Google has recently rolled out availability of Adwords In-Market Audiences for SEARCH marketing campaigns, and anyone in e-commerce or bricks and mortar retail in particular should be paying attention. This development was first announced by Google in May 2017, but it appears to have taken them a while to roll this out, however all Adwords users should have the facility enabled as of today.

Google's In-Market audiences have been available since 2013 under various guises, but for advertisers who are unfamiliar with Adwords Display advertising, this will be an entirely new concept, as the audiences have until now only been available for display (and YouTube) campaigns.

What are Adwords In-Market Audiences?

If Google notices a web user has changed their search behaviour to visiting or searching for a large number of topically similar and product or service oriented websites, it deems that user to be "in the market" for that particular type of product.

The science behind exactly how this matching works is as obscure as everything else about Google's big data, but Google themselves say "In-market audiences uses the power of machine learning to better understand purchase intent. It analyzes trillions of search queries and activity across millions of websites to help figure out when people are close to buying and surface ads that will be more relevant and interesting to them."

How Can I Make the Most of this?

The answer here will depend slightly on whether you've got some experience under your belt with in-market audiences for display yet. If you've been using these audiences in your own display campaigns, you are recommended to examine their historic performance, and strongly consider adding the most relevant such audiences to your search campaign audience targeting.

What you are looking for is traffic that performs significantly better on site than other audiences or targeting methods. You will be able find this evidence either in Adwords itself or otherwise in your Analytics.

For the vast majority of advertisers, you're recommended to simply add ALL your existing in-market display audiences to your search campaigns, and set bid adjustments based on how much better these audiences appear to be performing than others.

Comparing Relative Traffic Quality - Adwords

To answer that question, you might look at your conversion rates for these audiences in Adwords against your Adwords average conversion rate.

This screen shot is from one of our retail client accounts, you will find this report in your own Adwords accounts under "Display Campaigns> Audiences". On of our favourite metrics here at Rattling Tram is the perhaps arcane-sounding "all conversion value/click". We are RELIGIOUS about making sure all our conversions are given MEANINGFUL dollar values relative to their worth, because this methodology means you can do all sort of clever comparative analytics while knowing you are comparing apples with apples.

"All conversions value/click" roughly translates into English as "conversion value per click". For anyone familiar with Analytics, this metric is roughly analogous to "per session goal value". Neither of these are very commonly reported metrics, but we urge any advertiser who is ever looking at comparative traffic quality to get very familiar with both.

The screen shot indicates that our traffic from these two in-market audiences is performing around 20% and 10% respectively better than the site average, so we would set our bid adjustments to +20% and +10% for these audiences with confidence in these cases.

Note that if we had just focussed on the conversion RATE rather than value, the results would look very different, with results only 1-5% better than the account average, which would recommend only small bid adjustments.

Comparing Relative Traffic Quality - Analytics

We see a similar result in analytics (view this report in Audiences> Interests> In-market Segments), where the standard reporting metric - conversion RATE only indicates one significantly better performing audience. Instead, we strongly recommend building yourself a custom report a la the following:

Here, we see the per session goal value metric adds another dimension to the picture, indicating that we actually have THREE in-market audiences performing well above average, and we would look to add all these audiences to all our relevant campaigns, with bid adjustments conservatively set around +20 and +40%.

What If I've Never Used In-Market Display Targeting?

Never fear, Analytics has your back. Audiences> Interests> In-market Segments is not a very commonly run Analytics report, but we recommend all website owners - particularly anyone in e-commerce or local services to keep a fairly constant eye on this one. You are receiving this data whether you've been running ads targeting these audiences or not for as long as you've had analytics installed on your website.

You will usually see only about 50% of your total site traffic in this report, which gives you some idea how many users on average Google is able to flag as being "in-market" for some product or service. This makes sense, not everyone on the web is currently shopping for a major purchase.

How Good is the Data?

Advertisers have traditionally been dubious about the merits of these in-market audiences. However, at Rattling Tram, our experience has been almost universally positive. It's our strong belief that these audiences ARE highly effective for generating action-ready traffic PROVIDED your product or service is one that potential customers are likely to research extensively online in advance.

We do a lot of work with retailers and local service businesses, and our experience is that for higher priced or larger purchase decisions - the sorts of purchases that potential customers WILL spend a bit of time researching online in advance, then you will almost certainly see benefits in using relevant in-market audiences for your ads targeting.

If you're selling fidget spinners, apparel or FMCG, chances are you will see less success with these audiences.

How do I do This?

In Adwords, navigate to Search Campaigns> Audiences, and click the blue pencil at the top of the page. You will then have the choice of adding your targeting at either campaign or ad group level.

Remember, with Adwords selecting "Targeting" ALWAYS narrows your ad reach. You ads will ONLY serve to users who meet one or more of the criteria you specify here if you select this option. There MAY be instances where you would consider doing this, but these would be very specific contexts that only experienced advertisers should really be contemplating, and a whole other blog post to themselves. For most advertisers, you should select "Observation". This expands your campaign reach to include this targeting in ADDITION to your existing setup, and allows you to set bid adjustments as necessary.

Once you've saved your targeting, you'll see it all presented in a neat table. Make sure you remember to set your bid adjustments by clicking on the "Bid Adj." column of the relevant row.

At this stage, it appears there's no intention to make these audiences available for Shopping Ads, although that would seem to be the final logical extension, as they are now the only Adwords ad format without these targeting options.

The post In-Market Audiences Now Available in Adwords Search appeared first on Rattling Tram Small Business & Retail Marketing.

The crew at AI Target did some crunching of Facebook's publicly accessible big data recently and found Australia was the planet's fourth most expensive Facebook ads market.

Australia sits towards the top of a list of similar OECD countries with relatively low population bases. The obvious takeaway here is that is that the demand for Facebook ad space is highest in the more advanced economies, but the amount of Facebook ads real estate available in a given country is a function of its population base.

So countries with the lowest population bases have the least advertising real estate available, and therefore incline towards higher levels of competition.

There are a few misfires in the report, the authors stating that "interestingly enough, some most competitive yet ineffective (i.e. lowest converting) regions include Svalbard and Jan, Mayen, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Pitcairn Islands, Christmas Island and Iceland."

I'm not sure that really is very interesting at all. The populations of all those countries could virtually be counted on my fingers and toes. The small sample size is very obviously skewing this data, and it its practical usefulness to anybody without a supply chain to Christmas Island - fully 1,540 kms from the Australian coast - is unclear.

Nor is it clear why an Australian territorial island has been assessed as if it were an actual country.

The report also fails to recognise the significant differences in non-English language markets. You CAN use Facebook to reach consumers in Japan or Hong Kong, but very few advertisers are doing so. And these are the markets that Facebook's penetration is lowest. We seriously doubt regionalised auction factors are the real drivers here.

But the results overall show that there remains good value in generating Australian traffic via Facebook, with Australian users the EIGHTH MOST CONVERTIBLE on the planet.

So Australians are amongst the most receptive peoples in the world to receiving advertising messages via the Facebook platform. At that means that most SMEs should be looking to implement at least some activity in this area.

Find Out More about Rattling Tram social media advertising HERE

The post Australia is the world's fourth most expensive market for Facebook ads appeared first on Rattling Tram Small Business & Retail Marketing.

The Tailwind blog has today broken the news that hashtags, once a solid gold rule never to be used on Pinterest, have been re-enabled on the platform (they did supposedly once work back in the day).

This means that the once golden rule is now completely out the window. Pinners SHOULD start using hashtags on their pins from today onwards. It appears that hashtags now do enhance the keyword discoverability of your pins.

The change it is being suggested has been driven specifically by marketers, who have grown accustomed to working with hashtags on other social media platforms. Pinterest's standalone "no hashtags" position has rendered content sharing between other high volume platforms like Twitter and Pinterest problematic to automate.

Should I Add Hashtags to Existing Pins?

Tailwind are advising in their article that their may be some worth in adding hashtags to existing pins. However Rattling Tram would advise that until there's some evidence Pinterest is actually re-indexing existing content, that would potentially be a huge waste of time.

We are recommending adding 4-5 search relevant hashtags to all of your new pins, starting immediately, and we will be monitoring the development of this new feature closely.

Have you had any experience with hashtags on Pinterest in recent weeks? Share what you've learned in the comments below.

Curious about what Pinterest can do for your retail brand?

Adam Ford is helping Aussie retailers RIGHT NOW to get ahead of their competition and leverage the free, purchase ready traffic that is available to them from Pinterest.

Visit Adam Ford's Pinterest for Aussie Brands homepage to find out more.

The post Breaking - Hashtags are BACK on Pinterest appeared first on Rattling Tram Small Business & Retail Marketing.

Pinterest's "Pinsights" team is responsible for mining the social media platform's huge treasure trove of user interest data, and their annual style report is the motherlode of actionable insights.

What is this Pinstyle Report?

We'll let Pinterest explain the methodology in their own words:

"The Pinsights team looked at top queries to identify the most popular questions Pinners have as it relates to wearing certain articles of clothing, trying makeup looks, and styling outfits-- both for everyday wear and life moments.

"This represents the top queries associated with key terms like “how to wear”, “what to wear”, “style”, “outfit” searches associated with top saved articles of clothing, and top searched colours and looks in the beauty category. Data is ranked based on volume of global searchers (number of people searching) in the full year 2016."

So why do I care?

People are always looking for hot "hacks" for social networks. Well, on no other platform, and in no other niche does the offical social media network provide anything that is anywhere near this clearly a "Handbook to succeeding on this platform, backed by all of our own research".

Fashion and beauty retailers and bloggers need to take heed. And sit back now as Rattling Tram digests for you all of the key actionable items.

This research is all about what sort of content is "most discoverable" on Pinterest. So the actionable dimensions are all about optimising your content for discoverability. And those who have been paying attention will know that is really ultimately about ONE variable that's under your control - PIN DESCRIPTIONS.

These recommendations are all about answering the question - "what keywords should I be using in my pin descriptions to ensure maximum success for my fashion or beauty site".

It's important to remember that on Pinterest your pin descriptions are there to make you discoverable, but ALMOST NOBODY on the platform actually reads them. So your language doesn't need to worry so much about grammar and MORE about SEO.

Hitting all the right keywords with unintelligable garbage for your pin description is perfectly acceptable behaviour on this platform in a way that would be VERY NOT COOL if you tried it on say Instagram.

Key Findings

Overall, there's lots of tips for some common and some more unusual keywords that fashion and beauty retailers and bloggers should be trying to hit as often as possible in optimising their pin descriptions for discoverability on Pinterest.

But there's also plenty of gold in here not just for marketers but buyers and product planners alike on what's trending in their marketplace right now.

"How to wear" searches dominate.

This is an unusual keyphrase to see here for any marketers used to working with Google Adwords. People aren't "Googling" these sorts of terms anywhere near the volume as they are "Pinteresting" them. Pinterest users tend to be on the platform looking for helpful and handy general tips more than they are looking for a specific end product.

Pin description text for fashion garments should where possible include the phrase "how/what to wear". So a women's bomber jacket might have the pin description "lightweight women's bomber jacket in red - what to wear to rock the perfect street style" or "how to wear a women's bomber jacket - this model rocks the perfect street style".

The finding: "What to wear" searches are also strong, and are closely correlated to life events. People are searching terms such as "what to wear to a wedding, concert, bar mitzvah, etc." So your descriptions should veer towards describing not just the objects/garments but the CONTEXT in which they are the perfect attire. So "this tuxedo is the the perfect thing to wear to a wedding..."

Similarly "how to" searches are very strong. Pinners like to use Pinterest as a great accumulated "hive mind" of advice. So if you can take your content to places that are more information rather than sales-oriented, then you're maximising your chances of success.

Instead of just posting up your product image and description, why not "how to wear a double breasted suit" that just happens to use your product as the example? Now you're helping people. Now you're giving to the community. I prefer interacting with you versus the next retailer who is just shouting sales slogans at me.

"STYLE"-based SEARCHES are strong

A lot of pinners display a tendency to search on terms related to a particular fashion style with which they identify. The hottest such searches for 2016 were Street, Bohemian, Hippie, Classic, Hijab, Grunge, French, Preppy, and Casual. So any importers of classic French hijabs are fully HYPE right THIS SECOND and you heard it here first!!! Triple points for retailing them as menswear ...

For most fashion and beauty retailers the "styles" relevant to your own niche are going to be fairly obvious, and it's perfectly acceptable on Pinterest, and now recommended by the data to end say a clothing description a la "bohemian style, boho style, hippie style, Yoko Ono, etc."

Remembering again that the Pinterest search engine is blind to hashtags (DO NOT USE HASHTAGS ON PINTEREST), you can and should add comma separated terms to the end of your description as you would hashtags on Instagram or Twitter in exactly this way.

"OUTFIT" is probably the keyword you are missing

This one leaps out of the report. Pinners are very commonly searching not just for "FASHION PRODUCT TYPE X", the more common search is "X OUTFITS". So for fashion retailers, it is not just a pantsuit, it is a WOMENS LIGHT BLUE PANTSUIT OUTFIT on Pinterest. OK?

Style trends in women's dresses

Maxi, Shift, Midi, T-shirt, and Slip are the most commonly searched styles of women's dresses for 2016. So common searches here are a la "women's T-shirt style dress", and your descriptions should where possible seek to match these phrases.

Style trends in outerwear

Leather jacket, Bomber jacket, Jean jacket (including oversized, blue, white and patches) - nb this is a North American term that won't be prevalent in Australian searches, Green jacket, Camo jacket.

It's interesting to note that the search term is "Camo", not "Camouflage". Retailers should where possible include common variant/shortened phrase terms along with full descriptions. So, "Mens camo camouflage bomber jacket" in this case.

Large/oversized sweaters and ponchos that can be easily draped/overlayered also appear to be trending.

Key Findings for Beauty Retailers

It's not ALL about the clothes. Retailers in the beauty sector also will find a treasure trove of data in the new report. And some unusual terms do pop out.

The top three haircut style searches were for "short", "bob" and "pixie"(!?!???!). It's interesting this term is is trending at the same time as others like "hippie" and "boho". The phrase "manic pixie dream girl" appears to have somehow acquired some sort of social cachet amongst milennials. If you're pinning anything that could reasonably be dubbed "pixie style", you're well recommended to include that phrase in your pin description (kill me NOW!).

The top searches for hair colour were even more revealing, given that as far as this reader is concerned the first two of these adjectives aren't actually colours : Ombre, Balayage, Blonde, Brown, Red, Black, and Purple.

Ombre, I will assume means you are Mexican coloured. And balayage is roughly the colour of rope. Am I close here?

And nobody in beauty sector probably needs a new report telling them that "smoky" eyes is the most commonly searched term of the moment, but here it is regardless.

Conclusion

So, the report's findings are a grab bag of the bizarre and the bleeding obvious.

What retailers should take away from it all however is that your pin descriptions do very much matter to your discoverability, and doing just a little bit of research can give you a LOT of actionable improvements to help you become a master of the Pinterest platform on which your customers are performing searches related to your products daily.

Curious about what Pinterest can do for your retail brand?

Adam Ford is helping Aussie retailers RIGHT NOW to get ahead of their competition and leverage the free, purchase ready traffic that is available to them from Pinterest.

Visit Adam Ford's Pinterest for Aussie Brands homepage to find out more.

The post New Research Reveals Top Pinterest Search Terms for Fashion, Beauty appeared first on Rattling Tram Small Business & Retail Marketing.

As of today, your business' listing in the KNOWLEDGE GRAPH section of Google's search results will display additional POST card information that can be configured to contain direct calls to action to specific pages of your website, promote offers, or display upcoming event information.

'Knowledge Graph'?!

Before we get in to all the detail, "what the heck is knowledge graph???", I hear the internet collectively intone.

Well, chances are you're actually so familiar with Google's Knowledge Graph that you've actually never needed a name for it.

We are talking about the section on the right hand side of Google's search results which regularly displays "rich" information pooled by Google from a wide variety of online sources.

That's the Knowledge Graph in the pink area below.

The knowledge graph won't necessarily trigger for all searches. Google tries to intelligently serve it when a user appears to be doing a search that would benefit from the richer "context" the knowledge graph provides.

So, searching for something like a current movie title might trigger a knowledge graph that pooled together all the nearby session times for that movie from cinema sites, as well as review snippets and ratings from movie review sites, and so on.

Who Will See My Google Posts?

The easiest way to trigger the knowledge graph is to do a search for the name of any company that has an active Google My Business page. There you will see a "carded" preview version of your Google My Business page, and it is here that the new POSTS will now start appearing.

So, the first thing it's important to note is that Google is not offering to serve your promotions to people searching for relevant terms. It remains to be seen if Google is going to index these posts at all. Your Google Posts are probably not going to do much for you from an SEO perspective.

With a degree of assumption, your posts won't be shown unless a "card" for your business is triggered in the Knowledge Graph. At Rattling Tram, we've been keeping an eye on this, and Google My Business cards will sometimes trigger on related "topical" searches, but the reality is that most users who are seeing your cards are liable to be searching directly for your business name.

So, Google Posts won't be much about putting your content in front of new customers unfamiliar with your brand, and there is some up and downside to that.

View and clickthrough statistics for Google posts will be available through your Google My Business admin page.

Not all industries are apparently seeing the posts feature, with some confirmation that hotels and B&Bs are excluded at this stage, we're actively seeking feedback from anyone who is NOT now seeing this feature on their account. Please message us via the sidebar and let us know the nature of your business.

Tips for Using Google Posts

People performing brand-related searches are most likely to be closest to the purchase end of their buyer's journey, so small business owners should be thinking about some real elevator pitch offers for their Google posts.

For this reason, local small businesses and retailers are advised to consider making strong offers that are directly related to their conversion goals.

Similarly, emphasising product or service USPs or competitor positioning can also serve as a device to shift buyers through your sales funnel.

You have the option of augmenting your post with upcoming event information or one of 5 call to action buttons linked to any page on your website. As with any online promotion, readers are strongly advised to consider creating campaign-specific landing pages for conversion objectives. This would be less imperative for non-offer-based posts.

Google's regular content standards apply, and that means avoiding any blue language, excessive or unnatural capitalisation, commercial slang or excessive exclusions on your offers. See HERE for Google's content policy in detail.

Google also offers some excellent best practices documentation HERE

Notes on image sizes

Images should be recommended minimum 426 x 426 px in size. Users have the option of cropping and resizing any uploaded images to square within the platform.

Images display in the GMB platform at 330 x 330 px, but in the Knowledge Graph full width, and cropped from the image CENTER to 426 x 130px, making it difficult to select an image that is going to display consistently in all contexts.

For this reason, users are advised to use large, clear, simple images, ideally with identifiable traits at the center of the image.

Getting Started with Google Posts

Creating a Google Post is easy, even for the non-tech savvy. It is literally just a couple minutes work setting up a new promotional channel that will tick over steadily for you over time.

• 1. Log in to your Google My Business account at https://business.google.com
• 2. If available, select the new POSTS item in the left hand menu

• 3. Click "Write Your Post" to bring up the following window

• 4. Click the camera icon to add a photo
• 5. Add your promotional content under "Write Your Post". Google recommends an ideal length of 150-300 characters, but your limit is 1500

• 6. Add an optional call to action button, and nominate its landing page URL on your site

• 7. Add optional event information. NB events gain an extra "Title" field, limited to 58 characters

• 8. When you're ready, hit PREVIEW and PUBLISH

• 9. Your post should now be showing in your Google My Business Manager

• 10. Click on your post again to view analytics results, delete the post, or to edit any of the content

Got Questions?

Contact Rattling Tram here, we just love helping out.

The post Google Rolls Out New Posts Feature for Google My Business appeared first on Rattling Tram Small Business & Retail Marketing.

Advertisers are now able to run one of three specialised Pinterest campaign types, each with its own distinct goal.

Pin Engagement campaigns are charged on a cost-per-click basis, and fairly simply put will show a specified pin in the home feed of your targeted audience. Established Pinners may have seen some of these in their own feed listed as "Promoted Pin". You are charged when a user interacts with (re-pins, saves, sends, likes, or clicks through) your pin.

This is an excellent tactic for publishers of new blogs or websites, or for those new to Pinterest. You may not have a huge personal following on the site yet, but that can easily be overcome through a little pay-to-play.

Similarly, Website Traffic campaigns are also cost-per-click, and are effectively a specialised form of Pin Engagement campaign where the only engagement you are charged for is the click through to your site.

Website traffic campaigns work by promoting one of your existing pins, so can be more effective for those who have already built up some "juice" on Pinterest, whereby users able to promote pins that have a demonstrated history of success on the platform should fare better.

Brand Awareness campaigns offer the same targeting options as other campaign types, but differ in that they are charged on a price-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) basis. In this type of campaign, therefore costs can be readily predicted and controlled, but the campaign metrics will ultimately be less defined, so success or failure much more difficult to measure.

Pinterest offers full analytics on all campaign types, so advertisers will obtain full data on any form of engagement with their pins.

Brand awareness campaigns, however, which lack a specific, measurable end user activity as their goal are generally not recommended as a startpoint. Pinterest, as a social platform, should not be somewhere users first encounter your brand in an advertising context.

Targeting Options

Pinterest Ads feature many of the usual demographic targeting options - User Interests, Gender, Device Type, etc., but the platform is FAR less developed than its competitors in that it is unable to target by Age, nor geotarget by a region more defined than "Australia". More established ad markets Canada and the US now have state-based geotargeting, so one assumes Aussies will also see this eventually.

Some basic retargeting options are also available, so users can upload an existing customer/target list by email, or target users by activity on your website or interaction with one of your pins. Pinterest Ads will also build lookalikes of any of these audiences.

So, now we have ANOTHER option in the seemingly endless array of digital advertising platforms on the market.

Pinterest Ads: Who should be doing it?

At Rattling Tram, we are currently recommending that RETAILERS, particularly those whose customer base skews more FEMALE and towards the GEN-Xer than Gen-Z, and most definitely anyone who is selling online, need to make Pinterest an urgent marketing priority. If that sounds like you, you're the sort we'd be recommending should be exploring the newly-unleashed potential of Pinterest Ads.

Likewise, if you have a large existing customer database, and particularly if that customer base skews female, finding these people on Pinterest should be an absolute push-over. Pinterest may well prove to be a cheaper and more effective means of remarketing to your existing customers than using Google's Display Network.

For everyone else, we'd recommend starting out with FREE Pinterest, getting to know the platform and building your own following organically for a few months before throwing any money at advertising.

Pinterest is a unique beast amongst social media platforms, and those coming to it from experience with those platforms may well find the learning curve steeper than expected. Which is of course one way Rattling Tram is here to help.

You'll find plenty of tips, hacks, pointers and infographics at our own Pinterest board - Pin-tastic Pinterest Marketing Depot - Australia.

Thinking about getting started? Questions? Contact Rattling Tram here, we just love helping out.

The post Pinterest Ads are now live for Australia appeared first on Rattling Tram Small Business & Retail Marketing.

The thing is, we're setting out on a great long marketing journey, and we'd love to have you along for the ride.

We've started these blogs in a large part because there's a huge dearth in quality local Aussie marketing content available online. We intend to be the regional go to for small business marketing news.

But we'll also have a strong practical focus with, tips, how-tos, infographics and 'growth hacks' aplenty.

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We've also got RSS feeds, Facebook and LinkedIn Groups, Pinterest Boards, Triberr and Tailwind Tribes where /the community can continue the discussion offline.

Have a poke around the blog homepage HERE.

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In the meantime we've got lots of writing to do, and departure to worry about. Look forward to having everyone aboard.

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