Want to know what makes your site rank higher in Google? Understand how Google works? This is your chance to learn it… for free! For the first time ever, we’re launching a completely free course: the SEO for beginners training. In this course, you’ll take your first steps in the world of Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO. The course will be launched on May 7 and is easy, fun and free! So what’s stopping you?
Learn what to do to make your web traffic grow. Create a My Yoast user account now and we’ll give you access to the course on May 7!
Whatever your expertise is, whether you’re a hairdresser, a consultant or a plumber, you probably have a website. And you want it to rank on top in Google. But what if the competition is outranking you? You can beat them through search engine optimization or SEO. SEO is the art of creating a website that search engines and users like. This can give you a head start on the competition that’s still in the dark about SEO. In the SEO for beginners training, you’ll learn why Google likes certain websites more than others. So you’ll know what to improve on your own website.
As this course is for beginners, it doesn’t matter if you know nothing about SEO or not so much about websites yet! We won’t use too many technical terms. We want everyone with a website to be able to understand what makes one website better than the other.
And on top of that, it’s free and much fun to do! You’ll get access to over two hours of instructional videos, lots of reading material, and challenging quizzes to train what you’ve learned.
In this training, you’ll learn which factors make a website rank high in Google’s search results. It will give you a fundamental understanding of how search engines work. You’ll learn about keywords, why they are important and how to choose them well. Also, you’ll get insight in writing SEO-friendly posts and how structuring your site well can improve your rankings.
At Yoast we believe in fair changes in the search results for everyone. We think SEO isn’t something only the big companies should be able to do. Small businesses or non-profit organizations, or great ideas in general should get a platform and should be easy to find on the internet as well. That’s why our Yoast SEO plugin is for free, you get a free eBook when you sign up for our newsletter and next week we’ll even add a free course to the list!
As of May 7 you’ll be able to enroll in this course. It’s completely free. If you don’t want to miss it you can already create a My Yoast account. The course will be automatically added to your account on May 7. We’ll send you an email when it’s available!
The post Get ready for our FREE training: SEO for beginners appeared first on Yoast.
Whew!
Life took an unexpected turn in early March, and my focus went from being a full-time entrepreneur to a full-time caretaker.
My dad, who has lived a life with near perfect health, got very sick, very quickly.
He went from being in perfect health on a Friday, March 2nd, to being near death the following Tuesday evening, thanks to a severe kidney infection.
He thought he had the flu. Unfortunately, it was much worse than that.
The infection got into his bloodstream and his body went into septic shock, and every single organ began shutting down one by one.
Before he knew he had the infection, he got dizzy and fell in the bathroom and broke BOTH of his ankles.
Yes… both!
So he cannot put any weight on either leg and is in a wheelchair.
He’s been this way for nearly two months because he had to get clearance for ankle surgery by several different doctors.
As you can imagine, for a man who was very active, this is driving him nuts having to sit all day and be so dependent on family.
He was finally approved for surgery this Wednesday. So hopefully the therapy will begin a few weeks after that and he can get back to walking.
Nevertheless, it all could have been so much worse. I’m just so grateful he is alive and his health is good!
In the meantime, I feel very lucky and blessed to have this online business… especially when I’ve needed “time off.”
Most of March was a wash in terms of getting anything done for the biz.
In spite of all that’s been going on, this is shaping up to be one of my best years in some time.
In February, I had a $10K revenue month with Merch By Amazon and over $13K in total print on demand revenue (Amazon, Etsy, RedBubble, Spreadshirt, Zazzle, etc.)
That was the first time my print on demand income surpassed my largest affiliate income source (GoDaddy’s reseller program).
As great as those numbers look, you have to know that Merch By Amazon is far from being a sure thing. I have invested an insane amount of time on this in the last year, and income is up and down like a roller coaster.
So please do not join Merch expecting your income to grow every month. Mine sure hasn’t. As one of my students said, you have to treat Merch as your vacation money and never rely on it! Nevertheless, I’m completely obsessed with this opportunity!
I also just had another record month with my PSP courses.
As you may remember, my main method for promoting my courses is through podcasting.
For the longest time, affiliate income was my primary focus. Now it’s taking a backseat to course income, and this has been a long-time business goal of mine.
For too many years I was relying very heavily on affiliate income, and I wanted to see a shift.
One thing I’ve learned from my students on Passive Shirt Profits is that your work does not end when you launch your courses.
How many of you have ever thought, “If I can just get my course launched then the hardest part will be over.”
WRONG!!!!
That’s actually when the real work begins.
Creating the course videos was the easy part for me. The bigger and ongoing challenge has been making sure students can execute!
Just because your course is live doesn’t mean it’s optimized for the best learning experience.
Some people get stuck in areas you might breeze through, or we assume certain things are clearer than they truly are.
Typically your first version of the course is going to be your worst, but your student feedback and questions should help you improve it.
I tried something new this year with my Merch Course, and it’s really helped myself as a teacher and several students.
I began sending out weekly strategy tips to students, and many of the tips are very personal to my ongoing experiences with Merch By Amazon.
At first I worried about sending too many emails, but the responses have been awesome!
Students who weren’t selling anything are starting to see sales. I started receiving more “success” emails, and a few even began posting testimonials in my private group!
(I blurred out the name since it’s a private group and I didn’t get permission to share the name.)
Then I woke up to this today….
I eventually want to do one-on-one coaching/training for Merch due to requests, but I’m not ready yet.
However, this feedback and ongoing correspondence with students is prepping me for that when the time is right.
I may experiment with that once things settle down with my dad.
If you’ve ever struggled with how you should be marketing your business or even what kind of work you should be doing online, I’d highly recommend The Marketing DNA Test by Perry Marshall (I am NOT an affiliate.)
It revealed a lot about myself as an entrepreneur AND an online teacher.
It was recommended by one of my followers. (Shout out to Mitch!) I thought it would be fun to take. 
Based on how you answer 15-20 questions, the test gives you guidance on the best methods to market your site.
It also gives you insight into the kind of work you should be doing based on your strengths and weaknesses.
I’ve always known that I’m doing the kind of work that fits me, but I wanted to see if the results aligned with what I believe about myself.
The results revealed that I excel more with right-brained, creative work and I connect with people best through video.
It also said I have a way of getting inside my visitor’s heads that is almost “psychic and sometimes a little bit scary.”
However, I’m NOT so great at analytical work that requires a lot of attention to detail.
I’m also not good with thinking of the spot. I need time to gather my thoughts.
That explains why I fall in love with work like writing/blogging, video and T-shirt design creation, but hate overly analytical work.
That also must be why I abandoned my Accounting major in college.
I wonder if that’s why I’d always start off using keyword research software but abandon it after I found a niche.
I could never make myself use it to research every keyword I wanted to write about. I always wanted to follow my gut and common sense.
With Amazon, I have my process I use to find a niche/keywords for Merch. But I spend waaaaaaay more time coming up with my actual shirt ideas and working in Photoshop than I do obsessing over research.
The other reason why these Marketing DNA results were so interesting to me is it made me realize the disconnect that exists between how I learn and operate versus some of my students.
Right-brained people learn differently than left-brained people.
Left brained/analytical people prefer structure when learning. They take notes, like to plan everything out, and need to have all their ducks in a row before uploading/launching anything.
I’m the complete opposite.
I don’t like to do extensive planning and preparation. I’m not a note taker and prefer to jump in and figure it out as I go — even if I know everything is not perfect.
I rely on my gut with a lot of decisions I make, whereas left-brained people use more logic and research before they are comfortable moving forward.
One way is not better than the other, and they both have their pros and cons.
However, as a course creator, I’ve had to learn to focus more on the details and methodical steps for people who prefer that type of learning.
I wouldn’t have been able to improve on that if I hadn’t stayed in touch with my students.
So remember, your course is never, ever complete. It should continue to evolve based on the feedback from your students.
I’ve been selling courses for nearly four years and I’m STILL learning.
Anywho, just thought I’d update you all on what’s going on with me. It’s been an up and down year for sure, but I’m taking it one day at a time.
I hope life is treating you well!
Digital payments company Square has announced plans to acquire Weebly for approximately $365 million in cash and stock. The purchase was in line with Square’s objective to provide a cohesive solution to entrepreneurs in running their businesses across all channels.
Known for its payment software and hardware, Square has diversified its portfolio to include money transfer, business financing, and customer relationship management software. The company offers flexibility in selecting and integrating third-party solutions that include point of sale, accounting software, and other back-office applications. Weebly, on the other hand, provides an easy to use platform for building and hosting websites. Over the years, it has focused on catering to small businesses and online companies.
Let's take this online: @weebly is joining Square. https://t.co/zpeUzCwTqN pic.twitter.com/hrz7k2lWY9
— Square (@Square) April 26, 2018
With the merger, a start-up company doesn’t have to shop around separately for applications, hardware, and platforms compatible with each other to have a presence online and offline. It is one of the challenges in setting up an eCommerce site, especially for those without the know-how to do so. In a statement, Square CEO Jack Dorsey pointed out that the strategic move aims “to bridge these channels, and we can go even further and faster together.”
Square emphasizes the importance of an omnichannel experience in commerce. It simply means that sellers can reach out to potential customers through both digital and physical storefronts. From brand discovery and purchase to returns and exchanges, the seller can interact with the buyer in-store, online, or even in-app.
“From managing orders, appointments, and payments to building a website, running a business is complex, and entrepreneurs around the world want powerful and intuitive tools,” Alyssa Henry of Square said. “Whether they’re an artist, a winemaker, or a hairdresser, with Square and Weebly sellers will have one cohesive solution to build their business.”
David Rusenko, CEO of Weebly, agreed that entrepreneurs would benefit the most from the merger. He wrote, “Together, we will support you to build professional websites and powerful commerce experiences — whether online or in real life. This move reinforces our original mission: to help the world’s entrepreneurs succeed. As Square + Weebly, we’ll be able to help you in more powerful ways than ever before.”
He also assured Weebly clients that no major changes are expected to happen. The transaction, however, will boost Square’s customer base and provide a steady revenue stream. With 40 percent of Weebly’s 625,000 paid subscribers based outside the US, the deal is set to expand Square’s global presence.
Until the deal is finalized in the second quarter of 2018 and cleared of regulatory hurdles, Weebly and Square will continue to operate separately.
[Featured image via Weebly Twitter]The post Square Acquires Weebly for $365 Million, Aims to Be a One-Stop Solution for eCommerce Businesses appeared first on WebProNews.
What follows are our 10 most popular articles for April 2018, recognizing that articles we published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later ones.
13 ...
The post April 2018 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts appeared first on Practical Ecommerce.
Over the years we’ve seen the importance of the humble business listing change. While citations were once considered key link sources and their accuracy a contributing ranking factor for local search, today their impact has waned somewhat.
However, as Moz’s most recent Local Search Ranking Factors survey found, NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) details in business listings and online directories are still considered fourth most important for ranking in the local pack and fifth most important in localized organic rankings.
But not everything is about rankings: accurate citations are still a foundation tactic for any business, as they increase online visibility by placing businesses in the listings and directories in which potential customers are looking for them.
That’s if they are accurate. What happens if they’re not?
Recent research by BrightLocal, in the Local Citations Trust Report 2018, sought to answer this question by polling 1000 US consumers on how they feel and behave when they come across inaccurate business information online.
Today, trust in business and institutions in the US is at an all-time low, and it’s the responsibility of every business owner to make a difference in any way they can – even if it’s something as seemingly small as ensuring business name, location, and contact number information are reliable and consistent online.
According to the BrightLocal research, 80% of respondents felt that seeing incorrect or inconsistent contact details and/or business names online would make them lose trust in a business. With consumer trust in business being such a critical part of the buyer’s journey, this is obviously of great concern.
Of course, this is only an issue if businesses are actually uploading inaccurate information to online directories.
If you thought inaccurate citation data wasn’t a problem, think again. Not only have 30% of consumers found inaccurate business information online in the last 12 months, but a shocking 36% have also ended up calling incorrect phone numbers for businesses as a result of this inaccurate information. Add to this the fact that 22% of respondents went to the trouble of visiting a business only to find it was not located where online information suggested it was, and you start to see a troubling picture of lost business.
These experiences aren’t just confined to incorrect NAP, though. Nearly one quarter of consumers have visited a business too early or too late owing to incorrect opening times displayed online. Ultimately, this means that businesses with inaccurate citation data are likely to be missing out on a great deal of custom.
Let’s say a consumer has found a business’ address online and gone to that location, only to find the business is nowhere to be seen. What happens next?
Although it’s encouraging to see that 59% of people would persist in their search for a business if they couldn’t find it – either by calling or looking elsewhere online for the address, many aren’t quite so patient.
Almost one third (29%) of consumers said they would try to find another business online or nearby, and 12% would give up completely. Obviously, the likelihood of the latter, more extreme reaction is down to how necessary the need for the business was, and also how far the consumer had to travel, but this data still suggests that businesses with inaccurate citations data online risk losing out.
As the research found, 22% have visited an incorrect address, and with only 29% of these people seeking out an alternative business, we can get an idea of how much business is being lost to competitors as a result of inaccurate location data.
Just imagine: you do all that great work and spend all your marketing budget encouraging someone to use your business, and you succeed, only to lose out to a local rival owing to something as simple as inaccurate citation data. Marketers tend to be very good at looking at the big picture, but it’s little details like this that result in lost business, even when marketing activity has otherwise succeeded.
It’s worth pointing out, too, that men answering this question seemed to be far more likely to give up their search for a business completely. Eighteen percent of those who identified as male in the survey said they would abandon their search. We live in a far more fast-paced world than ever before and immediate gratification is paramount, so I’d strongly recommend that businesses with a primarily male customer base get their citations in order, lest they face the lost custom of a frustrated customer.
Frustration is an unpredictable emotion that can result in a range of reactions depending on the state and personality of the person experiencing it. As we’ve seen, once frustrated by incorrect business information, consumers could calmly persist with contacting the business (providing the contact number is accurate), look for another business, or quit their search entirely.
The BrightLocal research found that a huge 93% of consumers agree that finding incorrect information in online directories “frustrates” them. These are consumers with a strong intent to buy, as they’ve already searched for a business like yours and picked yours due to any number of factors. Even if they do choose to use your business after all, their first experience with it involves frustration. If you’re providing incorrect or inaccurate information online, you’re going to have to hope that your product or service is spectacular to avoid an overall negative experience.
After ploughing through incorrect information and coming up empty-handed, almost 70% of consumers said they would stop using a business as a result. This includes the quite literal cessation of business use due to not being able to find or call them, as well as deciding not to use a business because of diminished trust caused by inaccurate online information.
If you run a business or manage a client with incorrect business listings information, you are at high risk of missing out on swathes of new customers.
All your marketing, visibility, and brand awareness efforts are for naught if potential customers can’t find your business. You risk frustrating them, and in some cases completely wasting their time. First impressions are paramount, and creating accurate citations is one of the most important ways to ensure you’re building consumer trust from the off. If not, then I’m sure your competitor in the next neighborhood would be happy to take the business.
Video continues to gain traction in social media, and live-streaming is at the forefront of the movement, offering individuals and brands a direct way to engage followers in real time. There are a variety of live-streaming apps, from free social networks to advanced video production platforms. Here is a list of apps for live-streaming video
The post 13 Apps for Live-streaming Video appeared first on Practical Ecommerce.
Robert Rose, CMI chief strategy advisor, loves to reset his audience’s brains with a truth bomb:
The purpose of a business is to create a customer.
This 60-year-old quote from management great Peter Drucker reminds marketers that their work – creating demand, generating traffic, prompting social shares, or even gathering leads — is in service of this one clear goal. It’s a refreshing pause button on all the distracting possibilities available.
Sulte Group CEO Teju Owoye takes the customer-creation concept one ambitious step further.
Your content can create a self-replicating referral engine, as Teju shares in her Content Marketing World presentation Accelerating Growth by Hacking Your Conversion Journey.
To get there, though, you first must help users learn to love the product or service they just signed up for.
In the conventional sales and marketing funnel, marketing teams work on building awareness and nurturing prospects so some become leads and some eventually purchase a product or service. It’s tempting to celebrate those wins.
“It’s super exciting that you’ve got the customer to purchase your product, your service, engage with your platform,” Teju says.
But, what most marketers call “conversions” are truly a relatively minor transactional event that signals the start of a change. What happens next can determine who does the bulk of your future funnel-filling work — you or your happy customers.
“Marketers need to be intimately involved post-conversion to make sure that the customer is not only utilizing the product, but they become evangelists — and they’re referring their counterparts, their friends, their family, whoever is in their sphere of influence,” Teju says.
To boost growth, Teju suggests you guide the newly converted (through personalized content delivered at key moments) to become a different kind of customer – an active user who gets so much value from your product or service that the impulse to share it with others is almost irresistible.
Guide a new conversion to be a different kind of customer - an active user. @TejuOwoye. Read more>>
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What if, instead of applauding a conversion, a transaction, or a sale, you view a new subscriber or buyer as beginning the journey? What if you devoted the same measure of consideration and resources to new customers as to your red-hot leads? The traditional funnel changes to something more like this:
The right side is what Teju calls “our new job as marketers … making sure that the consumer has a delightful experience and is unlocking value at critical points while using your product.”
To understand how best to guide your new customers toward this value, ask these familiar questions:
How does your brand respond when customers have questions or problems, asks @TejuOwoye. Read more>>
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Then add a new, somewhat mind-bending question:
Good consumer sentiment prompts behavioral change. It’s no surprise that when customers feel a product or service can ease their pain, they engage with it. But did you know that the opposite is true?
Customer behavior can change how a customer feels. The more people act like power users, the more they feel like they are power users. The result is a magical, self-perpetuating brand advocate (a power user).
The more people act like power users, the more they feel they are power users. @TejuOwoye via @thanybethanybe.
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(A note about “power users.” Although that term is often associated with software or apps, Teju is adamant that the concept works for any B2B or B2C company: “The same thing applies for a software as a service company, applies for a law office, or for a marketing agency: You want to make sure you have delighted customers who are referring you to people they know.”)
To bring the behavior-drives-feelings concept down to earth, Teju describes a client whose goal was to popularize its software — an app that powered a cash-back rewards program.
First, they dug deep into website tracking data to identify a handful of behavioral markers that distinguish their most active, engaged, happy customers — in other words, the super users.
Here’s what they found:
The brand used the findings in a surprising way. Instead of going out to find new potential power users, Teju says, the team set out to create new power users within the existing subscriber base by developing a calendar of activation milestones.
To support these milestones, the marketing team devised personalized messages for users who didn’t do these things, those who signed up without fully using the application’s features or getting the rewards. It started with a message like this:
“Glad to see you in our cash back rewards program. Next, link a card so you don’t miss out on any rewards.”
The goal of this message is to motivate an otherwise lukewarm customer to hit what Teju calls an “activation milestone.” In the expanded funnel, activation is the step that prompts people to really unlock the features of a product.
The marketing team did not expect an emotional investment in the program right away. That could come later. At this stage, a user’s actions mattered most.
Once a customer links some cards, the team sends a reminder like this:
“Looks like you haven’t tried using our app at a restaurant quite yet. Doing that separates our most well-rewarded ($$$!) app users from people who don’t get as much out of the experience.
“Tell you what. If you visit one of our affiliated venues in the next week, then we’ll sweeten your day by giving you a chance to win a restaurant gift card.”
The goal was to get this person to adopt the product or service and use it as a power user would. Incentives were a great way to achieve that goal – especially when your product rewards users organically in time.
For example, this software company realized an aha moment would come for users who took enough power-user actions. A supremely gratifying moment would happen when the user would look down to find a fulfilling $10 reward on the app – just for continuing his usual spending habits.
Often, Teju says, the moment was so powerful the user remarked aloud to friends and family in casual conversation, creating a genuine word-of-mouth referral that sent new prospects right to the app.
The aha moment for power users is when they talk to friends about your product. @TejuOwoye. #wordofmouth
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Get this right, Teju says, and you’ve not just created a loyal customer, you’ve created a potential viral loop, the self-fueled engine of word-of-mouth marketing.
Much of today’s content endeavors to spark a feeling or perception. It’s tempting to try to convince consumers of their own desire for your solution – to make promises, brag, or otherwise compel audiences to a faux enthusiasm. When maybe, just maybe, another tactic could be to move them one step further toward power-user behavior.
The closer their behaviors inch them toward your product’s built-in rewards, the sooner they reach that natural aha moment. And that’s the kind of moment they can’t help but share with others.
Want more pause buttons, truth bombs, and aha moments of your own? Register for Content Marketing World Sept. 4-7 in Cleveland, Ohio, and earn a $100 discount when you enter code BLOG100.
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
The post How Content Can Create a Self-Sustaining Customer Referral Engine appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.
Analysts spend 80% of their time prepping data and only 20% of their time analyzing it …
(Forbes).
After years of cleaning data in excel, python or other tools, Tableau has released their answer to our data woes with Tableau Prep.…
The post Introducing a Whole New Way to Prep Data in Tableau appeared first on Seer Interactive.
Year round Liz and Bill Farrell, a husband and wife team, work the dirt at Fat Stone Farm in Lyme, Connecticut with their two kids.
After making the move from cubicles to the great outdoors, the Farrells realized they loved growing fresh food, and creating healthy, farm-grown products ranging from elderberry apple shots to their own maple syrup.
Now—when you think of a typical farmer’s marketing strategy—you might picture a hand-painted sign at a local market, but Liz and Bill run a digital elderberry empire.
The couple started as Shopify merchants and then partnered with digital agency Webistry to take their business to new heights. They wanted to see better return on ad spend, and prepare for winter (their best sales season of the year).
It was a perfect partnership from the start, but nobody could predict that a combo of Unbounce landing pages, popups, a Shopify integration, and near obsessive audience building and retargeting on Facebook would:
Overall, with Webistry’s help, Fat Stone Farm tripled ROAS in just five months (December ‘16–April ‘17), and—via continued optimizations—reached returns of 33X over a year and three months.
Here’s their epic ecommerce story, and the paid media tactics that could work for you too.
Historically, sales of Fat Stone Farm’s Elderberry Apple Shots go up in winter to help fight off flu season. So in early winter 2016, Bill and Liz approached Jonathan Naccache, Co-Founder at Webistry to prep some advertising.
The agency discovered that they couldn’t look to AdWords for a huge win. The search volume for elderberries or related products wasn’t super high, and this approach simply wasn’t scalable. Instead, they needed to generate extremely targeted custom audiences on Facebook (which can be difficult because prospects on Facebook aren’t necessarily screaming about their love of elderberry – these prospects need to be uncovered).
In Webistry’s approach, each ad campaign would target a group of interests that could coincide with elderberry products. They’d target Facebook users who’s interests included: alternative medicine, natural remedies, homesteading, or those engaging with popular health blogs like Mother Earth News and Wellness Mama.
It took a lot of research, and as Jonathan says this is where the agency advantage comes into play: “having access to several strategic minds, resources and thorough research gets you a significant edge right off the start.”
From December 2016 to January 2017, Webistry ran campaigns on Facebook targeting each of the audience segments they’d identified might be interested in the elderberry shots.
Here’s an example of some of the ads (corresponding to fall and winter seasons):
All elderberry apple shots ads led to this Unbounce-built PPC landing page, which converts at 4.7% (lifetime average conversion rate). A conversion in this case was a purchase via the ‘add to cart’ button):
And while the orange ‘add to cart’ button on the page looks deceptively simple, it’s actually where the magic happens. Instead of redirecting prospects to the brand’s Shopify store, Webistry fashioned custom javascript to make the button integrate seamlessly with Shopify and offer a slick, on-page checkout experience:
Two months into this campaign, return on ad spend was 1.66X, and cost-per-purchase was fluctuating between $19 and $145. Jonathan knew they could improve upon these early results and began targeting audiences of vegetarians, vegans, healthy eating affectionados, and homesteaders.
And so, in April 2017 the agency launched a new landing page campaign for smoothie lovers.
The idea was to position the elderberry product as the ideal ingredient to add to a smoothie. Here’s a sample ad used to launch this campaign:
And of course, the landing page this ad pointed to:
Beyond driving sales, the agency realized there was potential for lead capture here too (as a means of remarketing to especially interested prospects later), so they added an on-exit popup to this page. It offered up a free smoothie recipe book and integrated with a Mailchimp autoresponder.
With an 18% conversion rate, here’s the popup built in Unbounce:
The smoothie campaign helped drop cost-per-purchase down to ~$9.65, and Bill and Liz saw a return on ad spend of 3X from their initial investment after just five months of executing this strategy.
This was great, but Webistry wanted to help Fat Stone Farm stay present in their potential buyer’s world year round. They could lie low waiting for winter again all summer, or they could start developing highly refined retargeting and lookalike audiences to reach all year long.
In May 2017, continuing in the off-season, it was time to start preparing for their next winter. Fat Stone Farm was seeing major benefits from refined Facebook audience targeting, so Jonathan and the team extended this strategy with sweepstakes.
They used weekly sweepstakes as a means to gauge and track prospect’s interest in the products, then later in the winter, they created Facebook lookalike and retargeting audiences to get in front of similar groups of interested people regularly.
As Jonathan shares, this allowed the team to generate even better target audiences:
“Our goal was to create campaigns that helped us measure different levels of interest, and to identify these audiences by tracking every event with a pixel. We had a drip campaign setup, and non-winners of the first sweepstakes were given access to a second sweepstakes.”
That is – those who didn’t win each week were offered access to another sweepstakes prize (either the breakfast pack or gummy pack product). This helped introduce prospects to other Fat Stone Farm products and gauge interest for these versus a complementary offering like smoothies.
Here’s a sample ad for the sweepstakes:
And here’s the first landing page touchpoint:
If you didn’t win, you might be sent a second offer in the sweepstakes, with a chance to win an Elderberry Gummy Kit via the landing page below:
Of the people who clicked through on the Facebook ad and reached the first landing page above, 18.79% converted. Moreover, of the people who did not win the first sweepstakes, but clicked through the email announcing the second sweepstakes, 79.55% converted via the landing page.
Not only did this campaign collect over 15,000 relevant leads that Fat Stone Farm could remarket to year long with terrific offers, but it reduced cost-per-lead down to a mere $0.51.
Which brings us to…
After all the ad testing, landing page alterations, and lessons along the way, Webistry re-launched the sales campaigns using six months of audience-segmented data.
They launched the gummy kits as a standalone product landing page (vs. the sweepstakes page) and continued to sell the Elderberry Apple Shots. The best part? From January to March 2018 Webistry achieved the highest return on ad spend for Bill and Liz since starting to work with them: a whopping 33.12X.
Additionally, this season they saw the lowest cost-per-acquisition of just $1.55.
As Bill Ferrell says of the partnership with Webistry:
“These guys are worth every penny. Excellent results (very high CTRs, good CPA, [and] lots of new customers!). The Webistry co-founders are hands-on, creative, and keep tweaking throughout. Their attentiveness to the campaigns and my crazy ideas have exceeded my expectations month after month.”
Berry good results indeed.
Backups are an insurance policy for your ecommerce store that you hope never to use. Unfortunately, many backups aren’t adequate.
The purpose of a backup is to recover the code and ...
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One-page web design (also known as ‘single page web design’) is a trend that’s really taken off this last decade. Although it’s been around since the beginning of the web itself, one-page design seemed to take a backseat for years — as companies and individuals alike opted for more all-encompassing sites with often dozens of... View Article
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To prove you clearly explained how you'd be using data and what content you'd send to subscribers, save a copy or screenshot of the signup form you used to collect their personal data. Now, let’s say you imported your list from another email service provider (ESP). In this case, you won't have the source information within your AWeber subscriber details. However, you’re confident your list subscribed in a compliant way through your old ESP. If you don’t have this information available in your previous ESP, you probably can’t prove consent and should consider sending a re-engagement email. Finally, let’s quickly touch on the third question: “Can my subscribers unsubscribe from my list as easily as they subscribed?” The short answer: If you’re using AWeber, your subscribers already have the ability to unsubscribe on their own using the “Unsubscribe” link in the footer of all your emails. You can also make the unsubscribe option more obvious by adding it within the text of your email messages. Here’s an example from Ann Handley's newsletter, which I shared in my previous post with her bi-weekly: 
Subject: Still interested in receiving emails from me? Hi there! I hope you’ve been enjoying the content I have sent you, like {Insert all of the types of content you send (e.g., newsletters, sales, product info, etc.)}. If you’d like to continue receiving emails from me, click the link below: {Keep me on the list - LINK} By confirming your subscription, we’ll continue sending you:In addition to confirming consent, you can also use your re-engagement email to create better segments of your subscribers, using AWeber’s Click Automations feature. For example, let’s say you send a newsletter as well as product information to your subscribers. You can add multiple links within your re-engagement email to allow them to opt in to receive different types of content. When subscribers click any of the links, you can tag them appropriately and send them more targeted emails. Here’s a sample re-engagement email that has multiple options:Not interested anymore? That’s alright. If you don’t click the link above, we’ll take you off our list and stop emailing you. You can also unsubscribe here. (Note: Hyperlink the word "here" to the personalization token {!remove_web} in your email message.) Thanks, and have a great day! {Your Name}
- {Insert a list all of the things you plan to send to subscribers on this list}
Subject: Still interested in receiving emails from me? Hi there! I hope you’ve been enjoying the content I’ve been sending you, like {Insert all of the types of content you send (e.g., newsletters, sales, product info, etc.)}. If you’d like to continue receiving emails from me, click one of the links below:It's a best practice to generally wait about seven days after sending a re-engagement email before deleting any subscribers who do not click the link(s) to reconfirm their consent.
- Keep sending me the newsletter {tag with gdpr-newsletter}
- Keep sending me product information {tag with gdpr-productinfo}
Not interested anymore? That’s alright. If you don’t click any of the links above, we’ll take you off our list and stop emailing you. You can also unsubscribe here. (Note: Hyperlink the word "here" to the personalization token {!remove_web} in your email message.) Thanks, and have a great day! {Your Name}
- Keep sending me both {tag with gdpr-newsletter and gdpr-productinfo}
So, when is it appropriate to use checkboxes? The GDPR requires that consent must be freely given by subscribers, and cannot be bundled with unrelated actions. Keeping this in mind, here are two examples where checkboxes are required to be compliant with the GDPR: Example #1 Let’s say you’re a retailer and you want to send marketing emails to your customers after they make a purchase, as well as share their data with other companies within your retail group. Under the GDPR, you cannot bundle their purchase with consent to send marketing emails. Instead, a separate consent should be captured at the point of purchase that is specific to the purpose of sending marketing emails or sharing their data with partner companies. You might decide to use a separate checkbox to capture this secondary consent. Example #2 Let’s say you’re a financial institution and you want to allow third parties to use customers’ payment details for marketing purposes. Under GDPR, this type of processing activity (i.e., the sharing of payment information for marketing purposes) is not necessary for the performance of the contract or agreement with the customer. Consent must be freely given, and if a customer refuses consent, the institution would not be able to deny services or increase fees. That would be a violation of the GDPR. If you would like to share subscribers' data with other parties, you should use a checkbox to allow them to give their consent freely. And keep in mind that these checkboxes cannot be pre-checked.
“It’s scaremongering to suggest that we’ll be making early examples of organizations for minor infringements or that maximum fines will become the norm,” she said. “The ICO’s commitment to guiding, advising, and educating organisations about how to comply with the law will not change under the GDPR. We have always preferred the carrot to the stick.” “While fines may be the sledgehammer in our toolbox, we have access to lots of other tools that are well-suited to the task at hand and just as effective,” she continued. “The GDPR gives us a suite of sanctions to help organisations comply – warnings, reprimands, corrective orders. While these will not hit organisations in the pocket – their reputations will suffer a significant blow.”If you’re taking the necessary steps to understand and follow the GDPR regulations and engage in good email marketing best practices, you are on the right path to protecting yourself.
The post 6 Myths about the GDPR and Email Marketing Debunked appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.
It’s safe to say that not every career is meant to last a lifetime. Experiences from one career opportunity might spark interests that can take you on different paths to professional fulfillment. At the end of the day, though, that is the most important thing that working professionals should strive for—fulfillment.…
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Google’s mobile-first index is here, causing fresh uncertainty about potential SEO impacts – but there are a number of proactive steps to take to manage risk and maximize ranking opportunities.
Rather than passively wait to feel the impact of the shift to mobile-first indexation, we advise companies to take six specific actions to prepare for opportunities and protect site performance as the mobile-first index is rolled out throughout 2018.
Brands that have been prioritizing mobile performance shouldn’t experience a negative impact from the mobile-first index, but an honest and systematic re-evaluation is required. Companies who have allowed the mobile and desktop experience to diverge over the years will likely experience change – rankings could be lost (or gained) as a result of the switch.
Before diving in and making changes to prepare for the mobile-first index, we recommend running a full audit of current desktop and mobile rankings in all the regions your company does business in, along with top performing pages.
Tracking this performance over time, any losses or gains in keyword visibility should be clear to see – along with potential causes. Across the six actions below the common thread is Google’s determination to provide accurate answers to users, in the channel that is used most frequently – mobile.
Keeping that at the heart of your SEO strategy and things should be fine – but having a plan certainly helps.
Even today, too few marketers and SEO professionals meaningfully differentiate between responsive, mobile-friendly and standalone mobile sites – but that difference will become especially important in 2018.
A responsive website adjusts (or responds) based on user activity and the device used. Typical features of a responsive site include minimal navigation, images optimized for mobile and content that shifts seamlessly according to the size of the display.
In comparison, a mobile-friendly design is often anything-but mobile-friendly, attempting to show content on a mobile device as they do on a desktop, and so give users the frustrating experience of having to manually zoom in, or squint at small fonts.
Finally, some brands still operate standalone mobile sites, completely separate from the desktop experience. With responsive and mobile-friendly sites, there shouldn’t be any difference in content from a desktop version of a site.
However, a mobile-friendly site may be disproportionately skewed towards the desktop experience with an impact on factors like mobile site speed, navigation and general usability – and these are all areas of concern when considering how Google evaluates quality in 2018.
With a separate mobile site, marketers need to make sure that the mobile version contains everything (useful) that your desktop site does which could be a lot of work depending on your mobile strategy so far.
For some brands still lingering with standalone mobile sites, the shift to the mobile-first index may be the nudge needed to move to a fully responsive approach to the site.
Whether you operate responsive, mobile-friendly or a standalone mobile site, the first action we recommend is to identify any differences and either add to or completely overhaul the mobile sites you manage.
While desktop site continue will factor into rankings as a secondary consideration (and it is vanishingly unlikely that longstanding sites with many well-earned rankings will be wiped off the SERPS) making sure the mobile experience contains all the relevant content of the desktop experience – including all structured data/meta description/alt text/schema – is an important protective step.
The mobile-first index flips previous logic – when 80% of evaluations about rankings were based on desktop crawling and indexing, site speed considerations were less of a concern.
However, as Google crawls mobile sites while mimicking (a not-very-good) mobile connection, slow performance, elements that struggle to load and broken links will quickly use up crawl equity and indicate that your site is less efficient at delivering the answers that users want relative to your competitors.
In addition to Google tools, we regularly use platforms like GTMetrix, Pingdom, DareBoost and WebPageTest.org to get a complete view of speed issues.
Particularly for international sites, testing mobile speed from different locations and comparing these measurements to those of your key competitors will help establish practical targets to aim for. Although Google frequently mentions a target page speed of under three seconds as being ideal, in practical reality and SEO terms, aiming to be better than your competitors should be enough.
Like with SEO in general, speed optimization is similar to an old joke – ‘you don’t have to run faster than the bear to get away. You just have to run faster than the guy next to you.’
As ever, the quickest wins in terms of speed are usually to be found in reducing image and video size, managing JavaScript and other moving elements, minimizing tracking codes and scripts and doing what you can to reduce any slowdown caused by bolt-ons like booking and payment platforms.
The challenge for SEO professionals is to identify elements like these that can be improved without too much damage to the brand experience or taking away content useful for users.
Understanding the intent of site visitors and reducing barriers from their first click in the SERPS to the information they are looking for should result in positive user experiences – and minimize the risk that comes from a site experience that causes confusion, fruitless clicking around and pushes customers away.
Although there’s some fuzziness about quite how Google interprets the quality of a user’s visit – and how it rewards that quality in terms of rankings – we advise researching the different types of mobile journeys your customers take in a systematic way and making them more efficient.
Though much ‘best practice’ SEO advice has in the past been based around engagement and keeping visitors on the site, we all know that site visitors often stick around because they’re being frustrated by unclear navigation and a poor approach to customer journey planning.
Users are more impatient of poor customer journeys on mobile – and we must anticipate that Google will feel the same too. Though helping visitors to get the answers they seek more quickly may actually decrease dwell time, we’re confident that Google and other search engines will differentiate between a short visit and a swift return to the SERPS, and a short visit that successfully ends the user’s search.
Evaluating bounce rates and the success of the mobile user journey using heat-mapping tools like Hotjar or user research panels like Peek User Testing will bring in objective data to answer whether your visitors are engaged and loving your content, or hitting barriers and getting increasingly annoyed.
In the mobile-index era, we predict that this annoyance will have a greater impact on rankings – and so is a risk to be managed carefully.
Maximising opportunities
While taking steps to understand your assets and protect your rankings is important, the shift to the mobile-first index is also a big opportunity to get ahead of competitors who are less prepared. Knowing that others will be slow to react really gives an extra incentive to put real effort into SEO strategies that will positively differentiate your brand from competitors.
A lot of content marketing (such as infographics, interactive microsites, mega pages and even video, depending on the platform) produced by brands still display poorly on mobile devices.
Taking a mobile-first mindset and prioritizing everyday content and content marketing assets that work particularly well on mobile devices will resonate best with both customers and search engines. Fortunately, there are a lot of methodologies that can be used to provide depth of content that is engaging and easily navigable on mobile.
One of the biggest changes is the resurgence of expandable content areas like tabs, accordions and other filters. Use filters to hide content not relevant to a visitor’s specific query, tabs that reveal further information when clicked and accordions that expand the page are all familiar to site visitors – and allow for a single web page to be seamlessly used in multiple ways by multiple audiences.
While these have been seen by Google and other search engines as a potentially sneaky way to cram in content to a page, Google is on record as stating that content that is hidden to make a mobile site more efficient and speedier to explore will be taken into full consideration.
While competitors may have a responsive or mobile-friendly site and feel that this is enough preparation, many will likely still take a desktop-first mindset, creating overloaded pages that are tedious to wade through on mobile devices.
Thinking with a customer and mobile-first mindset to arrange content that can be skimmed easily through logical headings, bolding of main points and pull-out quotes, numbered lists, bullet-points and more will support mobile visitors and and differentiate from competitors while allowing search engine bots to crawl effectively.
Again capitalizing on the slowness of competitors, the move to the mobile-first index means a re-evaluation of progressive web apps and accelerated mobile pages could bring up big opportunities.
As a recap, Accelerated Mobile Pages allow web pages to load especially quickly by loading page elements asynchronously and removing out elements of JavaScript that cause delays.
AMP templates are easily applied in the code with well-established procedures to provide the speedy AMP version to search engines, with the slower (but perhaps more visual) non-AMP still being recognized for ranking purposes with a canonical tag.
Progressive Web Apps use browser feature detection to give a fast, app-like experience that can be loaded from a mobile home screen or simply visited with a direct link. Websites that have a lot of moving parts and a lot of returning traffic, for example in e-commerce or other transactional sites, are the most well suited for Progressive Web Apps as they can massively streamline the user experience.
In both cases, although implementation is comparatively straightforward, you can bet that a minority of companies in your industry will have a systematic approach to using these technologies.
Being fast, being relevant and being right are key watchwords for future mobile-first SEO and using technologies that help speed, indexation and the user experience is a positive and proactive step.
Action six – identify competitors to beat
As discussed, not every competitor will be thinking systematically about the mobile-first index, or the changing nature of SEO in general. That opens up the possibility that by being faster and more focused, some previously difficult to rank for keywords will become more obtainable.
Using your business and industry knowledge, we advise clients to identify competitors who have rankings ahead of your own that may be less responsive to change, and underprepared for the mobile-first index.
Building these target keywords into your mobile strategy and wider SEO strategy – including off-site SEO and link earning – should result in some strong opportunities.
For some, the mobile-first index won’t result in anything transformational – if you’ve been following best practice for years and your main competitors have been doing likewise there probably won’t be any game-changing shifts.
However, in any period of uncertainty there are opportunities to take advantage of and risks to manage – and in competitive SEO niches, taking every chance to get ahead is important.
Whatever your starting point – the mobile-first index is the new normal in SEO, and now is the time to get to grips with the challenge – and potential.
