Fox News host Jesse Watters lambasted media on “Jesse Watters Primetime” Friday for appearing to provide cover for President Biden in the Hunter Biden investigation and various over controversies he and the White House are facing.
JESSE WATTERS:: If you want something swept under the rug, all you have to do is call it a “Biden.” Whether it’s the laptop or the classified docs in Chinatown, Democrats can never seem to verify anything. And now that the smoking gun FBI documents out alleging the Bidens forced $10 million in bribes out of the Ukrainians, Democrats can’t ignore it anymore. So they’ve come up with some of the most ridiculous and hilarious excuses we’ve ever seen. MSNBC saying the FBI informant is just hard of hearing.
The highly credible, multilingual, extremely trustworthy, longtime confidential FBI informant, probably hard of hearing. He probably misheard the Ukrainians, saying they bribed the Bidens, he misheard them every single meeting and every single conversation for three years. I get it. The media is having a hard time wrapping their heads around the Biden bribery bombshells. They couldn’t believe the Ukrainians would hire Hunter Biden to protect them through dad. Hunter’s a lawyer. He went to Yale. There’s no way Ukrainians would call him stupid, even if he’s losing his crack pipes, laptops and guns everywhere. He’s not stupid. He’s just disorganized.
This is now the 10th person connecting the Bidens to bribery. Can the media connect the dots yet?
The internet has transformed the advertising industry. Traditionally hard-to-measure channels like TV, billboards, and sponsorships are being pushed to the wayside by cheap, trackable online advertising channels like social media ads, display, and paid search ads. This shift is democratizing the industry. Even the smallest brands can compete on the same platform as multinationals if … Continue reading Online Advertising for Business: Creating the Perfect Plan That Gets the Customers You Want
The internet has transformed the advertising industry. Traditionally hard-to-measure channels like TV, billboards, and sponsorships are being pushed to the wayside by cheap, trackable online advertising channels like social media ads, display, and paid search ads.
This shift is democratizing the industry. Even the smallest brands can compete on the same platform as multinationals if they have the right knowledge, ad creatives, and targeting. If you want to grow your business, online advertising should be the first place you start.
I’ll show you how you can do just that in this guide. You’ll learn why online advertising is so beneficial, the best online advertising channels to use and how to create an online advertising campaign from scratch.
Online advertising is a form of paid-for marketing that leverages internet-based channels to promote products and services. There are plenty of online advertising channels to choose from, including search engines like Google or Bing, social media platforms, and display ads, banner ads, and native ads.
Unlike traditional advertising mediums, the cost of online advertising is low. Small businesses can generate hundreds of new customers for just a couple hundred bucks a month. Online advertising is more measurable, too. Every channel can be tracked, measured, and optimized, so marketers squeeze as much ROI from their campaigns as possible.
Such are the benefits of online advertising, companies are increasingly dedicating more and more of their budget to digital channels.
As you can see in this infographic from Visual Capitalist, there have been sharp falls in newspaper and TV advertising spending, while search, social media, online video, and e-commerce spending has increased dramatically since the early 2000s.
Why Your Business Should Advertise Online
However big your business, online advertising is one of the best ways to build a brand, win new customers, and grow revenue. It has many advantages over traditional forms of advertising and other forms of online marketing, but there are four big benefits I want to highlight.
Immediate Results
When you advertise online, you don’t have to wait months, weeks, or even days to get rewarded for your efforts. Sales can happen as soon as your ads go live.
This is unlike virtually any other form of marketing—traditional or otherwise. With SEO, for instance, it takes an average of about three months for a page to rank well on Google. Social media accounts tend to grow between 9.4 percent and 16 percent every six months.
The speed at which you see results doesn’t just help you win customers and drive revenue faster, it also helps you optimize campaigns quicker. Because you get data so fast, however, you’re able to optimize your campaigns to maximize ROI much faster. What takes six months or more with SEO, takes just three months with paid ads.
This is vital because optimizing PPC campaigns can double your ROI or more. Easton Sports, for example, doubled its ROI from 400 percent to 900 percent by working with e-commerce marketing agency The Good.
Better Targeting
Forget broad, mass-market ads that aim to please everyone. Online advertising lets you drill down into your target market and know with confidence that every dollar of your budget is being spent on them. That’s the kind of targeting traditional advertising can never compete with.
Most online advertising channels offer granular targeting, allowing you to focus your efforts on a small segment of their audience. Facebook lets you customize your target audience by dozens of criteria, including:
location
age
gender
education
job
interests
behavior
connections
As a result, you don’t have to worry about wasting your advertising budget on people who aren’t interested in your product. If you have strong buyer personas, you can target them with ease. Even if you don’t have buyer personas, granular targeting makes it easy to identify profitable segments of a large audience.
Better still, online advertising allows you to reach millions of people every day. Facebook has almost three billion monthly active users. Google processes around 63,000 queries every second. No other advertising medium lets your average joe business reach audiences of this size.
Low Costs
You won’t be forking over millions in advertising fees to reach targeted audiences. Unlike traditional advertising—where it can cost over $100,000 to run a 30-second TV advert—the cost of online advertising is incredibly low.
It costs, on average, just $3 to $10 to reach 1000 people with online advertising, compared to $22 to reach 1000 people using traditional methods. While your mom and pop retailer can’t hope to afford a TV advert, they can run a successful online advertising campaign on Facebook, Google, or any other channel.
You can limit the cost of your online advertising, too. The vast majority of online ad platforms will let you set a limit on your total and budgets, so you don’t blow everything at once.
Loads of Data
The worst thing about traditional forms of advertising like print, TV, or radio is that it’s tough to work out how well your campaign performed. That’s not the case with online advertising, where most channels show you exactly how well your ads performed.
Typically, online advertising channels will show how many people saw and clicked your ad, how many sales your ad resulted in, and many, many more metrics.
This data is gold. First, it allows you to measure ROI to see whether your online advertising is delivering a return.
Second, you can use that data to optimize your campaigns and make them even more profitable. With it, you can understand why your ad performed well or poorly and what you can change to improve your ROI in the future.
Types of Online Advertising for Businesses
Below are the main types of online advertising you need to know
1. Paid Search
Paid search is one of the most important online advertising channels. The vast majority of all online interactions start with a search engine—which makes it one of the best places to target potential customers.
Google is the dominant force in paid search advertising, which is unsurprising given it currently enjoys an85 percent global market share. Other search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo also offer paid ad solutions.
Paid ads come in two models: pay per click and CPM. With pay per click, brands pay every time someone clicks on their ads. With CPM, brands pay a set cost per thousand views.
They are usually positioned at the top of search result pages, as you can see below. They may also feature at the bottom of result pages and in separate tabs, like the Shopping tab.
Paid search offers some of the best targeting available to online advertisers. Brands can target specific keywords, destinations, devices, and more. This allows them to create highly relevant ads that can return an average ROAS of 200 percent.
That comes at a cost, however. Paid search ads are some of the most expensive you can buy. The average CPC of Google Ads is between $1 and $2. Averages can rise much higher in some industries like law—where the average CPC is more than $6.
Pros:
huge reach
fantastic targeting
immediate results
high intent traffic
Cons:
can be expensive
not visual ads
highly competitive
2. Social Media Advertising
Social media advertising is huge. It is the second biggest digital advertising market with revenues of $153.7 billion in 2021. That’s expected to grow to $252.6 billion in 2026.
Consumers are obsessed with social media, too. Over half of the world’s population use some form of social media and the average person uses it for 2 hours and 27 minutes every day.
Every major social media platform has an advertising offering, including:
Ad formats vary depending on the platform, but the vast majority will be a form of in-feed ad. Facebook, for example, has four main ad formats.
The cost of social media ads will also vary depending on the platform. As you can see in this table by WebFX, LinkedIn and Instagram are two of the most expensive platforms with average CPCs north of $3. Facebook and Twitter tend to be the cheapest.
Pros:
insane targeting
wide audience reach
effective for brand awareness and sales
some channels have low costs
Cons:
costs can be very high on popular channels
a lot of competition
can be hard to find the right platform
Apple tracking updates may cause issues
3. Native Ads
Native ads don’t feel like they’re ads at all. Brands partner with publishers to create sponsored content that provides a lot of value to the reader while subtly promoting your business. The content is published on the partner’s site and distributed as normal. The idea is that users read the content and get value from it without feeling like they’re being sold to. It’s a win-win.
Here’s an example of a typical native ad on Fast Company. Note the small “paid content” disclaimer in the top right-hand corner.
Native ads can be very effective.
It’s been shown the softer touch of native ads can result in five to ten times higher CTRs than direct response ads. Native ads can be expensive, however. Major publications charge as much as $200,000 to get featured.
The vast majority of major publishers will offer some form of sponsored content or native ad package, making it easy for your brand to get featured in dozens of high-quality publications.
Pros:
build trust
appear authentic
Cons:
high effort required
typically smaller returns on investment
4. Display Ads
Display advertising is one of the most common forms of online advertising. In fact, it’s probably the one that came to mind when you saw the title of this article. Display ads come in many forms, including banner ads, in-content ads, side-bar ads, and popups.
Below you can see an example of a banner display ad on Digiday.
There are multiple ad platforms that brands can work with to run these ads. Popular platforms include:
Google Display Network
Facebook Network Ads
Taboola
Leadbolt
Display ads are one of the most cost-effective forms of online advertising, costing as little as $0.50 per click. There’s a trade-off, however, as display ads typically have some of the lowest CTRs of any online ad.
Pros:
cost-effective
widely available
great for brand awareness
Cons:
low CTRs
tend to be ignored or blocked
linked with poor UX
5. Retargeting Ads
Retargeting ads are much more effective than standard display ads.
That’s because consumers rarely make a purchase the first time they land on your website. When you show them the same products that previously caught their eye, they’ll be more likely to eventually make a purchase.
That’s where retargeting ads come in. This is a form of display ad that only targets people who have landed on your website and left without making a purchase.
Retargeting ads can appear on any website that shows display ads, as well as Facebook and Google. The cost of retargeting ads will depend on where they are displayed. The average cost of retargeting ads on Google, for example, is $0.66 to $1.23 per click.Display retargeting ads will be much cheaper.
Pros:
only target people who have shown an interest in your brand
higher CTR than display ads
Cons:
can feel intrusive
harder to run after privacy updates
6. Affiliate Ads
Affiliate advertising is where a brand partners with a third-party (usually a publisher or influencer) to promote its products or services. Rather than an upfront payment, third-party gets paid a commission every time they refer a customer to the brand.
Affiliate advertising is a rapidly growing market and is expected to be worth $8.2 billion in the U.S. in 2022.
The cost of affiliate marketing can vary dramatically depending on the industry you operate in and the third parties you partner with. Commission rates vary between $3 and $200 and can be as low as 1 percent per sale or as high as 60 percent.
Pros:
only pay when you make a sale
easy to get started
lots of third parties and publishers
Cons:
can be required to give away a large percentage as commission
can be time-consuming to stay on top of affiliates.
7. Video Ads
Video ads are an increasingly popular form of video-based advertising. The most common form of video ads are YouTube ads, but other video platforms like Vimeo host ads, too.
The potential reach of video ads is huge. On YouTube alone, consumers watch more than one billion hours of videos every day. YouTube also ranks second in monthly user numbers for social network platforms and is the world’s second-largest search engine.
How to Create an Online Advertising Strategy for Your Business
The steps to create an online advertising strategy will be broadly similar regardless of your business, product, or service. You start by setting goals, defining your target audience, and assigning a budget. Next, you pick a channel and create ads. Then it’s simply a case of launching and optimizing as necessary.
Step 1: Set Goals
You should always set goals for your online advertising campaign. Having a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your strategy and how you measure those goals will keep you on track, increasing the likelihood of success.
One study found that 76 percent of people who wrote goals down, made a list of actions, and ran weekly progress reports achieved their goals.
Making more sales is a typical online advertising strategy goal, but it’s not the only one. Others include:
increasing brand awareness
getting more subscribers
growing your social media following
Whatever your goal, make sure it follows the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) framework.
Instead of saying you want to acquire new customers with your Google Ads campaign, state that you want to acquire 1000 customers in one month by spending $5,000 on ads.
Step 2: Find Your Target Audience
With a goal in place, it’s time to decide on your target audience. Who exactly do you want to reach with your ads?
As we’ve discussed, the beauty of online advertising is that you can target an incredibly specific audience. It’s time to take advantage of that. Consider things like:
age
gender
demographic
nationality or location
interests
Make sure you account for your goals. If you want to acquire tens of thousands of customers, you’re going to have to cast a broad net. If your aims are more modest, you can afford to be more specific.
Step 3: Assign a Budget
Assigning an appropriate budget is essential for any online advertising campaign. It will define how much you can spend and, to a lesser extent, which channels you can advertise on. I recommend basing your budget on a variety of factors, including:
your overall marketing budget
your product or service price
your goals
how long you want the campaign to last
any previous results
You don’t want to blow your budget on one campaign. Nor do you want to assign a tiny budget if you want the campaign to run for six months.
While you should always establish a budget upfront, be prepared to be flexible with that budget. The immediacy with which you can see results is another advantage of online marketing, so you should be prepared to increase the budget if you see success.
Step 4: Pick a Channel
Now that you have a set of goals, a target audience, and a budget, you can finally decide which channel you want to advertise on. The truth is you probably already have a paid advertising channel in mind.
That’s fine, but it’s important to make sure it matches your goals, budget, and audience. Budget-wise, advertising on Google Search can be incredibly expensive for certain keywords.
The average cost per click for keywords related to the insurance industry was $20.12 in 2021, for instance. If you don’t have the appropriate budget, you’re better off choosing another channel.
Similarly, there’s no point in advertising on Google if your goal is to increase your social media following. Or advertising on Facebook if most of your customers use TikTok instead.
If it’s your first time launching an online advertising campaign, stick to one channel. It will make creating ads and setting up the campaign a lot easier. You can start to advertise on multiple paid marketing channels when you get a few campaigns under your belt.
Step 5: Create Ads and Launch Your Campaign
This step is going to vary quite a bit by your chosen paid ad channel. In the case of Google Search ads, you’ll need to write ad copy. For display ads, on the other hand, you’ll need to design an image. Whatever channel you use, the bulk of your efforts should be spent here.
For example, if you’re advertising on Google Ads, improving your Quality Score can make a huge difference. This is a measure of how relevant your ad and landing page are. It’s been found that an above-average Quality Score can result in a 50 percent discount on your cost per click. Low-Quality Scores, on the other hand, can result in you paying four times as much.
Spending time improving your ad copy can also increase your clickthrough rates, as I show in my ad copy guide.
Step 6: Optimize Your Campaign
Creating an online advertising campaign doesn’t stop once you’ve hit launch. The wealth of data that these channels provide means you can start optimizing your campaign almost immediately.
Review your ad dashboard daily after launch and look for ways to optimize your campaign. Common strategies include:
changing your bid amounts
changing ad run times
adding negative keywords
changing your copy
changing images
changing a new ad targeting a different segment of your audience
You can also pivot your campaign entirely if things aren’t working out. There’s no point wasting budget on a campaign that isn’t generating any return. Instead, pick another paid channel and launch a new campaign.
Note: Don’t worry if this section seems overwhelming. You can work with an online advertising agency that will handle the entire process for you.
Online Advertising Strategies for Business to Take Your Strategy to the Next Level
Launching your first online advertising campaign is just the start. Once you’ve got a few campaigns under your belt, you can start to experiment with advanced strategies like the ones below to supercharge your results.
Use Tools to Enhance Your Ad Campaigns
You don’t need to spend money on anything else apart from your budget to see results with online advertising. There are marketing tools for almost every channel that can enhance your campaign and help you generate even more ROI.
Find and utilize these tools wherever possible. My keyword research tool, Ubersuggest, is a great example of a tool that can help you improve your paid ad campaigns by getting access to high-quality keyword data. This is useful if you want to make sure you’re targeting every relevant high-value keyword in your Google PPC campaign.
Head on over to Ubersuggest and click on the keywords dropdown in the left menu bar. Enter a keyword in the “Discover new keywords” bar. For this example, I’m going to use the keyword “digital marketing agency.”
Hit search, and you’ll be served hundreds of relevant and related keyword ideas. You can export the keywords as a CSV file and add them to Google Ads immediately. Or you can filter them to make them even more relevant.
For example, say I don’t want to target any keywords with a CPC higher than $20. By clicking on the CPC filter and entering between $0 and $20, I can filter them all out.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with a tool like Ubersuggest. For more help, see my complete Ubersuggest guide.
Automate PPC Bidding
Automated bidding will feel like a lifesaver if you’re not confident in setting bids and optimizing campaigns. Google is the best-known ad platform for automated bidding, but plenty of others like Microsoft and Facebook offer some kind of automated or smart bidding service, too.
Google offers two forms of automatic bidding: a standard automated bidding service and a smart bidding service that uses machine learning to optimize for conversions. You can target five goals when using automated bidding on Google:
Increase site visits: Google will generate as many clicks as possible.
Increase visibility: Google will target impression share to show your ads at the top of the page.
Maximize conversions at your CPA: Google will drive as many conversions as possible at the target Cost per Acquisition.
Meet a target ROAS: Google will try to maximize the value of every click.
Maximize conversion bidding: Google will try to get the most conversion value while spending all of your budget.
The benefit of automated bidding is two-fold. First, you don’t have to worry about setting the right bids and can focus instead on other parts of the campaign. Second, Google will probably do a better job of setting bids than you.
For instance, T-Mobile boosted conversions by 22 percent, decreased cost per acquisition by 27 percent, and increased conversion rate by 23 percent by switching to automated bidding on Google.
Create Hyper Personalized Ads on Facebook
Personalization should be part of every marketing strategy—and your online advertising campaign is no different. More than half of customers (60 percent) say they’re more likely to become repeat buyers after a personalized experience.
When you use dynamic formats and creative, you create a personalized experience for every person who sees your ad. Facebook will automatically change certain elements of your ad to suit the user’s tastes. These elements include:
The format: Facebook will show either the carousel or collection format.
The description: Additional information like price and delivery information may or may not be displayed.
The media and creatives: Dynamic video can be used to create auto-generated videos using your product catalog.
The destination: Facebook may send people to different destinations depending on where they’re most likely to convert.
The benefits of hyper-personalized online advertising can be massive. Facebook tested the dynamic formats and creative solutions across 12 online stores and found they increased views, add-to-carts, purchases, and sales. There was also a 34 percent increase in incremental ROAS, a 10 percent improvement in lift, and a six percent decrease in cost per incremental purchase.
Use Ads to Re-Target New Customers
Most retargeting strategies focus on trying to convert consumers who have visited your site but not made a purchase. Let’s flip conventional wisdom on its head and focus on converting customers who have already bought from you.
Here’s the theory: it costs five times as much to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. You’d be better off turning one-off customers into repeat buyers rather than converting new customers.
Retargeting ads are also the perfect vehicle for these messages. According to an IAB survey, 92 percent of marketers believe retargeting ads perform the same as or better than search, 91 percent believe they perform the same as or better than email, and 92 percent believe they perform the same as or better than other display ads.
How should you re-target customers? I recommend three strategies:
Cross-selling: Pitch them products similar or related to the customer’s first purchase.
Upselling: Encourage them to purchase an add-on or upgrade their account.
Subscription: Encourage them to turn their one-off purchase into a subscription.
Experiment With Under-Utilized Platforms
I’ve got bad news for you. Everyone is advertising on Facebook. Most of your competitors are also probably advertising on Google, too. Ditto for display ads. Competitors with bigger budgets will target the same audience and the same keywords. That doesn’t bode well for you.
Better ads and more optimized campaigns are two ways to stand apart from the competition, but an easier way is to advertise on platforms where your competitors don’t.
Instead of Google, run search ads on Bing or even DuckDuckGo. Read my guide on Bing for advice on how to do it.
There are plenty of other alternative ad platforms that don’t get the love they deserve. Quora is an excellent source of engaged and highly targeted users ripe for being served great ads. Motley Fool Australia used Quora to increase leads by 111 percent and lower CPAs by 47 percent, for instance.
Online Advertising for Business Frequently Asked Questions
What percent of my marketing budget should go to online advertising?
Your marketing budget should be between 2 percent and 5 percent of your revenue. The percentage of that budget you should dedicate to online advertising will depend on your other marketing strategies and your success with paid ads. The fewer other strategies you use and the more success you have, the more you can devote to online advertising.
What is considered online advertising?
Online advertising is any form of paid-for internet-based marketing. It includes PPC, social media ads, banner ads, display ads, video ads, and many other channels and formats.
What is the best type of online advertising?
There is no best type of online advertising. The best form of online advertising is the one that works best for your brand and audience, whether that’s search, social media, or something else entirely.
What types of businesses should do online advertising?
Any business with an online presence should consider online advertising. It’s cost-effective, highly measurable, and incredibly targeted, which makes it easy for any business to get started.
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Conclusion: Online Advertising for Business
Online advertising is an incredible marketing strategy. It’s cost-effective, easy to measure, and accessible to virtually every business, big or small. I hope this article has shown you how easy it is to get started, too.
It’s a new year. Whether you have a new business or you have been running your business for a while, these tips will help make sure you have a business setup for success in 2022 and beyond.
Why Does Your Business Setup Matter?
The way you set your business up affects its fundability. It cannot be fundable if it is not built on a foundation of fundability. What is fundability, and what are the building blocks of a fundable foundation?
Fundability is a business’s current ability to get funding. Of course, there are things you cannot control related to fundability. Yet, there are plenty of factors you can control. These are what you need to focus on. They include setting your business up with a fundable foundation, and more.
Business Setup: a Fundable Foundation
Follow these steps to build a fundable foundation for your business.
Step 1: Don’t Neglect Your Business Name
This is more important than you may think. It includes a lot more than just choosing a name. First, check with your Secretary of State to find out if they require that a business name be unique.
Then, keep any indication of a high-risk or restricted industry out of your business name. Your business can be Rachel’s rather than Rachel’s Gas Station. This can help prevent an automatic or nearly automatic denial from a lender just because of the type of business. It can increase the chances that your business actually gets a chance at funding.
If your business is perceived as high risk from the beginning, the application may not even get to the underwriting process.
Step 2: Address Your Business Address
A fundable business setup includes a physical address where you can receive mail. Never use an UPS box or a P.O. Box. In fact, some lenders will not approve and fund unless this is the case. If you don’t want to use your home address, you can use a virtual address. In fact, it’s not a bad idea if you need to hold a meeting or an interview. Regus, Davinci, and Alliance Virtual Offices are all good options. Still, keep in mind that there are credit providers that will not accept virtual addresses.
Step 3: Make the Right Call With Your Business Phone Number
Not surprisingly, toll-free phone numbers are best. Lenders see them as a sign of business credibility. It’s very easy and inexpensive to set up a virtual local phone or a toll free number. If you want to avoid a separate phone, just have your business number forwarded to your personal phone.
Additionally, your business number needs to be listed with 411 for most credit issuers and lenders to approve you. Check for your record to see if you’re listed. While you’re at it, make sure your information is accurate. No record? Then use ListYourself.net to get a listing.
Step 4: Jump in With An EIN
Now, get a free EIN for your business at IRS.gov. This is an identifying number for your business. It’s similar to your personal Social Security Number. You’ll use it on all of your business documents.
Step 5: Set Up an Incorporated Business Entity
Incorporating gives you more credibility in many cases. It sets up your business as separate from you, its owner. Of course, by default incorporating reduces your personal liability. Other entities, like sole proprietorships and partnerships, do neither.
Step 6: Get Licensed
Contact State, County, and City Government offices to see if there are any required licenses and permits to operate your type of business. Licensing requirements differ depending on state, town, and industry. Always make sure you have the proper licensing for your corporation. Often, your Secretary of State will have this information.
Step 7: Open a Business Bank Account in the Business’s Name
You must have a separate, dedicated business bank account. Keep in mind, you have to keep business and personal funds separate for the IRS anyway. Having a separate business account makes that process easier and reduces the risk of audit at tax time.
More than that, many credit issuers require a business bank account before they will approve you for an account. In addition, the date you open your business bank account is the day that lenders consider your business to have started.
As a result, it doesn’t matter if you incorporated your business 10 years ago. If you just opened the business bank account yesterday, then in the eyes of credit issuers your business started yesterday. Since there is a minimum time in business requirement on almost all business credit accounts, the sooner you open your business bank account, the better.
A business bank account is also required for getting a merchant account, so your business can accept credit cards. For years, studies have shown that customers spend more with plastic than with cash.
Step 8: Do Not Underestimate the Importance of a Business Web Domain and Professional Website
It’s highly likely that lenders and credit providers will research your business online. As you can imagine, it is best if they learn everything directly from your business website. Not having a company website can hurt your chances of getting business credit. Keep in mind though, an unprofessional website can do just as much damage.
You need it to be a professional website. That means it’s got to have helpful information for anyone who finds your company online. Additionally, it should be hosted professionally. Buy web hosting from a hosting company like GoDaddy or HostGator. Try to avoid a free version of a hosting service like Weebly or Wix.
Your domain should be your business name, if possible. A free Wix or Weebly domain does not look professional. For example, www.yourbusiness.com appears much more professional than www.yourbusiness.wix.com.
Furthermore, you need a company email address for your business. Guess what? It needs to be on the same domain as your website. It often comes with a website domain provider such as GoDaddy. Do not use Yahoo, AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, or other free email services. Again, owner@yourbusiness.com appears much more professional than yourbusiness@yahoo.com.
Beyond the Foundation
After you set your business up with a fundable foundation, the next business setup consideration is risk. For some businesses this isn’t an issue at all when it comes to funding. Yet, for others, it can be tricky.
Step 9: Choose NAICS Codes Wisely
The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) is the standard used by Federal statistical agencies. You choose your NAICS code on the IRS website.
There are inherent issues in every single industry. However, those listed under certain NAICS codes are considered riskier than others. It doesn’t matter if the business is prospering, they are still considered a risky business. Usually higher risk comes from chances of injury or frequently engaging in cash transactions, or a low barrier to entry.
The IRS, lenders, banks, insurance companies, and business CRAs use NAICS codes. They are trying to determine if your business is in a high-risk industry classification. The NAICS puts out a list of high-risk and high-cash industries. Higher risk industries include casinos, pawn shops, and liquor stores but the NAICS list is old and has not been updated in years.
Why Risk Matters
When it comes to funding, risk matters big time. There are several industries where lending institutions are hesitant to do business. In those particular cases, there are stricter underwriting guidelines. In contrast, some industries are considered so risky they are automatically denied.
Of course you want to be impeccably honest when it comes to selecting your NAICS code. Still, if more than one can apply, you don’t have to choose the one that’s higher risk. It pays to check and be careful when making your selection.
If only high risk codes apply, there’s nothing at all wrong with changing your business to match a related but lower risk code.
Step 10: Be Consistent!
A big reason for many credit and loan denials is inconsistent business information. This makes it hard for the lender to locate a business offline or online. It also sets off fraud alarms in the minds of those making lending decisions.
To avoid this, make certain your business name and other information is the same everywhere. That includes incorporation papers, licenses, utility statements, and bank statements among other things.
If you change your business name, be sure to change it everywhere.
This means you change it in these places, among others:
Your website
411 listing
Your records with the business CRAs (D&B, Experian, and Equifax)
Minor details such as using an ampersand in your name in one place and the word “and” in another can cause a lot of problems. Be careful and consistent with all business information.
First Funding Options
While you are working on setting up your business, you are going to need funding. If your business setup is not yet conducive to fundability, you’ll need to pursue some alternative options. One great possibility is the Credit Suite Credit Line Hybrid.
Credit Line Hybrid
A credit line hybrid is a form of unsecured funding. Our credit line hybrid has an even better interest rate than a secured loan. You can get 0% business credit cards with stated income, and many of these report to business CRAs. That means you can build business credit at the same time.
This will get you access to even more cash with no personal guarantee.
Credit Line Hybrid: Terms and Qualifying
You need a credit score or a guarantor with a credit score of at least 680. There is no requirement for financials, and you can often get up to $150,000. Be aware, some cards may report on your personal credit.
Business Setup for Fundability
Honestly, you cannot build a fundable business without first having a fundable foundation. This is what the business setup is all about. All other aspects of fundability hinge on the foundation, so don’t neglect it. Don’t skip it. If your business is already operating and you need to backtrack to make this happen, do it now. The sooner the better.
To create a paid ad campaign effectively, you need a solid strategy for organizing your data and tracking your ad performance.
Excel spreadsheets can do just that.
While a spreadsheet might not seem like the most intuitive tool for managing your marketing efforts, there are many Excel tricks you can use to quickly streamline your data, track metrics, and improve conversions.
There’s no need to be an Excel expert to master these tricks. All you need is access to a version of Excel and a desire to learn.
Maybe you’re wondering if you should bother learning Excel if you already use other tools like CRM software or Google Analytics to manage your marketing campaigns.
Honestly, you probably should.
The humble Excel spreadsheet offers you a simple yet highly effective way to organize all your data from various project management tools in one place. Whether you want to use your spreadsheet for keyword research or you’re turning data into a bar chart, there’s an Excel trick to make your job easier.
Plus, you never know: You could end up at a company that still strictly uses Excel for these things!
With all this in mind, let’s look at using Excel to boost your paid ad or pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.
Google Sheets is a fantastic (and free) alternative to Excel. It’s not designed to handle the enormous data sets you might want to hold in Excel, such as keyword research, but it’s excellent for managing deadlines, analyzing customer relationship data, and filtering statistics to gain some key insights into your ad performance.
I’ll be using Excel to work through examples here, but you can, of course, use Google Sheets for many of these tasks if that’s what’s available to you. You can also check out Calc from OpenOffice since the functions on offer are very similar.
5 Excel Tricks to Use in Paid Ad Campaigns
When creating paid ad campaigns, you need to think about which keywords to use and bid on, how to boost your click-through rate, and how to increase your conversions once people land on your page. What’s more, you need the means to compare different ads within the same family to check for underperforming content.
Excel, thankfully, can help you tackle all of these issues and more, so here are my top five Excel tricks you can use to design, track, and analyze your paid ad campaigns.
1. Filter and Sort Key Data
As I’ve touched on, the goal of creating a PPC campaign is to get as many clicks and conversions as possible. How do you maximize your chances of success? You first need to choose the right keywords.
If you use keyword research tools like Ubersuggest, you probably see hundreds, if not thousands, of keyword suggestions. Excel can help you sort through this data to identify the keywords you should be using.
Depending on your campaign goals, you can filter the data based on factors including:
Say you’re creating a PPC campaign around video marketing. You input the keyword “video marketing” into Ubersuggest. When you click “View all keyword ideas,” you’ll see 342 suggested keywords and over 11,000 related keywords.
How do you translate this into Excel? First, download a copy of the keywords by clicking the “Export to CSV” button:
Now, filter the results to only see the keywords most relevant to you and your campaign. To do so, load up the spreadsheet, head to the “Data” tab, and click the “Filter” option:
For our example, let’s filter the keywords based on SEO difficulty. Go to the column header and click the arrow. From the drop-down menu, uncheck the boxes for the irrelevant keywords. They’ll disappear from your search results so you can focus on the important keywords:
Once you’ve finished analyzing the data based on one filter, you can quickly switch to another using this Excel trick.
You can also filter out “negative” keywords from your search results. Say you don’t want your PPC ad to appear in search results for “real estate” because you’re not targeting this audience. Click on “Text filters” from the drop-down menu, then “Does not contain.” Input the words “real estate” into the box.
2. Use a PivotTable to Track and Compare Audience Demographics
The next Excel trick I’ll show you is how to create a PivotTable.
What is a PivotTable? Think of it as a kind of interactive report. It allows you to analyze massive data sets and extract critical data to inform your decision-making process. Here’s what a PivotTable might look like:
From a marketing perspective, PivotTables are invaluable. They can show you, at a glance, who is clicking on your ad and where they’re based. What’s more, if you’re running multiple ads, you can identify if certain demographics are clicking on one ad more than the others, and so on.
In other words, if you’re a marketer trying to track your campaign’s success, a PivotTable could be your new best friend.
To use a PivotTable effectively, first identify your data source. You might use data from Google Analytics or another analytics tool.
Next, import this data into an Excel spreadsheet. The easiest way to do this is by importing a CSV into Excel. To import a CSV into a new Excel workbook, simply click the “Data” tab, then click “Get External Data” and select “Text” from the menu options:
Once you’ve checked the data moved over correctly, create your PivotTable. Include columns for demographic data such as location, age, and gender, and columns tracking metrics such as conversions and impressions.
Highlight the cells containing the data you’re interested in, then go to the “Insert” tab and click “PivotTable.” Confirm the fields you want to include to generate your table.
Next, decide what data you want to include in your PivotTable. For instance, if you’re tracking audience demographics, have columns for data such as location, age, and gender.
You also need columns for metrics like clicks, impressions, and conversions because you’re trying to track performance.
Finally, analyze the results and make whatever changes you need to increase your conversions and improve your PPC campaign success.
3. Use VLOOKUP to Track Metrics
Do you want to combine two sets of data from different spreadsheets or tracking tools into a single sheet? Then you need to check out the VLOOKUP function.
Essentially, VLOOKUP allows you to quickly combine a vertical column of data from one spreadsheet into another. Be aware: Both data sources must have at least one column in common, or this method won’t work.
Say you’re looking for new keywords for your PPC campaign. You don’t want to duplicate keywords, so you’re looking to see if any of the new keywords you found are already on your existing keyword spreadsheet or PivotTable.
You can use the VLOOKUP Excel trick to identify any genuinely new keywords and import them into your spreadsheet.
First, identify the new column in your existing spreadsheet that you want to fill with fresh keywords. Then, select “VLOOKUP” from the “Formulas” tab.
Next, complete the VLOOKUP formula. You’ll need four things:
Lookup Value: This is the value that both data sets have in common, such as a keyword.
Table Array: Table array is the range of columns you’re pulling from.
Column Number: The column number is what column number you’re pulling data from. For example, if you’re pulling data from the second column in your table array, the column number is “2.”
Range: Finally, it’s best if you keep the range “FALSE” to only pull exact matches.
Once you complete the formula, the data sets merge.
VLOOKUP is pretty technical, so check out the Office support page for more help creating your formulas.
When you’re creating PPC ads, it’s worth adding original graphics or data visualization tools, like bar charts or graphs, to potentially increase your click-through rates and conversions. Luckily, Excel can help you do this.
If you’ve already got a PivotTable, it only takes a few clicks to turn it into a chart. Simply click the “Analyze” tab, select “PivotChart,” and decide which chart type you want to use. That’s it!
Don’t have a PivotTable? Fear not.
First, select the data you want to include in your chart, click “Insert,” then hit the “Recommended Charts” button:
Pick the design you like most and generate the chart:
The Microsoft support page has more hints and tips for customizing your chart.
5. Save Time With Excel Macros
When you create paid ads, you often perform the same steps each time. Excel lets you automate repetitive tasks to save you time.
How do you automate these tasks? Through this neat little Excel feature called a macro.
Macros are essentially automated or recorded sequences. You “record” a set of actions you want Excel to automate, like keystrokes. When you need this action performed again, you simply run the macro, and Excel handles the rest for you.
Well, there’s no limit to what you can use them for, but here are some suggestions for paid ad campaign steps you might automate.
completing keyword research
generating new campaigns
converting data into PivotTables
building new templates
Setting up a macro should be a short process, though you can always check out the Microsoft help page if you need more guidance.
First, ensure you can see the “Developer” tab in Excel. From here, hit “Visual Basic” and then click the “Record” button. If you can’t see the Developer tab, just click the “View” tab and hit “Record Macro” there instead:
Choose a name for your macro and then start recording. Once you click “OK,” Excel records every action you take on the spreadsheet until you hit “Stop Recording.” Now you’ve got a macro set up to use whenever you need it.
Before you run a real and complicated macro, try setting up your own simple test macro to get a feel for how they work.
Conclusion
If you’re a marketer, these Excel tricks can help you create, track, and manage your paid ad campaigns more effectively than before. There’s no need to be an Excel expert, either. All you need to know are a few simple commands, and you could be up and running pretty quickly.
From keyword research to customer relationship management, Excel could be the tool you’re looking for. Once you’ve tried these Excel tricks a few times, you’ll probably wonder how you managed to run your PPC campaigns without them!
If you need any more help with Excel, be sure to check out Microsoft’s Excel Community support page.
Have you used any of these Excel tricks for your paid ad campaigns?
Did you know that 73 percent of sellers prefer working with agencies that use real estate video marketing? Whether it’s a walkthrough of the property or a Q&A session, sellers expect their agents to use video marketing to reach the right buyers and sell their properties.
For real estate agents, this demand presents a few challenges. How do you make an engaging real estate video to impress both sellers and buyers alike, and how do you track a video’s performance for your marketing purposes?
Luckily it is not as hard as it might seem. Although real estate videos serve a unique purpose, they’re similar to regular marketing videos in many ways, so don’t be intimidated by them.
Let’s take a closer look at why real estate videos are worth the effort and how you fit them into your overall video marketing strategy.
Why Should You Create Real Estate Video Ads?
Real estate videos do two things: they attract buyers to your listing, and they encourage prospective sellers to choose your agency over your competitors.
Are they worth the effort, though, when you could create social media ads or optimize your listings? Maybe with the current market, you think it will be a waste of resources. Let’s look at what the numbers say.
46 percent of buyers think video tours are the most influential content on an agency’s website.
Listings with embedded videos are 53 times more likely to rank highly on Google than listings without embedded video.
You’ll earn around 60 percent more qualified leads through real estate videos.
A caring personality is one of the top reasons sellers choose a particular agent or agency, and that’s easier to share in a video than, say, a picture or article.
What’s more, 84 percent of video marketers feel they’ve generated more leads thanks to video marketing, and 94 percent of us use videos to learn more about the products we’re buying.
The takeaway? To draw traffic to your listings and impress your sellers, try out real estate video marketing.
Before we dig into strategies, let’s cover the basics.
What Equipment Do You Need to Create Real Estate Video Ads?
There’s no need to spend a fortune on top-of-the-range lighting, props, or cameras. However, you’ll still need some recording equipment before you shoot your first real estate video. How much you spend depends on your marketing budget, but let’s break down the basics.
First, you’ll need a camera capable of shooting in 4K or HD to make sure the videos are high quality and not blurry or pixelated. A smartphone works, too.
If you opt for a camera, make sure it’s capable of capturing both high-quality video and images. Practice shooting with the camera before filming day to ensure you get the most from the equipment.
Using a smartphone? Clip on a wide-angle camera lens. This allows you to shoot larger scenes while minimizing glare and improving image quality. Here’s what the lens looks like:
Lenses like this one shown above are cost-effective and widely available, so shop around.
Want to go all-out? You can always buy a drone for 360 aerial footage. However, you’ll probably need a permit to fly a drone in most areas, so keep that in mind.
Next, you’ll need lighting filters. Use a neutral density filter for shooting outside, and get a pocket-sized LED light you can attach to the camera (or smartphone) for filming in poorly-lit areas.
Got the lighting sorted? Now you’ll need a microphone. You can either buy a mic attachment for your smartphone, or a portable mic for attaching to any camera device.
You’ll also need editing software. Check out tools like Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro X for professional editing support. You’ll likely pay for a subscription, but they’re easy enough to master, and you’ll produce the sharpest, most professional videos this way. Alternatively, you could outsource editing to a freelancer.
Finally, you’ll probably need a stabilizer like a selfie stick or a gimbal. These tools keep your camera steady and minimize shaking while you walk around a property.
10 Tips for Successful Real Estate Video Ads
A real estate video is all about setting a great first impression. You want to bring the property to life, connect with potential buyers, and ultimately set yourself apart from other realtors with your professional marketing skills.
To help ensure your content achieves these goals, here are ten tips to produce the highest-quality real estate video ads.
1. Know Your Real Estate Video Ad Budget
Be clear about what you can afford to spend on video marketing. Unsure how to allocate your budget? Let me give you a few pointers.
First, consider your target audience. It’s worth watching real estate videos in your listing’s price range to see how your efforts compare to your competitors’ video ads.
Next, think about how much you’ll spend on actually promoting your videos. From social media ads to targeted email marketing, the costs can eventually add up. To keep things more cost-effective, repurpose your real estate videos into digital ads so you can double your content output without spending more.
Also, take the time to research paid ad strategies, or hire a digital marketing consultant to take care of the budget, targeting, and testing.
2. Plan Your Angle in Advance
A great real estate video doesn’t just happen. It takes planning. Remember, you’re trying to tell a story, so you need to spend time thinking about what story you want to tell.
For example, determine what equipment you’ll need, whether you’ll hire actors to play any roles, and what time of day or night you plan on filming. Do you want to sell your own real estate skills or help a buyer fall in love with an unusual property?
Depending on the seller, you might also need their approval before you start filming or sending the video out to prospects, so factor in time for adjusting your angle and making changes as required.
3. Keep Your Real Estate Video Ad Short and Sweet
The length of your real estate video depends on where you’re marketing it. For example, according to HubSpot, popular Twitter videos average around 43 seconds, while popular YouTube videos run a little longer at two minutes.
A real estate video can be as long as six minutes, but it’s not always wise to fill this time. Why? People have short attention spans. Don’t risk losing a potential buyer’s attention just because you’ve added 30 or 40 seconds of filler to your video.
For example, here’s a video for a property listed by Douglas Elliman. It’s just over 90 seconds long, but it’s visually engaging and covers every angle a potential buyer needs to see without extra fluff:
4. Script the Video
Great real estate videos typically follow a three-act story structure, according to research by Vimeo.
Act one: Give a clear, frontal view of the property and a few clips of the neighborhood.
Act two: This part focuses on showcasing each room. Start with the main feature rooms before moving on to the smaller rooms.
Act three: End the video ad with an exterior view of the property. If you’re using drone footage, place it here.
Remember, you’re telling a story, so following a traditional story structure works!
5. Provide an Engaging House Tour
If you want to ensure a prospect watches your video the whole way through, keep it engaging. Be enthusiastic. Show people why you’re excited about the property, and inspire potential buyers to envision themselves living in the property.
Focus on the possibilities. What could make this property truly special for the right buyer? How might the property be flexible over time? For example, a first-floor bedroom can be an office now and a bedroom for an aging parent or partner later. A basement can be a game room, an in-law suite, or an at-home gym. Drive home how the property can meet their needs over time.
6. Focus on Special or Unique Features
No matter the price range, every property boasts a special, unique, or at least intriguing feature.
Maybe there’s cool history attached to the building, or there’s a custom marble countertop in the kitchen. Or, maybe it’s just the first house to come to market in the area for a long time.
To identify unique features, ask the buyer what changes they’ve made since they bought the house, and if it’s an older property, identify if they kept any key features like original wooden flooring.
Special features can be anything from dual sinks to fully-landscaped gardens, so look for those little quirks that make the property unique compared to similar properties.
For example, this property in Montecito has a wine rack:
Plus, it boasts a hot tub:
Capturing these features in the video highlights the unique aspects of this home.
7. Show Off the Neighborhood
It’s great to show off a property, but what’s going on around it? Include a few clips of the surrounding area, even if you just zoom out to capture the apartment block and a couple of nearby amenities. Make sure to include any famous landmarks, fun events, schools, and even sidewalks.
Is the neighborhood a little rundown or potentially off-putting? An aerial view might work best, so you don’t focus too much on the finer details.
8. Sell the Lifestyle
When you’re looking for a property, it’s not just about the unit. It’s about the life the buyer will lead when they live there. For example, if you’re near the beach or a park, talk up the family-friendly vibes. Are you close to the buzz of shops, restaurants, and cafes? Highlight the walkable, cosmopolitan lifestyle.
Use the property to sell the lifestyle, too. For example, going back to the Montecito property, the landscaping gives off seriously chilled, secluded vibes:
9. Interview Neighbors
People make neighborhoods. After all, who better to tell you what a neighborhood is really like than the residents? Try to get a testimonial or two to add some authenticity and personality to your real estate videos.
Unless it’s a new neighborhood, try to find residents who’ve lived there a few years. Otherwise, potential buyers might wonder why people don’t stay there very long!
10. Use Interactive Elements
From CTA buttons to clickable links, interactive elements help bring your videos to life. Use your editing software to add a CTA inviting people to book a showing, or include a link to a page where buyers can learn more about the listing and the services you offer.
Remember, real estate videos are a marketing tool. Use them effectively and treat them as you would, say, a YouTube video or digital ad.
Measuring the Success of Your Real Estate Video Ads
You’ve filmed your real estate video and launched some ads. How do you know if it’s working for you? The answer’s in your metrics. Here are five key metrics to track if you’re trying to measure your success rate.
View count: Your view count tells you, well, how many people watched your video!
Engagement: Video engagement levels tell whether people watch your video all the way through or stop watching.
Click-through rate: Want to know if people interact with your video and click those links and buttons? Check the click-through rate.
Conversions: Your conversions tell you if people are taking the desired actions, such as booking a showing or signing up for a newsletter.
Social media shares: Are people sharing your videos across social media? It’s a good sign if they are, so track your social media shares.
To get this data, either integrate your videos with your usual marketing platform to track metrics, or use a dedicated video analytics platform like Vidyard.
Conclusion
Video ads bring a whole new dimension to real estate marketing. With the right editing tools, a sharp eye for detail, and some enthusiasm, you can bring your property to life or show possible clients why you are the best choice.
There’s one final point to remember. You can shoot a clear, engaging, and professional real estate video with little more than a smartphone.
Don’t feel like you need to splurge to create successful video ads unless it’s within your budget to do so!
Have you ever thought a struggling ad campaign would perform better outside of the country? International PPC campaigns work best when you understand your target audience and appeal to the local culture.
Here are seven top tips for running international PPC ads to give you the knowledge necessary to succeed anywhere on the planet.
International PPC Ad Strategies
There are many reasons a marketer or company would want to run international PPC ads in another country. For example, you want to earn more revenue, or your product or service caters to another culture. Or, perhaps you are doing well in your current country but are ready to expand your market.
If you’re not entirely sure but want to give it a shot, running ads outside of the country might prove to be lucrative if you can get past the hurdles to developing a successful ad campaign.
This article guides you through setting up your first international PPC campaign. After reading these seven tips, you’ll have the knowledge and understanding necessary to put together a strategic ad campaign to target a unique audience.
1. Decide Which Countries to Target With Your International PPC Ads
Before you start diving into targeted ads in specific countries, you’ll want to determine which countries will respond to your ad.
One of the most important first steps you can take is to throw all of your biases out the window. Even if you think you know everything about a country and a culture, it might not be not as cut and dry as you think.
You’ll want to research the market in the country, see what types of advertising guidelines they have, and start to understand what the economics are like in the country.
Pay attention to purchasing and spending habits. Before you advertise a specific product somewhere, make sure the country spends money in a way that aligns with whatever it is you’re selling.
For example, certain products are impulse buys, where others require a day or two to decide. Impulse buying comes naturally to many Americans. Approximately 54 percent of US shoppers admit to spending more than $100 on something without even thinking about it.
That might not be true in other countries, so if your product requires shoppers to make a quick decision, look for countries that share a love for impulse buying.
2. Create International PPC Ads That Appeal to Local Culture
As advertisers, we want our ads to stand out. When someone scrolls through a Google search or flips through posts on Instagram, we want our ad to be the one they recognize. However, we don’t want our ads to stand out in the wrong way.
Having a buyer persona doesn’t end at the border. You still need to create ads to appeal to the local culture and address concerns or issues.
To do this, you need to research the local culture and understand their unique interests. This could be as simple as finding what colors and images appeal to them.
The tone of your ad is also essential because certain cultures relate to language differently than others. Take weight-loss products, for example. Weight loss products are very popular in the United States but may not resonate well with other cultures. Talking about something like weight may even offend some.
Another great example would be thinking about a typical workday. In the US, a 9-5 workday is common. Many people work from Monday to Friday, and they might not convert during that time.
As a result, we may want to advertise specific products and services later in the day and on the weekend when we find most people are browsing the internet and social media.
In Southern and Eastern Asian countries, work hours there are much longer. It’s not uncommon for them to work as many as 80 hours in one week. This poses unique challenges for advertisers, but it could also be advantageous for advertising something to help people work less or relax more.
3. Optimize Your Budget by Country
Your cost-per-click and cost-per-acquisition will vary from country to country. The only way to know for sure will be to experiment by stretching your audience out wide and narrowing it down as you learn which country is receiving your ad the best.
To get an idea of how much to budget for specific countries, use a tool like Ahrefs or SEMRush. If we go into Ahrefs, you can input a particular keyword and see what the traffic looks like in another country.
If there’s a lot of traffic for a low competition keyword, you may want to give the keyword a try by allotting a larger amount of your budget to that word.
If we continue with the weight loss example and try “best weight loss pills” in the United States, we see a ton of search volume, and it’s super competitive.
It would be tough to rank organically for this keyword, and the CPC is $1.10, which is high.
When we switch the audience to India, the search volume drops dramatically to 150 and a CPC of $0.35. We may not want to advertise this keyword to this audience, but if we do, we don’t need to budget as much as in the United States.
4. Advertise Where the Locals Are
You’ll want to understand how different countries use search engines and other platforms. Targeting Google will ensure you cover most of the world and exclude as few people as possible, but what about when you narrow down to a more specific audience?
There might be a high concentration of people using a different search engine in that country, and now your CPC has gone way up because you didn’t do your research.
As expected, Google carries the entire planet with a 92.41 percent market share of worldwide internet usage. If you’re starting a campaign and want to see which countries respond best, advertising on Google sounds like the right way to go.
Look what happens when we narrow it down to Russia: 44.54 percent of users use Yandex. In this case, advertising on Google would exclude nearly half of the people in the country because they wouldn’t see your ad.
Google provides many resources to help advertisers, and statcounter.com is a great way to get data about foreign, unfamiliar countries.
5. Organize and Keep Tabs on Your Campaigns
The organization is an overlooked but crucial aspect of managing international PPC ads. It’s even more important because if you’re not keeping individual tabs on each country, you’ll have a harder time determining which ads are converting—and which aren’t.
If you aren’t careful, countries with low CPCs and high volume will use all of your ad spend even though they’ll never convert. While this is happening, countries that might have a higher CPC, but also higher conversion rates could be left behind.
So make sure you have a robust tracking program in place before you launch.
You’ll also want to track varying time zones. If you put two countries on opposite sides of the globe into the same campaign, you’ll need to keep in mind that raising or lowering the bids during certain times will do the same for the country on the other side of the planet.
A better choice is to separate campaigns by country and stay on top of your stats more than usual.
6. Take Advantage of Localized Concerns
Another reason to keep each campaign unique to a region is that you shouldn’t use the same ad copy across the board. Even when you start with a broad ad, you’ll still want to keep the message exclusive to a certain region and change the copy as you transition from one region to another.
The same ad copy rules apply no matter where your target audience is. Identify pain points people in that region may have, things that excite them, and what causes them to buy. These factors will vary from region to region, however.
For example, seasonal trends will vary from place to place. Google Trends is a great way to identify this.
Suppose we use the example of weight loss pills. The trend has generally been consistent for the past 12 months, with a slight dip during the winter months.
This tells us that Spring would be the best time to advertise something like this because more people are likely thinking about losing weight as Summer approaches.
Research the same term in Italy, and the interest is almost non-existent for months at a time. The culture in the country may not recognize weight loss pills as a method of losing weight, or they may simply not have as much interest in weight loss as in the United States.
The point is, your ad copy needs to address the concerns of the specific region or country. You don’t want to serve the same ad to every area because they may not relate to it or have an interest in the topic.
7. Use a Local Domain Extension
Credibility and trust are important factors for any campaign, but it is doubly essential for international PPC ads. Use a domain extension to match the country you’re advertising in to build trust fast—which is crucial when you only have a few seconds before someone bounces.
While having a “.au” or “.co.uk” domain extension might not seem like a significant change, it can make a massive difference in the long run. Plus, think about the advantage it might give you over someone using a standard “.com” or “.org” extension.
Having a domain extension to match the country gives you the local appearance and increases the chances of someone clicking on your link. If you think about it like this, we have certain trust signals in the US as well. It’s like the endless battle between choosing “.com” or “.org.”
The same trust signals apply all over the world, and every little bit helps. ICANN.org provides a long list of domain extensions based on specific countries.
Conclusion
When it comes to international PPC ads, you can’t cut corners or take shortcuts and expect to have success. Keep your campaigns organized by country, keep tabs on your ROAS (return on ad spend), and be sure to factor in little details like time zones and domain extensions.
The good news is, there are plenty of marketing resources to help make your worldwide dream a reality.
What countries are you targeting with ad campaigns? Let me know in the comments.
The past few years have witnessed an increase in the evolution of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) content marketing. Such a positive change gives you an edge over other professional SEOs out there. With the exponential increase in competition for high ranking on Google, a number of people are coming up with great content. However, they …
Case studies go beyond simple testimonials by providing real-life examples of how your brand satisfied your customer’s needs and helped them accomplish their goals.
An in-depth case study helps you highlight your successes in a way that will help your ideal potential customer become your next customer. They help you show rather than tell prospective customers how you can help them reach their goals.
But, creating a solid case study can be a challenge. Today, I’ll provide actionable tips to help you write a case study, provide background information, and identify key metrics that will help your case study drive conversions.
1. Write About Someone Your Ideal Customer Can Relate To
Do you know who your ideal customer is? If it’s someone in the education industry, then make your case studies about your university customers. If it’s someone in the automobile industry, then make your case studies about auto parts and accessories manufacturers.
The goal is to ensure that your case study will show prospective customers that you are:
Comfortable in their industry.
Undertand their industry’s specific needs.
Know how to give their industry targeted results.
Think about it on a smaller level, such as when you’re reading a how-to blog post. Most of of these posts are geared toward average readers.
But when you come across a post designed specifically for your needs (such as online marketing for the healthcare industry), you are more likely to understand and apply the information.
The same goes with case studies – people who read about results in their industry will feel like the same approach will work for them.
2. Tell the Story from Start to Finish
Storytelling is a powerful marketing strategy. A great case study will allow someone to really get to know the customer in the case study including:
Who is the sample customer and what do they do?
What were the customer’s goals?
What were the customer’s needs?
How did you satisfy those needs and help the customer meet their goals?
But don’t stop a month or two out. Follow up with the customer in the case study and update your case study a few months down the road to show how your solutions continue to provide long term benefits.
This gives readers the opportunity to see that your goal is not only to help with immediate needs, but also to ensure long term results.
3. Make Your Case Study Easy to Read
No one likes to read one huge chunk of text, no matter how interesting and informative it might be. Case studies, like blog posts, should be scannable and easy to read.
Be sure to use good content formatting elements as you would with articles, blog posts, and copywriting on your website, including:
Headers
Images
Bulleted lists
Bolded & italicized text
In addition to providing great SEO value for your case studies page, these formatting elements will help your readers (especially those that like to skim) find the most important parts of your case study and get a great impression about what your business could do for them.
Consider adding multi-media elements in addition to written content, such as videos, PDFs, and images to mix it up and make the content more engaging.
4. Include Real Numbers
Have you ever read case studies where a business states they “doubled traffic” for the customer in their case study and wondered if that meant they went from 100 to 200 visits or 10,000 to 20,000 visits?
Avoid using broad statements by using clear, direct numbers. This makes your case study more believable and helps build trust in your brand.
You want your case study to be as precise as possible. Instead of saying you doubled their traffic, provide specific, accurate numbers and (if possible) real proof in the form of charts, graphs, or analytics data.
Remember that not everyone is as familiar with analtyics technology as you are, so highlight the most importnat pieces of data and provide context to why it matters.
This way, the reader can see where the customer began and where the customer ended up with your help.
Plus having the picture proof can help the reader envision exactly what you might do for them, making your case study that much more powerful.
5. Talk About Specific Strategies in Your Case Study
So you doubled a website’s traffic or sales, right? How did you do it? This is where you sell your products or services simply by saying which ones you used and how they led to the desired result.
Don’t just say “our online marketing services led to these results.” Instead, say something like, ” A three-month social media campaign focusing on Facebook & YouTube and five-month of link building campaign led to an increase in rankings, plus brand exposure led to these results.”
Don’t worry about giving away your secrets — the goal is to establish your brand as an industry leader and you need to show you know your stuff.
6. Try Different Content Formats
Case studies do not have to be fit into a story form every time. Try different types of case studies, such as an interview format where you have your clients answer the same questions mentioned earlier about what they do, their needs, their goals, and how you met them.
Quoting your customer in their own words will make the case study even more relatable to your ideal customer than you telling the story.
Infographics, webinars, and even podcasts can also be used to highlight case studies. Don’t get stuck in the same old text-only format — get creative and see what type of content your users respond to.
Here’s a case study example from Venngage that uses a brochure-style case study to highlight how Vortex was able to grow conversion. (Notice the results section that highlights specific gains.)
7. Appeal to Different Types of Learners
While some people enjoy reading, others may prefer audio, video, or visual representation of your case study. So consider taking your text-based case studies and re-purposing the content as:
The bonus with YouTube videos and infographics is that they are easy to share. This means that your case study may go further than just your own site, leading to more of your potential customers finding out how they could benefit from your products or services.
Case studies can also be embeded in other types of content — such as an ebook, how-to blog post, or resource guide.
8. Make Your Case Studies Easy to Find
What’s the point of having great case studies if no one will ever read them? Be sure that your case studies are organized and easy to find.
Here’s a few examples of good case studies that are easy to find — and therefore, much more powerful.
AWS provides case studies right on their homepage. They also make it easy to look for an-industry specific case study in manufacturing, financial services, fitness, and more.
Drupal provides case studies right in their hero image. Users considering using their solution don’t have to look far at all to see how other brands are finding success with Drupal.
Conclusion
A great case study starts with case study research. Ask your customers to fill out a short form that highlights how you helped them reach their goals — be sure to ask for specific results.
There are some actions of prep work you do not desire to miss out on if you’re interested in producing riches. While there is a terrific back entrance key to producing riches, the roadway to finding that secret varies from one person to another. Allow’s check out some basic methods you can get going on that particular roadway as well as just how these actions relate to your day-to-day live.
Research concerning Attracting Wealth
This could appear evident, yet possibly among the very best methods to produce wide range is to research exactly how others have actually done it in the past. Pick meticulously whose life as well as which techniques of producing wide range you examine. Some individuals have actually developed riches with not-so-honest methods, as well as you’ll most definitely wish to remain satisfied as well as truthful while drawing in riches in your life.
Look for their “excellent back door trick” to bring in riches. Maybe they began going door to door as salespersons or begun as a staff and also functioned their means up to the setting of head of state or vice head of state of a huge firm. You can discover lots of publications composed by well-off males as well as ladies or go online to check out regarding just how to be effective.
Identify What Brings You Happiness
Riches indicates absolutely nothing without joy. The fantastic information is you can do both. Why not do what you enjoy most while all at once bring in wide range?
Establish Goals for Financial Freedom
Establish some objectives for your organisation by making a note of the earnings you want to gain this coming year, in 5 years, and also 10 years from currently. Make sure to develop objectives for both the short-term and also long-term, and also compose a service strategy with the actions required to get to the objectives. Develop a spending plan for your brand-new endeavor to figure out investing for advertising and marketing, stock (if relevant), as well as regular operating costs.
Producing Wealth by Helping Others
You will certainly bring in riches as you assist others understand their desires. You can do this by locating out the troubles and also issues others might have in organisation or also in their individual lives, and also after that produce options for them. If you’re interested in wellness and also physical fitness, you can establish solutions or items to aid others lead a much healthier life.
Once you find your very own abilities as well as possibility, producing wide range is not so challenging. This excellent back entrance key is easy to recognize, however lots of people are so active treking along in their present work that they never ever make an initiative to much better themselves. Maintain a favorable frame of mind as you grab your objectives and also you’ll quickly be bring in wide range like never ever prior to!
If you’re interested in developing riches, there are some actions of prep work you do not desire to miss out on. While there is a wonderful back door key to producing wide range, the roadway to uncovering that secret varies from individual to individual. Pick very carefully whose life as well as which techniques of developing wide range you examine. Some individuals have actually produced riches via not-so-honest ways, as well as you’ll absolutely desire to remain satisfied as well as sincere while drawing in wide range in your life.
Producing riches is not so tough once you find your very own abilities and also possibility.
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