Your business depends on Facebook ads to drive traffic to your website. Any disruption, even a small one, could impact your revenues from this channel. But as technology continues to improve, residual impacts will undoubtedly occur. Double Up is here to help you understand those effects and how we can continue to increase your website’s traffic without much effect.
The Apple iOS 14 Release
Apple announced some changes in iOS 14 that affect how people receive and manage conversion events using the Facebook pixel. For most of us, advertising on mobile is critical since 99% of people worldwide access social media on their mobile devices.
How we target, optimize, report on conversions may change.
In compliance with EU privacy guidelines and increasing concern over how much digital tracking happens online, the App Store will require Apps (like FB) that track to announce the fact via prompt. It will also prohibit certain types of tracking unless people opt-in.
Apple iOS 14 Update Impacts Businesses
Even though about 81% of people say they would trade their data to increase personalization online, there is still a large number of users that would agree to this.
Opting into something makes it more of a decision, while opting out is the default. A lot of undecided people will just stay opted out. Reporting and user experience will be impacted. Advertising has the potential to become less personalized and likely less relevant to many consumers. That means it’s harder to reach your target audience.
There is a good chance that this will push more businesses into a subscription-based model, which does allow for greater tracking and personalization.
It’s important to note that there’s been a lot of talk over the years about privacy rules eventually wiping out businesses’ ability to use tracking through means like Facebook pixels. But here we are years later, seeing ad revenues rise. According to The New York Times, online ad revenues increased about 56% in the second quarter of 2021 Q2. That said, this isn’t the time to be complacent.
Facebook is taking this seriously and so should you.
How Facebook Is Responding
Facebook will begin processing pixel conversions using Aggregated Event Measurement, a tool that limits domain conversions to 8 events that Facebook will prioritize for optimization.
This will balance privacy with conversion optimization.
Update to Facebook’s SDK for iOS 14 version 8.1. This will help personalize the user experience despite these changes and let you keep receiving conversion events.
Be sure to verify your domain, or you may stop receiving conversion data.
Go ahead and update your events manager to limit it to 8 conversion events. This will allow Facebook to optimize those events within the new parameters.
Exclude iOS when you set a conversion goal for the campaign.
Start planning now how you can measure the effectiveness of campaigns without these conversions. This may require some outside the box thinking.
If you’re wondering how you’ll adapt your Facebook Ads to these iOS 14 changes, connect with the experts at Double Up Digital. We can help you manage the transition without massive disruption.
Your landing page should be your website’s best sales rep. All your sleepless nights of web design, planning marketing campaigns, and SEO efforts were to just get traffic to your landing page. This is where your paid-search visitors are exposed to your sales copy and ideally turn into sales or leads.
It’s not that much of an exaggeration to say that the success of your website depends largely on how well put together your landing page is. An effective landing page that is a lead generation machine validates all your hard work and increases conversions. A subpar one puts them all to waste.
Why Optimize Your Landing Page
That’s why when it comes to pay per click advertising, your landing page is one area you cannot afford to take for granted. It doesn’t matter how much traffic your SEO efforts are generating if you can’t turn that traffic into sales leads. Below, we’ll talk about how to optimize your landing page and get the most out of the traffic you’re getting.
Invest In Your Sales Copy
This is the absolute most important thing you should consider when looking to maximize your landing page. Your sales copy is literally the number one factor that can determine whether or not your landing page will convert leads or sales.
There are many schools of thought when it comes to the best practices for sales copy. One thing everybody agrees on, however, is that you need a strong headline. A strong headline should catch your visitors’ attention and make them feel good about being on your website – that they didn’t suddenly land on the wrong site by mistake. Once you’ve got their attention, then you can start to sell them on your truly life-changing products and services.
Your sales copy is what’s going to move your website visitors to either buy something or leave their information with you. It only makes sense to invest the appropriate time and effort into coming up with the best sales copy that you can.
High-Quality Page Design
Making your landing page aesthetically pleasing should be a no-brainer. Most visitors usually can tell with a quick glance whether or not they want to spend time on your website. You’ve worked so hard on getting them there, do you really want them bouncing away just because your landing page isn’t aesthetically pleasing?
It doesn’t even take that much effort. The most important thing is to keep the landing page looking professional. This is best done by keeping the design straightforward and minimal. It might be tempting to fill the page with images, but that’s just going to give it a cluttered feel. A few choices, relevant images, coupled with a well-thought-out outline of your main points will go a long way in helping potential customers take you more seriously. After all, nobody wants to feel like they’re being spammed or scammed. You want your landing page to be a smartly dressed professional salesman, not a scruffy clown.
Imagine browsing the Internet on your phone and suddenly you’re on a page that isn’t loading properly. The layout is distorted, the text is all over the place, and the images just don’t look right. What do you do? Chances are, if you are like most of the over 4.5 billion mobile phone users in the world, you simply exit that page. It’s not your time and trouble, after all.
This is what is likely to happen if you don’t optimize your landing page for mobile users. You’re losing the sale or lead before you even get a chance to sell to your website visitors. It’s just not worth the trouble for them. Keep this in mind when designing your landing pages to avoid alienating the millions of potential customers out there who are using mobile devices to browse the Internet.
Focus On Important Elements
When trying to maximize your landing page, think about what that really means to you. If your answer is anything other than getting conversions, then you’ve got it all wrong. The landing page is all about lead generation. That’s it. Everything on your landing page should have the sole purpose of helping you get sales leads. This means you want to get your webpage traffic to conversion with as few distractions as possible.
This can be done by simply clearing the useless clutter from your landing page. Avoid external AND internal links that might take your potential customers away from your page, never to return again. This includes search and navigation bars. It’s hard enough to get traffic on your webpage, even with heavy investment on Facebook ads, Bing ads, and social ads – why would you risk sending them away?
The landing page is all about conversions. Keep it focused on making sales and getting your visitors to leave their information.
Speed Is King
People like to say that content is king, and they’re not wrong. Speed, though, is part of the royal family when it comes to PPC marketing. A slow-loading landing page is bound to lose a lot of potential customers within seconds. Nobody is going to patiently wait around until your page loads. Be sure to optimize the loading speed of your landing page (and your website in general,) or you’ll see just how fast you can lose potential sales leads.
Improve Your Conversion Goals With Online Marketing Experts
Your landing page is where all the magic happens. It is where your opportunity to convince and convert potential clients lies. All the hard work you’ve done optimizing your website’s SEO, the money you’ve spent on ads, the hours upon hours of coming up with content – all of that was just to get traffic to your landing page. If you’re serious about maximizing your conversion rate optimization, connect with the experts at Double Up Digital. We can help you get the most out of your landing page.
Over the years, social networks have taken the online marketing world by storm. From Twitter to LinkedIn to Instagram, social media has become an integral part of top digital marketing companies all over the world.
Of course, anybody who is serious about digital marketing knows that the impact of Facebook cannot be ignored. With over 2 billion active users every month, Facebook offers businesses an incredibly diverse and targeted audience to share posts you want to promote. Literally a quarter of the world’s population is on Facebook, and that figure is only expected to go up in the future.
If you’re like any of the many businesses on Facebook, you’ve probably come across the Boost feature while planning out your social marketing campaign. You’ve also probably been tempted to take the leap and just go for it; let the boost feature do its magic and get you all the traffic, engagement, and extra reach you know you deserve. Unfortunately, it’s never quite that easy in practice. Here’s what you need to know before boosting Facebook posts.
Boosting Facebook Posts
The boost feature can be an incredibly powerful tool when used correctly, but it can also be a huge waste of time and money if you don’t really know what you’re doing. Like any tool, it’s very much dependent on how you use it. In this article, we’ll talk about how to use the boost feature to get the most out of it.
Let Your Posts Get Organic Traffic
Before you even think about boosting your Facebook posts, it’s important to let them get some organic reach first. This is because you want to know how well your post will perform before you put it in front of wider audiences. There’s really no set time for how long you should wait before boosting a post, but experts advise giving it around six hours. Once you know how your posts are performing, then you can move on to the next part of this article.
Boost Your Best Posts
This one should go without saying, but it’s surprising how many businesses make the mistake of boosting posts their audience doesn’t find particularly interesting. It’s understandable to want to increase the reach of your personal favorite posts, but remember that it’s what your audience wants that really matters. The people who have already liked your page are not just your fans; they’re the perfect test audience. They can tell you definitively what posts deserve to be boosted.
Find posts that perform well with your current organic reach. The more likes, shares, comments, and views, the more popular it is. That’s why it is very important to let posts get organic reach first. It gives you the chance to determine which posts deserve your hard-earned dollars to get boosted. These are the posts that you should be investing in when it comes to using the boost feature of Facebook. You already know these posts are great performers and garner a lot of positive responses – now it’s time to get them in front of more people.
By being selective about what posts you choose to boost, you get your money’s worth and get the most out of the boost feature. Use the boost feature to further invest in your best posts as opposed to using it as a crutch for underperforming posts. Remember that you’re basically expanding your reach to new audiences. You want them to see the best that you have to offer.
Define Your Reason For Boosting Facebook Posts
It can be incredibly tempting to use the boost feature indiscriminately for all your posts. After all, who wouldn’t want to reach more people? Larger reach means more engagement and better brand awareness, so why not just boost everything?
For starters, it’s because just boosting every post your page may have can get really expensive, really quickly. Secondly, and just as important, it’s incredibly crucial to approach your digital marketing campaigns with a well-thought-out plan. If you don’t have a structured plan you are following, you are just throwing money away. You might as well just start a fire and toss bags of cash into it.
In line with this reasoning, it is only prudent that you define specifically your reasons for boosting certain posts. Are you looking to create more brand awareness? Maybe you want to increase the amount of traffic on your website. Or perhaps you are just looking to get more likes on your Facebook business page. Whatever the reason may be, having it clearly defined will help you choose which posts to boost.
Who Do You Want To Reach?
We covered identifying your best performing posts and investing in them. We also talked about clearly defining what you want your boosts to achieve. Now it’s time to figure out what audiences you want to reach.
Facebook boost offers diverse targeting options. This includes fans and/or friends of your fans, age, interests, gender, and location. This is incredibly important as Facebook literally allows you to target custom audiences whom you want your boosted posts to get in front of. Google ads may give you a much wider audience, but nobody does targeted advertisements better than Facebook. That’s one of the reasons why many online marketers have been investing so much money on Facebook advertising. It only makes sense that you take advantage of this and figure out exactly who you want your boosted posts to reach.
Remember when we talked about defining your reasons for boosting? Knowing what you want your boosted posts to achieve will let you make intelligent decisions on whom you want to target with your boosts. And since you already know what your best performing posts are, it’s a simple matter of matching the post to the audience.
Facebook Advertising Experts
As a digital marketer, it’s important that you keep up with the newest emerging trends. If you’re looking for expert advice on social media engagement, contact Double Up Digital today. After all, if you want results, it’s always a good idea to work with experts who know what they’re doing.
It is impossible to discuss digital marketing without mentioning those three magic letters: SEO. Content may be king, but Search Engine Optimization is what makes sure everybody can access that content. That’s why there’s no shortage of tips, techniques, and strategies popping up every day, just begging to be implemented in your SEO efforts. The question then, is: How do you know what works for you? Continue reading to learn why Google Analytics and Google Search Console are critical for measuring SEO success.
The answer comes in the form of data. Undeniable, cold, hard data. Having access to irrefutable, objective data can help you choose which path to take when it comes to SEO. This is where Google Analytics and Google Search Console come in.
Google Analytics and Search Console
Google Analytics is a free web analytics service the search engine giant offers website owners. It can be used to measure detailed information and data about a website’s visitors. Among other things, this includes how long a visitor spent on the site and how they got there in the first place. But that’s barely scratching the surface. Here are some ways you can fully utilize Google Analytics to measure your SEO success:
Total Site Visits
This is probably the most obvious analytic to measure. How many visitors are coming to your website? Plenty of visitors is obviously a good sign, while no visitors might mean you need to seriously rethink your SEO strategy. This is the most basic of all measurements, but it can give you a good general idea about how successful your website is.
Determine Traffic Sources
Next, it makes sense to determine where your site’s traffic is coming from. Is it mostly organic traffic, spurred on by your SEO efforts? Or is it coming from other channels, perhaps social media or referrals? By having a good grasp of what drives traffic to your website, you can make the appropriate adjustments. Google Analytics allows you to understand exactly where your traffic is coming from. As long as your numbers are going up over time, this shows that your SEO efforts are paying off.
Study Individual Page Views
It’s important to note that websites do not dominate keywords – it is the pages that do. That’s why the next logical step is determining which of your website’s pages are the most successful from an SEO standpoint. In theory, you might be able to figure out why these pages are so popular and apply the same methods to your other pages that aren’t performing as well.
Monitor Bounce Rates
Before you get all excited about all the views a page is getting, it’s important to understand that the quality of your web traffic is just as valuable as the sheer volume of it. Bounce rates refer to the amount of traffic that simply exits your page without clicking any links to get deeper into the website. A low bounce rate is ideal, as it means your content is engaging enough to get a visitor to explore more of what you have to offer. And more engagement likely translates to a higher chance of a sale.
While Google Analytics is centered more on a website’s visitors, Google Search Console (GSC) is focused on how your website appears on search engine results. It draws a clear correlation between how your SEO techniques are affecting your pages’ rankings. Here are some ways GSC can help you measure how successful your marketing and SEO efforts are:
In-depth Keyword Data
With Google Search Console, you can get detailed reports on how certain keywords are performing, including their impressions, views, and click-through rates (CTR.) This is valuable data because it shows you specifically where you can improve on your keyword strategy. For example, if certain keywords are not performing as well as you would like, maybe it would be a good idea to modify them slightly into long-tail keywords.
Search Appearance to Improve CTRs
CTRs are also an extremely valuable measure of a website’s SEO success, and Google agrees. Search results that get very little clicks ultimately drop in rankings, as Google deems them less valuable than results that have higher CTRs. If your CTRs aren’t where you want them to be, then it might be a good idea to see what improvements can be made. For example, you might consider adding structured data in the form of rich snippets to make your website look more appealing in the SERPs. A visually-rich search result is more likely to attract visitors and engagement.
Checking Site Speed with PageSpeed Insights
Google Search Console’s PageSpeed Insights lets you know exactly how fast your website content loads. Nobody enjoys slow websites. The PageSpeed Insights tool also gives you suggestions and fixes for your site’s speed. By improving loading times, you can drastically improve the user experience on your website for your visitors.
Fixing Broken Pages
Just as visitors do not enjoy slow load times, neither do they like broken pages. A single broken page makes your entire website seem less reliable and professional, potentially costing you valuable web traffic and prospective customers. The Crawl Errors tab in Google Search Console can help you identify which pages need fixing so visitors can access the content you have to offer.
While Google Analytics and Google Search Console are two very different things, you can’t simply say one is better than the other. Both are powerful tools that can be invaluable in your SEO efforts if used correctly. Google Analytics can give you objective data to show how your website is performing, and Google Search Console can highlight opportunities such as better keywords and more optimal site performance. It’s not all about the numbers. Conversion is just as valuable as traffic and using both Google Analytics and Google Search Console in concert will be necessary to get the most out of your SEO strategy.
Experts in Google Analytics & Search Console
Consider Double Up Digital if you’re looking to learn more about how you can improve your website’s SEO and talk to one of our experts today. Our SEO specialists combine years of experience that can help transform your business. Get in touch with us today to get started.
Google Adwords or Social Ads? This is a question that has long haunted digital marketers all over the world. It is something that all businesses eventually have to answer as they seek to grow their reach, their brand awareness, and most importantly, their sales.
Google Adwords is almost synonymous with online advertising, and with good reason. The search engine giant’s advertising platform has a reach that no social network can even hope to compare to. With Google fielding over 3 billion search queries daily, it is easy to understand why Google Adwords is by far the most popular and most dominant pay per click advertising platform today. With the emergence and continued growth of social media though, social ads have begun to make a real case as a viable and valuable alternative to the Google Adwords platform. LinkedIn and Facebook, in particular, are proving to be effective advertising platforms in their own right.
Therein lies the dilemma. How do you know which avenue to take for your business? Here are some of the pros and cons of Google Adwords and Social Ads so that you can make an informed decision:
The Old Reliable: Google Adwords
To say that Google Adwords dominates paid search is an understatement. When you think “paid search,” you don’t think about Bing ads. No, you automatically think about Adwords. Paid search, as the name implies, is about targeting certain keywords in a potential customer’s search query. This is a time-tested method that has been used since online ads first started out, and it makes a lot of sense. Purchasing intent is usually higher when it comes to search ads. That’s why they’re searching in the first place, right?
In general, you will be paying more per click with Adwords, but with the higher buying intent, it is usually worth it. Most users looking to buy something generally go direct to Google search and not Facebook. This high purchasing intent also means that it makes sense to use Adwords for high-value items. The higher conversion rates for those higher-priced items will more than make up for the more expensive pay per click rates.
Adwords also has the advantage when it comes to retargeting simply because of its wider retargeting potential. This is especially valuable because you can gently remind customers who have made contact with your website that you’re just waiting for them to take the plunge, so to speak. Sometimes, a gentle nudge is all it takes.
Taking the Adwords route also makes sense when you’re selling a product that doesn’t really have a social component to it. For example, there isn’t really much of a social component to buying tires for an old tractor. There isn’t much branding in the endeavor, either. For most people looking, it’s as simple as going on Google search and typing “tractor tires,” and then clicking on whatever results show up, most often the first and/or most prominent ones.
Getting Social with Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads is a relative newcomer when compared with Google, but it is fast growing in popularity. Facebook has a daily audience of over 1.5 billion users, which makes it a prime advertising platform. While Adwords mainly focuses on conversions via search queries, Facebook ads are much better for building brand awareness because of the social component. They are also better when it comes to targeting audiences, because of all the data Facebook collects on its users. This treasure trove of data includes age, sex, gender, likes, dislikes, and important life events to name a few. With all this data, your business can target very specific groups of audiences you think will respond positively to your ads.
There’s also a big difference in how Facebook ads look compared to Adwords. Adwords ads are usually text-based and look very dry, while Facebook ads can be visually rich and appealing masterpieces of advertising. The best part is that they blend seamlessly with the user’s feed, making for a visually appealing overall experience.
Great-looking ads and amazing targeting capabilities sound terrific, but they aren’t all Facebook ads have to offer. One of the biggest draws of this particular ads platform is its affordability. If your business has a limited ad budget to spend, then it is worth considering going the Facebook ads route. Lower, budget-advertising costs can also mean high returns on investment, and who doesn’t want that?
Connect with Businesses on LinkedIn
Like Facebook, LinkedIn is one of the most popular social networks in the world today. There is one big difference though – LinkedIn users tend to be mostly business professionals. With over 500 million users, LinkedIn is easily the largest collection of professionals out there. This means that LinkedIn Paid Ads can offer you a high-value audience of educated professionals from many different businesses. Unlike most social networks, LinkedIn users aren’t typically interested in being distracted by funny cat videos and memes. They are looking for ways to advance professionally, or to improve their own businesses.
Of course, such a valuable audience comes at a cost. The cost per click rates for LinkedIn ads are usually significantly higher than those for other social networks like Facebook. You also need to remember that not everybody on LinkedIn is in a position to make decisions about purchasing the products you are advertising. There are plenty of LinkedIn users that are on the social network simply to look for jobs, and they are not even remotely interested in whatever your business has to offer.
Adwords & Social Media Advertising Experts
Google Adwords and Social Ads are both powerful platforms that can give your business a boost. We have outlined many of each platform’s pros and cons, but to really find out definitively what works best for your business, there is no substitute for actual testing. Adwords and Social Ads also don’t have to be exclusive of each other. A combination of both just might be what your business needs. If you want some more help with your advertising campaigns, talk to one of the experts at Double Up Digital today.
It’s not a secret that Google changes its algorithm regularly. Way back in 2010, a high-ranking Google representative revealed the search giant typically introduced 350 – 400 algorithm changes every year. If that number takes your breath away, prepare to be shocked – in 2018 alone, Google made more than 3,230 improvements to its search algorithm. These constant updates and changes make website maintenance services even more critical for your site.
How many average daily changes does that equate to? Over 8.8 changes each day.
While it’s intimidating to many digital marketers to think that Google improves its algorithm once a day, let alone nearly nine times daily, it’s merely evidence that it’s vital to regularly check, maintain, and update your website regularly. Web maintenance is key to staying relevant and continuing to rank well in search engine results pages produced by Google and other search engines like Bing and Yahoo.
As an SEO, you should know that it’s not just algorithm updates that can make your website out of date overnight. Web design trends and can also make your site seem out of touch in the blink of a digital eye. If your target audience shifts or its members’ tastes change or you change your offerings, it may make your current, unmaintained website irrelevant as well.
Why Consider a Website Maintenance Plan?
How can you tell if your existing website needs the attention of our website maintenance team? If you don’t remember the last time you scheduled website or WordPress maintenance, the odds are quite good that your site is past due for some critical maintenance. The passage of time isn’t the only indicator your site needs some immediate attention, however.
Your Site Doesn’t Use HTTPS in its URLs
In today’s connected society, it’s vital that every website does what it can to protect users’ information. Even if your site doesn’t process sensitive information like credit card numbers and home addresses, you should still use HTTPS in all your URLs.
According to Google, “HTTPS helps prevent intruders from tampering with the communications between your websites and your users’ browsers.” Intruders take the form of malicious hackers and legitimate yet pushy companies like hotels that force ads on to web pages and everything in between, and it’s essential that your website is set up to protect your visitors – and their information – from all of them.
Maintaining website security doesn’t “just” build trust in the minds of your visitors. Site security is also a ranking factor for Google. If your site isn’t secure and your website isn’t using the HTTPS protocol, it’s past time to update your site. In addition to security, a website maintenance plan will help you stay current on software updates and other critical changes that affect the performance of your site.
Your Website Design Lacks Visual Appeal
When someone navigates to your website, you only have a very brief window of time to grab the person’s interest. In fact, that window is so short, it’s typically measured in milliseconds. For that reason, you’re probably missing out on conversions if your site is lacking visual appeal because you’ve failed to maintain it.
Like we mentioned earlier, new web design trends pop up from year to year and as new trends are incorporated into web design, users’ perception of what’s appealing and what isn’t changes. If your site doesn’t feature at least some of the newest design trends, its appearance may drive traffic to competing websites instead of motivating visitors to explore your webpages.
Your Website Offers a Poor UX
User experience or UX is another critical factor Google uses to rank websites in SERPs. A lot goes into UX so it can’t be overlooked by any webmaster who wants their site to be ranked favorably by search engines. One of the most important parts of UX is site and page speed.
In general, websites and webpages should load in three seconds or less, with less being preferable. If your website takes too long to load, visitors will return to their SERPs quickly, which will negatively influence where your site lands in SERPs.
How your site works across devices is another part of UX. Visitors should have the same experience with your site no matter what they’re using to view it. Having a responsive design ensures your site provides the same user experience regardless of what kind of device a person uses to interact with it. Responsive design doesn’t just guarantee that your site will work the same on existing devices like tablets and smartwatches. It ensures your website will offer the same UX on devices that haven’t even been invented yet as well.
Your Content Isn’t Meaningful, Relevant, Unique or Fresh
Publishing fresh content often isn’t enough, however. The material you share also needs to be meaningful and relevant to visitors. Your content needs to be unique, too. If your website shares duplicate copy with another site or between its pages, it won’t do your position in SERPs any favors.
Your CTAs Are Ineffective
Every landing page on your website needs to have a single call to action. More accurately, your landing pages need to have effective CTAs that will motivate visitors to take a precise action like share their email addresses or enter their zip code. To be effective, your CTAs should be visible, concise, specific and compelling. If your current CTAs lack those characteristics, it’s time to update your website to avoid losing leads and conversions.
Your Site Isn’t Aligned with Your Brand
If you don’t engage in website maintenance regularly, your site may fall out of alignment with your brand over time. When that happens, it can cause confusion among the members of your target audience, which can have a negative impact on trust, loyalty, and sales. If your site is no longer a seamless reflection of your brand, you should prioritize updating your website.
Setting up a Website Maintenance Plan
You don’t need to silo website maintenance into a quarterly or semi-annual activity when you can trust Double Up Digital to maintain your website on a regular basis instead. Ensure your site stays relevant by trusting the experts at our Atlanta, GA digital marketing agency with all your website maintenance needs beginning today!
You don’t need to be a seasoned digital marketer to have heard about Google Quality Scores. Whether you’re a small business owner or the COO of a large, international conglomerate, you should be familiar with what a Google Quality Score is. That’s because it can have a significant impact on your bottom line in two contexts – how much you spend on online ads and the ROI correlated to your paid advertising expenses.
What Factors Determine Your Quality Score?
According to Google, “Quality Score is intended to give you a general sense of the quality of your ads.” In other words, your Quality Score gives you a general sense of the quality of the ads you run on Google and the landing pages where people end up as the result of clicking on your PPC advertisements.
Also referred to as your AdWords Score, your Quality Score
is expressed as a number that’s equal to or between one and 10, with one being
the lowest and 10 being the highest possible score. The higher your Quality
Score is, the more relevant and useful Google thinks your PPC ad and the
related landing page are to people who view your ad.
Three primary factors determine your Quality Score, expected
click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. Only Google
insiders know the exact weight each factor has in determining your AdWords
Score. Although that’s the case, it’s fairly common knowledge that your
click-through rate is the leading factor that will influence your score.
Why Does Your Google Quality Score Matter?
If you engage in PPC
advertising or ever plan to in the future, it’s crucial for you to be mindful
of your AdWords Quality Score. That’s because your Quality Score will determine
what position a given one of your ads holds in Google’s paid search results.
Your ad’s position in paid search results isn’t the only thing that’s influenced by your Quality Score. Your Quality Score also has a direct impact on your cost per click and your cost per conversion. As you probably guessed, your cost per click will be lower the higher your Google Quality Score is. Similarly, your cost per conversion will also be lower when your Quality Score is higher although this cost will still be higher than your cost per click because not everyone who ends up on your landing page will ultimately convert.
Remember – Google attempts to provide users with results
that best match their needs as they’re expressed in search. Your Quality Score
is an estimate of how well your ads and landing pages satisfy those needs. With
that in mind, it’s only natural that Google rewards sites with high Quality
Scores with lower per click fees.
It’s worth noting that your Quality Score does not determine
Ad Rank at the time of auction. Instead, your AdWords Score is an aggregate
indicator of your cumulative performance in auctions.
Quality Score Values
While your Google Quality Score is expressed as one number,
it actually encompasses four values, including Quality Score, landing page
experience, ad relevance and expected click-through rate. You can add those four individual values to
your keyword reports or you can view them when you hover over the speech bubble
that looks like it should be filled with words “spoken” by a cartoon character.
Quality Score
As we explained earlier, your quality score is an indication
of how relevant your ads, keywords and landing pages are to someone who views
your PPC advertisements. As you improve your AdWords Quality Score, your PPC
costs will typically go down and your position in Google’s paid search results
will likely improve.
Landing Page Experience
Landing page experience is a measure of how relevant your landing page is to people who navigate to it by clicking your PPC ad. Several things influence this rating, including how well the content on the page aligns with the search term a person used and how user-friendly your landing page is in terms of navigation.
Expected Click-Through Rate
This metric is based on how well your previous ads have
performed in the context of getting people to click-through. Your expected
click-through rate is basically an estimate of the likelihood that people will
click your PPC ad when they see it.
When determining your estimated click-through rate, Google doesn’t consider certain things you might expect. The search giant doesn’t factor in the effect of ad position, for example. Google also ignores extensions and other things that can influence an advertisement’s visibility.
Ad Relevance
To call this metric “ad relevance” is a bit misleading for
people who aren’t familiar with AdWords. That’s because this figure isn’t an
estimate of your ad’s overall relevance. Instead, it’s an expression of how
closely your keywords align with the intent of or message delivered by your
advertisement.
If your ad relevance measure is low, it may be a sign that
your PPC ads are too broadly-based or that they’re too narrowly focused. It
might also be an indication that the keywords you used aren’t related to your
business or industry.
How to
Improve Your Quality Score
With your Quality Score being so important, it’s vital that
you do everything you can to improve your score if it’s not already a 10. While
that may sound simple enough, it’s not exactly actionable advice for driving
your AdWords Score further north.
Here are some useful tips that can help you improve your
Quality Score:
Work with knowledgeable experts: Unless you’ve mastered AdWords, we suggest you let the experts at our Atlanta, GA digital marketing agency handle your PPC advertising. Our team knows all the ins and outs to advertise on Google and Bing and we’ll improve and maintain your Quality Score for you.
Organize your keywords: If you want to improve your Quality Score on your own, start by organizing your keywords into logical groups you can tie to separate advertising campaigns.
Make your ad copy more effective: By making your ad copy more effective, your ads will have a higher click-through rate, which can help increase your Quality Score.
While you may be tempted to go it alone, there’s no reason
to when we’re standing by to help you get the most out of your PPC ad
campaigns. Contact Double Up Digital to learn more now!
There’s no question, if you want your business to grow, you need a strategy for reaching out and connecting with your target market. The problem is knowing how to do this. You need a way to reach them where they can be found, and to connect with them on their terms. Today, the internet is where this is going to happen.
You already know this, but the world of digital marketing seems complex. You’ve heard buzzwords like SEO, PPC, ROI…and it all sounds like the beginning of a pot of alphabet soup. You know digital marketing is important, but you have neither the time nor desire to tackle it on your own – after all, you’re already busy running a growing business.
What to Look for in a Digital Marketing Agency
The logical thing to do here is to outsource your digital marketing to an agency. A quick look online tells you that there’s no shortage of digital marketing or creative agencies to choose from, but you have enough business sense to know they’re not all created equal. You want to work with a top agency that knows exactly how to elevate your digital presence and generate results for your business. To help you cut through all the clutter and connect with an agency that’s worth their weight in gold, here are 10 things to look for in the digital marketing agency you choose.
They Fit Your Specific Needs
Digital marketing and SEO agencies come in all sizes, and everyone seems to have their own opinion on whether it’s a larger or smaller agency that’s going to maximize your digital performance. There really isn’t a one size fits all answer to this conundrum because there are advantages and disadvantages to each. The top agency that’s the perfect size for you is the one that is most aligned with your needs and goals.
Generally speaking, you want an agency that isn’t so small and overstretched that they can’t devote the time needed to your business, and not too big that they’re inflexible. An agency that’s the right size for you will provide enough flexibility to adapt as your business grows over the coming months or years.
Relevant Industry Experience
You want to connect with a digital advertising agency that’s experienced and has a proven track record of delivering results. What’s important to remember is that experience in your particular industry is what really counts. Critical marketplace knowledge is developed through hands-on experience and knowing how to intuitively adapt a marketing strategy for a specific industry.
Today’s consumer expects a certain experience. They want personalization and a marketing approach that demonstrates an understanding of their needs. This is going to be different depending on the industry you’re in, which is why it’s imperative that your digital marketing agency have industry-specific experience.
Results, Not Promises
Of course, you’d like to shoot for the moon with your marketing efforts, but if the results an agency are promising seem too good to be true, they probably are. An experienced, successful agency understands that building your digital presence is something that needs to be nurtured. It’s true that certain strategies can produce results faster than others – like the faster results generated by a pay per click campaign over the slow build of SEO.
All that said, a top digital marketing agency knows that there’s testing, analytics, and continual tweaking involved in creating a marketing strategy that produces great results. It doesn’t happen overnight, and an agency that’s worth the investment isn’t going to fill your ears with false promises.
Where Is Their Focus?
In line with the above statement about looking for results rather than false promises, top digital agencies will use extreme caution in quoting how their marketing efforts will impact the bottom of your funnel – referring to conversions and ultimately your sales potential. When you’re first discussing a marketing strategy with an agency, there are simply too many unknown variables that can affect this outcome. Look for an agency that focuses on meeting your goals through an effective approach for nurturing traffic into and through your funnel, rather than focusing solely on the endpoint.
A Sparkling Digital Presence
The telltale sign of a great digital marketing or SEO web design company is that they practice what they preach. Take some time to look over their own website, check out what they’re doing with their social media marketing. Maybe even sign up for their email newsletters. The goal here is to look at what they’re doing with their own brand, and what their image is from a customer perspective. If what you see doesn’t impress, and generate some excitement about working with them, they might not be the agency that’s the best fit for your business.
They Match Your Style
There are a lot of exceptional digital marketing agencies out there, but this doesn’t mean that they’re all going to deliver stellar results for your business. In addition to looking for industry-specific experience, you also want to work with an agency that matches the style and personality of the brand you’re trying to build. Who are their clients, and what type of “feel” is there to their online presence?
For example, if you’re a smaller, niche business that leans toward being a little quirky and innovative, an agency that’s experienced in cultivating serious or sophisticated brand images (think along the lines of banks, doctors, or attorneys) might struggle a bit in aligning a marketing strategy with the style and personality of your business.
Value
Unless you’re one of the few businesses out there with bottomless pockets, price is a consideration when choosing a digital marketing agency. You don’t want to blow the budget, but you also don’t want to skimp and risk spending any money in vain on lackluster results.
So, what’s the balance point you should be looking for? Is it better to aim for a lower-priced agency and hope for the best, all while giving yourself a little budget wiggle room, or should you go all-in on the most expensive agency out there? The answer is somewhere in between. You don’t want to break the bank on the most expensive agency out there, but the marketing team you choose should be charging you enough to pay for their exceptional staff and provide you with all the perks and attention you expect and deserve.
Do You Mesh?
You want to interview a digital agency before you commit. This isn’t only to cover the basics like services and pricing, but also to get a feel for how well you “mesh” with their team. You’re looking for smooth communication, the ability to share thoughts and bounce ideas off of each other, all without causing any tension or conflict.
The fact is, there will be times when you’ll work more closely with your digital agency, and communication will frequent. A top agency won’t expect you to take a hands-off approach but will want your input throughout the process. The importance of being able to communicate with their digital team can’t be overstated.
How Do They Handle Reporting?
When working with a digital agency, you should demand transparency. With the best agencies, this isn’t an issue because they’re open and communicative about the performance of your digital strategy, with little or no prompting on your part. This isn’t to say you need to be updated every day, but you should know when you can expect to hear from them and feel confident if a major issue does arise that you’re not the last one in the line of communication.
They’re Using the Best Tools
You might not be a marketing expert, but that doesn’t mean that ignorance is bliss when it comes to the tools your agency is using to enhance your marketing strategy. When interviewing them, ask them which tools, software, and other implementations they regularly use and then ask for their opinion on which tools are most important for creating a successful digital strategy for your business. They should be able to provide you with an answer and an explanation for their opinion, even if in the end the process ends up looking a little different.
Work with a Digital Marketing Agency That Acts as an Extension of Your Team
Choosing a digital marketing agency is one of the most important decisions you’ll make for your business. The right marketing team can cultivate a brand, increase visibility, and build a stellar reputation that’s so important for attracting and engaging with today’s digital consumer. There are a lot of agencies out there, so it’s important to take your time and make sure the one you end up working with is not only the best in the industry but also the best for you.
At Double Up Digital, our team members are here to produce results for your business. We offer a full spectrum of digital marketing services and are ready to roll up our sleeves and formulate a strategy to build your business online. We’re also ready to sit down and talk about how we’re going to accomplish this. The only thing we need is for you to contact us at Double Up Digital today.
It’s a no brainer that getting more people through the door is the key to growth for small and medium-sized businesses – ok, any size business, really. If you’ve been relying on traditional (meaning non-digital) means of advertising as a business owner, you’re probably seeing a slow trickle of new traffic, rather than an increasing stream that you need to grow and thrive. Investing in online marketing campaigns can provide a serious boost to your business.
You need a strategy for maximizing your potential to attract a wider audience and generate an increase in traffic. Considering that the modern marketplace is increasingly digital, it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise that online marketing is how you’re going to attract more customers, encourage repeat business, and continuously build your brand awareness.
Why Invest in Online Marketing?
The fact is, the majority of consumers search for specific products and services online before they even consider other avenues of contact. For your business, there’s no better way to reach a broader audience, earn their trust, and nurture them into customers than with online advertising.
Still a little hesitant about dipping your toes into the world of online marketing? Take a look at some of the reasons for implementing an online marketing strategy.
Everyone Is Online
The overwhelming majority of consumers today are connected to the internet in one way or another. Whether they’re lazily scrolling through their smartphones, or sitting in a café with their laptop, people spend hours every day online. When you want to reach more customers, you go where they can be found, and today that’s through internet marketing.
The digital landscape is also where you’re going to find your competitors. Devoting some effort to online marketing means you’re on an equal territory with the companies that are competing for your business. You get the chance to see how they’re engaging with your shared customer base, and how those customers are responding. This can help you develop a more effective strategy for attracting a wider customer base.
You’re Playing a Numbers Game
Ok, marketing isn’t just about numbers, but your ability to reach a wider audience through online marketing is a huge advantage over traditional marketing strategies. With traditional strategies, you’re relying a lot on chance. You’re sitting there with your fingers crossed, hoping they heard your ad on the radio or didn’t immediately toss your mailer into the recycling bin.
With digital marketing, you’re reaching a broader audience – which is important, but you’re also reaching an audience that’s more targeted. This means that instead of reaching the masses and only having a few pay attention, the larger audience you do attract is one that’s more likely to have an interest in engaging with your business.
Brand Recognition
There are a lot of businesses out there, many just like yours, that are all competing for the attention of the same audience. There needs to be something that differentiates your business and sets you apart. For today’s digital consumer, that thing is brand recognition.
Online marketing helps you build a consistent brand across multiple digital platforms including social media channels, email marketing, pay-per-click ads like Google Adwords, and content marketing like sponsored blog posts. As customers develop more familiarity with your brand, they’re also more likely to stop, pay attention, and engage with you online. This opens the door for new possibilities with your target audience.
Affordability
As a growing business, you want to get the most bang for your buck from a marketing standpoint. Online marketing is one of the most cost-effective means of reaching new and existing customers, which means for every dollar spent, you’re maximizing your reach compared to other ad strategies.
With online marketing, you also have the advantage of being able to quickly access metrics on your marketing performance. If something isn’t working, you learn about it faster and you have the information and tools to make quick adaptations to generate more positive results. With traditional marketing strategies, time and money can both be wasted – which limits your ability to reach a wide customer audience.
Accessibility
You’re a consumer too, right? If you could list the perks of engaging with businesses online, what would top the list? If you’re like most people, you might cite things like more options, as well as the fact that you can shop whenever you want and reach companies outside of the standard business hours. Accessibility is a huge perk of for modern consumers, and online marketing helps to establish your business as one that’s accessible, approachable, and willing to go the extra mile to connect with customers.
Online Marketing and the Mobile Consumer
When was the last time you met an adult who didn’t own a smartphone or didn’t have one on their person at that very moment? The percentage of adults in the United States who own and use their smartphones daily is astronomical. We’re not just using them to scroll through social media either. Now, more than ever, mobile devices are how consumers are making connections with businesses.
Online marketing allows you to reach this mobile customer base – the one that’s seemingly always connected and more likely to visit a business once they make a connection. If you’re a business with a physical location, it takes a lot less nurturing to convince a mobile consumer – who might already be en route to you – to make their way through your door, than it does to generate traffic through traditional marketing strategies.
Discover How Online Marketing Can Help You Reach More Customers
As a growing business, it’s crucial that you’re consistently working towards reaching and connecting with your audience. We can help you discover the target audience that’s going to become your new customers and show you exactly how to reach them. Today, traditional marketing strategies aren’t enough. You need a successful, strategic approach to online marketing, and that is where we enter the picture.
At Double Up Digital, we’re the digital agency with a proven track record of generating results for businesses like yours. Contact us today to speak with one of our online marketing experts and start connecting to your customers today.
At its very core, your website has two main goals – to attract and capture leads and to convert those leads into customers and clients. Without an influx of new business, achieving and maintaining growth is impossible. Lead generation is the strategy used to attract a new segment of your audience, spark some curiosity, and eventually get them to commit to your brand. If you’re using landing pages in any of your marketing campaigns, it’s crucial to understand how landing page design is directly connected to your conversion rate.
The question for businesses has always been how to maximize their lead generation potential, especially when connected to a specific marketing strategy – like a pay per click ad campaign. Landing pages have proven to be one of the most effective elements of a lead generation strategy, yet they remain an untapped goldmine of lead generation for many businesses.
Not just any landing page is going to enhance your ability to attract and capture leads. The secret to success is all about landing page design, and here’s why great design is so crucial for driving conversions.
The Purpose of Landing Page Design
First, let’s take a step back and talk about the importance of a good landing page. The internet is an incredible marketing platform, but it’s also insanely crowded. The average internet user comes in contact with a steady stream of ads and marketing attempts the entire time they’re online. There’s really no escape, so we’ve adapted by learning to ignore much of this “background noise”.
Even when a person hops online with a specific search query, and is looking to be marketed to, there are still so many options and businesses competing for their attention. If you’ve managed to capture a user’s attention with an ad or snippet of compelling text, you need a strategy for keeping that attention and leading that person to the next step – a form field submission.
This is where quality landing page design comes in. A landing page is a stand-alone page, which usually isn’t directly connected to your website. By that, we mean that landing pages typically don’t contain navigational features that enable the visitor to access your site directly. Rather, landing pages are designed with the intent to encourage a very specific action – such as signing up for a newsletter or attending a webinar.
The reason landing pages are separate is that it’s easy for a visitor to get lost when navigating around your website. There are many elements fighting for their attention, and it isn’t always easy to lead the visitor where you want them to go. Landing pages give you more control in the path the visitor takes, as long as your landing pages are designed with lead generation in mind.
Why Landing Pages Are Crucial for Lead Generation
Maybe you’re wondering why a landing page is more effective for lead generation than any other page of your web design – for instance, your homepage or product pages. Landing pages are key because they keep the visitor focused and are designed for a very specific point of the sales funnel, unlike your other web pages which serve a broader scope. If you’ve been asking yourself if landing page design is essential, the answer is yes, and here’s why.
● Landing pages are about the lead and the offer, not the company. Landing pages offer an opportunity for you to help the lead become better acquainted, but at the core, they’re focused solely on the lead and providing them with value.
● Landing pages have limited distractions. No matter how interested a visitor may be in your offer or your company, there are simply too many distractions on your website to pull them away. Landing pages are focused, clear, and free of visual clutter.
● Landing pages are customized. Since landing pages are attached to a clickable link, they’re very targeted to a specific point in the customer journey, or at least they should be. Narrowing the audience better enables you to personalize the content and compel action.
● Landing pages help you collect information. Landing pages should provide a targeted value incentive that’s too good to resist. While you’re generating leads, you’re also capturing valuable details – like contact information, but also key insights into the demographics that are visiting your page.
Landing Page Design With Lead Generation Potential
Great landing page designs intuitively leads the visitor to the next step, but there are also plenty of ways for a landing page to fall short of this goal. At the end of the day, you want your landing pages to clearly define the value your offer holds for your target audience and compel them to take further action. Of course, how this is accomplished will depend on what type of lead offer you’re putting on the table but generally speaking, landing pages fall into a couple of different categories.
The first is a click-through landing page. These types of landing pages are used when the ultimate goal is conversion. They can serve as a warm-up for leading a visitor to a sales page. Click-through landing pages are most effective at a later point in the sales funnel after the lead has been nurtured. For lead generation purposes, you’re looking for a landing page design that compels the visitor to share more information about themselves, establish a point of contact, and to maximize the potential for the new lead to interact with your business and form a more solid connection.
One of the pain points businesses face with landing page design is limited space. You have a single page to convey a lot of information and encourage action. Clean and simple is more effective, so you also don’t want to overcrowd the space with visual clutter. You’re looking for the perfect balance in design.
Critical Landing Page Design & Marketing Elements
The most effective landing pages take into consideration which elements are most likely to capture and hold a person’s attention. A few examples of elements that are often included in successful lead generating landing page design include:
Short Videos
Social Proof of Your Product or Service
Relatable and Relevant Photographic Images
FAQs to Address the Most Pressing Questions
Copy that is Concise & Compelling
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Action-Oriented CTA Button
Start Capturing More Leads and Increasing Conversions Today
Are you ready to maximize your lead generation potential? Great, because we’re ready to help you attract more leads and form stronger connections with your audience through professional web design. Let us help you create landing pages that generate leads and deliver results for your business. Contact Double Up Digital to learn more about our full spectrum of web design and digital marketing services.
