The 2024 Clearwater Invitational will feature 10 teams that were ranked in the preseason top 25. Here’s how to watch, plus X factors for each team.
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“Which is better, SEO vs PPC?”
If there’s one question I get asked more than any other, this is it.
Everyone wants to know who wins in the battle and where they should spend their marketing dollars. And everyone hates when I tell them there isn’t an easy answer.
Like everything else, it depends.
Neither SEO nor PPC is fundamentally better than the other. As you’ll discover in this article, each tactic has its own set of advantages and disadvantages.
What is almost always true is that SEO and PPC work better together. Don’t believe me? I’ll prove it. In this article, I will:
Ready? Then let’s look at my favorite digital marketing strategy first.
If you need a search engine optimization primer, read my guide to SEO before going any further. If you don’t, you should already have a pretty solid understanding of how ranking on a search engine’s result pages can generate awesome traffic that grows your business.
Almost any business can benefit from the free traffic that search engines like Google send their way, but that’s not to say SEO should definitely be the be-all-end-all when it comes to marketing strategies. As you’ll read below, while there are plenty of benefits of SEO, there are also a couple of drawbacks to be aware of.
It’s cost-effective. SEO can be one of the cheapest forms of marketing and an incredibly cost-effective way of growing your brand. You don’t have to pay to receive organic traffic, and you can do much of the work yourself. But even using an SEO agency is much more cost-effective than PPC.
It delivers long-term results. If you do SEO correctly, your efforts can pay dividends for years to come. Not only will you avoid Google penalties, but SEO also has a habit of compounding. The top pages get more backlinks by virtue of being the top-ranked pages on Google. In turn, that makes them even more likely to continue ranking high in the future.
It targets every part of your funnel. Consumers are using Google at every stage of the buyer’s journey. That makes SEO one of the few digital marketing strategies to target every part of the sales funnel. Use SEO to engage customers early in their journey, and you should be able to significantly decrease acquisition costs.
Great brand awareness and trust. The more you appear on Google, the more consumers will trust your brand. And unlike PPC, you don’t have to spend a fortune to dominate the search results. With a focus on content marketing, you can become the go-to resource for your industry, appearing for every relevant keyword and positioning your brand as the trusted authority.
It takes time. Your SEO efforts aren’t going to drive instant results. It can take between six months and a year to see significant traction. As you can see from the graph below from content marketing agency Grow & Convert, there is a direct correlation between the length of engagement and the number of first-page rankings. Results can occur faster, but SEO may not be your best bet if you need to drive traffic now. That doesn’t mean you should avoid it, however. The sooner you start with SEO, the quicker you’ll see the kind of long-term results I described above.
You need to keep investing. While you can stop all SEO efforts and continue to see excellent results, I wouldn’t recommend it. In order to keep competing with the top brands, you’ll need to continue to publish new content, update existing articles and stay on top of the latest advice from Google.
You must be precise. You can’t half-heartedly work on SEO. Because Google and other search engines are constantly updating their algorithms and penalizing sites that use black and gray hat optimization techniques, you need to do SEO the right way. Trying to cheat the system and get quick wins will only see you end up with a penalty. And once you get penalized by Google, it’s far from easy to recover.
It requires a high level of skill. While anyone can do the work of an SEO in theory, being successful is another thing entirely. Not only is there a lot to know because of the complex nature of Google’s algorithm, but the work can be incredibly time-consuming. So even if you follow my advice, you may not necessarily have the resources to create content, optimize your on-page elements and build links. That’s why most people will look to hire an SEO consultant or an SEO agency, instead of doing the work themselves.
PPC stands for Pay Per Click Marketing. It is the practice of using paid advertising on search engines like Google and Bing to drive targeted traffic to your website. If you need more information on the basics of PPC, check out my overview of PPC before reading on.
As you can see from the screenshot above, PPC gives you the opportunity to appear at the very top of search engines. I’ll show you below just how powerful that can be. But don’t think that kind of placement comes for free. Among the biggest cons of PPC is the price you have to pay.
Let’s dig into those pros and cons further.
It delivers instant results. PPC is possibly the only digital marketing strategy where you can see results the same day you launch a campaign. The same certainly can’t be said for SEO. Of course, you’ll need to pay a lot to achieve fast results, and you’ll still need to create a great landing page, but it’s certainly possible to see a return on your investment within a week. You can scale results quickly, too. If your ads and landing pages convert, then acquiring more visitors is usually just a case of spending more money on ads.
It offers exceptional visibility. PPC ads are the first thing users see on desktop and mobile searches. Better yet, Google now makes it far less obvious that the top results are paid ads. In some cases, there can be as many as four paid ad spots before the organic results, as well as shopping ads. PPC ads also let you highlight key business information like your phone number and site links in a way that SEO doesn’t.
You get high-intent clicks. Most of the users clicking on your PPC ads will be close to making a purchase. That’s because most PPC ads only target high-intent commercial keywords. As a result, conversation rates are much higher for PPC than SEO. It also means it’s much easier to track to what extent PPC ads drive revenue.
Great data. You will generate a serious amount of data when you run a PPC campaign. You’ll see which ads work, which keywords drive the most traffic, and which landing pages convert best. That makes it easy to optimize your campaigns to increase return on ad spend while decreasing costs. It will also give you data you can use to improve your SEO and other digital marketing campaigns.
You have to pay to play. Unlike SEO, which can drive traffic for little to no money, you will need to have a pretty significant marketing budget to see results with PPC marketing. When we talk about industry-specific cost-per-click, it gets even higher, especially when talking about the legal and medical worlds. That’s fine as long as your ads are good, your landing pages convert, and you see a return on your ad spend. But that’s not always the case. Often, you can blow through hundreds or even thousands of dollars before achieving a positive ROI. As you can see, PPC cost per clicks can get pretty expensive.
Constant investment is required. Not only do you need to pay to play, but you also need to keep spending money to drive results. Your traffic and sales stop the moment you turn ads off. That makes it all too easy to become reliant on PPC. It is essential to balance your efforts with SEO and other digital marketing strategies.
There’s a learning curve. While it may seem easy to create an ad and put together a budget, optimizing your PPC campaign takes a lot of skill and knowledge. For one, Google and Bing’s platforms can be tricky for beginner marketers to get their heads around. But you also need to understand how optimizing your bids works, what negative keywords to add, and how to best optimize your landing page. None of these things are simple without the help of a PPC agency.
PPC ads can get stale. You need to constantly refresh your ads to keep them engaging. Any form of paid advertising, PPC or otherwise, can suffer when users become ad-blind. That’s when users notice they are reading an ad and scroll past it without engaging. That means PPC campaigns require more than just an ongoing budget. You need to commit to testing out new ads and landing pages if you want to continue driving sales.
In reality, you shouldn’t be choosing between SEO and PPC. You should do both. PPC is great for achieving quick wins and driving high-intent traffic. SEO is a long-term game, but it should be a much more effective strategy after a year or two. You can rank for dozens of keywords with a single article, unlike PPC, where you can only target one.
What’s more, SEO and PPC are even more effective when you combine them together. Just check out the three strategies below for proof.
You always want to appear at the top of the SERPs for your branded terms, right? Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible without combining SEO and PPC. Because companies will often create paid ads for their competitors’ branded keywords, you need to be creating PPC ads for your brand terms, too.
In doing so, you’ll own the first page for your terms and significantly boost brand awareness.
Don’t worry; you won’t have to spend a fortune on these ads. Because your landing page will be highly relevant to the search term, the cost of your ad appearing in the first paid ad position will be significantly less than what it will cost your competitors.
Run a PPC campaign for long enough, and you’ll soon find one or more expensive PPC ads that get a reasonable amount of clicks but almost no conversions. These keywords are a colossal waste of money.
This usually happens when these keywords lack commercial intent or target users at the start of the buyer’s journey.
That doesn’t mean it’s a bad keyword, though. Instead of giving up on it completely, use SEO to target it with an article instead. In doing so, you can introduce your brand to consumers earlier in the buyer’s journey and get the chance to grab their email address with a lead magnet. And because the data shows users click on your ad, you know they will probably click on an organic search result with the same angle, too.
One final way to integrate SEO and PPC is to match your PPC ads to the SEO results. When you start doing both SEO and PPC, you’ll notice that a lot of the time, PPC ads don’t align with organic results.
This is particularly common on non-transactional comparison queries that occur in the middle of the buyer’s journey. Customers aren’t looking to buy at this point. They are looking for the best solution.
While the organic search results are filled with comparison posts, many PPC ads will only focus on one product. Search for “best CRM” and you’ll see a great example of this. The ads are all focused on single products, but the top organic result is a comparison post.
Here’s how you can win big in these cases. Rather than match your PPC ads to existing ads, match your ad to the searcher’s intent.
Instead of creating an ad solely focused on your product, create an ad and landing page that compares the best products in your industry. In doing so, users will be much more likely to click on your ad.
PPC ads appear at the top of search engines ahead of SEO results. Paid ads are ranked depending on relevance, budget, and landing page quality. SEO results are ranked on over 200 factors.
You can use PPC ads to discover untapped and valuable keywords. PPC also supports your SEO efforts and helps you own the first page of results.
Neither PPC nor SEO is better than the other. They each have their own advantages and disadvantages. That being said, they always work best when used together.
The biggest difference between SEO and PPC is the cost. Traffic from SEO is free, while you need to pay to have a PPC ad appear in search engines.
You can use both SEO and PPC to grow your business. SEO will take time, but it is an incredibly cost-effective strategy in the long run. PPC will give you the customers you need now, even if you have to pay for the results.
That’s why I always recommend marketers don’t choose between them. Do both, and make sure you are using both strategies together to drive even more conversions.
Get started with SEO and PPC today by diving into keyword research before creating your first PPC campaign and an SEO strategy.
Which marketing strategy are you most excited about? Do you prioritize one over the other?
When’s the last time you attempted to make a recipe in the dark? I’d venture to guess you’ve never done so. It’s unnecessary and reckless. Would you be surprised to learn, then, that more than 60 percent of companies have ignored marketing analytics data when making marketing campaign decisions?
Just like making a recipe in the dark is unnecessary and reckless, so too is ignoring the invaluable marketing data when making expensive and time-consuming decisions for your business.
In this post, we’ll introduce marketing analytics and its benefits. We’ll cover the types of marketing data and how to create your own report. Finally, we’ll highlight three examples of companies that used digital marketing analytics to their advantage.
Marketing analytics is the use of data to evaluate the performance of a marketing activity or collective marketing efforts.
From 2012 to 2020, the share of projects where marketing analytics were used to make a decision has ranged from 29 percent to 43.5 percent. While this number seems low, it does go to show that using marketing analytics to drive your own business’s campaigns will give you an edge against the competition.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty details, it helps to understand why marketing analytics is so important. While some companies may argue that analytics data isn’t crucial to their business, others will stake their success solely on their ability to follow the data.
Perhaps the greatest benefit to digital marketing analytics is the ability for businesses to understand big-picture marketing trends and forecast future results.
On a micro level, marketing analytics can help a business to understand the ROI of their individual programs. This can help them to determine which programs to cut and which programs to invest in. It will also teach them what they need to know for future projects.
Finally, consider that sophisticated marketers (those who utilize 5 or more analytics tools) are 39 percent more likely to see an overall performance improvement in their marketing programs. Just imagine what that growth could look like across your portfolio!
When it comes to marketing analytics data, there are three categories it can fall into. Here’s a description of each, as well as examples of the metrics used.
Descriptive analytics provide insights into the current state of your business. They answer the question, “what is happening now?”
The types of metrics you’ll see here are surface level. They provide a quick snapshot of the business as it is today but without any analysis or reasoning behind it. These metrics include page views, revenue, units sold, average unit price, and conversion rate.
Diagnostic analytics provide a root cause as to the descriptive analytics. That is, they answer the question, “why is this happening?”
When you have questions about your descriptive metrics mentioned above, you’ll dig into the diagnostic metrics. These dig deeper to find the cause of the diagnostic metrics by looking at things such as traffic sources, bounce rates, exit rates, and last touch channels.
Predictive analytics provide a look into the future of your business. They answer the question, “what’s likely to happen in the future based on past and current trends?”
As you can imagine, predictive analytics requires more sophisticated input. While you can pull descriptive and diagnostic analytics and make connections, you cannot do so easily with predictive analytics. Instead, you’ll typically need the help of a predictive modeling tool or a data analyst.
If you’ve been tasked with creating a digital marketing analytics report for your business, the steps below will help to get you started.
Where does it all begin? With the raw data.
How you pull your data will depend on the tools and platforms you use. There are many free and paid options available and you may find yourself using more than one to get a fuller picture.
Google Analytics is a free tool that provides you with in-depth website analytics. If you’re using an e-commerce platform like Shopify, you may also have access to free analytics within your account. Paid options include HubSpot, Domo, and Tableau.
There are two important questions to answer before you compile your data. They are:
To answer those questions, you’ll want to dig deeper by answering the following:
Are you pulling the data just to get a snapshot of the business, or is there something more specific in mind? Are you delivering the report to top-level executives or a direct manager? How will this data be used? How often will this data report need to be compiled?
A weekly report on the state of the business to your direct manager will look completely different than an analysis of a business unit to the CFO of the company.
You have the data and you know the purpose and audience for your report. Now it’s time to ensure you’re highlighting the right data in your report. This will come down to understanding the type of data analytics you’ll need to answer to your audience (e.g., descriptive, diagnostic, predictive).
Let’s say you’re tasked with reporting on the launch of your company’s newest product. It hit the virtual shelves two weeks ago and it’s time to evaluate its initial success. What does this look like?
Here you’ll be pulling descriptive analytics. This includes metrics like product page views, add to carts, revenue, and conversion rate.
It doesn’t end there, though, because your audience will likely want to know whythe above metrics are what they are. Whether they’re below or above the target goals, it’s good to understand what happened to get you where you are.
This means you’ll also be pulling diagnostic metrics like last touch channel and traffic source. You can also dig into the customer demographics and behaviors.
With this data, your report will begin to shape itself into more of a story than just a bunch of KPIs and graphs.
You have the data, you know your audience, and you have your story. Now it’s time to consider the best way to tell your story to make sense to your entire audience. Visuals are a crucial way of doing so.
Visuals include graphs, charts, maps, funnels, and Venn diagrams. They are a great way to help you see your data in a new light andtell your story more effectively.
The good news is most analytics tools offer a suite of visualization tools so you don’t have to find yourself reinventing the wheel. However, programs like Microsoft Excel also make it incredibly easy to turn raw data into visualizations.
It can be inspiring to see how other businesses are using marketing analytics to inform their decisions. Here are three examples for you to consider.
Averages are used frequently when evaluating marketing analytics. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but as we’ll see below, it can be good to look at those outliers to determine the true efficacy of the average.
Looking beyond the average customer for Costa Rican Vacations has resulted in a 40 percent increase in website conversion.
According to Casey Halloran, the Co-Founder and CEO of Costa Rican Vacations, their team frequently looks to averages to inform their decisions: average spend, the average length of stay, and the average number of travelers.
Upon taking a deeper dive into the data, they realized the average number was so far off the actual customers’ metrics due to the extremes of the outliers. That is, the majority of their customers were on one end of the spectrum or the other with very few actually falling into the middle.
With this information, Costa Rican Vacations made a shift in its product offering. One way they did so was by adjusting the total budget slider on their homepage to go up to $20,000.
By doing so, they opened up their offering to a new, higher spending customer base and increase website conversions by 40 percent.
Other businesses, too, can benefit from this example. After all, how often do we look at averages and medians without considering the impact of our marketing decisions on the outliers? With this in mind, take time to truly understand how average your average customer really is, or whether they’re simply a product of extremes on either end.
Allrecipes is the world’s largest digital food brand. It boasts 18 websites in 23 countries and more than 85 million users. No matter how large your brand, there’s always the competition to consider. To maintain their competitive advantage, Allrecipes worked with Tableau to better understand every stage of the customer journey.
The brand had several primary objectives, including to:
Allrecipes leveraged Tableau, a business intelligence platform to visualize data all in one place. With custom dashboards and organizational collaboration, the brand was able to achieve numerous goals. In particular, let’s look at how Tableau’s device-level analytics enabled them to drive mobile engagement.
According to Esmee Williams, the VP of Consumer and Brand Strategy, mobile usage had increased from 8 percent to three-fourths of all visits in recent years.
The goal was to increase mobile usage while also providing a continuous experience across devices. They performed an A/B test which showed the mobile site on all devices as a way to learn more about how users interacted with mobile site elements.
Using Tableau’s digital marketing analytics collection and visualization tools, Allrecipes used the data they collected to improve the mobile site. This included optimizing content and encouraging photo uploads with an easy-to-use interface.
While you don’t need to perform a cross-device A/B test to get these same results, your business too should evaluate mobile device engagement to understand customer behavior. Only then can you implement changes that have a measurable impact on customer engagement metrics.
Let’s end our examples with a titan of industry, Netflix.
Netflix has a customer retention rate of 90 percent which is far above Amazon Prime’s 75 percent and Hulu’s 64 percent. What is it that drives Netflix’s success? According to Netflix, its success is largely due to the collection and use of customer behavior analytics.
What kinds of data does Netflix collect and feed to their algorithm? Here are a few examples:
Of course, Netflix also looks to interactions the customer has with their shows and movies. If a user selects a show based on the 96 percent recommended rate by Netflix, does the customer finish the series? Do they rate the series well?
With more than 150 million subscribers, Netflix has a large data pool from which to gather insights. This is critical to their success considering 80 percent of viewer activity is triggered by algorithmic personalized recommendations.
Here are the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about marketing analytics.
In addition to the three marketing analytics data types listed above (descriptive, diagnostic, and predictive), there are also said to be prescriptive analytics and cognitive analytics.
Your digital marketing analytics campaign should be scalable, sustainable, and affordable.
The needs of your business will largely inform your decision on marketing analytics tools. However, a few tools to consider are Tableau, Power BI, and Adobe Reporting.
A data analyst can certainly offer important insights for your business. For small and medium-sized businesses, though, they likely aren’t necessary.
Marketing analytics is more than just a collection of data. It provides invaluable insights that could have otherwise gone unnoticed.
After all, when you’re making big decisions regarding your business’s marketing campaigns and programs, you need to evaluate all of the data available to you. Only with a proper analysis of previous data and current trends can you ensure you’re making the best decisions for your company’s bottom line.
What percent of your business’s marketing decisions are made using analytics?
On Thursday, a large gallery followed Phil Mickelson. They cheered him and jeered. They were not there, though, to see him play the game well.
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With over 1 billion users and counting, TikTok presents a great opportunity for businesses to advertise their services, grow their audience, and increase their ROI through targeted ad campaigns.
The challenge? Standing out on such a competitive platform and ensuring the right audience sees your ads at the right time. If you want to get the most from your TikTok advertising budget, you need to employ effective strategies, so here’s how to master TikTok ads and execute winning campaigns.
Anyone can advertise on TikTok. However, TikTok ad campaigns work better if you’re targeting certain demographics.
Here’s what I mean. TikTok typically attracts teens and young adults. According to DataReportal’s research:
Just over 11 percent are 45 or over, so it’s not the best platform if you’re targeting this age demographic.
We can delve a little deeper into the demographics.
Say you’re targeting young U.S. women. Do TikTok ads work better for certain businesses instead of others even within this demographic? Possibly. Fitness and sports-related content are among the most popular content with over 57 billion views, while beauty and skincare content has over 33 billion views.
To be clear, TikTok is available in 154 countries, so it does have global appeal among teens and young adults.
While there isn’t a “right” way to run a TikTok advertising campaign, there are ways you can optimize your TikTok ads and boost your chances of success. To master TikTok advertising, follow these seven simple tips.
TikTok Ads Manager is a hub from which you can create, run, and manage your ads. With TikTok Ads Manager, you can:
How much does TikTok advertising cost? Well, TikTok uses a bidding model, so you can set your own daily and campaign limits depending on your marketing budget. As a guide, be prepared to spend at least $50 per day for campaigns, and $20 per day for specific ad groups.
Before you create TikTok ads, you need a TikTok Ads Manager account. TikTok offers a breakdown for getting going, but here’s a quick start guide.
First, head to the TikTok for Business page and “Get Started.” From the next screen, click “Sign Up” then input your details before hitting “Sign Up” again:
Next, input some basic business details to create your account:
Once you’ve registered, you’ll need to provide a few more business details, including payment information, and wait for account approval before creating your first ad.
Once there’s a campaign set up, you can set up an ad group and then create individual ads. The instructions are super easy to follow, and you can be up and running in minutes.
Here’s something crucial to note. Once you create a campaign, you can’t change the budget. Make sure you’re happy with your maximum spend limits before creating your TikTok Ads campaign.
Although you can run ads for up to 60 seconds, TikTok suggests you keep most ads under 15 seconds. Given the short timeframe, you’ll want to use some fun creative elements to stand out, so here are some suggestions.
Laneige, a popular Korean skincare brand wanted to increase engagement and encourage people to download a coupon for skincare products. They used Branded Effects to show what people may look like before moisturizing:
Then after moisturizing:
The result? 419,000 engagements, 12,000 new followers, and thousands of coupon downloads.
Unsure of what elements to use? View popular posts in your niche, consider why they resonate with your target audience, and apply these principles to your campaigns.
Ever seen someone using (and loving) your product on TikTok? Do you wish you could run this user-generated content (UGC) as part of your own ad campaign?
Well, thanks to Spark Ads, you can take existing, organic posts from other TikTok accounts and turn them into original ad content. Why would you want to do this? Let me give you three reasons.
Using existing content means less work for you, for one thing.
What’s more, since the content comes from real TikTok accounts, any activity you generate (such as likes, follows, or shares) is linked to your post. If you’re looking to boost your engagement, Spark Ads can help.
Finally, UGC adds authenticity to your company and helps to boost your brand’s reputation. Since customers are over two times more likely to prefer UGC to branded content, Spark Ads are definitely worth your time.
Here’s an example. Digital bank Up targets Australians aged between 18 and 34. They wanted a creator partnership to build brand awareness and grow their audience reach.
For their mission, Up chose an Australian finance influencer, @TashInvests. They produced Spark Ads which generated over 1.5 million impressions and 76 app downloads, which exceeded Up’s original expectations:
Here are some tips for getting the most from this form of TikTok advertising.
The most successful ads target a specific audience. TikTok knows this, so the platform lets you tailor who sees your ads by excluding certain audiences and directly targeting others.
You can target audiences by dimensions such as their age, behaviors, device, interests, and physical location. For example, maybe you want to target under-25s using iPhones, people based in Canada, men interested in soccer, and so on.
Here’s how to do it.
From TikTok Ads Manager, go to “Ad Group,” then “Targeting.”
Then, choose which audience segment to target. For example, you might choose U.S. users aged between 25 and 44:
TikTok will then optimize who sees your ads so there’s a greater chance of running a successful campaign. Cool, right?
Hashtags allow people to organize content into categories so others can find what they’re most interested in. For example, someone looking for Starbucks content might search for #starbucks.
While you can use as many hashtags as you want, you won’t reach your ideal audience unless you know which hashtags to target, so here’s how you might choose the right ones.
First, check out which hashtags your most successful competitors use. Chances are, it’s worth including at least one or two of these hashtags to boost your visibility.
Next, use trending hashtags. Mountain Dew, for example, targeted #nationalpetday to advertise its “Code Red” beverage in a fun, engaging way:
To find these hashtags, scroll to the “Discover” tab and check out the day’s top tags. Choose any that resonates with you:
You can also find related keywords by searching for a word and leaving the hashtag out. Tap “Hashtags” under the search bar, and you’ll see similar hashtags to include in your campaigns.
TikTok is a highly visual platform, so your ads need graphics and videos to stand out. If you don’t have expensive recording equipment, don’t worry; you don’t need it. Here’s how TikTok creator @lucajpeterson quickly creates high-quality visual content.
First, film and upload your video content as usual. Before clicking “Post,” hit “More Options” and drag the “Upload HD” bar right so it turns green:
Sharp videos bring your content to life. In this Zoomerang TikTok video, for example, we get a real sense of the fabrics, textures, and colors since the brand uses high-quality graphics:
To get the most from your TikTok advertising, upload the clearest, sharpest graphics and videos you can.
Let me leave you a final tip here. According to TikTok’s own research, more than 63 percent of videos with the highest click-through rate (CTR) highlight the main focus product within the opening three seconds. Whatever your marketing goal, get to the point quickly.
When it comes to TikTok ads, you might only have someone’s attention for a few seconds. This means that you need a clear, concise, and actionable call to action (CTA).
CTAs ask viewers to do something, whether it’s visiting your website, using a promo code, or downloading an app. Good CTAs can help boost sales by responding directly to users’ needs and driving specific actions.
For example, Sour Patch Kids wanted to promote its “custom mix” which lets customers build own candy bag. The display card “Make Your Mix” is colorful, engaging, and fun, and specifies the desired action:
You can access pre-made CTA buttons through TikTok Ads Manager; however, creating your own visual inlay helps make your campaign stand out.
Your TikTok advertising cost depends on several things. At the campaign level, there’s a daily and lifetime budget of $50. At the ad group level, you need a minimum budget of $20 per day, and your lifetime budget works out as your daily budget multiplied by the number of campaign days scheduled.
First, create a TikTok Ads account and choose your campaign objective. Name your campaign, set your marketing budget, determine the ad placement, and choose your target audience. Set your campaign schedule and create your ads.
If you’re a business on TikTok, you could try TikTok ads. However, TikTok ads might work best for retailers selling to younger audiences.
Good TikTok ads are visually appealing with clear CTAs and well-chosen hashtags to boost visibility. They use high-quality images and successfully capture a viewer’s attention within just a few seconds.
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If you want to maximize visibility, increase your ROI, and boost your social media reach, then try TikTok ads. TikTok advertising is suitable for all businesses on the platform, it’s easy to get started, and since you don’t need a huge campaign budget, it’s accessible for startups and small companies.
To create a winning TikTok ad, use images and creative elements like videos where possible, keep your CTAs brief and impactful, and target the most relevant hashtags. Need help getting started? Take a look at my consulting services.
Have you tried TikTok advertising yet? What do you find most challenging about TikTok ads?
Despite the growth of social selling for e-commerce, SEO keyword optimization is still crucial to long-term business success. Why? Because that’s how most customers find you.
Search traffic is responsible for 65 percent of e-commerce sessions. If you’re not optimizing for keywords, buyers won’t find you among your competitors.
SEO offers many other advantages. SEO offers many other advantages. For instance, it has a fantastic ROI when done correctly.
If you want further proof of SEO’s advantages, case study after case study shows how a few tweaks can potentially get your site to the front page of Google.
A few words of warning before I move on:
Why Should E-Commerce Companies Care About SEO Keywords?
With an estimated 4.2 million e-commerce businesses in North America, there’s a ton of competition.
To stay ahead of the curve, you need to do everything possible to optimize your site, rank higher in SERPs, and increase visibility. You’ve probably guessed by now, but one of the best ways to do this is with strategically chosen keywords.
For guidance, your chosen keywords should be:
When it comes to finding keywords, you need resources to help you along the way. This is where Ubersuggest comes in.
Ubersuggest is a free tool that makes it easy to research keywords and identify which ones to target.
But, you don’t have to take my word for it. Let’s talk about how Ubersuggest helped our e-commerce customer, Portrait Flip, improve traffic and drive ROI.
Portrait Flip is an online store that creates real portraits by real artists from customer photos around the world. Using Ubersuggest for its keyword research, the company increased its organic traffic by 70% in just two years and increased revenue by 32.33 percent over their goal.
Perhaps you think that’s unattainable. However, there’s a simple reason behind the enhanced results: you drive more relevant, organic traffic to your website by optimizing your pages by targeting the right keywords.
From SEO audits and competitive analysis to monitoring results and adapting your approach, plenty goes into running a successful online store. However, there’s no need to get overwhelmed. With the right tools, creating a killer e-commerce store isn’t complicated.
Below are five steps to creating a killer online store using Ubersuggest. (link to each section)
I’ll walk you through each step of the way.
Step #1 Create a project in Ubersuggest
If you’re new to Ubersuggest, you need to start with the basics.
Begin by registering for a free account.
Once you do that, go to the dashboard and click on “Add Your First Project.” Next, add your website URL and name.
It’s also essential to connect your project to your Google Account to see how your keyword strategy is affecting your Google presence. Here’s how to do that:
Remember, SEO takes time, and there might be some trial and error along the way. Therefore, once you’ve set it all up, I recommend you use Ubersuggest at least once a week to:
Portrait Flip did this and achieved significant success and savings:
“We were able to create and implement a clear SEO strategy with Ubersuggest starting in January of 2020 that helped our organic traffic take off. We’ve saved thousands of dollars on paid advertising by keeping Ubersuggest at the heart of our SEO, and we’ve watched our SEO and our revenue grow exponentially, too.”
Step #2 Perform an SEO Audit.
The Ubersuggest Site Audit is the best place to start with your Keyword Strategy. When you perform this analysis, you get a general overview of your website’s SEO standing.
From here, you can understand where your website ranks in terms of industry-standard for optimal SEO health.
To perform a site audit:
Here’s how Portrait Flip used the site audit feature.
First, Portrait Flip optimized its results by focusing on the ‘Broken Link’ finder.
This helped the business understand where it was losing potential customers due to broken product links.
At first glance, this might not seem like an important issue, but broken links negatively impact your SEO and the customer experience.
Portrait Flip also found the ‘Page Load Time’ report invaluable, as the company was keen to see if any added website code was inadvertently increasing its load times.
Again, this may not seem like a significant issue. However, speed is crucial for online shopping. Ideally, you want your e-commerce store to load within two seconds. Anything above that adds to your bounce rate and customer dissatisfaction and leads to lost sales.
After fixing simple issues on the Portrait Flipw website, 98 percent of the revenue generated from its SEO and PPC efforts in 2021 came from organic search.
Step #3 Research Keywords to Target
Now, this is where the fun starts.
You can use the Ubersuggest Keyword Reports to understand which keywords to include in your content to drive relevant and lucrative traffic.
There are two main features to focus on here.
The keyword overview allows you to see how competitive a keyword is and its search volume trend over time. To narrow down your keyword choices, think of the general search terms your target audience might use when searching for a product you sell.
The keyword research feature shows you how people search for keywords related to your business and your products. It enables you to uncover valuable keywords that other competitors aren’t targeting.
How Portrait Flip uses these tools:
Content marketing is at the heart of Portrait Flip’s efforts to attract traffic to its site. For example, the business used blogging and posted regularly on its social media channels. However, these efforts weren’t driving traffic the way the company hoped.
This is where Ubersuggest proved its worth.
The results were exceptional.
Portrait Flip exceeded their traffic expectations in one quarter by over 27 percent—and that’s without any paid advertising. If you’re planning on using these reports, here are a couple of tips to get the most out of it them:
Use the ‘SEO Difficulty’ filter to help determine which keywords are more competitive than others. Be intentional in comparing this with the ‘Paid Difficulty’ feature to help decide if you should pay for Google Ads against the keywords.
NOTE: Keywords with high Paid Difficulty are usually lucrative. However, they are almost always more expensive.
If you want to attract a worldwide audience, search for global keywords on the ‘location’ tab. You can target your geographical search towards specific local traffic or by country. This can help you find unique keywords in different regions to target.
Competitive analysis is an essential part of any effective SEO strategy. By understanding your competitors, you can learn what techniques and keywords they’re using to rank well in search engines and replicate their successes.
Ubersuggest makes this task more manageable than ever. Just use the following tools:
1. Enter your domain name or URL from your site into the Backlinks Opportunity tool. (Linked above).
2. Enter a competitor domain or a URL from their site.
3. Click ‘search.’
You can also use the Ubersuggest Chrome Extension for keyword analysis directly in Google search results, YouTube, AND Amazon pages for further insights.
Here’s how you’ll see the data in your SERPs:
You can also remove competitors or add them.
You’ll also see monthly search and CPC:
Here’s how to use this feature:
Create a Project for each Competitor: On the Dashboard, click “add a project” and add a few of your competitors to get a complete overview and consistent updates on your competitor’s ranking. You can easily remove competitors or add them. Here’s some more information on using Ubersuggest to spy on your competitors.
How Portrait Flip used Ubersuggest’s competitive analysis tool:
Portrait Flip monitored how its competitors were performing and what keywords they were ranking for. Specifically, the company used the Keywords by Traffic and Top Pages by Traffic reports together to get an idea of keywords they were losing out on. Using the information, Portrait Flip secured Page #1 on Google above competitors for primary keywords that drove converting traffic to their site.
Step #5 Start Tracking Your Progress
As you work on your SEO Keywords, it’s critical to be patient and track your progress over the long term.
Although you might see results with your plan in the next few weeks, as I’ve repeatedly stressed, SEO is an ongoing process and it takes time to get results. Typically, you can expect to wait a few months, so if you’re not seeing immediate progress, don’t get discouraged.
When you track your keywords, you can see which ones aren’t working and use some fresh ones to optimize your content.
Then rinse and repeat!
Keep testing and learning. A/B test different targeted keywords on product pages over time and track to see which performs best.
You can use Ubersuggest to monitor keyword performance. Here’s how:
In your Dashboard, you can view SEO progress over a specific time. Plus, you can see your progress in keyword ranking and estimated traffic value.
How Portrait Flip did this:
As they tracked their progress, they found that most of their year-to-year growth came from organic traffic, which steadily grew once they started using Ubersuggest.
One of the toughest tasks for e-commerce business owners is standing out from the competition. Gaining visibility, discovering the right keywords, identifying backlinking opportunities, and conducting competitive analysis are some of the most challenging tasks every online store owner faces.
Fortunately, Ubersuggest offers a solution to these common problems, allowing you to enhance your e-commerce store in key areas. This allows you to increase visibility, attract targeted prospects, and enhance conversions.
Many small to medium-size businesses need rapid funding at some point. Same-day business loans can be a lifesaver for a business owner, whether there is a cash flow crunch or a time-bound opening. Same-day business loans are structured like any other loan. You receive a certain sum at an agreed-upon interest rate and pay it back with interest over a predetermined repayment time.
The main distinction is that same-day business loans offer funding within a day or less. To get the most of same-day financing opportunities, you’ll often need to keep up with lending industry trends.
Providers of same-day business loans now operate can help smaller companies get through hard times. . There are several business loans and short-term financing options accessible.
If you have a line of credit, it functions like same-day business loans in that it lends you money on the go and is accessible anytime you need it. As you make the payments, the line of credit extends anew. It enables you to raise funds just when necessary, pay interest solely on the amount borrowed, and thus build your business credit score.
If you are forming an LLC in Georgia, business lines of credit may be helpful for financing working capital as well as a source for emergency funds.
Here, your lenders provide you with a portion of your client’s invoice. This financing allows you to get by until your installments arrive. It includes both invoice factoring and invoice financing. Still, they vary slightly in how lenders collect payments and how invoices are processed.
Use this type of financing to buy equipment, inventory, or devices to keep your agreements. . You won’t need collateral because the loan gets secured on the equipment itself. It implies that you have a good shot at getting approval even with a bad credit score.
A merchant cash advance (MCA) is a lump sum of funding you borrow from an online financing provider. And you repay it with a percentage of your businesses’ daily card transactions. The MCA is a quick and straightforward way to secure a business loan, but it is perhaps one of the more expensive models. The amount approved is calculated as a proportion of the business’s daily transactions. The businesses that use an MCA usually charge back between 20% and 40% of the money borrowed as a factor rate.
During a downturn in business, use these loans to finance routine operational expenses like rent, salaries, and utility payments. They are mainly for modest sums of money.
Furthermore, these loans tend to not demand collateral and often get repaid over a year and a half. You might be able to secure a working capital loan very fast, particularly if you’ve previously used one and repaid it on time.
A swifter financing processThe key benefit of same-day business loans is that you will get the financing you need on the same day you ask for them. If you get all the necessary documentation ready and match the qualifying criteria, some lenders even grant business loan approval instantly.
Instant business financing does not call for substantial paperwork. To apply for a same-day business loan, you must provide basic financial details but no extensive financial documents.
Same-day business loans have far less demanding approval thresholds. This is when compared to traditional company finance. While the criteria for business loan providers differ, it is possible to get a quick small business loan with a credit score as low as 500. Furthermore, many same-day lenders do not ask for collateral.
It varies from lender to lender. But at times, a lender may provide an early payment discount if you repay your entire loan amount with interest in a particular period.
Same-day business lenders deal with the financing and approval of riskier applications. This results in greater default risk. To be profitable and offset the risk in the face of increasing loan defaults, such lenders demand higher interest rates and fees.
Conventional lenders, like credit institutions and banks, often do not provide instant business loans. As a result, it’s often harder to identify legitimate lenders who offer same-day loans.
Most entrepreneurs seeking same-day business loans resort to personal loans to cover business expenses. Personal loan amounts tend to be much lower than what you’d expect from a conventional business loan.
The trick to getting a same-day business loan is making sure your financing proposal is thorough. You need to fulfill the lender’s requirements for documentation. And you need to submit documents per the lender’s timeline.
At the same time, it’s critical to remember that there is no need to rush the process of applying for a business loan. These loans can be exceedingly expensive due to high-interest rates. Hence, before you enter into a loan agreement, double-check that you understand all the surcharges, cost of interest, and penalties in your term loan contract.
Author Bio:
Matt Horwitz is the founder of LLC University, a website that teaches people how to form LLCs. Matt is the leading authority in LLC education. He is featured in CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Entrepreneur Magazine, and US Chamber of Commerce. Matt holds a Bachelor’s Degree in business from Drexel University with a concentration in business law. LLC University®, established in 2010, was the first company to create free LLC courses in all 50 states.
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Telling Putin what he doesn’t need to worry about won’t stop him.
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Dave Wilson and Harry Lyles Jr. preview the most interesting storylines of the week in college football, from Auburn-Penn State to Alabama-Florida. The post Auburn's first Big Ten road game in 90 years and everything else to watch in Week 3 appeared first on Buy It At A Bargain – Deals And Reviews.
Dave Wilson and Harry Lyles Jr. preview the most interesting storylines of the week in college football, from Auburn-Penn State to Alabama-Florida.
The post Auburn's first Big Ten road game in 90 years and everything else to watch in Week 3 appeared first on Buy It At A Bargain – Deals And Reviews.
