By Jordan Henri | December 14, 2022

It’s no secret that reviews have a significant impact on the way that your brand, products, or services are perceived. When most of your potential online traffic is finding you from either a search engine or your business listing on Google Maps, it’s worth considering reviews as part of your SEO strategy.

There’s more to it than simply racking up reviews in bulk, though.

• What happens if your business gets a negative review online?
• How do you correctly respond to a negative review?
• How do you deal with fake feedback online?
• Should you respond to positive reviews?

Today, we’re going to cover the answers to all these questions. Plus, we’ll give you examples you can use when responding to the reviews you do get.

Why Responding to All Reviews Matters

It’s natural to prioritize responding to a negative review—it’s part of the relationship you have with your current customers and what future customers are going to be looking at when they research your business.

• Responding to negative reviews and feedback shows that you’re willing to accept constructive criticism and, more importantly, offer a solution.
• Responses to negative reviews should be prompt, too—think within a week or less.

What about positive reviews?

You might think that a response to positive feedback isn’t necessary. They loved your product or service—what more is there to talk about?

The truth is that your audience wants to hear from you even if they’ve left positive feedback.

• Positive reviews are like free promotions for your business—the least you can do is show your appreciation with a response.
• Anyone researching your business is looking at whether or not you’re the solution to a problem that they have.
• Current and future customers want to know that you take their feedback (and business) seriously—and value that they chose you.

Even something as simple as thanking them for taking the time to leave a review helps. It shows that you’re listening to them, value their input, and care about their experience with your product or service.

Your responses to reviews have effects that go beyond the relationship with the customer who left the review. Responding to feedback of any kind often leaves a great impression on potential customers who take the time to look at your reviews section.

How to Respond to Negative Reviews

No matter how hard you try to avoid them, you’re likely to receive a negative review at some point. Mistakes happen—whether it’s an issue with your product, service, or a customer experience mishap.

The best way to respond to a negative review is to begin with an apology, thank the reviewer for sharing their thoughts, and acknowledge the results of the negative experience. This shows the reviewer that you’re taking their experience seriously—think of it like the online equivalent of active listening.

• If it’s appropriate, you can offer an explanation for what happened—not an excuse.
• Explain to the reviewer what you’ll be doing to address the problem so it doesn’t continue to happen.
• You’ll also want to include your next steps for the reviewer, if necessary. For example, provide an email address for the reviewer to follow up with you if further discussion is required.
• Lastly, kindly apologize once more before signing off as a best practice.

Here’s an example of what this looks like in action:

Hello {first name}, First, thank you for sharing your feedback. We are sorry that {negative aspect} didn’t meet your expectations. Clearly, we fell short, and we apologize. In the future, we’ll make sure that the {situation or specific event} doesn’t happen again. The last thing we want to do is let our clients down. Moving forward, here’s what we’ll do to make it right: {solution}. Again, we apologize, but we also hope you’ll consider giving us another chance. Feel free to reach out to {contact within your organization} personally at {email address}, and they’ll see to it that we get it right this time.

What about false or inaccurate reviews?

Unfortunately, false reviews are part of life as a business. Whether they were purchased by the competition or simply reviews from trolls online, at some point, you’ll probably have to deal with responding to false reviews.

• Start by investigating whether or not the reviewer is actually talking about your business or if they got you mixed up with someone else.
• Sometimes, reviews are left for the wrong company. In this case, politely explain that this isn’t the right page and ask for the review to be removed.
• If the review is rooted in any truth, begin by apologizing for where you went wrong—just like you would with a negative review response.
• Even if the feedback is scathing, you should respond with politeness. Think of this as an opportunity to show people the right face of your brand.

Some reviewers leave rude feedback—don’t feed into this. Even if you’re tempted to respond in kind, remember that other customers may perceive you differently when responding to a rude review with the same tone.

If you’re not sure whether or not the reviewer is being honest, kindly ask for some kind of proof:

• “When were you in?”
• “Which location did you visit?”
• “May I ask who you spoke to?”

This helps you verify if you’re dealing with a real customer.

If the review is fake, comment professionally saying that the review is false and has been reported to the site moderators.

How to Respond to Positive Reviews

Luckily, responding to positive reviews is much easier than their negative counterparts.

• Start by greeting and thanking the reviewer for taking the time to write a review and for sharing their kind words. This shows that you care about them and value what they have to say.
• Next, acknowledge the joy or satisfaction that your product or service brought to them.
• You don’t want to look like you’re replying to every positive review with a copy-and-paste message. Read their review and personalize your message based on what they enjoy about your product or service.
• Include a reminder that customer satisfaction is your primary focus and that you’re glad everything worked out! This is also a subtle opportunity to highlight your product or service that the customer enjoyed.
• Finally, thank the reviewer, wish them well, and sign off.

Here’s a great example of what responding to a positive review can look like. Remember, though—personalization is key: use this only as a starting point.

Hello {first name},
We appreciate the kind words! We’re so excited to hear that {first aspect reviewed positively} worked out for you. It’s always humbling to hear how we’re able to make an experience memorable for our {fans/customers/guests}.
We are also happy that you found {second aspect reviewed positively} {helpful/useful/etc.}. We’ve worked hard on that part of our company, and so we are glad to hear it made your day better.
Have a great day, and thanks again for the review!

How to Respond to Mixed Feedback

Some reviewers will leave mixed reviews about your product or service—they enjoyed one aspect of the experience but didn’t like another. Or maybe your product impressed them, but they didn’t enjoy the experience of getting it.

Whatever the case, the best practices for responding to this kind of review borrow a little from both negative and positive review responses.

• Begin with greeting and thanking the reviewer for taking the time to leave feedback.
• From there, acknowledge any positives that made the reviewer happy with your product or service.
• Now it’s time to address the negatives. Apologize for any missteps in customer service or issues with the product.
• Explain how you’ll use the feedback to correct any future problems.
• Sometimes, the negatives in a mixed review may outweigh the positives. If this happens, offer to make it up to the reviewer in a private conversation by leaving contact information.
• Finish off by thanking the reviewer and signing off with your name.

Here’s a great example of a response to mixed feedback that hits on all of these points:

Hello {first name},
First off, thank you for letting us know about your experience with {company/product/service}. We’re elated to hear that {aspect highlighted positively in the review}. Be sure that we’ll let {person/team/department responsible} that their work is appreciated!
However, it sounds like we could do better when it comes to {areas of criticism}. Sorry we fell short there. Moving forward, we’re going to {how you’ll address the criticisms}, so we hope you’ll stick around so that we can show you how important your feedback is to the team when we make these changes.
In the meantime, if there’s anything else you want to share with us please contact us at {email}.

Professional Responses Set You Apart

Whether it’s a positive, negative, or mixed review, the facts remain the same—your audience wants their voice to be heard. How you respond to this feedback sets you and your business apart from the competition.

Follow the tips in today’s article, and you’ll have the tools you need to:

• Respond to all feedback professionally
• Properly address any criticism
• Cultivate better relationships with your customers

If you have any more questions about reviews or SEO, we’d love to hear from you! Get in touch with us to learn more about how we can help you and your business.

By Marina Milutinovic | October 31, 2022

Each day, millions of people look for a pizza place, a hair salon, or a car wash in their own neighborhood. During their search, these same people are evaluating where or who they want to make their purchase from—and they read business reviews to make that decision.

Whether you’re the owner of a local shop looking for more foot traffic or you simply want a solid online presence for your business, your Google Business Profile is the first step in your online marketing strategy.

In this article, we’re going to cover a common issue that can hurt small businesses: sharing the same address with another business in your Google Business Profile.

Why Multiple Businesses at the Same Address Can Be a Problem

Generally, Google does not want multiple businesses that are not distinct business entities to share the same address. Listing multiple businesses that are not legally distinct can sometimes result in a hard suspension from Google—and the removal of your listing and reviews.

There are other difficulties associated with having multiple businesses housed at one address. Google will often prioritize whichever listing they think has the most local SEO potential when viewed in map search. This effectively hides the other listings at that location until you zoom in on the map.

Beyond the issues highlighted above, Google also looks for certain key indicators that each business that shares an address is a separate entity. This includes having a separate entrance and exit for each business and permanent signage inside and outside of the building.

If you’re an eyebrow threader who rents space at a hair salon, and you try to verify your business on Google to pull in more clients using the address of the salon, both your listing and the listing of the salon may get investigated and suspended.

Why did this happen? You’re still a distinct business entity, but you are not considered a separate business because you do not meet Google’s criteria for business eligibility and ownership.

Two Common Cases Where You Can Successfully Share an Address

There are still two common situations where Google will allow multiple businesses to share an address:

1. Two businesses with different business categories: This applies to businesses that are entirely separate with distinct entrances that provide different products or services while operating under the same address. It’s also the scenario that individual departments within businesses, institutions, or universities usually fall into.
2. Individual practitioners: This typically references doctors, lawyers, or real estate agents with their own clients that operate independently in public-facing roles within a practice.

In our previous article covering how to create a Google Business Profile account, we provide guidelines for individual practitioners. If you’re a doctor, lawyer, or real estate agent setting up your presence in Google Maps, definitely check out our advice in that article.

If you are an owner of a business that shares an address with another business (e.g., within an office complex with distinct suites) and you are in no way connected to the other business, creating a Google Business Profile account is a simple process. Having a different name, phone number, and website makes you eligible for your own listing. However, if you have a business department within your organization, there are some additional guidelines to follow:

• Each department must provide different services
• The name of each department must be different from the name of the main business and other departments
• The business category for the department must not be the same as for the main business

Google offers some great examples of what this might look like on their Google Business Profile Help site. Some examples of acceptable distinct Business Profiles would be:

• Walmart’s Vision Center service
• The Sears Auto Center
• Massachusetts General Hospital’s Department of Dermatology

Some examples that would not qualify as distinct Business Profiles include:

• The Apple products section of Best Buy
• The hot food bar inside Whole Foods Market

Remember to verify your listing

Once you’ve created a separate listing or listings for your departments or other businesses, go ahead and verify it so it can be visible to internet users. Having separate listings is beneficial for businesses since they enable a better user experience.

We Know Local SEO: Let Us Help!

Businesses of all sizes across the world are using local SEO to get discovered by their customers. CommonMind specializes in local SEO, and we’re happy to help you assess how well your business is being found by your ideal market.

From there, we support your business goals by building a solid and sustainable marketing strategy that will help you rank higher locally. Get in touch with us! We’ll help put local SEO to work for you.

By Alden Do Rosario | September 9, 2022

Companies frequently use A/B testing to compare different versions of their product, ad, website, or prototypes to see which is performing better. Many A/B testing resources recommend that such tests should be run over a long period of time so that they can gather statistically significant results.

While getting more data over a long period of time sounds like a great plan, this could give rise to some issues around the way the data was collected, a restriction of your budget, or a need for faster results.

Too often, small and medium-sized businesses can run into roadblocks that cause a test to get stuck—without ever receiving enough data to validate a decision.

Why Do Traditional A/B Tests Get Stuck?

Unless you are an A/B testing and CRO expert, you might not have noticed that a lot of A/B tests will get stuck, never receiving enough volume to choose a winner or finish without conclusive data. You might have experienced some disappointment if you’ve tried A/B testing but didn’t get the data you wanted.

Unfortunately, this is a very common issue. When an A/B test is run in a competitive environment that requires a large budget to get clicks or interactions, a test might get stuck. Additionally, if a small business has a hard time getting enough traffic to gather data for the test, they might be waiting weeks or months for the results.

If you want to optimize your A/B testing strategy, find the best headlines, and build your best creative, here is a new approach your team can try the next time an A/B test gets stuck.

The Alternative to Traditional A/B Testing

Traditional A/B testing, in a live environment, has been the most popular way to validate decisions and understand what resources you should focus on. But what if your website, ads, or prototypes don’t have enough traffic? Or if your organization refuses to justify the cost of A/B testing? There are many marketers, researchers, and businesses that face this scenario.

You can either play a guessing game and hope that your optimization efforts will be successful, or you can use new qualitative and budget-friendly methods to turn the guessing game into an analytical process.

The optimization tactic covered here won’t provide the same level of statistical validity offered by well-executed A/B tests. However, this method can help you avoid making changes based on gut instinct. Additionally, it will help optimize your resources with real, actionable insights. This optimization strategy relies on gathering quality user feedback that will then drive changes in design, copy, funnels, prototypes, and more.

• If your A/B test is stuck in neutral, rapid user testing is one of the most commonly used qualitative research methods.
• User testing is a technique used in user-centered design to evaluate a product by testing it on real people to gather feedback. Marketing professionals have reported that just 5 user tests can reveal 80% of usability issues.
• A rapid user test can provide much of the same data as a live A/B test with the added benefit of qualitative data.

If you need to understand the why, not just the what, of your design process—and are running tests on a low-traffic website or environment—a qualitative user test is the best option.

In order to develop a thorough understanding of users at each level of development, today’s modern, agile teams need access to rapid user feedback. Instead of waiting weeks with a live A/B test, remote-user testing provides similar data in a fraction of the time—for a fraction of the cost.

The Benefits of Rapid, Feedback-Based A/B Testing

Rapid user testing’s biggest benefit in this scenario is its ability to eliminate roadblocks that occur in high CPC and low volume environments when A/B testing. The process allows you to gather feedback in just hours—and ensure the test creates statistical significance. The following are some of the most impactful benefits of implementing a user-based A/B testing strategy.

Draft data-backed decisions

Each time you run a test and use the results to inform decisions, you are making smart improvements based on the opinion, interactions, and feedback of users. Utilizing this testing method ensures you are running the ads that the audience connects with the most.

A user-based A/B test will not only eliminate the issues posed by live A/B testing, but will also help an organization better understand user needs and expectations. By providing quantitative and qualitative data, you can validate decisions with statistics from participants. Testing reveals which ad or design is the most popular, allowing you to launch the right design. 

Understand your target audience

Through user A/B testing, researchers can understand how the target audience interacts with ads and identify the variations that resonate. Targeting and applying advanced criteria to the testing audience creates tests that gather feedback from the users that are most likely to view your resources once they are live. 

Save time and money 

User A/B testing as an alternative to or accompaniment of a traditional A/B test will save time and money.

• In high CPC environments, a live A/B test could cost hundreds or thousands. User A/B testing requires a fraction of that investment, and enables smaller organizations to focus budget elsewhere.
• If you create and implement a user A/B testing process, you will identify ways to optimize designs with feedback from real users. Identifying issues with ads, websites, or other elements of the business before launch will save time and money in development and rework.
• Traditional A/B tests often get stuck in neutral or take weeks to complete. Fast user feedback is valuable, allowing teams to identify problem areas, most important elements of a design, and allot additional time to optimize.

Iterate quickly

By frequently conducting user A/B testing, you can identify the ad and design direction that create traffic and convert users. With rapid feedback testing and retesting, you can be done in hours instead of weeks. This helps small businesses to allocate design spend wisely. 

Adding user A/B testing to your marketing toolkit helps your organization gather actionable data—without the need for a large budget or extensive time dedicated to research.

How to Conduct a User A/B Test

User A/B testing provides a method for understanding what works and what doesn’t. An effective testing program can increase conversions, profit, and other desired goals by understanding the most impactful areas to optimize. A/B testing is no longer just a post-launch, once-in-a-while activity—it is a structured and ongoing process that can be conducted before launching concepts, features, or other material.

While user A/B testing is not as widely known or popular as live A/B testing, it is just as effective for small-scale businesses looking to grow and simple to conduct. However, a researcher must follow a few crucial steps when conducting these tests.

Step 1: Choose a testing platform

There are several effective platforms that allow organizations to test their resources quickly and effectively. A few of the best platforms are PollthePeople.app, UserTesting.com, and UserBrain.com.

• All of these platforms can conduct user tests in hours and provide high-quality feedback.
• Each has a built-in user panel enabling businesses to choose the number of participants they want to test with as well as apply advanced criteria and segmentation.
• These self-service systems offer plans that allow businesses of any size to optimize with user feedback. There is often no need for coding or design experience as they are equipped with templates and test designs that are simple to use.
• Additionally, they will display the feedback and data in a results dashboard to easily analyze and understand the outcome.

Step 2: Select a template and launch

To easily implement and design your test, you should choose the template that matches the resources you are testing. The most common templates for SEM professionals are Google ads, Facebook ads, and ad copy templates. 

• Once you have your design variations uploaded, create test scenarios or questions to help achieve the testing goals and validate the hypothesis.
• Ask users to complete tasks and provide feedback comparing and analyzing their experiences with each design.
• The right testing platforms have built-in user panels that represent the users that would see your ads in a live environment.
• Most platforms offer audience segmentation and advanced criteria to target participants in specific demographics and groups. 

Before you launch a test, it is important to review whether it is designed effectively: review the resources you are testing, the scenarios and questions for participants, and the audience you have identified for the test. Once you have confirmed the test is set up how it needs to be, launch the test and wait for the results.

Step 3: Analyze results and make changes

Most user A/B tests provide both qualitative and quantitative data to understand the what and the why of the test. Your team will be able to filter responses, share data, and find actionable insights to optimize your business strategies moving forward. 

• It is important to understand all of the data that is gathered to fully understand the results of the test.
• Each respondent will provide feedback on their experiences to educate your decisions and help your team run the best ads possible.
• Based on the version that won the test, along with the qualitative data, you can make changes to designs that meet user needs. 

Rapid user A/B testing eliminates uncertainty from the creation and implementation of new resources. An organization can create better ads with the confidence that their designs will satisfy their customers and generate new ones.. 

Comparing Live A/B Testing and User A/B Testing

Traditional A/B testing executed effectively is one of the best ways to validate design direction and gather data, but a lot of researchers—especially those in growing organizations—run into budget and time restrictions. When a live A/B test gets stuck in neutral, user A/B testing can be an effective tactic to gather feedback in less time at a lower cost.

Each testing method has benefits that help optimize designs and drawbacks that can cause bottlenecks. Determining which style is right for your business will depend on your unique needs as a company. Compare the pros and cons of each testing method below to find the best fit.

The Pros of Live A/B Testing

Receive clear evidence

It’s easy to see how many users click on an ad or convert into a lead with traditional A/B testing. The evidence is based on real, live behaviors, providing clear evidence that one version is more effective than the other. 

Test new ideas

If you have a new approach in mind for an existing campaign, this form of A/B testing provides proof that your assumptions are correct. You can experiment with new concepts or designs to understand if they will be effective and improve your ROI.

Optimize one step at a time

Live A/B testing allows organizations that run large ad campaigns to find the best direction and identify the elements that have the greatest impact. An enterprise-level organization can benefit from testing small parts of the ads and then working up to the overall design. 

Answer specific design questions

If you are trying to understand if the order of your headlines changes ad effectiveness or if the color of your creative increases engagement you can understand that through A/B testing. These tests allow the marketer to test different text, tone, arrangements, and creative which all have an impact on the ads. 

The Cons of Live A/B Testing

Requires more time and resources

Traditional A/B testing can take a lot longer to set up than other forms of testing. With that in mind, organizing and running effective live A/B testing can eat up a lot of time and money.

• Once a set of variables have been identified, designers and researchers need resources to execute changes.
• Achieving conclusive results can take weeks or months for low-traffic organizations.
• In competitive CPC environments, tests can get costly: the longer the test runs, the more budget an organization will have to commit to the process.

Small businesses (and some growing organizations) might not have the traffic or budget to iterate live A/B tests and receive feedback on every design element. 

Only works for specific goals

This kind of testing is ideal if you want to answer one question or understand the quantitative data. However, if your goals are harder to measure with statistics alone, traditional A/B testing won’t provide the answers. 

Doesn’t improve ineffective ads

If the ads you are launching have errors or are ineffective in engaging users, an A/B test won’t tell you why. You will find out which ad is better in terms of raw data—but there is a chance that both are still ineffective. 

It’s common for both variations of ads to have flaws. Traditional A/B tests won’t reveal these flaws directly: they’ll require some insight to resolve. Additionally, they won’t reveal the direct causes of user frustration, or identify ways to improve ads. Ad A may have resulted in more clicks and conversions, but that’s only in relation to B.

The Pros of User A/B Testing

Receive actionable data

Similar to traditional A/B testing, this method provides businesses with quantitative data that tells them which variation is more effective. It’s easy to see which ad users consider “better” based on the votes and task completion rates. In addition to this data, user A/B testing utilizes direct feedback to show you why one version is better. 

Saves time and resources

While traditional A/B testing can take weeks or months for small-scale businesses, user-based testing can be designed, launched, and analyzed in just a few hours. This type of testing lets you create great user experiences and optimize based on feedback quickly.

Using user A/B testing to find issues and identify the best ads to launch before going live is less time-consuming and expensive. With tests completed in a few hours or less, growing organizations need to commit fewer resources to get effective ads up and running.

Optimize individual elements faster

The reduced cost of user A/B testing coupled with a rapid turn-around time enables small-scale teams to test more elements in ads. With reduced costs, growing organizations will have the room in their budget they need to test one element of their ad and work toward analyzing every part of the campaign. 

Test new ideas

Just like with traditional A/B testing, this method allows marketers to validate innovative ideas and concepts with proof as to whether it works or not. You can quickly understand if a new direction or design is effective before launching. 

Identify and improve bad elements

While live A/B testing can identify ads that are more or less effective than their counterpart, user A/B testing with qualitative user insights can tell you if both versions are bad. Plus, this form of testing can potentially highlight any major issues with the design.

The participants comparing variations can tell you if both are ineffective, if specific elements need fixing, or simply reveal what frustrates them the most when interacting with your ads.

The Cons of User A/B Testing

The pre-launch environment

User A/B testing is conducted in a pre-launch environment, meaning you won’t get the same data as running a live test. While you will be able to understand which version is better, you won’t fully understand if that design works in a live environment until you launch the campaign. This can lead to additional costs if you find your live results don’t match your pre-launch assertions.

No conversion and click data

One of the biggest benefits of traditional A/B testing is the real, live data on clicks, engagement, and conversions. With user A/B testing, you won’t get click or conversion data because the campaign is not live.

Could User A/B Testing Support Your Business?

While live A/B testing is a very popular testing method, smaller teams can run into issues when they don’t have the traffic or budget to effectively test in competitive CPC environments. A great alternative to live A/B testing for businesses with a tight budget is remote user A/B testing. 

User A/B testing allows growing organizations to gather actionable user data in only a few hours to understand expectations, experiences, and allocate resources effectively. User A/B testing can be a useful addition to or replacement for live A/B testing depending on your organization’s scale.

Furthermore, this form of testing still allows you to optimize resources one step at a time with lower overhead. Testing new ideas can be done much faster, giving small teams more time to focus on optimization. 

If you (or your team) are running A/B tests that frequently get stuck in neutral, explore user A/B testing. It can be a great way to gather the same actionable feedback without worrying about the snowballing costs associated with stuck tests.

About the author

Alden Do Rosario

CEO @ Poll the People

With over 25 years of experience in digital marketing, Alden is an avid entrepreneur, digital marketer, and current CEO at Poll the People—a user testing platform that lets marketers and designers test their assets with real people. Formerly, Alden was CTO and co-founder of Chitika, which became the second largest contextual ad network after Google Adsense.

By Nick Cotter | April, 2022

Launching a successful B2B affiliate marketing program is no easy task. There are a lot of factors to consider, and you need to make sure everything is in place before you launch. To help make the process a little bit easier, I’ve gathered some expert tips from professionals who have experience in this area.

Keep reading for insights on everything from choosing an affiliate network to creating attractive offers. With these tips, you’ll be well on your way to launching a successful B2B affiliate marketing program that your partners will love!

What is a B2B Affiliate Program?

A B2B affiliate program is a marketing arrangement whereby a company recruits affiliates to market and sell its products or services to other businesses. In exchange for each sale generated, the affiliate receives a commission. 

There are a few different B2B affiliate programs, but the most common is the revenue-sharing model. In this model, businesses earn a commission on sales generated by their affiliates. Other common models include the CPA (cost-per-action) and CPS (cost-per-sale) models.

B2B affiliate programs can be an effective way to generate new leads and sales for businesses. The programs offer an incentive for businesses to promote a product or service, and they can be a cost-effective marketing tool.

Should you Start a B2B Affiliate Marketing Program?

There are many reasons to start a B2B affiliate marketing program. It can help you reach new markets and expand your customer base. Additionally, it can also lead to increased sales and profits. However, before starting a B2B affiliate marketing program, there are a few things you should keep in mind. 

• You must have the infrastructure in place to support it. It includes a well-developed website, an effective marketing strategy, and a dedicated team to manage the program. 
• You need to choose the right affiliate partners. They should be a good fit for your business and your target market.
• You must put together an attractive and compelling offer that will motivate your affiliates to promote your products and services.

If you do all of these things, you’ll create a foundation for success for both you and your affiliates. 

What are the 11 Expert Tips on Starting an Affiliate Marketing Program for B2B?

Launching a successful B2B affiliate marketing program isn’t easy. But with the right approach, you can create a program that delivers results for your business. Here are 11 expert tips to help you get started:

1. Don’t Lead with Affiliate Marketing.

If you’re looking to launch a successful B2B affiliate marketing program, affiliate marketing shouldn’t be your only marketing channel of focus, especially if you’re a new founder with a B2B business. Instead, focus on creating a strong overall marketing strategy that will include affiliate marketing as one part of the larger picture. By doing this, you’ll be able to set realistic channel KPIs for your affiliate marketing program and ensure that it’s successful.

2. Set Realistic Channel KPIs.

When setting up your affiliate program, it’s important to set realistic KPIs for the channel. It will help you track your progress and ensure that you’re on track to reach your goals. By setting realistic KPIs, you’ll be able to gauge your affiliate marketing program’s success early on, and adjust strategy and projections accordingly.

Some ideas for business KPIs you may want to track include: 

• Sales generated
• Leads generated
• Traffic generated
• Conversion rate
• Average order value

Some ideas for affiliate specific KPIs you may want to track include: 

• Affiliate partners onboarded
• Partner activity index
• Time since last partner activity
• Program earnings per click

3. Understand Affiliates’ Role in Marketing Funnel.

Before you launch your affiliate program, it’s important to understand how affiliates fit into your overall marketing funnel. It’s important to remember that affiliates are just one part of the larger equation and that they shouldn’t be relied on to drive all of your marketing results.

Affiliates can play several roles in your marketing funnel, such as: 

• Prospecting new customers
• Converting leads into paying customers
• Increasing customer loyalty and retention
• Acting as brand ambassadors

Pro tip: Have an upcoming marketing campaign or product launch? Leverage your affiliate partners as part of the distribution strategy! They’ll be able to help amplify the push.

4. Take Your Time Building a Commission Structure.

When you’re first starting, it’s important to take your time building a commission structure that will work for both you and your affiliates. This structure should be fair, competitive, and aligned with your overall marketing goals.

You need to consider what type of product or service you’re selling, the average order value, and what kind of margins you can afford to pay. By taking the time to build a strong commission structure, you’ll be laying the groundwork for a successful affiliate program.

Pro tip: Don’t price your program’s payout so high that your customer acquisition cost (CAC) is too high. You don’t want to get yourself in a situation where you have to tell partners you’re lowering their commission.

5. Pick out the Right Affiliate Network or Software.

Picking the right affiliate network or software is crucial. Not all affiliate networks and software are created equal. When setting up your B2B affiliate marketing program, it’s important to pick the right affiliate network or software. It will ensure access to all the features and tools you need to run a successful program.

Some things to consider when choosing an affiliate network or software include: 

• Ease of use
• Pricing model: Monthly or annual contracts
• Affiliate tracking and reporting
• Customization options
• Support and customer service
• Affiliate recruitment capabilities
• Payout tracking

6. Set up an Affiliate Program Launch Plan.

Launching a successful affiliate program is no easy task. It takes time, effort, and planning, but it can be a huge help to your business with the right planning and execution. Before you launch your affiliate marketing program, create a detailed launch plan. It will help ensure that your program is successful and that affiliates can start generating leads and sales right away.

Some things to include in your affiliate program launch plan include: 

• Creating promotional materials (e.g., banners, emails, blog posts)
• Reaching out to affiliates and recruiting them to join your program
• Hosting a webinar or other training materials to help affiliates get started
• Setting up a system for tracking leads and sales
• Launch a paid media buy for publications affiliates are a part of
• Set up an onboarding nurture campaign emails for affiliates

7. Ensure Your Affiliate Terms & Conditions are Buttoned up.

When launching a new affiliate program, it’s important to have all your terms and conditions in order. It will ensure that both you and your affiliates are on the same page from the start and avoid any confusion or legal issues down the road. 

Make sure to clearly state:

• The products or services you’re promoting
• What type of affiliates you’re looking for (e.g., bloggers, social media influencers, etc.)
• How commissions will be paid
• Any restrictions on how or where the affiliate can market your product or service
• What happens if an affiliate violates your terms and conditions

Important: This is not legal advice. These are solely recommendations we suggest looking into when building out your terms and conditions. Always advise legal counsel before publishing any form of legal documentation.

8. Create an Affiliate Onboarding Nurture Cadance.

One of the keys to a successful affiliate program is ensuring your affiliates are properly onboarded and nurtured from the start. This means providing them with all the necessary information and resources they need to start promoting your products or services.

A good way to do this is through an affiliate onboarding nurture cadence. It will provide affiliates with a step-by-step guide on how to get started and regular updates on new offers, promotions, and other news. By taking the time to onboard and nurture your affiliates, you’ll help ensure their success in promoting your products or services.

Here are a few email campaigns you’ll want active:

• Welcome email series
• Your first lead/conversion email
• Your first sale email
• 30-60-90 day check in emails

9. Set up Challenges and Goals for Affiliates.

Giving affiliates challenges and goals is a great way to set your affiliate program up for success. This will help keep them motivated and engaged and ensure they’re promoting your products or services in the most effective way possible.

Image source: https://partnerstack.com/platform

Some ideas for challenges and goals include:

• Meeting a certain sales target within a certain timeframe
• Generating a certain number of leads in a given period
• Creating a specific number of social media posts or blog articles about your product or service
• Generating a certain amount of traffic to your website

Always make sure your additional reward with challenges is in alignment with your channel CAC goals!

10. Build Strong Relationships with Top Affiliates.

One of the best ways to set your affiliate program up for success is to build strong relationships with your top affiliates. It makes it certain that they’re promoting your products or services in the best way possible and gives you a group of ambassadors who can help promote your brand.  By building strong relationships with your top affiliates, you’ll help ensure their success in promoting your products or services.

Image source: https://partnerstack.com/platform

There are a few ways to build strong relationships with your top affiliates, such as:

• Providing them with exclusive offers and promotions
• Recognizing their achievements publicly
• Giving them early access to new products or services
• Inviting them to events or meetups

11. Leverage Data and Continue to Iterate on Strategy

Data is essential for any successful B2B affiliate marketing program. Use it to track the performance of your affiliates. It’ll ensure that your program is always evolving and improving and what marketing channels generate the most traffic and sales.

It’s important to regularly review this data and use it to iterate on your strategy. It may involve changing your commission structure, altering your marketing mix, or trying a new creative approach. By leveraging data and continually repeating your strategy, you can keep your affiliate program fresh and successful.

Launching a B2B Affiliate Marketing Program

Launching a B2B affiliate marketing program can be daunting, but with careful planning and execution, your program can become a valuable part of your sales and marketing mix. By following these tips, you’ll be on the right track to building a successful program that generates leads and revenue for your business.

By Marina Milutinovic | February 7, 2022

Local search can be an incredibly powerful tool for small businesses.

When you Google specific services, chances are good that you’ll be shown listings for businesses in your area instead of seeing larger businesses from around the world. This is the power of local SEO: It allows small businesses to rank highly on Google and reach their local customers. 

In this article, we’ll dive into local SEO, how it works, and why it’s important for small businesses.

What is Local SEO?

If you’re already familiar with SEO, you can think of local SEO as optimizing search engines for local (geographic-based) keyword searches. More than 90% of US consumers searched online for a local business in 2020, according to BrightLocal research, and therefore appearing in local search results can play an important role in generating leads and sales for many businesses. 

What are the main factors that affect local search results?

There are three main factors that affect local search results:

• Distance: Search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo, use users’ locations (IP addresses for desktop computers or mobile phone locations) to determine what results they’re going to display. For example, when someone in Rockport, MA, looks for organic food, Google will display results based on physical distance, among other factors. The results will most likely contain local organic food shops or online grocery stores that deliver food to Rockport.

• Relevance: Google determines how well a business matches a user through the details the business provides in Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business). Google also considers the content found on the business’ website. 

• Prominence: Google tries to determine which businesses are more popular. The prominence is calculated by the information on a business found anywhere online, such as articles, links, directories, and business profiles. A business’s reputation is a big factor in the eyes of Google and other search engines. Trust is determined by the number of reviews a business has online as well as its star rating. Quality of content and the number of backlinks also influence the trustworthiness of a business website. 

Out of the three factors we listed, relevance and prominence are the ones a business can influence to improve its position in local search results. 

Why is Local SEO Important?

Having the best product or service does not guarantee people will find you online. Most users will click on the first or the second link that comes up in the search results, and the only way that they’ll move onto the second page of search results is if they’re dissatisfied with the results on the first page.

A recent survey showed 57% of consumers say they shop local to keep the money close to home, and 38% of consumers support local businesses to feel connected with their community. Establishing a solid local presence will help you keep your business up and running.

Paid advertising can take up an entire marketing budget of a business. In contrast, investing in local SEO is not as expensive, and implementing a local SEO marketing strategy will provide long-term results. 

Local SEO helps businesses:

1. Grow their local customer base
2. Connect with their local community 
3. Build brand awareness
4. Gain a positive reputation

What Types of Businesses Could Benefit Most from Local SEO? 

Every business that serves local customers should utilize local SEO marketing. Some of the businesses that might get more hits from local SEO include:

• Restaurants, coffee shops, hotels, bars, nightclubs
• Doctors, dentists, hospitals
• Lawyers, insurance agents
• Plumbers, electricians, hair salons, bookkeepers, gyms, summer camps

What Do Google’s Local Search Results Look Like?

There are several types of results for local searches that can be seen in Google. 

The first one and the most prominent one is the local 3-pack. The local 3-pack shows the top three most relevant results as determined by Google, in a “box,” with a map that shows pinned locations of the top three businesses.

There’s a “View all” button at the bottom of the box in case a user wants to see more results. Once a user clicks on the “View all” button, a map opens and shows the top 8-10 results with an option to sort the results by Rating or Hours.

The second type of local search result is Google Business Profile. It appears on the right side of the search results and shows the most important information about a business. It can also show ratings of the business from across the web, articles and press releases about the business, and links to the business’s social media channels.

The third type of local search result is “regular” organic links. 

Among the organic links, Google may also include local directories, e.g., Yelp and FourSquare pages:

The Most Common Local SEO Strategies

Google Business Profile Optimization

Google Business Profile is a free Google service that makes your storefront or service visible in Google Search or Maps. You can showcase your business by adding photos, offers, posts, information, and more.

Business owners should fill out their profiles as much as possible and maintain their profiles on a regular basis. Note, sometimes users can add suggestions to your business that Google may apply to your listing (like changing hours of operation or the address). Even though users have some influence over the information that Google applies to your business listing,  it might not be such a bad thing after all. Google uses this information to keep listings accurate. When a business owns a couple of hundred listings, things can easily slip through the cracks.

Google will send you an email if someone or Google edits or deletes information in your business profile. Your next step is to log into your account and accept or decline the changes. Google doesn’t provide an exact time frame of when the changes will actually happen, but try to be vigilant. 

Local Directories

When assessing the prominence of a business, Google uses information that businesses provide through their business profiles as well as information found around the web. Three critical data points for Google are name, address, and phone, also known as “NAP” data.

When NAP data for a business is consistent across the web, it sends a signal to Google that this data is accurate and the business is legitimate. This is why it’s important to keep NAP data consistent. 

If you’ve moved your business to a different address, or changed your phone number or name, then chances are your business information is inconsistent. That can cause Google to exclude it from the results or consider your business less relevant.

Correcting business information and maintaining it across 50 or local directories is time-consuming. That’s why we use services like Yext to manage a business’s online presence.

Website Signals

Every business that serves one or more specific geographic markets can benefit from including one or more local landing pages on its website. Think of the page as a digest version of your business that answers these questions:

• What are your address and telephone number?
• What are your business hours?
• What products and services does your business offer?
• Why should visitors choose your business over another?
• How can a visitor contact your business?
• How trustworthy is your business? (Reviews and testimonials by clients)

• Where can a visitor learn more information about your business?

Local Content

Local or localized content is content that focuses on local keywords. For example, you own a gift shop that ships across the states, but you also want to attract the locals to visit your brick-and-mortar store. Your local content strategy could focus on keywords such as “gift shop boston”, “unique gifts boston”, etc., but it could also emphasize other topics of local interest to your customer base, such as featuring other local shops or mentioning local attractions.

If you don’t find a good place for localized content on your website, you can start a blog. Try to post new articles regularly, and use them to showcase your products and services. Remember to fill in as much information as possible, such as meta data, images, and title tags.

Don’t forget that search engines don’t like keyword stuffing, so you need to be creative with producing local content. Try to include local keywords as naturally as possible. You can add them to meta data, heading, alt tags, and other hidden areas of the page as well.

Here are some types of local content you can add to your website:

• City or neighborhood landing page (you need one for every city/neighborhood you have a physical location in)
• Regional or state landing page
• FAQ
• Discount and offers
• Local events
• Blog

Reviews

There is no guarantee that higher review ratings will result in higher rankings, but research has shown that a higher rating makes more visitors convert to customers. Take a look at some of the findings:

• More than seven in ten consumers trust an online review as much as they would a personal recommendation, making reviews as powerful as word-of-mouth marketing for growing your business.
• A study by Harvard Business Review suggested that improving the average review rating on Yelp by one star could lead to a 5%-9% increase in revenues.
• Having four and five-star reviews shows your business can be trusted to deliver on its promises. This means consumers are more likely to choose you over competitors.
• Negative reviews can be damaging to the prestige, profitability, and trustworthiness of a business.
• A single negative review can drive away approximately 22% of customers, whereas around three negative reviews can drive away 59% of customers.
• A single negative review could cost your business customers, with 40% of consumers saying reading a negative review makes them want to take their cash elsewhere.
• People hesitate to purchase from businesses with no reviews.

Every business should have a review strategy in place, both for getting reviews and responding to them. Your rating doesn’t have to be a perfect five (or ten), but when a visitor sees how you handle positive and negative reviews, it may have a higher effect on potential customers.

Summary

We hope our article has demystified local SEO and that you now understand why businesses of all sizes across the world are using it. CommonMind specializes in local SEO, and we’re happy to help you with assessing the state of local SEO for your business and creating a solid strategy that will help you rank higher locally.

By Will Rico | January 18, 2022

LinkedIn ads provides a wealth of options, from bidding and billing options to the targeting facets you can use to reach your ideal audience. There are several ad options at your disposal as well. Depending on your goals, different ad types will suit your needs better than others. 

As you’re setting up a campaign, one of the first questions LinkedIn will ask you is to choose your objective, and depending on the objective you choose, your options for ad types will differ.

In the table below, we show which ad types are available for which objectives.

LinkedIn Ad Type Descriptions and Examples

Single Image Ads

Carousel Ads

Video Ads

Event Ads

Message Ads

Conversation Ads

Lead Gen Forms

Spotlight Ads

Follower Ads

Text Ads

Single Job Ads

Single Image Ads

Single Image Ads show up in your audience’s LinkedIn feed and combine introduction text with powerful imagery to captivate your audience.

Single image ads are the most popular ad type on LinkedIn, including among CommonMind clients. These ads are a digital billboard you can use to grab a user’s attention, hopefully stop their scroll and encourage a click.  We use single image ads to:

• Promote brand awareness by sharing high-impact blog posts
• Encourage conversions by highlighting a content offer
• Promote thought leadership

Carousel Ads

Carousel Ads give you additional space to tell a story with a swipeable series of cards. These are often a combination of imagery and text. 

Carousel ads are helpful if you know your data is best shown in a static form but there is too much for a single ad. They work very well for showcasing speakers for an upcoming event because each speaker can get his or her own card in the carousel. They’re also good for showing multi-step simple processes, such as “get started in three easy steps” campaigns with supporting imagery.

Video Ads

As the name suggests, Video Ads let you captivate your audience with powerful visuals in video form. 

Video ads give you powerful insights such as percentage watched times. You can also retarget users who have watched various percentages of your video. For example, you can create an audience of users who watched at least 50% of your video.

Event Ads

Event Ads are similar to Single Image Ads. However, they are optimized for maximizing event attendance by including event details, such as date, time, and a call to action button unique to events. 

Event ads feature an “Attend” button so users can easily indicate that they will be attending.

Message Ads

Message Ads allow you to advertise with a targeted message straight into your audience’s LinkedIn inbox. 

Message Ads work great for a few different objectives, including website visits, lead generation, and website conversions. In fact, some companies find that their Message Ads yield greater conversion rates than their display ads. 

Conversation Ads

Similar to Message Ads, Conversation Ads target users’ LinkedIn inbox. The main difference is that you can deliver multiple offers and types of content in the same message, giving the ad a “choose your own adventure” feel. 

Conversation Ads deliver on many of the same objectives that Message Ads can. However, because you can deliver more offers and further customize the body of your message, they’re particularly effective for engagement.  

Lead Gen Forms

Lead gen forms are less of an ad “type” and more of a feature that you can use with different ad types. A Lead Gen Form is a valuable tool for collecting quality leads. Instead of requiring leads to fill out every field of a form, LinkedIn will scan the user’s profile to autofill most (if not all) of the form fields. This provides a seamless experience for your audience, allowing them to review the information and click submit in a few seconds. 

Spotlight Ads

Spotlight Ads are dynamic ads that show up outside of the user’s LinkedIn feed. Instead, they are displayed in the right rail as you’re browsing LinkedIn. These are typically used to highlight a product, service, event, or job opening. 

Spotlight Ads can be effective for driving awareness. The ads are tailored to members based on their LinkedIn profile data and can grab a user’s attention by using his or her own profile image. You’ll often see them used for HR/recruiting ads

It’s important to note that Spotlight Ads are only viewable on desktop. 

Follower Ads

The other type of dynamic ad that shows up outside of the user’s LinkedIn feed is the Follower Ad. They’re nearly identical to spotlight ads, but the objective is to have your audience follow your LinkedIn company page. 

Follower ads can be helpful for engagement and brand awareness. They allow you to showcase your company’s LinkedIn page while also giving your audience a quick way to follow your account.

Text Ads

Text Ads appear in the right rail, i.e. outside of the LinkedIn feed, similar to Follower and Spotlight Ads. They allow you to target specific audiences, captivate them with compelling copy, and link to an offer of your choosing. 

Using the wide range of targeting options available to you, text ads allow you to drive high-quality leads to your business. They also give you the option to add an image, which can be as simple as your logo. 

Text ads are also desktop only and won’t show up for mobile users.

Single Job Ads

The Single Job Ad is optimized for driving quality candidates to a job opening with a particular company. 

Different LinkedIn Ad Types for Different Objectives

From brand awareness to lead generation, the LinkedIn Ads platform has an ad type for every objective. 

Some ad types work well across several different objectives as well. For example, Single Image Ads work well across the board (except for video views). 

Although there’s much more to any PPC strategy than simply picking the correct ad format for the job, the format you choose can make a big impact on the results you see. Don’t hesitate to test different formats against each other or purposefully use 2 or more formats simultaneously. You can sometimes see a lift by running multiple formats at the same time.

Need Help With LinkedIn Ads? CommonMind Can Help

CommonMind can help you reach your goals and achieve reliable growth with your LinkedIn Ads strategy. Reach out to us for more information.

By Will Rico | January 10, 2022

Running successful LinkedIn ad campaigns depends on multiple factors.

You’ll want to make sure that you’re targeting the right audience with an offer that is compelling to that audience.

But even with a compelling offer, grabbing your audience’s attention in today’s world of information overload is easier said than done. That’s why it’s vital to invest time and resources in the creative elements of your campaign as well.

Too often, advertisers invest significant amounts of energy and ad dollars into their offers and ad spend while treating creative as an afterthought. The result is lackluster click-through rates, high CPCs, and missed opportunities. 

To help improve your ad creative and campaign results, here are 6 best practices to keep in mind. 

#1 – Stick to High-Quality Photos

Photos, especially of people and faces, can help create emotional connections that draw users to engage with your ads. Most advertisers cannot procure custom photography for each campaign, and therefore they leverage stock photos instead. 

Stock photos can be effective. However, you’ll want to stick with high-quality and unique images. Go for photos that both look unique and communicate the idea or emotion you’re trying to convey. 

Another way to stand out is to inject custom elements into your imagery. For example: If you don’t have a designer on staff to do this for you, tools like Canva give you a do-it-yourself option.

Also, a note about free stock photos: some are truly great, but avoid photos that are outdated even if they are otherwise of decent quality. Fashion and technology have changed rapidly over the last ten years, and the free stock photo sites are flooded with images with older phones and more formal office attire that’s less common in many modern work environments.

Example ad that demonstrates an engaging use of a photo.

#2 – Keep Banner Text Short and Relevant

LinkedIn ads tend to perform best when banner text is kept short and relevant.

AJ Wilcox, host of The LinkedIn Ads Show podcast, makes a fantastic point about banner text: If you’re driving past a billboard on the highway and there’s a wall of text on it, chances are you won’t be able to read it, and by extension, won’t take anything away from it. 

Similar logic applies to LinkedIn ads. It’s best to keep your banner text short and sweet. The billboard rule says you should limit yourself to 7 words or less. 

Remember, ads on LinkedIn contain introductory text, a headline, and a call to action, in addition to an image. Therefore, it’s not even absolutely necessary to overlay text on the image you choose for your ads.

We like experimenting with text-free images because they make ads look more similar to organic social posts and are less prone to being ignored due to ad blindness. i.e., our internal filter that notices and scrolls past ads without our even realizing it.

Example ad which follows the billboard rule of limited text on the image.

#3 – Maintain Consistent Branding and Messaging Between Ads and Landing Pages

When a prospect clicks on your ad, they should feel like they’re in the right place. The user should clearly understand that they’re receiving the same offer that they clicked on.

To achieve this, keep your messaging, branding elements, and design principles consistent between your LinkedIn ads and your landing pages. Things like color schemes, imagery, and logos can help you maintain a consistent brand look. 

#4 – Make Your Offer Clear to Your Audience

Most people are short on time. If they have to guess what you’re offering with your ads, there’s a good chance they’ll just keep scrolling.

Tell your audience exactly what they’re getting out of your offer.  

For example, if you’re offering an eBook, add “eBook” to your headline and/or your introductory text. This clearly shows the prospect what your offer is about and what they’re going to get if they click on your ad. 

#5 – A/B Test and Optimize

Testing your ads is not only a crucial part of a successful LinkedIn Ads strategy, but it’s also a straightforward process. 

To A/B test your ads, switch out certain creative elements while keeping everything else the same. For example, if you run the same banner image with two sets of headlines, you’ll immediately have two ads to test against each other. Similarly, you may test two images with the same introductory text and headline.

When A/B testing, it’s important to understand which metrics are valuable to track depending on the ad’s place in the funnel. The most important metric to optimize for ads is often the click-through rate.

When measuring the results of an A/B test, keep the concept of statistical significance in mind. Depending on how close the results are, you may need many more ad impressions before a true winner can be declared.

ABTestGuide.com provides a useful calculator for this purpose. Note, if you’re comparing click-through rates (CTRs), use “impressions” for the “visitors” data and “clicks” for the “conversions” data.

#6 – Move Quickly With Creative Changes

Not every ad you create is going to be a hit. 

While this can be discouraging, it’s important that you move quickly with any creative changes. If your creative is underperforming, don’t be afraid to change it up quickly. It’s better than sitting on ads that aren’t meeting your goals, and you’ll spend less in the long run by making a change early.

Here are a few ideas for ad elements you can change if your ads are underperforming:

• If your ad is an illustration or design without a photo, try an ad with a photo instead.
• If your ad contains a photo, try removing any text that overlays the photo, or take the reverse approach: remove the photo and try an artistic design with just text and graphical elements.
• If your introduction text is long, try something short and to the point.
• If your introduction text is short, try longer text with bullets.
• If your headline doesn’t describe the offer literally, add the offer type to the headline, e.g., “Ebook,” “Infographic,” “Free Trial.”
• If you’re already mentioning the offer type in your headline, try hitting a pain point, e.g., “Stop Losing Sales,” “Reduce Customer Wait Times,” etc.
• If you’re using landscape images (1.91: 1 ratio), try vertical (1: 1.91) and/or square images.

Following These LinkedIn Ads Best Practices Can Help You Find Success With Your Campaigns

LinkedIn Ads, when used effectively, can yield a fantastic ROI, but only if your ad creative is efficient at driving awareness, clicks, and conversions.

It’s not only worthwhile to invest time and energy in your creative, it’s absolutely vital to your campaign’s performance. Start by following these 6 best practices. From there, continue to adapt based on what works best for your audience. This will put you and your campaigns on the right track for achieving your goals. 

Struggling with LinkedIn Ads? CommonMind Can Help

CommonMind can help you achieve predictable and reliable growth with your LinkedIn Ads campaigns. We can manage everything from the creative to the analytics and beyond. Reach out to us. We’re here to help!