Seer team members have a thing for shopping online and we geek out when we find a new company who provides an amazing online shopping experience. It’s not easy to woo marketers with marketing, but the following companies have stolen our hearts … and our dollars.…
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Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox might have inadvertently leaked the Facebook usernames, profile pictures and even the likes of their users because of a side-channel vulnerability.
A side-channel vulnerability was discovered in a CSS3 feature dubbed the “mix-blend-mode.” This allowed a hacker to discover the identity of a Facebook account holder using Chrome or Firefox by getting them to visit a specially-designed website.
This critical flaw was discovered in 2017 by security researchers Dario Weißer and Ruslan Habalov and also by independent researcher Max May.
The researchers created a proof-of-concept (POC) exploit to show how the vulnerability could be misused. Weißer and Habalov's concept showed how they were able to visually harvest data like username, profile picture, and “like” status of a user. What's more, this insidious hack could be accomplished in the background when the user visits a malicious website.
The visual leak could happen on sites using iFrames that connect to Facebook in via login buttons and social plugins. Due to a security feature called the "same-origin policy," sites can't directly access iFrame content. But the researchers were able to get the information by developing an overlay on the cross-origin iFrame in order to work with the underlying pixels.
It took Habalov and Weißer's POC about 20 seconds to get the username and about five minutes to create a vague copy of the profile picture. The program also took about 500 milliseconds to check the “like” status. Keep in mind, however, that for this vulnerability to work, the user should be logged into their Facebook account.
Habalov and Weißer privately notified both Google and Mozilla and steps were taken to contain the threat. Google was able to fix the flaw on their end when version 63 was released last December. On Firefox's end, a patch was made available 14 days ago with the release of the browser's version 60. The delay was due to the researchers' late disclosure of their findings to Mozilla.
IE and Edge browsers weren't exposed to the side-channel exploit as they don't support the needed feature. Safari was also safe from the flaw.
[Featured image via Pixabay]The post Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox Leaked Facebook User Data Caused by Browser Vulnerability appeared first on WebProNews.
Inventory planning is essential for merchants. Overestimating inventory needs can be costly. But underestimating can be costly, too — hurting revenue and profit. Just-in-time inventory preserves cash, reduces storage needs, ...
The post Use Google Analytics, Data Studio to Plan Inventory appeared first on Practical Ecommerce.
What’s your story? It’s a common question when you’re first getting to know someone. It begs for details about your past, your career, your family, your hobbies. You probably never hear anyone reply: “I studied content marketing as an undergraduate and earned a Ph.D. in creating great customer experiences.”
Those degrees don’t exist, of course. But that’s OK. Great storytellers come from all sorts of places. And they’re telling stories in so many new ways that each day seems to add proof to Daniel Pink’s dramatic 2006 assertion:
The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers – creative and holistic ‘right-brain’ thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn’t.
Great storytellers come from all sorts of places, says @EditorStahl. #storytelling
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Captivating examples of this “different kind of mind” at work emerge seemingly one after the other. Let’s take a look at the secrets to their storytelling success.
In his keynote presentation at Content Marketing World last year, Joseph Gordon-Levitt served as an in-person example of the “different kind of mind.” He’s an actor, a producer, a director, and a writer (phew!).
His talk explored how thinking differently about creativity led him to form a new kind of collaborative production company. Anyone anywhere in the world can contribute to one of the company’s creative challenges by submitting (text, video, music, art) through the HITRECORD website. Ideas get remixed and refined by other contributors, and the best examples make their way into short films, online videos (some sponsored by brands), and other creative works.
For many brands, video has become an important form of storytelling, whether it’s educational, entertainment, or a mix of both. “Video presented itself via co-collaboration and creation with others on the same mission: teaching self-reliance,” says Laura Berkobin, director, digital and content at Pull-A-Part, which created a successful miniseries for DIY aficionados. “For brands to figure out video, they need to first ask themselves and answer, ‘Why would [my customer] spend their time [watching, reading, listening to] my content vs. someone else’s? What’s our expertise and edge?’ Determine your ‘why’ and ‘what’ before you tackle the ‘how.’”
Determine your 'why' and 'what' before you tackle the 'how,' says @Berkobin. #video #PullApartChallenge
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Want to see how to convert an undrivable vehicle to a pickup truck worthy of a tailgate in under 11 hours? Pull-A-Part has it covered through education and humor. Now that’s expertise and edge.
.@PullAPartAuto DIY #video: converting broken vehicle into tailgate-worthy truck. @EditorStahl Read more>
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The series, three years in the making, required executive buy-in, influencer relationship building, and content co-creation. But the result was worth the effort.
“The real ROI is that, within a group of top-tier DIY influencers in the automotive repair space, Pull-A-Part (a salvage yard) is now in their world view. And they’re in ours. It’s return on relationship with a side of butterfly effect.”
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:
In January, virtual reality debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, where Oculus Story Studio showed several VR shorts. These movies both represent and require different ways of thinking about story delivery and experience.
In his new book Storytelling for Virtual Reality, John Bucher interviews Jessica Brillhart, Google’s principal filmmaker for VR, about this storytelling shift. “What’s interesting is shared experience – having something big happen,” she says. “You’re right there next to the hero watching it. That creates camaraderie. That creates shared experience. That creates empathy.”
A few brands took advantage of the 2018 Olympic Games in Pyeongchang to experiment with VR to engage a broader audience. NBC and Intel partnered to show 30 events in VR through headsets, smartphone apps, or 360 video. Meanwhile, The New York Times created an augmented reality section for Olympic features.
These examples (and VR experiments emerging in fashion, cosmetics, comics, publishing, and the list goes on) mark the early days of this exciting medium for storytelling.
It’s the perfect time for brands to experiment with the possibilities of #VR, says @johnkbucher. #storytelling
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Although VR hasn’t quite broken out of its video game/classroom niche into the mainstream, John (who also is a multi-hyphenate talent: actor-director-producer-writer), thinks this is the perfect time for brands to experiment with the possibilities. “Today’s VR projects may reach small audiences,” he says, “but they teach brand leaders the medium and how to communicate with this form of storytelling.”
Despite new options, the fundamental elements of powerful stories remain the same, Denise Roberts McKee, COO, About Face Media Inc., reminds us. Whatever the medium – fireside ballad, printed page, documentary film, or VR experience – the power of the story determines whether an audience will applaud the content or click away too soon. Maybe it’s a relatable hero, a clear goal, the passion and grit to overcome obstacles, or a meaningful resolution; the formula matters.
The power of a story determines if an audience will applaud or click away too soon, says @drmckee.
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The heart of content marketing is the ability to tell compelling stories that attract (and retain) an audience. The most successful brands, agencies, and media properties will be those that continue to tell great ones and adapt to new ways of doing it.
I started this piece with one question: What’s your story? I’ll end it with another: How will you tell it?
Once upon a time, this reader decided to invest in expanding their storytelling skills and learn in person from Laura, John, and Denise, who shared briefly in this post about how to be a great storyteller. So they registered for Content Marketing World and used the code BLOG100 to save $100. And their content marketing success story continued …
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
The post 4 Secrets of Great Storytellers appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.
All the latest trends are part of Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends report every year and we couldn’t ignore the changes digital in media usage, mobile consumption, voice search and all the innovations that change our lives.
Here’s an overview of the stats that caught our attention.
There has been a growth of 4% in the digital media usage, reaching 5.9 hours per day. Mobile digital media usage as reached 3.3 hours, while the desktop usage has slightly decreased in 2.1 hours per day. Despite the growth of mobile media consumption, we still see a stable use of other devices, while desktop usage is still present.
This stat can be useful for brands and publishers who try to understand their audience and how the rising mobile consumption can affect their next campaigns.
Innovation takes place in many forms and trends and the most interesting stats have to do with the rise of messaging, voice search and video.
According to Mary Meeker’s Report, messaging is expanding and we’ve already noticed the increased number of monthly active users among all the popular platforms. Messaging platforms become more useful every day for users and brands are already exploring the best ways to include them in their digital strategies.
Mobile adoption keeps increasing for video usage and there is no prediction that this growth will end soon. As mobile consumption increases, more users are watching video content through their phones. This makes more companies evaluate their existing marketing strategies and how their publishing habits can adjust to this trend.
Voice services have seen an impressive growth with Amazon Echo reaching an impressive adoption rate. Except for the usage, there has also been an improvement in the service and the skills, which justifies the rise in sales. As voice technology matures, more consumers are ready to try it out. Its improved accuracy makes it more appealing and the growth from one year to another proves this trend that becomes mainstream.
Search has become an important part of the process of discovering a new product. Amazon seems to be the first option when it comes to product discovery, but search engines seem to come second at a percentage of 36%. This serves as a great reminder of the power of SEO for e-commerce businesses and how search can lead to consideration and sales.
Amazon may be the primary choice for product finding, but we cannot ignore how SEO can play a critical role in affecting consumers’ decisions for their next purchases.
An interesting journey is presented in the slide below, showing how the process of product finding takes place through search. An organic search can help a user move into a paid search to find the right product. This can move to Google Shopping and Product Listing Ads and the journey is complete with a shopping action.
This is a great visual representation which reminds us of the role SEO and PPC can hold in a digital strategy that seeks for increased sales.
Another interesting observation has to do with the role of social media in product discovery. Facebook, Instagram and also Pinterest can play a key role in the stage of awareness and consideration. Brands can involve social media in their funnel to help move users in their next stages that lead to a sale.
What’s important to understand is that a conversion cannot be achieved without the crucial previous stages, starting from the awareness and, moving to consideration before the actual purchase. Thus, every channel, including social media, can play a key role in a multi-channel world.
There has been a growth of 21% in the Internet advertising spend in the US with a growing allocation of the budget going to mobile ads.
As mobile usage increases, advertisers adjust their strategies to reach their audience. We are expecting an even bigger budget on mobile advertising within the next years, although it’s still important to create ads for different devices.
A closer focus at the advertising spend shows a growth of the advertising revenue for Google, Amazon and Facebook. This growth is related to the rise of e-commerce and how it is combined with ads to increase the sales.
Google saw a 3x increase of engagement with its focus on mobile product listings, while Amazon noted a 42% YoY increase in its advertising revenue.
Although the advertising spend is split between the big players in the industry there is still an indication that more advertisers are willing to invest in e-commerce growth to maintain a viable business.
One of the most important changes in search the last few years has to do with the increase of personalization. The more data search engines access, the higher the chances of successful personalization. The key to success, in this case, is the effective combination of data and UX to provide the best search results.
People seek relevant and fast answers to all their questions, while proximity is also an important matter for them. Thus, there has been a query growth of 900% from 2015 to 2017 to the results that include ‘near me’ as more users search for local results. This also means that local marketing and local businesses can benefit from this trend, which highlights another big trend in marketing. There’s no need anymore to create generalized content as personalization and local marketing can lead to more successful results.
As innovation brings more exciting opportunities, marketers and advertisers are facing the challenge of keeping up with the trends. The stats above indicate:
All these observations can be really helpful, especially when your team is ready to look ahead to plan the strategy and the upcoming campaigns. Any of these trends can bring a business closer to its customers, provided that it embraces its potential in the most relevant way.
In 2017, it was predicted that $92.4billion would be spent globally on paid search. This figure has grown year-over-year, proving its effectiveness as a platform that advertisers are continually keen to invest in.
In this beginner’s guide to paid search we will share:
Paid search is a form of digital marketing where search engines such as Google and Bing allow advertisers to show ads on their search engine results pages (SERPs).
Paid search works on a pay-per-click model, meaning you do exactly that – until someone clicks on your ad, you don’t pay. This makes it a measurable and controllable marketing channel compared with more traditional forms of advertising.
Ad formats include text ads, which are shown at the top or bottom of the organic search results, or shopping ads shown above the search results.
A quick note on the organic search results: if your website appears here, you will not pay for a click to your website and you cannot pay to appear in the listings either.
Every second, tens of thousands of people are searching on Google for products, services and solutions.
This presents an incredible opportunity for you to promote your business to a relevant and engaged audience that is actively looking to research or purchase products or services.
Some other forms of advertising, such as banner ads, are known as ‘interruption marketing’, meaning that the person who sees the ad may not actually be in the market to buy something at this stage. Where paid search has the edge, is that by typing something into a search engine we know that the user has the intent to research or purchase.
The first mistake new advertisers make is forgetting to track return on investment. The great thing about online advertising is that everything can be measured. In addition to being able to see how many people have clicked on your ads, and how much it has cost you, you can easily see how many people then take action (i.e. how many conversions you have).
Examples of conversions you could track include:
This means you can easily see how many leads or how much revenue your ads have generated for you. All websites should have conversion tracking set up in Google Analytics so that you can measure which of your marketing activities bring the best returns.
There are some common terms used across paid search platforms – some more self-explanatory than others.
Most paid search platforms work in the same way.
You can choose to show your ads in specific countries, cities and zip codes.
Keywords are search terms that people type into search engines such as Google, for example “womens shoes”, “tv repair shop near me” or “best sushi restaurant”.
Google’s free tool, the Google Keyword Planner, allows you to discover what words people are using throughout the world to find products or services like yours. Bing has its own as well, and there are plenty of other third party tools available.
These tools will show you a range of potential keywords, plus how many people per month are searching for them, how much competition there is, and how much they’re likely to cost-per-click.
In paid search, there are four different keyword match types that impact when your ads are shown.
There is also a fifth keyword match type: negative keywords. Negative keywords can be added into your campaigns to stop your ads from running on searches that are not relevant to your business.
One of the most costly mistakes that new advertisers make is to only use broad match keywords because this is the default match type.
As a result, ads are shown when people search for the advertiser’s specific keywords, but also hundreds or even thousands of other variations, some more relevant than others. Advertisers then blow through their budgets quickly and don’t see any sales or enquiries.
Make sure you think about which match types to use and create a good negative keyword list before you begin.
You will create ads to show when a user searches for one of your keywords.
Text ads have three primary elements:
However, there are a number of things your ads cannot contain, including but not limited to:
Ads should engage your audience, guiding them to choose you over the other ads or organic listings on the page. A good ad will contain:
You set how much you want to pay for a click on one of the ads showing for your keywords. This is called a ‘Bid’ or ‘Max. CPC’. Every keyword can have a different bid.
Paid search platforms give you a guide on how much you should bid, but ultimately it’s down to you. If Google is recommending a bid of $2.50 but you only want to bid $2.00, that’s fine – it may just mean your ads show lower down the page or less frequently.
When someone searches for one of your keywords, your ads are entered into an auction. There are two factors that are taken into account and define where your ad appears on the page. These two factors are combined to give you an ‘ad rank’. The advertiser with the highest ad rank in the auction will appear in the first result. These two factors are bid and quality score.
Quality score is the score from 1–10 that paid search platforms assign every keyword in your account, 10 being the highest. This is calculated based on three factors: expected click-through rate; ad relevance to your keywords; and landing page experience.
Quality score was introduced to stop advertisers from simply paying the most to appear at the top on search terms that their website isn’t relevant to. Now paid search platforms reward higher quality advertisers – and not just those with the deepest pockets.
Ad extensions are additional pieces of information about your business you can show alongside your ads. In addition to providing a better user experience, they can also increase the quality score of your ads and help your ads take up more space on the results page.
Some of the ad extensions available are:
There are more ad extensions available.
Typically your ads will start showing within a few hours and you can see the results in your paid search accounts. You can pause your campaigns at any time.
Every paid search platform is slightly different when it comes to billing. When you create your account, you enter your credit card or direct debit details. You are charged either after a certain threshold has been met or every 30 days, whichever comes first. It is normally possible to get some free credit applied to your account – it’s worth a quick search to find out.
Most marketing campaigns that fail do so because they haven’t started with the end result in mind. Before you begin your paid search campaigns, it’s vital that you think about what you want to achieve.
There are two very important questions you should ask yourself:
You might respond with “as many as possible for as little as possible”, but is that really true? Could your business handle 1000 enquiries in 1 day?
Campaigns without specific goals are inevitably going to waste money. Without setting a target, how will you optimize your campaigns? If your cost/conversion is $50, how do you know if that’s good?
Once you have set your goals, you can work out whether they are achievable by calculating the conversion rate required. The average website converts at around 2%.
Safer:
If you are happy to pay $50 per conversion and you know the CPC is $1, then 1 in every 50 clicks will need to convert. The conversion rate required for this is 2% (1/50).
Riskier:
However, if you were only happy to pay $5 per conversion, 1 in 5 clicks would need to result in a conversion, meaning the conversion rate required is 20%. This is much less likely to happen.
Simply divide your target cost per conversion by your expected CPC to work it out. Many advertisers set out on paid search campaigns without doing this calculation and learn that a campaign is not viable the expensive way.
Once you’ve done your keyword research, calculate the average CPC. Then look at your desired cost per conversion. From this you can calculate the conversion rate required. Below is a conversion benchmark for most brochure websites:
One of the common myths about paid search is that it is too expensive; I bet you’d be horrified to learn that a click on the keyword “car insurance quotes” could cost $132.59.
Remember this is set by the market, which means one of your competitors is happy to pay this amount per click, which means they are either making money, or running an unprofitable campaign – and it’s more likely to be former than the latter.
Before you rule a keyword out, you need to consider what the conversion rate required is. For example, let’s say that an insurance firm is happy to pay up to $4000 for a new customer once they take into account cross-sell opportunities and lifetime value.
By dividing the target cost-per-conversion by the CPC, we can calculate that 1 in 30 people who visit the website need to become a customer, which is just below a 3% conversion rate, meaning it’s competitive but possible to compete and make a good ROI on this keyword.
By using some clear thinking and making some well-reasoned assumptions, you can predict potential outcomes before you invest.
Use the Google Keyword Planner to see how many people search for terms relating to your business.
This relatively quick calculation means that before we even begin our campaigns, we can predict whether the results are likely to meet the goals we set earlier. You can also use the ClickZ CPM Calculator to get an idea of the cost of a campaign.
Most advertisers who claim that paid search doesn’t work have not done these two basic things:
A couple of important checks and changes you should be doing include:
Bid adjustments
You can adjust your max CPC at any time. Increase bids on keywords that generate a high volume of conversions at a low cost/conversion to get more clicks. Reduce bids on keywords with a high cost/conversion. You can also pause keywords that are not delivering results.
Check the search term report
The search term report shows you exactly which words users typed into the search engine and saw your ads. If you are using broad or phrase match keywords, make sure you are doing this regularly. Where you find irrelevant search terms, add them as negative keywords.
It’s often asked which is better; paid search or SEO? SEO is the process of increasing your website’s rankings in the organic search results. You cannot pay Google or other search engines to increase your ranking.
On the face of it, SEO sounds like a better option: once your website ranks in position one, the clicks you get are free, and more users click on organic listings than paid ones. But the important thing to remember is that there is a CPC to SEO as well.
SEO takes time. If your website is very new, and you want to rank for very competitive keywords such as ‘insurance’ or ‘buy a car’, it can take years of work before your site will even rank in the top 10 results.
All of that work costs money regardless of whether you pay an agency to do your SEO, pay an employee to do it, or even do it yourself. Every hour invested into organic optimization costs money.
You can factor in these costs versus the increase in traffic the activity generated. Let’s say you run an SEO campaign, costing $2000 in agency/consultant fees, and this campaign increases your ranking from position 10 to position 2. This ranking increase looks to generate an extra 4000 organic clicks. Therefore, you could say that your organic CPC in this scenario is $0.50. You can then compare this to your paid campaigns to see what’s providing better value.
This article is just an introduction to the world of paid search. There is much more to be learned and tested, and new features are being added to the platforms all the time. Some good next steps for increasing your knowledge include:
When done properly, paid search can grow businesses exponentially. Set your goals, forecast your outcomes and avoid the pitfalls we’ve listed in this article, and you will benefit from the results.
Do remember that success will often depend on the quality of your website in relation to others who are also running ads on the same keywords. Conversion is king and sending traffic is only half the job.
By Fountain Partnership, a Google Global Award Winning Paid Search Agency. All images provided by Fountain Partnership.
