Category: Blog | What Say The Experts

How to Make Your WordPress Site More Secure (33 WP Pros Offer Tips)

by Chris Herbert | Last Updated January 21, 2021

If you’re a WordPress site owner, you’re a prime target for hackers.

That’s not just my opinion. There are more than a few statistics that make that clear. The popular WP security plugin, Wordfence, reports an incredible 90,000 attacks on WordPress websites every single minute. Another security platform, Securi, produced a report in 2018 based on an analysis of more than 18,000 hacked sites that revealed 90% of these sites were running on WordPress. And last year, close to a million WP sites were attacked in a single month by the same malicious actor.

You get the picture. Hackers have gotten a taste for going after WP sites, believing them to be easy prey. But the truth is, in a lot of cases, site owners make them an easy target. There is A LOT you can do to beef up your site security to prevent your site from being just another number added to the stats above. And in this article, we’re going to help set you on the right path.

We spoke to a whole bunch of WordPress experts and asked them the million-dollar question: How do you secure a WordPress website? Each provided one piece of advice and we ended up with a checklist of sorts to help make your site a tightly-run ship.

So dig out a notebook, grab a coffee and let’s get started.

How to Secure Your WordPress Site Quickly

As part of our research when putting together this article we also conducted a couple of polls asking 50 WordPress pros two questions. The first of these was “Name your 3 favorite quick-wins that bolster WP security with relatively little effort?”

We wanted to provide you with an understanding of the steps that are easy to implement, but that have a big impact on strengthening your site security. So if you’re pushed for time, these are the things that are going to give you the most protection for time invested.

In the chart below, you can see which items were mentioned most frequently.

WordPress Security Quick Wins — *(Feel free to use this chart. Grab a copy here)*

As you can see, the top three suggestions are all very straightforward and don’t take any special preparation or skills to implement. These are:

Keep everything updated (this includes the WP Core, your templates and plugins). You also want to keep an eye on the PHP version your site is running on and keep that up to date too.
Install a security plugin. There are several good ones to choose from, many of which have a free version that gives you a good amount of protection without spending a dime. And even the premium versions are often very affordable.
Use secure passwords. This isn’t rocket-science. The weaker your password, the easier it is for a hacker to gain access to your site. So do yourself a favor and make their job as hard as you possibly can by using complex, secure passwords.

So if you only have very little time to try and figure this security thing out, make these three things your top priorities. If you have a bit more time, look into the other steps outlined on the chart. This will go a long way to helping make your site more secure.

The Biggest Security Mistakes WP Site Owners Make

The second poll was simple. We wanted to know which WordPress security errors the pros see WP site owners making most frequently. Because if you can avoid these, it’ll go a long way to ensuring your site is not as vulnerable to attempted attacks.

Most Common WordPress Security Mistakes Made — *(Feel free to use this chart. Grab a copy here)*

And wouldn’t you know it. There are lots of similarities between the two charts. Not keeping software updated to the latest versions and using weak passwords were by far the most popular answers in this poll. And both of these mistakes are so, so easy to remedy.

If your site did fall victim to an attack, it’s extremely likely that one of these bad practices on the chart above would be to blame. Use this as a checklist of the absolute fundamentals that you need to have in place to prevent your site’s defences from being breached.

Running a Company Remotely: 25 Experts Tips to Set Your Business Up for Success

by Chris Herbert | Last Updated August 25, 2020

Remote working arrangements had been growing in popularity for some time already. And then 2020 happened. For obvious reasons lots of businesses the world over have been thrown in at the deep end and forced to run their operations remotely. For some it’s a temporary measure, for others it has become part of the long term plan for their business. There have been lots of different experiences.

The point is that running a company remotely is now a concept that virtually every man and his dog is familiar with, whereas 20 years ago if you muttered “remote work” to most people they’d likely look back at you with a puzzled expression and reply “remote what?!”

There are a tremendous number of benefits to running a company remotely if it’s done correctly. And it’s that “if” that’s the key point. This kind of working arrangement brings with it a new set of challenges and pressures that can impact many aspects of your business, particularly your staff.

We wanted to help give company owners the best chance of succeeding by talking to some of the most knowledgeable folks around when it comes to remote workplaces. We spoke to 25 consultants and strategists that help companies with all things remote work and have years of experience to draw upon. We asked each of them to provide one tip for any company that is looking to create a successful remote working environment. This article is the result of those conversations.

The Most Common Mistakes Made By Remote Companies

We’ve put together this resource to provide you with tips to help your business excel with a remote setup, but it can also really help to be aware of the potential pitfalls and reasons why some remote workplaces fall flat on their faces.

As part of our research process, we asked each of the experts that we got in touch with to name the 3 most common mistakes that companies make when establishing a remote workplace. Any that were mentioned 3 times or more are shown on the chart below.

Over and over there were two remote work mistakes that kept cropping up. Simply thinking you can try to recreate your physical office in the virtual world, and run it in exactly the same way was the first one.

Not defining a clear communication strategy that your team should adhere to was the other. When you’re not physically in the same space, it’s obvious that the way in which you communicate with each other is going to change, so that needs to be something you take into account and plan for.

How to Run a Company Remotely + Get It Right: 25 Experts Weigh In

“It won’t be much different. Our staff are just at home instead of in the office. No big deal.” – said every company director that implemented a remote work program that flopped bigger than Windows Vista.

Not having your team all in the same physical location IS a big change but with the right advice it’s a change that can be immensely beneficial to all involved. Below we’ve listed a quick rundown of all of the tips that we curated to help you figure out how to properly run a company remotely.

Learn About Your Team and Embrace Its Work-Style Diversity (Anja Simic)
Addressing Issues That Impact Your Ability to Meet Deadlines or Provide Quality Results (Diane Stegmeier)
Create Deliberate Connections (Sarah Aviram)
Empower Engaged Leaders at all Levels (Mika J. Cross)
Avoiding Burnout for Yourself and Your Team (Lance Robbins)
Design a Global People Ops (Remote) Strategy (Nicole Le Maire)
Writing Things Down is a Game Changer (Yanislava Hristova)
Focus on Outputs Over Inputs + Avoid Over-Tracking (Chase Warrington)
Break the Culture of Hyper-Responsiveness (Rhys Black)
Build Remote Work Rituals to Elevate Your Culture (Maryellen Stockton)
Remember the Three I’s (Kevin Eikenberry)
Cultural Underpinnings: Trust Based Ownership & Accountability Principles (Dorota Piotrowska)
Create a Standard Remote Work Onboarding and Training Process for Both New and Existing Recruits (Fadila Ahmad Abdulrazaq)
Remote By Default (Deborah Simmons)
Be Real, Be Caring and Work to Help Everyone Be a Superstar (Arturo Schwartzberg)
Communication as a Service (Kaylie Boogaerts)
Management Will Make or Break Your Company’s Remote Workforce Success (Gregory Sherrow)
Setting Clear Expectations (Ali Greene)
Understand Your Legal Responsibilities as an Employer for Your Remote Employees (Jo Palmer)
Overcoming Distance Bias Through Emphasizing Location Diversity + Inclusion (Sacha Connor)
Building and Sustaining a Collaborative Culture (Radina Nedyalkova)
Emotional Intelligence – The Key to Effective Remote Working (Shauna Moran)
Introduce Video By Default for All Virtual Meetings (Egor Borushko)
Learn to Listen with More Senses (Stephan Dohrn)
Be Proactive with Team Building Activities (Laurent Parenteau)

If your company has implemented any of the tips shared in this article or you have any advice to add, we’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments section!

What the Experts Said: Remote Workplace Tips Explained

Now you know how most companies fail when setting up remotely and you’ve seen a top-level overview of the tips we curated, it’s time to deep-dive into the advice our remote work experts shared. These folks have walked the walk, and the information shared is based on years of practical experience figuring out how to fine-tune remote teams so they can work just as successfully as in a conventional office setup. In many cases, even more so.

If you want to jump to a specific tip, you can use the filters below.

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Deborah Simmons

Deborah’s role as an insight specialist is dedicated to working with organisations who put humans first in their thinking. Her experience of, and research into digital nomadism and remote work, positions her as a thought leader in the transition of teams from traditional to distributed workplaces. The majority of her time is now dedicated to making this transition as smooth and as future-focused as possible, through her tailored workshop ‘Location Independent’.

http://caminoinsight.com

Remote By Default – “Hear me out. Let’s just take stock of where we are at the moment…

Going remote overnight – as has been the harsh reality for many organisations during the pandemic – is not a recipe for long-term success.

Why is this? Well, there are numerous reasons, but here are the main ones:
1. Tech changes more rapidly than humans do. We are responding to new challenges with old, industrial organisational solutions which are out-dated and ineffective.
2. We may have the remote tools, but we don’t have the remote culture.
3. Many organisations simply aren’t ready for such a drastic change and they are effectively paralysed with fear.
4. Remote working environments have not yet been adapted to our needs. So many people have struggled because they are juggling work, partners, home and children all in the same environment, and without clear boundaries.
Does this mean that we can’t implement remote working successfully? Absolutely not!

We are now at the point where organisations are starting to take stock; to think about the future of their workplace and how they wish to pick up the pieces and move forward. And, with the best of intentions, many will likely opt for the Hybrid workplace, where some workers return to work in the main office and others work remotely (whether from home, a co-work space or a satellite office).

The Hybrid office, however, is not solving our problems; it’s actually perpetuating them. Why is this?

Proximity bias. Work and culture (including social) are very much still centred around the office, and this means remote workers are overlooked which can be very harmful to your team. When proximity bias exists, remote workers become marginalised – they miss out on important communications, aren’t involved in developmental opportunities and social events and can feel isolated and excluded. This is the stuff that can ruin morale and career progression, so it’s not something that should be glossed over as collateral damage.

So what’s the solution? Remote by default.

This doesn’t mean closing down the office permanently on Friday and everyone working remotely 100% of the time. It means setting up the workplace as ‘remote first’ and, where realistic, giving people the choice. This way, we enable the seamless flow from office to remote and back again, in a way that actual physical location becomes inconsequential and more of a ‘nice to have’.

If you think about the organisations that were set up in this way before the pandemic, the likelihood is that lockdown would have had a very minimal impact on their business practices.

Remote work experts worldwide are advocating the move to a total virtual workspace. Just to reiterate: this doesn’t mean people can’t or shouldn’t work in the office (people shouldn’t be forced to work remotely – it’s not the optimal choice for everyone), it just means that remote working is facilitated first. It’s altogether more inclusive and equal – something that we are striving towards as we attempt to move away from the privilege and exclusivity within our society.

Think of it as a virtual workplace – effective, human-centred and flexible. Some believe that this is not possible in a remote environment but it absolutely is.

And this is where having a clearly defined and embedded remote work culture is going to pay huge dividends. Whether co-workers are in your main office hub, at home, in a coworking space or café, you’ll all be communicating, collaborating and working towards your goals, using the same tools, speaking the same ‘language’ and with the same expectations, plus potentially a new respect for your work and each other.”

Stephan Dohrn

Stephan is an entrepreneur, coach, facilitator, and remote work expert. In addition to coaching entrepreneurs and remote leaders, he is the co-founder of Radical Inclusion, where I help remote teams thrive by improving collaboration. He is German, married to a Brazilian for over 10 years. They have 2 kids and live in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

http://www.sdohrn.com

Learn to Listen with More Senses – “Online we cannot see much of each other’s body language, posture, and gestures. To compensate, many remote leaders tend to fall back on things like chat messages and being more purposeful and clearer in the questions they ask.

That is a great strategy, but it can become too much and can be perceived as distracting by your team members.

So, how can we listen more deeply? We all have the ability to sense others through our hearts – to listen from our hearts. We do not use this ability much in in-person settings, especially in a business context, so it takes training.

Experiment with the Following:

When you listen to a co-worker, focus on your mind and listen from that place, then feel into your heartspace (feel your physical heart) and see what happens when you listen from that place.

Why should you train this ability? Over time it will not only slow down and deepen your way of communicating, but it will also have a similar effect on how others communicate with you.

How to Learn More:

Search for 4 Levels of Listening by Otto Scharmer on YouTube, and check out the tool ‘Mirroring‘”

Yanislava Hristova

Founder of Remoteit.world and HR Leader with over a decade of experience in remote tech talent acquisition and company growth strategies.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannyhr/

Writing Things Down is a Game Changer – “The nature of remote work is that it heavily relies on processes, prioritizes output over time and emphasizes efficiency. Its proven top benefits are a significant boost in productivity, better decisions and higher employee engagement. The question is how do you accomplish the promised outstanding results in a distributed environment? Well, it’s simple but not easy. One of the true superpowers of remote work lies in writing things down. Let’s dive deeper into why writing things down is a game changer.

There are several practical reasons why you shall keep things documented and how, by doing it, you uphold sustainability, save time and empower inclusivity.

The Handbook-First Approach

As a newbie in the remote workplace, your instinct is likely to try and figure things out yourself before you ask for help or information. Which prompts the question, “Where can I find information that is for internal-only use and not bother my colleagues?” Every remote company must create and maintain one centralized information space. It’s like a folder on your computer but it’s in a sharable format which allows other people to access it too. Gitlab calls this the handbook-first approach. Simply put, it’s a GDrive folder or a Notion/Confluence page etc that is your go-to place when you have frequent questions on why, what and how. It consists of all possible resources and references on a strategic, operational or day to day level. You must include literally everything there such as the company purpose, values, team, strategy, marketing to all processes, how to guides, rules, procedures, OKRs, meeting notes, vacation requests, new ideas, everything. This is an essential space because you need something that serves as a single source of truth. One extra practical use is the onboarding of new employees.

Make Meetings More Efficient

High productivity and exceptional results don’t just happen because we work remotely. They happen because of the focus on efficiency. The majority of remote workers are hyper-time-protective because they realize spending time wisely matters. Meetings are one particularly debatable instrument of teamwork, and writing things down will help you save precious time and prevent endless meetings.

Prior to every meeting, explain the context in written form in a new document and share it with your teammates. Give them time to read it at their own convenience, activate critical or creative thinking and come up with comments and notes directly on the collaborative tool. Jeff Bezos incorporated a similar practice at Amazon and so far it has been a standard to bring everyone on the same page respecting one’s own speed to absorb and process new information. You may be surprised that sometimes you may not even need a meeting to get people’s input. If a meeting is needed, send the agenda in advance. What if someone can not attend? Of course, you do not want to repeat everything word by word and triple the time investment. You will just record this meeting and upload it in the documentation space. Send them the link to watch it and then start a conversation. This is pragmatic when you want to incorporate a high level of flexibility, asynchronous communication and various time zones.

Everyone’s Voice is Heard

Last but not least, let’s touch on inclusivity. It is probably among the most wanted features of a modern workplace nowadays. An environment where everyone’s voice, ideas and feedback is at its heart. Implementing a writing-first approach motivates all employees to share their ideas openly, to give input and their voice to last beyond the duration of a virtual meeting. This is particularly helpful for more introverted individuals who are shy or nervous to speak up in front of many people, but whom may demonstrate genuine care and commitment to company success.

Writing things down may seem not easy at first, however, once you master it, it’s a real game changer to building lasting successful remote operations.”

Radina Nedyalkova

Remote talent advisor, virtual lecturer and LinkedIn coach. After 10 years in the corporate world, working in the global recruitment teams of LinkedIn and Airbnb, I set up Vox Advisory in 2019. My mission is to repair the bridge between the organisations and the talent through the right human-oriented practices.

http://www.vox-advisory.com

Building and Sustaining a Collaborative Culture – “What really is collaboration? I always advise my clients to drop buzzwords like “team player” and “people-person”- both in their CVs and job descriptions. True collaborators PROACTIVELY look for partnerships internally and externally. They involve others and are not afraid to ask for feedback. They encourage knowledge sharing and tolerate different points of view. These traits are a lot more valuable than being likeable and able to cope in a team environment. Why? Because experts who embody the essence of collaboration bring people together, act as informal leaders and ultimately, can exert significant influence over your culture. Especially if you are building it in a remote setup.

Change the Narrative

Attitude is what matters in 2020. Yes, we all have a specific need, a skill for success, a position we have to fill. But what I have seen is that companies tend to make two significant mistakes: promoting the wrong person to become a team manager (in order to retain them) or hiring a toxic individual because they tick all the other boxes. Experience can be taught, behaviour though consists of beliefs, values and upbringing. We have all heard that diversity brings better results over time, so let’s consider what a culture ADD can bring: inclusion, creativity, innovation, ideation and, a sense of belonging.

The Ultimate Challenge: Me vs We

Not many organisations have figured this one out. Humans have been social creatures since the dawn of time. However, with big changes such as the 4th industrial revolution (Iot), the Gig economy, having 5 generations working together and the rise of the remote options, professionals have a plethora of choice for their career development. Cultivating loyalty and hiring the right people whilst increasing retention, have become more complex than 10-15 years ago.

Being a remote employee is appealing, but is it sustainable for everyone? What gels people together and helps them establish relationships when they are not having any physical interaction? Perhaps, one of the important things to consider is creating a space where people feel that they are nurtured on an individual and community level. That they are appreciated for the potential they have, as well as their interpersonal competencies and skills for success.

Adopting innovation in all of your people-related processes (from screening and selection to managing the day to day requests) is more affordable than ever. Slack bots that help you drive internal engagement, peer2peer live interview platforms, apps that boost your video interactions. Avail of the technology around you and empower your teams to demonstrate your culture on a daily basis.

Some key action points for every startup owner, manager, HR director or C-level executive (yes, not just for HR):
1. Clarify Your Values and Belief System – This is not the “nice to have” PR approved statements. Is collaboration truly embedded in your ethos and goals? Is it introduced in how you build your strategy and measure success?
2. What is Your Employer DNA & the Skills for Success in Your Specific Environment – Don’t go for the standard form of a job description, CV screening and interview selection (years of experience, type of education and being a “team player”). What unites your people and make them feel like they belong? Why should they stay in your company?
3. Drive Radical Transparency – Sustaining the culture is a team sport. And when you are working in a remote setup, you need to overcommunicate and be 100% more alert about how you come across, how others prefer to interact, what the challenges are with written communication and potential language barriers. Embrace vulnerability and work on your cultural awareness.
4. Cultivate Internal Champions – Teamwork makes the dream work – and you will need allies to maintain the commitment and ensure people hold each other accountable in your remote space. Look for these proactive, self-driven and socially-engaged current or future employees who can be your legacy and your voice.
Best of luck!”

Rhys Black

Rhys is the Founder and CEO of Delocate, a remote work consulting firm helping companies become high-performance remote organisations

http://www.delocate.co

Break the Culture of Hyper-Responsiveness – “Perpetuating a company culture where employees are expected to respond to messages ASAP from senior leadership can have significant negative impacts on team productivity and morale.

Firstly, this creates a chaotic work environment where employees are not able to get in a productive state of flow and do their best work. This leads to low output, poor quality of work and is deeply stressful and unfulfilling for employees.

Not only does it create a distraction-infested work environment, but it can also lead to team members burning out.

If your team members feel pressure to respond to messages at 3 pm, they probably feel the same way if they receive a message at 10 pm. This very quickly leads to work hours stretching, difficulties in shutting off from work and eventually burn-out.”

Fadila Ahmad Abdulrazaq

Fadila A Ahmad, is a Remote Work Advisor, business strategist and entrepreneur who has worked across 8 countries and 4 industries while travelling to over 30 countries around the world. She is the founder and lead strategist at Africans Living Fully, a media and community platform that empowers and inspires Young Africans and POC to be limitless in their pursuit of a meaningful career, business and life path that is true to them.

http://africanslivingfully.com

Create a Standard Remote Work Onboarding and Training Process for Both New and Existing Recruits – “An integral part of effectively running an organization remotely is the people and the culture you built and instil in them. When new people are hired, it is your responsibility as the hiring manager to ensure that they have everything they need to be successful in their role. Similarly, existing employees who are going remote for the first time or transitioning into fully remote roles temporarily or permanently need to be acquainted and upskilled to enable them to work effectively.

New recruits come in with insecurities centred around the fear of rejection leading them to be alone; Remote employees naturally suffer even worse since location bias is very common, especially in hybrid organizations. It is important to note that Onboarding, unlike Orientation, is not a one-time event.

Onboarding is a series of activities happening over an extended period of time that seeks to empower and enable staff to understand their new working environment, the team, the organizational culture, method of work and tools.

How Long Should Onboarding Take?

The duration is determined by the complexity of the new hires’ roles, the tools needed to be learned, the type of company and how long the engagement period is for. Darren of BambooHR wrote about 10 things you should consider in determining how long the onboarding process should take, for more insight read here. Although many companies adopt a 2-3 week duration, the Boston Consulting Group recommends a 1 year intentional onboarding period as being more effective in retaining employees and enabling productivity among them.

Creating a standardized onboarding process will help you share all of the essential aspects that will help new team members become successful in their new role, saving you time and effort by not having to make constant corrections. This standard onboarding process can be formal or informal. Formal onboarding processes include training, workshops, seminars, intensive coaching and mock exercises. Informal onboarding activities can include job shadowing, intentional observation of a company’s process, approach to creating solutions and dealings with varying stakeholders.

The Onboarding process begins with Pre-onboarding, then an Orientation, First Assignments & provision of ongoing support.

Here are 7 Tips to Help You Onboard Remote Employees
1. Create an Onboarding Plan (Ideally 1 year long with a 2 week intensive) – Develop a standard onboarding plan where all necessary meetings and training are scheduled in advance. Create a full agenda, gather all the relevant resources be it video, audio or links that can enable new recruits to get fully acquainted with key areas of the organization. Introduce them to all people, processes and projects that will be relevant to their work. The onboarding plan should include both formal and informal activities to enable them to feel comfortable in their new working environment.
2. Communicate Clearly the Role, Responsibility and Vision of the Organization – What is the value the employee will be bringing to the organization? Who are they going to work with? Who will they report to? How often should they report and communicate with that person? What is the organizational structure and dispute resolution procedure? Where is the company vision? How will they help you achieve it? What is the result you want them to achieve for your business and how will it be measured?
3. Communicate Expectations and How Results Will Be Measured – If there is anything that makes or breaks a Remote company it is communication at all stages of hiring and during the actual teamwork process. At the onboarding stage, it is crucial for both parties to communicate expectations, share the company’s vision, how the employee’s performance will be measured and what constitutes success and productivity at the workplace. This will allow both parties to understand and set the right mood for work.
4. Establish a Communication and Collaboration Plan – And then share it with them.
5. Get Them to Start with a Small Project – It is important to have a clear work plan for new hires with short-term intervals of under 90 days to introduce new recruits to company information, other team members and rituals within your remote culture. In doing so assign them work that requires information discovery, culture fit test and cross-departmental team collaboration.
6. Ask and Act on Feedback – If you have not had much relevant experience managing a remote team, it’s important to know that you will experience challenges; my best advice to you is to invite new recruits to pay attention to your process and provide you with constructive feedback that can help you improve the experience for future recruits.
7. Create Opportunities for Personal Connections – Remote work means there is an absence of those water cooler and chit chat moments employees experience when they are in an office space. It is your responsibility as the HR or Team lead to create opportunities that can foster virtual team blonding and personal connections. For new recruits this means inviting them to introduce themselves in the first week of work, inviting them to hang out at the HQ, encouraging team members who live in the same city or region to have regular meetups or even virtual non-work related experiences.
Expected Results

A study that was carried out by the Boston Consulting Group found that of 22 different HR practices, onboarding has the 2nd biggest impact in terms of employee experience. Added to that, the research showed that companies with a well-designed onboarding process typically achieve over double the revenue growth and also close to double the profit margin when compared with companies with either no boarding process or poorly planned procedures in place. And if that weren’t enough reason to focus on onboarding, employee retention rates are also much higher with proper onboarding.

Your ability to attract, hire and retain the best talent will highly depend on the robustness of your onboarding process and more importantly your continued commitment to ensuring the people you hire continue to have the adequate capacity, expertise and understanding required to function effectively in their jobs. Therefore training and professional development resources need to be inclusive and made accessible to all employees irrespective of geographical, physical, mental or demographic differences.

Here are 3 Tips to Help You Do That
- Actively Involve Your Team in a Periodic Exercise to Determine Their Learning Needs and Style – Some people learn best visually, others love to read extensively, while the rest learn best on the job or simply by doing it themselves. From time to time is important to create an exercise for your remote team that helps you identify the different learning and upskilling needs that are essential to help them thrive at their jobs.
- Provide Access to Learning Tools and Platforms that Cater to the Needs of Different Groups – Employers must not forget that remote teams can include people with visual, hearing or other forms of disabilities, and it is essential to provide learning resources that cater to the needs of these groups too. Provide access to relevant resources for specific job roles, technical briefs or simply the culture you want them to adopt. Here are some examples.
- Ask for and Use Feedback from Diverse Population – Ultimately the training program you create is for employees – so make a conscious effort to seek different perspectives on what you can do to help them thrive. Be aware of location bias, especially in hybrid organizations; seek the perspective of your remote teams in the development process of the training program.
Hope this helps you and your team run a more effective remote work environment!”

Kaylie Boogaerts

People & Culture Manager at LaterPay, a remote-first company. I head the international team's recruitment, culture and all other HR efforts. I enjoy focusing on creative problem-solving and am proud of cultivating a reputation as a leader through collaboration and communication.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaylie-boogaerts-72167040/

Communication as a Service – “A remote setup allows you to give your team more flexibility, which often goes hand in hand with more asynchronous communication (http://asyncmanifesto.org/). If you don’t set any guidelines and expectations on how to handle that, things can easily go wrong.

For example, when you need something from a colleague, it’s easy to quickly drop them an email or a Slack message with your question or request. If you don’t think about what information the other person needs to be able to help you, they’re going to have to come back with questions to pull that information from you. This back-and-forth exchange goes quite quickly when you can have it in person. However, when you’re writing each other, and especially when you’re doing it asynchronously, this becomes a long process.

Instead, view your communication as a service to one another and push the information the other person needs. Don’t make them pull the information from you.

What Does this Look Like in Practice?
1. Consider how much context the other person already has and what information they may require to be able to answer you. Can you provide them with a link to documentation, a ticket, screenshots? What follow-up questions can you expect them to ask and can you already answer those in your first message?
2. Be clear about whether you’re looking for approval, feedback or a decision.
3. Give the other person context on the urgency of your request. When do you need a reply?
4. If you pull someone into a conversation, provide a summary of the conversation for them and be clear about what you need from them. Don’t force them to read through the whole conversation and to find out why exactly you pulled them into the conversation.
5. Be aware of language and cultural differences and avoid role-specific jargon and country- or culture-specific language.
It’s better to over-communicate in order to keep things moving in a remote environment.

How to Make Your Team View Their Communication as a Service?
1. Lead by example.
2. Explain the concept to your team. You can do this by just sharing what I wrote above, or you can be a bit more creative and set up a little training or workshop.
3. Reward or praise people when you see team members communicating more effectively by viewing their communication as a service to each other. Just a simple “Thanks Marie for providing context and your expectations when you requested this from me. It made it super easy for me to get back to you and unblock the team” does wonders!
Good luck!”

Laurent Parenteau

I've worked fully remotely since 2009, for large and small companies, some that were non remote-friendly. Interested in discussing anything related to remote work? Hit me up!

http://laurentparenteau.com

Be Proactive with Team Building Activities – “One of the biggest differences between remote and in-office work environments is the casual discussion and random human connections that happen. People chat at the coffee machine, over lunch, in the parking lot, etc. This happens whether you want it to or not, without having to do anything special.

When you have a remote work environment, this is no longer the case. You have to take explicit actions if you want those random human connections to happen. And you do want them to happen, as it is tremendously valuable for team bonding and helps reduce miscommunication problems.

There are many ways this can be done, and the more methods you use, and the more diverse they are, the better the result will be. Here are a few activities I’ve successfully used.

1. Weekly Icebreaker Questions

In your chat tool (Slack, Twist, whatever), have a dedicated channel for icebreaker questions. Every week, in that channel, ask a simple question that everyone is required to answer. Questions like “What’s your favorite taco?”, “Best book you’ve read / movie you’ve seen lately?”, “Do you prefer Pepsi or Coke?”, or any other icebreaker style questions are perfect for this. They can be silly, or could require more thoughtful answers, so vary between those styles over time.

Over time, without much effort, you end up knowing a lot more about your coworkers. Also, when someone new joins your team, they can see the previous answers and jumpstart their knowledge of their teammates. They can also go back to those older questions and answer a bunch, allowing the rest of the team to quickly learn more about this new team member.

This is one of the easiest asynchronous team building activities you could run.

2. Social Time

Social Time is a weekly meeting about anything except work. The goal is to have the team get together and discuss. Since this is synchronous, you have to be careful if your team spans across multiple time zones, but this can be adjusted to work in those situations as well.

One approach I really like for Social Time is to use the Weekly Icebreaker Question to kick start the discussion. The discussion usually ends up with the team talking about random stuff, and that’s perfect. But the initial already answered icebreaker provide a nice and simple way to get the discussion moving.

Other times, instead of having a discussion, we’ll play a game. There’s a whole lot of free (or paid) online games available, so you can find whatever suits your team. One game that always results in a lot of laughs is any of the online Pictionary clones.

A variation here would be to use smaller groups (10-15 people) instead of the whole organization, depending on size.

3. Random 1:1

Another great synchronous discussion activity and one that is a good complement to Social Time, is to hold 1:1 meetups with 2 random people. That could happen anytime, but I’ve had great success with it happening right after Social Time. It makes scheduling easy and also people can just keep the same discussion going if they want to (so there’s no awkward silence wondering what to talk about). This is a great opportunity to create a personal connection with everyone, even if you don’t interact with that person on a day to day basis.

A variation here would be to use smaller groups (3-4 people) instead of one-on-one, depending on team size.

4. PowerPoint Karaoke

This one is great for celebration events. Everyone gets a random deck of random slides and needs to do a 5-minute presentation based on that, without having seen those slides beforehand. One nice thing with this activity is that it’s well suited for remote teams, doesn’t require any particular skills, and isn’t competitive.

That said, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to a really fresh team, where people might not yet feel comfortable looking like a fool and doing improvisation in front of the team. You’d need to do some more ice-breaking stuff first. But after that, it really helps to get the team to jell and break down any barriers that could remain.

One Final Tip: Be considerate with your team. Any team-building activity you want to hold should take your team’s diversity into consideration. What do they enjoy? How spread across the globe are they? What is their idea of fun?

With that in mind, go ahead and experiment!”

Shauna Moran

Shauna is an accredited and award-winning executive coach who empowers leaders of remote teams to create and build more effective distributed workforces- so they can scale and grow with confidence.

http://www.operateremote.com

Emotional Intelligence – The Key to Effective Remote Working – “There’s a difference between being able to work remotely and being truly effective at remote working.

As an accredited leadership coach, emotional intelligence practitioner and remote team researcher- the key to being effective at remote working lies in emotional intelligence.

When we think of remote working, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to believe someone will succeed as long as they can effectively do their jobs. There’s a deeper level to being successful as a remote employee, manager and organisation.

In order to manage ourselves and each other in an online or multi-office environment, individuals need to have a high level of self-perception, how we see ourselves, understand ourselves and how well we identify our own emotions.

The autonomy that comes with working remote, and primarily alone, means that we should be tapped into ourselves as individuals in order to better make decisions that promote our overall well-being. Working without in-person interactions on a daily basis, means we need to adjust how we express ourselves online.

Our communication skills and awareness should be developed when we’re working in multi-cultural virtual environments. We need to understand how we can communicate, listen and express ourselves effectively online. If our team are based all over the world, we’ll need to develop our independence in order to be resourceful and self-sufficient.

Our assertiveness in setting clear and healthy boundaries and expectations are vital when working across multiple time zones and primarily online when we’re so connected through technology. Our interpersonal skills need to be developed and explored when we work online with colleagues, employees and customers. In order to build mutually satisfying trusting relationships, we need to develop our empathy towards other people.

This is where emotional intelligence comes in.

Emotional intelligence is a set of emotional and social skills that collectively establish how well we perceive and express ourselves, develop and maintain social relationships, cope with challenges, and use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way.

Emotional intelligence accounts for 25-45% of workplace performance, and unlike IQ, EI is something that you can improve with training.

When We Think of EI When Working Remotely, It Helps Us:
- Better manage our time, energy and emotions in order to sustain ourselves, be productive and prevent burnout.
- It helps us understand how to express emotions online, how to tap into the emotions of others in order to build strong interpersonal team relationships.
- It empowers us to cope with stress, make decisions and problem solve when emotions are involved
- It helps us show up with empathy, and balance that with assertiveness to ensure we’re finding balance in how we show up remotely.
If we want to improve these skills, we can. Aside from working with a professional coach, a great place to start on your own is to tap into self-awareness. Ask yourself the following questions, start getting into the habit of reflection and experience how you can be the best problem-solver and manager of your life when working remotely.

Reflection Questions to Build Self-Awareness
- Based on how I’m currently managing my time and my energy, what’s working? What makes that work well and how can I bring those same processes forward into more of my tasks?
- What’s not working well with the way that I work right now? What’s taking my energy and what doesn’t make sense for me/my team? Where might I be able to improve or what might I be able to change?
- What are my non-negotiables in both my personal and professional life (what gives me energy and drives me closer to my definition of success?)
- How have I carved out time for my non-negotiables? What healthy boundaries do I need to put in place for myself?
- When and where do I work at my best? What are the routines and habits that serve me? What do I need to shed that no longer serves me?
We should bear in mind that working remotely throughout a pandemic isn’t normal circumstances for remote working. Work environments and priorities in most companies are changing quickly, which makes it even more important to practise reflection on a regular basis. I do this exercise at least once a week and encourage you to do the same.”

Dorota Piotrowska

Dorota is a seasoned People Experience, Org Development and DE&I Professional as well as a Remote-smart Advocate. Until recently she was the first Head of People at Netguru, a rapidly scaling, remote first software consultancy (nearly 700 people). Now moving to fintech where she'll continue to develop a remote smart and digitalised workplace.

http://www.netguru.com

Cultural Underpinnings: Trust Based Ownership & Accountability Principles – “A remote smart organisation is first and foremost about strong, cohesive and pervasive cultural underpinnings. For people to thrive and be effective in it a high degree of ownership, empowerment and accountability is needed. They’re all built on trust.

Trust has many layers of course. Here is my remote org experience based top 10 take on this:
1. Respect above all and embrace perspectives of others determined by their individual set of cultural lenses (check here) to avoid the so-called vicious circle of Four Mis’s -: Misperception ➡️ Misinterpretation ➡️ Misevaluation ➡️ Mistrust.
2. Psychological safety – it’s ok to make mistakes, it’s critical to not judge a book by its cover or to judge the book by the chapter you walked in on.
3. Integrity – walk the talk.
4. Sincerity and radical candor (i.e. Caring Personally while Challenging Directly).
5. Reliability – deliver as promised, and do not overpromise because you’re bound to underdeliver.
6. Commitment to what you’re building as a team.
7. Consistency and clarity, even if things evolve, explain the rationale of the modification.
8. Competence & life long learning – be a subject matter expert in your role, but don’t forget about…
9. Intellectual humility- adopt a ‘learn it all’ NOT ‘know it all’ mindset, be in listening mode, listen to learn not to find quick fixes/to win. Especially crucial in the context of the remote workplace.
10. The mutually reinforcing ‘trust triangle’ attributes: logic, authenticity, empathy, as depicted here.”

Kevin Eikenberry

Kevin has spent 30 years helping organizations and leaders from over 40 countries become more effective. Inc.com has twice named him in the top 100 Leadership and Management Experts in the World. His books include, Remarkable Leadership, From Bud to Boss, and The Long-Distance Leader. His next book is The Long-Distance Teammate.

https://RemoteLeadershipInstitute.com

Remember the Three I’s – “You won’t go far wrong if you keep the following in mind.

Intention. Everything leaders must do when leading a remote team must be more intentional. Old habits might not work, and intention is a habit over-ride. Think about how you need to do things, rather than relying on past approaches. Be more intentional about everything from informal communication to coaching to team building – and everything else in your leadership role.

Interaction. When people work away from each other, conversations will become more transactional. The focus will be on the work and the task. Make sure that you (and all team members) create space for interaction and avoid everything being a transaction.

Isolation. When people work alone there is the risk that people will feel isolated and alone. Don’t allow the social currency of the workplace to be lost as distance between people increases. Help people maintain and build relationships. They will be healthier, happier, and far more productive.”

Sacha Connor

Sacha Connor is the CEO of Virtual Work Insider, a remote work and virtual leadership skills training consultancy. VWI specializes in coaching remote, hybrid, and geographically distributed teams to work together seamlessly across any distance. VWI has worked clients such as Toyota, Beam Suntory, Clorox, Cigna, Gilead, and FIFCO.

http://www.virtualworkinsider.com/

Overcoming Distance Bias Through Emphasizing Location Diversity + Inclusion – “Unprecedented location inclusion is one of COVID’s positive unintended consequences. The office shut-downs have forced so many of us into FROGs* – fully remote organizations. This meant that for the first time, in many companies, all team members were are on an equal, location-agnostic, playing field.

For many, the frequent faux pas of only inviting people to participate in a meeting, a brainstorm, or social gathering that live or work nearby has vanished. Those invisible fences have fallen in favor of location inclusion – people are being included based on merit, not proximity.

Before COVID, so many of us were being called upon to lead teams that were distributed across the country and the globe. The COVID office shutdowns took that one step further, jumping all the way into fully remote teams. Now that some offices are slowly reopening, new hybrid teams are emerging.

These team dynamics require us to lead in a way that ensures inclusion, regardless of location, to get the best ideas, best collaboration, and best business results. And leading and working within these hybrid teams is actually harder than working as part of a FROG due to an unconscious bias called Distance Bias.

I experienced Distance Bias first-hand, working fully remotely for eight years while leading large teams that were responsible for more than $250 million in business and were mostly located three time zones away.

The NeuroLeadership Institute identified five unconscious biases that impact decision making. They call it the SEEDS model. The “D” in SEEDS stands for: Distance Bias—our brain’s natural tendency to put more importance on things and people that are closer to us than farther away. This Distance Bias can become a key factor in holding back hybrid teams.

While you have been working in your fully remote teams you might not have been feeling the Distance Bias as strongly, but you might have fallen victim to its close sister, Recency Bias – our brain’s natural tendency to put more importance on the people and things that are closer in time to us. The people that are more top of mind for you are likely those that you’ve seen via video chat or heard from via email or text more recently.

Once your team is aware of Distance and Recency bias, here are some steps to mitigate them. The tactics may vary depending on where your team is in the spectrum of remoteness during COVID and after.

If you are a manager:

1. Be deliberate about forming relationships equally with your co-located and remote direct reports. For example, hold virtual coffee chats with your remote people to create a personal connection.

2. Consider all your direct reports when assigning projects, rotations, or promotions. Pick the best person for the job, not just the closest in proximity.

3. If you have questions about a project or a business issue, go to the “right” person to get the answer instead of going to the closest person.

If you are a team leader or team member:

4. Enable virtual attendees to participate equally in team meetings.

Insist on using video conferencing software so everyone has a virtual seat at the table.
Proactively invite remote people into the discussion.
Leverage virtual whiteboarding software so everyone can contribute to a brainstorming session.

5. Build team culture and relationships virtually.

Be overly communicative about your team’s roles, goals, and values.
All social activities should involve all sites and team members. I went as far as having virtual happy hours, virtual baby showers, and virtual holiday parties.

As offices and cities start to slowly reopen, let’s not slip back into our old ways of proximity as paramount.”

* the FROG reference is attributed to Greg Caplan, co-founder of Remote Year.

Lance Robbins

Director of Workforce Development at Distribute Consulting. Lance is a career people and operations professional with a focus on helping distributed teams scale and perform. Lance has served as a talent acquisition advisor to reputable remote-friendly organizations. He believes building strong distributed teams is the first and most crucial catalyst for realizing the greater power of virtual work.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lance-robbins/

Avoiding Burnout for Yourself and Your Team – “We’ve all heard or even felt the doubts. “Will my employees stream Netflix all day or will they actually work?” One of the most commonly cited fears of managers is that remote employees won’t work as hard or as much when they’re not in an office environment.

Contrary to popular belief, there is a far greater risk that remote employees and managers will spend more time working than their in-office counterparts.

With the progressive globalization of workforces and marketplaces the days of having a predictable “close of business” time are long gone. Employees and contractors are receiving inbound requests and assignments around the clock, and more often than not, the steady stream of demand gets the best of remote workers.

While work-from-homers can’t just leave the office altogether, since it’s literally in their house, it’s critical that remote workers CAN leave the workplace behind. Here are 3 tips to make it easier to make the break between work and over-worked.

1. Your Calendar is the Boss

Make no apologies for blocking off times that meetings cannot be scheduled. If you find yourself chronically eating microwaveable noodles alone with your computer, you might want to block off a 30-60 minute lunch window. If it’s been far too long since you made any memories with your loved ones, go ahead and block off some evening hours for that purpose. Keeping your calendar up to date communicates the times you ARE available to your teammates and clients and keeps you from having to say “no”.

2. Notifications Off

Great job! You’ve carved out some time to leave your desk and enjoy a meal with your family. What could possibly ruin this accomplishment? 17 Slack notifications, 4 emails, and 6 LinkedIn comments, that’s what. It’s not really a break from work if you’re still working on your mobile device. Do yourself a favor and turn off the notifications from the settings on your phone. There’s nothing so urgent that it needs your attention right this very moment.

3. Create Some Physical Space

When the day is done, lock the beast in its cage. Nothing tells your brain to work a little longer than carrying your laptop out of the office and into your living area. So, unless you need it for a personal project, leave your work computer where it belongs… at work. It will be there in the morning, and you can check your emails then.

Just because managers can’t see their employees overworking, doesn’t mean they aren’t doing it. If you’re a leader of remote workers, lead by example. Follow the tips above to avoid burnout for yourself and your team.”

Gregory Sherrow

Remote executive with more than 15 years of experience managing remote teams and advising on remote work best practices at the individual and organizational levels for the private, public and nonprofit sectors.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregsherrow/

Management Will Make or Break Your Company’s Remote Workforce Success – “Remote work: many love it, a few are suspicious of it and company executives have traditionally been split on it. Suddenly, it’s a critical tool for nearly all professional workforces. How quickly the world changes.

However, strategic change often lags environmental change. Companies around the globe are suddenly struggling with traditional office-based workforces going 100% remote. Some were already moving that way and could apply what they had already learned. Others have struggled to reach previous productivity levels and create a functional remote work culture.

Homebound executives point fingers for perceived failure in many directions, but it turns out that a major gotcha for many companies successfully going fully remote is the management itself.

Executives, corporate captains and business owners of the world focus their energies on finance and strategy, relying on a very traditional corporate animal, the middle manager, to make everything run smoothly. Without them, chaos would take over the office parks and towers of the corporate world. So what’s the big problem? Just send the middle manager to work from home like everyone else.

Let’s quickly run through that scenario. We’ll pretend that I’m an executive at an insurance firm that just realized it can’t rely on an old fashioned office-based work environment. The part-time and temporary remote work assignments we instituted as a result of forces outside of our control are beginning to require something more permanent.

I have been told by the CEO to turn the company on its head: make working from home the norm and meeting in the office the exception. I am a realist and expect some hiccups. After all, not everyone can or wants to work remotely. I’m afraid that up to 20% to 30% of my workforce will stagnate at home and I’ll need to make tough decisions about them before it’s too late. The difficult choice of replacing or doing without will be easier for some than others. When it comes to replacing experienced managers, however… I get a headache just thinking about it.

The skills needed to manage a full-time remote team aren’t the same as the traditional office-based management skills that rely heavily on constant personal interactions, strategically dropping in on meetings or standing behind someone as they work. If I apply that 20% to 30% figure to the middle managers right off the top, I can see through the smoke and carnage that the company’s normal operations will be disrupted in a big way.

So What’s the Solution?

Startups and established office-based companies that want to move the focus of their workforce away from the office need to take a few pages out of the playbook of successful remote companies.

1. Flatter is Better

Forget the traditional reporting structure your parents and grandparents imagined when they told you inspirational bedtime stories about climbing the corporate ladder. In most companies with a distributed workforce, the distance between the c-suite and the talent is minimal.

But make no mistake, successful distributed workforces still need talented leaders between c-suite planners up on deck and the crew below. Those who have assembled remote companies that operate like well-oiled, long-distance communication machines have found that full-time remote workforces just doesn’t require as many stratifications in order to reach the same goals. Begin combining and spreading out responsibilities from the beginning and don’t be afraid to redefine roles to meet adapted goals.

There are multiple reasons for remote companies ending up flatter. Some have to do with the mentality of the type of person who works well from home, others have to do with efficiencies. Your company may discover reasons for a flatter structure that are unique to your own corporate culture.

One common reason is that remote structures naturally feel flatter, allowing communication channels to naturally grow wider and become full-duplex. With previously unnoticed physical barriers gone (floors in a building, office doors, layers of admin assistants), suddenly everyone, everywhere is one video conference call away. This allows well-structured, remote companies to adapt quickly to rapidly changing marketplaces and work environments even when their teams are literally spread between Alaska and Zimbabwe.

2. Hire Smart

In this case, “smart” means seeking out independently-minded, resourceful individuals at all levels who are organized and driven. These people don’t need the moral support of their co-workers in nearby cubicles or the direct pressure of an immediate supervisor peering over their shoulder. Self-motivated individuals understand that a team works best when everyone is contributing to the group’s direction and meeting personal and team goals, not just passively lining up behind the team leader waiting to be told what they should be doing.

3. Train Well

At this moment in history, experienced and talented remote workers, especially with remote management experience aren’t very common. Until they are, we need rule three.

Hiring or contracting a remote management trainer who can not only provide newly-remote managers with a plan for success, but also help establish a positive remote work culture, will save both time and money. Working it out as you go along is never a good business plan and leaving an entire company to flounder while talented employees attempt to find their remote footing on their own will result in a death spiral.

There are companies that have learned to adapt and survive great changes in technology. And there are many who failed. The driving force behind this change may be different, but with the right preparation and training, your employees can roll up their sleeves, go home and get to work.”

Sarah Aviram

I've worked in Human Resources and as a Talent Development leader for Fortune 500 companies and smaller high-growth technology companies. I've also worked remotely from twelve countries and just published the book

http://www.sarahaviram.com

Create Deliberate Connections – “It’s critical for managers in remote organizations to create opportunities for deliberate connections since colleagues are missing those water-cooler conversations that build relationships.

The most challenging aspect of working remotely is feeling isolated. Help your team feel a sense of connection by deliberately creating more face-time opportunities. Here are some examples:
- Build in small-talk-time in first few minutes of meetings by posing a question like “what’s the last thing you got delivered to your home?” or “what’s your best travel memory?”
- Start the day with a standup and end with a wrap up. Share goals, accomplishments, small wins, or even just something small you learned. Ask these three questions to each person at the meeting:
- Suggest peer 1-on-1s with coworkers.
- Create optional co-working times with cameras on or chat on. Folks can work in silence or shout out if they have a question.
- Schedule demo days where different team members share what they’ve created and what they learned from this project.
- Rotate meeting facilitators for optimal visibility and conversational turn-taking.
- Hold virtual events for the team to join like workshops and even fitness sessions.
- Encourage random virtual coffees by pairing up team members for a weekly “virtual coffee” to drive a sense of connection, moral support, and accountability.
- Focus on a good day’s work by asking team members to finish this sentence at the beginning of each day: “It will be a good day’s work if I’ve accomplished ______”. Then follow up at the end of the day to see how they did and if they need support.”

Maryellen Stockton

Maryellen Stockton is the founder of Work Well Wherever. She works with small businesses and start-ups to help them create human connections in remote teams. Her 7+ years of experience in the field allows her to know the best practices for working well remotely and how it can be a platform for organizations to build a great company culture and become more productive.

https://www.workwellwherever.com/

Build Remote Work Rituals to Elevate Your Culture – “According to the author, Mollie West Duffy, “Rituals are powerful drivers of culture, so they should be thoughtfully designed and nurtured to reinforce the organization’s values”.

Workplace rituals are important, but they become even more important when you aren’t working together in the same location. Getting started with rituals? Here are 4 ways to use rituals to enhance your remote culture.

1. Strengthen Your Onboarding Process

Review your new hire plan and think about what rituals you could include to reinforce your company’s core values. Think about how you welcome new employees and how you can cultivate relationships from the start.

2. Celebrate Employees

Honor your employees on their birthday or work anniversary by having a virtual team party to make sure your employee gets lots of love on their special day. You can also send digital cards or create a celebration channel in your team chat. Continue to find ways to celebrate together.

3. Foster Relationships
- Weekly stand-ups via video call to discuss what everyone is working and discuss any challenges and or help needed.
- Check-ins via chat asking a different question to the team each week.
- One-on-ones with your leader to connect, discuss goals, development, and support.
4. Show Gratitude
- Celebrate the completion of a big project or crushing your company goals by hosting a virtual lunch or happy hour.
- Host an annual employee award ceremony to acknowledge team members who model your core values.
Rituals are a powerful tool you can start today to create an amazing remote culture.”

Egor Borushko

"Work wherever you want, whenever you want" is my motto, and Running Remote's mission statement. Working remotely for over 10 years I recognise that remote founders need support in managing their remote organisation. That's where Running Remote comes in.

https://runningremote.com/

Introduce Video By Default for All Virtual Meetings – “It’s easy to fall into misinterpretation during virtual meetings due to the lack of body language and typically more distractions. By implementing a company-wide video-by-default policy, the participants can feel more connected to each other. Audio-only calls tend to create an even further distance between your remote workforce.”

Anja Simic

Anja lives and breathes remote work. She is the Head of Marketing at Deel, the payments and compliance platform for remote teams. Anja is passionate about amplifying the message that talent is everywhere and the opportunities should be as well.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/anja-simic-86120859/

Learn About Your Team and Embrace Its Work-Style Diversity – “When building a remote company, every founder strives to gather the best, most talented team. But what happens when you hire remotely and cannot quite assess their soft skills? You need to make the most of your hiring process. Since many are now working from home, the interview process becomes more intimate. The applicants do their interviews from their homes, bedrooms, desks. This is the first touchpoint to learn more about who your candidate is.

Bonus: Commenting on something you see (book, poster, pet) is a great conversation ice-breaker.

It’s About the Output, Not the Input

People are different, and their work-styles might be different from yours or someone else’s. Many remote companies have moved past the 9-5 schedule, because of many things, the main ones being time difference and flexibility. Productivity cannot be forced, so it’s important to understand in which way your team functions the best. Some might be productive early in the morning, some prefer to work at night, and that’s ok. If you have clear responsibilities and communicate well within the team, this shouldn’t be a bottleneck.

Remote Policy is Key

Every company should have a remote policy or a playbook, to outline the processes that happen within the company. The policy should include the knowledge base, department guidelines, roles and responsibilities, etc. It should also serve as the “source of truth” for anyone from a recent hire to the oldest employee.

Learning About a Person (& Their Work-Style) is an Ongoing Process

Dedicating time to learn and understand your team is important. It’s not a task, but rather an ongoing effort. Set up 1:1 calls, check-ins, or allocate time during team calls to hear how your team is doing, learn about what is happening outside of their work, etc. Identifying the work-style and embracing it within the team will go a long way when it comes to productivity, employer experience and will create a great team culture.”

Diane Stegmeier

Diane Stegmeier is a globally-recognized leader in workplace change management. She works with top employers to design, implement, and refine remote work programs that boost employee satisfaction and productivity while maintaining a company’s unique corporate culture.

https://stegmeierconsulting.com/

Addressing Issues That Impact Your Ability to Meet Deadlines or Provide Quality Results – “Many employers have had structured flexible work arrangements, remote work programs, work-from-home policies, or flex-work guidelines for ad hoc requests for quite some time. Employees working remotely is certainly not a new concept. So, what’s different today, and how can companies successfully ensure both managers and individual contributors thrive in a remote work environment?

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many companies to completely close down their physical offices and send their employees home to work remotely. The individuals sent home include the managers who have long resisted having their staff members participate in a remote work program. The old reasoning such as “How will I know my people are working?” and “I need to be able to see my direct reports throughout the day!” can still be voiced by managers, but it will not change the enterprise’s edict for remote work environments based on pandemic-related health and safety concerns.

⚠️Here’s How to Ensure Your Remote Work Program Will Fail

A sure-fire way to fail as an organization is to adopt a one-size-fits-all remote work program, and to refuse to allow for any compromises. A company whose flexible work policies are cast in stone is bound to struggle. One common problem is leaders who treat all employees equally as if all members of your workforce are identical, each having the same requirements. Just because an issue arises that creates a problem for one individual, it does not mean all employees will eventually be touched by the same problem.

✅How Can Leaders Help Their Employees with the Inconveniences & Adjustments of Working Remotely?

Employees operating in a remote work environment will indeed experience occasional inconveniences and require minor adjustments from time to time. Of course, the same is true for working in the corporate office. How can leaders ensure that their direct reports will meet their deadlines and produce quality results? Your flexible work approach must be flexible. Think “flexible flexibility.” Do not expect a one-size-fits-all program to be the best solution to achieve your desired results. Make sure your work from home policies and procedures allow for the flexibility in addressing unique circumstances in order to support employees’ requested needs and accommodate specific physical requirements.

Differentiate Between Cultural, Environmental, and Operational issues

As a leader responsible for guiding your direct reports through change, it’s often beneficial to recognize the difference between cultural, environmental, and operational issues that may arise in a remote work environment. Accept the fact that leaders cannot—and should not—fix every minor inconvenience your staff members experience while working remotely. Empower your employees to seek solutions where appropriate. You should get involved to resolve issues that impact the employee’s ability to meet his or her deadlines or provide quality results.
- Culture is the social control system of an organization. Your organization has an overall corporate culture, and every business unit or team has its own culture that informs employees of what the acceptable behaviors are in the workplace—and in a remote work environment.
- Environment has to do with our physical surroundings as well as the way we work within our spaces. Within the walls of our corporate offices, we often adjust furniture components to create spaces for concentrated quiet work, as well as spaces for lively interactions. In a typical office, workplace protocols are developed based on how the space should be used and acceptable adjustments that can be made. In the case of working remotely, the environment is likely the employee’s house or apartment. Remote work environments don’t come with a laminated poster displaying the proper etiquette to guide your family’s behavior.
- Operational elements are often tied to processes, policies, and procedures. They are about how the work gets done through technology or other methods.
Bottom Line: Invite your direct reports to bring issues to you that impact their ability to meet their deadlines or provide quality results. This will, in turn, help your employees to focus on what is necessary to support their work, and hopefully, ignore the minor adjustments and inconveniences of working in a new, remote work environment.”

These insights have been drawn from Diane Stegmeier’s book, Innovations in Office Design: The Critical Influence Approach to Effective Work Environments, which has been adopted by universities on six continents and ranked the #1 Workplace Strategy Book by Amazon readers.

Chase Warrington

Head of Business Development at Doist Inc., a remote first company of 80 people in 30 countries, building products for remote teams.

http://doist.com

Focus on Outputs Over Inputs + Avoid Over-Tracking – “One of the first questions aspiring remote team leaders tend to ask me goes something like: “How can I best track remote employee performance?” My answer to this is: you have to start with trust.

Don’t waste resources setting up systems to track employees’ every minute spent on the clock. Hours worked is a really bad measure of productivity – plus it’s been proven that while office employees “work” a standard 8-hour workday, they typically average about 3 hours of “real work” each day.

Trying to track employee performance in this way or expecting people to respond to messages within 5 minutes to prove they’re “at work” is only going to get in the way of them actually doing their jobs. Instead, default to trusting that you’ve hired the right people who are capable of working at a high level, whether they are in an office or at home.

New remote leaders have a tendency to focus on inputs — things like hours worked, emails sent, calls made, message response time. These metrics are easy to quantify, making us managers feel secure that we’re getting the most out of our team.

However, focusing on inputs leads to frequent interruptions, busywork, and burnout, more often than results.

Instead, start focusing on outputs — which actually create value for the team. For example, if it’s your employee’s job to sell, let them sell. Don’t pull them into multiple meetings a day or interrupt them with messages they need to reply to immediately. Help your people identify their highest impact tasks and then encourage them to block off uninterrupted time in their calendars to focus on getting that work done.

Shifting this focus away from micro-managing the inputs, and instead focusing on outputs, will pay dividends for your remote team down the road. Happier employees, better results, less staff turnover, more goals achieved.”

Ali Greene

Ali is the founder of cohana.io whose mission is to educate, inspire and engage teams to create efficient, effective, and innovative frameworks for the future of work, regardless of where (or what) their "office" looks like.

http://www.cohana.io

Setting Clear Expectations – “How many times have you lost patience when waiting for an important response from someone who said they would get back to you “soon”? Have you ever experienced that feeling, when a deliverable from a team member leaves you irked, even though technically the task has been completed?

All of those moments boil down to unclear expectations. Remote work can exasperate communication issues, and cause mistrust between managers and employees, simply due to misunderstandings in expectations. Simply, if people are not on the same page, if they do not know what to anticipate, it will be impossible to build trust, a core foundation for strong remote teams.

Ideas on How to Solve It

As a leader in a remote organization you should set the following expectations:

1. Availability & Working Hours – There are a couple of decisions to make when it comes to availability and working hours. Some questions to have clear answers on include:
- When are people expected to be online and working? Are you keeping a 9-5 or can workers choose when to be productive?
- Are there core hours of overlap you expect your team to have for spontaneous questions and real-time collaboration? Example: You may decide to have 2-4 hours of overlap a day for team members to check in with each other.
- Which meetings are mandatory? How far in advance should meetings be scheduled? Are there core hours for meetings?
2. Communication tools – The tools you use are only as good as how you implement them into your company culture. Write down all the major ways your company communicates, what the goal of that communication is, and then choose a tool to suit your needs. Further, define a cadence for acceptable response times based on communication tool (for example: 24 hours in email, 4 hours over Slack).

My favorite tools are Asana for project management, Zoom for video calls, and Slack for asynchronous updates and collaboration!

3. Project deliverables and success metrics – Before delegating a project or assignment, managers should make sure there are clear expectations set on the work that needs to be accomplished. This will reduce the tendency for frequent check-ins, and virtual micro-management that can be frustrating for remote teams. Areas that managers should define are:
- What is the goal of the project?
- What is in or out of scope?
- What is the project plan and milestones timeline to adhere to?
- How should stakeholders be included?
- What is the cadence for updates and what content should those updates include?
- What are the final deliverables, how and when should they be received?
- What does done look like?
- How will success be measured?
Making sure you and your employees are on the same page as it relates to those three topics will help reduce confusion and frustration when collaborating virtually and set you up for remote work success. Good luck!”

Nicole Le Maire

Modern People Ops For Virtual Teams

https://thepeopleengine.me

Design a Global People Ops (Remote) Strategy – “When it comes to virtual (remote) organisations, there are a lot of moving pieces that must come together in order to form a successful business. It boils down to more than just pushing employees to perform their tasks and turn it into cash flow. As a business owner, you must have smart working (distributed) teams in place, connected so that each knows not only just their expectations, but the needs and goings-on of other teams, as well.

Your global People Ops strategy needs to be flexible to integrate the differences comfortably to satisfy everyone. You will find the stakeholders will be aligned to either a global or local focus, depending on the nature of their position. Ideally, all these viewpoints should be incorporated.

(Countless businesses have implemented a global model, where the corporate department centralises and establishes policies, procedures and tools to ensure business interests are accomplished across the organisation. However, success in a remote company depends on addressing local cultures and business needs!)

There is a tendency to build large chunks or phases while designing a People Ops strategy. Management wants the huge initiatives that fire teams up and get them excited; however, individual components usually don’t align, causing challenges to their innovation!

When you descale work, you reduce the impact of these challenges by empowering a bold vision with a clear small, first step. When you pair this with outcome-based measures of success, the benefits grow 10X.

As different groups of participants will have divergent views and needs, your goal is to bring out the collective knowledge and skills, to achieve the best alignment. Encouraging stakeholders to voice their views, listen, give feedback and incorporate what makes sense for local and global people practices.

Make your global people vision become a reality, resist working with a large team to achieve a revolution in one go. Perfect the slices of value you create before you scale up to other areas. Ensure you give the people team support to make mistakes and achieve changes to push the innovation forward.

The experience to create is about positivity and collaboration. This is the best way to build a healthy organisation culture of openness, trust and transparency, which benefits the business. Take a collaborative approach with communication where it is visible and proactive.

Open communication is crucial, by involving all the stakeholders in your Global People Ops Strategy, you are more likely to find success in achieving the organisation’s goals. Utilise your digital communication systems to enhance collaboration and conversation with one another.

These are all steps you can take today to help build trust with your remote employees. The more they trust you, the more value your people team can bring to the table, the glue that holds it all together. You have such an important job, and it’s crucial to make the most of it!”

Jo Palmer

Jo Is the Founder and Managing Director of Pointer Remote, an Australian based company that works with communities, business and individuals to leverage remote work through online training, workshops and recruitment services.

http://www.pointerremoteroles.com.au

Understand Your Legal Responsibilities as an Employer for Your Remote Employees – “It is extremely important to have an understanding of your legal responsibilities as an employer when employees work remotely. In many countries, it is the employer’s responsibility to ensure that their employees have a safe workspace from which to work at home. If their employee is injured during work hours, the employer may be liable. Regulations and laws differ from state to state and country to country so it is vital to research your particular obligations.”

Arturo Schwartzberg

Lifetime caring leader. CoFounder & Chairman SweetRush Inc. since 2001. Led the company to top of learning and development industry and built a 100% remote high-performing team located in 14 countries.

http://www.sweetrush.com

Be Real, Be Caring and Work to Help Everyone Be a Superstar – “It’s not about you, but about them. Your job is to help each individual truly maximize their potential. Look inward, and ask yourself if you really and truly care about their wellbeing and if not, change. Your remote team is held together by your gravitational force and you need to focus on connection and authentic caring.

All of this is true remote or otherwise, but remote accelerates the need. You need their trust – they must trust you – and then you will be able to trust them. And so, it starts with you.

If you do this right, you can create a team based on mutual success and each member of the team caring about each other, about you, you for them and all in all a beautiful high performance and caring environment.

We have created this environment at SweetRush and have built a high performing team of 200 superstars based in 14 countries.

All this is as it should be; a principle of all religions is mutual success (do unto others….) and none of this is a new concept born on the new normal of remote, but rather a basic human-centric value that we should all adopt on the path to world peace…and building an awesome remote team :)”

Mika J. Cross

Mika is a widely acclaimed workplace expert, speaker, strategist and innovator specializing in global workplace initiatives, remote and distributed work, culture change, strategic communications, knowledge management, next generation workplace and future of work. Her career includes 20+ years of public service and she is a proud veteran of the Unites States Army.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/worklifechampionoftheuniverse/

Empower Engaged Leaders at all Levels – “Here’s a little secret about how to set up a remote working environment for success>>> EMPOWER your people leaders!

In order to leverage all the benefits of a successful remote working environment, you have to invest in and support the people who lead the people.

First, managers and supervisors REALLY need to understand the rules and regulations that guide the remote and flexible work policies in your organization. They also must feel comfortable enough in the work environment to make the right decisions for their people. Consider creating a regular open forum Q&A with HR leads and first-line managers. Set up a way to field direct questions from them (polling, email, chat or text polls) and provide them with as many tools, tips and resources as you can to make their jobs easier so they can help support the people who work with and for them.

Create a peer-to-peer manager mentorship program to help share ideas, stories and examples on creative ways they’ve overcome challenges and realized success in implementing remote and flexible work for their teams.

Secondly, support the workforce. Why not create a virtual space for employees to recognize exceptional leaders who are going the extra mile to ensure their teams are supported, communicated with and engaged. An informal monthly recognition forum, newsletter or Virtual Town Hall can go a long way. Make sure your organization is being deliberate with the formats, forums and frequency of top-down, bottom-up and cross-organizational communication, especially in the remote work environment. If you think you are over-communicating, think again and do more!

Simply implementing new remote and flexible work policies will not guarantee their success or implementation. Different people have different circumstances, and if your workplace culture does not support and empower the leaders of people throughout all levels of the organization, the policies will not work as intended.”

Facebook Ads Mistakes: Insights from 45 Experts

by Chris Herbert | Last Updated August 25, 2020

In 2020, when a lot of business owners think of paid advertising, they think of Facebook Ads. There’s no doubt about it, it’s a juggernaut of an advertising platform and offers businesses the opportunity to get their products, services and brand in front of millions of potential customers. But it isn’t just a case of you putting your money into the Facebook marketing machine, and it throwing leads and paying customers out the other side. Think like that and you’ll probably blow your whole advertising budget and have very little to show for it.

It definitely helps to know what you’re doing. But perhaps even more important is knowing what not to do when setting up your Facebook Ads campaigns, which is the reason we created this post. And who better to walk you through this particular minefield than a group of experts that work with the Facebook advertising platform day-in, day-out, and between them have managed a mind-boggling amount of advertising dollars.

In total, we spoke with over 40 Facebook Ads consultants, strategists and specialists, and asked them each the following question: “Can you name one mistake you commonly see made with Facebook Ads, and provide some ideas on how it can be avoided or fixed?” The result? A boatload of insights and actionable advice that should help steer your campaign from frustratingly mediocre (or certain doom…I was being optimistic) to the joyful feeling of “it’s working!!!”

The Most Common Errors Made with Facebook Ads

Before we run through the entire list that we curated for this article, we want to take a moment to highlight the main ones to watch out for. Part of our research process involved asking each expert to name the three most common Facebook Ads mistakes that they encounter. Any that were mentioned more than 5 times made it onto the chart below.

As you can quickly see, in our survey we found that not getting the pixel set up properly, not putting the time in to test the various elements of your ads and not putting your ads in front of the right people are the three most common ways that people slip up when advertising on Facebook.

45 Facebook Ads Mistakes to Avoid

Below you’ll find a pretty comprehensive list of Facebook Ads errors, with some more common than others, and a spread of mistakes that range from “rookie” to slightly more complex. However, they do all share one thing in common…they’ll all harm your campaigns in one way or another.

Not Using Persuasive Ad Copy (Sarah Sal)
Not Creating Segmented Retargeting Audiences (Becky Hopkin)
Using the Wrong Campaign Objective (Kirsty Saint)
Not Utilizing Captions in Video Ads (Akvile DeFazio)
Not Excluding Past Purchasers (Hunter Durham)
Landing Page Issues (Claire White)
Poor or Unclear Ad Messaging (Leah Mazur)
Forgetting About Other Marketing Methods and Organic Social Media to Support Facebook Advertising (Ali Wheeler)
Not Excluding BOF from TOF and Confusing Your Messaging TOF/MOF/BOF (Mel Eilers)
Not Testing Enough – Creatives, Copy and Audiences (Rebecca Perkins)
Ignoring the Impact of Relevance on Ad Costs (Annette Clubley)
Boosting Facebook Posts (Ashley Boston)
Touching Campaigns Too Soon and Too Often (Miles Bonanno)
Not Understanding the Power of DPAs in eCommerce Retargeting (Rose Taylor-Brown)
Too Narrow/Specific Targeting (Paulina Poliszewska)
Showing the Same Ad to a Person More Than Once (Brian Meert)
Not Taking Advantage of Custom Placement Aspect Ratios (Aashay Shah)
Not Using Video View Ads to Build Warm Audiences (Amy Bliefnick)
Not Using One Ad ID Across Multiple Ad Sets (Terry Foster)
Using Facebook’s ‘Lowest Cost’ Bid Strategy Like Everyone Else (Robin Brooks)
Abandoning Your Ads after Setting Up (Rome Nicolas)
Not Using the Correct Custom Conversion or Event (Jayne Day)
Not Hooking Your Clients’ Attention in the First 3 Seconds (Yesim Saydan)
Forgetting to Leverage Existing Customer Data (Ashley Monk)
Not Making Sure The Fundamentals Are In Place Before Campaign Launch (Sally McInerney)
Not Doing the Hard Work First in Understanding Your Customer Avatar (Jamie Forrest)
Not Understanding Facebook Fraud (Dorothy Illson)
Not Using User (or Influencer) Generated Content in Ads (Sam Weber)
Failing to Test Ad Copy Hooks (Stirling Gardner)
Not Installing the Facebook Pixel (Alyssa Ege)
Huge Expectations from Low Budgets (Rachel Lewis)
Failing to Hone in on the Benefits of Your Offering (Paula Gilbert)
Sending Traffic to Slow Loading Website (Debbie Friend)
The Content Facebook Doesn’t Like in Ads – What to Watch Out For (Suzanne Potter)
Neglecting the Importance of the Headline (Paula O’Sullivan)
Not Leveraging Lookalike Audiences (Sandy Sidhu)
Not Giving the Facebook Algorithm Enough Control (Sufian Asghar)
A New Pixel Needs to Be “Seasoned” (Natasha Leonards)
Running One Ad in Isolation and Not Thinking About the Follow-Up (Samantha Pilling)
Expecting to Win with Your First Campaign (Jonathan Howkins)
Poor Ad Account Organization (Logan R Mayville)
Not Building Trust First (Stefan Wesley)
Changing the Budget to Scale a Campaign (Jacob Malherbe)
Not Having a Big Enough Budget (Casey Willow)
Not Re-Targeting Your Website Visitors (Laura Faragher)

Have you made any of these mistakes before? Or perhaps you’ve committed a Facebook Ads sin that we haven’t covered? If so, we’d love to hear from you in the comments section at the end of the article!

What the Experts Said: Facebook Ads Mistakes Examined

In this section, you can read in more depth what our Facebook Ads experts had to say. Each will outline a mistake they commonly see people make when using the Facebook advertising platform, and will then run through some ideas to help you avoid falling foul of the same issues.

There’s a lot of invaluable advice included and tips that will help you move the needle and improve your results with Facebook Ads. So grab a coffee and get learning!

Use the handy filter below if you want to jump straight to something specific.

{"filter_mode":"masonry"}

Jacob Malherbe

Jacob Malherbe is a Facebook marketing expert, helping law firms get the most from the social network. His company X Social Media LLC are working with 350 law firms doing direct response advertising for most Mass Torts Cases. X Social Media LLC has grown by more then 2,500 % over the last 3 years and spent 51 million on Facebook advertising in 2019.

https://www.xsocialmedia.com/

Changing the Budget to Scale a Campaign – “Scaling Facebook Campaigns has always been difficult for most Facebook managers so here are some suggestions to do it right.

The first rule of thumb is to never, ever just change the budget on a live Facebook campaign as a way of scaling the campaign. When you just do that, the algorithm that is trying to find the right people to show your ad to will get shocked and your campaign performance will go downhill fast — it will not be a good outcome.

Instead, here are two ways of scaling Facebook campaigns that work:

1) The first way to scale a campaign is to duplicate the campaign into a new campaign that would start up with whatever budget you want to run. Now don’t shut down the old campaign – just increase the budget on the new duplicated campaign to whatever you want to scale to cumulatively. The only risk with this strategy is again the Facebook algorithm, as the first conversions you get on the new campaign will determine that campaign’s outcome and if it becomes as successful as the original campaign. If you have started with good targeting then this should be an easy way to scale.

2) The second way to scale is by using Facebook rules. Here you would set up your rules on which conditions need to be met for Facebook to automatically scale the campaign. You can set a target per objective (leads, Sales, etc.) and when the conditions are met FB will automatically scale the budget by your set % each day at 12.00AM. The timing is very important as that is when Facebook starts the new budget. So make sure that has been selected. The maximum suggested scaling with FB Rules is 10% every 24-48 hours at 12.00 AM (midnight).

These are two time-tested ways of scaling your Facebook campaigns.”

Sally McInerney

Facebook and Instagram Ad Agency Owner

https://rockit-social.com/

Not Making Sure The Fundamentals Are In Place Before Campaign Launch – “Facebook ads are too often seen as a panacea for growth and profits.

“Experts” make wild claims about their “secrets” to making money via Facebook ads. It’s all too easy and tempting to fall for this over-simplified solution to successfully running ads.

Whilst it can be pretty lucrative for many businesses – there are a number of other REALLY important factors which you must consider before attempting to invest in ads…

Here are a few of them.

1) Website/Landing Page Conversion Rate – If you have an ecommerce store you need to look at an average site conversion rate of 2%. If you are trying to convert traffic that lands on a landing page – it will need to be converting at 20%. These are really important metrics as even if you have the best quality traffic landing on your site – if it’s not converting that traffic – you are wasting a ton of your investment. This metric is the biggest influencing factor in driving a good ROAS for your ads.

2) Abandon Cart Rate – Ideally, you shouldn’t have any more than 68% abandoned carts. If you do – there is an issue at cart level (shipping, payment options, lengthy checkout). This is a very common bottleneck to experience and is usually down to high shipping costs.

3) A Good Offer/ Hook – You HAVE to give people a reason to give your service or product a go. Don’t under-estimate the power of a great discount for new customers, a really generous free gift or some incredible reviews that give instant trust to your brand. Although you may be reluctant to give large discounts – if you want to grow your brand’s sales online – its something you must have worked into your strategy. Remember – the important metric here is to look at Lifetime Value of a customer – it may mean you break even on their first purchase, but then you need to focus on building that lifetime value and suddenly that initial CPA looks pretty good!

4) Promote Tested, Winning Product – You might have a whole range of product/services and it’s easy to think the best plan would be to promote EVERYTHING so that you cover all bases. WRONG! Pick that product that you know flies off the shelf and is an easy consideration for the consumer. Once you focus on that winning product, you can focus your targeting, copy and messaging on exactly who that product serves and what their pain points and desires might be. Once you’ve converted customers with the no brainer product – you can up-sell all your other items!”

Paula O'Sullivan

Social Media Strategist, Facebook Ad Specialist, Founder of Possum Digital

http://www.possumdigital.com.au

Neglecting the Importance of the Headline – “The best Facebook Ad campaigns pay attention to ALL the elements of the creative, especially the headline text. This is the large, bold text directly under the image or video, and when written well, can help increase engagement with your ads.

While this text is not the part of the ad seen first (especially on mobile), the headline copy is what can make someone ‘stop the scroll’ and really take a look at your offering. It’s a way of reinforcing your key message before the Facebook user moves through the rest of their feed.

My top 3 tips for creating an eye capturing headline:

1) Be Clear and Concise – This is not the place for long, flowing sentences. Get to the point, and fast.

2) Inspire Curiosity – While I never recommend ‘clickbait’ type copy, you have around 5 words to grab their attention, so use them well.

3) Tell People What You Want Them to Do – Give them a clear call to action.”

Sam Weber

Performance Marketing Consultant based in Melbourne, Australia that has helped grow over 2,000 small to enterprise scale businesses through Facebook and Instagram Ads.

http://weberdigital.com.au

Not Using User (or Influencer) Generated Content in Ads – “One of the biggest mistakes I see from Facebook advertisers is not using user (or influencer) generated content in their ads.

Especially at the bottom of the marketing funnel, UGC/IGC is pivotal in building trust with the audience.

We often forget that people are on social media, primarily, to connect with their friends in an authentic manner.

So why break up their consumption of content with a salesy, emotionless ad?

Time and time again, across the thousands of Facebook Ads I’ve run, the organic-styled, iPhone shot creative of someone using the product or service significantly outperforms the more polished and production-heavy one.

And not just for clicks.

But quality leads and purchases.

Don’t forget that it’s significantly cheaper (most times even free) to generate this content than the typical polished photo/video. So as well as reducing your marketing expenses it’s simultaneously lifting your revenue.

Social media users today see through bulls**t – so show them reality.”

Jayne Day

I am an online marketing strategist and business coach. I help coaches, consultants, online experts and service-based business owners build thriving, profitable businesses and grow their reach online.

https://webonize.com.au

Not Using the Correct Custom Conversion or Event – “When business owners start using Facebook Advertising they often set up their custom conversion incorrectly or use the wrong one when setting up their conversion event in their ad sets, which greatly impact the results that they have.

For example, you may be using Facebook Ads for lead generation and to build your email database. To do this you may be offering a lead magnet such as an eBook. You need to have the campaign set up with the conversion objective and then have the custom conversion created to track the URL that people land on after they submit their email address and not the landing page before they submit their details.

If you don’t have this set up correctly Facebook just assumes you want people to land on that page and not take the desired action of submitting their details.

This then affects the people that Facebook shows your ads to and won’t necessarily show it to people that are more likely to take the entire action we want them to.

Another example is if you have an ecommerce store and you want to drive sales – you want to ensure you have the custom conversion or event set for completed checkout and not just add to cart. It is the final sale that you want and this is what you want Facebook to optimise your ads for.”

Stirling Gardner

Former Hollywood writer turned digital marketer and agency owner. Creator of Launch Perfect™ where we have gotten 43x ROI for our clients. We partner with businesses who are ready to scale fast. Consider us rocket fuel for your business revenue..

http://www.StacktDigital.com

Failing to Test Ad Copy Hooks – “The #1 thing, even the biggest agencies get wrong, is how to write and test their ads so they are set up for maximum profitability.

More often than not, I have found that most Facebook Ads agencies don’t even write the ad copy for their clients. Say what? That’s like buying a brand new car but it doesn’t come with seats or a steering wheel.

Even the agencies that do write ad copy for their clients do 1 or 2 versions and call it a day. They tell their clients they are “split testing” and when the ads don’t perform, they’ll rattle off 100 excuses why. The client knows in their heart something is amiss, but out of convenience, they stick with the agency till several months have gone by and they’ve lost a ton of money (on ad spend and agency fees).

You do not have to suffer through this anymore!

BACKSTORY:

The prevailing wisdom taught by every Facebook ads “guru” is that the success of the ads comes down to the creative (the image or video that goes with the ad copy).

Why? Because adding a bunch of stock photos (or client photos) as a “test” is a lot less effort than testing your ad copy.

But when you test multiple variations of copy “hooks,” (what I call the first 2-3 sentences before a reader has to click “read more”), the extra effort will pay off in spades.

We have seen CPAs (Cost per Acquisition) drop by as much as 6x. Yes, across multiple client accounts in a wide variety of niches.

The Ad “Fix” that will get you 6x the results

When we set out to launch a new ad campaign, the first thing we test are the hooks. We have found that if you leave every other piece of the ad constant (audiences, creative, placements, and even body copy – the copy that comes after the hook) that the hook is the #1 biggest needle mover to profitability.

And here’s the real kicker… the hooks we test aren’t crazy different! The difference in saying “How We Multiplied Our Client’s Revenue 6x Using ‘The Hook Method’” could yield widely different results than “‘The Hook Method’: How We 6x-ed Our Client Results!” Of course, not all of our hooks are that similar, but you get the point.

Here are the steps we use to achieve these types of results:
1. We write the entire copy of the ad first… we specialize in longer form ad copy but this method works with short copy, too.
2. We then brainstorm 15-20 hooks to test.
3. We put each of those ads with different hooks (keeping everything else the same: creative, audiences, etc) in one campaign with one only one ad per audience (or ad set as Facebook likes to call it). To simplify… if we want to test 20 hooks, we create one campaign with 20 ad sets and one ad with a unique hook per ad set.
4. We leave everything else the same, run it for 3 days and voila! You are going to see something incredible… 1-3 of those hooks will stand head and shoulders above the others when it comes to performance.
5. We shut down the other 17 ads and scale the winners.
6. From there, we will start to test creative and then finally audiences.
We have seen winning ads run for literally years. So, no agency can ever use the “your ads fatigued” excuse again.

Good luck testing and experiencing truly high-performance ads!”

Rebecca Perkins

Rebecca has extensive experience working with many different types of organisations - big and small - on their Google, Facebook and Instagram Ads campaigns. She loves using her analytical background and in-depth knowledge of the platforms to help businesses and charities get great results.

http://www.rebeccaperkins.co.uk

Not Testing Enough (Creatives, Copy and Audiences) – “When Facebook ads don’t deliver stellar results quickly, businesses often conclude the platform isn’t for them. But this is rarely the case. Sadly, securing tangible results from ads isn’t as straightforward as choosing an image, drafting an ad, picking a few interests, and watching the money roll in.

You might get lucky, but usually it takes weeks, if not months, of testing to really optimise campaigns and to get the results you’re looking for, whether that’s sales, leads, donations, or something else.

Solution:

It’s a good idea to treat the first couple of months of any campaign as a data-gathering exercise: you’re getting valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t, and these can set you up for consistent returns in the future. As long as you have the Pixel correctly installed, the data you gather can also be used to build audiences that you can retarget in the future.

There are lots of different variables to test: copy, creatives, audiences, campaign objective, placements, the inclusion of call to action buttons, different headlines. Don’t do it all at once! It’s important to have a strategy so that you can disentangle how each variable affects the results.

How many audiences you can test comes down to your budget. With less budget, it will take you longer to get results. That’s fine, but I would advise not spreading the budget you do have too thinly across lots of different ad sets. It’s a better bet to test audiences concurrently and to draw conclusions that way.

So what might a sensible testing strategy look like? Supposing you had a budget of £50 a day, you might want to test five audiences in five different ad sets. Within each of these, you could have three or four different ads. The crucial thing is to just change one variable at a time. So perhaps start by focusing on the creative – maybe testing a video, single image, and carousel – and keeping the copy, headline, and everything else exactly the same across all the ads.

Once you’ve gathered enough data, you can then optimise where you need to, switch off the ads and audiences that aren’t getting good results, field in more creatives, switch up the copy, or whatever else you decide to test next.

Sometimes there’s a clear winner that gets great results across all ad sets, but often the results are surprising. Different creatives appeal to different audiences and sometimes what’s been a surefire success for one account, won’t necessarily translate well to a different sector or product. It’s only by trying things out and analysing the results in a strategic way that you can really optimise your digital advertising campaigns.”

Rose Taylor-Brown

Rose is the founder of Juno Six, a small boutique agency specialising in paid social media ads for e-commerce, experience and travel businesses. She also mentors on Emma Van Heusen’s Facebook Adcelerator training course and loves nothing better than getting stuck into Facebook's analytics, tracking and attribution!

http://linkedin.com/in/brownrosemary

Not Understanding the Power of DPAs in eCommerce Retargeting – “Personalisation and relevance are key to customer-centric marketing and, as consumers, we’re all looking for a great experience. So if your Facebook ads eCommerce retargeting strategy doesn’t include Dynamic Product Ads, you’re simply leaving money on the table.

Dynamic Product Ads, or DPAs, are a very powerful tool to tailor your retargeting ads to each potential customer, and the best thing about them is that businesses both big and small are boosting their sales thanks to their potential for personalising at scale.

How Do They Work?

To be able to show the exact products back to people who have viewed them on your site, you first need to be set up correctly.

1. You need a Business Manager account to run DPAs.

2.You need to have the Facebook Base Pixel installed sitewide and need to make sure Facebook can track the key actions your customers are taking. As a minimum, you need to be tracking:
- View Content – this will fire every time someone clicks onto a product page and will share information so Facebook knows which product has been viewed.
- Add To Cart – these people are showing a higher purchase intent than just viewing products
- Purchase – this is the action that, ultimately, you want your customers to take so it’s a valuable action to track. In the case of DPAs, Facebook needs to know who has already purchased so they don’t waste your money retargeting someone who has already completed their purchase within your desired retargeting timeframe.
3. You need to create a catalog which allows Facebook to connect to your website. A catalog is simply a container that holds all the product information from your eCommerce site, such as product IDs, price, descriptions, colours, etc. How to create the catalog feed will depend on the platform your store is built on and Facebook lists some integrations and information on creating the catalog for these. You can also upload products manually but it’s worth noting that you’ll have to manually update it when products go out of stock, and if your store has hundreds of products, this just doesn’t make sense.

Once you have created your catalog and connected it to your pixel tracking in Catalog Manager (under Events along the left side of the screen), then you should be good to go with your retargeting DPAs.

Harnessing the Power

Now you are set up, you create a Catalog Sales campaign and can go through your ad set up as normal, making sure to pull in the correct catalog at the campaign level. However, ideally, you do need to make sure you have a minimum of 750-1000 unique people in your retargeting audience to make DPAs work.

Retargeting people with relevant products not only helps to remove barriers to purchasing – Did they just forget to check out? Did they need to consider the purchase for longer? – but it also helps increase the FOMO/desire for the product by putting it back in front of them and, combined with the right messaging, can help shoppers to get over the line to a purchase. Simply put, breaking down barriers to purchase is what DPAs do smartly and effectively.

And with big enough audiences you can even take your personalisation further by creating DPA retargeting stacks to show potential customers the products they have looked at, at the right time, and with different messaging depending on when they viewed or added to cart. You could consider splitting your DPA audiences down and retarget them with a reminder message for days 1-3 post-viewing, trust copy on days 4-6 and an offer on days 7-10, for example, making the overall customer journey much more personalised to your potential customers.”

Claire White

I help businesses utilise the power of Facebook advertising by offering a 'done for you' service or by guiding you through the steps to enable you to run your own.

http://www.alphabet-street.com

Landing Page Issues – “You’ve decided to run a Facebook ad, you’ve picked your objective, targeted like a laser, got your offer nailed and the creatives are looking super good and you’re feeling pretty pleased with yourself. How’s your landing page looking though?

First off, is your landing page relevant to the message you are sending out in your ad? If you’re a Pilates studio targeting beginners in your ad, don’t send them to the advanced class booking page. Consistency is the key. It needs to match up with your ad.

So, you know the rules about before and after shots – you can’t use them in your ads. Ok, that’s fine but surely it doesn’t matter if they’re on the landing page? I’m afraid it does my friend. Your landing page will be looked at too during the ad approval process and your ad may, as a consequence, not be given the chance to get out of the gates. The same goes for wild promises that can’t be proven (make £10k a day guaranteed – that sort of thing).

Does your landing page load in a timely manner? We are not a patient species in general and you may be losing leads/sales. Your sales page needs to be loading in under 5 seconds in an ideal world.

So, if you skipped straight to the end, make sure your landing pages match up with your ads, load quickly and you’re not promising anything you shouldn’t be.

Good Luck!”

Akvile DeFazio

Akvile DeFazio is the President of AKvertise, a social media advertising agency. She specializes in Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter Ads for ecommerce brands, events, mobile apps, musicians, and non-profits. Akvile is a California-based published author, international speaker, and has been published in USAToday, AdAge, and more.

https://www.akvertise.com/

Not Utilizing Captions in Video Ads – “Did you know, according to DigiDay, 85% of videos are watched without sound on Facebook. To overcome this, make sure you are sharing your story and conveying your message textually, visually, and acoustically when it comes to your Facebook video ads.

If you aren’t, add captions to have all of your bases covered and improve the chances of your new video ads performing well. Plus, we don’t want to disregard anyone that may be hearing impaired.

To add captions to your Facebook video ads, you can easily do so in the ad level under your video creative by clicking the “Edit Video” button.

Next, head over to captions and allow Facebook to quickly scan your video and generate captions for your video or if you have an SRT file, upload it to accomplish this.

If you have Facebook generate your captions for you, be sure to review them before launching as oftentimes, if the words aren’t clearly spoken, if the person speaking has an accent, or your brand name is uniquely spelt, they may be miscaptioned.

Once you are pleased with the transcription and it is grammatically correct, save and publish your new video ad.”

Dorothy Illson

Dorothy Illson is the founder of Needle’s Eye Media, a full-service digital advertising agency. With an innate talent for data-wrangling and a holistic understanding of digital marketing, Dorothy leverages a scientific approach to help her clients grow. This allows her to profitably spend several millions of dollars each year on behalf of her clients.

https://www.needleseyemedia.com/

Not Understanding Facebook Fraud – “Have you been a victim of Facebook fraud?

No, I’m not talking about fake clicks, duplicate traffic, or illegal data sharing…

… I’m talking about CREDIT.

Specifically, Facebook taking credit for conversions they aren’t responsible for.

Here’s why this happens:

Facebook’s default attribution window is 28-day click and 1-day view.

It’s the 1-day view that matters here.

Because when you allow Facebook to take credit for view-through conversions…

It’s almost guaranteed to over-report.

Remember: Your Facebook pixel is going to fire on every purchase – whether or not that person saw an ad.

But when Facebook sees that purchase…

They’re going to ask themselves “did we show this person an ad?”

If yes, then they’ll take credit for the sale.

Even if that person never stopped to read the ad or click on it.

What You Can Do About It

So, here’s a way to get a better idea of what Facebook is really responsible for.

Go into Ads Manager > Customize Columns.

In the bottom right corner, under Attribution Window, click on Comparing Windows.

Then create presets to show you the 1-Day, 7-Day, and 28-Day Click.

This will give you a much clearer picture of what Facebook has really contributed to.

It will make your numbers look worse…

But it will also give you better ammunition to scale the ads that are actually working for you.”

Miles Bonanno

Miles is a seasoned advertising veteran with over 15 years of award-winning work history helping global consumer brands grow. She is the owner of Miles Digital, an ecommerce-focused consultancy that proudly assists brands scale from earning $10K per month to six-figure stores.

https://www.milesdigital.com/

Touching Campaigns Too Soon and Too Often – “A common mistake that I see when running FB ads is touching / editing / revising new campaigns too soon and too often.

You will need to give the algorithm some time and a reasonable amount of data (1,500 impressions per ad at a minimum) before deciding if it’s a winning ad or if you need to make edits to the audience, creative or offer to see better performance.

Facebook is a data machine and you need to give it enough time to look for the perfect audience, especially for newer ad accounts. If you’ve done your homework on your audience and thoroughly thought of your creative/messaging and offer, you need to trust that FB is doing its part in searching for the right audience and placements.

Keep calm. Sit on your hands if you have to. Better yet, walk away from your laptop soon after you launch a new campaign. Whatever you do, don’t touch a fresh campaign too soon without giving it the proper time to provide you with data for your next point of action!”

Alyssa Ege

Alyssa Ege is the President at Sail Away Media, a social media marketing firm. She guides the team in crafting strategies that have delivered up to 42X return on their investment. She's been featured on WPBF News, Fit Small Business, and Voyage Miami, and lectures to business owners across the country.

https://sailawaymedia.com/

Not Installing the Facebook Pixel – “I’ve audited hundreds of Facebook advertising accounts, and one of the most common mistakes I see is forgetting to set up the Facebook pixel. The Facebook pixel is a small piece of code that is installed on your website (or any landing page you are driving traffic to).

The purpose of the Facebook pixel is to track how many people landed on your site from your ad campaigns. Without it installed, it’s nearly impossible to determine the success of your campaign (unless you are only interested in engagement on the platform itself).

Another main benefit of having the Facebook pixel installed on your website is the ability to retarget visitors. In case you’re not sure what retargeting means… Think about the last time you were shopping online but didn’t complete your purchase. And for the next week, that pair of shoes followed you all across the internet. Powerful stuff, right?

Facebook advertisers are able to retarget users by tracking their browsing history with the pixel. Retargeting campaigns typically result in the greatest ROI – so make sure you don’t miss out on this!

Installing the Facebook pixel is a simple process. All you need to do is copy the small piece of code Facebook provides and paste it into your website header. If code like this makes your head spin – it’s a simple task to pass off to your web developer.

Good luck!”

Debbie Friend

Trained in Social Media Management and Facebook Ad Strategy, Debbie worked with award winning tech start-up Personalyze and at Mediacom London before moving to New Zealand. Debbie now runs Indie Advertising, working with SMEs in multiple global locations wanting to increase their exposure online with Facebook advertising campaigns.

https://indieadvertising.co/

Sending Traffic to Slow Loading Website – “One thing many smaller businesses should ensure before running any ads on Facebook and Instagram is that they have a fast loading website. There’s thought to be at least a 40% drop off from people clicking on ads and not waiting for a website to load. This is a massive waste of ad spend.

If you optimise for landing page views rather than link clicks when driving traffic, any issues with website loading speed will usually become apparent. When looking at results, if link clicks massively outweigh landing page views it’s often a problem with the website.

Often too many pop-ups or larger images than necessary can hinder loading speed and result in a loss of many potential customers. A healthy, speedy website is definitely a prerequisite for running ads.”

Logan R Mayville

Logan Mayville helps entrepreneurs and small business owners double their leads in 30 days so they can serve more people without wasting their marketing budget.

https://loganmayville.com/

Poor Ad Account Organization – “The biggest mistake Facebook advertisers make is poor Ad Account organization, and the effects can be drastic.

The key to increasing long-term, sustainable performance is the act of organizing your ad account (and subsequent targeting and creatives) into two steps — Prospecting and retargeting.

In prospecting campaigns, you’ll target large groups of cold audiences, so it’s critical that your ad creative catches attention and stops the scroll — if you’re targeting 1 million people, a difference of .5% CTR will have a massive effect on your results down the line. If I had to pick one creative option, I would choose a 15-second video with 1) a hook in the first 3 seconds, 2) a text overlay, and 3) a clear and compelling CTA.

In retargeting campaigns, you’ll target small groups of people with an established interest in your product or service, so the primary objective of your ad creative is to persuade; not catch attention like in the prospecting campaigns. To do this, follow your buyer’s journey from attention to consideration to decision and provide material for each phase — product reviews, testimonials, comparisons, and limited availability notices can all be effective.”

Robin Brooks

Facebook Advertising Expert | Speaker | Driven Over £5M In Sales Via Facebook Ads | Messenger Bot, Product Sales and Lead Generation Campaign Specialist | Helping clients create strategy and structure across Facebook’s many products.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/robin-brooks-b416a779

Using Facebook’s ‘Lowest Cost’ Bid Strategy Like Everyone Else – “Using Facebook’s ‘Lowest Cost’ bid strategy like everyone else – Having worked in Facebook Advertising for almost a decade, I see this mistake happen all the time.

What is the Lowest Cost Bid Strategy? – It’s essentially Facebook’s default setting and the ‘auto bid’ setting where you search for all lowest-cost opportunities while spending your budget. Sounds good right? The only problem is everyone else is doing the same. Facebook is an auction after all.

One of the greatest advantages of being a Facebook Ads Freelancer is that I get to see thousands of different campaigns and how advertisers manage them. One very common misconception that I come across is the use of cost controls. To my surprise, a growing number of large-scale advertisers use automated bids and refrain from using bid caps. Instead of setting bid caps, they limit campaign or ad budgets to “control” their cost per result.

How to Solve This – Change your bid strategy from ‘Lowest Cost’ to ‘Bid Cap’. Start off by setting your stakes high, set your bid cap to twice the price of the conversion. As long as your targeting is on point and your creative is average or above, your ad will feature in front of the right people ahead of everyone else who is using lowest cost bidding. You’ve done it, you’ve broken free of the rest of the ‘auto advertisers’ out there and put your ad in front of someone who wouldn’t have seen it originally.

Naturally, you aren’t out of the woods yet. You still need to monitor and optimise as you usually would, check frequency, competition and saturation, but you have given your adset the edge.

Parting thoughts: Stay competitive, don’t follow everyone else and test, test, test.”

Paula Gilbert

I’m a Facebook ads strategist and producer, marketing consultant and Associate of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. I’m also a trademarked member of Surrey Hills Enterprises. We’re a great fit if your business has a social or ethical purpose. ✔️

http://www.gardenshedmarketing.co.uk

Failing to Hone in on the Benefits of Your Offering – “If you’re going to get one key thing right with Facebook ads do this: work out the BENEFITS OF YOUR OFFERING to your target audience.

DON’T SKIP THIS STEP!

Think about what all good posts do on Facebook – they offer VALUE to the user. They entertain, inform or educate.

So many businesses struggle with this step. They are stuck thinking about why they want to sell their product.

And when an ad is created solely from a business’s point of view, the offering can seem spammy or promotional, and people disengage.

So forget about why YOU want to sell your product and why you think it’s the bee’s knees. You need to think about it from an outside-in perspective.

Map out your audience and then work out the main reasons why they’d want your product. What are the benefits?

Here’s how to do it:

1. Build out a profile of your ideal customer. Here are some ways to do this:

Look at your users on social media, think of buyers you know, look at reviews on Amazon for similar products (this is a great one), if you can – look at Audience Insights in Business Manager (it should show if you have over 1k followers on your page). Map out your target user with demographics and their interests.

2. Now focus on this person, their hopes, dreams, their stage of life. You want to get inside their heads.

Then ask yourself – how does your product or service fit into this…What are the benefits to the user? And what problem does it solve? FRAMING YOUR CUSTOMER’S PROBLEM AROUND YOUR PRODUCT HELPS YOU FIND THE ‘FIT’.

3. Now work this into your copy, your creative, your call to action.

Remember, when a great ad really ‘speaks’ to you, it’s because the business has honed its marketing and shows empathy.

Get this stage right and your ad won’t just talk, but will sing to your audience.”

Natasha Leonards

Facebook & Instagram ads strategist and social media manager. I love to work with small businesses to help them grow and build their customer base.

http://www.awesocial.co.uk

A New Pixel Needs to Be “Seasoned” – “The pixel is the piece of data generated by your Facebook ad account to place on your website. This tracks all of your website visitors and their actions on your website. When you have a new pixel installed on your website, it is worth spending the time and budget running a traffic campaign to “season” it. This then gives Facebook data to work with and saves money, as it means Facebook then does not need to work so hard finding the right people to serve your ads. 10k pixel fires is the optimum amount of fires to season a pixel.”

Jonathan Howkins

As a Facebook Advertising specialist, I train and coach business owners and in-house marketing teams to generate more leads and sales from Facebook. With over 20 years of experience as a creative director within a marketing agency and training direct from Facebook, I can help you create campaigns that convert.

https://jonathanhowkins.com

Expecting to Win with Your First Campaign – “Are you expecting to win with your first Facebook campaign? If so, you’re in for a disappointment.

Unfortunately many business and brands are under the illusion that Facebook Advertising is the solution to all their problems.

It’s often perceived as a no-lose marketing option where you simply pay the money to Facebook and you instantly get more leads and sales.

Well, the bad news is that it just doesn’t work like that.

In fact, almost all Facebook campaigns lose money initially, because to start with you need to invest some time and money learning more about your audience, as well as refining your targeting and messaging.

The process of converting a loss-making campaign into a profitable one, is all about testing, measurement and optimisation.

Facebook has the technology and data to help you win, but only if you’re prepared to take your time and logically work through a structured process of refinement and testing to discover what really works.

This is an investment you need to be prepared to make. But it needn’t be expensive, or take much of your time.

The beauty of Facebook is that you can easily create simple campaigns, spend very small sums of money, and get some great data to help you refine your targeting and messaging, so you can reach the right people, with the right message, at the right time.

This is when you can really start winning and scaling your campaigns – and start getting some great results!

So, start with some simple Video Views campaigns or Post Engagement campaigns to identify your audience and learn what messages they engage with. You can run these campaigns for just 3-4 days, spending no more than £2 per day and get some useful data to help shape your next campaign.

You can then experiment with Traffic and Conversion campaigns when you’re ready to start testing your messaging and creative.

The journey to profitable campaigns does take a little time and investment (together with some knowledge, experience and expertise), but the long term opportunities and return on investment can be huge.”

Annette Clubley

Annette has worked with literally hundreds of businesses on their web development projects, search engine optimising their sites or advertising their business on social media. She specialises in bringing her organic and paid search strategy experience together to reduce advertising costs and help your business grow.

https://www.marketingorganised.co.uk/

Ignoring the Impact of Relevance on Ad Costs – “Facebook introduced ad relevance scores in 2015 but I still find businesses that don’t know what it is or what to do about it when they find their ad has a low quality, engagement, or conversion relevance score. As a keen analyst, I find it extraordinary that a business will not take advantage of data that could help them improve adverts.

So, what is an ad relevance score? It is a score between 1-10 that Facebook applies to an advert based on positive feedback (people liking, clicking through from or converting from an advert) and negative feedback (people hiding or reporting an advert).

Facebook reports on your advert’s relevance score in Ads Manager, showing results for Quality ranking, Engagement rate ranking, and Conversion rate ranking. Note: ad relevance diagnostics are not shown for ads that have been served less than 500 times.

Below average scores are split into the bottom 35% of adverts, bottom 20% of adverts, and bottom 10% of adverts. Average represents the 35th to 55th percentile and above average is above 55% of adverts.

Why Does this Matter to You and Your Business?

“Put simply, the higher an ad’s relevance score is, the less it will cost to be delivered.” – Facebook

You can see in the example above that a lower quality ranking has increased the cost per result by 2 pence. Across a larger campaign, this can make a significant difference. Making sure that your advert is relevant will reduce your advertising costs.

Ideas on How to Solve It

Thankfully Facebook provides a handy guide on how to fix it if your advertisements have a below-average score. Their advice is to focus on improving low rankings and move them up to average or better than average, as this has more impact than improving an already average ranking.

If Your Quality Ranking is Low – Look at your creative assets to see how they might be improved, change formats and ensure no low-quality images are used. Fine-tune your audience to make sure they are your target market.

If Your Engagement Rate Ranking is Low – Use eye-catching creative ideas to make people stop and look, and think about targeting an audience that you know will be interested in your product or service and engage with the advert.

If Your Conversion Rate Ranking is Low – Make sure that you have a clear call to action for the advert and check your landing page to make sure that it is inviting and quick to load. Target a high intent audience like those who are engaged shoppers.

“If your conversions meet your expectations, you may not need to adjust your ad.” – Facebook

Finally, do not get hung up on it! If you have set an objective or goal for your advertising campaign (you have, right?!) and your advert is meeting that objective then in the words of Facebook ‘you may not need to adjust your ad’.”

Aashay Shah

Aashay Shah is the Director of Kick Marketing, a boutique agency that focuses on helping businesses generate higher quality leads and sales through Facebook advertising.

https://www.kickmarketing.com.au/

Not Taking Advantage of Custom Placement Aspect Ratios – “No doubt, in today’s digital age, we are constantly bombarded with information and advertising with every swipe, click and scroll.

That’s why it’s never been more important for your ads to stand out from the crowd and avoid blending in with the competition.

The versatility Facebook provides throughout its vast network: Instagram, Messenger, Audience Network and so on, is truly powerful to reach a wide audience; however, this also presents challenges for business owners to have creatives that suit every placement that sits within each platform.

Have a quick look below at some of the options available:

Generally what happens is somebody may upload a single square image or video and then let Facebook determine the best placement for it.

This is very easy to set up but sometimes your ad may look like this:

I completely understand that it can become costly to get custom aspect ratio’s for every placement and potentially inefficient if creative bulk campaigns.

Where possible, these are the 3 custom placements I recommend to have different size creatives for:
- Square (most placements)
- IG Feed (1000px x 1350px)
- Stories (1080px x 1920px)
Have a look at an example from HBF Health below.

The IG Story creative takes up maximum screen ‘real estate’ yet is simple and effective.

Not many advertisers are taking advantage of the Stories placements which is why there is a massive potential to stand out in this placement currently.

Since incorporating custom IG Feed and Stories graphics, we’ve found a significantly lower cost per lead or sale for those placements.

Work with your creative team in getting a basic structure for these placements and you may be pleasantly surprised with the results they yield.”

Stefan Wesley

Stefan Wesley "The Digital Commando", is a former Armed Forces Communications Specialist turned Tech Mogul. As CEO of Sigma Digital and Founder of The Digital Commando Academy, he empowers freelancers and agencies with the skills, knowledge, and expertise to create highly-effective Facebook Ads Campaigns that turn Startups into 7-figures Businesses.

https://www.digitalcommando.io/

Not Building Trust First – “Having a great funnel or website is all well and good, but in order to generate a lead and/or sale, we first need to drive the customer from our Facebook Ad.

There is a common misconception that the offline sales process is completely different from the online sales process? Let’s take a minute to think about this, when we go into a high-street store we are usually greeted by a member of staff who will introduce themself and direct us to what we are looking for. After this, they will usually take time to listen and then educate us about the product they feel is right for our needs. If they have done this correctly we will make a purchase, right?

Think about the last 3 purchases you have made from a Facebook Ad… Were the brands totally new to you? Did you make a purchase the first time the Ad appeared on your newsfeed?…. or had you seen content from them over a period of time and then taken advantage of a great offer that they put in front of you?

If a shop assistant approaches you as soon as you enter the store and puts a random product in your face, closely followed by the words “BUY THIS NOW!”, I’m betting the chances that any of us actually purchase the product is slim to none. We don’t “Know, Like or Trust” the seller yet!

This is the No.1 Biggest Facebook Ad Mistake I see from advertisers. A brand that creates a Sales Ad and Targets a fresh audience of 1.2 million people that they think fits their target demographic without first taking the time to introduce themself or build rapport.

How to Fix it

Make sure to segment your Facebook Ads into 3 key content pillars:
1. Entertaining and Motivational
2. Educational and Value Adding
3. Lead Gen and Sales.
Firstly, use Entertaining and Motivational Facebook Ads Campaigns targeting a wide audience to generate an initial round of engagement from potentially interested Facebook Users. But remember, DO NOT TRY AND SELL THEM ANYTHING…YET!

Secondly, show ONLY Facebook users that have engaged with your Entertaining and Motivational Ads, longer-form content such as videos about your brand. A great way to do this is to tell a story. I don’t care about the lovely chair your company is selling, but I can relate to Bob who has been building them by hand for 18 years. Tell me about Bob, why he loves what he does, his family, and not only will I buy your chair, I’ll tell all my friends about Bob and how he built it when they come round for dinner. Another way to do this for the service industry is to offer free training sessions, literally showing people you can help them by actually helping them, But once again remember, DO NOT TRY AND SELL THEM ANYTHING…YET!

Last but not least it’s time to close the sale, but now you’re negotiating from a position of strength. Humans are reciprocal creatures and because you have already given them something for free or “at your expense”, they will feel a natural desire to reciprocate. This means they now know who you are, understand your brand, and what you have to offer that suits their needs and trust you to deliver on it. YES… NOW YOU CAN SELL THEM SOMETHING!

Close the sale with a selection of great offer ads BUT only show them to Facebook Users that have watched at least 50% of your video content and watch the sales start flying in!

Good luck and go and show people you can help them, by actually helping them!”

Jamie Forrest

I help turn 'OK' Facebook ads results into Great results by identifying the SPECIFIC mistakes you've made and show you how to fix them.

https://www.healthyleads.co.uk/facebook-ads-audit/

Not Doing the Hard Work First in Understanding Your Customer Avatar – “When it comes to defining their customer clearly (if you don’t know who you’re selling to, it’s hard to speak to them in an appealing way) there are two related/intertwined ways that people get this wrong – and it can be lethal to the results of their campaigns.
1. They don’t define their target customer at all in the first place, and just use generic language that (sort of) appeals to everyone.
2. If they have defined an avatar, they’ve lumped everyone in together, to some amalgamation of all their customers.
Generic Language Speaks to (and Disqualifies) Nobody

Buying is first and foremost an emotional decision, and if we don’t trust the person selling to us, we’re not going to buy, so you need to show that you UNDERSTAND THEM, and UNDERSTAND THEIR PROBLEMS.

How to Avoid Making the Same Mistake

First, define all the different groups of people that buy from you. There should be at least 3, but if you’ve got loads, then just identify the biggest few.

i.e. a massage therapy client had 3 main groups of clients – 30-45 year old mums, 40-60 year old business executives, and those recovering from injury.

Each of these personas will have different opinions/goals/pains etc, so once you’ve done that, ask yourself the following questions for each one:

1. For each one we want to know the basic demographics that define them:
1. Age
2. Gender
3. Location
4. Income
2. Then the psychographics that relate to what you’re selling:
1. What do they want?
2. What do they care about?
3. Who are their enemies?
4. What are their dreams?
5. What do they believe?
6. What are their suspicions?
7. How have they failed before?
8. What are they afraid of?
Then when you create an ad campaign, create it for just one persona at a time, and craft your message and your offer to match them.

The same treatment might solve the problem for multiple groups, but saying “a back and shoulder massage can help alleviate pain and aid recovery from injury for anyone” isn’t half as powerful as saying “if you’ve been sat at a desk for 8 hours a day for the past 20 years, you’re likely feeling pain across your lower back and aches when you get out of bed in the morning…” because it talks to a specific person.”

Rachel Lewis

Rachel is a social media obsessive, Facebook and Instagram Ads specialist and lover of bees. With a background in media and education, Rachel supports small businesses and organisations in the education sector to get the best results from their Facebook advertising campaigns.

http://www.abellasocial.co.uk

Huge Expectations from Low Budgets – “Warning – Your budget is too low for your high expectations. Reality check needed.

Facebook is not a magic money tree. Too many people have hugely unrealistic expectations of what is possible when it comes to the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). Or they simply don’t realise that you need to invest in your ad spend in order to get results.

Yes, it’s possible to get some really great results but your budget needs to be in line with both your objective and your expectations.

Here’s How to Set an Initial Realistic Budget

As a business, you may already know how much you will be willing to pay for a person to take an action from your ads, whether it’s the cost per lead or the cost per purchase but a few simple calculations can help you to decide on a realistic budget for your advertising campaign.

Here’s an example:

Think about the following for your business and campaign.

And use the following simple baseline target stats to make your calculation.

So, to get 50 people over the line on the website, at a rate of 5% conversion, we’d need to drive 1000 people to the sign-up page.

To get 1000 people to the sign-up page at a CTR of 1% we’d need to gain 100,000 impressions.

If every 1000 impressions costs £10 (CPM) then we’d need a budget or £1000.

Which is a little bit higher than £50!

Obviously, this is a rough estimate to the budget needed and any fluctuation in the baseline metrics or the conversion rate of your website will have an impact on the cost per result.

For example, if your website converts at a rate of 2% then your cost per result would rise to £50 and your campaign budget would be a suggested £2500.

The only way to more accurately assess the true cost of your campaign is to begin testing ads so that you can input your own realistic figures into the calculation.

The process of testing is so important as it allows you to find out what elements of your ads can drive the best results with the lowest CPMs and CPCs and which ads result in the best CTRs and ultimately the best cost per result.

Just remember, if you are aiming for a high revenue result, you’ll need to be realistic about your budget expectations. You’ve got to spend money to make money with Facebook Ads.”

Amy Bliefnick

Amy is a digital marketer, technology enthusiast, and lover of all things personal development. After working for a marketing automation platform brand, she built her agency 511 West to help coaches and online course creators expand their reach and get more clients through Facebook advertising and funnel optimization.

http://www.511west.com

Not Using Video View Ads to Build Warm Audiences – “The biggest mistake I see is advertisers driving new, cold audiences straight to a purchase page expecting people to buy right away. While this can work, it is VERY rare. There are many different components that go into making a campaign successful, and it just takes some testing to get it dialed in. It helps to think of it as buying data and information so you can make informed decisions.”

In order for someone to want to buy from you, there must be some trust there – trust in you (the offer) and trust in themselves. To help them trust you faster, I recommend utilizing video. Video helps people to connect with you or your product faster than any other form of content.

In Facebook Ads Manager, you can target your new, cold audiences (people who have never heard of you before), with a Video Views campaign objective.

If you already have video content or you are doing Facebook Lives, you can easily repurpose them to run as ads.

Once you have built up some views on your videos, you can create Custom Audiences of people who have viewed your videos for 25%, 50%, 75%, and 95%. You can also retarget ThruPlays, but those are either 15-second views or viewed to completion.

The more people you have in the 50%, 75%, 95% views audience, the better as they tend to be “warmer” or more engaged with the content you are sharing. Especially if your videos are on the longer side, but provide a ton of value.

To build these warm audiences, click on the menu icon in the top left, and then click on “Audiences”

Click “Create Audience” and then click on “Custom Audience”

Select “Video”

Then pick which Video View percentage you would like to retarget. Again, the longer the warmer.

Then click “Choose videos…” to pick the video ads that have the views that you would like to retarget.

Enter the number of days you would like to go back and retarget. The closer the warmer, the longer the colder. I recommend doing one for last 30 days and then another for 60,90, and/or 180.

Name your audience, and click “Create Audience” – and you’re done!

Now when you are setting up your ad set, you can select this custom audience to target as a warm audience who hopefully knows, likes, and trusts you better after watching your videos!”

Yesim Saydan

Yesim Saydan is a Social Media Strategist and Growth Hacker, helping Business Owners multiply their Sales and Brand Reach - by using social media strategically and creatively. She is a Social Media Mentor at Google’s Accelerator, while running her own Social Media Consultancy. In addition, she has been invited to speak at various conferences worldwide.

http://www.facebook.com/YourSocialMediaExpert

Not Hooking Your Clients’ Attention in the First 3 Seconds – “We live in a world where the attention span of a human is less than the one of a goldfish! If you don’t grab your ideal clients’ attention the first 3 seconds, they won’t even watch the rest of your Ad and all your effort will go to waste.

To make sure that we put this into context, let me emphasize that I am talking about the 2nd step here: How to optimize our Ads so they will be watched and engaged with as much as possible. The 1st step before that is to ensure that your Ads get in front of your ideal clients.

To ensure that your ideal clients will see your Ads, you need pay attention to 3 key elements:
- RIGHT TARGETING – Do NOT start a campaign based on Interests! (This should be your last resort after you have exhausted your Custom audiences and lookalike audiences)
- RIGHT OBJECTIVE – Determine in advance what you want to achieve with your campaign. Facebook’s AI is incredibly smart. It will help you reach your goals if you tell it what to do.
- RIGHT MEDIUM – This changes all the time. Right now Short video ads get the best results.
Now that you have the first step taken care of, and we know that your Ad is being shown to your ideal clients, let’s talk about which mistakes most Business Owners are making that waste their whole Ad budget:
1. Starting the video with an introduction that is all about themselves or the company.
2. Being very salesy, starting with a pitch.
3. Talking with little energy.
4. Making small talk.
5. Being boring and monotone.
WHAT YOU NEED TO DO INSTEAD

Remember that you are not only competing with your competitor’s Ads and other FB Ads in general, but also the baby pictures of the friends of your audience!

Your audience is NOT on Facebook to watch Ads. Actually most people hate them.

It’s YOUR job to give them a reason to watch your Ad. And that’s why the hook – what you do in the first 3 seconds – plays a huge role. You need to have something at the very beginning of your Video Ad (in the case of a photo, then use something striking in the photo) that grabs their attention right away!

How you ask?
1. Start your video with a relatable question that talks about the pain of your ideal clients and hooks their attention right away. A great example of this is Dean Graziosi’s Ad, where he paid Larry King a HUGE sum of money to introduce him at the beginning of his Ad. Dean thought that he would grab tons of eyeballs, since Larry King had a huge following but the Ad flopped. Why? Because Dean was not famous then. Although he had created a great video, very few people watched the part after the introduction. The beginning of the video was this: ‘I am live here with Dean Graziosi. He is the Author of X, does XYZ.’ Why do you think that the Ad performed so bad, even when Dean used a big Influencer to market him? There was nothing that stopped the audience from the distractions in their lives, so they didn’t pay attention to the rest. But when Dean changed the hook – the beginning of his video – the Ad became a huge success. A tiny little thing that turned it from an Ad that almost no one watched fully to a viral one. What was that little thing? Instead of Larry King introducing Dean, Larry started off the video by saying: ‘Have you ever thought in your adult life that you would be further ahead by now?’ Do you realize how much more impactful that first sentence is? How it would make you stop what you’re doing and want to pay attention to what else he says in the video? We can all relate to that question.
2. Talk about the RESULT you can help visitors achieve in one sentence. Don’t go into a sales pitch or your lengthy story yet. People don’t want to buy a pill. They want their headache to go away. Give the audience a one-liner, where they can see that you have the solution to their pain.
3. Provide social proof. This may be a result you helped many people get or even just one person in particular that makes a strong case: ‘John lived his entire life with claustrophobia, not even leaving his apartment. And yet after 1 month of trying our X Formula, he is skydiving’
After grabbing their attention with a burning question that occupies the minds of your ideal clients and a sentence that ‘indirectly’ says shortly and sweetly how you are an expert in this topic, introduce yourself and tell them your personal story of transformation.”

Leah Mazur

Leah worked for Canada's #1 Facebook advertiser before starting her consulting business in 2017. She manages advertising campaigns for clients in a variety of industries including startups, mobile app companies, and online learning.

https://loopdigital.ca

Poor or Unclear Ad Messaging – “An engaging message and a clear offer are the most important things for effective Facebook ads.

No one is going to stop to read an ad that’s not interesting, and if it’s not clear, they won’t take the time to try to figure out what you are offering.

Spend time on your ad copy and visuals to make them communicate your message simply and clearly, and in a way that focuses on what’s in it for THEM.

Your ad copy should include:

1. An Engaging Way to Capture Attention in the Newsfeed

The first sentence of your ad copy is crucial for catching interest from your ideal prospect. Don’t use this to talk about yourself. Find an attractive hook to pique interest.

2. Messaging that Qualifies the Audience

Keep your exact audience in mind when writing your copy so that they know it’s for them. If the right people don’t find it relatable, you could be attracting the wrong people. For example, if your ad copy mentions feeling broke but you’re selling a high-ticket item, you’re probably not going to attract people who want to invest the price of your product.

3. A Clear Description of the Offer

What exactly are you offering, and what are the benefits for the audience? Why should they care? I often use bullets in my copy to convey what’s included in an easy to read format.

4. A Call to Action to the Next Step

Finish with instructions for what you want them to do next. You should make it as easy as possible for them to take you up on your offer. For example:
- Click to download the free guide
- Start shopping today
- Install the app to learn more
This tip isn’t as straight-forward to implement as something more technical like a change to targeting or the pixel. But I truly believe that the messaging is where most advertisers mess up with their ads and where I’ve seen the biggest improvements to campaign effectiveness.

You can be targeting the perfect audience, and have all your configurations set up properly, but without copy that attracts the right people and encourages them to take the next step, it’s likely your campaign will flop.

If you want to really move the needle on your campaign results, focus on your messaging!”

Mel Eilers

Mel is a super, switched-on Facebook Ads specialist and owner of Socially Sound. Specialising in sport, lifestyle and event brands, Mel uses data-driven decisions to get clients the most value from their FB budget.

http://www.sociallysound.co.uk

Not Excluding BOF from TOF and Confusing Your Messaging TOF/MOF/BOF – “Just a load of acronyms right? Yep.. but important ones, and ones you need to understand when running Facebook Ads. What do they stand for? Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel and Bottom of Funnel.

TOF is your cold audience, people who have never heard of you and know nothing about what you do or sell. MOF is your warm audience, those who have heard from you, but possibly not bought/worked with you – yet. BOF is your hottest audience. They know who you are, have bought from you or worked with you before.

The funnel works by pouring large numbers of cold audiences in at the top, taking them on a journey of your product/service via ads with the appropriate messaging. As they move through the funnel, they get warmer, creating your ‘hot’ audience at the BOF.

Depending on your product or service, your sales funnel may be shorter, or longer. If you were running low-ticket e-commerce ads (products under £50) you may not use MOF. If, however you were running ads for a high-ticket coaching programme that cost £5,000 there would be more stages in your funnel to ‘warm-up’ your audience.

Understanding your different audiences ensures they receive the right message relevant to where they are in their customer journey with you. If you don’t craft your message to where the recipient is in the customer journey, it can be confusing… and annoying!

Let’s say you are a loyal subscriber to a product. Purely for explanation purposes, let’s say it’s coffee. As a subscriber you receive 5 different coffee flavours/products to try each month. You pay a certain price upfront each month and it’s delivered to your door. This would make you part of that brand’s BOF audience – ie. you know the brand, you buy from them.

Then say you’re browsing Facebook and you’re served an ad for one of those subscription boxes. It contains the same products as the box you’ve already received. It talks about all the great coffee flavours, talks about home delivery and provides brand credibility and – what’s this – they get their second month for free?!

So, what’s the problem?

1. Firstly, the brand is spending money on ads that are reaching existing subscribers. The imagery and the messaging is suitable for a TOF audience, but it’s being seen by a BOF audience – an audience that already knows you and buys from you. An audience that doesn’t need to know about brand credibility and/or home delivery – because they already buy from you. How do you stop this happening? If you want to attract new customers – and spend your budget wisely on ads – you need to exclude your BOF audiences from your TOF ads. This will ensure your ads are only being served to potential new customers.

2. The existing subscriber is seeing products it has already received. They don’t need to see these ads – it’s pointless and a waste of money. It’s also annoying – they are likely to just scroll on and totally ignore your ad, because it’s not relevant. They may also be seeing an offer that they were not privy to themselves – which could be annoying. As a brand, you need to nurture your BOF audience. Maybe serve them ads that showcase your brand’s other products – DPAs are good for this. Try to upsell them other products that they might be interested in – with a hook (discount code, one-time/limited-time offer). The messaging here, for example, could read: “As a loyal customer, why not try our exclusive range of coffee syrups? Currently only available to subscribers. Save 10% on your first order.”

Regardless of discounts/offers/hooks (which have their place at all points of the funnel), my point here is that the messaging you use throughout your funnel needs to be appropriate to the audience it is being served to.

TOF of funnel (potential new customers) need to know why/how your products/services will help them, what pain points they answer. You need to make them curious about your brand, wanting to know more about what you offer and – importantly – your brand credibility.

One of the keys to successful FB ads is being able to serve your audience with the right ad at the right time. Once they have bought from you, they need to feel nurtured and valued as a customer. Here, the messaging needs to change. Add value, upsell, maybe create offers purely for existing customers. Serving the wrong message to the wrong audience or – as I also commonly see – using one message to serve all stages of the funnel, won’t do you any favours.

Another of the keys to successful FB ads is planning. Plan your messaging, plan your images. Know your client avatars and write accordingly – and do all this ahead of time, so you can really hone your tone and attract the right people to your brand.”

Terry Foster

Terry Foster is the founder of Terry Foster Consulting Services, which specializes in creating profitable digital media channels for small and minority-owned businesses. Terry has managed over $15 million dollars of ad spend on 10 different paid traffic channels, resulting in over $75 million dollars of sales for his clients.

http://www.terryfosterconsulting.com

Not Using One Ad ID Across Multiple Ad Sets – “This is a mistake that is definitely overlooked by many – and it can be costly.

When you duplicate an ad set in Ads Manager you will create duplicate ads BUT the Ad ID will be different. The problem with this is that it negatively impacts your social proof.

You can verify your Ad ID’s by clicking on “Page Posts’ in Ads Manager. You then want to view ‘ad posts’. Take a look at an example I was able to dig up on a client’s account.

This is the exact same ad but it has two different ID’s.

This means that each one will separately track its reach and engagement.

It also means that you are losing out on an opportunity to garner more social proof by having all of the engagement tied to one ad.

It is much better to have 1 ad with 100 likes than to have 10 ads with 10 likes. When people engage with your ad that is a positive sign to Facebook.

As a result, your ads will be delivered cheaper. It is also easier to manage the comments on an ad if there is only one Ad ID.

How to Win
1. Create your “BASE” ad.
2. Locate the post id of your “BASE” ad.
3. Duplicate your ad sets, but afterwards, you will need to update the ad to ‘Use Existing Post’ and supply the Ad ID that you just created.
Now all of the ads will be tied to the same Ad ID and your social proof will be amplified!

If you would like to see me demonstrate this via a video then just click here”

Paulina Poliszewska

Paulina is a Digital Marketer who specializes in Performance Facebook Advertising. She has managed approximately £2M in ad spend for small to medium size e-commerce businesses and helped them to scale quickly. She also runs her own successful e-commerce store.

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/paulina-poliszewska-b6810391

Too Narrow/Specific Targeting – “Many inexperienced advertisers try to reach their customers by narrowing the targeting to a very specific group of people. E.g. advertising a beauty product only to people who live in particular cities, who are between 25-40, who like similar cosmetic brands and ALSO like Kim Kardashian.

Although it looks like you have defined your perfect audience, typically your highly-targeted ads will reach a very small number of people. This way, you will not only quickly saturate your audience, but miss out on many sales opportunities, which will likely increase your CPA, lower the sales volume and effectively sabotage your campaign results.

The Solution:
1. Avoid applying multiple restrictions – choose interests that are relevant to your product, you might even group them if they are similar, but avoid narrowing your audience further.
2. If you can, keep the age and gender targeting open and geotargeting – countrywide.
3. Keep an eye on the audience size – if it’s less than 200k, try to broaden it.
4. Test completely broad targeting (no targeting settings).
Most of all, learn to trust the Facebook ad algorithm. Facebook’s algorithm looks for the cheapest way to reach your goals within your audience. Depending on your campaign objective, it allows you to find the lowest cost conversions/clicks/engagement within the audience you are targeting – so the bigger the audience, the more chances you get to reach customers and the faster you can scale.

The algorithm is smarter than the most experienced advertisers so let it work its magic :-)”

Suzanne Potter

Suzanne is an experienced Marketer, Social Media Manager and Facebook Ad Strategist based on the South Coast of England. Founder of Spring Marketing & Social, Suzanne works closely with clients to deliver strategy, implementation and training to help them connect with their audiences and grow their brand.

http://www.springmarketingandsocial.com

The Content Facebook Doesn’t Like in Ads – What to Watch Out For – “Bill Bernbach said “Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make”

So, the question is, how do you make a good impression? A lot of advertisers will consider this question and think of the end-user, forgetting there’s somebody else crashing the party – the bots and moderators who will approve your ad before it even gets in front of your audience.

So how do you write and design your ad so that it flies through the approvals process and starts delivering?

One of the first things to remember is that Facebook ultimately aims to put the user experience at the heart of the platform. So that means it’s looking for ads that fit nicely into the users feed, attract attention in a positive way and don’t make the reader feel bad in any way.

Where Do I Start?

The first thing to do is to make sure you aren’t using any of the red flags that Facebook looks for when your ad goes to review. Some of them really are common sense – don’t swear, discriminate or use any type of sexual imagery or innuendo, but others are a little less obvious.

Let’s take a look at some of the things to avoid in your ads and how to create some workarounds that will get your ad through the all-important approvals process.

It’s Not What You Say, It’s How You Say It

Misleading or false claims are a big no-no when it comes to Facebook Ads copy, and rightly so. So that means no exaggerated claims, miracle cures, or talking about unrealistic outcomes within a certain time frame.

This can make ads in the healthcare or weight loss space tricky, no more “7 Quick and easy ways to lose your middle-age spread!” headlines. Instead, tone it down and talk about “Tips to tone up”. It makes it far less accusing and isn’t going to make somebody feel bad about themself.

It’s All About You

Facebook doesn’t say you can’t put “you” in your ad copy. But you do need be careful about how it’s used.

The problem comes when you write the ad copy in a way that makes it feel like the ad is directly targeting somebody and calling them out in a way that is against their advertising principles (and polite conversation).

So, for example, you can’t write “Have you been declared bankrupt?” or “Are you single and looking for romance?”, it’s way too direct and has the potential to make the reader feel bad about themselves.

Instead, try and craft your copy to call out your audience so that they relate to what you’re saying, but in a more general way; “Our financial products have everything you need”, or “Meet like-minded people online”.

Don’t Make Promises You Can’t Keep

Not many people realise that when you send your ad for review, Facebook also looks at a host of other elements, including the landing page you’re sending your traffic to. So if you’re advertising 67% off everything, but your landing page makes no mention of this discount, they will see it as an inconsistency and a sneaky way to drive traffic to your website. Not cool.

That also goes for the imagery you use on the ad – advertising beautiful jewellery which actually turns out to be cheap, cheerful plastic rubbish once you hit the website will get you a red mark too.

So, the upshot is that ads need to be as clear and transparent as possible, with landing pages to match.

Strike a Pose

How do your images look? It should go without saying that they should be clear, and in line with all the usual content restrictions. But the one that commonly catches people out is the 20% rule. This essentially guides the advertiser not to have more than 20% of the image as text as Facebook really likes an image to be an image.

Although it’s not enforced as strictly as it used to be, it’s still worth knowing because it could be a reason why your ad is being held back or rejected.

Mind Your P’s and Q’s

It may seem trivial, but you’ll also be held back if your spelling, grammar or punctuation aren’t up to scratch. In fact, poor grammar falls under Facebook’s list of prohibited content.

And don’t try and sneak in a swear word by replacing letters for symb*ls, as it’s a red flag to the bots and is highly likely to be rejected. Instead, make sure you check your spelling and grammar before the ad goes out to give yourself the biggest chance of success.

And Finally

This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the “don’ts” when it comes to ad copy, but it should give you a good start point. If you want to know more, a good place to look is the Facebook Business Help Centre pages where you can find the full list of guidelines and rules.

And if you’ve done all this and your ad is still stuck in review, remember that it can take up to 2 days to get through the process. If you haven’t had any luck, there is a form here (https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/186912391909649?hc_location=ufi) you can fill in for help, or try duplicating the campaign and sending to review again – sometimes it speeds things up.

So when you’re crafting your ads remember the golden rule that Facebook puts the user experience at the heart of the whole platform and make sure you avoid the red flags to help you run a successful campaign. Good luck!”

Sandy Sidhu

Sandy Sidhu is an accomplished ads specialist dedicated to problem-solving, analyzing results + making suggestions to the client based on their results. She loves all things technology + geeking out over Facebook ads & marketing strategies. She left the corporate world to pursue her own digital marketing business 12 years ago.

http://www.sandysidhumedia.com

Not Leveraging Lookalike Audiences – “When it comes to Facebook ads, one of the areas that leaves a lot of business owners scratching their heads is: targeting.

While many know they can target based on interests, location, demographics and behavior, Lookalike Audiences are often overlooked.

What Exactly are Lookalike Audiences?

Lookalike audiences are audiences that are similar to a source audience that you provide Facebook.

For example:
- Email List
- Customer List
- Page Engagement
- Website Visitors
- Video Views
With a Lookalike Audience, you choose a source audience and Facebook will do the rest of the heavy lifting and find more people like them, within the selected location and audience size.

Facebook will then deliver your ad to the audience of people who look like your source audience.

Things to Consider

When creating your Lookalike Audience, you can choose the size of your audience.

The smaller the size the closer it will be in terms of similarity to your source audience.

Facebook recommends the source audience be at least 1000 people.

A source audience must also contain at least 100 people for the country you would like to target in order to use it as a Lookalike Audience.

Here are some examples of Lookalike audiences that you can create:

Email list

Upload an existing email list and then create a lookalike audience off of that.

Page Engagement

You can create a custom audience of people who have engaged with your page and then create a lookalike audience.

Value Based

Upload your customer list and assign a value and let Facebook find people like your most valuable customers.

Once you set-up your lookalike audiences, you can then use them in your ad-sets.

Ultimately, with Facebook ads, it all boils down to testing and looking at the data to determine your next move.

While Lookalike audiences are still “cold” audiences, they take a lot of the guesswork out of targeting since Facebook is doing the work for you.”

Laura Faragher

Hi! I'm Laura, a freelance Facebook Ads Specialist. I specialise in helping small businesses grow using the power of Facebook Advertising. I'm passionate about making a real impact on a business's bottom line.

http://www.thepracticalmarketingacademy.com

Not Re-Targeting Your Website Visitors – “Without a doubt, the BIGGEST mistake I see business page owners making is NOT re-targeting their website visitors in their ads audiences. They’re really missing a trick!

By re-targeting people that have already been on your website, you are sending your marketing messages and getting your brand in front of people that already know about you, and potentially (as they have been browsing your website), are interested in your products and services.

An added bonus of re-targeting website visitors is that they’re what we call a “warm audience”. So conversion rates are likely to be higher, just as the cost per conversion is likely to be lower!”

Hunter Durham

Hunter Durham consulted with 100+ e-commerce businesses during his time at Facebook and many more since he left. He knows the ins and outs of the algorithms that power today's paid media platforms. Impact Industry manages budgets of over $2M+ annually.

http://impactindustry.marketing

Not Excluding Past Purchasers – “I’ve seen a lot of ad accounts consulting with 100+ businesses during my time at Facebook. My role was to coach my clients on how to spend most efficiently in the Facebook ads eco-system. One of the most common mistakes I saw is people not excluding past purchasers from their customer acquisition campaigns.

This Presents Two Problems:
1. Facebook is optimizing acquisition campaigns off past customers, not new customers who are buying for the first time.
2. It is hard to understand true acquisition costs because repeat purchasers are being included in your campaigns. And Facebook is really good at finding and attributing past customers.
When I am conducting audits, it is always a difficult conversation with the client (or even agencies) when I tell them that their performance most likely is not as good as Facebook is reporting. I recently reviewed an account where customer acquisition costs were about 3X higher than they thought because proper exclusions weren’t being applied.

How to Identify and Solve It:

When reviewing performance, one of the very first things I do is break out Facebook’s reporting window into 1-day view, 1-day, 7-day, 28-click.

What this does is allow me to see the breakdown of how Facebook is reporting the purchase event. If there is a large amount of view-through conversions, it may mean that too many past purchasers are being attributed to campaigns. View-through conversions are still important but too many likely means the results are skewed.

From a campaign level, I generally set up 3 types: Prospecting (Top of Funnel/Cold Audiences), Retargeting (Middle of the Funnel), Loyalty (Bottom of Funnel/Retention). For my prospecting and retargeting, I exclude all past purchasers 3 different ways: CSV list from E-commerce platform, Custom Website Audience, and Email Service Provider.

The reason I do it multiple ways is each type might have a separate match rate. Additionally, the pixel only collects data for 180 days. So if you have only excluded it with a 180 Past-purchaser audience with the pixel, past purchasers will be included after 6 months.

Past purchasers are still a really important targeting audience in your Facebook strategy especially during sales and key times of the year. When I do want to target past purchasers, I put them into a separate loyalty campaign, that way I can break them out from my standard reporting.”

Ali Wheeler

Ali founded her business, Society State in 2017 after working as a Marketing Specialist for 12 years across a range of industries. Today, Ali offers a ‘no fuss’ approach, delivering paid social management & training plus strategic social media, helping brands build engaged communities and drive business growth.

https://www.societystate.com.au/

Forgetting About Other Marketing Methods and Organic Social Media to Support Facebook Advertising – “If you’re relying solely on Facebook & Instagram advertising to sell your products or services – you’re in for a rude awakening.

Plenty of clients come to me and hope that Facebook Advertising can make them millions of dollars, but one of the first questions I ask them is “What other marketing and advertising are you currently doing for your business – or planning on doing”?

Many of them say “Oh I know I need to be posting on Instagram more” or “I don’t have an email list”, or “Other than posting on Instagram, nothing”…

It’s then I hear alarm bells ring in my ears. You see, my most successful clients are those that have an engaged social media following, an engaged email list or have quality leads ready to target.

In order to have successful social advertising campaigns, it is imperative that business owners don’t put all their eggs in the one basket. Facebook Advertising is a way to amplifying your other marketing efforts.

Here are six other marketing ideas you can implement to support your Facebook & Instagram Advertising:
1. Set up automatic abandon cart and system emails for your ecommerce store: this will automatically decrease your abandon cart rate, increase customer life-time-value and loyalty (hello birthday vouchers!)
2. Develop a realistic cadence of marketing emails: regular marketing emails – providing opportunities for your audience to engage, interact and buy from you via your email marketing provides another touchpoint for your business.
3. Regularly post on your social media channels: creating an engaged community online will support your Facebook Advertising efforts by creating custom audiences of engaged users to retarget with Facebook and Instagram Ads.
4. Check your engagement rate on your social media: A great way to check your Instagram engagement is using Phlanx – it’s quick and easy, and gives you a good sense of if you need to improve. A good benchmark is around 1.6% (source)
5. Set up Google Advertising: Google advertising can be an effective way of driving relevant, qualified traffic to your website exactly when people are searching for the types of products or services your business offers.
6. Get a solid SEO strategy: This can improve your search ranking and website visibility – which has a flow on effect in driving more traffic to your website.
The benefit of having an omni-channel marketing strategy, is all about optimising your audience size. If you are using Facebook & Instagram advertising with ‘warm’ audiences, and relying on your website pixel data alone – you’re limiting the number of custom audiences you can target. The time it takes to generate sales and conversions can take a lot longer – and you’ll also be missing out on creating killer lookalike audiences also!

Here are three examples of custom audiences created from other marketing efforts – to get the most out of your paid social activity:

1. Customer List: You can upload a list of customers who’ve interacted with your business. The most common is an email list, but it also could be an event list, or a list of leads from a market or exhibition (hello – real-world events). The benefit here is you can retarget them based on their prior interaction with your business and move them to the next stage of the sales funnel.

2. Video Views (from IGTV video): If you’re a regular video content creator, and uploading video to your social media accounts – creating a Video Views audience is a must! One of my favourites is creating an audience based on IGTV video views – some of the businesses I work with have thousands of people watching their IGTV video content, and being able to retarget them with conversion campaigns or website traffic campaigns is absolutely priceless!

3. Facebook Page: Creating an audience based on interactions with your Facebook page (or Instagram account) is one of the first audiences I set up for new clients. If they’ve got an engaged following on their social media – that is people interacting with organic posts, or previous ads – why not create a custom audience to retarget to. The options here are extensive, and based on varying levels of engagement including targeting people who’ve visited your page, right through to people who’ve saved your page or any post.

Before jumping headfirst into Facebook Advertising, take a step back and look at your other marketing efforts and see what can be improved or turned on first.”

Sufian Asghar

I am a Facebook ads agency owner, and have been running ads on the platform for the past two years working exclusively with eCommerce brands spending between 10k-60k p/m on Facebook

http://szn-media.co

Not Giving the Facebook Algorithm Enough Control – “Many advertisers and brands make the mistake of not taking advantage of giving Facebook more control, this means using what is known as the Facebook Power 5 which are the following:
- Dynamic Ads
- Account Simplification
- CBO
- Automatic Placements
- Auto Advanced Matching
1. Dynamic Ads – The first step in allowing Facebook more control in order to get the best results for you (by using the millions of datapoints and years of learning that the algorithm now has which allow it to optimize ads better than humans can) is using dynamic ads. This allows Facebook to deliver the right ads featuring the right products to the right people based on their specific engagement with products or services in that specific niche.

2. Account Simplification – Account simplification is one of the most powerful tools when running Facebook Ads, as fewer ads and fewer ad sets equal quicker learning phases and better optimization. Gone are the days where you need 20 or 30 campaigns in your ad account – simplifying the ad account will simplify your optimizations and make your life a whole lot easier.

3. CBO – CBO refers to campaign budget optimization whereby instead of budgets being set at the ad set level, you can now set them at the campaign level. This means that in real-time Facebook will determine which ad sets in your campaign have the best chance of generating conversions and allocate spend that way throughout the day, allowing you to spend less time in your ads manager constantly tweaking things.

4. Automatic Placements – Many advertisers and brands still use manual placements and the truth is, Facebook knows a whole lot better than you do – where to show your ads in order to get you results. By isolating placements and restricting Facebook you end up with a significantly higher cost per result than you would if you had chosen automatic placements.

5. Auto Advanced Matching – Auto advanced matching allows for better data exchange between Facebook and your site in order to assign conversions to the correct source and allow you to make better data-driven decisions for your future ad spend.”

Casey Willow

We are Casey Willow and Harry Boulton. The Willow-Boulton Group is an extension of ourselves, an ever-changing, ever-evolving structure of integrity that is representative of our passion and our ideal. Our goal is simple. We help people and their businesses reach their desired financial situation using Facebook Advertising, the best advertising platform to date.

https://www.willowboulton.co.uk/

Not Having a Big Enough Budget – “We’ve spoken with multiple brand owners who’ve been misled about the reality of creating an ROI Positive advertising campaign using Facebook Ads.

We discovered that the best budget for building a reliable campaign is £5,000 or over. We reached this conclusion during the early days of our Agency when we were working with people who didn’t have an adequate budget.

Luckily there is a formula you can use that can give you an idea of how your budget will perform against your industry-standard conversion rate and CPC/CPA.

To structure your formula, you must first find out what your CPC/CPA average based on your industry is. You can find this information online or use previous campaigns you’ve run (I would recommend using the industry standards found online).

The next bit of data you’ll need is your conversion rate and you can either use the industry-standard or use your website conversion, which you’ll be able to find on your google analytics or website hosting analytics page.

Depending on the type of campaign you’re running, you may want to pick your conversion from either your website or your Facebook channel.

The next piece of data you’re going to need is the revenue you’ll be making per conversion, for example, if you’re selling T-Shirts at £25 per shirt your revenue per conversion will be equal to £25. You can take this a step further, by incorporating your margin to get a figure on your profit per conversion, let’s say you’re selling the same T-shirts which cost you £9.80 to make and ship so your pre-tax profit would be £15.20.

Now we have all of our data lets build a scenario and work through this together.

First, to get this going you’ll have to decide on your budget, like most hopeful online brand owners you pick a budget of around £1,500 per month, not too low, but also not too high ‘just right’.

CPC: As you are in the apparel niche, your CPC is around 70p before optimising.

CPC means your Cost Per Click, so basically how much it costs you every time someone goes from your Ad to your website.

Monthly Clicks:

Your monthly clicks are the first part of this formula we calculate.

This is the number of people who go from your Ad to your website/product page.

To figure out our monthly clicks, we take our budget of £1,500 and divide it by our cost per click of 70p(0.70).

£1,500/0.70 = 2,143

Now that we have our monthly clicks we need to figure out how many of those clicks will turn into actual conversions on our site, as I said before you can either use an industry conversion rate or use one from your past data. For this example, we’ll use the industry standard of 4.11% for Apparel.

Monthly Conversions:

To figure out your monthly conversions, you take your monthly clicks and multiply them by your conversion rate.

2,143 X 4.11% (0.0411) = 88

That’s 88 purchases. Now let’s figure out how much that would be in terms of ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

ROAS:

To figure out the Return On Ad Spend we must take your total number of sales and multiply them by your product price of £25 and then take your original budget away from that figure.

ROAS = 88 X £25 – £1,500

= £700

£700 is the amount you’ve made in ROAS on this Campaign. However, we can take a step further by looking at your actual profit by factoring in the loss you make per shirt which is around 40%.

So by taking 40% of £700 (£280) away from your ROAS we’re left with a pre-tax profit of £420.

You spent £1,500 to make £420 😐

But as I said we found a sweet spot. Let’s run through the same scenario with a budget of £5,000 and see what happens.

We’ll be using the same CPC, Conversion and Product Price along with the same margin of 40%.

Let’s start with our Monthly Clicks.

£5,000 / 0.70 = 7,143.

7,143 Monthly clicks. Let’s see how many conversion we’ll get with that.

7,143 X 4.11% (0.0411) = 294

294 Sales on your store. Now let’s calculate the ROAS.

294 X £25 = £7,350

£7,350 In ROAS. Nw let’s factor our margin of 40% to see what our pre-tax profit will be.

£7,350 X 40% (0.40) = £2,940

A Loss of £2,940.

£7,350 – £2,940 = £4,410

Let’s look at the noticeable difference between both budget models.

The first budget of £1,500 produced a ROAS of £700, almost 50% of the original spend which turned into a profit of £420, 28% of the original budget.

The second budget of £5,000 produced a ROAS of £7,350, 147% of the original spend which turned into a profit of £4,410, 88% of the original budget.

This formula is in no way a sure way to predict your results, as for that we would need to factor in things like CTR, CPA, website bounce rate along with finding a way to quantify the success of your creatives.

The reason I believe that everyone who is planning to use Facebook as an actual marketing channel needs to understand this formula is because people right now are walking around saying they’ll produce ‘X’ ROI on a £2,000 budget which genuinely negatively impacts our industry. This causes business owners to reject the idea of Facebook becoming an integral part of their online marketing strategy.

Problems with This Formula
1. This formula does not take into how good your creatives and copy are. Without testing, you cannot accurately quantify how making the banner, ‘Red’ or ‘Blue’ will affect your campaign.
2. This formula cannot predict how the campaign will evolve.
3. This formula is limited by not incorporating CTR and other Facebook metrics.
4. This formula does not take into account how accurate your base targeting options are.
5. This point ties into the evolution of your campaign, but you’ll also be unable to predict how well a retargeting campaign will do using the basic version of this formula.
The main reason we recommend using a budget of £5,000 or higher is that you’ll have a lot more room to play with in terms of testing and changing the campaign variables to better suit your audiences online behaviour.”

Brian Meert

Brian Meert is the CEO of AdvertiseMint, a Hollywood based digital advertising agency that specializes in helping successful companies advertise on Facebook. Advertisemint has managed millions of dollars in digital ad spends in entertainment, fashion, finance, and software industries.

http://www.advertisemint.com/

Showing the Same Ad to a Person More Than Once – “If users see the same ad more than once, they scroll past it because they’ve already seen it and know what it’s about. This hurts your Facebook ad quality score. To solve this, you need to build segments around four areas: top funnel, middle funnel, bottom-funnel, and customers.

The top of the funnel is the first introduction to a customer. Once they interact, they are moved out of this segment. For this stage of the funnel, create an ad that is mysterious, that leaves them wanting for more information. Apple and Tesla are amazing at this.

The middle of the funnel is for users who have been to your website or engaged with your posts in the last 10 to 180 days. These are users who know about your business. Use tools such as Dynamic Creatives to create ad variants that answer questions about your business, such as the way the business works and the benefits to users. Feature testimonials, reviews, blog posts, holiday sales, and more.

Next up is the bottom of the funnel. Here are users who have been to your website in the last 10 days. Focus on running Dynamic Product ads if you’re running an e-commerce store and focus on creating ads that answer one of the five P’s (product, price, placement, promotion, people) for why people should purchase. If you run a larger e-commerce store, you can use Amazon’s approach and set up multiple ad accounts and business pages for each category of your store. Set your bid caps to 5 to 10 times your target CPA — this will allow your customers to see multiple carousel ads of your products per day. You’re now bringing your shopping experience to the customers.

Last up is your customers. Make sure not to forget about them. Leverage your data on lifetime value and create ads that offer customers first dibs on a sale, share exciting news or feature customer reviews. Everyone likes being on the winning team. There is no such thing as a perfect ad. Focus on creating a variety of ads that appear at the right time and help build a stronger relationship with your customers.”

Becky Hopkin

Becky is MD of Digital Gearbox, a specialist PPC agency. Our mission is to ensure the goals of our customers are being met, if not exceeded, through the implementation of our kick-ass PPC strategies. We exist to deliver results that our customers don’t have the time or knowledge to achieve.

https://digitalgearbox.co.uk/

Not Creating Segmented Retargeting Audiences – “Getting the Facebook Pixel installed on your website is a must-do before you run any Facebook Advertising campaigns. The pixel is a powerful piece of code that lets you measure, optimise and build audiences for your advertising campaigns.

Many marketers, having installed the pixel, plan to run a retargeting campaign to push Facebook Ads in front of people that previously visited their website. This is a solid strategy; after all, where the average website conversion rate is just 2.35%, this means 97.65% of your website visitors are leaving without doing anything.

When you’re investing time and money to drive traffic to your website, you really want to do everything you can to nurture those visitors to a point where they’re ready to convert. Retargeting ads to those visitors is one way you can do this.

The problem is too many marketers simply set up a single retargeting campaign to target all of their past website visitors with a generic message, and they then expect this to draw people back.

Whilst the mere reminder of who you are and what you’re offering might bring some people back to the site, for many this approach will be ineffective.

Retargeting becomes much more powerful when you spend some time building segmented custom audiences based on things such as the type of product or service they viewed on the website and how far down the purchase funnel they got.

This way you can better tailor ad messaging based on the type of potential customer you are speaking to, making it much more likely they will engage with the ad and ultimately convert off the back of it.

You can build your own custom audiences in the audiences section of your Business Tools, and you can create audiences using criteria such as specifying certain pages the audiences should have viewed, the time spent on the site, the event actions they have taken, and how recently they have been on your website.”

Ashley Monk

Ashley is the owner of It Media, a boutique social media agency that helps service-based business owners feel less overwhelmed about growing their business, and no longer worried about where their next client will come from. Ashley helps business owners simplify their online marketing and generate leads through Facebook ads, social media, amazing content, and email marketing.

http://byitmedia.com

Forgetting to Leverage Existing Customer Data – “Facebook advertising is simplified and lumped together with organic content by nonmarketers. But unfortunately, the platform couldn’t be more robust.

One of the greatest mistakes I see on the platform is lacking to leverage existing data.

Even if you’ve never run or optimized a campaign, your existing customer data may be your greatest asset.

So often, companies make assumptions about the target demographic they aspire to reach. But those assumptions are guesswork until tested & proven.

One of the most essential components of our onboarding process to ensure this area is addressed is by creating personas.

Before we draft a campaign, we see market research as a critical component. Through surveying & gathering existing data, we design every element of the campaign based on the customer journey & avatar up until this point.

Perhaps the most effective sample to build the best audiences that is SIGNIFICANTLY undervalued is building custom audiences.

One of the most powerful aspects of Facebook is its ability to track offline events – which comes from leveraging contact information from past customers.

By uploading this information to Facebook, the data is slashed for confidentiality, but the datapoints are mapped perfectly to create Lookalike samples.

But more importantly, uploading such information makes retargeting actual purchasing customers seamless. It also allows for even more information to track past purchase behavior.

The process is simple: simply create a custom audience directly within the ad set level. Then, download the sample CSV file provided by Facebook to accurately map your existing data to upload.

Though the step may seem tedious, it’s far greater of a cost to omit it than take the extra time to incorporate this into your campaign.”

Samantha Pilling

Sam is a highly sought-after Lead Generation & Facebook Advertising Expert with 24+ years of Media Experience. She specialises in helping coaches, consultants and expert-led businesses attract new clients and amplify their impact.

http://www.bitememarketing.co.uk

Running One Ad in Isolation and Not Thinking About the Follow-Up – “Imagine this…

You’re single. You’re looking for love. So, you decide to go to a bar in the hope of meeting someone special.

As you order your drink someone catches your eye across the room. In a heartbeat, you dash across the room, drop to your knees and propose marriage… without even asking their name!

None of us would dream of doing this in real life, would we?

So why are we doing this with our Facebook Advertising? Why do we expect a total stranger (who has never heard of us before) to make a big commitment on having only seen one Ad?

What we need to do is consider our marketing efforts (including Facebook) as a long-term-relationship, and not a one-night-stand.

How do we go about having a long-term relationship with potential customers?

1. Firstly You Need to Get on Their Radar

One of the fantastic things about Facebook Advertising is just how targeted you can get with your adverts. If you want to target 50+ year old women within a 20-mile radius of your business who love Knitting and Horror Movies – you can do it on Facebook!

So, the first step is to research your ideal clients – what do they love? How old are they? Where do they live? Are they a specific gender? And so on.

Create ‘Interest Targeting’ lists on Facebook and run ads to them using content they’ll love. Is there a video you can share that will entertain or educate them?

Consider running ‘Engagement’* or ‘Video View’* campaigns with the simple objective of getting on their radar (and at the same time building warm audiences of people who have expressed an interest in what you do).

* At the time of writing this tip, there has never been a better time to do this. Not being a vulture and picking over anyone’s misfortune, but many people are still in lockdown and have turned to Social Media to stay connected. This means that the cost of running Video View and Engagement campaigns has dropped.

2. You Need to Woo Them!

Depending on what you do or what you sell, one piece of great content may be enough to warm your audience to you. For ‘higher ticket’ companies (where more awareness and consideration is needed) then you may need to woo them for longer!

Always bear in mind that they are not on Facebook to be sold to.

They’re here for social connection, to catch up with friends, to have a gossip, and to be entertained.

Add value to their day with content that really resonates with them.

3. Don’t Forget to Propose

Now, we don’t want to stay in the ‘friend zone’ forever, so there comes a time when you need to get down on one knee and ask them to commit to being your customer!

We do that through retargeting your warm audiences.

These warm audiences might include…
- People who have viewed one of your videos
- People who have engaged with your content on Facebook
- People who have visited your website
- People who have put something in their Shopping Cart on your website but didn’t complete the purchase
- People who have expressed an interest in your event
- People on your email list
- People on your Chatbot list
4. Just Because They’re in a Relationship with you, It Doesn’t Mean the Work Stops There!

Once they’ve become your customer, don’t neglect them! If they’ve had one great experience with your business they are likely to come back for more.

Upload your Customer List to Facebook and create a Custom Audience of existing customers. Send them great content, add value to their day, give them offers, and tempt them back to buy again.

And here’s one final Pro Tip for you… Create Lookalike Audiences on Facebook based on your Customer List! That’s saying to Facebook “These are my customers, go and find other people just like them!”

And Facebook will go off and do the hard work for you!”

Kirsty Saint

Kirsty is a Facebook Ad Specialist and Marketing Consultant who helps mission-driven businesses connect with their ideal clients.

https://www.kirstysaint.com

Using the Wrong Campaign Objective – “Be careful what you wish for with Facebook, because you just might get it!

Facebook’s advertising platform is incredibly sophisticated in finding the people you tell it you’re looking for. What most advertisers don’t realise, however, is that not all campaign objectives are created equally.

In Business Manager, there is an array of objectives to choose from when creating a campaign, shown below in ‘guided creation’, and ‘quick creation’ mode.

Guided Creation

Quick Creation

Facebook knows the usage and activity-based behaviours of people on its platform. It will show your ads to people who are likely to take the action you choose, based on their past behaviour.

A common mistake that inexperienced advertisers make is to choose the wrong campaign objective for what they hope to achieve. Let’s say you’d like people to click through to your website and fill out an enquiry form. I often see this set up with a ‘Traffic’ objective, because the thinking is ‘we’re sending people to the website’.

Interestingly, the people who click through to your website from your ad posts are not always those who will actually purchase your services. Facebook knows who is more likely to simply browse your website, and who is more likely to make a purchase or fill out the enquiry form (a conversion).

if you want web traffic, ask for traffic. if you want conversions, ask for conversions.

Ideas on How to Solve It:

The most important step in creating any ad campaign is to define the objective you seek to achieve.

Is it:
- For awareness, so people know you exist, or to reaffirm your existence in the marketplace? (Brand awareness objective)
- For engagement, where you want as many people as possible to comment, like or share your social media post? (Engagement objective)
- To drive visits to your website so people read more about your services or a blog article? (Traffic objective)
- To encourage visits to a physical store? (Store visits objective)
- To encourage people to subscribe to your email list through a free download? (Conversion objective)
- To prompt prospective customers to book a call with you? (Conversion or lead generation campaign)
- To achieve online sales of your products or services? (Conversion or catalogue sales campaign)
Without first getting clear on what is important to you, your campaigns might not deliver the results you’re after if you choose the wrong campaign objective.

Secondly, if a ‘conversion’ objective is right for your campaign, make sure you have the other components in place to make it work.

You’ll need to have the Facebook Pixel installed on your website, with a conversion event set up (e.g. ‘complete registration’ or ‘lead’) on the Thank You page, for example. This is how Facebook knows a conversion has occurred, and continues to try to find more people in your target audience who are likely to take that action. When you create your ad in the Ad Set level, you will then need to select the conversion event that matches your Thank You page.

Also, be aware that it might not be the best option to optimise for conversions in your ad set. This is because the Facebook algorithm prefers to have at least 50 conversion events in the past week to know what these events look like.

If you’re working with a low budget, or just starting tracking conversions, Facebook might struggle to find the right people if you optimise for conversions, and you could end up with a very high cost per click (CPC). Optimising for landing page views or link clicks might give you a better result, at least to start. You can then switch your optimisation to conversions later.

Advertisers who set up the correct campaign objective and optimisation will have a greater chance of success with Facebook Ads, by attracting the right visitors for the right action.”

Rome Nicolas

Rome Nicolas is a founder of Bisaya Digital who specialise in managing Facebook and Instagram ads to get new, loyal customers for e-commerce businesses. He enjoys helping small-to-medium-sized companies boost their monthly recurring revenue faster.

https://romenicolas.com/

Abandoning Your Ads after Setting Up – “It’s an original sin to create an ad and abandon it for more than two weeks or so, then realize that you should have been checking the ads daily to see if there are any drastic changes.

In optimizing a newly created ad, allow the ad to fully utilize the algorithm for three days. But, after that, the real job of optimizing an ad begins.

If you don’t check your ads on a daily basis, you won’t know if people are seeing the same ads for several times already. You also wouldn’t know if the campaign is achieving the objectives you’ve set it up for.

Monitoring it would certainly help you make the necessary changes to avoid wasting your money for nothing.

*Ideas on How to Solve It: After the initial three days of letting the Facebook algorithm do its magic, it’s time to monitor your ads on a daily basis and consider making changes, if needed.

In checking the quality of your ads, keep in mind the following metrics:
- Ad frequency
- Click-though-rate vs conversion rate
- Clicks by interest
- Number of leads
- Ad performance by placement
- Relevance Score
When making changes, make sure it is data-driven and not based on a random gut-feeling.

The data you see in your Facebook Ads Manager will help you improve your productivity and ensure that you have a successful campaign.”

Sarah Sal

Sarah Sal is a Facebook Ads Specialist. She’s written on Facebook ad testing, strategy, and execution for AdEspresso, Agorapulse, Blitzmetrics, Copyhackers, ActiveCampaign, AdWeek, Jon Loomer’s Power Hitters Club and others. She’s even presented inside Perry Marshall’s iconic 80/20 Facebook ads course

http://sarah-sal.com/

Not Using Persuasive Ad Copy – “30% of all Internet users rely on ad blockers, which are overwhelmingly popular as people get tired of ads. Even if our technology doesn’t block ads out automatically, our brains are trained to ignore anything that looks like one. Rather than screaming louder to grab scrollers’ attention, we should write great ads that don’t look like an ad. We’re talking about content that educates, entertains and provides value.

Without education, you are writing an ad and asking the user to take your words at face value.

Many advertisers assume they’re facing trouble with their audience when what they really have is a problem with content & copy.

I once had a call with a SharkTank company. The founder told me: “The problem with our Facebook ad might be targeting optimization.”

I replied: “You think your ads are not targeting the correct audience. Maybe you’re reaching the right audience, but the ad copy isn’t convincing enough”.

Their Facebook ads weren’t profitable. By working on the ad copy, their ad campaigns became profitable, and they also got the most sales in a single day from Facebook.

Below is a screenshot of one of those ads:

Source

Imagine you found the diary of a client that got help from your product or service. Does your ad feel like you’re reading a page from that diary?

What does 46X better ad performance and a free slice of pizza have in common (not pineapple pizza)?

Strategyzer’s a company I helped get 1866% ROI on their ads. On prior ads, they spent $4,433.53 in around 3 weeks and only got 1 sale in return. That was equal to $0.40 for every $1 spent on ads.

The problem was the ad copy just stated that they had an event coming up.

And here’s the screenshot of that ad:

Source

How did I move them from $0.40 for every $1 spent to make $18.66 for each $1 they spent? ($212,000 in sales for an ad spend of only $11,357.26, to be exact)

I knew supermarkets like Mash and Costco got up to 2000% in extra sales by giving away samples. So I used ads to give people a pre-taste of what to expect at Strategyzer’s €2000 upcoming event, instead.

Here is an example of the first ad we ran for them:

Source

Educational content also helps you fight ad fatigue.

Many marketers wonder why their cost per conversion tripled in the last 3 weeks. And that’s because Facebook equals interruption marketing.

You’re not a coffee shop at an airport with 500k new people passing by every day. Those businesses know that brownies are better than waffles at getting passengers to stop and enter their cafe. And you’re not fulfilling the demand, you’re creating the demand.

Think about users as a tourist that goes to London, for example. If ads that promoted London’s hippest night scene suddenly stopped converting, I might switch to a copy that talks about London’s wide gastronomical offer or museums, instead. Not everyone would want to visit London for the same reason. Sometimes changing the ad copy to talk about something different while still promoting the same can significantly help fight ad fatigue.

So, how can you write ads that stand out amidst all the noise on the Internet?

Here are a few ideas:

1. Don’t Just Make Claims. Be Persuasive and Educational:

To be more persuasive, make your ads educational and don’t just make claims. Most people just state what they’re selling. Ad copy works when it’s persuasive, and it teaches something at the same time. A great ad makes the user think: “Even if I did not click on the ad, just by reading the ad text, I’ve learned something new.”

When scrollers stop to read something out of which they’re actually learning something new, ads convert much better. And how do you achieve that?

2. Use the Power of Analogies

Take “37 grams of saturated fat” as an example. Those can teach us a lot about writing better ads. When health warnings to popcorn and coconut oil first came out, popcorn buyers had absolutely no clue what those meant! So advertisers relied on analogies…

In a 1992 press conference, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) announced:

“A medium-sized ‘butter’ popcorn at a typical neighborhood movie theater contains more artery-clogging fat than a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries for lunch, and a steak dinner with all the trimmings—combined!”

That made the front pages of the Los Angeles Times and USA Today. The Washington Post wrote about it. And it was featured on CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN.

The public response was such a strong one that movie theaters were forced to stop using coconut oil.

In fact, I’m currently reusing this popcorn analogy from an ad on which I paid £0.27 per click with 95 clicks as a result. People spend way more on Marketing per click than these figures, I’m sure you’ll know.

3. Answer Questions You’re Asked All the Time

To write good copy, imagine a question people in your niche keep asking non-stop. Turn what you’re tired of answering into compelling ad copy.

Excellent copy takes what you know your target audiences think, and it puts it on the page. When your prospects read your copy, they feel like you’re inside their head. That’s NOT because you’re a genius, but because you’ve been listening to them for a long time.

Ad copy is not about you. It’s not about your product, even. It’ll ALWAYS be about your customers.

Below is a screenshot of such an ad:

4. Turn Misconceptions into an Ad

All industries are plagued by misconceptions! They affect their image, on top of it all; it’s the reality out there!

If you address a misconception in your Facebook ad copy, that can clear up a customer’s conscious or subconscious objection. Explain your stance and back it up with evidence.”

Ashley Boston

Ashley is a #1 best selling amazon author and Facebook Ad strategist. Ash has been in the Digital Marketing space for 12 years supporting business owners and educating them through her online courses and membership Traffic Ads Mastery on how to create profitable Facebook ads on autopilot.

http://www.unleashedmultimedia.com.au

Boosting Facebook Posts – “Boosting posts is one of the biggest no-no’s when it comes to Facebook advertising. Most people aren’t aware that when we “boost” a post we are asking Facebook to optimise for engagement on that post. Boosting posts won’t increase website traffic or increase your sales and this is why it is key to make sure you have a strategy in place and that you are using the Facebook ad account to create your ads.

You want to ensure you are seeing a ROAS on your ad campaigns, so if you are wanting to generate more traffic to your website, use the Traffic Objective for a cold audience and then you want to ensure you have a follow-up campaign to remarket to your website audience using the Conversion Objective and optimise for Purchasers.

Say goodbye to boosting posts and hello to profitable and scalable ad campaigns.”

How to Improve Email Deliverability Rates: Expert Advice + Strategies

by Chris Herbert | Last Updated July 15, 2020

Much is made of email marketing’s reputation for being a marketing channel that can deliver BIG in terms of ROI, but there’s one thing that can quickly turn dollars into despair. Oh you know we’re talking about email deliverability. If your emails aren’t landing in the inbox they’re about as much use as a chocolate teapot! Poor deliverability means even though you’re investing time and money, a significant proportion of your subscribers don’t hear a peep from you, most likely feeling a little abandoned, and that isn’t any way to nurture a relationship!

But it’s not all doom and gloom. If your email deliverability rates are low, don’t throw the towel in just yet. There ARE lots of things you can do to remedy this. A remarkable number of things that are under your control in fact. And to help take you on that journey from email doldrums to inbox bliss, we spoke to 24 experts who have decades of combined experience in this area, to get their thoughts on the steps you need to take to increase email deliverability.

Now it’s up to you. We’ve sought out the world-class advice for you, now you need to put it into practice. So scroll down the page and start learning about the changes you need to make to your email marketing program to get more of your emails hitting the target.

If you’ve used any of the tips shared in this article, we’d love to hear about the results you achieved in the comments section!

How to Increase Email Deliverability: 24 Experts Weigh In

“Which strategy will improve my email deliverability?” is probably a thought you have quite often if you run an email marketing program, and below you’ll find a top-level overview of all of the strategies that were shared in the making of this post. There’s no push-button secret shortcut that will improve your deliverability rates without any effort, but if you implement the advice shared by these experts, you’ll see gains in time.

Reengage or Disengage (Gene Gusman)
Implement Real-Time Email Verification on All Subscription Forms (Lauren Meyer)
Seedlist Testing – Why It Is Important (Anthony Mitchell)
Mind Your Canaries: Know Your Early Warning Signs and How to Monitor Them (Karen Balle)
Differentiate Your Message Types By Sending IP and From Address (Anna Ward)
Implement BIMI (Toshi Onishi)
Know What the Best Practices Say (Vytis Marčiulionis)
Email Authentication with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC (André Goermer)
Deliverability Doesn’t Care About Your Business Model (Alison Gootee)
Opt-Down and Reduce Cadence to Users As They Age (Zack Aab)
Send LESS Email (Henry Gutierrez)
Improve Engagement (Jennifer Nespola Lantz)
Setting Clear Expectations for New Subscribers (Varun Srinivas)
Build a Welcome Series (Dan Oshinsky)
List Management is Key (Brett Schenker)
Monitor Both Your Campaigns and Your Reputation (José Ramón García Layos)
Inboxing – Constantly Warm Up Your Sending Domain and IP (Siva Devaki)
Proper Data Management (Kevin Hopkinson)
3 Incorrect Beliefs that Could Seriously Damage Your Deliverability (Thibault Sarlat)
Build the Trust You Need to Deliver an Email (Przemysław Kuciel)
Avoid Big List Syndrome (Josh Nason)
DO NOT BUY LISTS! (Mike Hillyer)
Segment Your List (Scot Berggren)
Be Ethical and Protect Your Inbox Reputation (Aleksandrs Vilums)

What the Experts Said: Deliverability Tips Explained

This section is where we’re hiding all the game-changing advice, where our experts explain their tips in greater detail for you. There’s so much value in what they’ve shared. I learned tons about deliverability by reading through each tip, and I’m 100% sure you will too!

If there’s one tip that catches your eye, you can skip right to it by using the handy filters below.

{"filter_mode":"masonry"}

Siva Devaki

Siva Devaki is the co-founder of MassMailer. Siva’s background in CRM and his passion for software products led him to build MassMailer. MassMailer is now a popular native email app for Salesforce CRM. Originally from India, Siva lived in California for 19 years before moving to Hawaii two years ago.

http://massmailer.io

Inboxing – Constantly Warm Up Your Sending Domain and IP – “There could be hundreds of reasons why your e-mails are going to spam, and most aren’t your fault. If your domain reputation or IP reputation is poor, your emails will go into the spam folder without any doubt. Inboxing is a technique that fixes that by creating positive activity from your domain / sending IP, raising your e-mail reputation significantly. The process is done entirely in the background. You will see a significant difference that actual e-mails will start getting delivered and opened.

You can use your DNS provider and the email service provider. It is always easy to start with a fresh new domain in case your existing domain already has a bad reputation even though it is possible to repair your current domain provided it is repairable. Sometimes you can contact the respective organizations that have listed your domain in the blacklists and provide valid reasons to remove your domain from the blacklists. Once it has been removed from the blacklists, you can start repairing using the Inboxing service. If it is completely not possible to get the domain out of blacklists, then it is advisable to start fresh by using a new domain.

The Inboxing process is quite simple to understand. In the background, the regular emails are sent in volume to the seeded list worldwide to various ISPs from your domain and the IP address. The positive engagement is created between the sender and the seeded email list inboxes daily and makes sure no emails are in the spam folder. This ensures a 100% delivery rate and a higher open and response rate.

The following are the steps to get started:
- Identify a service provider for Inboxing (I’m biased, but I’d try massmailer.io)
- Go with your existing domain if it is not blacklisted or purchase a new domain.
- Create an email inbox that will be used as the sender for Inboxing. You need to provide this to the Inboxing service provider.
- If you have an email service provider that you are using to send emails, find out the SMTP login details for the same and provide it to your Inboxing service provider.
- If you already have a dedicated IP address, which you want to warm-up, that will work as well or your Inboxing service provider can also assign a dedicated IP address to send the emails.
- You will make any changes necessary to your DNS settings based on the suggestions made by the Inboxing service provider.
- Once the settings are made, your Inboxing service provider will start the warm-up process of the domain and the IP address.
- It will take 1-2 weeks to warm-up a domain and the IP address after which you should be able to send emails.
- Inboxing is a continuous warm-up of your domain and the IP address that happens in parallel to your regular email sending.
- You will be able to see an improvement in the delivery rate, open rate, and response rate due to the Inboxing process.
The Inboxing technique is simple yet powerful to improve your email deliverability rate.”

Thibault Sarlat

Deliverability Consultant by day, teacher and trainer by the evening, Spam Fighter at night. Sharing is caring.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thibaultsarlat/

3 Incorrect Beliefs that Could Seriously Damage Your Deliverability – “I can remember it like it was yesterday. My mentor explaining to me that Deliverability is the ability for an email message to get to its intended target without any modification.

Simply put, a message is either delivered (be it to the spam folder), or it is bounced. Sending and delivering one personal email message to Aunt Lily is a piece of cake. Sending hundreds of thousands or even millions of bulk messages in a matter of minutes to the same ISPs is another story. Why ? Because ISPs fight Spam. That is a good thing. You just don’t want your campaigns to fall victim of that raging war. So, since the other experts are putting forward the do’s, I’ll take the don’ts.

There are many rules and best practices that experienced professionals in the email marketing industry will tell you to follow. Blogs are filled with top ten lists of what you should do. Hell, I even wrote some myself, and I always enjoy reading new ones. Lots of these lists are very good, useful and properly rooted in the realities of our field.

Part of my consulting experience has shown me that senders don’t always follow what you advise them to do, even if they know perfectly that it is for their own good. Many times, I’ve met senders that need to be told what the bad moves are to realize the risks they are taking. That is why I have chosen to tell you which ways of thinking or which moves will surely make your program fail.

Remember that an email marketing program starts when you gather your future recipients’ emails and ends up with all the form that churn can take (unsubscription, spam complaint, hard bounce, long lasting disengagement, etc.).

In between is a daily battle to make your messages relevant, interesting, and expected. The right message, to the right person, at the right time and on the right channel. Easy to say, right?

So here is a list of the 3 wrong beliefs that could seriously sour your email marketing programs:

1 – The bigger (the DB), the better

Size doesn’t matter. The biggest ears don’t make you the best listener. Have you ever tried to put a cost on managing useless, unengaged contacts? Start by not subscribing them. Most of the time, the bigger the DB, the more bitter the results.

You must make the effort to ensure that the people who are entering your email marketing programs are doing so Freely, Easily and Willingly. Call it F.E.W. if it helps. Make sure that each of these adverbs apply. Do not be satisfied with 2 out of 3.

That means not only do you have to enlighten your soon to be subscribers at the point of registration, but to make a solemn promise, and live by your word. These are the happy F.E.W. after all. No sneaky wording, no opt out, no double negation, no funky business here. See it as wedding vows. It may not last your whole life, but you must live by the promise you made for as long as the relationship lasts. So, make it simple, and make it true.

Technically, this means that Double Opt In is your best friend here because nothing can show willingness and prove freedom of choice more than the 2 clicks needed. While you are at it, if Captcha is not mandatory, it is highly recommended. It’s the best defence against unwanted and dangerous contacts entering your database.

Half empty glass people will tell you that doing so you will lose many contacts compared to Simple Opt In. Of course. So what? Good riddance! How much do you think an unengaged address is worth?

Be smart and get rid of all subscribers that come from the same IP, the same day. It doesn’t make sense unless they are working at the same company and are sharing the same infrastructures. Don’t rush into sending them the first lot of marketing content. There are so many automated checks that can be done almost in real time. Not caring and acting on that can have you blacklisted in a blink of an eye. Preventing is preferable to curing.

2 – The more I send, the more I earn

Wrong! It’s not a linear relationship at all. Long gone are the golden days of mass marketing when all messages landed (at that time no one really cared where they landed anyway). Attention is scarce. Engagement is king. ISPs are masters of their own domains. Their wishes have become unwritten laws. I mean you are knocking on their doors. They are defending their castle and they make it their mission to keep their users and customers happy with the filtering they provide. How can you please the ISPs then? Segmentation.

Even daily deal sites should have some sort of segmentation to avoid overusing the trust they were given. For retailers, it’s even more important that they cherish and cuddle up to their most engaged contacts for as long as it lasts.

If your new contacts are not all Double Opt In (they rarely are), do not assume that freshly gathered contacts are necessarily engaged ones. Have them all pass through a nicely built welcome/activation program. Not just one email. A real sequence works better because not everything can be said in one message. Do not bombard them right away with your marketing content. Be patient and subtle and earn their trust right from the start. The most precious gift you can give them is to care for who they are and what they want.

If you are not sure, ask. The best welcome programs I’ve encountered were set up like a small poll.

Today, major ESPs can gather as much data as you can imagine. They include a DMP and Engagement Data Platform. So feed the beast, make it gather valuable information and you will for sure end up with actionable insights.

ESPs save all click and open related information. So, there is no good reason to not include engagement criteria in your most commonly addressed segment. Not caring to define what is an « engaged » contact in your business could easily be your downfall. It’s the number one rule for the ISPs: Target Active Contacts (T.A.C.). Ignore it at your own risk, but do not complain when your inbox delivery rates drop or even your open rates plummet to the ground.

For the less engaged, or the disengaged contacts, use automated reactivation programs. They will be the best investment of your time at that point in the customer lifecycle. Their indifference to your messages is a sign that they lost interest at one time or that you lost focus on their expectations, or both. The sooner you realize it and act on it, the better. Trying to rekindle the flame is not easy though. Don’t wait too long. If they are well thought out and built, no one should not open or click any of your messages for more than a few weeks.

3 – Keep them forever

When people are no longer interested in your content, it shows. Rates drop. So, after a time, let them leave. Hell, make it easy. After having done all that is technically possible, marketing wise (outside of full-blown reactivation harassment of course), you have to make it easy for unengaged contacts to leave. Never hide your unsubscription link. Put it both at the bottom and at the top of all your emails. Test it regularly. Make sure it’s working and that the process is simple to follow.

You do not want the recipients to find that spam complaint button appealing. The only acceptable diversion from that path is to set a preference centre or a poll form between the unsubscribe link and the actual unsubscription. You may be able to keep a few in, with lighter marketing pressure, but in any case, try to learn why they are leaving. Just as you wanted to learn about them when they got in, you should learn why they want to go out. But don’t sit on that information. Use it to cross-reference that reason with the source or time or marketing operation they were subscribed to. You’ll be surprised how much you can learn about your « providers » practices that way. Maybe their « gold » vein has dried up and you can move to better lands.

Keep in mind that abandoned addresses can be turned into recycled spam traps. Try to always address any subscribed contacts at least three times per year, regardless of their engagement status. But at the same time, you must apply a rule for unengaged addresses to be unsubscribed or discarded after too many attempts at reactivating them.

Conclusion

I’ve tried to focus your attention on the three major moments of the customer lifecycle: gathering consent, retention send outs, disengagement/churn. I’m sure other authors have described in more detail precise moments of that cycle and brought to your attention precise solutions to apply. Keep in mind that a sender reputation is more easily damaged than built and maintained, and that your patient efforts can easily be ruined and will likely cost you a lot of time, effort, money and not so fun discussions with your team. Remember, when in doubt, ask your deliverability support contact, and in the meantime try your best and…”

Toshi Onishi

Messaging specialist based in APAC with over 10 years of experience

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonishi/

Implement BIMI – “BIMI stands for Brand Indicators for Message Identification. It is a new standard that allows senders with good reputation an easier opportunity to get your logo displayed next to your message in the inbox. BIMI not only improves your visibility and brand awareness, it’s also designed to prevent fraud and support deliverability.

A recent study by Verizon Media on its Yahoo Mail BIMI beta program showed that there was an average 10% increase in open rates for email messages that had brand logos on them. And while BIMI is still a pilot program which only Verizon supports, Gmail has indicated they will start trialing BIMI sometime this year so it is reasonable to assume more mailbox providers will most likely follow suit in supporting this new standard.

So how do we implement BIMI? This can be done in 3 simple steps:
1. Publish and set appropriate DMARC tag status
2. Create and Publish the BIMI image
3. Establish a good reputation by following deliverability best practices
Publish and Set Appropriate DMARC Tag Status

DMARC is an authentication method built on top of existing email authentication mechanisms. However, one of the features is the ability to publish what policy you want the mailbox providers to apply when your email fails DMARC authentication and alignment checks. This is shown in the “p=” tag within the DMARC record and it applies to your primary domain, as well as all the subdomains unless a “sp=” tag is used with a different value.

To qualify for BIMI, this “p=” tag needs to be set to either “quarantine” or “reject”. However, as all organisations have different email infrastructure, consult your hosting provider or whoever that manages your DNS to set this up as some additional work will most likely be needed.

Create and Publish the BIMI Image

To be used in association with BIMI, the logo must be formatted in a way to be readily recognizable as associated with the brand, easily displayed at various resolutions, and include characteristics that support verification and security. Specifically:
1. The logo must be square
2. The logo must be saved as a version of the Scaled Vector Graphic (SVG) format as defined by the SVG Tiny 1.2 profile published by the W3C in 2008.
3. The logo cannot include anything else such as tags, external links, secondary Word Marks, unregistered marks etc.
Once your BIMI logo has been created, it needs to be stored at a HTTPS location. Make sure you note down this HTTPS path, then contact your hosting provider or whoever that manages your DNS to publish the BIMI record and map it to the HTTPS path.

Establish a Good Reputation by Following Deliverability Best Practices

One of the aspects of BIMI is that the mailbox providers can determine at their discretion whether to display the sender’s logo or not. In order to have the sender’s logo published, they require that the sender comply with deliverability best practices and establish a good reputation.

If you know your mailbox provider supports BIMI, then you can test by sending to a test account at that mailbox provider. If you see your BIMI logo (the SVG file you uploaded), then congratulations!, you are authenticating correctly and have been considered as a trusted sender by that mailbox provider.

If you don’t see any changes, then continue following deliverability best practices to improve your sender reputation. Mailbox providers are continuously reviewing and, if they determine you to be a sender with a good reputation, it will only be a matter of time before you will see your logo next to your messages.”

Lauren Meyer

Lauren is the VP of Industry Relations and Compliance for Kickbox. With more than 13 years of experience in the email industry, her background includes digital strategy as well as global deliverability, anti-abuse and compliance. Lauren is a vocal advocate for having a proactive, data-driven approach to email best practices and deliverability.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-meyer-3958b84/

Implement Real-Time Email Verification on All Subscription Forms – “We all know that email addresses are marketing gold.

It’s commonly mentioned that email has an ROI of 42:1. That’s a return of $42 for every $1 that you spend on email marketing.

That is four times higher than any other digital marketing channel.

And research shows that it’s 5x less expensive to retain a customer than it is to acquire a new one.

So once your potential new customer has finally reached the point where they are actually willing to give you their email address, the last thing you want to do is collect incorrect information from them.

Normally that kind of mistake leads to a hard bounce, or potentially the address could be a typo spam trap. Both of those have a negative impact on deliverability.

In a world where competition is tight, studies show that 95% of visitors will come to your website or physical location only once, and never return again.

That means you have only one chance to collect their email address.

By implementing real-time email verification on all subscription forms, marketers are able to verify email addresses in real-time at the point-of-capture, and can even prevent the user from hitting ‘Submit’ until they have entered a valid email address.

This allows companies to not only reduce their hard bounce rates, but also to avoid missed connections with potential new leads, and build a larger and more qualified email list, which will inevitably lead to more revenue for the company.

It’s unlikely that unsuccessful subscribers will realize they fat-fingered their own address and come back to sign up again if your welcome email never arrives in their inbox.

Implementing real-time email verification on all of your subscription forms can ensure the email addresses you’re collecting are valid, and that your content will arrive in their inboxes as expected.”

Scot Berggren

Email Marketing and Deliverability expert with several years of in-depth experience. Passionate about solving deliverability problems for senders, providing detailed guidance on best practices and potential factors affecting reputation.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/scotberggren

Segment Your List – “While there may be times sending to an entire list is warranted (updated Privacy Policy), you’ll likely see better deliverability results when your email is segmented.

There are several ways in which a sender can segment for campaigns, but here are a few.

First, if you are seeing a drop in performance due to fewer emails landing in the inbox, try sending to just those on your list that have engaged (opened/clicked) recently to help improve the IP/domain reputation. As you begin seeing an improvement, slowly expand the reach until you find your sweet spot. Some of the major ISPs pay close attention to who is engaging with your email to determine whether it gets delivered to the inbox or junk folder.

Second, if you have a preference center be sure you are following the choices recipients checked. Some on your list may prefer to receive emails once a week versus daily or a digest of emails at a specified time. If your emails include multiple categories, such as different women’s and men’s items, only send to the subscribers’ preference. This will not only limit recipient complaints, but also help with subscriber fatigue. Honoring what your subscribers signed up for and allowing them to update their preferences goes a long way to building trust.

Other ways to segment are by purchase history and amount spent. For those who have made a recent purchase, look at following up with complementary items or be proactive about when their item(s) may be running out and it’s time to reorder. Regarding amount spent, is there a way to treat your top customers differently with non-monetary invites or events versus sending a discount offer to those who haven’t bought in some time?

One thing to think about is be sure to not over segment or you might find your lists become too small and aren’t useful anymore.”

Varun Srinivas

I have over 8 years of experience in email deliverability and have worked with many ESPs and senders of all shapes and size. I enjoy solving deliverability challenges and help marketers send better emails. In my current role as a Director of Email Deliverability and Compliance for Maropost, I provide our senders(customers) consultation, strategic deliverability guidance and actionable insights to achieve higher levels of deliverability.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/srinivasvarun/

Setting Clear Expectations for New Subscribers – “The quickest way for an angry & impulsive subscriber to stop receiving emails is to click the “Mark as spam” button. This often happens if it is unclear to your subscribers what they are signing up for and when they’ll receive your message. The subscriber acquisition process is not just about adding another address to ‘the list’, it is about setting expectations up front about the email program and the value it provides.

Here are some best practices, to establish trust and retain subscribers:
- Use the subscribe landing page to explain email programs to subscribers.
- Outline objectives and subsequent incentives to the subscriber.
- Always be clear about mailing frequencies, be it once a week, twice or even daily.
- Mention display names and from addresses that will be used.
- Share sample content to the subscribers from the get-go. This will prepare them as to what to expect.
- Always be ‘TRANSPARENT’ about your business practices.
Morning Brew’s welcome email, confirming your subscription and telling subscribers that they can expect to receive news Monday to Saturday is a perfect example ensuring that the subscribers know what to expect.

Setting clear expectations at the beginning of the sign-up process reduces the risk of spam complaints or unsubscribes, thereby helping build trust with your subscribers.”

Vytis Marčiulionis

After a short period in web hosting support and abuse detection at the start of my career, now I provide daily assistance to email marketers that face email deliverability issues. Currently I am part of a team that is looking after approximately 10,000,000,000 emails sent on a monthly basis.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vytis-mar%C4%8Diulionis-b452415b/

Know What the Best Practices Say – “Know the best practices! When you know what the best practices are, you will be better placed to realize where you may have stepped out of line and what exactly you can fix to earn the favour of mailbox providers. And there is always something to fix, mainly because the email industry is very fluid and keeps changing constantly.

Here is where I recommend to start.”

Zack Aab

Zack Aab is the Senior Deliverability Strategist at Trendline Interactive. His responsibilities include deliverability audits and consulting for enterprise clients and ESPs, as well as data privacy and legal compliance implementation.

https://www.trendlineinteractive.com

Opt-Down and Reduce Cadence to Users As They Age – “Unless a user is very active, the longer it’s been since they opted in, the greater probability that they are sending negative signals to their mailbox provider.

Offer an “opt-down” to re-engage and even if they don’t request the opt-down steadily reduce the frequency that they receive messages.

This allows them to convert if they become interested later while reducing the frequency and therefore impact of the negative signals they are sending to their provider, as well as reducing the likelihood they get sick of you and unsubscribe or complain.”

Alison Gootee

Alison Gootee is a deliverability nerd with over 5 years of experience in the email space. Her motto is, "everything in excess, except for email!"

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisongootee/

Deliverability Doesn’t Care About Your Business Model – “In my time handling an abuse desk for an ESP, one frequent refrain I heard was, “But you just don’t understand our business model!” This would be followed by an explanation as to why spamming people is integral to the sender’s business. Believe it or not, deliverability requirements are the same across all industries and businesses: send mail people want and expect, nothing more or less.

If your business model necessitates sending unsolicited email (also known as spam!), that also results in conversions of some kind, then your business is untenable. There is no legitimate business that can experience high deliverability while simultaneously sending spam–they are mutually exclusive. Forced opt-in? Spam. Scraped data? Spam. Industry contact list? Spam. Even if you KNOW the audience will be interested in your product if they could just see an email about it? Still spam, I’m sorry. Any time you send mail to recipients who didn’t ask for it, they will unsubscribe, mark the mail as spam, or –yikes– report you to your ESP.

Any time you send to an audience obtained through unsavory means, you also run the risk of hitting spam traps; those inscrutable addresses that can get you blocked and/or blacklisted. Since spam traps are indistinguishable from regular email addresses and receive mail without bouncing, even a list validated by a cleaning service won’t be able to suss them out. If you value deliverability, then the (very real) threat of having your mail blocked likely outweighs the (very imagined) benefits of spamming an audience of people in the hope that some of them will be so elated about your offerings that they’ll overlook the inbox intrusion and purchase anyway.

If you’re still thinking, “Okay but you really don’t seem to understand my business. We need to reach out to cold lists in order to build our list!”, then ask yourself these questions:
- When’s the last time you purchased something from an email you didn’t sign up for?
- Do you have a good impression of the brands who send you spam?
- If these truly are promising prospects, then why make a bad first impression?
Email reputation extends beyond just the inbox and the spam folder–it translates directly into your brand reputation and influences how people view you, your customers, and your products. That means that unless you’re the CEO of Spamming, Inc., and your objective is to send the most spam, your business model is irrelevant.”

Przemysław Kuciel

Email deliverability is more than just a job for me - it is my passion. I am fortunate enough to love what I do - helping businesses make it through the competitive email world.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pkuciel/

Build the Trust You Need to Deliver an Email – “Imagine that you are hosting a huge party, and the whole world is invited. Crazy, huh? Well that’s how it is to be an email provider.

Despite having security doing a great job by checking IDs (in this case SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) they can’t be sure that all guests will behave properly.

Finally, after a mandatory verification process they let you pass.

The lights hit your eyes, and in this very moment you acknowledge that you’ve gained a huge amount of trust.

Now, it is up to you. Will you start to build the trust you need to stay in the world-wide email party, or will you waste your opportunity and get kicked out for misbehaving (getting blocked). It is hard to get back into this splendid email party after getting kicked out – the hosts do not often give second chances.

But when you decide to be your best self in there, a huge world of opportunity opens. You are trusted. You are allowed to the special room out there, reserved just for trusted people – the Inbox.”

André Goermer

Recognized as a resourceful and intuitive leader, I offer over 15 years of diversified experience in the advancement of professional services programs within the digital industry. I have been leveraged as a trusted business partner capable of positioning clients for growth and profitability through the management of targeted digital strategies.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andregoermer/

Email Authentication with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC – “Internet Service Providers (Microsoft, Verizon, Gmail & more) across the globe have the goal to protect their recipients/customers from Spam and mostly from Phishing attacks. Brands have the objective to land with their marketing campaigns in the recipient’s inbox. One of many methods to distinguish between a marketing campaign from a brand and a phishing email is the verification of the sender.

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are three acronyms with which email marketers will have to get more familiar in order to prevent email phishers from using a brand to spam or domain spoof, as well as being informed about phishing attempts through alert notifications.

Instead of drowning in jargon, let’s visit an analogy to explain the concepts of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. The SPF record is a “document” that contains the name of the only authorized “virtual postman” – let’s call him Pat – who is in charge of delivering an email marketing campaign to the recipient. If done this way, the recipient will accept the message without batting an eye.

Sometimes Pat is sick at home and has to delegate the message delivery to his colleague, Jess. Most recipients will be suspicious of Jess, as they don’t know her. In this case, a forwarded email will lose the SPF features of the initial sender. However, with the help of the DKIM, Jess will also be able to deliver the message, because it will be properly signed by the original sender.

The DMARC dog, thanks to his good sense of smell, knows if the postman and his mail are fraudulent. He will start barking in order to alert the recipient about the upcoming scam danger. However, this smart DMARC dog can be also trained to let the postman pass through safely or, on the flipside, be trained to eat his mail.

This trio of SPF, DKIM and DMARC has now become a global standard, which means that your message can be properly delivered into the highly coveted email inbox. Almost all Internet Service Providers accept this type of safety measure.

1. SPF = Sender Policy Framework

When the recipient’s server receives the email, it compares the sender’s IP and the IP in the DNS and, if both are the same, it accepts the message and delivers it to the inbox. Otherwise, it returns a message by stating “Error 550 – Message rejected because SPF check failed” or delivers the message to the junk folder.

2. DKIM = DomainKeys Identified Mail

DKIM is usually a 1024- or 2048-bit encrypted key that must be coupled with the sender domain, used to fight email spoofing. Upon receiving the email from the recipient’s server, it verifies whether the key, published in the email header, belongs to the one related to the sender domain. If not, they assume that the email has been intercepted by third parties and modified.

As for the SPF, DKIM implementation requires publication in the DNS area with the public key and signature visible in the message header.

To reiterate, the possible results of the record check can be:
- Pass: the signature received matches with the public key
- Fail: the signature received is not related to the public key of the sending domain, which means that the message has been modified somehow.
Further possible errors could be Softfail, Neutral, None, Permerrorand Temperror. Obviously, only the Pass status is to be considered as a record correctly entered.

3. DMARC = Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance

By publishing a DNS record, you will receive an alert from the Internet Service Provider who does support DMARC whenever a domain that is not properly configured (doesn’t pass the SPF and DKIM validation) is used as sender. This way you know when, who, and how, your identity is used on the web.

In terms of Email authentication, using SPF, DKIM and DMARC is the best response to email spoofing.”

José Ramón García Layos

I have 20 years of hands-on experience on the Internet developing businesses, building and leading e-commerce projects to success. A few years ago, I stumbled upon email deliverability, a nearly unknown area at the time, which fascinated me and that has driven my career as of then.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrglayos/

Monitor Both Your Campaigns and Your Reputation – “Monitoring your campaigns is paramount when it comes to understanding if your deliverability is in a good health. Except for some odd exceptions (mainly Russian ISPs), it’s quite difficult to know what your inbox placement is like (meaning how many emails you’re sending are landing into your subscriber’s inbox), so monitoring your campaigns the right way and the reputation of your IPs and subdomains where available can provide you with a pretty accurate picture of how your program is performing. That way you’ll be able to pinpoint any scenarios where your emails may be landing in the spam folder or getting blocked.

You should ensure you pay attention to:

#Open Rates

This is the most popular metric and, even though you shouldn’t judge your email marketing program just by looking at them, they will give you a clear understanding of whether something may be off. This is the reason it’s important to look into open rates broken down by recipient domain. This way, you can count on:
- Aggregated data over time that will indicate you how each ISP usually performs, their trends, ranges and natural peaks and valleys.
- A clear picture across your entire database, because by breaking down open rates by domain, you’ll ensure a problem with a particular ISP won’t get lost in the big picture / other ISPs with more presence in your database.
Usually open rates will follow a trend and that trend will be the same across each ISP. In order to pinpoint a deliverability issue, look for things that stand out in that trend, mainly steep decreases in opens that would indicate either emails being filtered to the spam folder or bouncing back because of a problem (that you should be able to identify by looking at the bounce message).

#Click Through Open Rate (CTOR)

While many marketers look at click through (CTR, clicks/deliveries), CTOR (clicks/opens) will precisely tell you how relevant, engaging and actionable the content of your email was. And to increase the magic of this metric further still: if you observe a lower open rate alongside a spike in the CTOR, that’s a clear indication a portion of your emails landed into the spam folder, while the most engaged users (these who not only opened but clicked) still got them into the inbox.

#Reputation with the ISPs

Some ISPs will provide you with information about your current IPs’ and subdomains’ reputation, which you then can use as a data point to infer inbox placement. The most common ones are:
- Microsoft Smart Network Data Services (SNDS) – You can enroll your IPs and you’ll get daily info (with a 24 hr delay) about their reputation. Each IP will have a color, which will point you to any issues and to the amount of emails that are expected to land in the inbox: green (>90% emails in the inbox), yellow (between 10% and 90% in spam) and red (>90% emails into the spam folder). Just create an Outlook account or log in with an existing one at https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/snds, go to “Request access” and follow the instructions.
- Google Postmaster Site – Here you can enrol your sender domain(s) and you’ll get daily data (with a 48 hr delay) about their reputation. Each subdomain will have high/medium/low/bad reputation, which will give you an idea of how many emails are sent to the inbox by Gmail. Just create a Gmail account or log in with an existing one at postmaster.google.com, click on the “+” symbol and follow the instructions.
- Mail.ru Postmaster – Very useful if you send emails in Russia, the Mail.ru postmaster site provides with an incredible amount of information to senders:
  - Engagement – Know how many people are reading your mailings and how many delete them without opening them.
  - Complaint rates – Know how many subscribers have marked your mailings as spam.
  - Delivery rates – Stay informed on the progress of the mailing process: how many emails have already been sent and delivered, how many were marked as spam or were blocked. This is very uncommon among ISPs, so it’s a very valuable piece of information.
- Yandex Postmaster – Same as Mail.ru, the Yandex postmaster provides with an incredible amount of information to senders:
  - Engagement – Know how many people are reading your mailings and how many delete them without opening them, how many read and still have them in the inbox and how many are unread and still in inbox.
  - Complaint Rates – Know how many subscribers have marked your mailings as spam.
  - Delivery Rates – Stay informed on the progress of the mailing process: how many emails have already been sent and delivered, how many were marked as spam or were blocked. This is very uncommon among ISPs so it’s a very valuable piece of information.
  - Yandex will provide hints about how to improve the engagement of the users based on the data they provide.
By putting all of these pieces together you’ll be able to pinpoint most of the deliverability issues you may be having and start troubleshooting them to get your messages back into the inbox!”

Anthony Mitchell

Director of Deliverability at InboxSys, formally known as Mailmike. I’ve been working in the domain of Deliverability for over a decade now, which in the past has included ESPs such as emailvision (now Actito/Smartfocus), eCircle (now Mapp), and Adobe. I strive for the highest standards in Deliverability for our customers.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wizanthonymitchell/

Seedlist Testing – Why It Is Important – “An E-Mail seed is an email address created with analytical purpose only. Basically, the test addresses you use for split A/B testing can be considered E-Mail seeds. You send an E-Mail to your test-address, to see if the subjectline looks good, if the content is okay and if and why the message was delivered to the E-Mail inbox, or not. Since manual A/B testing does not scale well, it’s recommended to use seedlist tools.

A Seedlist is a list with multiple seeds. Most typically, a seedlist contains various ISP seeds from various commercial ISPs plus a trigger seed, usually an address ending with something like “@app.inboxeverytime.com”.

The single trigger seed is used to receive and analyse content, authentication and mail headers.
The various ISP seeds are used to check to which folder (Inbox, Junk, etc.) this specific message and this specific address at this specific ISP was delivered. Typically ISP seeds contains email addresses from major international ISPs such as Gmail, Outlook & Verizon Media (Yahoo & AOL) plus other providers that are relevant to the region that is being targeted in your email marketing campaign.

ISP seeds have quite similar characteristics to spamtraps: By default, ISP seeds addresses do not open or click in any email. A good further read on how to exclude seed-generated clicks from your campaign analytics can be found under this link.

How Does It Work?

There are two kinds of purposes for seedlist tests:
- Testing to prevent issues. This is done by analysing the message content, authentication and header and by observing trends in inbox placement before a campaign is sent out.
- Testing to detect, reproduce and solve existing issues, usually done during or after the sending of a campaign.
The trigger seed helps to collate the information we have about a campaign and the entire seed list collectively. Once your email marketing campaign is setup and ready to be pushed live:
- Send a test first to the entire seed list.
- Sit back, and watch the results come in.
- Analyse the seed list results, for technical checks and Inbox placement rates.
During this process the trigger seed does most of the leg work, so to speak. The accumulated report allows for a full analysis of the whole email already in a matter of seconds. The reference seed checks the mail headers to ensure all is well with domain authentication, domain alignment and checks your body content, IP reputation and identifies what can be improved. That’s what you essentially really want to know before sending the campaign.

Now we’ve got that out of the way. The other, various seed addresses (major ISPs) have no other purpose but to show you where your email has landed, which is only moderately interesting for senders with organically grown data.

Click to Enlarge

What are the Advantages?

Email marketing changes quickly, ISPs update their policies often, to change with new Industry Standards. It’s a great way to test what works! Any insight prior to going live can be advantageous, such as:
- Domain configuration / E-Mail authentication
- Mailserver setup
- IP-warmup metrics and evolvement
- Content quality
- Which mail-stream (i.e. marketing, transactional) is performing better
- Which ISP you face delivery challenges to and check for folder placement
- IP & domain reputation: Blocklists and spamfilters
And with the right interface, it saves you a lot of time testing.

Known Challenges

Certain providers look closely at user engagement on an email account level. A full explanation would be sufficient content for another blog. Luckily, I have already written a blog about this subject in the past. When ISPs decide their actions on a per mailbox level, results for individual mailboxes are likely not to match your seedlist tesing ISP results. There is no (serious) way to implement those user based engagement metrics in a seedlist test. Instead, it’s better to look at the data from a bird’s eye perspective by observing trends. It’s neither scalable, nor necessary to see every detail. If many users show negative engagement metrics on a user-level, you are very likely to see the accumulated effect of that in your clean, unengaged ISP seeds. That way, it is possible to see what providers think of the overall setup and where you deliver by default.

Excessive testing to ISP seeds can also be damaging to your reputation, especially when you target seedlists with hundreds of seeds for every ISP worldwide. This is due to the fact that seeds do not engage with your email, it can be perceived you are sending to a large, inactive list.

Tip 1 – Test Before

Prevention can save your life, even if every test appears to be successful. It could, for example, happen, that a DNS administrator accidentally removes, let’s say, a DKIM record. This would be a once in a lifetime incident that could seriously damage the result of your campaign, or even your whole reputation. Through persistent testing any issue could be tackled before any damage can be done.

When issues are flagged, it’s a good idea to preventively fix them, even when they don’t appear to cause problems (aka. Junk folder delivery) at this very moment. The decision made by ISPs to put an E-Mail in the inbox or not is based on more than one factor. If the mentioned issue does not accumulate to problems today, it may accumulate to problems tomorrow.

Tip 2 – Test During & After

When you launch your campaign, always include a seed list and try to distribute the seeds evenly through your list. When sending to a large list of unengaged contacts, the result may worsen over time. This is where ISP seeds have the most relevancy. ISP seeds are a great way to observe trends within a campaign and at a global level. Important is again, to respond to each and every indicator before it can become a problem.

Tip 3 – Custom Seeds

To prevent reputation loss by excessive testing, it’s always a good idea to limit the seeds in your seedlist to the ISPs that are important to your marketing strategy.

It’s an obligatory exercise to find out which seeds are important to your marketing strategy. This information can be found by simply analysing your database to see the domain distribution of your database. Your seedlist should reflect the ISPs and ratios used. This way, the campaign volume covers up for the negative effects of testing.

If you have the option to use your own E-mail addresses in an automated seeding process, it even becomes possible to fake a certain user engagement per mailbox for analytical purposes. Note, however, that faking things is expensive and not “smart” per se.

Tip 4 – Automate!

A manual split A/B test is a lot of work. Automated seedlist tools help a lot, but you still need to spend time before and after each and every campaign to look at a test result. With an API for seedlist testing, it’s possible to automate the full, round process. Before sending a campaign, the seedlist is requested, mails are sent out, the result is collected and – if everything is alright – the campaign is being sent. The other way ’round, campaigns can be blocked from being sent in case of critical issues and alerts can be used to inform the responsible person.

Conclusion

If you really want to measure the success of your campaign(s), send one seed list test before and one test during each campaign. Keep it simple, automate and respond to flags in order to improve ROI for your email marketing campaigns.

See-d you later.”

Gene Gusman

Gene Gusman is Director of Deliverability Operations, North America for Cheetah Digital. He is a technologist with over twenty years of experience in marketing and publishing technology. He leads the optimization efforts of the messaging infrastructure for deliverability while helping clients to get their messages to the inboxes of their customers.

http://www.cheetahdigital.com

Reengage or Disengage – “These days, one of the primary factors influencing email inbox placement is engagement. Even if you are doing all the right things in terms of permission, authentication, frequency and content, if your subscribers are not opening, clicking, responding, or otherwise engaging with your emails, then deliverability will suffer.

Sometimes people change their interests, change their minds, or simply get tired of the same thing. If that is happening with your email campaign, get their attention and find out what they do want. When someone has not interacted with any of your messages in a while, it’s time to change the conversation.

Maybe they are just not responding to the current subject matter, so change the Subject line and pre-header to include a call to action. The subject line and pre-header are your only line of communication until they open the email. And, since they have not been interacting, lower the frequency of sending.

Don’t wait until a subscriber has not engaged for six months before changing your message. It is not uncommon for an audience to open and click less frequently with time. When you see this happening, try offering an incentive or some new and special content to rekindle interest in the program.

Consider creating a segment of your list that was previously active, but not within the past 3 to 6 months (the time period could vary with your program). Send these subscribers a different message before they lose interest entirely. If they have not engaged within the past 6 to 12 months (depending upon your program), they now require a concerted reengagement effort and should be placed in a segment outside of the primary mailing list. If they still do not interact after some weeks (once again, the period could vary with your program), you should send a request to reconfirm their permission. If one or two of these are unsuccessful the address should be deactivated.

A list with too many inactive addresses can damage your reputation and negatively impact deliverability. As the mailbox provider focus on engagement has increased, they may also look at the percentage of the addresses that are engaged as a factor in determining inbox placement. It is therefore important to incorporate an activity-based segmentation strategy so that it is integrated rather than an occasional task. Review your program to help determine the appropriate time periods for each segment. Addresses that have passed through the phases of decreasing activity, have been given a chance to re-confirm their permission and have failed to do so should be removed from your list. DISENGAGE!”

Mike Hillyer

Founder of EmailNinjas, Mike has been working in the email industry since 2006 and advises senders on infrastructure, deliverability, and strategy.

http://emailninjas.com

DO NOT BUY LISTS! – “You may get approached about buying lists, but it’s the worst possible thing you can do. It’s tempting to think that you could potentially gain thousands of new people to reach with your message, but what you’re really getting is a minefield of spam traps, honeypots, and people who never asked for your message.

Buying a list is the quickest way to get blacklisted not only by the mailbox providers, but by the Email Service Providers (ESPs) who scan uploaded lists to try and catch list purchasers before they can start sending and ruin the ESP’s reputation.

Did your boss hand you a purchased list and ask you to get on it? Rather than send them email, use the list to generate lookalike audiences in other channels, craft a compelling and relevant ad copy, and point clicks at a landing page that encourages them to sign up for your list. Now you have a clean list of recipients who actively signed up for your content and a safe way to expand your email marketing footprint.”

Anna Ward

I've managed mailservers and lead deliverability teams for ESPs for the past 6 years, working in email deliverability and compliance for over 9 years. My work is all about increasing performance, minimizing risk, and establishing the most trusted reputation with ISPs and mailbox providers.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/annagraceward/

Differentiate Your Message Types By Sending IP and From Address – “Every business has different types of messages they send — login-related transactional messages, purchase confirmations, automated marketing series, monthly newsletters, legal notices, etc. Since each of these messages has a different vulnerability, if you’re sending them all from the same IP and domains, you’re putting *all* your mail at risk when something goes awry with just *one* type of message.

For example, if a form on your website gets hacked, your promotional messages could also see excessive bounces and blacklistings as receivers try to block the abuse. If your marketing team accidentally sends to the wrong list, complaints and poor engagement could quickly result in poor deliverability for transactional messages too.

Differentiating your message types by sending IP and From address whenever possible creates separate sending reputations the receiver can rely on. That protects your messages against widespread deliverability issues when small problems inevitably surface (it also makes identifying those problems much easier!). At the very least, I recommend my clients use different subdomains for transactional and bulk/broadcast messages to better monitor their sending reputations and keep them healthy.”

Aleksandrs Vilums

Aleksandrs is an email deliverability consultant and email industry services product manager. Since 2010, he has helped ESP, SMTP, CRM services, and marketing agencies with solutions for a better quality of email delivery.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleksandrs-vilums-78514957/

Be Ethical and Protect Your Inbox Reputation – “There are a few best practices I would advise anyone wanting to improve their email deliverability to follow.

1. Think About Your Email Deliverability Reputation Score!

When email users open their mailbox, users have a chance to give reputation credit to email senders or take it away. This is done with functions that mail services provide to email users. When email users either mark or move an email message to spam/junk, delete unread messages or unsubscribe, they take away sender reputation credit. But when email users open, forward, reply to an email, categorize it, mark it as important, add the contact to the address book or move an email message from the spam/junk folder to the inbox, it gives reputation credit to the email sender. If sender reputation credit is high, senders have a better chance to deliver email messages into the inbox. And of course, email delivery speed is also better with a higher sender reputation score.

2. Keep Your Email Recipients Happy!

Before you send out an email message to your recipients, think about the value that they will get and how your recipients could react. Is the subject line interesting to them? Will they notice it and open your email? If the answer is yes, think about whether your content provides value, especially if your email recipients are receiving your email message for the first time. If these things all seem to be in order, do you expect some of your email recipients could mark your message as spam? If yes, think about why? What do your recipients want to receive and how frequently? Even if the email recipients didn’t remember where and how they joined your email list, if your message is interesting, the email recipients could continue to open your next email messages.

3. Check Your Email Delivery Quality Before You Send Out an Email Message to the Full List!

You have a list, you have content and your “from details” are set up for your email campaigns. Before you send out an email message to all your recipients, check if your content gets delivered into the inbox for your @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @outlook.com mailboxes. If your test was delivered and landed in junk/spam folders then something is wrong and must be resolved before your message gets sent out to the full list and affects your delivery reputation. Sometimes problems could be with the service that you’re using to send out messages, so you could ask the service provider for help, but in my experience in most cases the problems are with content, sender reputation or sender settings. If you cannot resolve the problem yourself, you can ask deliverability specialists/consultants for help.

4. Use Email Delivery Reputation Monitoring Tools!

If your average open rate is below industry standards (or clicks to your pages from messages 7-10x less than your industry average open rate), you must use reputation monitoring tools for your company to check if your reputation is good enough to deliver your emails into the inbox. One of the free and easy to use tools that I recommend is postmaster.google.com.”

Kevin Hopkinson

Kevin has a deep history with email marketing and deliverability; particularly in the political action theatre, having raised more than $10 million in online donations for clients. He has more than 12 years of experience in professional delivery services and getting email to the inbox.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinsprofile/

Proper Data Management – “I’d estimate that about half of all email deliverability conversations I’ve ever had, in some way or another, morph into a conversation about data management. It’s the elephant in the room that many people don’t understand is hurting them the most, and that’s what I will gently touch on here.

Always make sure you have a program setup that naturally churns emails out of your production for good after X number of sends/days with no engagement. Just look at it as a cost of doing business if you purchased the list, because it’s not necessarily those folks who are buying and sending emails that are the problem like most will allude. It’s all of those senders who are ignorant to the fact that delivering the same email into perpetuity is not a good strategy.

With that said, one of the worst data management strategies out there is when marketers demand email quotas in their lists counts. Now that is a practice that became obsolete the exact same day it was thought up. The end result is always years of sending to emails that will never engage; emails that are doing more harm than good by staying on the list. Keeping unengaged users on a list for years on end is like holding up a big sign that says to the filters “I don’t care!”. Folks implementing strategies like that should do a list hygiene scrub and take a gander at their Recycled trap metric.

That said, email providers and filters are incredibly sophisticated nowadays; and they are particularly good at how they are able to track reputation. The data you’re pushing through their systems tells them everything they need to know about you as a sender. In fact, their AI probably has ways to match data points that we can’t even think of. They are able to bucket every single email attempt at their users, which also happen to be their most important asset. Without the email user, ISPs cannot harvest engagement data and present them relevant advertisements. Their mission is clear – to protect those users at all costs. So please manage your data accordingly.”

Jennifer Nespola Lantz

Director of Deliverability at Zeta. I've been in the email world since 2005 and have gone from coding email to production management to the wonderful world of deliverability. In a former life, I was a media planner, which has given me a rounded perspective on customer communications, regardless of medium.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-nespola-lantz-b688774

Improve Engagement – “There are many nuances to deliverability and why email goes where it goes. When approaching any deliverability issue, there are some basic items that need to be in place before any other strategy is employed otherwise you may be met with diminished impact or no effect at all. These basics include the infrastructure and MTAs follow best practices, authentication is set up correctly and passing, the sender employs sound data collection practices (and there are many), and the sender is mailing wanted and expected mail to OPTED IN individuals. Once those items are reviewed and checked off, then one of the most successful ways to address a deliverability issue can be summarized in one word, engagement. Use it, love it, live by it.

UNDERSTANDING THE VIEW

I love analogies so when I think about ISP filtering, I think of it as if it were an event promoter. Each event can be measured by a multitude of factors that determine if it was successful enough to promote again. Customer activity is the most direct and impactful signal about how it was received. If an event triggers a thunderous applause, you’ve got yourself a hit, even if there were issues such as lighting, some boos, dull moments along the way, or a delayed start. If you hand an ISP a stadium full of 60,000 people and only 600 are clapping, the performance going on inside that venue will feel a little lackluster and, frankly, a terrible entertainment experience that does not warrant being repeated. However, move that performance to an auditorium that seats 700 and 600 people applaud, it makes a much bigger impact. This is the goal. Frame how the ISPs view what they are receiving. In some cases, it comes with the necessity to reduce the number of people you are sending to (I’ll get to that in just a sec), but the impact on what will happen to your mail is much greater. Once you build a positive reputation, then you can start to develop larger venues, so long as that also grows the enthusiastic audience in the same proportion.

REFRAMING THE PICTURE

To reestablish or build your reputation, start by restricting your list to customers that have engaged with the email within the last 3 months (30 days for more dire circumstances). This will naturally improve the quality of the audience. Customers that look for your mail, move it, open it, click it, star it, add a reminder, reply to it, forward it, etc. are your most valuable asset. They are the ones that will attend your next event. The only thing the unengaged customers are doing for your reputation is reaffirming to the ISP that the filtering was right and your performance was a dud. Removing them leaves you with a larger group of people that are telling the ISP that the filtering to the inbox is indeed what they want. And bonus! It also will weed out spam traps that may be hiding in your list. The higher quality list and the better metrics are huge signals to the ISPs that there is value in what you are sending.

Once in place, let that new selection sit. ISPs need a history long enough to help adjust their algorithms before reputation and inboxing will follow. This period of time is your way of telling the ISP that your customers “Like me, they really like me!”. During this time, keep an eye on any automated campaigns that may also be contributing to the negative metrics. Those should also be capped if so or potentially paused and set aside for review. In some cases, reputation could take 3-4 weeks before you’ll see a change. I had one client experiencing reputation issues and we implemented engagement restrictions on 2 of the 3 sends per week from an open mailing that was sent 3 times per week. After this sat for about a month, the MOM open rate increased 3 percentage points and the number of customers opening by 43%.

MOVING FORWARD

In life and in email, it’s easier to ruin reputation than it is to rebuild it so don’t expect fast changes or a quick build back to ‘normal’. As you start to see your open rate and your reputation return to normal after the first 3-4 weeks with the new targeting, begin your expansion. When you are ready, move from 3 months to 4, then 5, then 6. Give it at least 2-3 weeks between each subsequent jump. You can sometimes jump more aggressively, but that really depends on your business and how much your deliverability was impacted. As you start to go beyond 6 months, you’ll want to tread more carefully. Some clients will have a sweet spot of 6 months, some 9, and some 12. Once you get reestablished, your targeting can also lean on metrics from other sources, like purchase data, website activity, etc.

For each expansion, factor in volume changes as well. If you are sitting at a lower volume due to the restrictions, you’ll want to make sure your expansion doesn’t spike volumes or dilute the metrics with an influx of unengaged customers or spike complaints, and so on. Otherwise, you’ll be at square one again. Portion out the expanded audience over a couple of launches. It allows you to ramp up the volume, manage the audience makeup, and temper complaints from those that may have been sitting for a while. I like to break up the audience so jumps are around 10% at a time. In some respect and views, this is a very conservative approach. I prefer this though because by doing it this way, it allows me time to monitor and see if there is anything else impacting the mailings. Flexibility in rebuilding what was lost is very important. Pull back when you see a backslide, push forward when you are doing well.

For the long-haul and health of your program, you may not get back to business-as-usual, but an altered version of it. I see the most success when there is an engagement cap in place, generally 12 months or less. Again, there is value in the lesser/unengaged population, but if you are going to reach out to them, be strategic. It should not be a part of your everyday operations. At some point reengagement series and repermission series should come in to permanently weed out those that have moved on from the relationship. Reengagement series could start as early as 3 months, repermission as early as 6 months, but this is all dependent upon the business, service/product lifecycle, etc.

Lastly, while you are working through remediating your deliverability issues, I would also recommend a self-discovery session to review the mailing program. What is going out? Is it relevant? Is it timely? Is it too much? Too little? What can you do to keep your core list as engaged as possible to minimize attrition? What drove the issue to begin with? And ultimately are you connected with your customer? If your mail is wanted, expected, and timely, deliverability issues often fade away.”

Josh Nason

Josh has been in the email space for more than 10 years and has worked for email service providers, agencies, and been a client himself.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshnason/

Avoid Big List Syndrome – “Great deliverability always starts with sending emails to those who opted in/want to receive those emails, but another common misfire is what I call “big list syndrome” — when marketing likes to tout their list size.

The problem? A healthy chunk of those big lists likely haven’t engaged in quite some time, resulting in lower than expected inbox placement rates due to low engagement levels.

We always recommend cutting off email recipients that haven’t opened in more than two years and pushing them to a re-engagement campaign. From there, senders can likely cut down even more depending on what the stats tell them (ex. how soon someone unsubscribed following signup).

By cutting down on inactive recipients, senders can get a more realistic idea of their active list and why and when recipients are dropping off. That also can become beneficial following the cleanup as you can get a better sense of how your active users are responding to your campaigns, especially if open percentage is a key metric.

Keeping continually tight marketing lists is an easy way for senders to increase engagement and cut out the fat.”

Karen Balle

Karen has been in email for over 20 years. She has been heavily involved in the evolution of email and deliverability. Her current focuses are deciphering the complexities of deliverability and helping to keep email accessible to companies and non-profit organizations of all sizes.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-balle-9294701/

Mind Your Canaries: Know Your Early Warning Signs and How to Monitor Them – “Reputation is a function of engagement over time. It’s obvious when you start seeing blocks that there is a reputation problem but there are warning signs, or canaries, before blocks ever happen. Knowing what your canaries are can help you avoid blocks or minimize the impact of blocks when they do happen.

First, track any major changes to your email program in a spreadsheet or other easily searchable database. Since reputation is a function over time, blocking rarely happens immediately. It’s more likely that you’ll start seeing changes 2 weeks to 2 months later. Major changes include, but are not limited to, adding new list sources, rebranding, changing your mailing patterns or significant changes to content. When you start seeing problems, refer to this list to see which changes could be the root cause. Whenever possible, when you make a significant change, create a corresponding roll-back plan or a plan to alter how you’re using the data to make it easier to reverse potential reputation damage.

The easiest way for an experienced deliverability consultant to monitor your canaries is to monitor your block bounces. If you don’t have access to your blocks and a person who is knowledgeable about their meaning, you should use other signals like extending sending times or blocks at mailbox providers who are more prone to block more quickly instead. It’s also important to look at trends for your engagement metrics for your top 5-10 mailbox providers over the last three months. A slow decline in open and click rates, or an increase in unsub and complaint rates are other early warning signs. Not all ESPs provide per-domain reporting, so you may need to create multiple segmented sends or implement creative use of A/B testing to get per-domain reporting.

If you’re sending B2C email, monitoring send times; getting reporting for non-global domains like Comcast, Cox, and RoadRunner; and monitoring engagement over time by domain for your top five to ten domains are going to be your biggest canaries.

Keep an especially close eye on delivery times to Verizon Media Group (AOL, Yahoo, and Verizon). They have a series of traffic shaping temporary rejections that often preface a block. If mail to VMG is exceeding four to eight hours, it’s time to start rolling back some of your more recent changes. These traffic shaping temporary rejections are often your earliest warning sign. Microsoft also uses traffic shaping, but it’s less common that VMG.

The global mail providers – Gmail, Microsoft (outlook.com and hotmail.com), and Yahoo – are the biggest portion of most senders’ lists. Oftentimes, the early warnings are blocks happening at non-global domains like Comcast, Cox, and RoadRunner, and will start experiencing problems before the big three. Some ESPs allow you to pull reports based on domain. If your ESP doesn’t, you can segregate each send into two or more parts to separate the big three from your remaining domains. While engagement metrics won’t be identical, they should be similar across all parts and should be consistent over time.

Trends across multiple months are also important to keep track of for the big three. Gmail gives much less warning than other mailbox providers and is harder to resolve. Any immediate drop in open rates of more than 1% is cause for concern. Strive to maintain open rates above 12% for the big three. You also want to monitor open, click, unsub, and complaint rates over time. Optimally, open and click rates remain above 15% and 4% respectively, while complaints and unsub rates stay under 0.08% and 0.1% respectively. When you detect a worsening of engagement metrics, refer to your recent changes document. Find the change(s) that happened before your decline and start working to roll back that change or make adjustments to how you’re handling that data.

Note, Gmail does not send feedback loops, or complaints, unless a send has a very high complaint rate. Other mailbox providers send copies of most complaints to your ESP, which allows your ESP to suppress those subscribers and provide you with a complaint rate. Complaints must be under 0.08% to stay in the safe zone.

If you’re sending B2B email, there’s less warning before blocking, but there are two service providers that serve as early warnings – Mimecast and Barracuda. If these bounces are not available through your ESP’s reporting, you can use an MX lookup service like MXToolbox, xnnd.com, or Wise Tools – https://tools.wordtothewise.com/dns. Input the domain of the blocked email addresses (the part after the @) into the MX lookup box and submit the query. Look to see if the result includes barracudanetworks.com or mimecast.com.”

MXToolbox

xnnd.com

WiseTools

Sample Barracuda Results

Dan Oshinsky

Dan runs Inbox Collective, a consultancy that helps news organizations and non-profits with email strategy. He’s also the creator of Not a Newsletter, a monthly briefing about how to send better email. He previously worked as the Director of Newsletters at both The New Yorker and BuzzFeed.

http://notanewsletter.com/

Build a Welcome Series – “A welcome series is crucial in the first 30 days after a reader signs up for your newsletter. A great series establishes a relationship with the reader, builds trust, and guides them through the next steps on their journey. But they’re also so important for deliverability. These emails open at a much higher rate than your newsletters or regular email correspondence, and every time a reader engages with an email, it improves your brand’s standing with inbox providers like Gmail. By driving that early engagement with your readers, it’s going to help you stay out of the spam folder.

In that first welcome email, make sure you introduce yourself and set the expectations for readers: What they’ll get and when they can expect to hear from you. But don’t stop with just a single welcome email. Make sure that over the course of the first month, you send a series of emails to help readers get to know you, your team, and your brand, and help them get the most out of their relationship with you. The more they engage, the more it should help your email deliverability in the long run.”

Henry Gutierrez

Henry has 14 years of experience in email marketing, with a specific focus on deliverability. At Bluecore, he's currently helping maximize deliverability and ROI for some of the top retail brands in the country.

https://www.bluecore.com/

Send LESS Email – “There’s a lot to focus on when improving deliverability but the most common recommendation is to reduce volume. It is also by far the most unpopular. Aggressive volumes will result in sending to unengaged subscribers, spam traps or receiving high spam complaints, which will all affect reputation and inbox placement. Before giving tips on how to reduce volume it’s best to understand how less can be more, and more can be less.

More is Less

Below is a situation encountered years ago where the sender became more aggressive with the size of their unengaged subscribers and frequency.

Volume and inbox placement show an inverse relationship, affecting the amount of opens. As email tripled in volume, the amount of opens dropped by three times the previous amount. Below is the average amount of opens by daily volume:

It’s clear there is an adverse effect when giving into the temptation of increasing volume. Less consistently gives this program more. More opens and more money, by far.

Reducing Volume Intelligently

Some points to consider when reducing volume to improve deliverability:
- Identify Level of Urgency – Is there an important sending date coming up? In some cases a sender can bounce back to 100% inbox placement in just a few days if aggressive enough.
- Identify the Damage – Are emails being completely blocked or heavily filtered? Also it’s important to identify where the problem is so that the list size/frequency is only reduced with subscribers at problematic mailbox providers.
- Reducing Frequency – This is usually the least painful way to reduce volume. Start by reducing frequency to the lesser engaged subscribers. This should cause minimal impact to ROI since those subscribers aren’t engaging with emails anyways. Never count out that reducing frequency across the board may also be a solution.
- Reducing List Size – Sometimes it needs to be done. The higher the composition of unengaged subscribers, the higher the likelihood of encountering issues. The ideal engagement level for a size depends on factors such as content, frequency, vertical, acquisition, etc. Most successful senders email subscribers that have opened or clicked a message from anywhere between the last six months to the past year.
Sample Approaches
- Aggressive – A sender had 90%+ of emails going to the Gmail spam folder. Decided to send to those who opened or clicked a message in the last 10 days. Gmail inbox went to 100% after 3 days, but a cautious increase continued until a breaking point was found where inbox filtering started to occur again.
- Cautious – A sender had a 70% inbox placement rate for Gmail and reducing list size was a tough pitch. Reduced list size to those that opened or clicked in the past 1.5 years, from two years. Sender then also reduced frequency for those that had not opened or clicked in the past year to 1.5 years. Inbox placement for Gmail peaked at 85% two weeks after changes.
As with everything, measure efforts with every data point possible. Never rule out sending less as a solution to deliverability issues, which more importantly can increase opens and ROI.”

Brett Schenker

Brett has worked in the digital space for 15 years and email deliverability for over 10. Focused primarily on nonprofits and political organizations, he's become the expert in that space on the subject.

https://brettschenker.com/

List Management is Key – “I find list management is the key to getting good deliverability today. Email service providers are looking for engagement as a key metric. That means they want to see opens, responses, and forwarding of email. People fall off of lists and lose interest over time which means that without proper management, you’ll just get more of these “inactive” addresses on your list, decreasing inbox rates.

While the specific needs for every sender will vary, the place I start with those who need help is figuring out what domains you’re having issues with. I look at the open rates at the domain level and see which ones are performing below the average open rate for the list.

For these domains, I’ll then target differently, sending to people who have opened an email in the past 30 days as an example. You’re criteria will vary for that. Then, it’s sending to that segment and seeing if the open rates improve (not the percent, the actual number of opens) and let it keep improving over time.

You’re sending positive metrics that way to the email providers which they like to see.

Doing this I’ve seen open rates go from single digits to over 50% with more opens than ever before even though they’re sending to fewer individuals.

From there, it becomes a math problem maximizing the amount of emails you send to a domain versus what the open rates are.”

How to Optimize Your Landing Pages for Google Ads Campaigns

by Chris Herbert | Last Updated July 9, 2020

If you’re using Google Ads to drive traffic to your products or services, you want to make the biggest return on your investment possible. Whether that return is signing on new clients or pulling in product sales that make the cash register go ka-ching (what a great sound!), the goal is the same…to get your target audience to take action while spending as little as you can. That’s just good business, right?!

And one of the absolute fundamentals if you want to achieve that is getting your landing page “on the money.” That’s because it’s right at the heart of it all, so can either make or break your campaign. So you could kind of say knowing how to properly optimize landing pages for Google Ads is pretty important.

But just how do you go about doing that? Well to figure that out, I got in touch with 41 paid traffic pros, who are in the trenches living this stuff day-in, day-out, and they were kind enough to share a whole bunch of different ideas on how you can optimize your landing pages and enjoy better results with Google Ads.

Anyway, enough of my waffle. I would urge you to scroll down the page and dig into the good stuff. This article is chock full of golden insights that should get those cogs turning. And remember, take action! Great advice is only useful if you do something with it! And if you’re overwhelmed by the number of tips we’ve compiled; don’t be. Just take a deep breath, bookmark the article and try one thing at a time. You can always come back for more 🙂

Have you used any of these tips? We’d love to hear all about the results you achieved. Do tell us in the comments section at the end of the article.

Google Ads Landing Page Optimization: 41 Great Ideas

Landing page optimization for Google Ads got you in a tizzy? No sweat, we’ve got your back and we’re armed with plenty of suggestions. Here’s an overview of all of the different optimization tips that were shared. Have a read, pick a few out and get testing!

Make Your Landing Page Trustworthy (Freddy Heppell)
Test Multi-Step Forms to Get MORE Leads While Still Gathering More Information to Get Better QUALITY Leads (Reece Groves)
If It’s Not on Your Landing Page, It’s Not True (Amy Hebdon)
Match Your Message to the Intent of the Search, Not Just the Keyword (Mate Hernadi)
Import Landing Page Data Into Google Ads from Google Analytics (Melanie Gray)
Track Changes and Tests Using Notes Feature (Roy Steves)
Measure Crucial Events with Google Tag Manager (Dan Rospedzihowski)
Test a Sticky Header/Footer and Include Your Primary CTA Button (Cody Jensen)
Messaging to Explain vs Messaging to Convert (Bruce Chant)
Improve Load Speed (John Williamson)
Configure Your Landing Page Specifically for Paid Traffic (Navah Hopkins)
Test New Landing Pages Using Google Experiment (Tam Doan)
Integrate Tracking with your CRM to Carry Data Through the Sales Cycle (Natasha Ahmed)
Test, Test, Test (Barrie Smith)
Consistent Wording Between Ads and Landing Pages (Steven Hammer)
Focus on Relevance (Oliver Ewbank)
Utilise Dynamic Keyword Insertion for Relevance at Scale (Elliot Sheen)
Test a Quiz or Messenger Bot Style Landing Page (Justice Ekhaguere)
Master the Process and Keep Track of Learnings (Patrick Jongbloed)
Less is More – Reduce Waste (Thomas Jaskov)
Location Matters When It Matters, Which Is Always (Vincent Iachetta Jr)
Get Third-Party Feedback on the Content and Usability of Your Landing Page Before Going Live (Adrian Stephenson)
Analyze Your Search Terms Report (Justin Weyant)
Making Money with Google Ads Using Static and Dynamic Conversion Tracking (David Rothwell)
Bundle Related Products/Services to Increase Customer Value (Kaspars Brencans)
Simple User Interface/Navigation (Mirena Boycheva)
Deliver Different Experiences During the Conversion Cycle (Chris & Alicia Whitbread)
People Scan First, Then Read. Draw People Onto Your Page and Give Them a Reason to Read More to Convert (Scott Salwolke)
Keep On-Page SEO Best Practices in Mind (Vincent Tobiaz)
How to Use Ad Rank to Identify that Your Landing Page is Letting You Down (Selina Gough)
They Didn’t Convert? What You Can Do About That (Jeremy Templer)
Focus on 1 Conversion Goal (Jeenfer Wilson)
Dedicated Landing Page for Mobile Users (Athena Pham)
Use the C/E/A Methodology (Billy Robinson)
Different Goals Should Deliver Different Goal Values (Anton Hoelstad)
Highlight Your Key Selling Points (Adam Mackay)
Craft the Perfect Offer (Matt Isaac)
Keep your Call to Action (CTA) Above the Fold (Steven Kwan)
Think of it as Your Virtual Shopfront (Flavia Abma)
Less Navigation + Strong CTA (Eric Farmer)
Split Test Big Ideas (Johannes Klupfel)

What the Experts Said: A Journey to Better Optimized Landing Pages

In this section we’ve published each of our expert tips in full. They’re packed with real-world, highly actionable advice. If implemented, these ideas should help you optimize your landing pages and improve the conversion rates on your Google Ads campaigns in no time.

You can skip to a specific tip by using the filters below.

{"filter_mode":"masonry"}

Cody Jensen

Cody Jensen is the Founder & CEO of Searchbloom – an award-winning Search Engine Marketing firm named an inaugural member of the prestigious Clutch 1000 list.

https://www.searchbloom.com/

Test a Sticky Header/Footer and Include Your Primary CTA Button – “We’ve found tremendous increases in conversion rates by adding a sticky header or footer on your landing pages with your primary CTA incorporated. Having a sticky header/footer can be impactful on both desktop and mobile, but we’ve seen the most substantial increases in mobile conversion rates. Take a look at these screenshots to get an idea of what I mean:

Primary CTA in Sticky Header #1

Primary CTA in Sticky Header #2

Notice how I have scrolled down the page a bit, but the primary CTA is still easily accessible? Here’s an example of the same thing but now it’s a sticky footer with the primary CTA:

Primary CTA in Sticky Footer

No matter where the user is in their journey, and no matter what value proposition encourages them to take action, the user always has a clear and easy way to take the next step and convert.”

Dan Rospedzihowski

Head of PPC at Dark Horse with 10+ years of experience managing some of the UK's largest PPC & Paid Social accounts

http://darkhorse.co

Measure Crucial Events with Google Tag Manager – “Visually appealing and navigable landing pages lead to a well optimised, user friendly experience. Get all of those combinations right and you can reap the rewards of profitability!

Here I’ll be highlighting some of the most important KPIs to optimise towards, enabling you to get the most out of your ad spend. There are many analytics tools to choose from but I’ll be guiding you on one of the most important of those, Google Tag Manager (GTM).

Introduction to GTM:

GTM works in conjunction with Google Analytics (GA), which is widely known to be one of the most effective and free eCommerce reporting tools. GA sends event data (events are just another word for goals or actions completed by a user on your landing page) which can then appear in your Google Ads account. Having this data link to your Google Ads account offers the ability to optimise with maximum effectiveness as it means everything sits under one roof, giving you visibility on all key metrics. This helps to save you time and achieve the best possible performance.

How Does GTM Work?:
- GTM gathers event data specific to each channel or campaign
- This is sent directly to Google Analytics
- Google Analytics sends that data directly to Google Ads
- All the data is viewable in Google Ads
Getting Started:

To get started, you’ll need to install the GTM code (container snippet) on the pages which you’d like to track. Here’s a link to the full support guide:

https://support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/6103696?hl=en

If you’re using WordPress, Shopify or other templated platforms like Wix, Squarespace or Unbounce you can find guides quite easily online.

Top 5 Tags/Events:

This is the most important part where I’ll explain what events are, why to use them and provide links on how to install.

Form Submissions:

Most landing pages are geared towards form submissions and these are typically the most important goal to measure. These should be tagged individually as sometimes there may be more than one way to capture user data. Typical examples of these goals are: leads, call backs, quotes etc.

Button Clicks:

Landing page best practice guides would usually steer you down the path towards only focusing on one main call to action (CTA). If you do offer multiple CTAs on the same page it’s important to tag these separately to ensure you can measure the impact your optimisations may have on the different goals. If one is performing much better than the other, consider removing the lower performing CTA in a split test scenario. Another reason may be to understand individual campaign or keyword level performance within your ad account.

It’s common to see variations in user journeys based on different keywords or campaign entry points. For example, upper funnel queries may result in button A performing better than button B. This type of scenario may lead to new landing pages being built for different keyword groups.

Call Tracking:

Often overlooked or set up incorrectly, call tracking enables the advertiser to see how many calls were made by users who clicked on your ad. This works by dynamically changing the number on a landing page to a ‘google forwarding number’ without any extra cost. Call details can then be tracked without interfering with the user experience and can be localised to minimise any performance issues. You’ll be able to see the duration and volume of calls which will give you valuable insights into call quality.

To test this you can use the standard method via the Google Tag Assistant tool. If you’d like to see it in real time, you could do so at the expense of a click on an ad so make sure you choose the keyword wisely to save on cost! More information on call tracking here:

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6095883?hl=en-GB

Scroll Depth:

This handy metric can tell you how far a user has scrolled down a particular web page and is one of my favourite secondary KPIs to measure. Secondary KPIs can help to decipher why primary objectives are not being met. It’s also a good alternative to the time on site metric as users can often leave web pages open which can skew the data (you can adjust the idle limit for avg session duration if this is a problem you’re having).

Scroll depth tracking can be configured towards the percentages that you wish to measure. If it’s crucial for you to know how many users scroll 15% down the page, that’s easy to set up. You can choose the pages which you wish to measure too so that it doesn’t fire across your whole website. With the correct information, this can be a really powerful optimisation goal!

More info and how to install here:

https://support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/7679218?hl=en

Custom Events:

This feature demonstrates the versatility of GTM as a powerful goal tracking tool and is able to tag almost everything else you might wish to report on. You can tag a wide variety of events from mouseovers to combinations of goals, some of which may not be within the standard event list. These may need some developer work to create customised scripts. There’s a great blog which will help with your overall understanding here:

https://www.analyticsmania.com/post/google-tag-manager-custom-event-trigger/”

Reece Groves

7+ Years Experience in PPC Advertising. Get More Customers by Maximising Google, Facebook & Microsoft Ads with Conversion Optimised Websites & Landing Pages

https://www.linkedin.com/in/reecegroves/

Test Multi-Step Forms to Get MORE Leads While Still Gathering More Information to Get Better QUALITY Leads – “Everyone always wants hot leads that fall into their lap who beg to hand over their money to you.

But that’s not always possible.

But PPC managers have vast amounts of data so they can test quickly (a lot of the time). They soon become useful as part of the conversion rate optimisations effort when a/b testing things fast.

If you have more than 5 form fields, test splitting them up into multiple steps, BUT not on separate pages, that slows down the experience (only fractionally but it matters). You can get an idea of what I mean when I talk about multi-step forms, from form builder tools like these:
- https://leadgenapp.io/
- https://leadformly.com/
..or the multi-step form I built here for a home heating & renewable installation company, here:
- https://greenerenergygroup.co.uk/survey/
Take note of how effortless it is to finish and the use of clickable images rather than checkboxes with text next to them

Why does splitting form fields up work?

In a word, psychology.

Start with a simple question, like, if you’re an architect, for example, or how many bedrooms does your property have?

Once people start something they have a higher propensity to want to finish it – you know that satisfying feeling of completing something? That’s what is at play, but as long as it’s effortless. You can always add fun to it with flourishes of funny/brand copy and images as long as it is not overbearing & doesn’t distract from the goal.

On the other hand, if you have a long-form with 6+ fields & you’re asking for personal information, it may come across as daunting and people may not even start to fill it in.

Leave some of the most complicated or personable information at the end or even split up email/postcode in a previous step when applicable before going in for more information to increase chances of at least getting some contactable information like how we have done on the previous example.

Leave a splash of the “trust factor” & social proof in the way of testimonials & accreditations/certifications, so they stay with them throughout the form filling process. Then last but not least, always create a separate thank-you page redirect. As this gives reassurance, visitors have completed the form and is an opportunity for you to encourage people to follow you on socials or download resources of yours in the meantime while you get back to them.”

Steven Kwan

Steven is the Lead Generation Guy. Through his years of experience, he has focused on the channel that has made the biggest impact to his clients bottom line - Google Ads. His aim is to educate other on how to harness the worlds most effective marketing tool so that everyone can achieve success in their business.

https://leadgenguy.co.uk

Keep your Call to Action (CTA) Above the Fold – “My one recommendation to anyone who is using Google Ads is to create the main call to action (CTA) above the fold.

What does ‘above the fold’ mean?

Well, before the invention of the Internet, one of the main ways for people to get information was through newspapers. Newspapers use to be folded in half, with the main headline facing on top to capture people’s attention. This is ‘above the fold’ of the newspaper.

This translated to online with the expansion of the internet and ‘above the fold’ now means the top section of your website where people instantly land on your site.

So take a look at these real life examples:

Example #1

Example #2

Both landing pages look great.

Professionally designed.

Colourful.

However, one has their main call to action bang in the middle of the screen, where people can see it (example #1).

It can’t be missed.

Whereas with the other landing page (example #2), you need to scroll down and actually look for a call to action.

People do not want to do extra work, especially sifting through text to find out what to do next.

They don’t have the time…

So make it easy for people to take action.

Have one main call to action.

Stick it so its one of the first things they’ll see when they land on your page.

Make it visible.

Make it actionable.

If you’re doing Google Ads right, you’ll get enquiries.”

Steven Hammer

Steve Hammer is the President and co-Founder of RankHammer, the 2015 US search awards small agency of the year. Steve is a sought after speaker on the subjects of search marketing, PPC and analytics. In particular, he has been noted as a leader in AdWords Scripts and Google Tag Manager.

http://www.rankhammer.com

Consistent Wording Between Ads and Landing Pages – “You want to sound like a broken record when you’re making a landing page for your ads. If you use a phrase in the ad, use the exact same one on the landing page. Don’t worry about boring the audience. If you call yourself the greatest solution, don’t call yourself the best on the landing page. It needs to be that level of matching.

Remarkable consistency pays off because the user doesn’t need to think if they’re in the right place. Something caught their attention in the ad, so if you don’t use the same thing on the landing page there’s a good chance they might get confused. Think of it like a pop song. The hook that gets you in the first part needs to be around for the rest of the song.”

Melanie Gray

Melanie Gray is the owner and Google Ads Strategist at The Ad Factory. She manages over $200,000 in advertising spend each month and works with international clients such as The Daily Edited, Nimble Activewear, Brooks Running and Diesel. She has over 8 years of experience delivering successful and profitable campaigns for clients.

https://www.theadfactory.com.au/

Importing Landing Page Data Into Google Ads from Google Analytics – “As we split test different campaigns, ads, keywords, landing pages etc. it is important that we gather as much information as possible to determine what is working.

One tip that allows you to see this information directly in the Google Ads interface, is to import Google Analytics data. By linking your accounts and importing data, you will be able to see the following metrics directly in Google Ads:
- Bounce Rate
- Pages/Session
- Avg. Session Duration
- % of new sessions
You will be able to see this information for each individual keyword or ad copy, providing insight into what’s working well and what’s not. Here are the steps to implement this:
1. Set up Google Analytics (if not already) https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1008015?hl=en
2. In Google Ads, select Tools & Settings > Linked Accounts > Google Analytics (Details)
3. Locate your Google Analytics account in the list
4. Select “Link”
5. Hover over the pencil icon in the View column
6. Select import site metrics and save.
7. Go back to your Google Ads campaign and/or ad group view
8. Select Columns > Modify Columns
9. There should be a new option for Google Analytics (you may have to wait 1-2 minutes for the new link to go through). Select all columns you want to add. We suggest all!
You will then be able to analyse different ad copy and keywords for their bounce rates, and time spent on page, showing you further valuable information about how the user is interacting with your landing page after they’ve clicked on your ad.”

Barrie Smith

Results-driven Freelance PPC Specialist with 15 years' experience working with both B2C and B2B clients, delivering integrated digital marketing campaigns with a track record of success.

https://www.barrie-smith.com

Test, Test, Test – “You’re paying for every click so optimise everything to make the user convert.

Firstly, define your goals/KPIs first and make sure your tracking is setup correctly. A lot of novice PPC consultants simply track sales, but the PPC expert tracks a wide range of metrics – revenue per click, per keyword etc. Make sure you’re an expert with Google Analytics and Tag Manager.

In an ideal Google Ads campaign, your product or service keywords will be separated into their own Ad Groups, allowing you to dedicate your Ad Copy to the query and directing them to the appropriate landing page. Optimising your landing page isn’t just about sending users to the correct page – you can still have the correct page, but badly optimised.

Having the freedom to create landing pages specifically for PPC campaigns is a dream. This allows you to build pages to drive more leads or sales through your paid campaign by cutting out a lot of the distractions on the page and pointing the users in the direction of your call to action. Ultimately, raising your ROI.

Split test your landing pages – no matter how much of an expert you are, you cannot beat real data. So continuously testing your landing pages to improve the conversion rate is of huge importance. If you have a CPA of $100 with a 1% conversion rate for example, just think of the savings you can make by increasing that to 2% or 3%.

Don’t overlook the content of the page. You want to use this to convert your users. Test different headlines, different call to actions, different product descriptions; test everything. With Google offering free split testing there is really no excuse not to:

https://www.blog.google/products/marketingplatform/analytics/this-is-not-a-test-google-optimize-now-free-for-everyone

Having control over your landing pages also allows you to optimise your them to improve your Google Ads Quality Score. This can make a significant difference in the price you pay per click. By having an ‘Above Average’ landing page compared to Google scoring it ‘Below Average’ results in better rankings and lower costs per click.”

Flavia Abma

After finishing my International Business studies in Germany in 2001, I started working in online marketing for an online travel agency in 2002. I've been working in search engine marketing ever since, with clients of all sizes and from all kinds of different industries.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/flavia-abma-a3b3ab8/

Think of it as Your Virtual Shopfront – “When creating a landing page for Google Ads, think of it as your virtual shopfront.

What makes potential customers enter your shop? What’s displayed in your shop window? Is it well lit, bright and friendly? Are the products displayed in an appealing way? Are the prices clearly visible? Is your shop name easy to read? Is it easy to access your shop?

While the right copy and the right amount of copy are very important too, so is the layout and design of a page. Your shopfront – or landing page – is what users see first. And based on this first – visual – impression, a user will either stay and enter the shop and explore, or leave and take a look into your competitor’s shop window.”

Selina Gough

I have worked within the digital marketing space in 5 different Australian agencies, helping medium to enterprise businesses align their goals with their digital marketing strategies. My core capability is within Paid Media where I have become a specialist in Google Ads and Social Media Marketing, managing substantial budgets within the Australian and International markets to achieve my clients' measurement of success.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/selinagough/

How to Use Ad Rank to Identify that Your Landing Page is Letting You Down – “Ad Rank is one of the biggest limitations to a Google Ads campaign but weirdly one of the least analysed. When reviewing Search Impression share, there are two limitations that can stand in the way of an advertiser; Budget limitations and Ad Rank.

Ad Rank is a mysterious score that is the combination of a campaign’s Quality Score and Bid. If your campaign is poorly structured, naturally you’ll lose Search IS. If your campaign is structured perfectly but you’re not bidding nearly anywhere where you need to be, then you’ll lose IS.

If you’re finding that your ad rank is low, then there is a simple way to analyse whether it’s due to your landing page. Simply pull up a campaign’s columns for expected CTR, landing page experience and ad relevance. You’ll find on a keyword level which areas are lacking the most and you’ll be able to isolate the keywords that have a low landing page experience. I typically use a google sheet to import this data and automatically highlight which keywords require the most improvement.

Click to Enlarge

Once these keywords are isolated, then cross-reference the landing page in correlation with both Keywords and Search Terms. It’s important to check for both types of terms as these are vital for quality score metrics and landing page relevancy to an ad.”

Vincent Tobiaz

Worked in Web Design since 1998, and in 2005 ventured into WordPress, SEO/PPC/Social Digital Marketing experiences. Throughout his career has worked with everything from small businesses to Fortune 500s such as Verizon, AT&T, Citi & AARP.

https://www.seosmooth.com/

Keep On-Page SEO Best Practices in Mind – “It is no secret that Google will scan your landing page to see how relevant it is to the searcher’s query. Based on that relevance and other factors Google will assign your landing page a score. The higher the score, the better your chances are at beating out the competition in search results.

In my experience, using SEO best practices for landing pages will increase the landing page score that Google gives your page. This means that focusing on things like load time, a secure website, and AMP pages are all very important. BUT what a lot of people don’t focus on are the other bits of on-page SEO best practices like:
- Adding ALT tags (that match your targeted keywords) to the images on the page
- Focusing on user experience and how easy your landing page is to navigate
- Adding a meta description that matches your targeted keywords
If you keep on-page SEO best practices in mind when creating a landing page for your Google ads, it will give you the extra edge over the competition that you might need to beat them out in search results.”

Bruce Chant

Bruce has over 13 years' experience in digital marketing. In recent times he was Account Director of one of Australia's largest & most awarded Digital Marketing agencies, before returning to work for himself. Bruce still gets a buzz out of driving real results for real businesses.

https://digitaldynamic.com.au

Messaging to Explain vs Messaging to Convert – “No matter your service or product or niche or goal, there is no substitute for great copy.

Most web copy is beige at best, and rarely is it focused on converting the user effectively.

The most common trap is to believe we just need to get all the right information across to the user AND THEN they will convert. Information is not the issue, persuasion is.
- Start with a problem. Human minds are drawn to wanting to see that resolved
- Stop telling the user about yourself, and engage with them by describing their pain point
- Once you’ve identified the problem, be laser sharp with how YOU can help them
- Create tension – draw the user down the page
- Take out Adverbs & adjectives (bring focus), use Pro-nouns (be relatable)
- Delete. Remove unnecessary words.
Use this type of structure for your landing page which will see your ability to convert improve dramatically:
1. Headline statement – say what you do. Be VERY clear. Avoid vague buzzwords that say nothing!
2. Strong Call to Action – give users something to accept or reject. Add it in the Top RIGHT making use of the eye’s natural Z pattern. AND add in middle of the header.
3. Failure – Tell me what will happen if I don’t take action. Present the cost of NOT buying.
4. Success – Tell me what life looks like if I do buy. Show results.
5. The Way Forward – Spell out the way forward. Breakdown the process of doing business with you.”

Freddy Heppell

Freddy is a Digital Account Manager at Repeat Digital, based in Nottingham. He helps businesses generate more leads and sales from their pay-per-click marketing, specialising in Google Ads.

https://www.repeatdigital.com/

Make Your Landing Page Trustworthy – “Gaining the trust of your visitors is paramount when optimising your landing page to encourage conversions.

Unless you have the power of a strong brand, you need to develop trust with your users to encourage them to take the desired outcome on your landing page.

In order to make your landing pages trustworthy, there are a number of things you can do.

First off, you can share more information about your company. This can be done by adding a small ‘About’ section on your landing page, using images of your employees to portray who you are, where you’re based and what you do.

Then, add social proof, a term coined by Robert Cialdini in his 1984 book, Influence. There are many ways you can leverage this psychological trigger. The most effective forms are testimonials from happy customers, ratings and reviews, and case studies. It is important to note that these should not be clickable, so to encourage a conversion on the landing page your user has been sent to.

This landing page from “Webtrends Optimize” includes a testimonial from a customer, along with four case studies emphasising successful KPI increases for their customers.

Click to Enlarge

Finally, add at least one “trust element”. This can be any kind of security badge, guarantee, or membership of a trusted organisation such as the ICO, that lets them know the information they are about to share with you is safe.”

Eric Farmer

Eric lives in Pleasant Grove, Utah with his family and is currently the Director of Paid Media at BestCompany. He has been doing PPC since 2008 and he self-taught himself Google Adwords.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericdfarmer/

Less Navigation + Strong CTA – “There is a time and place for lengthy, wordy website pages where visitors can navigate your website at will. Your PPC lander is not this place. Since you’re paying hard-earned money for every visit to these pages, you need a conversion rate that gives you a solid ROAS (return on ad spend).

You can hold your visitors hands down the conversion path without them even really knowing it. This is the balance you’re looking for: not too pushy, but minimal choices that guide visitors to convert.

So what exactly am I referring to? Well, it can be a lot of things, so I’ll give you my top 3 tips:
1. If you can’t code the landing page to your needs, use a third-party service that specifically helps you create PPC landing pages in just a few hours (I’ve had great success with unbounce and instapages).
2. Remove the nav bar. This gives visitors way too many options to get distracted and lose their way. You want to keep them on the page you paid money to get them to!
3. Include one, very clear and visible CTA (call to action) that lets visitors know exactly what they are committing to.
Overall, in my experience, the more honest and transparent you are, the more you will be trusted and the more your landing page will convert. Good luck!”

Mirena Boycheva

Mirena has over 6 years of experience in digital marketing, specializing in pay-per click channels. She manages her own PPC agency working predominantly with SMEs. Building strategies based on her clients' goals, she helps them to increase not only their website visits, but their business as a whole.

http://www.leadvertisingsolutions.com

Simple User Interface/Navigation – “Creating a one-of-a-kind website is something you might think is a great idea! Having tons of buttons, many calls to action, blocks of text, different colours, a menu that comes up in a special way and drop-down menus at different levels, hidden sections… It will definitely distinguish you from the competition, right?

You do not want to copy anyone else, you would rather spend more time and money to have a customised website created for your own brand to make it as detailed as possible, as interactive as possible, etc. This would generate you many sales, you would think…

The truth is that the more your website differentiates itself from other websites, the more lost your visitor might feel. There are best practices for creating user navigation, which will lead the user straight to their goal in as few clicks as possible.

It is important to take into account the way average user thinks and the way they are used to finding the information they need on any website. Every little change might make the user feel lost and this means they will drop off your site.

Of course, you should try to keep people on your site and make them explore further. You can create a variety of links to inspire the user and make them curious about what great offer they might find behind every button. However, you need to make sure that there is an easy way back or an easy way for them to navigate to the place you want them to. If you’re selling stuff, you don’t just want visitors interested in reading your blog, you want them to buy. So make sure all your paths end up there. The user should never be more than 3 clicks away from the end-goal. You can still use nice fonts, colours, images, videos, form designs. However, do that keeping in mind that no matter how pretty your lead form is, what is most important is that users can find it.

People are used to finding certain types of information in specific places on a website. For example, if they were interested in the delivery options or payment methods, they would look in the website navigation menu, on the product page or the website footer. You need to make sure you have that information covered in all three places.

If you are not sure whether you have built an easy to understand flow of steps to conversion, you can check Google analytics. You can see how many pages users visit on average before leaving your site. Alternatively, you could check on which step or landing page users leave your site. Then you can change the navigation flow. If the users end up on your testimonials page and then leave, then you might want to update that one or even remove it to see if that changes their behaviour. If you have too many fields to fill out on your lead form, that could harm your conversion rate.

To conclude, you can add as much content and as many links to your website as you wish, but limit the number of clicks required from entering the site to the conversion to the absolute minimum necessary.”

Adrian Stephenson

A seasoned PPCer with bags of practical business experience outside the world of marketing. I don’t claim to know everything – does anyone? – but finding answers by continual perseverance is what attracted me to this industry. A bit like the annoying child who only knows the word ‘why’!

http://www.doneforyouppc.co.uk

Get Third-Party Feedback on the Content and Usability of Your Landing Page Before Going Live – “Just because you completely understand your landing page doesn’t mean that the rest of the world will.Everybody is different and will see things from their own perspective. This means that your perfectly worded (in your opinion) copy could be misinterpreted.
After all, it’s widely accepted that the ‘general public’ lacks common sense, so if there’s a way to get it wrong, they will find it.

Also bear in mind that website visitors tend to be short on patience and will literally scan-read your page to decide whether it solves their problem.

Consequently, and particularly on mobile, you only have a few seconds to win over your visitors.

So, rather than relying 100% on your own judgement, get some extra eyeballs to check out the landing page.

In the perfect world you might run it past three or four people from your target market, but in our somewhat imperfect society, a selection of diverse volunteers would be fine.

You want them to answer three questions:
1. What do I do next? – you’re looking to get them to take action. Whether that’s to pick up the phone, fill out a form, or make a purchase, it needs to be obvious what to do and how they need to do it.
2. How long does it take to work out what the page is about (i.e. the product or service on offer)? – if they can’t figure it out in a few seconds you’ve got your design wrong. Avoid choices if possible, or anything else which requires a decision to be made.
3. What would stop you from taking any action? – anything from poor punctuation/grammar to political incorrectness can sow negative seeds. Make sure your page is squeaky clean. You don’t want fence-sitters either, so make sure that the benefits are clearly displayed.
In summary, you need to have a landing page that a 9-year old could understand and comfortably make it through to the next step in your sales funnel.”

Thomas Jaskov

Thomas Jaskov is a senior SEO Expert and Google Ads (AdWords) consultant at Jaskov Consult ApS

https://jaskovconsult.dk/en/

Less is More – Reduce Waste – “If your goal is to better optimize your landing pages for Google Ads, you really need to think in terms of web usability and conversion rate optimization. If you don’t know so much about these topics, you can start with reading a great book called “Don’t Make Me Think” written by Steve Krug.

Then try to imagine this scenario:
1. John wants to buy 10 red roses for his girlfriend
2. He does a search on Google for “buy red roses”
3. He then clicks on your Google ad
4. John arives on your landing page… On your landing page, there are 100 different flower types. 99 of those flowers are not red roses. One of them is “red roses”…
Unfortunately John, doesn’t have the patience (or time) to look at all the products on your landing page, so he leaves.

Your bounce rate goes up, this signals to Google, that the user didn’t find, what he was looking for, and your Google Ads Quality Score goes down.

This was just one example of you giving too much. And if you know a little about “Lean” and “Six Sigma”, you would know, that the 99 products, which weren’t the red roses on your landing page, would be considered “waste”.

What you really want to do is to minimize the amount of waste on your landing page, and give your visitors exactly what they are looking for, so they have a higher chance of achieving their desired outcome.
- If your visitor searches for “red roses”, then give them red roses.
- If your visitors are looking for “red flowers”, then give them red roses, red tulips, red dahlias etc.
- If your visitors are looking for “flowers”, then give them roses, tulips, dahlias etc.
A common mistake when designing landing pages is that there is too much waste on the landing page. That’s not good for conversion rates, and it is not good for your Google Ads Quality Score. You need to remove as much waste as possible. Less waste is more sales… less is more!”

John Williamson

John Williamson is the Director of Paid Search at Gild Group. He is an analytical and entrepreneurial-minded data nerd, SEO/SEM expert, usability enthusiast, coffee addict, Redditor, Boglehead, and Oxford comma advocate. He is passionate about delighting users and customers through ethical, intuitive, human-centered, confidence-inspiring design and engagement.

https://www.theoptimizingblog.com/

Improve Load Speed – “My single tip for a Google Ads landing page is to focus on improving page load speed. Working on page load speed is an often forgotten and under-utilized tactic when it comes to PPC and digital marketing in general. Many site owners may not realize that landing page experience is a big factor in one’s Google Ads Quality Score, and that page load speed is a factor in that landing page experience. A higher Quality Score means lower ad costs and better ad placements.

Page load speed has become an increasingly important factor over the years, both as an organic ranking factor and as it applies to Google Ads Quality Score. It has also been empirically shown that users are more likely to convert and less likely to bounce from a quick-loading page. Modern users expect a fast page load; if yours takes more than a few seconds, they’re likely clicking the “Back” button to move on to your competitor.

Here are 9 things you can do today to improve your website’s load speed:
1. Pick a solid web host. A good hosting platform and whether or not you’re on shared or dedicated servers can make a world of difference for your load speed. Server response time has a huge impact.
2. Enable compression. This should be a simple setting with the host or you can implement it manually in your htaccess file on an Apache server. The application itself is usually Gzip.
3. Minify CSS, Javascript, and HTML. Minifying simply refers to reducing the file size of these things and removing extra spaces, commas, etc. There are plugins available for this, depending on your CMS.
4. Enable caching. Browsers “cache” pages, essentially saving a copy in flash memory to retrieve quicker in the future. You can safely cache stylesheets, images, etc. that won’t change very often.
5. Use a CDN. A Content Delivery Network serves your content from a server closest to the end user, reducing latency.
6. Compress images. Smaller image file sizes mean quicker load times. You can usually compress images without it being visible to the human eye.
7. Reduce unnecessary redirects. These hog resources.
8. Defer Javascript loading. You can usually safely defer scripts, having them load in the footer of the page rather than the header, so that the page load doesn’t have to wait for those scripts.
9. Delete unnecessary plugins and unused code. This regular housekeeping eliminates the unnecessary use of resources.”

Adam Mackay

A face to face solution selling professional, Adam has adapted 15 years of sales skills to the world of Search Advertising to help his clients 'sell' their key benefits, & provide the best solutions to their customers.

http://www.adwordswork.com

Highlight Your Key Selling Points – “When people are searching for something, whether it be using Google Search, Bing (or even the Yellow Pages!), they all have something in common:

They all want the best solution for them, at the specific point in time that they are searching.

When they search, they are going to be provided with a bigger range of options than they have ever seen previously. The ease of online advertising means that you now have more competitors going after that customer than ever before.

This makes it more important than ever to ensure that when someone does click your Ad, and arrives on your Landing Page, that they are provided with a genuine point of difference. Your Landing Page needs to sell the reason why they should take the next step with you – and not one of your competitors.

All too often, businesses and ad agencies look at the competition, and try to replicate what they are saying. This results in websites and Landing Pages from every advertiser saying the same things as each other: “best service” or “most experienced” or “locally owned.”

Not only are these statements boring platitudes that offer nothing to a prospective customer – they are also the same things your prospective customer is going to read in the Ads and Landing Pages of your competitors. If they see the same thing from every advertiser, how are they supposed to choose?

This is where it becomes crucial to highlight very early on in your Landing Page content the specific benefits, selling points, and competitive advantages your business has to offer to your prospective customer. They need to understand what’s in it for them – why should they take the next step and enquire or buy with you?

Don’t just follow what your competitors are doing and saying – and don’t say anything that can’t be proven. If you say “we have the best customer service” and believe that its a key selling point, then you better be able to back it up with strong evidence and prove how your customer service is different to, or better than, your competitors.

The people who visit your Landing Pages are still people. Write your Landing Page to speak to them, in the same way you would speak to them face to face. It’s all too easy for them to just hit the ‘back’ button and keep on searching, if you can’t give them a reason to work with you.”

Justin Weyant

Justin is an Senior Consultant at WordStream, who has analyzed thousands of paid search and paid social campaigns. He has helped SMBs improve their ROI for 4 and a half years.

https://www.wordstream.com/

Analyze Your Search Terms Report – “The first step in determining how to optimize your landing pages for Google Ads is to analyze your Search Terms report in your ad account. If you sort your search terms by impressions, you can look for trends in the most commonly searched terms that your ads are showing up for. Your landing pages need to match your market demand, so you should create landing pages that are relevant to the trends that you notice. You may already have relevant landing pages on your website, so you can direct users to those pages if that’s the case. However, you should create new landing pages when you find search terms that are relevant to your services, but you don’t have a specific, relevant landing page for that search.

For example, if you are a general contractor, your customers come to you for a wide range of projects. Someone looking for window replacements should go to a landing page about windows, and someone looking for roof repairs should go to a landing page about roofs. Businesses get higher Quality Scores and Conversion Rates when they create landing pages that are relevant to a specific location (ex. town,county,state), service (ex. criminal defense, corporate law, family law), or intent (ex. discount, 24/hour, free shipping). Additionally, you should consider creating a competitor comparison landing page if you notice users are looking for your competitors a lot! That way you can convince them why they should use you instead of the brand they are searching for.”

Oliver Ewbank

Oliver Ewbank is an award winning paid media specialist based in London. His digital insights have been featured in a variety of publications, including BBC News, PPC Hero, Wordstream, SEMrush & Virgin Entrepreneur. A guest speaker at Google, Oliver has run paid media projects for eBay, Koozai & Feefo.

https://www.reeyap.com/

Focus on Relevance – “When it comes to optimizing a landing page for Google Ads its vital that you consider Quality Score. Quality Score is metric from one to ten and it impacts your Ad Rank and Cost Per Click. Put simply, the higher your Quality Score the more often your ad will show and the cheaper your CPC will be.

Page speed is obviously important but I would also make sure you focus on relevance.

If you’re bidding on the search query [cheap flights to Barcelona] make sure this term is featured in the Header once and once or twice in the body copy. It’s also worth using relevant images with appropriate alt descriptions.

Increasing the relevance of the landing page will increase conversions and earn you a good Quality Score.

If you’re working with big budgets on large campaigns it’s worth creating landing pages directly relevant to each query you are bidding on. You can do this at large scale using the Unbounce Dynamic Text Replacement (DTR) feature.”

https://documentation.unbounce.com/hc/en-us/articles/203661004-Working-with-Dynamic-Text-Replacement

Natasha Ahmed

Natasha Ahmed is an Ex Googler and 12+ year PPC expert. After serving in Director roles at global PPC agencies on Fortune 50 accounts, Natasha now runs a boutique paid media agency serving B2B technology clients in growth mode.

http://www.flowstaqppc.com

Integrate Tracking with your CRM to Carry Data Through the Sales Cycle – “If you’re using paid media to capture leads for a nurture campaign or sales team, integrate your PPC tracking and other paid media tracking with your CRM customer data.

Each CRM customer profile should include the channel, keyword and campaign that the user originated from (at a minimum). This gives your agency visibility into the channels, campaigns, and keywords that actually generated revenue and in turn, the power to optimize your campaigns towards better lead quality and boost your actual ROI.

Some CRM’s offer seamless integration (Zoho, Salesforce). Others require a workaround with UTM parameters. If you’re looking into CRM’s, add this feature to your list of considerations.”

Matt Isaac

Matt Isaac is a Google Ads expert and founder of SimpleDigital.net.au. Since 2010, he has advised over 1,000 SME's and trained hundreds of staff from leading Australian and international marketing agencies. Today, he is one of Australia's most sought after SEM experts, trusted by Australia's best brands & marketing professionals.

http://simpledigital.net.au

Craft the Perfect Offer – “The most critical element of landing page design has nothing to do with the landing page itself. It is not the design, the copy, the page speed, the images – it is the offer.

With the right offer, even the most bland and ordinary landing page will convert like crazy.

With the wrong offer, then it doesn’t matter how good your landing page is, it will fail.

If you are creating a landing page you should be spending at least 80% of your time crafting the perfect offer that is irresistible to your target audience.

Here is how we generate a list off different offers, refine them and then road test them to end up with 1-2 different offers for our landing page that we can be extremely confident in.

1. Define the target audience

Hopefully you are already very clear on who you are targeting. If, not, take some time to answer the following questions:
- Who are we targeting?
- What problems are they trying to solve?
- What stage are they at in the buyer journey?
- What are their pain points?
- What objections could they have related to your product/service category?
- What could trigger them to take action now?
Describe this in as much detail as you can.

2. What do they need right now?

The purpose of a landing page is to get a visitor to take action right now. When paying for Google Ad clicks we want to make every click count. This step is about trying to think about what could trigger them to take action now.

Asking a visitor to buy your full product or service offering on the first visit is unlikely to elicit the desired response as this type of purchase decision generally requires time, research and multiple interactions.

Instead of asking them to buy everything on the first go, create an offer that gives them a quick win and progresses them to the next stage of readiness to buy your main offering.

Based on their current stage in the buyer decision making process you might offer the following:
- Problem Recognition – Checklist that helps them to understand the extent of the issue or problem
- Information search – Questionnaire that helps them to get a customised solution based on their circumstances
- Evaluating alternatives – Price / feature comparisons
- Purchase decision – Reassurance and social proof
3. What can we offer?

There are an almost endless number of forms that your offer can take. Here are just a few ideas to get you started:
- Calculator
- Short course
- Demonstration
- Webinar
- Checklist
- Buyers guide
- Case studies
- Trial
What we are looking for are offers with high perceived value to your target audience but low cost to the business. If an offer requires too much cost or development time then you can rule it out for the moment.

Keep going until you have a list of 5 – 10 different ideas that you can implement with minimal effort.

4. How irresistible is that offer to our audience?

Revisit each of the offers through the lens of your target audience and specifically where they are in the buyer journey. Ask yourself the following questions about each offer you have listed in the previous step:
- Does this offer address pain points or objections?
- Does this offer solve a problem for them?
- Does this offer put them in a better position or give them a quick win?
- Is this offer timely and relevant to where my audience is currently at in the buyer decision making process?
- Does the offer encourage them to take action now?
Ideally you will end up with about 3-4 of the top offers that are a good fit for your audience.

5. Test the top 3-4 offers

This may seem counter intuitive in a recommendation about Google Ads but Facebook ads are actually a great way to test your offer.

Facebook’s audience targeting is far more advanced than Google’s and allows us to pinpoint our target audience quickly, easily and cheaply, particularly using audience lists. It is also a lot cheaper than testing on the fly with Google because you can capture leads without the need for a landing page and all within the Facebook platform.

Here is how you do it:
- Upload a customer list to Facebook to create a custom audience
- Create ads targeting your custom audience or a similar audience
- Use your various offers as the ad copy
- Use lead ads to capture the contact details of anyone who is interested in the offer
Run this campaign until you have either a clear winning offer or 1-2 standouts which you can split test with the landing page.

6. Plan the landing page

You should now be ready to craft your landing page with a battle tested offer.”

Jeremy Templer

You don’t know anything about paid search marketing until you get your hands dirty — and SureFire Search’s Jeremy Templer gets his hands dirty. He’s worked in search for over 20 years, helping advertisers beat their KPIs while also testing new ideas and opportunities.

https://www.surefiresearch.com

They Didn’t Convert? What You Can Do About That – “Should you do remarketing? Yes, but make sure your conversion rate is up to scratch first.

Your ad and landing page are two sides of the same coin; both play a critical role in getting conversions.

You know this: you’ve got everything in sync, and you’ve followed up on the other recommendations in this article. But if your conversion rates are still underwhelming, don’t jump straight into remarketing.

Most advertisers don’t give remarketing a second thought. They think that merely presenting their offer over and over will get them more conversions.

Yes, you should remind non-converters what they’re missing out on (but only those interested enough to have spent quality time on your page). And yes, with repeat ad impressions you should see an increase in conversions.

But before you flip the remarketing switch, dig deeper to find out why they didn’t convert in the first place.

Put yourself in the shoes of your would-be customer. Compare your competitors’ offers with yours. Spot check your landing page. And double-check your analytics reports to make sure that everything is working as expected.

If your conversion rates are a problem, you should do what you can to improve them before you get to remarketing. You’ll increase your chances of winning over returning visitors gracious enough to give you a second chance.

Yes, an incentive (a discount or additional bonus) can help sway the fence-sitters who didn’t see enough value in your original offer. But that alone is unlikely to change your conversion rates from subterranean to stellar.

So, remarketing? Yes, but check you have the basics right first.

Make sure you haven’t skipped over any of the expert recommendations in this article. Then let’s look at what else might be going on.

Tracking issues: Check for significant disparities between click and session numbers. Make sure that UTM referral code is not being overwritten: page redirects, missing analytics code, on-page elements with UTM tracking, and payment gateways are usually to blame.

Technical issues: Look closely at your analytics reports. Are conversion rates worse for some devices, browsers or operating systems? Are page load times up to scratch? Turn to session tracking software like HotJar, SessionCam and Clicktale to see exactly where the problems are.

Competitor offers: Does yours stack up? See who else comes up in Google paid and organic results. If you checked before writing your ads, check again. Alert competitors and newcomers may have matched or undercut your offer, and now they’re converting the visitors you couldn’t. Any amount of remarketing is not going to change that unless you can respond.

Search queries: Your keyword list may look good, but what about the actual search queries triggering your ads? Often the sheer volume of unique queries means that search query reports don’t get the attention they deserve. But you don’t have to work through them row-by-tedious-row. Look for any common but irrelevant themes, and add related terms to your negative keyword list.

Poor placement: In the same way that irrelevant search queries can kill a search campaign, low quality websites, apps, and YouTube channels can undermine display ad performance. Be selective — this is why you have a placement exclusion list.

Credibility: Yes, your page may be oozing with social proof (you’ve got testimonials, third party reviews, and high-fives from your recent customers). But make sure everything is plausible, and bold assertions are substantiated elsewhere in your copy.

And don’t stop there. Sometimes it’s the little things that undermine people’s trust, stopping them from converting. That includes poorly written copy littered with typos and spelling errors. Cheesy stock images. And calls-to-action that fail to address concerns as to what happens next.

Your value proposition: Is it obvious what you’re offering? Make sure you’ve described your product or service in language that your customers use, not in your own marketing jargon.

Not every solution can be unique (but if yours is in some way that’s important to your customers, then say so).

Are you addressing a common problem that your target audience has? If it’s a new or niche product, are you making clear what problem it solves? Your target audience might not be aware they have a problem.

And try to make sure that your most important selling points appear above-the-fold.

Your conversion funnel: If dropout is high once people start checkout, look for obstacles in the process. Forms that ask for too much (or too sensitive) information or where the expected input is not obvious. If payment options are limited, shipping fees high and delivery times too long or your return policy too vague.

Your analytics will highlight where you have the problem, but session tracking software (or user testing) will unearth why there’s a problem.

Pricing options: If you think that the issue is your price, then you’ve not convinced people you offer enough value. Check to see what competitors are doing, and what you can say that makes your offer stand out in comparison. But also, don’t be afraid to test different price points. And, if your product or service allows it, present 2-3 prices for different options (too many and you’ll make it too hard to choose). Make sure it’s easy to compare what you get (and don’t get) for each option.

Checked everything? Done everything? And now your conversion rates have improved?

Then, yes, by all means. Remarketing.”

Billy Robinson

Google Ads Lead Generation Expert

http://www.synq.com.au

Use the C/E/A Methodology – “This stands for Confirm/Engage/Act. Basically if the search query is health insurance for women, then when the user lands on your landing page, in the top left corner, she should see an image of a woman – yes you can gender target your campaigns in Google Ads too. She should also see the phrase she just typed “health insurance for women” as well – that’s your “C” for Confirmation Zone.

Next, moving from left to right, top to bottom, you should show some content that explains why your business is the best place for a woman to get her health insurance. Awards, user reviews, stats & more are ideal here. This is your “E” for engagement zone.

Finally, to the right side, but above the fold is your “A” for Action zone. This is where your desired call to action should be present. A common action is “Get a quote” or “Book a consultation” etc.

This sequence is in order of how the user’s eye naturally moves across the page, from left to right, top to bottom. It provides the things the user needs to see in order to be most likely to take action.”

Roy Steves

Originally a web developer, eventually the VP of Digital Marketing for Leslie’s Pool Supplies, and now founder of SEM agency StatBid, Roy’s path centers on using math to improve eCommerce operations. His team specializes in paid search for DtC and retail eCommerce companies, focusing on efficiency and consistency of performance.

https://www.statbid.com/

Track Changes and Tests Using Notes Feature – “If there’s one small thing (so small, most people totally overlook it) that can make a huge difference, it’s keeping track of the changes you’re making and tests you’re running with the Notes feature in Google Ads.

If you’re making big moves, be sure to drop notes into your Google Ads campaign to indicate what you did, and why. It’s a lot like the Annotations in Analytics, but you can add date-specific notes to either individual campaigns, or to the account itself. With the date of the change within your date range, click on the chart to “Add Note”.

Then, add some details for the person managing this in the future (especially if it’s you!).

Little gray boxes will appear under the timeline, which reveal the notes for that day when clicked:

Whether it’s a month from now, or a year from now, you’ll be thankful that you’d stashed that context somewhere, so that you can quickly make sense of what might be driving changes in performance.

I certainly notice the absence of Notes when I’m trying to make sense of a new account, or one I haven’t looked at in a while. When a campaign suddenly changed behavior in the past, a well placed Note can be a life saver!”

Anton Hoelstad

Digital Marketing Consultant & Google Ads Specialist

https://antonhoelstad.dk/

Different Goals Should Deliver Different Goal Values – “When you have the option to add goals that you track for a given website, consider the option of assigning each of these different values, so that you can prioritize their value in your digital marketing efforts.

For example, if you have goals like newsletter signup, request for quotation and using the contact form – each of these actions has very different values for the company.

A newsletter signup could be worth 50$, whereas the “request for quotation” could be worth much, much more. These values can be added easily to the tracking, and afterwards your reporting is a lot more nuanced, and you know which keywords delivers the highest value – not most conversions at the best CPA.

This gives you the option to switch bidding tactics to focus on ROAS (or at least value), instead of CPA.

Remember to calculate a value, and not just use your gut feeling. What a lead is worth to you requires that you know the average value of a new customer, and the conversion rate from lead to paying customer.”

Justice Ekhaguere

ROI Focused Paid Media Manager with 3 years experience in the SaaS & Ecommerce space.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/justice-ekhaguere-5157a739/

Test a Quiz or Messenger Bot Style Landing Page – “Oftentimes the best online marketers, are actually offline marketers.

Offline Marketers are great at analyzing conversion issues because they have firsthand experience into how people actually react to things in real life.

So when you start to consider how you can improve your landing page, ask yourself if what you’re doing online would make sense to do offline?

For example, if we were trying to sell cars and someone walked into our dealership… would we jump on them and try to show them our best deals and latest models??

No, a seasoned salesman would qualify the prospect to see what they’re intentions were… do they want to buy now? or just look? etc

Key insight: The salesman wouldn’t qualify you by having you fill out an application right away. He would most likely start a conversation and figure out how to best help you.

In that conversation, he would most likely get all the information he would have gotten on an application without the friction as well.

How does this translate into google landing pages?

If you allow people to qualify themselves to you before asking them to fill out an application, you’re more likely to get them to invest into your sales process.

As they get more invested, you get more information on them without as much resistance.

How can this be implemented?

There are a few ways to go about this:
1. You can build a messenger bot that asks people questions in a fun and conversational manner… and send people to that instead of a traditional landing page. Popular platforms include manychat.com, chatfuel.com, and mobilemonkey.com.
2. You can create an online quiz experience as opposed to the traditional landing page using a platform like typeform.com. I’ve seen a lot of nutrition and supplement companies use this method on their landing pages with great success.
  Here are a few for reference:
  
  – https://ketocycle.diet/
  – https://usaf.yourketo.diet/
  – https://simpleketosystem.com/
The theory behind why this experience works comes from Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence.

The Theory is called Commit and Consistency.

Essentially, if you can get someone to take a small action, they’re much more likely to take the another bigger action. The goal is to slow play them to your intended goal, instead of going for it right away.

Now go and test it out for yourselves!”

Amy Hebdon

Amy Hebdon has been managing SEM accounts professionally since 2004. She is the founder of the Google Partner agency Paid Search Magic, which provides both full-service management and training to digital marketers. She also co-hosts the free facebook group Google Ads for Savvy Digital Marketers.

http://paidsearchmagic.com

If It’s Not on Your Landing Page, It’s Not True – “If I’m your ideal prospect, I need your landing page to meet my expectations before I’m willing to take action. This is true whether the expectations were explicitly set by your ad, or they exist silently unchecked in my head.

Let’s say you sell blenders, and I want to buy a dishwasher safe blender. If your landing page doesn’t tell me your blender’s dishwasher safe, then in my mind it’s not – and I’m going to look elsewhere. If I bounce, that means you spent the money on acquiring the click, but didn’t make it back on the conversion.

Now that was a small example, easily fixed by just including a feature of your product. But it’s just as important with intangibles – things that matter to your audience on a deep level.

Study your prospects and customers. Interview them. Research how they describe their problems in their own words. Find out what matters to them, and build your landing page to address their needs and concerns.

You also want to make sure that everything in your ad – every feature, offer, value proposition, benefit, differentiator and promise – is supported on your landing page.

With expanded ad copy, dynamic keyword insertion, and multiple ad extensions that can live at any level in the account… it becomes really difficult to track what details your visitors are seeing in the first place.

Don’t include anything in your ads that isn’t backed by your landing page, and don’t expect your prospects to do the work of extra research to learn more about your offers than you were willing to tell them.

If there’s something they need to know before they’re ready to buy – whether it’s a feature, a benefit, a result, a risk-reversal, assurance, or an explanation – remember, if it’s not on your landing page, it’s not true in the mind of your customer.”

Johannes Klupfel

Johannes is the founder and director of Cloud Clicks, a digital advertising agency in Australia. He's been growing businesses using Google and Facebook Ads since 2009. He likes to read, travel and spend time with his family.

http://cloudclicks.com.au

Split Test Big Ideas – “When it comes to optimizing landing pages for Google Ads, there are a million things you could be doing. Split testing is the obvious choice. For starters though, make sure that your landing page is loading blazing fast. Ideally, it should load in 2-3 seconds or less. There is no use in split testing anything if you lose the majority of your website visitors before the page is fully loaded.

I prefer to use a third-party platform like Unbounce to host landing pages for myself and my clients. Another good option is clickfunnels. Unbounce allows me to split test my landing page and provides fast hosting, plus a few other bits and pieces that I like. When doing any split test, test only one thing at a time. For example, test the headline, test a completely different copy or offer. Test an image or a layout. Test a different colour scheme. Don’t get bogged down testing tiny changes like the colour of a button. Yes, I’ve heard the stories of a button colour change increasing conversion rate by 140%. It rarely happens though, so focus on big tests first and keep improving your conversion rate. If you test too many things at a time, you won’t know what made the difference.”

Jeenfer Wilson

Jeenfer is the founder and CEO of Verrunt, a digital marketing agency that specializes in setting up and managing effective Google Ads campaigns for local businesses.

https://verrunt.com

Focus on 1 Conversion Goal – “When you spend dollars on a click from Google Ads, the usual mindset is to get as much revenue from that particular click. I have seen landing pages that promote a free e-book, also promote the business and in addition to providing a free demo of the product. While this school of thought might look harmless, most landing pages built with this objective end up counter-productive. Let me explain why.

With a multitude of options available, people’s attention span is too low. If they gave you a chance by clicking on your ad, give them what they want right away.

If you promised a free-ebook in the ad, just give them the e-book. Mention only about your e-book and nothing else. Of course, you can give them as much detail as possible about your awesome e-book, but don’t talk about how awesome your business or product is; no, not yet. Once you get the lead, you will have a lot of time and channels to do that.

Every landing page should have one and only one goal.

I’d even say even if the goal is one, give the visitor only 1 choice. Let me explain that a bit.

Consider you are a local moving company and you process both form inquiries and leads, I’d strongly recommend using only one of the channels. If you want the user to pick up his phone and give you a call, only add your phone number as buttons. Don’t add your form anywhere on the page. Persuade them to give you a call. That’s everything the landing page should do.

But what if you believe form inquiries also might do well? Do an A/B test. Keep all design elements the same and instead of the call button use a form that asks the visitors to fill the form to get a free quote. Channel 50% of the traffic to this version and run the test till you get statistically significant data to decide the winner.

This is exactly what we have done for one of our clients who had this dilemma.

Click to Enlarge

It’s still early days, but I believe I brought home the point.

But there is still an option to let the visitor know more about your business or your product. Any guesses? The THANK YOU page. You have already got what you wanted and so has the visitor. Now you can nudge the visitor closer to what you offer without pissing him off.

So, to summarise 1 landing page = 1 conversion goal and 1 way to attain them.”

Mate Hernadi

Mate has around 10 years of online marketing experience with a focus on PPC, Analytics, and Automation. He leads a team of PPC experts as Head of PPC. He prefers strategy these days but also loves a nice little growth hack.

https://evolutagency.com/

Match Your Message to the Intent of the Search, Not Just the Keyword. – “Context above all. Already your keyword research should be based on a thorough thinking about your marketing funnel. According to that, you have to differentiate between multiple types of stages: Unaware, Problem Aware, Solution Aware, Product Aware, and Most Aware.

These categories reflect the main stages of your funnel, and basically mirror the intent of your potential customers at those stages.

When you have the segmented keyword research, you have to consider your landing page. You have to satisfy Google so it recognizes your content as relevant, and rewards you with an ‘above average’ landing page experience. At the same time, you have to pay attention to where your potential customers expect to get after clicking on your ad.

Try to match these expectations with an adequate copy style, message, and offer.

Some keywords are broad or difficult to categorize, so if you are not sure which funnel level they belong to, try split testing the page with messages addressing the different stages.”

David Rothwell

David Rothwell is a 15 years expert with Google Ads and the author of 'The Google Ads Bible for eCommerce'. His upcoming book, training, and support program "Clicks to Money - Making Google Ads Pay (No Agency Needed)" will be the new must-have for every business owner who hates paying Google.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidrothwellgoogleads/

Making Money with Google Ads Using Static and Dynamic Conversion Tracking – “The purpose of your business is to make money. The biggest problem with Google Ads is not knowing if you are making any money. That’s like putting money into a slot machine and never getting any back. So why do so many advertisers on Google still gamble like this?

Even after fifteen years of client campaign management, I still see the same mistake which makes management, optimization, and scale of Google Ads campaigns impossible – not knowing how much money you’re making and your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

ROAS is the amount of money your campaigns made, divided by the cost. Anything less than 1.00 (break-even) means you are losing money, unless your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) brings you repeat purchases. You want to get to break-even as fast as possible so you can begin to optimise and scale your campaigns to save wasted money, and make more money.

Your ROAS is positive, you are now running a profit center where you want to spend as much money as Google can take off you, instead of a cost center with limited budgets. Imagine putting money into that slot machine and always getting more back than you put in? How much money would you put in it? All of it, until it stopped taking it or your bank account couldn’t hold any more.

Limited budgets means you are running Google Ads as a cost center, not a profit center

When Google Ads is a profit center, your daily budget is “Please take more money Google”

Does this mean we would spend that outrageous amount of money? No! Because there are not an unlimited amount of people looking, or clicks, for any industry. But when your campaigns are a profit center, you want your ads to reach as many people as possible, as often as possible, for maximum clicks, conversion opportunities, sales and revenue.

Google Ads is Math

So how do we figure out our ROAS?

It’s actually simple math. Here’s the equation:

ROAS = (Revenue / Cost per Click) * Conversion Rate %

Where Revenue = (Average Order Value*Customer Lifetime Value)

Every Google advertiser knows their Cost per Click. But what many don’t know is their revenue and their conversion rate of visitors (clicks) to money. This is why conversion tracking is so important. Without it you cannot know two of the three critical numbers to calculate your ROAS:
1. Cost per click
2. Revenue (money you got paid)
3. Conversion Rate (how many visitors to your page paid you)
If you are paying an agency to run your campaigns and they cannot tell you your ROAS, they are getting paid even when you are not.

You can calculate your ROAS with a simple spreadsheet (red means losing money)

The key to ROAS – Conversion Tracking

Conversion tracking is quite simple to set up, and can track sales, bookings, leads, or anything else of interest. It can also track actual purchases and money for ecommerce merchants and digital product businesses who get an online transaction or shopping cart payment.

The biggest challenge for service-based businesses is when tracking leads. I have spoken to many business owners who actually have no idea what the value of their leads is. You have to know the value of the lead, in other words, the conversion rate of the lead to money, and how much money you will be paid. Complex multi-step sales processes really need a Customer Relationship Management tool, or CRM (e.g. Salesforce), which is beyond the scope of this article.

Business is Numbers

Service businesses can still use average order values though. One client who ran an airport transfer service simply averaged out all his seat booking prices at £90. We tracked his booking conversions and because we only ever spent less than £5 to get them (for ten years running, during which time he continually grew his business by 15x) we were getting a ROAS of almost 20x. That’s 2,000 %.

For every £1 he spent on ads, he got £20 back. The slot machine again. That business owner was so successful he bought out two competitors and sold his business to an international company. All because of Google Ads, with over 1,000 campaigns running in 33 countries worldwide.

Service business with an ROAS (ROI) of 1,944%

“Prescription Without Diagnosis is Malpractice”

If you get leads, you usually have to make contact with that person anyway. So that’s effectively an appointment. Instead of leads, take online self-service appointment bookings instead.

You want to diagnose and disqualify unsuitable prospects who may not have the problem you solve, the money to pay for it and other factors. You also want to pre-sell your solution to appropriate prospects ready to have a serious sales conversation during the appointment, with a high probability of converting them to the sale and getting paid.

Say you’re a consultant or coach selling your time. If your average order value is an hour of your time for £200, and your close rate to payment is 30% then the lead is worth £60. If you spend anything less than £60 per lead, you are making money. Then all you need is a full calendar …

Follow the Money

Conversion tracking is all based on cookies (small bits of code placed on the device following the ad click). Tracking fails if users block or clean cookies, or change devices which cookies don’t follow. Google Ads cookies can last up to 90 days.

You have to place conversion tracking code on the page you want people to finally reach which has a known revenue value, like a booking or purchase conversion thank you page. This page has to be on the same domain as the rest of your website, so if you’re using a hosted platform like Kartra make sure you preserve the domain across all pages. Cross-domain tracking is not supported.

Tracking works down to the keyword and ad level, allowing converting ads and keywords to be optimised and scaled.
1. Google user types a search
2. Your ad may display (an impression)
3. You may get a click (clickthrough rate)
4. User device is cookied
5. If the visitor reaches your final thank you page the cookie on their device matches the tracking code and a conversion is tracked, including the revenue value if so configured
Google Ads Audits Without Money are Pointless

Along with limited budgets as above, not turning conversion tracking on and configuring it correctly is a “smoking gun” that your campaigns are a cost center, not a profit center. It’s the commonest problem, and the first thing I check when doing an account audit. Every agency out there will offer you a free campaign audit but unless you can see the essential “money metrics” of sales, revenue and ROAS there’s no point. Although there are campaign best practices, you will not know what to do unless you are guided by the money you’re making.

Fail! This airline’s conversions were multiple counted showing ridiculous numbers

How to Setup Conversion Tracking

1. Click Tools and Settings and select Conversions

2. Click the +Conversions box

3. Select website conversions

4. We’re going to use book appointment for this example

The category you use will depend on what you sell, who buys it, how much you charge, how you get paid, how often, what platforms you use for bookings, online payments, shopping cart purchases etc.

Remember, instead of leads, use self-service online appointments. The platform you use e.g. Calendly.com will need to be able to integrate with Google Ads conversion tracking. There are many to choose from in Capterra.com. Make sure the one you choose plays nicely with Google Ads (not Google Analytics) because not all of them do.

5. Give it a name

6. For appointments and leads, use the same value and £1 or an average order value

Refer to the consultant example above to determine this number.

If you sell digital or physical products and take online payment or shopping cart orders, use different values for each conversion. You will also need to adapt the code to capture the revenue value (dynamic conversion tracking), and this varies depending on what technology your website is built with. There are help files to guide you. Some shopping carts e.g. Shopify make this easy with direct integration.

7. For leads and bookings, count one conversion

For digital and physical sales with an online transaction or purchase, select every conversion.

8. Select 90 days conversion window

Believe it or not, sales can still come in all the way up to 90 days after the ad click.

9. Accept the other defaults but disable Enhanced CPC

10. Install the tag, following the installation and configuration instructions

11. Make sure you install both snippets correctly

12. You’re done

13. Tracking is in place ready to be tested

14. In the campaign overview, select columns for conversions

The columns of data you need to see are not set visible by default, so you have to enable them. You need conversions, cost per conversion, conversion rate, value per conversion, total conversion value, and conversion value / cost (ROAS).

Testing the Tracking

Before spending money on live campaigns, it’s essential to test the tracking setup is working. You will need to make a test lead, booking or purchase on your own website. Sometimes a cost-effective way to do this is to use your own brand name in [exact match] as a keyword. Note: if Google considers this a low search volume keyword your ad may not show. In which case choose another, more general one. You will have to pay the click cost for the test.

With digital or physical products make sure there is a cost for the item (not free) so you can be sure of tracking the actual revenue value. Target your campaign to your own location, then:
1. Search your chosen keyword until your ad shows
2. Clickthrough on it
3. Complete your sales, booking or lead process
4. Arrive at the thank you page (on the same domain, remember)
As soon as you have seen your ad and clicked through on it, you can pause the test campaign. Tracking is not real-time so it may be a few hours until it shows. If it doesn’t show up, the implementation will need to be re-checked following all Google’s help links as relevant to your website technology.

Success! Our conversion is showing

This is for a webinar booking

Here we have a count of one, 90 days window, repeat rate of 1.04, 25 bookings with a value of 25.

This is for an ecommerce store tracking revenue (purchases) value

Here we’re counting purchases, count of every, all conversions and their revenue value.

Congratulations! You are now ready to run live campaigns and track your ROAS down to product, service, location, device, network, campaign, ad group, keyword, ad, and landing page level. Now you know what’s making you money, you are ready to increase your bids and budgets to achieve your financial goals. You will also be able to save wasted ad spend and make more money safely.

And with sufficient conversion tracking data over time, automated bid management can make campaigns run reliably with no manual bid management needed, sometimes for long periods of time like months or even years – with no agency needed.

The top four most common mistakes I see people make with their Google Ads landing pages:
1. Not tracking conversions
2. Not knowing their Average Order Value (AOV)
3. Not knowing their page conversion rate %
4. Not knowing their Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)”

Patrick Jongbloed

Patrick Jongbloed has worked in search marketing for over 7 years now and currently looks after Digital Marketing & Business Intelligence at e-Careers, a Ed Tech company focusing on professional qualifications.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickjongbloed/

Master the Process and Keep Track of Learnings – “Landing Page Optimization for any business can be an exciting project. Who’d have thought that changing the colour of a button doubles conversion rate or that using “Purchase here” vs. “Buy now” really doesn’t work? And that’s exactly why it is not enough to just learn and apply the individual tactics and tips that you’ll find on this page. You also need to have a solid process and way of storing your conclusions in one central place.

See, sometimes you’ll test a hypothesis and you’ll be right. But frequently, you’re going to be wrong and you’ve learned something surprising about human behaviour. It is precisely those times you are wrong that tend to give you the most valuable insights. But what happens if in 6 months, a new member of your team looks at your landing page and says, “Why is that button round? Surely it would do much better if it were square? Let’s change it”, and they go and undo all your rounds of testing.

Unfortunately, in larger companies and agencies, this happens all the time. New members of the team or even experienced people with solid assumptions, see something that doesn’t make sense to them and “improve” it. Don’t get me wrong – these are the kind of people you want to work with! People should always take initiative and put their thoughts forward. But it has to be done in a logical and accountable fashion.

So what’s the solution here? After all, new colleagues can’t read your mind and can’t possibly know what you did 6 months ago. It gets even worse when you think of the loss of knowledge when you eventually move on to another company. Because of that, you want to have a really easy document to keep track of any tests you’ve done and insights you’ve had. Here is an easy example on Google Sheets which you can look at.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tudRDHpLw_DI_Dd5AJAtj0VT7FDxogNF5AEzvu_J7Xc/edit?usp=sharing

You can make a copy and alter it to fit your purposes.”

Tam Doan

Optimization Manager at Four15 Digital

https://www.four15digital.com/

Test New Landing Pages Using Google Experiments – “Make sure to test new landing pages using Google experiments instead of just swapping out the URLs. You can use other programs to do a landing page test, however they may not have access to 1st party data like Google does – which is why using Google for LP testing is more effective.

In order to set up an experiment, you must start by creating a “Draft” of an existing campaign. Using this draft you’ve created, go ahead and swap out all the final URL’s to point to the new landing page. Once the URL’s are all updated, navigate to “Campaign Experiments” and click on the “+” to select the draft you set up to run as an experiment. Configure this experiment to your liking, then click “Save” in order to start running your experiment.

Any results that show statistical significance will be denoted with a blue asterisk next to it, like so:”

Scott Salwolke

I've been doing online marketing since 2004 with my specialty being Google Ads Campaigns. My focus is on search campaigns and I work as both a consultant or as an ads manager. I specialize in working with service providers and B2B companies.

https://www.adhocmarketing.com

People Scan First, Then Read. Draw People Onto Your Page and Give Them a Reason to Read More to Convert. – “People clicked on your ad because something about it attracted their attention. Now that they’ve landed on your site you have to keep their attention.

If what you do or are offering is simple to understand, then you might only need a paragraph or two. If your product is more complex or your business more competitive, however, you might need a lot more content.

There is nothing wrong with longer copy if that is what it takes. Unfortunately, if all they see are blocks of text their eyes are likely to glaze over and they will hit the back button.

No matter the length of the page, you most likely will have to draw them in first.

It is easy to say people don’t read anymore, but when they’re searching for information on a business, product, or service they’re often in a hurry. To capture their attention, you need to give them information they can grasp just by skimming your page.

There are several ways to capture their attention and provide relevant information in bite-size pieces. What you want to highlight is the pain they are feeling, the benefits of your products or services, or the experience of your company.

Headlines and subheads automatically stand out on a page. Many sites simply have a single headline that they haven’t put too much thought into.

Use headlines throughout a page to break up the content into different sections. They should briefly summarize what is to follow and why it’s important.

Adding subheads can help to provide crucial information. These are smaller headlines that appear just above or below the headline. Subheads should focus on a benefit they will find in that content.

Put in the time necessary to create headlines that are compelling.

Bullet points are another way to convey important information. Typically, you have 3-5 elements listed. Keep the lines as short as you can, although varying up their length can be effective.

Your list should either focus on what makes your business stand out from the competition or the benefits of your products or service.

Use bolded text in sentences, even in lists, to highlight specific benefits or facts. When determining what information to bold, focus on the elements that are unique to your business or product.

Another place to use bolded text is in your testimonials. Highlighting something unique or specific they said about your business. Anything to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Remember that your bolding needs to make sense on its own even if it is not a complete sentence.

In the example below I’d argue the bolded text is being misused and doesn’t make sense out of context. Instead of highlighting “get max money,” it would be better to highlight “know the value of your claim.”

And does being a real auto accident attorney separate you from the competition?!

In the second example below, bolded text is put to better use. And the bullet lists provide a strong overview of what clients can expect with their services.

I’d suggest their list would have been even more effective had certain elements of the list been bolded as well. They could have bolded “immediate financial relief” or “secure the medical treatment you need,” for example.

One thing to notice in the example is that they’ve used captions for their photo. Captions and text on a graphic are another way to relate information.

Although the goal is to make your page more accessible when you have a lot of content, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t edit your copy as much as possible. Edit it down as much as you can, then incorporate these suggestions.

The goal of your work should be to either convince the reader to take an action or at the very least read more.

You only have a short amount of time to capture their attention and keep them on your site or take some sort of action. Anything you can do to make your business or what you offer to stand out, the better.”

Athena Pham

Working with leading B2B Mid-Market and Enterprise clients, restaurant powerhouses, influencers, and local businesses. These opportunities have allowed me to generate personalized marketing plans that are aggressive in breaking through competitive markets while developing a successful relationship with businesses.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/athena-pham-dm/

Dedicated Landing Page for Mobile Users – “Ever come across a landing page that’s clearly NOT optimized for mobile users? Here are some examples of landing pages that don’t have an optimized user experience.

Long forms on mobile…no!

Text heavy landing pages don’t convert well on mobile

Forms are already dreadful to fill out on desktop but when you’re requesting invasive questions on mobile, you’ll find significant drop offs and not many form fills. If this sounds like your mobile landing page, A/B test a shorter form with only the necessary questions and see which variant converts higher.

In the second example, you’ll find a text heavy landing page. With the attention span we have today and the nature of mobile users, we’re not likely to read all that text but instead, bounce, and look at your competitors. To prevent this from happening, try creating a simple yet to the point headline and subhead. Watch your conversions skyrocket.

Another tactic here would be adding a mobile friendly description under the Call To Action ‘Download Free Report’. Since users associate PDF downloads as an action only taken on desktop, this may deter visitors from filling out your form. Try adding text below the CTA, ‘Mobile-Friendly PDF’. This will let users know the download can be easily downloaded on mobile.

Now here are some companies that have mobile users in mind:

Drift

hulu

Drift does a great job in preempting users for what they can expect – ‘No credit card required’. This is a major plus for users to sign up instantly because of the no hassle Unique Value Proposition. And getting users to your mobile page is already a challenge but they put the icing on the cake with a bright CTA button that holds your attention. Well done Drift!

Moving onto Hulu, they do a great job with keeping the important information and CTA above the fold. Scroll depth is an issue on mobile and desktop so we want to make sure we put forth the main points that drive the user to take action immediately. The last point I’d make is they hone in on imagery for the user, which is key for the product they’re selling – TV and movies online. Showing their most popular or current films will compel users to sign up and start streaming.”

Navah Hopkins

Navah Hopkins is the Director of Paid Media at Hennessey Digital, an integrated digital marketing agency helping our customers own their markets via PPC, SEO, CRO, PR, and Content. Throughout her career, Navah has made a point to give back and loves sharing lessons learned on the international speaking circuit as well as local universities. She is a frequent contributor to SEJ, SEMrush, and WordStream blogs/webinars.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/navahhopkins/

Configured Specifically for Paid Traffic – “It’s vital your paid landing page is set-up for paid traffic, and not bogged down by content walls that serve SEO strategies. SEO and PPC can work together really well, and one of the ways they can empower each other is to share search query data without landing pages.

A paid landing page should be transactional in focus, making it easy to complete the desired action (call/form-fill/purchase).

By setting up separate pages for paid traffic, you’ll have more control over attribution, strategy, and conversion rate optimization (CRO).”

Vincent Iachetta Jr

Vincent Iachetta Jr. is the founder and President of Peppermonkey Media. Having more than a decade of expertise in digital media, Iachetta develops high-quality marketing and advertising strategies that deliver around-the-clock real ROI for small businesses in local markets across the U.S.

https://www.peppermonkeymedia.com/

Location Matters When It Matters, Which Is Always – “A little story…It’s lunch time. You’re starving with a side of hangry and that trail mix bar you grabbed after another late-night with a late start whirlwind out of the apartment wasn’t enough to feed a gerbil let alone provide adequate fuel to power you through a grueling day of crunching numbers and answering phone calls from pissed off clients.

At the exact moment the pixels in your phone shine 12:00 pm you excitedly snatch your phone like an ancient hunter out in the unforgiving wilderness grasping for his bow and ask it “Hey Google, find me the best pizza place in NYC that delivers”. You can almost taste the fresh crispy, sauce covered mozzarella goodness as you anxiously await the .5 seconds it takes for Google to return you the search results page.

You really want to take your time to read reviews and look at the gooey galleries of pizza porn but the beast in your belly forces you to smash the first result that looked somewhat relevant enough.

The website page is only partially rendered while your finger hovers over where you somehow instinctively know the menu will be but unknowingly your efforts are in vain.

Content and structure reveals itself and you frantically search and skim the page to get to the goods. You notice a title so you pause and stop to read. It says “Voted Best Pizza Place Chicago” 🙁 Bounce rate 100%

How Do You Prevent This Pathetic Modern Day Failed Food Hunt?

If you are building or have built a local campaign that is targeting users specifically looking for a product or service in a specific area like a town, city, county or state then make sure you double down on communicating that on the landing page.

If you have multiple locations break them out into their own campaigns, with their own relevant landing page about the location.

“But Vini, we’re targeting SOOOOOOO many different goes with 1000’s of geo-modified keywords. What are we to do?”

Easy, time consuming AF but not difficult. Stop overcomplicating the campaign and think about who you are targeting and where they are looking for what you have to offer them, and try to group them. If it can be broken out by county or metro area then do that to start. Separate the campaigns and create landing pages for each.

If you really went full on Merlin on your campaign with expert level geo wizardry that is forbidden to even whisper the smallest details of and I could never understand the god-like complexities and immaculate conversion rates and CPC’s that you have conjured…….then consider Dynamic Geo-Insertion. But that’s a tale for another day. Godspeed.”

Chris & Alicia Whitbread

Chris & his wife Alicia take a personalised approach to Google Ads management. They are an affordable Google Partner agency that delivers big results for their clients & specialise in scaling ecommerce businesses.

http://www.theadsmanager.com.au

Deliver Different Experiences During the Conversion Cycle – “In Google Ads you can use custom-combination lists to build sets of conditions from existing remarketing lists (including the Remarketing Audiences you create in Analytics), and then display your remarketing ads to users who meet those conditions.

You can use this feature to show ads to users at different periods of their conversion path – Example: 1-7 Days, 8-10 Days, 11-14 Days.

For each of these remarketing ads, you can deliver a customised landing page with different offers or messages to encourage the user to convert. And hey – Don’t be lazy! Split test those CTA’s!”

Elliot Sheen

Co-Founder of fully specialised Google Partner PPC agency

https://bind.media

Utilise Dynamic Keyword Insertion for Relevance at Scale – “Creating landing pages that are relevant to all of the keywords you’re actively targeting within Google Ads can be resource intensive, time consuming and in some cases very costly.

Fortunately there are some strategies you can deploy to make your core landing pages more relevant to individual keywords at scale – Dynamic Keyword Insertion.

You’re likely familiar with Dynamic Keyword Insertion within Google Ads when it comes to writing ads, passing the keyword a search term matched to as part of the ad copy itself. But why stop there? By implementing dynamic keywords insertion onto your landing pages your can solidify your business as the most relevant offering, improve conversion rates and boost quality score.

The best part is you can implement this yourself using free tools, regardless of the CMS your website is built in!

DKI Using Google Optimize

Part of Google’s Marketing Platform, Optimize allows you to personalise and test website changes backed with the fantastic data and reporting Google is known for.

Within Google Optimize you have the ability to run custom Javascript that can be used to dynamically replace text on your page, be that headlines or other content, based on parameters available within the Ad’s final URL.

You can generate your own custom Javascript for dynamic keyword insertion here:

https://bind.media/cro/google-optimize-dki/

We’ve implemented this on our own homepage for users who find us via one of our Free Data Studio Dashboards, see it in action:

https://bind.media/?src=datastudio

Landing Page Builder Tools

Many of the leading landing page builders have this functionality built in. Unbounce for example offers a solution out-the-box which can be applied to any text elements on your landing page.

Unbounce for example offers a solution out-the-box which can be applied to any text elements on your landing page.

To achieve this within Unbounce you simply need to highlight the text you’d like to make dynamic and select action > Dynamic text.

This will present the menu that allows you to specify the URL parameter that is being passed and how the text should be styled.

Getting Your Keyword in Your URL

Google offers a solution to pass a whole host of data to the Final URL of ads dynamically using ValueTrack parameters.

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6305348

By utilising the {keyword} ValueTrack parameter we can pass the keyword the search matched to through to the URL which can then be used by your DKI method of choice. It’s important you have an effective account structure in place that is directing traffic to the appropriate keywords, particularly as ‘Close Variant’ matching is only increasing!

Top Tips For Dynamic Content Success
1. As with everything performance marketing, test test test. Don’t implement dynamic keyword insertion willy nillilly (yes that’s a technical term) and assume it will improve your performance.
2. Check how your content is appearing – As we’re making changes dynamically and at scale, it makes sense to check the experience is nothing short of amazing across all of your variants. As a minimum, test the shortest and longest versions of the text you’re changing to ensure the formatting on point.
3. Get creative with personalization – Inserting a keyword isn’t your only option. You could make a page specific to industries, location, time of day, the weather if you wanted to or even provide estimated delivery times based on the user’s location! With the free tools and APIs that are available nowadays you can get extremely creative with how you personalize your website to boost conversion rates.”