How to Build Perfect Mobile Landing Pages

If you aren’t using mobile friendly landing pages, you’re losing out on conversions and you’re wasting money. Here’s how to fix that.

Let’s get this straight: mobile landing pages and desktop landing pages are not and should not be the made same. If you aren’t using mobile friendly landing pages, you’re losing out on conversions and you’re wasting money.

You know, we know, everyone knows by now that you have to be on mobile because its a key platform that facilitates numerous touch points along the buyer journey. Google’s data tells us that mobile is the likeliest starting place for online activities, whether it be researching a product through reviews or comparing prices, that can ultimately culminate in a sale down the line. In the past, in the case that research that started on mobile ended in a conversion, that conversion would most commonly occur on desktop.

That’s not the case any more. The growth of mobile commerce is outpacing traditional e-commerce according to ComScore reports. A third of all online sales come from mobile devices now.

Mobile tasks by category
Source via Google

So for the sake of winning more conversions, getting more sales, and just plain making more money on mobile, this article breaks down exactly how to build the perfect mobile landing page.

1. Design with Speed in Mind

Source: pexels.com

Mobile users demand instant and easy to digest information that cuts to the chase. They are fast and furious – any latency or slow load times make them agitated and immediately turns them off. Building landing pages for mobile users demands attention to user experience. That means quick load times, short forms, and catchy copy. Make sure you’re optimizing so that you have no slow-loading content.

In same cases, getting rid of images all together in favour of concise copy might work better. Page load times factor into strong user experience which contributes to higher conversion rates overall. Search engines also factor load times into their ranking process as well so keep in mind that slower mobile loading times can throw off your search results and ultimately effect your bottom line.

2. Keep Your Copy Short and Sweet Without Losing Clarity

Keeping your headlines concise is just general good practice. But on mobile, its even more important because of how easily distracted users are. Remember, mobile users are always multitasking and so their attention is already often divided. Don’t distract them further. Worst yet, don’t annoy them by making them have to read so much.

You know this first hand through your own mobile user behaviour. How often do you really read a full article through from A to Z? How often do you just briefly scan a page for the bare minimum info? Why do you think point form listicles are a thing now? Because we live in an age of short attention spans.

Thus, for mobile landing pages headlines should be as short and succinct as possible while all other copy should be minimized. The best way to practice writing clear and concise copy is by writing then editing, over and over and over again until you have the bare minimum that works.

3. Use Strong and Immediate CTAs or Click to Call

Keeping CTAs above-the-fold on mobile landing pages don’t always work, simple due to the variety of screen sizes out there. So the above-the-fold rule doesn’t necessarily always apply. That being said, you should still make sure your CTA is clearly visible and easily clickable by a user’s fingers (and also that it works).

Make sure you’re also optimize for smaller screen sizes. That means making your buttons fairly large. If click-to-call is applicable to your business, swap out your normal CTA for a clickable phone number instead.

Look at the difference between this desktop landing page:

moto 360

Here is the mobile version:

moto 360 mobile version

4. Keep Forms Short and Reduce Optional Fields as Much as Possible

We’ve mentioned already that mobile users are really distracted and easily agitated. So unlike on desktop where visitors may be willing to fill out long forms and provide additional information, mobile users are immediately turned off by too many forms.

The reasoning? Screen size. Forms are hard to fill out on small mobile screens what with our giant thumbs and these tiny little fields. Nobody has time for that! Even dropdown menus can be problematic on mobile as well. How often have you been frustrated by dropdown menus and millions of fields on a mobile landing page and just went “Urgh, forget this”? So then you know what I’m saying!

Our advice? Avoid them if you can so that you reduce the likelihood of visitor resistance.

Here’s an excellent reduction of form fields from desktop to mobile:

Source: smashingmagazine.com

5. Avoid the One-Size-Fits-All Mentality

Don’t you just hate when you land on a mobile page and you have to pinch the screen to zoom in to see what the message is? Or an image loads and its so big, it doesn’t even fit on the page and then you get distracted about why you even came to the page… and before you know it, you’re out of there.

For the love of conversion, don’t treat your mobile landing pages like desktop. Make sure your designs are either a) responsive or b) adaptive.

A responsive landing page automatically resizes to fit any screen size. With responsive, no matter the device your audience is using they should be able to see your landing page seamlessly across screens which is a good thing because there are multiple user touch points in the buyer process on numerous devices. It’s important the responsive designs for landing pages are used to maintain strong user experience and drive conversion.

Here is an example of responsive landing pages from Skinny Ties.

Source: dtelepathy.com

Adaptive landing pages  on the other hand are a little different in that the content of the landing page conforms or “adapts” to the screen size by displaying only the most relevant and important components. Adaptive landing pages are like the nutshell version of a desktop landing page or website.

Here is an example of an adaptive landing page:

Information on a adaptive website is different on different platforms
Source: venturebeat.com

 

Key Takeways

  • Optimize your landing pages for fast load times
  • Keep copy short and sweet (without sacrificing clarity)
  • Use strong CTAs or Click-to-Calls
  • Keep your forms short and minimize distractions
  • One-size does not fit all landing pages

Keep these key takeaways in mind when you set out to start your next campaign. Build better landing pages and watch your conversions grow.

Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com


How to Choose the Right Marketing Attribution Model

Your Quick Guide to 8 Different Attribution Models

You’ve planned the best campaign you can. You’re going to do a great job executing. But how do you plan on measuring your success?

You’ve got to make sure you’ve chosen the right attribution model, of course. What’s attribution modeling? An attribution model is a set of rules that defines how you credit each conversion or sale at specific consumer touchpoints along the sales funnel.

How do you choose the right marketing attribution model that’s right for you?

Below you’ll find a quick guide to 8 different acquisition attribution models. Keep on reading and discover which attribution model is right for your campaigns.

1. Last Interaction or Last Click Model

last_click_clearpier_attribution_model

The Last Interaction or Last Click Attribution model is a standard in most web analytics. In this model, all credit is assigned to the last event – whether is a click or any other type of interaction a customer had – just before conversion.

Historically, almost all conversions were attributed to the last click and Direct channel (traffic comprised mainly of visitors proactively seeking you out by entering your URL manually). The Last Click model is simple, and for that reason highly appealing. Its easy to track and doesn’t demand advanced technological assistance.

But, assigning all credit to only one channel is an oversimplification of the performance measurement and customer journey. Considering brands run marketing initiatives across multiple channels, single channel attribution fails to take all other traffic generation channels into consideration. For example, visitors may have been driven to your site and converted as a result of social media or by referral.

Last Click gives too much credit to the final event just before conversion, which may not necessarily be the final trigger for conversion. It ultimately undervalues all previous visitor interactions and decisions that pushes a visitor along the decision process towards conversion.

Finally, Last Click neglects to consider the impact of mobile. After all customers are now doing research on mobile well before they convert whether on desktop or mobile. Failure to credit other channels ultimately limit our ability as marketers to optimize each channel’s performance.

So now a day new technologies are quickly making Last Interaction or Last Click attribution modeling obsolete.

2. Last Non-Direct Click Model

last_non-direct_click_clearpier_attribution_model

The Last Non-Direct Click Attribution model ignores all direct traffic and gives 100% credit of the conversion to the last channel the customer clicked through before converting. This can be any channel from email to social.

Last Non-Direct Click is a bit more useful than Last-Touch in that it has the potential to correctly give credit to the channel that drove the final conversion, while eliminating the need to deal with ‘Direct’ data which is often a catch-all for all traffic that isn’t properly filtered or tagged.

However, a big downfall of this model is that it completely undervalues Direct traffic, wherein a customer must remember your URL to visit your site and then convert, which in turn undervalues your branding efforts.

If a customer just received a well worded email campaign that prompted them to make a purchase, or they just got a promo code they’re now willing to use, why would any marketer want to give credit to the campaign they interacted with just before this one when it was this one that in fact prompted conversion? You wouldn’t, so most marketers have moved away from this model as well.

3. First Click Attribution Model

first_click_clearpier_attribution_modelFirst Click or First Interaction attribution model assigns all credit to the first marketing event before conversion – it is the very opposite of the Last Click attribution model.

Again, its another attractive model because its so easy to use. And it does make sense, to an extent: you should definitely value the first customer interaction highly because without it, moving the customer along the decision making journey towards conversion is literally impossible.

But the First Click model doesn’t provide any actionable insight for marketers looking to optimize or measure their efforts. With Last Click attribution, at least we have some confidence in why and how that campaign triggered a conversion. First Click fails to show any data about the decision-making journey and gives too much credit to a single ad click.

4. Last Marketing Channel Touch Attribution

last_marketing_channel_attribution_model_clearpier

Last Marketing Channel Touch Attribution is channel specific. In other words, in this model, marketers would attribute the last known touch point specific to a channel to a conversion. For example, if you run Search you would use the Last AdWords Touch model. For Facebook, you would use the Last Facebook Touch and so forth.

But you can probably see the problem inherent with this model already: its incredibly biased towards its respective channels. You can easily overvalue the impact of each channel. If a visitor clicked a Search ad one day and then clicked a Facebook ad later in the week and then converted, each model will claim 100% credit for that conversion.

Rather than considering the model separately for each channel, aggregate them into a single report. This will give you a more holistic understanding of the multi-channel touchpoints that lead to a conversion.

The downside with this attribution model, however, is that you will see double or triple counted conversions which adds to your work load to further parse the conversion data.

5. Linear Attribution Model

linear_attribution_model_clearpier

The Linear Attribution model gives each touchpoint along the conversion funnel, for example search, social, retargeting, direct, and email, equal credit for the final conversion.

This model is an improvement on all those we’ve discussed up to this point because it allows for credit to be applied to every single touchpoint along the buyer journey. It’s a simplified multi-touch attribution model.

That’s great! So what’s the problem now, you ask? Disproportionate weighting.

The Linear Attribution model fails to take into consideration the impact of all the other touch points which may have provided more value, and played a bigger role in triggering a conversion.

6. Time Decay Attribution

time_decay_attribution_model_clearpier

In the Time Decay attribution model, whichever touchpoint closest to the time when the sale or conversion took place receives the highest credit for the conversion. It functions under the assumption that the closer the interaction or click is to a conversion, the greater the impact that interaction had on the conversion.

The argument makes sense. And at least this is a multi-channel/multi-touch channel that also captures the data involved in the long decision making process.

One of its drawbacks, however, is that it may undervalue the heavy lifting that was done by marketing efforts higher up in the funnel which is always located farthest a way from the conversion point.

7. Position Based Attribution

position_based_attribution_model_clearpier

Typically, in the Position Based attribution model, the first interaction and the final interaction in the decision making journey before a conversion is given 40% credit for the conversion, respectively. The remaining 20% is distributed evenly between the other channels along the funnel, but such weighting can and should be adjusted.

The position Based model is a stronger attribution model that takes multiple touchpoints, and multiple channels into consideration. It credits two of the most important customer touchpoints: the first click or interaction (that which introduced the you to the customer) and the final interaction before conversion.

8. Algorithms Based (Custom) Attribution

algorithms-based-attribution-model-clearpier

Algorithms or Custom built attribution models assigns credit for the conversion to each touchpoint based on its effectiveness.

This model requires advanced statistically modeling and continued optimization, based on your audience behaviour.  It is in fact your existing customer data that will provide the foundations upon which to build your Algorithms attribution model, and understanding of which channel and which step in the decision making journey has the biggest impact on conversion.

The Algorithms attribution model is the most data-driven and provides the most comprehensive customer insight so marketers can identify non-traditional opportunities.

So what’s the final takeaway?

By today’s standards, we should all be steering clear of the First (only) or Last Interaction (only) attribution model. Choosing the right method for you will depend on your marketing needs and the required complexity of your marketing mix.

If it all seems too complicated, not to worry. Start with the simpler Time Decay and Position Based models, although again, avoid First and Last Click. To make attribution modeling of all your marketing campaigns accurate, all your campaigns must also be properly tagged and easily identified so you can give credit to where credit is due.

And finally, don’t just rely on conversion based attribution modeling. Consider other factors, including your CPA, not just conversions. How much does it cost you per acquisition per channel? Is the cost disproportionate to the value of the channel?

Taking all of your marketing efforts into consideration holistically will ultimately help you optimize for stronger campaigns, better targeting by channel and buying behaviour, and reduced spend for maximum performance.

Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com


Why Publishers Need to Prioritize User Experience in 2017

A new mantra has taken over the publishing world and it goes by the name of “user experience.”

A new year has dawned on us and with it, a new set of priorities. A couple years ago, we were shouting “content is king” at the top of our lungs. But a new mantra is here to dominate the publishing world in 2017, and it goes by the name “user experience.”

It’s all well and good of publishers who are producing amazing, enthralling, and interesting content, trying to earn the loyalty of their readership. But how can your content even reach your audience, if your user experience is driving them to click away?

popup_michael_scott

We’ve all been on the other side as readers. You visit a website and suddenly you’re bombarded with way too many ads for products you’re not even close to interested in, all crammed on a page that took forever to load. Then suddenly an intrusive pop up interrupts your reading. You can’t find the navigation bar, there are too many “recommended readings” that seem a little sketchy, and something about the page’s aesthetic is just not pretty.

What do you do next? You click away! Chances are if you’re doing it, your readers are doing it too.

Poor user experience has a number of cumulative problems.

  1. Slow Load Times
  2. Increased Bounce Rates
  3. Reduced Engagement
  4. Incentivized Ad Blocking
  5. Poor Viewability
  6. Weakened Revenue Generation

Each are a result of major challenges all publishers face. If you’re not filling your site and inventory to its maximum, then you’re losing out on opportunities to capitalize. You need maximum fill to happen, but too many complicated ads can slow your load times which drives away potentially loyal readers who.

Too many irrelevant ads prompts banner blindness and therefore reduced engagement. Worse yet, they could be what pushes your audience to turn on the ad blockers and empower their user experience themselves.

With viewability increasingly becoming a major KPI for your ad partners, a lack of placement optimization could mean that you’re running ads in placements that either have the wrong traffic or aren’t even seen.

Beyond these issues, publishers also have an added challenge: not knowing who is running ads on their properties. It’s not just a matter of quality either, it’s an issue of brand safety. Not knowing exactly who may end up running ads on your site could result in inappropriate placements that could hurt your own brand.

So how can publishers take control of their user experience without sacrificing their monetization needs?

1. Change your philosophy

pen-idea-bulb-paper

Publishers need to understand that ads are a central part of the user’s experience. Strong UI design that remembers this is what can set a publisher a part and build a loyal following. If you want people to return to your site, you need to make sure their experience is as pleasant as possible.

2. Test regularly

test

You should be constantly split testing your design and ad placements to understand the impact it has on your audience. Get your readers to actively provide you with regular feedback as well through polls. Trust in your audience, and in the data, to dictate how you redesign to benefit their experience and then watch both viewability and engagement skyrocket as you learn to better optimize ad placements.

3. Forgo bombardment

bombardment

Respecting your audience’s user experience means listening to their grievances. One of the biggest complaints out there? Too many ads! Reducing your placements doesn’t necessarily mean lower fill rates or less revenue. Users are more likely to return to your site if address the issue of clutter, and fewer ads may allow you to command higher rates and offer your inventory at premium. Most audiences in the digital age are open to some form of advertising, but intrusive ads are often the reason why they click away or turn on the ad blocking.

4. Work with a DMP

Information concept: computer keyboard with word Data Management on enter button background, 3d render

The first thought here is why would a publisher need to work with a data manage platform (DMP) anyway? Advertisers require data to target audiences with relevant ads. As publishers, your job is to help facilitate this to protect your audience from irrelevant ads and enhancing their user experience. To do so requires understanding your audience data. Working with a DMP allows you to capture all of your first-party audience data and enrich it with insights for advertisers. The result is more potential to increase your CPMs across direct, performance, and programmatic inventory simply because of accessibility to actionable data insights.

5. Go Private and Premium with PMPs

partners

Fighting ad fraud and ensuring your own brand safety on the open exchange has always one of the top concerns for publishers. But it’s no doubt a challenge without the technical know-how or the right partners. Working with private marketplaces (PMP) can alleviate any concerns publishers have had about offering their inventory for CPMs on the open market. Private marketplaces offer a more transparent and controlled environment where knowing the brands that will be running on your properties is no longer foggy. While complaints have been logged about ad tech having yet to catch up in the PMP ecosystem, some PMPs, not only drive premium Performance but also safeguards publishers from fraud with multiple defense systems.

At the end of the day, publishers must make user experience a priority. Measuring and managing the impact of ads on user experience should be central part of your philosophy to win and keep audience trust. After all, it’s a loyal and happy audience is what drives your revenue generation.

Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com


A/B Testing 101: A Crash Course on Optimization

Without A/B testing -without experimentation- you have no concrete data to drive real growth.

What is A/B Testing and how does it work?

A/B tests are experiments in which two versions of something are compared against each other to see which performs better.

You can A/B test almost anything. Whether it’s an ad, a banner, a button, a landing page, a website, or an app –  it can be A/B tested.

When audiences visit your site or app, they are randomly split so that a percentage of users are shown version A, while others are shown version B. Statistical analysis will reveal which version gets the best results.

Image source: Visual Website Optimizer
Image source: Visual Website Optimizer

The A/B method lets you test very specific changes to your website, then collect and analyse the data so that the impact of the changes can be measured and lead to data-driven optimization.

The changes can be as simple as a headline (colour, wording) or as extensive as a complete redesign of the page. Then, half of your traffic is shown the original version, while the second half is shown the modified version to see which one gets the results you’re looking for – revenue, signups, downloads – whatever you’re trying to do with your website.

Why Should You A/B Test?

A/B testing may sound simple but the insight gained can lead to significant measurable improvement of the user experience and performance. When it comes to making guesses or assumptions about human behaviour – specifically, how people will interact with your site or app, the results are often unexpected and can only be uncovered through actually testing.

After testing one variable at a time – the cumulative effect of winning changes leads to tremendous boost towards your desired outcome or goals – such as conversion rates.

In addition, the overall spend on marketing can actually be decreased as the elements of the user interface become as efficient and effective as possible – especially when it comes to getting new customers. A/B testing also proves useful to help product developers and designers to optimize other goals such as user engagement, and in-product user experience – to name a few.

Here’s another example of why you should A/B test (for more examples, go to www.behave.org)  – the Citizens Bank experiment:

Should your call to action stress urgency or important information? 

Key Performance Indicator (KPI): Unique Open Rate (unique opens/net delivered)

Traffic Source: Existing banking customers. Traffic to site split 50/50 between version A and version B.

Goal: to determine which emotional language subject line will convert better – informative or urgent.

Difference between versions:

Version A: Urgent email subject line: “Act now – get help with selling or buying a home” 
Version B: Informational email subject line : “Important information about selling or buying a home”

a-b-test-citizens-banka-b-test-citizens-bank-b

 

Which version do you think won?

The Winner: VERSION B!

Compared to version A – the informational copy increased open rates 49.2%, at 99% confidence.

Why? Perhaps because urgency in subject lines is a widely used marketing tactic – one that has lost its effectiveness due to overuse. This particular tactic is an old trick – marketers are simply trying to trigger our impulsive instincts and motivate us to purchase or engage in some other call to action.

(Source for Citizens Bank example: BEHAVEhttps://www.behave.org/case-study/call-action-stress-urgency-important-information/)

Here’s another example from Highrise, a CRM software company:

Highrise’s Headline & Subheadline Test:

high-rise-a-b-testHighrise tested different headline and sub headline combinations to see how it affected their sign-ups. The test showed that the variation telling visitors that the sign-up is quick produced a 30% increase in clicks. It was also the only variation with an exclamation mark.

These examples show how A/B testing little changes can lead to big wins. So, what’s the process?

The A/B Testing Process

  1. Collect data: First, you must analyze and gain insight into where the bottlenecks are – such as pages with low conversion rates or high drop off rates and other user metrics such as page views, time on site, impressions, clicks, CPCs, and many more. Here are four tools to help gain this insight:

This information will help to set specific and measurable goals.

  1. Identify Goals: Figure out what metrics you will use to determine whether (or not) the changes get better results than the original version. Goals can be anything from website visit duration, email campaign signups, viewability of ads – the possibilities are vast and it is important to explore several possibilities before getting too focused as you risk missing the best possible solution. A helpful tip to start off: visit your website and jot down all the actions visitors can perform to create a list of possibilities.

While narrowing down to goals remember that less is more – keep focused and reduce choices so that you’ll get the most accurate results from testing. A straightforward goal example could be to simply optimizing engagement through a 20% increase in email list signups.

  1. Generate Hypothesis: Now that you know exactly what you want to improve, you can begin hypothesizing about what changes you think would make the biggest impact and then test. If your goal was to get more people to sign up for an email list or form – you could try something as simple as removing a few fields to make the process as painless as possible for the user to encourage more signups. We all know that attention span is short and that no one likes filling out lengthy forms (at least initially while to payoff is unclear). Or, what if your original call to action wasn’t as motivational as expected and your goal is to increase the response rate? For example, you want people to donate, so you might hypothesis that changing the wording from your current call-to-action “contribute” to “please donate” would be more engaging and direct.
  1. Generate Variations: Here’s where the A/B testing software comes in, which allows you to actually make the desired changes to your website or app and have the ability to see exactly what it will look like (especially helpful when changing colours or moving elements around) . A/B testing software resources include:
  • Optimizely optimizely.com (free trail for 30 days, affordable and easiest to get started, real-time support, multi-functional)
  • Visual Website Optimizer vwo.com (free trail for 30 days, feature rich, includes idea generation tools)
  • Unbounce unbounce.com (focuses solely on landing pages, offers 80+ pre-designed landing page templates)
  • KISSmetrics kissmetrics.com (premium, starting at $150 per month with full year commitment, offers advanced abilities, loads of data)
  1. Conduct Experiments: Let the testing begin! This is the part where visitors will be randomly sent to either the original version or the modified version to test which performs better. The way users interact with each version is monitored and compared to determine how the changes impacted the experience.
  1. Analyze Results and draw conclusions: You’re A/B testing tool will organize the data for you so you can see how your test version did compared to the original. Hopefully your test result support your hypothesis, but if not then there is still more hypothesising and experimenting fun to be had!

Conclusion

Every business, website, campaign, app, is different and A/B testing shows that common marketing wisdom often doesn’t apply. The advantages of improving conversion rates by A/B testing are well worth the relatively low investment of time and money.

See below for more surprising A/B testing discoveries that will make you want to test everything!

http://blog.granify.com/6-shocking-ab-test-wins-that-increase-conversion/

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/ab-tests-shocking-discoveries/

http://unbounce.com/a-b-testing/shocking-results/

Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com


4 Ways to Optimize Your Holiday Campaigns for Maximum ROI

From segmenting your data to using a CMP; consider the following.

Put away the pumpkin spice lattes, it’s nearly time to switch over to the egg nog. Every good marketer has at this point fully planned and scheduled their holiday marketing strategies. Campaigns are just about ready to launch. But of course, there is always room for improvements.

Before you launch those campaigns, consider the following 4 ways to optimize your performance campaigns for this holiday season.

  1. Target creatives according to segmented audience data

If you combine the power of compelling creatives with insightful audience data, you can target your audience more precisely and with relevancy. Consumers are much more inclined to engage with ads that are relevant to their needs. The more interruptive the ad, the more likely they’ll put the blinders on.

Let’s take the Amanda Foundation’s fantastic campaign which is a prime example of how useful segmented audience data can be for targeting.

Each of the advertiser’s creatives uses a shelter animal to promote adoptions. But the messaging is uniquely tailored to the audience based on known browsing behaviour/interests, and demographic data.

So if the viewer is a known foodie who loves trying new restaurants, delivering them creative number three would be perfect to inspire engagement.

digtial_pawprint
Image via CWMead
  1. Consider using a Creative Management Platform

Creative management platforms (CMPs) are powerful design tools for the programmatic marketer. CMPs are less technical than Dynamic Creative Optimization tools (DCOs) but also allows designers to make large ad sets as well as small changes to individual creatives. CMPs often have pre-set creative templates that cuts down on design time and makes duplication and customization simple.

It’s a scalable creative production environment where you can create and iterate on only the best performers.

holiday_promo
Image via makethunder.com
  1. Remember the importance of “Micro Moments” on mobile

According to Google, 76% of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a business within 24 hours and 28% of those searches results in a purchase. A lot of research is in the pre-sale buyer journey and this will spike as we head into the holiday season.

Google’s series on “I-Want-to-Buy Moments” examined one shopper’s micro-moments (by way of searches, clicks and website visits) over the course of one month to understand how much and how digital research played a role in her purchasing decisions.

The study shows that there are over 1000 digital touch points over a single month leading up to the consumer’s purchase.

micro-moments-1

Google also shows us the breakdown of her mobile versus desktop search paths:

micro-moments2So how can marketers win in these ‘micro-moments’?

Be there and be useful. Considering how much research goes into a consumer’s journey now a days, retargeting your ads is a good way to re-engage consumers with buying intent. Remember, although a lot consumers do their research on mobile, buying still happens mainly on desktop. Even upon checkout, marketers can reintroduce promotions, deals, and suggested products for upselling.

  1. Rotate your ads – or run dynamic creatives

Static banner ads are alright, if they’re well targeted. But banner blindness is indeed a real problem. Keep your visitors curious by rotating fresh creatives in to replace stale ones.

You can up your performance by employing dynamic html5 creatives as well. Why show case only one product, when you can highlight multiple? This is where using a CMP comes in particularly useful as these platforms are often equipped with dynamic creative templates where you simply have to plug in your raw assets.

Best Buy does a really good job at this. Get more out of your ad placement and do more to entice with fresh creatives.

bestbuy

So if you’re not already doing these four things to optimize your campaigns, now is the perfect time to start before the holiday mayhem begins.

Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com.


11 Optimization Tools that Will Improve Your Marketing

Looking for tools to help you optimize your marketing stack? Look no further.

What tools do you use to get your online marketing done? Are you a content creationist? Are you a brand marketer? Or perhaps, a social media maven?

Whichever category you fall under, the reality as a marketer is that your stack is often overflowing with tools. But which are the most useful? Which can actually improve your efficiency rather than just adding another layer of work in your daily life?

Look no further! We made you a list of 11 essential optimization tools to help improve all you marketing efforts.

Content Optimization

HubSpot

HubSpot Blogging Software - Automatically Mobile Ready

HubSpot is well known for its CRM and especially for its all-in-one inbound marketing software. There are a number of great features that HubSpot offers that’s worthy of highlighting, but let’s focus on their content creation solutions.

HubSpot’s content editor incorporates content layout and copy creation while enabling you to preview how your work will look across devices. This is an incredibly useful tool considering how most readers engage with content on their mobile devices now a days. Adding CTA buttons and building landing pages are seamless in this process as well. But on top of this, SEO optimization is built-into the editor so you can say optimize for keywords while you write and say by to WordPress plugins.

CoSchedule

Similar to HubSpot, CoSchedule offers a great content creation solution for teams. Like HubSpot, you can easily plan and schedule your posts with their content calendar. But CoSchedule has the added feature of being able to schedule your social media posts immediately after you’ve finished writing and scheduling your content.

If you’re like a lot of marketers, you might be using a lot of tools from Google Docs and Analytics, to Evernote and more, so CoSchedule can be a good choice because of all its integration capabilities.

But one of CoSchedule’s best tools is its Headline Analyzer. Just enter your blog headlines and CoSchedule will give you a full analysis with an EMV (Emotional Marketing Value) score out of 100 and a breakdown of the ‘word-type’ components to help you write catchier, more click-worthy headlines. Best of all – it’s a free tool available to everyone.

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SEO Optimization

Yoast

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If you’re using WordPress to create content, you’re probably familiar with the Yoast plugin. If not, you should be. The basic version enables you to add a focus keyword for your content and provides you with content analysis to improve your readability and SEO.

We all know the importance of building up your blog or website’s SEO so you end up indexed properly across major search engines like Google and Bing. In addition to the XML sitemaps Yoast can generate for you and the keyword optimization, there’s post title and meta-description editors that allow you to fix exactly how your content will be viewed when links are shared socially too.

SEMRush

Equal parts competitive intelligence suite, and SEO optimization solution, SEMRush is a versatile tool in any marketer’s stack.

SEMRush gives insights into your competitor’s strategies across display, organic, and paid search, as well as back links. The company has expanded into display and video analytics recently, but its bread and butter has always been keyword analysis. You simply enter relevant keywords to get an idea of the keywords your competitors are using for their SEO and PPC campaigns, their long-tail keywords, and even their geo-targeting parameters. Leveraging the data on how your competitors are positioning themselves can also help you strategise your next move better.

Moz

Similar to SEMRush, Moz offers great keyword information. But in addition to this Moz helps decipher crawl errors and even provides you with a page optimization score. For publishers and web masters, this is a great tool to run an instant audit of your on-page SEO to optimize for specific and relevant keywords that your competitor is also using. Bonus, its page opportunities identifier helps you uncover what opportunities you’re missing out on your pages to help you improve your search ranking potential.

MonitorBacklinks.com

If you haven’t discovered monitorbacklinks.com, now is the time. Building a strong network of backlinks is important for improving your site’s ranking and boost traffic. Monitorbacklinks.com helps you identify the sites on which the best quality backlinks directing to your site are located.

This helps you identify where the best opportunities lies to build new relations and more content, and ultimately place more backlinks to push traffic towards your business.

Website Performance

Visual Website Optimizer

Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) is a favourite A/B testing software for marketers. Even with no understanding of basic coding, Javascript or HTML, you can tweak and optimize your website and landing pages for better performance. You don’t have to go to your developers and ask for help, VWO really makes it easy to split test multiple versions of your site.

After a simple integration process require you to plug in a small script into your site’s header to verify your domain, you’re ready to start testing. And you can test almost everything from URL split tests, A/B test headlines and images, CTA buttons, or generate heat maps to understand where people are clicking and how to boost your conversions. Bonus, VWO offers a number of analytics and reports so you can identify where the major fixes need to be made.

Optimizely

Like VWO, Optimizely gives you the ability to experiment with your site to optimize towards the best user experience and ultimately conversions. The big difference with Optimizely has to be its mobile optimization tool. If you have an app, this is a great tool to edit your interface on the fly AND run split tests on mobile to ultimately roll out new upgrades in phases, or re-engage your audience.

Social and News Monitoring

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a monitoring tool that helps you keep an eye on your content and understand what performs best based on audience engagement across social. But in addition to this, BuzzSumo allows you to identify the influencers that create and share content relevant to yours.

There’s a “Trending Now” stream that helps you keep a finger on the news pulse running across social. You can filter this according to your own viewing preferences as well. Bonus, there’s a back links tracker and a Facebook analyzer that helps you identify which of your Facebook content is doing best to optimize towards superior social content.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of those essential tools that almost every social media marketer has in their arsenal. We’re all aware that through Hootsuite you can schedule and share social media content across multiple channels. It’s an all-in-one social platform.

But, you can keep an eye on your competitors or industry relevant news by adding their social accounts into your stream. For example, keep an eye on everything eMarketer is posting to their Facebook page by plugging them into your Hootsuite Facebook stream.

hootsuite_streamsTheir Twitter stream is even better: you can add a stream based on keywords. For example, if you add a stream and specify you want to follow keywords like “Performance Marketing” or “Digital Marketing”, these tweets are filtered in and you only see the most relevant tweets in this stream, rather than everything like in your actual news feed.

Feedly

The best way to start your mornings? With a cup of coffee while scrolling through Feedly, the ultimate news aggregator. Feedly compiles news feeds from a massive number of online news sources all into one news feed that’s personalized to you. Feedly isn’t so much an optimization tool, but using it definitely helps optimize your workflow.

You can sort your news according to subject matter like Business, Design, or Marketing, and get through the most relevant news in the most organized way possible. It’s the easiest way to stay abreast of all of today’s digital marketing news.

And there you have it, 11 essential optimization tools to help improve your marketing that you should be adding to your stack, now. Did we miss anything? What’s in your marketing tool kit?

Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com.