I’ve written many articles in the last year that address Google Ads' automation. Used carefully, automation — bidding, dynamic copy, scripts — can free up time for strategy. In this post, I’ll focus on Smart Shopping campaigns for Google Shopping.
The post Understanding Google’s Smart Shopping Campaigns appeared first on Practical Ecommerce.
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Soccer AI Fooled By…A Ref’s Bald Head
Artificial intelligence has made some amazing advances in recent years, but there’s nothing like a bald head to highlight its limitations.
A soccer match involving Caledonian Thistle FC from Inverness, Scotland, was using an AI-driven camera to keep track of the ball. Unfortunately for fans, the camera kept panning back to the linesman’s bald head.
The situation was made worse by COVID-19 restrictions prohibiting any fans from being in the arena. As a result, fans were relying on the televised broadcast to catch the game, and were no doubt disappointed to have a play-by-play view of the referee’s head.
The following highlight reel shows just how much the AI was fooled, and just how far AI has yet to improve.
Soccer AI Fooled By…A Ref’s Bald Head
Matt Milano
Here is a list of product releases and updates for late October from companies that offer services to online merchants. There are updates on social commerce, discounted shipping, holiday deals, live chat, analytics, and content creation.
The post Ecommerce Product Releases: November 2, 2020 appeared first on Practical Ecommerce.
In March of this year, Jay Baer, Founder and CEO of Convince and Convert, assembled his entire virtual team to announce an unexpected departure from our very successful strategy and consulting business. With the prospect of a pandemic, the business of public speaking was in jeopardy for the foreseeable future. Jay repurposed and repackaged our entire offering.
It was a smart move, one in which he predicted our business actions over the next six months would likely determine the direction and viability for the next six years. This is possibly true for your business as well.
In a recent live broadcast, 8 Steps to Rewire Customer Relationships, Jay recounts his observations and rationale for such a shift in strategy. Here he is in his own words:
“The first thing to do is to reconfigure your products and services. Do we offer something fundamentally different? Once you’ve done that, once you’ve reconfigured, then it’s time to Repackage Products and Services. So, alight, we know what we’re going sell now, maybe that different or substantially different than what we sold before, now how can we make it easier to buy from us given the circumstances the world is in right now. And we spend a lot of time in my own organization Convince and Convert doing just that.”
Historically, what we sell on the consulting side is very custom strategic plans (60-90 days to create) that provide a tremendous amount of guidance and detail to large corporate clients on how they should improve their social media, their content marketing, etc. It’s not an easy thing to buy, and it’s not an easy thing to deliver, nor was it intended to be. But our observation was we’re going have to repackage this because the plans we sold are intended to look at an 18-24-month time horizon. These are the things that you should do over the next two years, Mrs. or Mr. Client.
Nobody knows what is going to happen in two years. Nobody wants to buy a two-year strategic plan right now. Two years is a long time in the current state of affairs. So we completely structured our offering, cut the price (because we cut the scope) and decided we’re going to sell “Quick Wins.” It’s the same kind of strategic thinking we have always sold, but, instead of saying “here’s what you should do over the next 24 months,” we pivoted to “here’s what you should do over the next four months.” We deliver this in 30 days, instead of the 60-90 days.
It’s been really successful. It’s helped our business very much during this uncertain time for consultants and strategists.
It’s frustrating to me when I see companies not making it easier to be than ever right now. They’re still throwing up foolish obstacles in the way of their customers; things like, well, you can’t return it if you don’t like it, or the price isn’t any different than it was before, or any number of other circumstances.
You have to understand your customers may be unlikely, for obvious financial reasons, to transact the way they did before. I saw a stat just yesterday, it was a survey of chief marketing officers of large companies, that 42% of customers refuse or are unwilling to pay full price since the pandemic. Maybe they can’t, they don’t have a job or they’ve been furloughed, but 4 out of 10 customers can’t pay full price.
I’m not suggesting this is just about discounts—that’s not the point here—the point is you have to find a way to make it easier than ever to buy from you.
Maybe that is making it less expensive, maybe that is making it smaller as we have done at C&C. Maybe it’s taking the pain away from a risk and the doubt standpoint.
Jay shared this example:
“I bought an outdoor couch a couple of weeks ago. We’re trying to spend more time outdoors since we’re not going anywhere on an airplane.
This really neat start-up company makes cool outdoor furniture built for the weather, even in a place like Indiana which is not really known for great weather, but this couch was pretty expensive. I don’t know, it seemed like a lot for a couch, but I had it in my shopping cart, I didn’t transact, they sent me an email—cart abandonment (always a nice idea)—which said, ‘Jay, we want to remind you that we have a 365-day return policy.’ And I was like, ‘Dang.’
So you’re telling me I can sit on this couch for a year? And then be like, ‘Nah bro, I’m not into the couch.’ There’s a minor restocking fee which makes sense, it’s a whole couch, and that’s it.
OK. Boom. Checked out, take my money. I don’t know if that was the policy pre-pandemic, but that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.
Can you make it less expensive? Can you make it easier? Can you take the doubt out of people’s minds?”
Jay’s foresight and seemingly drastic plan to switch paths on deliverables was pure genius. Perhaps blatantly obvious in hindsight, but think back to early March; none of us knew much of anything about how this would disrupt business and everyday life. This pivot required agility not only to our operations but also to our clients, existing and newly acquired. Everyone still needs agility. The singular decision to retool the company deliverables, price points, and timeframe for delivery was spot-on. If you haven’t already done so, it may not be too late. This storm isn’t over.
Another direct benefit was an easier and shortened sales cycle. Previously, multi-month engagements at high price points often have to be budgeted or approved well in advance of execution. These new, smaller, more tactical, quick-turn projects were often priced within someone’s signing authority or discretionary budgets. Once one was delivered to a client, there was often a second one to follow-up.
I don’t think you’ll read this or hear it anywhere else. I heard it, the entire C&C team heard it, and we took it to heart. Jay told us that, “Our mission was to keep our clients in business. If they go out of business, we go out of business.” He told us, do whatever you can, provide Youtility, be helpful, even if we don’t charge them for our services.
Yes, he said, “…even if we don’t charge them for our services.” He quickly added, “It’d be better if we can charge them…”. He played the long game, the smart game, and the ethically sound game. That’s why he prophesized, “The next six months will likely define the next six years for your business.” At the time of this writing, we’re about six months into it.
The ‘quick wins’ approach worked, probably better than expected. As Jay stated above, it was still the type of strategic thinking clients expect from C&C, but now it was bite-sized as opposed to an entire 10-course meal spread over 18 months. The quick wins were crafted to be more easily executed with our client’s existing staff and resources, rather than, for example, building out a social media customer service team. Since the specific recommendations were to be completed in 90-120 days, that was a manageable timeframe in which immediate actions could be taken, and results shared with management.
In hindsight, the formula seems obvious. You just read it, in one short article. No books to read, no training courses to attend, no MBA required. Watch Jay’s full broadcast on 8 Steps to Rewire Customer Relationships. Start there and if you have questions drop us a note. We’re happy to help, even if we don’t charge you. 
The post How We Successfully Rewired Our Business During the Pandemic appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.
At Convince & Convert, one of my roles as head of strategy is to make sure that everything we recommend to our clients is grounded in sound research and a firm understanding of what is happening right now with our clients and their industries. To that end, we are constantly reading and summarizing reports for our own team.
One of my favorite annual reports is from our friends at Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, their annual B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report. This year, it’s more important than ever because the ground has shifted under all of our feet, and understanding the world we face during Covid and into 2021 is absolutely vital.
(Full disclosure: I’ve often worked with CMI and MarketingProfs as a speaker, and MarketingProfs is a former client of my company Media Volery; but I’d write about this report anyway because it’s essential information.)
It’s no surprise that, of those with content marketing strategies, seven in 10 B2B marketers surveyed said they have experienced major or moderate impact on their content marketing strategies.
As B2B marketers, we have to keep in mind that our customers’ customers are also adapting, so this is a critical time to change our tactics and help our customers adapt to the new reality that their end customers are facing. If you can provide value to your customers in the B2B space at this time and guide them in how to get more out of their marketing and sales dollars, they’ll not only be grateful, but they’ll be more likely to stick around.
Of the marketers who have made adjustments, 66% said they have had to make both short- and long-term adjustments.
For B2B content marketers, it’s important to lean into the uncertainty that our customers are experiencing. Acknowledge their fear and confusion by providing resources to speak to their challenges. Produce content that helps them plan short term and/or breaks down their thinking into quarters, so it’s digestible.
According to the study, the majority of content marketing changes that B2B organizations made in response to the pandemic related to changes in “targeting/messaging strategy”, the “editorial calendar,” and “content distribution/promotion strategy”—all focused on the operations of content marketing.
Interestingly, only a quarter of those surveyed indicated that they revisited customer/buyer personas, and less than a third (31%) said they reexamined their customer journeys.
In my opinion, this could be a major missed opportunity, considering that many businesses have shifted how they buy and what they prioritize during this time. In fact, our own Jay Baer says, “This is the greatest opportunity you will ever have in your business lifetime to create new customers.”
Understanding your audience during these times, their journey, and their mindsets will be critical to success. If your competitors aren’t investing there, now is the time for you to get this right.
Of those who reported “extremely” or “very successful” content marketing during the last 12 months, 83% of them attributed this success to “the value our content provides.”
Jay Baer published his seminal book on “marketing so helpful that people would pay for it,” Youtility in 2013, but its lessons are even more important in this current environment because of everything we’ve talked about above. Your existing customers are more willing to make a change than ever, but so are your prospective customers. So this means that you must build trust with them, so they’ll want to work with you at the end of the day.
According to the report, “72% of B2B marketers said their organization used paid content distribution channels (vs. 84% last year) in the last 12 months. However, the percentage of those using each paid channel increased over last year.”
What we believe is that as in-person events go by the wayside, more B2B companies will need to invest in influencer work. In the last seven months, we’ve seen an uptick in companies that want to work with us on their B2B influencer strategies and programs.
A whopping 86% of B2B marketers who outsource at least one activity say they outsource (some form of) content creation, far and away the largest percentage. The next item is content distribution at 30%.
However, the real challenge is “finding partners with adequate topic expertise.” As you can see from this chart, 69% say that their challenge is finding partners with adequate topic expertise.
This is another reason to work with B2B influencers—because oftentimes, they can be topical experts. We’ve recently worked with SharpSpring, a sales and marketing platform that includes CRM and automation capabilities, to launch their Agency Acceleration Series, which features a variety of experts who influence and are trusted by agency owners. It’s a good example of a program that both showcases expertise and provides a ton of Youtility.
As you can see from the chart, companies are willing to spend on content creation and website enhancements, but not so much in staffing/human resources.
Plus, as we’ve seen from the previous chart, we know that “topic expertise” and “budget” are the top issues. So what should we make of the disconnect?
As always, firms are trying to do more with less. That’s not a surprise. But it does mean that creating a content atomization pipeline is a pressing need. By doing so, we’re taking one piece of content and breaking it into many more pieces of content that can get eyeballs in a variety of places. Doing more with the content we’re creating will help maximize not only our content, but also help make our budgets more efficient.
Beyond Benchmarks to Actions
I hope you’ll take the time to review the B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report in full because there are a ton of other interesting numbers in there, but beyond getting an understanding of how your current approach compares to other content marketers, use this report (and other reports like it) to identify the places where you have the opportunity to take a step back, pivot, and invest time or energy in the areas that will make the biggest differences to your business and to your customers.
We must shake ourselves out of the status quo and make our B2B brands as useful to our customers as possible, if we are going to be around for the next annual report.
The post B2B Content Marketing Research for 2021: Key Takeaways and Trends appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.
COVID-19 is still dominating business headlines, but inside the digital marketing industry, the biggest story remains the coming demise of the third-party tracking cookie. Ever since Google made the announcement in January that Chrome would phase out the technology in two years, marketers, publishers, agencies, and data owners have been scrambling to prepare for this sea change.
It was always imperfect, but the cookie developed into a currency that allowed various marketing stakeholders to make sense of online and offline behavior and do business based on it. For example, being able to prove that a digital ad campaign led to a lift in brand awareness, new sales, store visits, and the others were made possible by syncing cookies across different data providers (for example, did the household who saw a Yoplait yogurt ad actually purchase more yogurt?). In turn, this gave confidence to marketers to invest in campaigns that were proven to provide sales and brand lift.
Many marketing tech companies are built on the faceless calculations of cookie-based tracking, targeting, and attribution. But as the general public came to understand how their data is being traded and used, their concerns sufficiently inspired regulators to come up with ordinances like GDPR and CCPA. Google’s decision to eliminate the cookie will make its own dealings with regulators easier, but it also forced a lot of companies who benefited from the ecosystem to rethink their own data practices from the ground up.
And so the demise of the cookie presents us with an opportunity – both for consumers and data-dependent organizations. What arises to replace the cookie in the coming years should lead to a more accurate, honest, and valuable digital ecosystem. Here’s why:
From a consumer perspective, the primary problem with cookies is a lack of transparency about their origins. Without the ability to know the source of the data, permanently opting out of cookie tracking was generally futile. The most promising new identity solutions rely on PII-based structures that make managing consumer consent much easier, allowing for more accountability throughout the value exchange.
To solve this, CCPA is now ushering in a radical change. Instead of anonymous identity graphs, which are impossible to manage and maintain for consumer opt-outs, the future of online identity will be tied to some form of personally identifiable information. Google is already operating this way, as they know your name and Gmail address, and so they can tie all communications, analytics, and advertising back to actual people. Consumers have given them that information in exchange for their free services.
And now the broader digital ecosystem is moving in the same direction. Publishers, marketers, data companies, and agencies will legally require identity solutions to provide their services while protecting consumers who both want to participate, and those who want a permanent opt-out ability. This is analogous to opting out of marketing emails by way of the CAN-SPAM Act, a regulation that has been largely effective at cutting down unwanted emails. Expect the same in all other forms of digital marketing going forward.
And while the new rules and requirements to protect consumer data will be more stringent and costly for marketers, media, and data companies, the new system will lead to better results for marketing technology as a whole.
Better data, analytics, insights, attribution models, and higher-quality target audiences are being ushered in. In fact, this is why Google waited so long to make this move because their identity solution (underpinned by billions of people with a Gmail address) was always a competitive advantage they shared with a few other market leaders (e.g. Facebook).
As real identity solutions become the new standard and easier to adopt, there are new opportunities to level the playing field for brands and those outside the walled gardens. There will be costly investments required, but this is ultimately a win-win for consumers and the marketing technology ecosystem. Right now there’s a lot of space for new ideas and innovation, and we should all embrace it.
Michael Hussey is President of StatSocial, an earned audience intelligence platform.
The post What’s left when the cookie goes away? appeared first on Search Engine Watch.
Analyzing search volume figures from tools like Google Keyword Planner is a core element of keyword research. However, contrary to popular SEO belief, the magic lies in qualitative keyword data and not quantitative ones. Even though, quantitative data shows numbers that help us filter down our seed list, show trends in the wording people use when they search and highlight the big opportunities we should be tapping into. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a search professional who doesn’t agree with this.
I’d argue that most keyword research today is over-reliant on this quantifying of searcher behavior and therefore misses out on the huge value in studying low to no-volume search terms. A more qualitative approach opens up a host of new opportunities, by looking at what the existence of terms can tell us, rather than what the numbers attributed to them can.
The main reason I favor this approach is because of the inherent flaws with the data that search tools provide. If these tools were 100% accurate and comprehensive, we could use them as our sole data source when building out a strategy. The fact is though, even the best tools we have don’t give the full picture.
Why does this matter? It means that many of the terms and topics we’re disregarding due to non-existent search volume figures could actually represent great opportunities.
If you don’t need persuading on the limitations of search volume data, feel free to skip to the “how do we find qualitative keyword data” paragraph. Otherwise…
I’ve largely focused on Google Keyword Planner here, as this is the tool which *I believe* all SEO tools are at least in-part reliant on.
There is an argument for tools like Ahrefs, which don’t group terms together, but they too call on Google for search data to a certain degree. What’s more, they rely on clickstream for the rest, which itself is only a representative view of searches, based on analyzing the behavior of certain users.
INSERT IMAGE – QUALITATIVE SEARCH VOLUME DATA
OK, so we can’t fully trust the numbers. We could see this as a problem, but equally, we could see it as an opportunity.
Suddenly, a 0 in keyword planner is no limitation. We can set our sights on a whole host of other tools and practices to inspire our targeting approach, as well as tackling areas we know from experience that our customers are interested in, even if the data doesn’t seem to prove it. Here are a few approaches I’ve found useful in the past.
Remember, the fact that terms appear at all through these methods means they are being searched. You can generate a lot of clicks from terms with no recognized search volume on standard SEO tools.
Like I said at the beginning of this piece, I am not suggesting that we should totally do away with search volume data, as it does provide a useful guide as to the most searched terms in your space. In reality, combining niche and high volume targeting will be the key to long term success.
My recommendation is to ensure key pages on your site tackle the most highly searched terms in your vertical, but that you also supplement this with content that addresses the varied and rich data you get from a more qualitative approach. If nothing else, qualitative keyword research will allow you to understand the breadth of your audience’s interests and concerns better. That’s got to be worth a go.
Thanks for reading, let me know in the comments below if you have any questions.
Jack Telford works as an Owned Strategy Director at global media network Starcom. He leads clients’ overall SEO approach and direction, whilst overseeing a team of SEO specialists working on content, technical and off-site plans. He can be found on LinkedIn.
The post The untapped value of qualitative keyword data appeared first on Search Engine Watch.
