember how much money I’ve lost because of this.

I used to think: “I just need to be patient, and I will see the sales coming in. After all, people are engaging, aren’t they?”

Or “I will increase the daily budget. I just need more exposure.”

But those sales never materialized, and I ended up losing money.

Now, you may think this is something silly or that there’s no way it can happen to you, but I say, don’t be so sure.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter if you’re getting thousands of shares and clicks. If you are not getting sales, something is not working. It may be your ad. It may be your landing page. It may be your audience. But whatever the case is, you need to stop the campaign and figure out what’s going on. Otherwise, you’ll keep losing money.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that clicks and engagement aren’t important. To some degree, they are. What I’m trying to say is that you should always keep track of your sales, scale what works, and get rid of what doesn’t work.

This way, you’ll always have a point of reference for your next ad or campaign.

In words of Jon Loomer, Founder of The Power Hitters Club, a private community for advanced Facebook marketers:

If you don’t use Conversion Tracking, you’re going to have a hard time determining which ad is actually leading to revenue. As a result, it’s very easy to make the wrong decisions when managing your ads.

This is extremely important information. Even if you’re making sales, if you don’t track which ad is leading to revenue, you’ll lose money.

Now, take a look at this screenshot:

facebook-ad-performance

What you’re looking at is a screenshot of an ad I ran a long time ago.

I was selling a product for $199 and, as you can see, it cost me $128.99 to get a purchase. Apparently, I was profiting $70 per sale.

The problem is that when calculating my results, I didn’t take into account some expenses—like contribution to overhead and the product cost—so instead of making $70 per sale, I was losing around $21 per purchase.

I was so excited with my “successful” ad that I didn’t notice the leak until I was already $20,000+ down.

I know, I know. It was a DUMB mistake. And it’s not directly related to Facebook Advertising.

But it’s a very common one.

That’s why you need to track everything, especially revenue.

The bottom line is this:

Sales first. Clicks and engagement, second.

If you take this approach, I guarantee you’ll learn faster and save a ton of advertising money.

Tip #3: You Don’t “Create” Successful Ads, You Build Them

Many people believe that successful campaigns are “created,” but they are not.

I mean, you can’t produce a winner ad out of thin air. No. You need to find the right information about your audience, so that you can build a campaign based on those findings.

And here’s a keyword: “Build.”

If you were to build a building, how would you go about it?

First of all, you’d start with a solid foundation, right? Then, you’d start putting together a series of building blocks to give shape to your building.

Finally, once the entire building is done, you’d start taking care of the less-important details — like painting and decoration.

My point here is, if you skipped the first steps, your building would fall really quickly. And you know what? When it comes to Facebook marketing, you need to take the same approach. You need to build your campaigns exactly as you’d build a building. Step by step, you’re collecting and putting together key data points that, eventually, will give shape to your winner ad.

These key data points are the foundation of your campaign. But, how can you find these data points? The answer is very simple, of course. You find them through testing and optimization.

Now, optimization is a simple (yet often over-complicated) concept. According to Neil Patel, optimization boils down to two things:

  • Do more of what works.
  • Quit doing what doesn’t work.

That’s all there is to it.

And it’s the key to building a successful campaign.

Now, here are some tips that will help you start off on the right foot:

1. Split your ad into different categories

You need to categorize the elements of an ad to simplify the testing process. Breaking down your ads into elements will help you visualize the different things you can test and optimize.

Here are the different elements you can test:

Ad Design

  • Image
  • Text
  • Headline
  • Call to action
  • Value proposition

Targeting

  • Country
  • Gender
  • Interests
  • Age
  • Custom Audiences
  • Relationship Status
  • Purchase Behaviors
  • Education Level

Miscellaneous

  • Landing Page/Product Page
  • Ad Placement
  • Campaign Objective
  • Ad Type

If you’d like to learn more about targeting and categorization, Content Harmony produced an excellent guide to Facebook Ad Targeting options that is worth reading.

2. Optimize every element of your ad creative

Naturally, your ad creative will have a direct impact on your conversions. Here is where your main idea (value proposition) is expressed, and you need to take the time to optimize every element that supports that idea.

It’s surprising how many advertisers neglect this step and design an ad that simply doesn’t harmonize with the market.

Below you’ll find a simple cheat sheet that breaks down the different elements of a Facebook ad, and gives you some tips on how to optimize them for higher conversions.

decide-between-three-major-ad-placements

Now, if you want to dig deeper into ad creative optimization, marketing writer Brad Smith has put together a comprehensive guide that will show you everything you need to know about the topic. Make sure to read it.

3. Avoid the “spaghetti-against-the-wall” approach

If you throw a bunch of spaghetti against a wall, some of it will stick.

When it comes to Facebook Ads Optimization, you can’t take the same approach.

Of course, testing is crucial for your success, but it doesn’t mean that you should create a ton of different ads just to see which of them work.

Instead, you need a strategy.

But, how can you find this strategy?

Well, you can start by reading this guide from Social Media Examiner. You’ll learn 15 optimization strategies you can apply to your business right now. Also, BigCommerce produced an excellent roundup of Facebook Ads tips focused on ecommerce and conversions. These two posts will help you find the right angle for your business and industry.

4. Assume nothing, test everything

Take a look at the image below:

adespresso-facebook-ad-test

Image Source

Let’s say you’re about to run the ads above.

How could you know which ad will perform best?

Some of you would say that comparing the emotional angles of each ad is the best method.

Others would say that you need to analyze the correlation between the offer and the imagery.

And another small group of smart folks would say that you only need to “Google it” (just kidding…bad joke.)

Anyways, these are insightful answers, don’t you think?

But none of them are right.

The truth is that you couldn’t possibly know which ad will give you better results until you test them.

When Adespresso ran those ads, they thought the first ad would outperform the second one. But the results were surprising:

adespresso-facebook-ad-results

The moral of the story?

When it comes to testing, your opinion doesn’t matter.

So remember, assume nothing. Test everything.

Tip #4: LTV Is More Important Than You Think

I love this quote from Peter Thiel, Facebook’s first outside investor:

“Long-term planning is often undervalued by our indefinite short-term world.”

How does this apply to Facebook marketing?

The answer is simple: In a bid to make a quick buck, many advertisers are missing on the tremendous opportunity that long-term planning can bring to their businesses.

Let me explain:

Assume you’re selling a $50 product, and it costs you $80 to acquire a new customer. At first glance, this doesn’t seem correct. If you’re spending $80 for every new customer, and you’re only making $50, it’s clear that you’re losing money, right?

Well, it depends…

Let’s also assume that you discovered that your LTV (Customer Lifetime Value) is $700. In this case, $80 per acquisition is not only acceptable, but utterly fantastic. You can afford to lose $30 per customer on the “front-end” of the relationship because you know that you’ll make far more money in the long run.

One of the primary reasons people fail at Facebook advertising is they don’t consider LTV when planning their strategy. They just focus on the quick sale. And the truth is until you calculate LTV and build your campaigns around it, you won’t take full advantage of your Facebook advertising.

Now, in case you’re wondering how to calculate LTV, this infographic will guide you step by step through the entire process.

Tip #5: Set Clear Goals (But Do It This Way)

This last one will sound kind of repetitive or dull. I was even tempted to exclude it from this guide. However, setting goals is crucial, and with so many people overlooking this step, I decided to talk a bit about it.

From an advertising standpoint, setting goals is vital because it helps you measure results and discover whether or not your ads and campaigns are following the right direction. Without a clear path to follow, you’ll never get tangible results.

Sure, chances are you already know all that. But how do you set the right goals?

Well, you need to start at the end…

Let’s say you want to increase your sales this year. How would you go about it? If I guess right, you’d set a goal like “40,000 units sold within 12 months” or “30,000 product sales by 2018.”

Now, setting “end” goals like these is advisable. They help you visualize the big picture and follow a clear path. The problem starts when you only set this type of goals. I mean, “40,000” can be a really discouraging number when you’ve never made that amount of sales before.

Worse yet, with “big picture” goals like these, it’s hard to measure results in the short run. Instead, you need to break them down into smaller goals. This way, you can analyze data with more speed and modify your strategy along the way, if necessary.

Getting back to the “40,000 units” example, how many sales would you need to make each month to reach your annual goal? The answer is 3,333 sales per month. And how many sales would you need to make each day to reach your monthly goal? Just 111 a day.

In this case, instead of trying to make 40,000 annual sales, you should aim for just 111 per day. By taking this approach, you can evaluate your campaigns on a daily basis, and therefore, pinpoint possible leaks in your strategy much faster.

The bottom line? When setting your advertising goals, remember to start at the end and break down your “big picture” goals into smaller goals.

I know, I know. It’s a simple concept. But it will make your life way easier.

More Facebook Articles From the Kissmetrics Blog:

It’s Time to Create Your First Unbeatable Ad

Look, I get it.

You’re skeptical.

You’ve spent so much money on different strategies and methods, and you’re afraid of failing again. But the only way to succeed is to move forward and try different things.

And I want to be completely blunt with you. Even if you implement this information, I can’t guarantee you’ll create a profitable ad.

Why? Because there’s way too many factors that can influence your results—like your industry, budget, experience, and even your country. But I can guarantee one thing: this information will put you on the right path to a more profitable, successful campaign.

But you need to give it a shot, don’t you think?

Anyways, it’s up to you.

I’d love to know your thoughts, brutal or otherwise.

About the Author: Josue Valles is a freelance copywriter, professional blogger, and business writing coach. He’s on a lifelong mission to help businesses find their voice and to turn boring ideas into brilliant stories. If you’re interested in working with Josue, you can email him at josuevallesp@gmail.com