What happens if those critical words are misspelled?

According to this extensive study by the team at Website Planet, you can expect to pay 10-20% more for clicks than other advertisers (depending on geography).

You could also see 70% fewer clicks than your competitors.

Which makes sense! Typos and misspelled words, especially in an ad headline, look unprofessional. Sometimes, they make your product look like malware. Overall, it’s a poor first impression that erodes trust.

Potential customers look at your storefront as a reflection of what using your software or product will be like. If the experience starts off with poor attention to detail, their faith in how you’ll attend to their needs as they use the tools is quickly demolished.

In the digital world, typos are often dismissed as inevitable. They sneak into texts, tweets, and sometimes, our website copy. But how do these little blunders affect the way potential customers interact with ads and landing pages? The folks at Website Planet were curious and decided to put spelling and grammar under the microscope. Let’s dive into the study. What they found was both surprising and enlightening.

They kicked off their investigation with a set of hypotheses. They figured that a typo in an ad might turn users off, leading to a dip in the click-through rate. Similarly, a typo-ridden landing page might not sit well with visitors, possibly causing a spike in the bounce rate.

So, they rolled up their sleeves and set up some A/B tests for Google ads and landing pages. They crafted three variants of an ad; one clean, one with a moderate typo, and another with an extreme typo. They also whipped up two landing pages; one typo-free and the other generously sprinkled with errors.

Now, the results?

First off, the typo-infested ads saw a decrease in clicks by up to 70% compared to the clean ad. And here’s the kicker, the geography mattered. In native English-speaking regions like the US and the UK, the clean ad won the day. But in India, an ad with a grammatical mistake unexpectedly took the lead. When it came to the cost, typos weren’t so forgiving. In the US, a typo could cost up to 10% more, while in the UK, the penalty for typos soared to 20% and a whopping 72% for grammatical errors.

Shifting the lens to the landing pages, the typo-laden page saw an 85% increase in bounce rate and an 8% reduction in time spent on the site. Despite a popular belief (backed by a Cambridge University study) that the order of letters in a word doesn’t matter much as long as the first and last letters are right, typos turned out to be quite the party poopers.

The takeaway? Good grammar isn’t just the hallmark of good communication; it’s a business imperative. Whether it’s the ad that introduces people to your brand or the landing page that welcomes them, a typo could be the difference between a bounce and a conversion. So, the next time you shrug off that typo, remember, it might just cost you a click, or worse, a customer​¹​.

The post Do Ad Typos Really Matter? first appeared on Clever Zebo.

In today’s digital world, ensuring that websites and applications are accessible to all users, regardless of their abilities, has become a critical component of successful online businesses. As the global population becomes increasingly diverse and digitally connected, web accessibility platforms are rapidly gaining prominence. These platforms enable businesses to comply with accessibility guidelines and create inclusive online experiences for users with disabilities.

The web accessibility platform space is dominated by several key players, each striving to provide the best solutions for businesses looking to make their digital assets accessible to all. Some of the most notable names in the industry include AudioEye, AccessiBe, UserWay, and Siteimprove, among others. These companies offer a range of tools and services to help businesses achieve compliance with accessibility standards such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

These platforms are typically geared towards decision-makers in various industries, such as marketing managers, IT directors, and business owners, who are responsible for ensuring their digital assets are accessible and compliant with accessibility regulations. In addition, these platforms are designed to cater to diverse sectors, including retail, healthcare, education, and government organizations, among others.

As the demand for web accessibility continues to grow, companies in this space are constantly innovating and refining their offerings to help businesses create accessible and inclusive digital experiences for all users.

Consider, for example, this fierce battle for Google brand name searches:

AudioEye can implement several strategies to protect its brand name and improve its ranking on Google Ads when its competitor AccessiBe is ranking first for “AudioEye” brand name searches:

1. Bid on branded keywords: Start bidding on “AudioEye” and related branded keywords to ensure that AudioEye ads appear above AccessiBe’s ads. Branded keywords tend to have a lower cost per click, so this can be an effective way to push competitors down in the ad rankings.

2. Optimize ad copy: Make sure your ad copy highlights AudioEye’s unique selling points and differentiators, like superior features, customer support, or pricing. This will make your ads more compelling to users and improve click-through rates, which can help increase your ad’s ranking.

3. Use ad extensions: Implement ad extensions such as sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippets to provide more information about AudioEye’s product offerings and services. This will make your ad more informative and visually prominent, increasing the likelihood that users will click on it instead of the competitor’s ad.

4. Improve Quality Score: Focus on improving your Quality Score by optimizing your landing pages, ad relevance, and expected click-through rate. A higher Quality Score can result in higher ad rankings and lower costs per click.

5. Monitor competitor activity: Regularly monitor AccessiBe’s ad strategies and adjust your bids, ad copy, and targeting accordingly. This will help you stay one step ahead and ensure your ads continue to outperform your competitor’s ads.

6. Target competitor’s keywords: Bid on AccessiBe’s branded keywords, positioning AudioEye as a superior alternative. This will help capture some of their audience and increase your brand visibility.

7. Leverage remarketing: Implement remarketing campaigns to target users who have previously visited the AudioEye website but didn’t convert. This will help to bring them back and increase the likelihood of conversion.

8. Optimize targeting: Refine your audience targeting to focus on users who are more likely to be interested in AudioEye’s offerings. This can include targeting based on demographics, interests, and in-market segments.

9. Increase ad spend: Consider increasing your ad budget to outbid AccessiBe for top ad positions. This can help to secure higher rankings in the short term, but it’s essential to monitor the return on investment to ensure the additional spend is justified.

10. Report trademark violations: If AccessiBe is using the “AudioEye” trademark in their ad copy, you can report it to Google for trademark policy violation. Google may take action and disapprove AccessiBe’s ads containing the trademark.

By implementing these strategies, AudioEye can effectively fight back against its competitor’s Google Ads tactics and protect its brand name in search results.

What else can a company like AudioEye do to reach decision makers and land more customers like Calvin Klein, Olive Garden, and WebMD?

1. Leverage Clever Zebo’s experience in accessibility

At Clever Zebo, we’ve had the pleasure of achieving a big revenue bump for our user testing platform client, Loop11, who has done a lot of accessibility work. By improving revenue and lead flow, we demonstrated our expertise in this area. AudioEye can tap into this experience to enhance their marketing efforts and reach their target audience more effectively, and if luck shines down on us, get a 43% revenue boost the way Loop11 did with Clever Zebo’s expertise.

2. Clean up typos in marketing materials

It might seem minor, but typos can have a significant impact on conversion rates. Research has shown that a single spelling mistake can cut online sales in half. AudioEye should meticulously proofread their marketing materials to avoid sending the wrong message to potential customers.

3. Utilize LinkedIn’s advanced targeting capabilities

LinkedIn allows you to target specific job titles, industries, and even company names. By leveraging these capabilities, AudioEye can directly reach decision makers at companies like Calvin Klein, Olive Garden, and WebMD.

4. Partner with industry influencers

Influencer marketing can be a powerful way to reach decision makers. AudioEye can partner with industry influencers who can vouch for their product and open doors to valuable connections.

5. Create case studies and whitepapers

Decision makers love data-driven content. AudioEye can create case studies and whitepapers that showcase their successes and establish them as industry experts.

6. Host webinars and workshops

Webinars and workshops offer a unique opportunity to engage with decision makers directly. AudioEye can host events that tackle relevant topics and showcase their expertise.

7. Offer exclusive content

By offering exclusive content in exchange for contact information, AudioEye can build a valuable database of potential customers, including decision makers from target companies.

8. Utilize remarketing campaigns

Remarketing campaigns allow AudioEye to target users who have shown interest in their services but have not yet converted. By staying top of mind, they increase the likelihood of decision makers taking action.

9. Invest in content marketing

High-quality content can position AudioEye as an industry leader, attracting the attention of decision makers. They can create blog posts, videos, and podcasts that demonstrate their expertise and engage their target audience.

10. Join and participate in industry forums

Active participation in industry forums can help AudioEye establish credibility and connect with decision makers. By sharing their expertise and engaging in discussions, they can create valuable networking opportunities.

11. Monitor and counter Accessibe’s SEM bidding

As previously mentioned, AudioEye faces tough competition in the form of Accessibe’s aggressive SEM bidding strategy. To combat this, they can monitor Accessibe’s bidding activity and adjust their own bidding strategy accordingly. This can involve bidding on long-tail keywords or focusing on ad placements with less competition.

12. Develop a robust referral program

Referral programs can be an effective way to acquire new customers. AudioEye can incentivize existing customers to refer their network, potentially reaching decision makers at target companies.

Now, diving deeper into #10, it’s easy to say companies should be partnering with industry organizations and participating in industry forums, but which ones specifically should a web accessibility platform like AudioEye team up with to strengthen its position as a leader in the web accessibility space, collaborate with other experts, and contribute to the ongoing development of accessibility standards and best practices?

For AudioEye to build strong industry partnerships and expand its network, collaborating with the following forums and organizations would be highly beneficial:

1. Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI): A leading organization that develops accessibility guidelines, WAI is part of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Partnering with WAI can help AudioEye stay up-to-date with the latest accessibility standards and contribute to the development of future guidelines.
2. International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP): As a professional association dedicated to individuals and organizations working in the field of digital accessibility, IAAP offers certifications, resources, and networking opportunities. Partnering with IAAP can help AudioEye gain recognition as an industry leader and collaborate with other professionals in the field.
3. Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies (G3ict): An advocacy organization that promotes digital accessibility policies and practices worldwide, G3ict offers resources, tools, and support to drive the adoption of accessible technologies. Collaboration with G3ict can help AudioEye expand its reach and promote its platform on a global scale.
4. Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) Working Group: As part of W3C, the ARIA Working Group focuses on developing accessibility standards for web applications. Partnering with this group can help AudioEye contribute to the development of new accessibility techniques and stay current with industry trends.
5. National Federation of the Blind (NFB): As one of the largest organizations advocating for the rights of blind and visually impaired individuals, NFB is an influential partner for companies like AudioEye. Collaborating with NFB can help AudioEye gain insight into the needs of blind users and promote its platform within the community.
6. American Foundation for the Blind (AFB): Similar to NFB, AFB is a national organization focused on improving the lives of people with vision loss. Partnering with AFB can help AudioEye reach a wider audience and work together to address accessibility challenges.
7. Industry-specific forums and conferences: AudioEye should consider partnering with industry events and conferences that focus on accessibility, such as the annual CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, the M-Enabling Summit, and the Accessibility Camp series. These events provide opportunities for networking, collaboration, and knowledge sharing with other professionals in the accessibility field.

These are just a few thoughts on how web accessibility platforms like AudioEye can stand out in the crowded digital landscape and get a leg up.

If you’ve read this far, we are blown away.

Seriously, write in and tell us.

We’ll buy you a frappuccino.

Until next time, farewell.

The post How Web Accessibility Platforms Should Fight For High-Quality Leads in 2023 first appeared on Clever Zebo.

What is Instagram Shopping?

Instagram Shopping allows brands to sell products directly on Instagram, without consumers having to leave the app. They packed this product launch with tons of features (which we’ll get into below) including a dedicated shopping feed, product tags, in-app checkout, and more.

This takes a lot of the friction out of the funnel, and enables a smooth transition from discovery to conversion.

Some advertisers, like Barbour, are seeing a 42% increase in Instagram sales using some of the Instagram Shopping features.

Why does Instagram Shopping matter?

Instagram (and influencers on their platform) have massive sway when it comes to product purchases. 70% of shopping enthusiasts turn to Instagram for product discovery and 87% of people say that influencers have inspired them to make a purchase. That means Instagram’s already-powerful influence and discovery engine is now loaded with advanced features that enable businesses to sell products.

More shopping data collected. Instagram, of course, already collects massive amounts of data from their customers, including shopping behavior and interests. With this development, Instagram controls more of the purchase funnel, enabling them to collect even more data on customer purchases and preferences. This is likely to improve the performance of their advertising network.

Increase sales and ROI. One featured case study illustrates how a Korean skincare brand leveraged an Instagram campaign using a combination of ads with Shopping product tags and Branded Content ads. This particular advertiser achieved an impressive 1.8X higher return on ad spend, 45% decrease in cost per purchase and 42% decrease in cost per “add to cart.”

Compete with growing eCommerce platforms. In the era of Shopify and BigCommerce, visitors looking to purchase products they find on Instagram would typically have to navigate away from the app to buy. With Instagram Shopping, the platform takes more control of the greater marketing funnel and can capture additional sales data in the process. The release of Instagram Shopping coincided with this partnership between TikTok and Shopify, enabling advertisers to drive sales on the TikTok platform. So it’s probably safe to expect more moves by Instagram/Facebook to get further entrenched in the eCommerce space.

A more seamless marriage between influencers and brands. A lot of the marketing language for the product launch emphasizes deeper support for influencers on the Instagram platform, and many of the features address this too (product tagging and support for Instagram Live are a few examples). With over 500,000 active influencers on Instagram, there are no surprises here.

Key features of Instagram Shopping

Instagram didn’t hold back on this launch. They built a slew of powerful features to support brands. Here are some of the core features you should know about.

1. Instagram Shopping Page

This is a customizable storefront where brands can host their products, allowing customers to shop right from your brand’s Instagram profile without having to leave the app. Within the Shopping Page, brands are able to group their products into what Instagram calls ‘Collections’.

2. Instagram Shopping Feed

Think of this as a News Feed for products, tailored to you in the same way that content on your News Feed might be. This is where consumers can discover new products and brands.

3. Shopping Tag

The Shopping Tag allows brands to highlight products being shown in the Instagram Feed or Stories. Shopping tags can also be used within Instagram ads, allowing advertisers to drive traffic to their website or native checkout on Instagram.

4. Shopping Support for Instagram Live

Brands and content creators can now sell products through Instagram Live and form deeper connections with people in real-time.

5. Product Launches

This allows businesses to announce an upcoming product launch, so fans can view details and set reminders to buy as soon as it’s available. This feature supports a range of ad types including video.

6. New Audience Types

Advertisers using Instagram Shopping can now create custom audiences based on actions, like tapping on a product tag to view a specific product. This allows advertisers to re-engage these high-intent shoppers with an ad type of their choosing.

Lookalike audiences can also be created to reach new shoppers that have similar interests to your current shoppers.

Getting started with Instagram Shopping

Instagram packaged up their own guide to setting up Instagram ads, but we’ll summarize the key steps for you here.

Step 1: Confirm Eligibility

Review the requirements below to confirm your eligibility.

• Your business must be located in a supported market
• Your business must have an eligible product
• Your business must comply with Instagram’s Merchant Agreement and Commerce Policies
• Your business must own a website domain which you intend to sell from

Step 2: Convert to a Business or Creator Account

Follow these steps to convert to a Professional Account. Once your account is updated, you’ll be able to add details such as store hours, business address, website links, etc.

Step 3: Connect to a Facebook Page

Follow these steps to connect a Facebook Page to your Instagram Business Account.

Step 4: Upload Product Catalogs

A product catalog is the plumbing behind how Instagram Shopping works and associates with your product data. These are two ways to enable this:

1. Using the Catalog Manager within the Facebook Business Manager
2. Importing your feed through a Partner Platform (like Shopify or BigCommerce)

Step 5: Account Review

Follow the steps provided by Facebook to submit your account for review. It typically takes a few days to be approved.

1. Go to your business’s Instagram profile and tap
2. Select “Settings.”
3. Sign up for shopping.
4. Follow the steps to submit your account for review.
5. Visit “Shopping” in your “Settings” at any time to check your status.

Step 6: Turn on Shopping

Once you’re approved, you can follow these steps to enable shopping features. If you don’t see Shopping in your settings, it likely means your account is still under review or it hasn’t been approved.

Step 7: Start Tagging

Now you’re ready to start utilizing the shopping features! The first step is to begin using product tags to highlight products in your photos and videos across Feed and Stories. You can feature up to five products per image or video post, and up 20 products on multi-image posts. Good luck!

Want some help advertising via Instagram Shopping? Get in touch with Clever Zebo today.

The post Increase Sales & Improve ROI with Instagram Shopping first appeared on Clever Zebo.

When it comes to running display advertising on the web, there are finite publishers, but hundreds of display ad networks who promise to run your banner ads with the best chance of conversion, the hottest technology and the most efficient algorithm.

Whether you call them ad exchanges or programmatic display advertising, there is one key question that plagues digital marketing managers who hear ad network reps beating the drum in one ear and upper management expecting measurable results in the other. That question is: does display advertising really work?

By that, I mean, is there tangible, incremental conversion lift coming from the display ads you run with Rocket Fuel, Quantcast, Chango and the like?

This post attempts to unpack how success is measured, what red herrings often crop up and how you can really get to the bottom of display advertising’s contribution to your company’s top line.

Defining the jargon in display

Clicks-through and view-through conversions, multi-touch attribution — what does it all mean?

Let’s quickly define our terms.

1. Your customer sees a display ad or banner ad. S/he clicks on it and converts. That’s a simple click-through conversion.
2. Your customer visits a page where your display ad is shown, but does not click on it. Later, s/he converts. That’s a view-through conversion.
3. Because view-throughs are measured based on whether the ad loaded on your customer’s computer, we don’t really know if your customer saw the ad, consciously or subliminally. It might’ve loaded at the bottom of the site, while s/he never scrolled that far. To get at this calamity, there’s a metric called viewability that some tools attempt to measure. It answers the question: was your ad actually viewed? Or did it just load somewhere on the page, falling on deaf ears, so to speak?
4. The traditional conversion path used to be measured against simple click-through conversions. Whichever ad or channel had the last touch, or the last click, that led to your customer converting — that was the channel that got credit. That’s last-touch attribution.
5. The new(er) hypothesis about complex advertising programs that touch a customer at many different moments on the way to a conversion — let’s say your customer saw a banner ad but didn’t click, then Googled your brand name, then searched for coupons, and finally converted on a newsletter click — the perspective that considers all of these touches and gives some equity to all of them is called multi-touch attribution.

So what’s the right way to understand whether display ads are working? Should we spend thousands of dollars to implement multi-touch attribution technology, or apply Draconian rules that only reward channels for closing the deal with a customer on the final click?

It’s a confusing problem. But you have options to measure what’s going on in your conversion funnel.

Here are some things you can do to truly measure the impact of display.

A/B test your ads against a placebo

There is something called a Public Service Announcement (PSA) test. In this experiment, you serve your display ads to 50% of your audience — business as usual — but the other half of your audience is shown a placebo. This half sees a PSA. One former client, for example, used a “Smokey the Bear” ad about preventing forest fires.

This type of test can take some time to gather meaningful data — it can take a month or more and be quite costly — but the results will demonstrate whether the potential customers who saw your real display ads have a higher propensity to convert than those who saw Smokey the Bear.

Consider this example of a real PSA A/B test we ran on behalf of a client in the home decor e-commerce sector.

Here’s what we uncovered by running this PSA test with Quantcast, an advertising partner:

The “Brand” group of ads, meaning the client’s regular ads, yielded 980 conversions (these are view-throughs) while prospects who saw Smokey the Bear ads converted 871 times.

When you factor in the number of cookies — in other words, how many times each ad was shown — the regular ads brought in 30% more conversions than Smokey the Bear. For you marketing statisticians, the confidence level here was 95%. You can find more info on statistical significance and what it means for marketers here.

Is this a good result? On the one hand, it’s nice to see 30% incremental conversions. On the other hand, what should we make of the fact that almost 900 people saw Smokey the Bear and converted anyway? Is the handful of incremental conversions enough to justify the display ad spend here?

For this particular client, it wasn’t.

We didn’t only test IAB-standard display ads as shown above. We also tested ads on the Facebook Exchange. There, we found no statistically significant conversion difference between the client’s real ads and PSAs.

This type of testing is one way to assess value. Advanced attribution tools are another.

Advanced attribution technology

If you’re touching prospects on many levels and via multiple channels, some experts argue you’ll benefit from an advanced attribution platform. This technology takes into account all the touches that contribute to a single conversion and algorithmically estimate how each channel fits into the larger whole.

Convertro is one such tool. It’s useful for estimating how many real conversions a given channel is contributing based on all the (possibly hundreds) of touchpoints in the sales cycle.

It can also show you data like this:

What we found interesting was the tool’s ability to show how often a given ad network played the role of Introducer (meaning that the ad network served the very first ad this prospect saw in your sales funnel), Closer (the ad network showed the last ad viewed or clicked by the prospect before converting), or Influencer (the ad network participated somewhere between introduction and conversion).

This breakdown can be useful in thinking about how important each ad partner is when it comes to guiding prospects to eventually buy.

The table above tells us that the ad networks pictured here acted as an influencer 97% of the time. That means they weren’t likely to be sourcing brand new prospects or “closing the deal” with soon-to-be customers, but probably contributed awareness along the way.

Last-click attribution

The conservative play when it comes to evaluating many different channels is to give maximum weight to last-click conversions and revenue.

That’s because only one lucky ad or channel can be responsive for the final click or view before a conversion. If you credit each channel with view-throughs, you might be praising multiple channels for the same conversion. But using a tool like Google Analytics to report on conversions and revenue from a given traffic source will, in the traditional view, tell you which channel drove the last click. Revenue resulting from each channel will be counted exactly once.

Some experts argue that last-click attribution has gone out of style and a more holistic view is in order for how prospects interact with your business on their journey through the conversion funnel. It’s true that tracking ROI has become more complex with the advent of drip campaigns, inbound marketing and many kinds of interactive ads. Still, a more rigid reading of the analytics can offer checks and balances against overspending.

The best thing you can do for your business is to look at attribution in more than one way. If you can afford a PSA A/B test, it’s quite informative (and in our example case, quite sobering). Otherwise, assessing ad network performance via multiple free tools will give you more insight than simply trusting the dashboard of your ad partner(s). With several perspectives at your disposal, it’s easier to make a call on which channels should be expanded and which can be cut.

The post Are display ad exchanges full of conversions, or just full of it? first appeared on Clever Zebo.

If you’re familiar with Lookalike targeting, feel free to skip the flowery introduction and head straight for the good stuff below. But for everyone else, here’s a deep thought.

So you’ve got a customer — or even many customers — and you know a surprising number of things about them. You know their age and gender, their ballpark annual income, where they live, what they like to do for fun. You’re no stranger to basic demographics and behavioral data.

So you’re wondering: how do I reach more people like these people, and compel them to buy from my business?

This is where the idea of lookalike audiences feels pretty intuitive.

Why not use technology to study a company’s existing customers or target audience, and enable that company to reach a broader audience who fits similar demographic trends?

For many advertisers, Lookalike capabilities in the LinkedIn Ads platform aren’t a big surprise; they’re what is expected. Facebook, for example, has had this feature since early 2013.

LinkedIn has started to roll out Lookalike Audiences in their new dashboard to select advertisers and is aiming to have it live for all advertisers by the first week of April 2019.

LinkedIn is known for being slow to roll out new features. Matched audiences and remarketing only went live in 2017. Since the acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft, there have been a slew of updates to the platform, including a new dashboard, carousel ads, video, Lookalike Audiences and more.

Before this rollout, there has been a little-known hack advertisers could use in order to run a makeshift Lookalike Audience on LinkedIn.  This is done by adding a matched audience, targeting and excluding this audience in your campaign, then enabling the audience expansion option.  Not the most seamless approach, but it worked.

In this post, we’ll be digging into the new Lookalike Audience feature set and how to use it directly in the LinkedIn Ads dashboard.

How do Lookalike Audiences work?

Lookalike Audiences are a way to leverage your current customers/audiences (using either an email list of contacts, pixel-based data or a CRM data integration) to reach a broader set of potential customers who are demographically and behaviorally similar.

The LinkedIn Ads platform will identify trends across your existing target audience (using data like company, industry, job experience, skills and other info) and find similar sets of users on LinkedIn. You can also find companies similar to the ones you’re targeting.

These audiences can be added to your campaigns and refined through other LinkedIn targeting options.

How do I create a Lookalike Audience with LinkedIn Ads?

Starting in LinkedIn Campaign Manager, follow these steps:

1.  Set up a website audience, contact list, or account list from the “matched audience” page.

Tip:  Try to use a larger list size, as your lookalike audience will likely average 5-10x the size of your seed list.

2.  Check to see if your audience is in the ‘ready’ state, then select the ‘people’ icon pictured below to begin processing your Lookalike Audience.

Tip:  You’ll have to wait up to 48 hours from the time you upload your list – be patient!

3.  Select “create campaign” to create a new campaign that will house your new audience.

4.  Select your campaign objective from the list.

5.  Add your Lookalike Audience to the campaign.

Tip: You can refine your audience further using other LinkedIn targeting options.

Which data source is best for Lookalike Audiences?

LinkedIn allows you to generate a Lookalike Audience using an email list, pixel data or CRM integration.

Here are a few options and examples of good data sources to use:

A list of customers uploaded from your CRM, i.e. Salesforce

Website visitors who landed on the customer login page

Email addresses of leads who have downloaded an eBook

People who visited a key page (i.e. your company’s pricing page)

A list of target accounts handpicked by sales

A list of your top revenue-generating customers

Both list quality and quantity are important. Although a list of your most valuable revenue-generating customers might be of the highest quality, the list size might not be large enough.

The list size must have a minimum of 300 matched members.  The base list size must be larger than 300, as not every email address will be matched to a LinkedIn account (the number of matched members divided by the total number of imported emails is called your ‘match rate’).

Best practices for LinkedIn Lookalike campaigns

Test multiple audience types, as no two audiences will perform the same.

Test a website-based audience vs. list-based audience to discover what performs best.

Identify an audience for each phase of the funnel. Consider a homepage-based campaign for brand awareness and a lead page for lower funnel campaigns.

Review campaign demographics to discover engaging lists or website audiences.

Limit any additional audience refinements as this will lower your audience size.

Larger lists are better and you need at least 300 matched members to use Lookalike Audiences.

Considering Facebook Ads results across the board, Lookalike Audiences are a generally successful targeting strategy for B2C campaigns but have their weaknesses in the B2B realm (this makes sense as Facebook uses data less geared toward a user’s career). Since LinkedIn provides exclusive access to its users in a professional context, we expect Lookalikes via LinkedIn Ads to be a huge win for B2B advertisers.

The post 2019 LinkedIn Ads feature update: Lookalike Audiences & how to use them first appeared on Clever Zebo.

The short answer is: you can usually learn a lot about how an ad channel will perform with just $1,000 to $2,000 in advertising spend, given that certain conditions are met.

1. Tracking. You have installed native tracking code for the ad platform being tested, and tested the code to ensure it’s installed correctly.
2. Analytics. You have an analytics tool in place that represents the broader “truth” around data for your website visits. This is important because it gives you an apples-to-apples picture of the data for multiple ad channels (and organic traffic channels). It’s also key to measuring success because it allows you to look at softer metrics like visitor engagement, time on your website, average pages per session, bounce rate, etc. The native tracking code, by contrast, will only tell you when visitors have converted.

Here’s what you can expect to see after spending $1-2k to test an ad platform.

• Clues about which targeting and campaigns are showing promise
• Indications of the ad messaging that resonates with your audience in an A/B test
• Hopefully, real conversions and some insight into their quality
• At minimum, some data around which campaigns and audiences lead to strong engagement

I’ll share some real data from our Quora Ads campaign analytics to illustrate this last point.

You can see below that we spent about $85 for a total of 120 clicks, most of which came from ads promoting our Google AdWords management services. We saw 20 clicks for Facebook Ads management services, and just a handful of impressions around our work managing LinkedIn Ads and Taboola campaigns. There wasn’t as much traffic on Quora questions surrounding those topics.

When you consider how valuable a real lead is for an online marketing agency, given our client retention rates, these CPC figures seem quite reasonable, averaging just $0.72.

But the soft metrics we saw in Google Analytics tell a different story about just how “real” these potential leads might be.

By any measure, visitors who are spending 6 seconds or less on a website are not very engaged with the content.

You can imagine how some advertisers might learn a lot by comparing specific audiences and campaigns by the engagement stats Google Analytics shows for a certain ad platform.

So which ad platforms should be part of a well-rounded online advertising pilot?

Depending on your product or service, it could make sense to test:

• Google AdWords
• Facebook Ads
• LinkedIn Ads
• Quora Ads
• Outbrain and/or Taboola
• Programmatic networks and exchanges (e.g. AdRoll, Rocket Fuel, DoubleClick)

I’ve developed a handy Google Sheet that we sometimes use to help clients divvy up their ad budget between relevant channels.

See the modeling tool >>

Using the above modeling tool for projections and guesstimates, you can try adjusting different variables like Avg. CPC and conversion rate by channel, and see how this would influence the CPA / CPL and conversion figures resulting from your advertising pilot.

Does $1-2k reflect the full budget a company should expect to spend on ads? Of course not. As you start to establish baselines and a picture of realistic performance, you can make decisions about channel-by-channel budget that makes sense for your business. But this modest investment amount represents a good pilot to test and learn what impact certain ad channels can have on your business.

The post What’s the right budget for testing a new ad channel? first appeared on Clever Zebo.

As an advertising platform, Quora is young and far from feature-rich. But the audience it attracts and the targeting available is very interesting to potential advertisers. Anytime you have a website where people spend time reading, learning and thinking about relevant subject matter, advertisers want to be there. These are the traits of a highly engaged audience.

As a digital marketing agency, Clever Zebo has spent some time experimenting with the Quora advertising platform, and we wanted to share what we’ve learned so far. Here are some of the most important optimization strategies and tips we encourage Quora Ads advertisers to consider.

1.  Always split desktop vs. mobile

When you start optimizing Quora Ads, you’ll soon notice there are no device-level bid adjustments.

In cases like these, we usually recommend that you create separate campaigns for each device in order to give yourself maximum control around bids.

In some cases, desktop bids can be twice as demanding as mobile bids, depending on the audience you’re targeting.

If you don’t break up campaigns by device, you may find yourself bidding too high on mobile and paying more than you need to, or bidding too low to attract any significant volume of desktop users.

Quora provides a useful bid estimation tool, displaying a cost-per-click range and a suggested bid according to the platform’s best estimate. You can see how the desktop and mobile bids differ below.

Mobile bid estimates

Desktop bid estimates

2.  Granular targeting, low volume

Quora Ads allow for very granular targeting and we usually end up seeing an efficient cost per acquisition (CPA). However, when it comes time to scale our campaigns, we’ve found there is often limited volume available to grow.

Tip: Quora also has a handy reach estimation tool, which you can view on the right hand side of the screen while creating your ad set, as pictured above.

3.  Import keywords from your Google AdWords campaigns

An effective way to quickly build your list of topics for targeting on Quora is the AdWords keyword import.

We recommending using this tool to gather topic recommendations and increase the reach of your campaigns.

4.  Remarketing

Remarketing is a useful feature to explore in ad platform that offers it. Quora Ads allow you to install a site-wide pixel (to be placed between the between the <head></head> tag of your website), and using this pixel you can create your remarketing audience under the ‘Audiences’ tab.

Quora has some more granular options that can be leveraged for audience building, to create multiple segments:

Tip: You also have the option to exclude audiences (for example, some businesses may want to exclude those who already converted).

5.  Copy limitations

You’ll find that Quora Ads have stricter copy guidelines than other ad channels, and you may face ad disapprovals if you don’t adhere to their ad copy policy.

These are some of Quora’s ad copy restrictions to be mindful of:

• Too much capitalization (you can’t capitalize the first letter of each word, as you would likely do in Google AdWords)
• Incomplete sentences (you must write your ad in sentence form)
•  ‘Misleading’ copy/claims (superlatives such as ‘#1 provider’ or ‘top firm’ are not accepted)
• Abbreviations are not accepted (LMS must be spelled out as ‘learning management system’)

When you create ads on Quora’s platform, here’s what the ad builder looks like:

Tip: Add a relevant call-to-action (CTA) for best results.

6. App install campaign

Quora offers an ‘App Install’ objective, with conversion tracking through third-party mobile app measurement tools such as AppsFlyer, Adjust and others.

Here, you’re working with the same granular targeting options and ad copy specs as ‘Conversion’ campaigns, with the addition of a ‘Get the app’ CTA. Unlike other Quora Ads, app install campaigns don’t feature a Display URL.

If you have a mobile app to promote, this is a great sandbox to test your acquisition efforts.

Overall, we’ve been impressed with the Quora advertising platform in its infancy. The ad creation process is well thought-through, and the advertising on the site doesn’t distract from the core learning functions that have brought visitors flocking to Quora.com.

You’re likely to see advertisers getting increasingly clever with their approach in order to create relevance. For example, Wishpond phrases their ad headline below as a question, mirroring the organic site experience:

You can see TrenDemon below using the same strategy, which suggests that perhaps framing your ad as a question can improve clickthrough rates:

Quora gives advertisers the tiny but meaningful benefit of a “Promoted by” callout in advance of the ad, which announces that this is a sponsored listing, but also creates some light brand awareness. As with other ad platforms, “Free” is still a popular sell to lead with.

What do you think of Quora Ads so far? Let us know on Twitter @cleverzebo.

Looking for a marketing agency to help you test Quora Ads and find the right digital advertising strategy for your business? Talk to a marketing genius today.

The post Don’t advertise on Quora until you know 6 things first appeared on Clever Zebo.

The question a lot of marketers have is: can Outbrain or Taboola be an effective ad platform for my business?

Much has been written on this topic, but ultimately it’s clear that some companies have been shrewd enough to extract valuable leads and sales from this relatively fresh marketing channel. This post aims to explore how to build and optimize native content campaigns effectively on Outbrain and Taboola, and to look at some key differences that distinguish the two platforms.

Where do Outbrain and Taboola Ads appear?

If you’ve seen “related articles” beneath content you’ve read on the web — often with thumbnail images and sensational-seeming headlines — this is where Outbrain and Taboola play. Sometimes you can spot the company’s footprint above this section of related content.

It looks like this:

Pricing and bid flexibility

Both Taboola and Outbrain offer native advertising placements on a cost per click (CPC) basis. Outbrain allows bidding in $0.01 increments and offers excellent visualization tools for estimating traffic volume and daily costs based on bids, targeting, and your campaign’s clickthrough rate (CTR).

Taboola allows for bidding in $0.001 increments and, once a campaign is active, allows buyers to modify those bids up and down, at a site level, as much as 50% of the baseline CPC bid. This is not an optimization feature that Outbrain offered at the time of writing and, while it may seem like a small difference, for direct response advertisers, the added flexibility around bidding and optimization can have dramatic results on cost per acquisition (CPA) outcomes.

Publisher-level bidding and optimization is a huge advantage of Taboola over Outbrain.

Quality and performance

When reviewing Outbrain and Taboola performance side by side, looking at the specific websites where your content appears, you will notice a marked difference in the brand recognition of the publishers that work with Outbrain. This isn’t to throw Taboola’s publishers under the bus, but you won’t find publishers like Reuters, CNN, Fox News, and The Washington Post working with Taboola. You will see these well-recognized brands and publications in the Outbrain network.

Still, these high-profile publishers can be a double-edged sword. If you are a brand-sensitive company relying on softer success metrics (e.g. traffic and engagement), or a company that generally prefers the name recognition and is willing to pay for it, Outbrain could be the right choice. On the other hand, if you are 100% focused on direct response advertising and return on your investment in the form of sales, Taboola could be a stronger fit for you. Their long-tail network of websites and additional bidding flexibility is often going to yield better CPAs.

It’s worth testing both platforms, but businesses with limited ad budgets should know about this key difference.

User experience

There is a more dramatic difference between Taboola and Outbrain when it comes to the usability of the dashboard. Even though Taboola often performs better for direct response and conversion-focused companies, Outbrain’s user interface is faster, more intuitive and better visually organized. It offers more data at-a-glance and provides a much easier-to-use ad builder (they call it “uploading content”) that includes import and export features, which save time and improve accuracy. There is also a convenient drag-and-drop interface for uploading new images.

Comparatively, Taboola’s user experience feels old. It is difficult to change certain targeting settings and it can be tedious to upload new ads. You cannot see certain ad creative stats and make changes to active ad creatives from the same screen. It can also be difficult to change specific targeting settings at the line item level.

The lack of CSV upload features for ad optimization is a shortcoming of both platforms. Taboola and Outbrain both require a “hunt and peck” approach for optimization. As an agency we’re excited to usher in new features that would allow buyers to manage optimization offline or via third party tools, e.g. via Excel, and import via CSV or make changes via API.

Other optimization tips and final thoughts

Perhaps the most critical part of optimizing Taboola and Outbrain campaigns is to build custom site lists. If you are spending more than $20,000 a month on either Taboola or Outbrain, you’ve probably discovered that 20% of the publishers you buy from are driving 80% of the conversions.

When you build custom site lists, you can focus more spend on sites that perform well and better optimize bids for the 20% of sites that drive the majority of your success. This leaves the non-custom site list line items open for prospecting new sites, and you can bid less on these line items as you no longer need to keep bids high enough to ensure traffic from those best-performing 20% of publishers.

Through careful examination of each publisher broadcasting your ads, and rigorous optimization by publisher, you can make your investment with Taboola or Outbrain super efficient.

Looking for an agency that specializes in content promotion platforms like Taboola and Outbrain? Learn more about Clever Zebo’s expertise with Taboola and Outbrain campaign optimization.

The post Should I advertise my business on Taboola or Outbrain? first appeared on Clever Zebo.

Building a badass team isn’t easy

Let’s start with one of the challenges: recruiting. As I think about our team, one thing is clear. I personally made a lot of mistakes getting here. I’m very proud of Clever Zebo’s current talent, but there were so many promising interviews that turned into excruciating, crash-and-burn “test runs” at working together. It’s embarrassing just how bad I am at using a series of interviews and writing samples to predict how successful a new team member will be. We inevitably warm up new recruits each quarter who won’t make it. And that’s usually my fault.

Breaking up is hard to do

If you’re familiar with Clever Zebo, you know that Josh and Igor were partners from the beginning. You might also know that Josh is a brilliant, dynamic individual with a great many interests and talents — which is why it may not surprise you to learn that Josh made the difficult decision to part ways with the Zebo and pursue other projects this year.

It was a new experience for both of us, having never negotiated the exit from a business before. It didn’t come easy at first. There were disagreements and open questions. We took great care in working out a solution to every problem with professionalism and respect. I’m proud to say that our friendship remains strong. And in fact, this very style of heartfelt blog post to accompany a big development at Clever Zebo is signature Josh — I’m merely borrowing from his playbook.

Defining what we do better than anyone else

Many agencies open their doors with a bit of an identity crisis, and we were no different. During the website refresh, we had to think hard about which areas of our expertise have evolved and what we’re the best at. It’s nice to confirm that, yes, paid search and paid social are core strengths. We also continue to take on marketing automation projects. Fresh creative talent has enabled us to take on more conversion-centric landing page and website creation in 2017. Now it feels more clear than ever what we do as an agency.

Our core values remain intact

In 2011, we set out to build a business that reflected who we are as humans. We wanted to value honesty, integrity, great service, a focus on measurable results and a work-life balance we could boast about. No matter how big the company became, we wanted to empower our entire team to travel and experience the best parts of life — especially when those parts were not work.

That’s why we’re a remote company without a centralized office or a requirement for “face time.”

Six years later, it’s clear that experiment has improved and not stifled productivity.

The website refresh forced us to confront who we are. It feels really good to discover that Clever Zebo is the company we set out to be.

Our reporting got smarter in 2017

I’m ashamed to tell you that until recently, our highly sophisticated reporting dashboard for each client was built as a spreadsheet in Google Sheets.

We’re not total idiots; it’s just that no out-of-the-box reporting solution met all of our clients’ needs. We had high standards, and made the decision to customize a report for every client just how we like it.

In Q1 we found our metric-laden Prince Charming, if you will. We introduced a new reporting technology that’s flexible and always 100% accurate. Boredom among marketing analysts at Clever Zebo has decreased 99%. Clients are digging the new dashboards.

Some other things we’re proud of

• Our first-ever client is still with us
• Several of our past clients re-hired us in 2017, which we take as a huge compliment
• We helped an apparel company lift sales from Facebook Ads by 530%
• We’ve learned from, vetted and tested several new ad platforms and exchanges in 2017; the advertising playbook continues to grow

Ok, yes. We do sometimes enjoy tooting our own horn. Who doesn’t? But we wanted to get this post in front of you to share how we’re feeling about the business these days.

Creating our new home online was a humbling experience. Getting all the details right always seems to take more time, patience and attention than my team and I expect. There were challenges and frustrations. But the process has also provided an opportunity for reflection and gratitude. Thanks for ruminating on the journey with us.

The post 9 things we’re proud of, embarrassed about & otherwise excited to share first appeared on Clever Zebo.

We learned a lot through optimizing a young but aspiring Facebook Ads account for an eCommerce brand that sells customizable men’s clothing.

I’m proud to say that within only a month, we managed to:

• Increase conversion volume by 530%
• Reduce CPA by 47%
• Boost conversion rate by 347%

*Data was pulled from a 30-day “before and after” window.

How did we do it?

Our initial Facebook Analytics review showed us two things:

1)  The 55-64 age segment was the best performing, followed by 45-54.

The 55-64 segment is the best performing, with a 49% higher conversion rate than the runner-up (93% certainty). The 25-34 and 65+ greatly underperformed against top segments.

2)  Although the majority of spend was focused on the ‘Mobile News Feed’ placement, the ‘Desktop News Feed’ placement was the top performer by a substantial margin.

The ‘Desktop News Feed’ placement had a 260% higher conversion rate and an $184.81 lower CPA than the ‘Mobile News Feed’ placement (statistically significant).

We optimized each campaign as informed by these observations, and then immediately:

• Launched a Lookalike campaign
• Launched a Remarketing campaign
• Put in place aggressive creative and copy A/B tests
• Updated the account to Facebook’s new universal tracking pixel and standard events
• Tested automatic and conversion optimized bid strategies

Thirty days later, our client was fired up to see more than a fivefold increase in sales from the Facebook Ads program. No fooling: it didn’t jump from 2 orders to 10 orders. The campaigns started out with a respectable five-figure budget and were humming in the vicinity of 500 high-ticket orders by month’s end.

The upswing was accompanied by a nice conversion rate bump, and we were able to cut the cost of acquiring a customer in half.

If you’re looking to scale and optimize Facebook Ads or other paid social advertising for your business, shoot us a note: igor@cleverzebo.com.

The post How Clever Zebo boosted a clothing retailer’s sales from Facebook Ads by 530% first appeared on Clever Zebo.