April Marketing Ideas 2021

With the spring season in full swing and April here, there are a plethora of holidays and promotion ideas that you can tap into. These observances and themes give you an opportunity to connect with your customers, have your brand's voice shine through, and make some creative content.

In this blog post, we will be going over some of the holidays and causes that you can post about in April that might align with your r business vertical. To help get your creative juices flowing.

April Marketing Holidays and Awareness Causes

First, let’s cover a list of holidays and national celebrations that occur in April that you might not be aware of. 

• April Fool’s Day

• Easter Sunday

• World Party Day

• World Health Day

• Siblings Day

• National Grilled Cheese Day

• Tax Day

• High Five Day

• Get to Know Your Customer Day

• Earth Day

• Picnic Day

• Denim Day

• Arbor Day

Here is also a list of themes and awareness campaigns that often occur during April

• Financial Literacy

• Sexual Assault

• Child Abuse

• Autism

• Volunteering

• Donate Life

Autism Awareness Month

Autism affects 2% of all children in the US. If you know someone that is affected by autism this is a great opportunity to get involved in some activities, raise awareness, or raise money through a charity dedicated to Autism. For example, if you have a jewelry business you can have a product dedicated to Autism Awareness. 

National Child Abuse Prevention Month

A blue pinwheel represents support for National Child Abuse Prevention Month. If you want to show your support for this cause, you can approach it the same way you might with  Autism Awareness. Spread awareness, give information on charities, or get involved in your community. For example, if you are a college you might plant blue pinwheels to show your support for any students or potential students that may have been affected by this. 

April Fool’s Day

Everyone likes to have a little fun and companies are more than allowed to do this on April Fool’s Day. All we recommend is that you keep it uplifting and fun. A great post in the past is gone from the McDonalds UK Twitter account. In 2019, they announced the long-awaited milkshake dipping sauces.

Make sure that your joke is related to your business. Or even share April Fool’s jokes that your employees are partaking in whether it's in the office or on a Zoom call. 

National High Five Day

National High Five Day is a little different now due to COVID-19, however, that doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate it still. You create a post based on giving high fives to your employees for the great job they’ve been doing through these trying times. In doing so you can reach out to your community and have them tag people that they would want to give high fives. You can also make a high-five post acknowledging your customers, vendors, or causes that you support such as the Make a Wish Foundation. The last idea for a high five day is if you're in the restaurant and host a five-dollar promotion. Just remember to use the hashtag #highfiveday.

Earth Day /  Arbor Day

Earth and Arbor Day are all about trees, nature, and mother earth. You can use these holidays as an opportunity to market your business. If you own a flower shop you can talk about the use of dried flowers for décor and events to save costs and the use of fresh flowers. If you are a fitness center try hosting classes outside or encouraging people to enjoy nature by taking a hike and appreciate nature. 

Easter

Restaurants typically benefit from Easter, by hosting an Easter brunch. Photographers can run a special promotion for families to take holiday pictures with their children. Other businesses can host a family Easter egg hunt to attract the local community, just make sure you are following the proper protocols. And lastly, bakeries can make cute Easter-themed treats for consumers to enjoy. 

Tax Day

Even though the day to file taxes has been extended, tax day still falls in April. If you are an accounting firm or a financial business this is a great time to talk about taxes or even the extension of when taxes need to be filed. All businesses can also host a tax day promotion. To really attract your customers you have the opportunity to help their wallets on a day that is stressful for most people. 

From April Fool’s to Arbor Day, there are a variety of holidays and causes that you, as a company, can create content around during the month of April. Take some time to yourself and think about which ones make the most sense for you and your business to work with. Hopefully, our suggestions also helped make some connections for some post ideas for you.

Enhance Your Keyword List With Microsoft Advertising Intelligence

Every digital marketer eventually starts scraping the bottom of the barrel for new keyword options. The reasons for this vary. You may be in a niche industry, for example, or maybe you are lacking search queries in Google Ads Reports. Every marketer can use extra help to continue to produce new and strong keywords. Microsoft Advertising Intelligence can be that untapped keyword resource your business needs.

Microsoft Advertising Intelligence is a free tool that is available in the Microsoft Office Excel interface. This allows you to find keyword ideas for any ad in Microsoft (Bing). In this post we will discuss some ways you can leverage Microsoft Advertising Intelligence to discover new keywords for your business.

Keyword Suggestions

The keyword suggestion tool is the focal point and the tool that most digital marketers will use. First take the list of keywords that you want to expand and paste it into the Excel program. Next highlight the keywords and click on keyword suggestions. You will then get a list of new potential keywords and stats based on the past month. This interface is similar to the Google Ads Keyword Planner. 

As you view the new additions to your Excel sheet you will notice some things. In Column A you will see your original keyword list. In Column B there will be variations of keywords that are recommended based on your original list. The next columns will be the metrics of potential volume, bid estimates, clicks, CTR, and more. 

There are two different variations of this tool that you can leverage. First is the standard converting keywords. Of course discovering new keywords from this list is amazing because they will more than likely produce results. The second variation to look at is converting search queries. Match types  are becoming less popular and frankly irrelevant with Google Ads advancements into AI, smart campaigns, and a reduction in the list of search queries. With that in mind this list might now provide the most accurate keywords to target so really read through them and pick out what makes the most sense to try in your business account. Using both of these variations will be the best way to get new keywords. This is probably the easiest way to use Microsoft Advertising Intelligence, but there is much more than you can do with it. 

Traffic

After obtaining suggested keywords through Microsoft Advertising Intelligence you can highlight the new keywords. Next, go to the navigation bar and click the traffic button. This will create a new report from the selected keyword groupings by device and number of searches in the last recorded month.

This creates a more readable and visually appealing report. Traffic view does not break up the keywords by match type and it makes the list smaller so you are not overwhelmed. This helps you to make quicker decisions on what keywords make sense rather than having to go through each individual match type.

Age and Gender Grouping

If you are trying to target a specific audience, you can try using the age group and gender tool that Microsoft Advertising Intelligence provides. This feature can be found under the “more research” option at the top of your navigation bar. This new list will break down the percentage of these age groups and genders revealing the percentage of people in each category that search these specific keywords. 

For example, if your business sees success in the age group of 50-64 this will let you see if the keywords on this list are used by this age range. If it is a low percentage or even zero then you can conclude that you shouldn’t use that keyword. All age columns will add up to 100% for the keyword usage. It allows you to clearly identify what keywords will be most effective. And if need be you can change keyword bids based on this information. It might not be the most impactful tool in Microsoft Advertising Intelligence, but you can find some small insights that can help contribute success to your account.

Keywords Through Webpages

Another option under the more research button is an ability to choose specific keywords by specific URLs. You can use this resource to try and drive more traffic to your URL. If you take a list of the URLs you’re looking into just paste them into the Excel sheet. Then Microsoft will scan the list of keyword suggestions based on the content of the pages you pasted. This can also help improve your quality score by including these keywords into your ads if you choose to add the keywords that are recommended in this sheet. Again, it may not make sense to add all of these keywords to add to your account, so make sure to look through them carefully before adding them all in. 

Keyword Performance Tool

After searching the suggested keywords for the ones you are thinking of adding into your account you can take it a step further. Highlight the keywords you want to add and click on the Keyword Performance option. You will get recent historical performance data on these keywords based on the Bing Network. Note, however,  that this does not include searched keywords on Google Ads. By doing this you can see from the keywords you selected which ones would drive the most traffic and what the cost per click (CPC) would be in Microsoft Ads. This will help you to estimate new spend based on these keywords and get a potential understanding of how they would act in Google Ads.

Some of the keywords that Microsoft Advertising Intelligence generates, don’t show in Google Ads leading some to assume they wouldn’t work. However in our experience what works in Google Ads works in Bing. So it makes sense to give these keywords a chance. This new free tool gives marketers who are struggling to find new keywords a chance to obtain new ones, and get a hard read on how effective they can be. There are several additional  tools that Microsoft Advertising Intelligence offers that we haven’t discussed here. Start with the ones we recommended above and then try the other tools to see if they can also benefit you.

Google Showcase Shopping Ads Move to Product Shopping Ad Groups in April

Google announced that on April 1st 2021 Showcase shopping ads will be stopped and removed. Companies using these ads would have received a notification last week on February 23rd.

Showcase Shopping ads will be added to the Product Shopping ad groups. However, advertisers who have been using Showcase Shopping ads will still be able to have access to performance data from past Showcase Shopping ads.

Showcase Shopping Ads Background

In 2016 Google introduced Showcase Shopping ads, which were implemented to provide a curated group of products. They were created with the intention to appear for broad and non-brand searches since 40% of all searches were broad match terms. 

In 2018 Google added video to Showcase Shopping ads in search. And a year after it was extended to Google Images, Discover feed and YouTube feed. In March 2020 Showcase Shopping ads became an eligible option in Gmail campaigns. Prior to this, Smart Shopping campaigns were the only way to get Shopping ads into Gmail.

Tips For Using New Showcase Shopping 

After April 1st, Showcase Shopping ads will be included in Product Shopping ad groups. With this new change anyone wanting to use these ads should closely monitor them for a few weeks. You might see more top funnel placements than you are used to, so staying aware of what you campaign is doing will make sure you are optimizing them accordingly.

Another tip is that due to this change you might see a change in the number of sales businesses are obtaining through Showcase Shopping. So be ready to circle back on your Google Ads strategies. Companies should be ready to find sales in other avenues if this change affects future projections.

Google has been making many changes throughout the last few years. Showcase Shopping  has also already been integrated into Smart Shopping Campaigns so you can leverage in this format as well. Hopefully everyone can see success with this new change. Just keep in mind businesses might need to make different changes to strategy depending on the new results.

Instagram Ads 2021: How They Work & What They Cost

Instagram and Facebook ads work under the same Ads Manager. However, the advertising costs for both platforms vary. Facebook is also more robust in its data and ad placements compared to Instagram. And typically, Instagram ads are more expensive than Facebook ads. Even though it has fewer placements, costs more, and has increased competition, you will also see some of the most cost effective results on Instagram.

On Instagram paid advertising can be a strong tool especially when you use the Feeds and Explore tabs, and Stories as your main areas of focus. Right now there are no placements available on IGTVs or Reels, but as advertising grows, it will more than likely be implemented. Instagram provides advanced targeting similar to Facebook. If Instagram is one of your strongest platforms we highly recommend advertising on it. 

Instagram Ads How They Work

On Instagram there are several different campaign objectives. The platform also boasts 18 different CTAs (call to action) for your arsenal, that includes: linking your website, downloading applications or shopping online. 

To advertise on Instagram all you need is a Facebook Business Page. You don’t even need an Instagram account! But if you plan to use Instagram you should have an account to understand the platform and to help you focus on what works best for your business and target audience. 

Instagram Ads are produced on the Facebook Ads Manager, and they are done the same way as Facebook Ads. 

Why Advertising on Instagram Makes Sense

Instagram is the second most popular social media right just behind its owner, Facebook. With 1 billion + users on the platform and the amazing targeting, demographic, and geographic data of Facebook, you can also get great prospecting, retargeting and conversions in your Instagram campaigns.

Engagement Rate Increase

Instagram is well known for its increased engagement rates for organic posts and paid ads compared to other social media platforms. According to a Mention Instagram Engagement Report. image posts saw about 38% more engagement compared to video posts. As a visual platform, Instagram, is more preferred for engagement compared to other,  typically text-based social media platforms. Just make sure to keep an eye on your organic and paid growth to see which type of posts are working best for your business.

Video Formatting

There are three different types of options that you can run for ads on for Instagram. You can use the Instagram Feed, Stories, and the Explore page. With these placements you can get around two minutes of video content out. This does multiple things for you if you utilize them. One, it gives you a chance to promote features and benefits of the products/services that your business provides. And two, it also gives you a chance to show off your brand. With ads launching on three different placements at once, it give you the chance to produce mass amounts of engagement.

Factors of Instagram Ads Pricing

Just like most paid marketing platforms, pricing has numerous variables. For example starting with just the campaign objective will instantly make your price higher or lower. You also have other factors including your target audience and its relation to your campaign objective and where it is in your funnel. If your business is trying to drive brand awareness which will more than likely be cheaper. But if you are trying to push your product or promos, you will start to see a higher cost for those targeted conversion campaigns.

Another thing that can change the pricing of your Instagram ads is your audience size, and geotargeting. When you target large audiences or geotargets  you will typically see lower costs. When you narrow down your audience and more specific geotargets you will start to see your price go up as there will be more competition with specific areas and audiences. As mentioned above, closing in on your target audience typically means you are getting closer down the funnel. 

CTR (click through rate) can also increase or decrease your prices. You will see a direct correlation between the two. Low CTR equals higher prices while, high CTR equals lower prices. If your ads are capturing your audience you will see a higher CTR which means more people are clicking on your ads and are completing your campaign goals. You want to try and hit anything above 2%. Make sure to look at your CTR consistently and try to make adjustments to hit that 2% and have healthier and  cheaper ads. 

The last factor to go over is your budget. Many companies that have small budgets will take longer to get out of the learning phase of their campaigns. The learning phase is when Facebook's data collections try to collect enough data to understand what you are doing with your campaign goals, and how your audience functions with your ads. Because of this you will more than likely see that it is more expensive at the start. These expenses will begin to decrease once the learning phase is over.

Instagram will keep gaining popularity, and with that more ads will be implemented and the space for advertising will continue to increase. It is also fairly non competitive at this point for businesses. But again it is growing as a platform, more businesses will start getting into the space. If you have some extra marketing budget try throwing it into Instagram to see how it compares to Facebook. This will also allow you to get a general feel for how to execute Instagram campaigns. It can be an incredible powerful tool for your business in the marketing funnel and if executed properly, you can attract more brand awareness and engagement. Who knows, Instagram can turn into one of your more profitable sources of conversion and revenue!

Gmail Ads Transition To Discovery Campaigns

On July 1, 2021 Google will transition Gmail ads into the Discovery campaign category. This announcement was posted in December 2020 on their Gmail ads support page. Once July 1st hits, you will no longer be able to create dedicated Gmail campaigns, you will also not be able to edit any Gmail campaigns you are currently running.

This new update that places Gmail ads in  Discovery campaigns can be a great way for advertisers to expand their reach. However, the way Gmail ads are currently being used will be very different from the way they will be used in the Discovery campaigns format. Let’s dive into what will be changing in Gmail ads starting in July.

No More Manual Bidding for Gmail Ads

Discovery campaigns do not support a manual bid strategy, so starting July you will no longer be able to use this method for Gmail ads. As of right now (before the transition) you can use manual and CPC (cost per click) bidding. The closest option you can leverage in a Discovery campaign is to choose the option of target CPA (cost per acquisition).

There is nothing wrong with automated bidding, especially since Google has made some much needed progress in the field. However, completely taking away the option of manual bidding is something that many will find disappointing, especially if they have found success in Gmail ads using manual bidding. 

No More Device Targeting for Gmail Ads

Right now Gmail campaigns ads are currency under the Display Network. A perk of the Display network is the ability to control what devices are seeing your ads. Most people have seen better success on desktops compared to mobile phones and tablets. Being able to see what device works best, allows you to make further optimizations to boost your ads to appear on specific devices. In theory, this should give you better results. 

You will not be given this option in  Discovery ads. As you can see, there appear to be further available optimizations for Gmail ads after the transition. You will still be able to segment device performance in Discovery campaigns, but you will no longer see the option to optimize on device bids.

Ad Formatting Change

Because Gmail will be switching from Display campaigns to Discovery campaigns there will also be changes to how the ads will be set up and displayed. There are some subtle changes to how you can create ads, which will affect your approach to your Gmail strategy. The creative aspect of ad creation is one of the biggest factors when it comes to Google Ads and needing to change how your Gmail ads are created / displayed can be a hindering factor to the success of your campaign. 

Text Changes for Gmail Ads

There are two ad formats people use in Discovery campaigns: standard discovery and discovery carousel ads. With these ads, your headline character maximum is forty characters, which is fifteen more characters to the previous Gmail ads (twenty five). Something to note is that your headline will be cut off if it is too long and someone is viewing it from a mobile device. We recommend staying as close to the original twenty five characters as possible. That way if your Gmail ads are shown via mobile phone you can make sure your message is being fully seen. Your description text lines offer the same number of characters (90) so there is no change there. One great thing about using the standard discovery ads is that you can have up to five different headlines and Google’s AI will choose which headline would benefit you most. You will also get five options for your description line if you use standard discovery ads.

Change is Happening Fast, Be an Early Adopter

Google has been making a strong push towards automation over the past several years, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Google is attempting to automate Gmail ads. Google wants to make Google Ads more friendly and easier to pick up for the average user. Automation is key in this process, helping users avoid countless hours understanding the intricacies of Google Ads. Ad types, bid strategies and even campaigns themselves are becoming automated. 

Because of Google’s increased focus on automation and less savvy users,  digital marketers need to be open minded and adapt. Complaining about these changes hasn’t made a difference to Google’s approach so the best thing to do is jump on these new changes as fast as possible. If you still want to run Gmail ads, start running Discovery campaigns asap. That way you can get a feel for how the campaigns run, and what works best. By learning this you can hit the ground running in July. 

2021 March Marketing Ideas

With February halfway done, marketers might be looking into marketing ideas for the month of March. Just like every other month there are a plethora of calendar based things you can build posts and marketing ideas around to connect to your audience and to attract customers.

March Holidays 

With so many holidays during March, the month allows marketers plenty of options for creative marketing campaigns or posts. Here is a list of a few of these holidays:

• Read Across America Day

• Dr. Seuss’ Birthday

• International Women’s Day

• Daylight Savings

• Girl Scout’s Day

• Pi Day

• St. Patrick’s Day

• First Day of Spring

• International Puppy Day

• National Medal of Honor Day

• Mom and Pop Business Owner Day

• MLB Opening Day (so long as the pandemic permits)

• Crayon Day

First Day of Spring

The first day of spring is officially March 20th. So why not celebrate the transition from winter to spring with a promotion. Leverage the excitement of winter finally ending and spring arriving  with a special offer. You can create promotions for Instagram and Facebook, or even leverage Google My Business to reach potential customers who are searching for you on Google. 

National Women’s History Month

March is also National Women’s History Month so take some time to pay homage to the women in your company or industry who have made an impact. If you want some inspiration or information you can check out the Women’s History Month website. You can also create a promo code that coincides with this celebration such as Women21. 

Pi Day

Everyone loves Pi Day which is March 14th (3.14). It is a great day for education programs and daycares to prompt math with a Pi Day event. It is also a great time for restaurants and bakeries to create special promotions such as having food or pastries cost $3.14 in honor of PI Day. Make sure when you are promoting your event, that you use relevant hashtags like #piday to get your posts found by more people. 

St. Patrick’s Day

St. Patrick’s Day is on March 17th and is beloved by many. Most communities celebrate with the shamrock festivities and many also have parades. This day is the ideal day to strap on some green and post on your social media. If you have a storefront, give a discount to anyone who is obviously wearing green. Or have a giveaway where if your customers comes to your store wearing green, shares it on their social media and uses specific hashtags, they can win a discount or prizes. As we just mentioned, make sure to use the appropriate hashtags, #stpatricksday  or #stpattysday,  to increase the reach of your posts.

Hashtags for March Marketing

Using relevant hashtags for your social media posts helps you in your outreach to new potential customers as well as attracting new traffic to your posts. Here is a list of hashtags that you might be able to leverage for March in your posts.

#womenshistory #BrainInjuryawarenessmonth #MarchMadness #youthartmonth #youthart #nutritionawarenessmonth #healthyeating #healthyfood #readacrossamerica #drseuss #internationalwomensday #womensday2021 #womensdayeveryday #piday2021 #piday #314 #pinchme #gogreen #stpatricksday #stpattysday #nationalmomandpopbusinessday

Hopefully some of these celebrations in March are celebrations your business can take part in. We also hope you can leverage some of the examples we provided to guide you in optimizing your posts and promotions next month.

Free Keyword Match Type Tool and Understanding Match Types

Short and long tail keywords, and keyword match types can be the difference between a strong or weak marketing campaign. The most critical tool available to you is Google Ads keyword match types, which digital marketers use to optimize their targeting within a campaign. However, organizing and adding the proper keyword match types can be tedious and you can forget to add match types if you aren’t paying close attention to the list of keywords you want to target. However, there is a solution: our Keyword Match Type Tool.

What is a Keyword Match Type Tool?

A keyword match type tool is used to accelerate the process of adding keyword match types to your account. Instead of inputting the same keywords several times, only to add brackets for exact match and parentheses for phrase match, our free match type tool correctly produces a list of keywords for you so all you have to do is copy and paste. And the bonus is that it is a free tool. Adding 30 keywords with three or four different variations into an adgroup quickly turns into 120 keywords. This can be an incredibly boring task, which can lead to  mistakes that you don’t need.

How to Use SalesX’s Keyword Match Type Tool 

We made the keyword match type tool as easy to follow as possible.

On the left-hand side, you add all the keywords you need to add to your account. On the right, the Keyword Tool will generate all four keyword match types (exact match, broad match modified, phrase match, broad match). *Note that Broad Match Modified will not be used anymore in Google Ads starting in July 2021. If you only need a specific keyword match type, simply click the keyword match types you don't need in the middle and the list on the right side will adjust accordingly. Below is an example of generic tea keywords for a general ad group. In the example the user only needs to include exact and phrase match types.

We added 15 keywords and clicked on the broad match modified and broad match buttons to remove them from the generated list on the right-hand side. And as you can see we now have only the exact match and phrase match variations of these keywords. All you have to do after this is click copy to clipboard and then paste it into the add keywords section of your new or already generated adgroup and you are done. There is no need to spend unnecessary time manually creating these lists. 

Feel free to try our keyword match type tool today!

For those of you who do not understand why there are so many options for keyword match types on Google Ads, in the next section, we’ve explained the difference between keyword match types and why you would use all of them for different situations.

Keyword Match Types

Keyword match types are words or phrases that are used to match ads with the terms that people are searching for. Keyword match types determine the degree of matching between the keyword and the user’s search query before the advertisement can be considered for auction.  Therefore, you can use broad match keywords to advertise in a wide range of user searches, or you can use exact match keywords to get specific user searches.

Broad Match Type

For broad match keywords your ads show on searches for your keyword and searches that are related to your keywords. This also means that these searches apply to searches that do not contain the keyword you input. Broad match is used to attract a large audience to your ads and to your website. Broad match is also the keyword type that is automatically used if you do not specify what kind of match type you are inputting. Here is an example Google has supplied that explains how broad match keyword types work.

There is an alternative to broad match keywords, which is called broad match modified. However, Google recently announced that this feature is merging with phrase match. To learn more about this new announcement checkout one of our most recent blog posts.

Phrase Match Type

For phrase match, your ads may appear on searches that include the meaning of your keyword. What this means is that you can get exact matches for your keywords, and you can also get access to a wider variety of phrases implied by your keywords. This provides you with more room than an exact match keyword and better targeting than a broad match keyword. You will be able to reach a wide variety of customers, while still showing up to target customers who are seeking out your products or services through their searches. Here is an example Google provided that demonstrates how phrase match keyword types work.

Exact Match Type

Exact match is exactly what its name implies.  Using this keyword type allows you to target users that search for the exact keywords you choose. This gives you the most control over who is seeing your ads and helps you create extremely tailored ads and landing pages. Here is an example Google used to explain how exact match keyword types work.

When building out a campaign making sure you are using the proper keyword match types for what you are trying to achieve is incredibly important. And as we discussed above, typing in the proper keywords variations can easily be tedious and produce errors. Our free Keyword Match Type Tool can help you accelerate the process and ensure accuracy try it today.

Google Ads is Merging Broad Match Modified With Phrase Match, What to Expect

On February 4th Google announced that it is going to start removing Broad Match modified keywords. In doing so, they will be changing how phrase keywords are used. For most digital marketers this is very unfortunate news, especially when Google recently changed search query data as well. However, this new update isn’t as bad as it sounds. 

As smart bidding was refined over the years, broad match has become more effective in driving performance when the two are combined. Because of this, phrase match and broad match modified are often now considered for the same use. You can reach your ideal customers using a combination of the two. On February 18th, Google is making changes to these two keyword match types to make it easier to reach customers. 

This is a big change for digital advertisers as a majority of users apply broad match modified keywords to their campaigns. Optmyzr has collected some research regarding the usage of phrase and broad match modified keywords.

“In Optmyzr’s analysis of 162 million positive keywords on February 5, 2021, we found the following about how advertisers use Phrase Match and Broad Match Modified keywords.

• 89% of advertisers use broad match modified keywords.

• 55% of advertisers who use broad match modified always put a plus in front of every term in their BMM queries, i.e. +video +games +for +xbox

• 95% of all broad match modified keywords have a plus in front of every term of the keyword. So only 5% of keywords are more selective about plussing words like this ‘video games for +xbox’.”

Merging Phrase Match and Broad Match Modified

To give marketers more control, the strengths of Broad Match Modified will be merged into Phrase Match. Phrase Match will now expand to cover additional Broad Match Modifier traffic. Merging the two will make reaching potential customers and managing keywords easier in your account(s). Here is an example from Google that demonstrates the new difference.

In this example it shows what type of search queries Broad Match Modified would pick up compared to Phrase Match and what search queries Phrase Match will pick up after this change. As you can see, Broad Match Modified would pick up the search query moving services Boston to NYC. If you were this company you might not actually provide this service and would be wasting money on something you do not provide. Worse, you would likely not find out about it until after the fact. With the new phrase match you can ensure you hit a more targeted search query without getting the outliers that are way off the mark. 

What Happens to Broad Match Modified Now?

Broad Match Modified won’t just disappear on February 18th. Google says this change will be slowly rolled out over several months, so that there is no shock to the system and digital marketers can make a smoother transition.

“Starting mid-February, both Phrase Match and Broad Match Modifier keywords will begin to transition to this new matching behavior.  Because this behavior will be applied to both match types, you won’t have to take any immediate action—you’ll keep your performance data and have no need to migrate your keywords.  

In July, once the new behavior has been rolled out globally, you’ll no longer be able to create new Broad Match Modifier keywords. However, existing Broad Match Modifier keywords will continue to serve under the new behavior. That’s why starting now, we recommend creating new keywords in phrase match going forward.”

How Does Phrase Match Change

Although the Google algorithm will be more helpful for digital marketers, it is still an algorithm A.I. can make mistakes. Google states that word order will stay if it makes a difference to the meaning. For example, if your targeted keywords are a verb and a noun it will remain in the proper order. However, if the target keywords are two nouns then they can be interchanged in the order they appear. Google sees this as the same. In other words, the interchanging of the words has a similar variation. Most of the time there won’t be any issues with searches.  However, there is uncertainty with the community when the sequence gets flipped like “orange juice” and “juice orange”. Stuff like this can happen regardless of market size or the size of your campaign budget. 

The good news is that it can be avoided if you remain attentive over your account. All you have to do is review your search terms report regularly. In doing so you can find poor matches in your account and add them to your negative keywords list. There is a lot of back and forth regarding the changes that Google is making with broad match modified and phrase match. Hopefully, now you have a better understanding and can be prepared to make changes and catch all of the search queries you aren’t interested in.

Benefits of Advertising on Social Media

We all know by now that social media can be a great tool for businesses to leverage for advertising. You can get a lot out of advertising on social media platforms, and you can get additional benefits beyond organic growth and traffic.

Whether you are new to social media, just considering trying it or already using it, there are multiple ways you can power up your social media efforts. 

Reaching New Customers on Social Media

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat or TikTok allow you to reach to the masses and connect with new people that can benefit by using your products or services.

SEM platforms like Google Ads are keyword focused. Social Media ads target users based on things like interests, demographic data and behavior. This type of targeting provides an advantage that allows you to extend their reach to new and additional customers who use these platforms. People who see your posts or page may not know your brand or what products and services you provide. However, by having prospecting ads, these new people may realize that your company or product can benefit them. This in turn can provide an additional  conversion for you.

Leverage Audience Insight to Enhance Social Media Success

Being able to optimize your audience by testing target audiences is a huge advantage on social media. A great example of this is Facebook. You can break down your reporting to learn about age, gender, business locations, country, region, dma region, and impressions by device or time of day. The list goes on and on.

By comparing all of these demographics you can further optimize your ads to what is most responsive to the audience that you are reaching the most. By continuously looking at your demographics, and modifying your ads based on this information, you can increase your chance of success.

You can dive even deeper into Facebook by looking at Audience Insights in Facebook Ads Manager. You can get a further breakdown of things like relationship status, gender, job titles, Education level, etc. You might find that your product or services convert better when people just get into a relationship, are recently married, or recently moved. You can alter your ads to target this audience. However, this type of reporting is limited due to privacy and transparency, Facebook is starting to make changes to this data giving you limited access to it. So start checking this out before it disappears altogether. It can be beneficial.

Audience Insights on all social media platforms can be incredibly beneficial and help you save money where you do not get the best reach or conversions. If you want to learn more about demographics check out our Instagram Demographics blog post.

Affordability of Advertising on Social Media

Advertising can get expensive online but compared to other routes, social media advertising is much more cost effective, especially if you are working off a small budget. On most digital platforms a small budget won’t get you very far, but on social media you can find some success. The more money you can spend, the faster you can get insights and learn what is working. You can then test and optimize to get better results. So having a small budget that can get you results will work faster than other digital marketing platforms. 

If your company is the type that can be marketed successfully on Pinterest, then we would highly recommend starting there. Costs per click on this platform can be incredibly low. IN fact, it can cost as little as $0.10 low. With numbers like this you can create a low cost campaign and drive a high amount of traffic to your website, that you can later use for retargeting.
Knowing how much of a budget you have to play with, what platforms you can advertise on, and which ones you can scale the fastest, can help you understand where to start. For example, if you see increased sales after launching Pinterest you can do two things: Increase your Pinterest budget, or start ad campaigns on another platform to grow your reach further. 

Ad Formats on Social Media

When it comes to ad formats on social media, there are several unique ways to deliver them across all platforms. The great part about social media is that you can let your creativity thrive here. You have options like standard image format to long form video content. One format that has been taking social media by storm is Stories. Stories are a way to increase organic growth. You can find the stories format on Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Twitter and LinkedIn also recently established them as well.

You can create videos displaying your products or services in use. Making short videos of how your products work make it easy to digest for consumers. It is a pretty simple concept, creating engaging video content of your products and service which bring in a bigger audience, and providing you a stronger chance of attracting traffic, followers, and conversions. If you don’t have any video ads to leverage, it's okay. You can use static images and make them into a video. Make sure your videos catch the attention of consumers and show off your brand so you get brand recognition. Make them direct, and finally ensure you include a call to action. 

There are a wide variety of formats on social media for advertising, so make sure to experiment with all of them to find the most optimal success.

Being able to optimize your social media campaigns on such a precise level makes social media platforms incredible profitable, and great way to grow your brand audience and sales. Making sure that you take advantage of all the resources that social media platforms give you is how you will be able to make these strong optimization points.

2020 Instagram Demographics to Keep in Mind for Digital Marketing in 2021

Most of the world has been staying  at home and working remotely through 2020. That means that social media’s usage and popularity has skyrocketed as have companies' marketing efforts. With the world in lockdown, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the new normal for communication for everyone. 

When it comes to social media and successful digital marketing campaigns, you need to be strategic and leverage data and demographics. Today we will explain why Instagram is the digital marketing platform of choice for many marketers. We’ll also discuss Instagram data and why the demographics are important. 

Why Instagram is Popular

Instagram is one of the most used social media platforms in the world, with around one billion users. Due to the sheer popularity of the app you can expect your competition to promote on this platform too. 

Instagram is a social media platform that is based on taking pictures or videos to network with other users around the world. It is widely popular regardless of age, but is incredibly relevant to Gen Z. The app itself is very straightforward to use and the interface is interactive, easy to interpret and attractive. It allows users to gain popularity online and showcase their life, skills, and talents globally. Due to the amount of users of all ages it makes the perfect place to market to every age group. For many companies big, small, general or niche, it is the perfect place to secure marketing success.

Why look at 2020 Instagram Demographics for 2021 Digital Marketing

Studies reveal that 60% of people use Instagram to discover new products. There are also over 25 million business accounts on the Instagram platform. And with Instagram being the 6th most popular social media platform,  it's a great place to engage with your audience. A strong marketing strategy has creative leads, generates sales, and builds your brand which serve to increase your followers / audience. That should include Instagram. If you don’t have an account on Instagram, start one, and if you aren’t leveraging it to boost your marketing strategy you should start.

Instagram demographics will help you to better understand your users. They will also help you to figure out which posts and promotions work best with your target audience. By having demographics you will be able to further enhance your social media strategy on this platform.

Instagram General Statistics

Instagram was founded in October 2010. Since hitting the app store it has been on a continuous climb of growth in users joining and is considered one of the best social media marketing tools. Here is some general information about Instagram that shows how influential it truly is.

• Over one billion active users worldwide (monthly)

• 500 million active users (daily)

• Over 500 million accounts use Instagram stories (daily)

• In 2019 Instagram said around 90% of users follow at least one business account on the platform.

Age Demographics

When you are marketing your business, your brand and specific products can appeal to different age groups. Knowing your target audience’s age and the most prominent demographics on Instagram can help you gauge what you should be marketing on your Instagram account. Here is the demographic breakdown of adults on Instagram in the US.

• Ages 18-24  75%

• Ages 25-29  57%

• Ages 30-49  47%

• Ages 50-64  23%

• Ages 65+  8%

Geo & Location Demographics on Instagram

The United States has the most active users on Instagram with 116 million people in the U.S. using the app regularly. But the U.S. accounts for  only eleven percent of Instagram’s overall users. 

Statista pulled a report of the top twenty two countries that use Instagram in October 2020. Here are the top ten.

• United States - 140 million users

• India - 120 million users

• Brazil - 95 million users

• Indonesia - 78 million users

• Russia - 54 million users

• Turkey - 44 million users

• Japan - 37 million users

• Mexico - 31 million users

• United Kingdom - 28 million users

• Germany - 25 million users

To understand more about location demographics, Pew Research surveyed people in urban, suburban or rural areas about their Instagram use. The survey determined that 25% of people in urban areas 35% of people in suburban areas use Instagram and 21% of people in rural areas use Instagram. 

Ethnicity Demographics

Pew Research has done multiple surveys that focus on ethnicities using instagram, including two surveys published in 2015 and in 2018. The three ethnicities they surveyed are Latinos, African Americans, and Caucasians. Here are the results of those surveys.

In both surveys we can see that minorities form a higher percentage of Instagram users and that there is an increase in use for all ethnicities over the three year time period. And with the influx of users during 2020 we are sure that these numbers have continued to spike. 

Leverage Instagram Demographics to Help Increase Digital Marketing Success

Looking at Instagram demographics should be taken into consideration when creating your campaign strategies. With the right targeted audience you can enhance your brand and products appeal to the masses.

Valentine’s Day Marketing Ideas

Most businesses owners are looking for ways to engage with their audience and potential customers throughout the year. Valentine’s Day is an ideal holiday to interact with your customers through your digital marketing. We realize most industries don’t have a direct correlation to the holiday, but you can still benefit from it. Today we will be going over some marketing ideas exclusive to Valentine’s Day that you can implement to help increase your relationship with customers.

Promotions

Getting gifts for your significant other for Valentine’s Day is part of the tradition so cater to gift needs and run a promotion. Start your promotion as soon as possible so you can get traction on the post as well as the most value from customers who use the promotion. If you are promoting this on social media make sure to make a creative post to get your followers’ attention on your deal. 

Gift Guide for Customers

People are indecisive when it comes to gift giving because they want to make sure it is perfect. Their loved ones or significant others are incredibly valuable to them and they want to make sure to show that with their gifts. This is the perfect opportunity to promote your products or services that would make the ideal choice for a Valentine’s Day gift.
Let’s say your company has no direct link to Valentine's Day. What can you do? Easy, create a post or a blog about gift suggestions. Does this post benefit you directly? Not really however, by giving honest and strong suggestions, you will be helping your community find the best gift possible. This helps promote trust between you and your customers.

Giveaways

A great way to get extra traction on your social media platforms is to have a giveaway. A great giveaway for Valentine’s Day is to promote a couples photo giveaway. Have your followers make a post with their significant other. Make sure to request that they use a chosen giveaway hashtag along with your brand hashtag, tag you in the post and like the original post. You will get interactions on your post this way and if they participate in the giveaway by tagging you in the photo their followers now have the opportunity to learn about your business.

Things to Keep in Mind

Be There for Last-Minute Shoppers

Last minute shopping for Valentine’s Day is very common. Approximately 60% of people purchase their gifts just five days before the holiday. So having a last-minute promotion or extended in store hours can go a long way in promoting your business to people that are in a rush to find their gift.
If you are promoting this on your social media platforms, don’t be scared away from using the phrase last-minute. Your post can be the reminder your followers need to pick up a gift and stay out of trouble and with extended hours it can make it possible for them to obtain a gift. If your store is online also make sure to have a countdown timer for the last possible time to order a gift. The reason for this is that people often forget how long shipping can take and you don’t want an upset customer who thought their gift would make it in time and doesn't. It is the worst case scenario for everyone.

Giving Love to Your Customers Through Emails

If you have an email list of past or present customers, leverage it! Send out your own Valentine’s Day card. In your email just give you thanks for using your products or services and the gift you give them can be a special promotion or discount to be used solely for Valentine’s Day. It will make them feel valued, produce brand loyalty and help you make extra sales. 

If you have products or services that are targeted for Valentine’s Day make sure you are marketing them. And if your business doesn’t directly correlate with the holiday don’t hesitate to post or market around it. Hopefully these Valentine’s Day marketing ideas will help you this year.

LinkedIn Released LinkedIn Marketing Labs Courses for Advertisers

In January, LinkedIn introduced free video courses that aim to teach advertisers how to use LinkedIn ad tools as well as a crash course on how to leverage their platform. These courses offer an introduction to the basics that will help advertisers understand LinkedIn ads. You will find things here like how targeting works and how to access and leverage analytics and reporting. 

Some advertisers question how effective LinkedIn ads are, and most come to the conclusion that it works best for niche markets. These new courses have been established to help marketers understand LinkedIn ads better and encourage more people to try the platform. 

Why LinkedIn Marketing Labs Courses are Important for Marketers

As we’ve mentioned, many marketers have felt the advertising platform on LinkedIn is very hard to use. Advertisers also feel like they get few results whenever they have tried to use the platform. On the flip side, some marketers have said once they have figured out how to use the advertising platform they have been able to launch successful campaigns for themselves or their clients. 

LInkedIn’s new videos focusing on how to leverage LinkedIn ads might be just what encourages marketers to give it a second chance. These new videos are meant to help beginners and intermediate advertisers get a better scope of the process and with this new information marketers might see more success. Because LinkedIn is a business based social media platform, it can be very useful for B2B companies. 

What to Expect From LinkedIn Labs Course Videos

As of publishing,  LinkedIn has provided 6 main videos that advertisers can use to get a better understanding of the platform and its advertising tools. Here is a quick summary of those videos:

Introduction to LinkedIn Ads

In this course you will learn about LinkedIn’s paid solutions. You will learn:

• Why you should advertise on LinkedIn

• How to get started in the campaign manager

• Creating Ad Campaigns

• Reporting 

• Optimizing Ad Campaigns

Here is the link to the Introduction to LinkedIn Ads Course.

Using LinkedIn’s Ad Targeting

In this course you will learn about:

• LinkedIn Targeting

• How LinkedIn’s Targeting Works

• Audience Attributes

• Matches Audiences

• Targeting Demographics

• Optimizing Your Targeting Strategy

Here is the link to the Using LinkedIn’s Ad Targeting Course.

Reporting and Analytics For LinkedIn Ads

In this course you will learn about:

• Why you should use reporting and analytics

• Reporting in Campaign Manager

• Insight Tag and Conversion Tracking

• LinkedIn Demographic Analytics

• Optimizing Campaign Performance

Here is the link to the Reporting and Analytics For LinkedIn Ads Course.

Building A Full-Funnel Content Marketing Strategy on LinkedIn

In this course you will learn about:

• Why use Full-Funnel Content Marketing

• Where to Start

• Content Distribution

• Creative Strategy

Here is the link to the Building a Full-Funnel Content Marketing Strategy on LinkedIn Course.

Using LinkedIn For Brand Awareness

In this course you will learn about:

• Why to use LinkedIn for Branding

• Using LinkedIn Page for Brand Awareness

• Defining Your Target Audience

• Creative Best Practices for Brand Campaigns

• Distributing Branding Content on LinkedIn

• Measuring Your Brand Awareness Metrics

• Analyzing the Deeper Impact of Thought Leadership

Here is the link to the Using LinkedIn For Brand Awareness Course.

Using LinkedIn For Lead Generation

In this course you will learn about:

• Setting The Scene

• How to Reach Relevant Audiences

• Understanding the Value of Your Leads

• Lead Gen Forms

• Website conversions

• Optimizing Your Campaigns

• Measurement and Reporting

• LinkedIn Marketing Partners

Here is the link to the Using LinkedIn For Lead Generation Course.

New Hope for Marketers to use LinkedIn Ads

These 6 LinkedIn Marketing Lab courses offer hope for success of the ad platform and the success of its users. All of these courses are 45 minutes in length and give marketers insights for how to leverage the platform. If you're a digital marketer, have some extra time, and are thinking about starting or getting back into LinkedIn ads, check out these courses to help you get on the right path.

Google Ads PPC Strategy Cornerstones

When it comes to online marketing pay per click advertising plays a huge role for companies. This is especially true for leveraging pay per click advertising to maximize your return on PPC marketing. When people think of PPC marketing there are the big three: Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Bing Ads. These are a great way to drive targeting potential prospects to your website, landing page, or blogs. The majority of digital marketers prefer Google Ads and make it the biggest part of their PPC strategy. This is mainly because Google ads displays their ads on Google SERPs (search engine results page), which of course is the most used search engine in the world. 

Why to Use Google Ads in Your PPC Advertising

Digital marketing through a PPC strategy can be costly, however it has some great advantages and benefits.

Speed & Convenience

PPC campaigns are fast and easy to set up for digital marketers. You can use these ads to target potential prospects with great precision and with the proper tracking, you can see your results immediately.

Cost Effective

Unlike other platforms, on Google Ads, you the advertiser, are only charged when your ad is clicked and not when it is displayed so you get the most bang for your buck. 

Adaptability

In Google Ads you will be frequently optimizing your account to produce max success. You will be modifying things like keywords, ad text headlines, ad text descriptions, landing pages, url pathways, what hours you advertise and the location. The list goes on and on. 

Budgeting

As an advertiser on Google Ads you set your budget for your campaigns. There is no minimum spending limit on this platform and you can choose to spend specific amounts. For example, if you only want to spend 50 dollars a day you can set that parameter, if you only want to spend 35 cents when someone wants to click on your ad you can. And this too is flexible. If there is a specific time period you want to increase spend, or a specific set of days like during Black Friday, you can easily make that change to your budget and restrictions.

Dependability

With PPC campaigns on most platforms it is easy to predict the amount of visitors or impressions you will be gaining based on how much you spend. Facebook Google and Bing all show you a projected amount of potential impressions and as you continue to collect data, your predictions and projections will get more accurate.

However, if you are a first time digital marketer, you need to stay on top of your account. Many first time marketers lose money, especially when they do not set up their PPC marketing campaigns. 

Google Ads PPC Campaign Prep

One of the first things we recommended doing if you are just starting your own Google Ads campaigns is to go through Google Skillshop. Google Skillshop helps you master and understand the tools that Google provides companies that use their platform and it is free. All you need is a gmail account. 

If you want additional information or just some more background for Google Ads, check out our tutorial for beginners. After you sign at the top there is a drop down that has the word topics. just click on that drop down and click on the Google Ads tab and you can get a crash course on everything about Google Ads and even get Google Certified at the end if you want. 

The next step after learning more about how to effectively use the platform, you should go to the Google Ads Keyword Suggestion tool to start making a strong list of keywords for the products or services that will be in your campaigns. 

Long-tail Keyword Phrases

PPC ads are competitive, and the price to get your ad to clicked on can vary on the keyword. For example, based on Google's Keyword Planner the keyword “lawyer” as a top page bid can range from $4.97 to $16.50. Top of page are the top three spots on a search result which are where you are most likely to get the best chance of conversion. However, if you use a long-tailed keyword, or a phrase, you are not searched as often as the competitive keywords.  You will, however,l get more bang for your buck and more potential clients that are willing to buy. A long-tailed keyword could be “human rights lawyer” which ranges from $1.62 to $7.24, which is half as expensive as the general, but competitive, keyword “lawyer”. It will also have a drastically lower number of impressions, except you will be getting potential prospects that are looking specifically for a human rights lawyer which gives you an even more search targeted audience.

Creating Strong PPC Google Ads 

One thing that is essential and correlates to your success on Google Ads is having strong ad copy. 

Product Price

One option you can go with is letting the potential customer know the price of the item or service. This strategy is offensive and defensive. lt is defensive because if your product price is higher than the consumer expects it can defer them from clicking on your ad and wasting money on that click. They may also  close out of your site once they see the price. It is also offensive because if you have great prices compared to other competitors it will work to your advantage to get more clicks and more potential customers.

Call to Action

A call to action is when you ask the customer with a specific phrase to perform an action like “call no”, “sign up”, or “purchase now”. The call to action helps the customer understand what they need to do after reading and clicking your advertisement. 

Adding Strongest Performing Keywords & Brand Name to Your Ads

When a user searches in Google, the keywords they used in your ad copy will be bolded which further validates your ad to the consumer. So reviewing your keywords to see which of your ad keywords are performing the best and adding them into your ad can be extremely helpful. Also, including your brand name into your ads will help the customer with brand recognition.

Continuous Optimization

We highly recommend working on continuous optimization. For example, when creating ads most people will have two variations running at once. The differences should test one specific thing. For example, you might try a different call to action in both ads and see which ad has the better click through and conversion rate. After having significant data you can choose the stronger ad and then make another variation off that ad to test. You can also test variations of keywords and change your maximum cost per click. 

There are several different tests you can try in Google Ads because the platform is so versatile. Just remember to always further your optimizations because you can always get better results. If you want tips for writing ad copy check out our ad copy tips blog post.

Making sure you understand how Google Ads functions and having a strong foundation in your account are essentials for success in PPC strategy. Adding the prep work before launch, including strong ad copy, and continuous optimization will allow you to bring your success to a whole new level in Google Ads.

Leverage Consumer Psychology For Post COVID Online Marketing Success

When companies look at converting consumers, they often overlook the psychological process that helps drive customers to purchase products or services. Sometimes companies don’t have the time to dig in the data and see the effects of psychology and instead will focus their attention on high performing campaigns. Delving deeper into the  psychological process behind consumer purchases should be something that you should consider. Especially now with vaccines being released and a renewed optimism that society can start getting back to normal.

Getting insight on consumer behavior is a strong focal point for driving successful conversions. In 2021 we will see some shifts in behavior. So let’s dive deeper into understanding the psychology of consumer behavior and why it’s important.

Why Consumer Psychology is Important

2020 has been a difficult year for most. Due to the virus, there have been changes in consumer personality traits. One important thing to note is that marketing is built and developed on understanding brands and their consumers. With everything that has happened this year marketers might want to reassess how their consumers view things and consider how that will affect marketing your products and services.

If you own an online store then you know that data about your consumer’s behavior is one of the most impactful things you can utilize. With behavioral analysis you can gain further insight into your customers and ensure a more personalized experience on your website.

Browsing Behavior for Online Marketing

One important online tool that provides strong insight into how customers interact with your online store is browsing behavior. Browsing behavior can be tracked by web analytics tools that can consider factors like how a consumer is attracted to a specific online store and what products they like or look at frequently. This can also be used to see how consumers interact with your landing page.

Purchasing Behavior for Online Marketing

Tracking your consumer purchasing behavior can provide great advantages. This will give you insight on the psychological makeup of consumers based on buying patterns and responses to promotional campaigns. This is a great tool for marketers that are trying to figure out how seasonal, or discounted promotions are working. Or, if you want to see how a specific product is selling, this can be great to use as well. 

Consumer Perception Changes Online Marketing During COVID

The effects of COVID-19 had a catastrophic effect on companies worldwide. This pandemic changed our businesses, work, lifestyles and the way our customers shop. People over the past year have spent their money on lifestyle changes that are specific to their new routines. Examples of these lifestyle changes include people transitioning to working from home and social distancing. The new health and safety codes people need to abide by have rapidly increased social media and ecommerce marketing trends compared to the last couple of years. According to the US Census, in Q2 2020 retail ecommerce reached $211.5 billion. This is an increase of  31.8% compared to Q1 and 44.5% year over year.

Considerate Consumption

Consumers are also being mindful of what they are buying. They  are consciously working on limiting food waste and are focusing their shopping on sustainable products. Brands will need to adapt to this new trend and possibly change their business models to accommodate and increase their opportunities for sales.

A/B Testing to Gauge Consumer Perception

To gauge if you are adapting to consumers' new perceptions you can use a/b testing on your landing pages and websites. A/B testing is a great way to present your consumers with two different landing pages containing the same information. These two pages will have different optimizations. After gathering an amount of data you can compare bounce rates and conversions of these pages to see which page is more effective. If you want to try multiple pages feel free, but keep track of what the changes are. If you have more pages tested at once you might want to get a larger data pool to make the most accurate decision regarding the winning page. Once finding your winning page, create another A/B test to further test and optimize your page so you can to continuously improve your conversion rate. The tests can be as simple as a different call to action, or as big as a new description or formatting change.

With all of the changes to the marketing world during the last year and vaccines starting to be rolled out, it is clear you need to analyze how you consumers have been behaving during and post pandemic. Normally this process would be easy to predict, but with these drastic changes you might need to change your methods. Extensive A/B testing and understanding consumer psychology will help you gain an advantage with both new and existing changes to the market.

2021 February Marketing Ideas

We’re already halfway through January and many marketers are looking into their marketing plans for February. The most well-known holiday in February is Valentine’s Day, so most people think of love and candy. In this post we are going to go over a few other special days that take place in February that you can promote. We’ll also take a look at several causes you can bring awareness to and unique observances you can leverage for creative marketing content to appeal to your target audience. 

February Marketing Ideas for Awareness Causes

Here is a list of awareness causes in February that you can use if they apply to your business or your audience:

• American Heart Month (for heart disease)

• American History Month

• Bake for Family Fun Month

• Black History Month

• Cancer Prevention Month

• Children’s Dental Health Month

• Embroidery Month

• Free & Open Source Month

• Library Lover’s Month

• Self-Check Month (Personal Health)

• Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month

• Wedding Month

Some of these awareness causes are general like “Wedding Month” and some are hyper specific such as “Bake for Family Fun Month”. Your company might find it hard to use all of these causes in posts. Make sure what you post seamlessly relates to your business.

Examples of Awareness Causes Posts

Black History Month is definitely important, especially given the events of 2020. So this year, make sure to put extra thought into your planning when posting anything Black History related. This post should be catered toward social change, rather than a marketing focus. Try highlighting black industry leaders who have shaped American society or industry.

“Cancer Awareness Month” is another popular cause that everyone should get involved in. Show your support on all social media with a purple theme. You can encourage your followers to make their profile picture purple as well, and promote purple products to continue spreading awareness.

February Marketing Ideas for Holidays

There are many well known holidays in February that you can post about. There is one caveat though -  make sure they align with your brand voice. Here are a few examples:

• Presidents Day

• Groundhog Day

• Valentine’s Day

• Mardi Gras

• World Cancer Day

• Ice Cream for Breakfast Day

• Boy Scouts Day

• National Pizza Day

• Clean Out Your Computer Day

• Random Acts of Kindness Day

• Love Your Pet Day

Examples of Holiday Posts

Mardi Gras is a great way to run a giveaway on social media. Mardi Gras is one of the most festive holidays and produces great engagement. With strong hashtags to spread your reach you can get more followers and gain some leads. Try giving away a Mardi Gras themed gift and have your audience follow some rules like following your page, liking the post and tagging a friend in order to win. This will boost your overall engagement.

“Wear Red Day” is a national holiday that raises awareness for heart disease. To spread awareness in your post, try using eye opening stats to drive home the importance of how heart disease can affect your audience. If your company is directly connected to the heart, you might consider hosting an event in support of cardiovascular health.

Leverage February Specific Hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to reach a bigger audience, gain more followers and secure more engagement and leads. Make sure the February specific hashtags are something you can tie into your company's brand / voice. Here are a couple of examples of some hashtags you can use:

• #Febsale - Febsale is a great way for small businesses to do a promotion for free shipping or a percentage off of their purchases.

• #FebruaryFeels - This is a hashtag you can use for testimonials from your customers or clients. You can give thanks for the praise as well as show off your company's prowess.

• #FebruaryFavorites - This hashtag is great for posting things of value to your customers. You can promote your most popular products or services to help new potential clients or customers. Or you can use this hashtag to give tips related to your products. This can also drive traffic to your website by adding it to your blog posts.

February is a great month with numerous holidays and observances that you can leverage on your social media to help your business gain more traction. Hopefully, you can capitalize on some of these posts to support some of the observances and holidays that mean the most to your company and your audience. And we also encourage you to leverage the hashtags we’ve recommended to help you gain a bigger audience on your socials.

2021 Marketing Retail Trends

2021 has arrived! There are always new trends that appear with the new year. Today, we are going to go over some of the top trends that you should be aware of for this year. 

Social Commerce

COVID-19 has sparked a huge surge in online shopping. Social commerce is the native shopping experience on a social media platform like Facebook or Tik Tok. Instead of needing to click on a post to get sent to another site to purchase the product, this technique allows the consumer to purchase the item directly from the social media site or app. 

With everyone staying at home and being more involved in social media, we have seen social commerce on platforms like Tik Tok, Spotify, Snapchat and the new feature Facebook Shops.

Facebook Shops are custom storefronts for businesses on Facebook and Instagram. This allows businesses to create an online storefront where the business can edit banners, images, items, buttons and colors. This Shop can be accessed on both Facebook and Instagram once it is set up which is great because you can now get an audience on both platforms. It is a two for one. 

Augmented Reality to Increase the Shopping Experience

When purchasing bigger items like a treadmill or a bicycle, most people want to go to the store to see how it looks to compare d products and make the best possible decision. Most of the world is in a situation where people are unable to physically experience a product and must compare using images instead. This is where AR or augmented reality comes into play. 

Augmented reality will fill the gap of purchasing online, but still provide the physical feel people want in order to purchase a product. Some bigger companies like IKEA and Target are already using AR shopping experiences. If you're a small business don’t worry, some platforms are helping make this possible for you.

Last year Shopify pushed out Shopify AR which is a toolkit to help businesses create their own AR experience and showcase their products. Expect to see more AR based experiences in 2021 and don’t be shy to hop on this trend. It can really give you a leg up on the competition. 

Retail Trend on Delivery Times

We all know that Amazon was dominating shipping speed when they released the possibility of one day and same day delivery. The original norm was five to seven days, then two day shipping arrived and now we have next day and same day shipping. Big companies like Walmart are now replicating the fast shipping process that Amazon, the trend setter, has set. However they are even going further and giving the option of two hours express delivery. 

Getting your package as fast as possible gives customers a sense of satisfaction like none other. Some customers will even check multiple sites to find the fastest shipping just to receive their products more quickly. Same day shipping isn’t a new concept. It has been around for two years, but is now becoming the norm.

Smart Speaker Shopping Trend

Smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home have skyrocketed in the last couple years. There was a spike of 70% increase of homes with smart speakers from 2018 to 2019 and we expect these numbers to continue to grow. Around 87 million adults in the US own a smart speaker today, so the trend of smart speakers has already started. However there is a unique feature that makes this incredibly viable for you. 

These smart speakers have become a tool for people to shop online, especially during the pandemic. Twenty percent of smart speaker owners are currently utilizing the shopping feature. You can purchase items, do product research, and even track deliveries using this feature.
As an ecommerce company you should look into voice-optimized SEO to help boost your traffic and make it easy for smart speakers to find your products.

These four trends are likely to dominate this year and will more than likely further grow and expand throughout the years. Being able to apply these trends to your company's strategy would greatly benefit your chances to increase your sales and revenue throughout 2021. If you want some more digital marketing trends for 2021 check out our other blog post.

Why You Should Put Captions in Your Social Media Videos

Regardless of your business vertical, you are more than likely using videos in your marketing strategy. If you haven't already started generating video content we recommend you do. Most people prefer watching a video about products or services rather than reading about them. However, due the tremendous number of videos being created it might be difficult to stand out. One thing that can increase the success of your video that many content providers skip out on is closed captions. Let’s talk about how captions can elevate your video.

Google Can Crawl Captions

Regarding the SEO aspect of video in YouTube, there is an indexing SEO process that is linked through title, description, tags, and captions. However captions are optional because Google cannot watch your video content to determine how relevant it is to the title, description and tags. Adding closed captions in your videos allows Google to better rank your video compared to others that do not have captions in them. This gives you the upper hand to rank higher in the search results. So the next time you create a video make sure in your script that you are using keywords that you believe will be searched to find your video.

People Don’t Use Sound On Videos

Did you know on Facebook around 85 percent of all videos that are watched without sound? The reason is that people are scrolling through their new feed and come across the video there. If the video being played isn’t interesting it will more than likely be passed over. However, if you have captions in your video it will more than likely keep the attention of the viewer and allow them to  better understand what is happening in the video. Captions will grab the attention of the viewer and help them maintain focus on the video that is being watched. It will also help encourage brand recall and associate brand recognition  as you will stay in the viewer’s mind.

Make Social Videos Inclusive with Captions

There are over 37 million Americans that are deaf or hard of hearing, so having videos with only audio eliminates a large percentage of your potential audience. Additionally, around 41 percent of videos are not comprehensible due the lack of closed captioning. When you don't have captions you are missing out on the opportunity to encourage numerous potential viewers to learn about you and your content. It is also the right thing to do to make sure everyone can understand and enjoy your content. 

Do Captions on Your Social Media Videos The Right Way

Before you ask yes, there is a wrong way to do captions for a video. There are strict rules you need to follow such as character limit, reading speed and cue-in and out times. If you don’t know the proper guidelines, your captions are worthless because people won't be able to read them. We recommend using the American Translators Association Directory, which has a dubbing/subbing section or you can hire a professional subtitler or captioner to do the work for you. If you have never done it before, stay away from free caption tools on the market and make sure you do it the right way.

If you're spending a lot of time creating social media videos it only makes sense to finish them off the right way and add closed captions. You will be inclusive and allow everyone to enjoy your content.  You will rank also higher in YouTube because of Google crawling. Finally,  on social sites like Facebook where people don’t automatically use audio, it will attract more attraction and bring more engagement to yoru videos.

Promoting Your Business Through LinkedIn Stories

One of the most popular ways to promote a business is through Instagram Stories. Did you know around one third of Instagram Stories are from businesses? Well now the business social platform LinkedIn has launched their own stories for professionals to use! LinkedIn Stories allow you to create a video that goes for 20 seconds and have it viewable to profiles for a full 24 hours, before it goes away.

Should you start diving into LinkedIn Stories? Are they different from your normal story features on other platforms like Instagram? To make it short, yes you should. LinkedIn Stories will allow you to further show off your brand and interact with your audience in a way they are already accustomed to.

What is a LinkedIn Story

As we mentioned above LinkedIn Stories are a way to show images to your audience for 20 seconds  that are only available for 24 hours before they disappear. You can post videos or images on LinkedIn Stories.

This feature is identical to the ones you see on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. You can also add stickers, place overlays, @ someone, promote other LinkedIn accounts, or do an AMA.

LinkedIn Story Benefits

LinkedIn’s story feature is unique compared to other social media platforms.  You can use it on LinkedIn to advertise to business contacts instead of posting life hacks, pictures of family and friends to people you know. On LinkedIn you will be posting to both peers and future prospects, so you will be posting content that is more than likely promotional.

This non traditional approach on LinkedIn allows you to provide more insight into your business to people. This feature will be most useful to company owners, entrepreneurs, and businessmen who want to count on a trust factor with prospective customers and future clients.

LinkedIn Stories offers you a significant opportunity to gain interactions from your audience. For example, Instagram Stories saw a 25% increase in the use of the swipe up feature (swipe up feature allows you to link a url) when there was a branded post. LinkedIn is expected to follow a similar trend to Instagram’s on its platform.

Keep in mind that you might not get direct sales but at a minimum, you will be promoting your brand and creating brand awareness. If you create the right strategy behind LinkedIn Stories you can successfully atir interest in your brand.

Promoting Your Company Using LinkedIn Stories

Sharing Customer Testimonials In LinkedIn Stories

Today, the success of products, services and companies are ruled by reviews. It can make the difference in a final sale. It also works for powerful content and marketing. Millennials are rapidly climbing the corporate ladder and becoming decision makers in their companies. Reviews have always been a critical part of their decision making process and this makes content using reviews very viable. Have a short clip from customers talking about how great your product or services are and it will be one of the best actions you take to draw their attention. 

Business Tips & Tricks

What better way to flex your business prowess than to create short format content informing others about how to make their business more successful? If you share tips or tease some of your valued features, it will encourage chatter from your audience. Make some of your posts exclusive to only LinkedIn and promote this exclusivity on other platforms to further your following. Through word of mouth and sharing you can really get the ball rolling. 

Inform Others On Trends Or Announcements

If you become an early adopter of LinkedIn Stories you will have the opportunity to grow your LinkedIn follower count before Stories becomes popularized. To really capitalize on this you can use Stories to post information regarding news updates from platforms. For example, since we are a digital marketing firm we would post content on updates to Google Ads, or any social media updates that would benefit digital marketing. By sharing this information you are gifting knowledge to others and building a community.

Overall, leveraging this new feature on LinkedIn will help you capitalize on this platform. Keep in mind these posts only last for 24 hours so there is no need for them to be perfect before you post them. However, make sure they relate to your business and your followers. However, if you post content that is too casual you will more than likely see a decline in the results you are looking for. Be an early adopter of LinkedIn Stories and race to the top improving your brand awareness on the LinkedIn platform.

Creating a Social Media Schedule

Having a social media schedule can come in handy. I am sure we have all had that moment when we are supposed to post something first thing in the morning, but  a morning meeting interferes.  making you scramble to throw something up before you have to go. It can get really chaotic when you are posting to multiple social media platforms and you need to post multiple times a day. A great way to control this chao is with a content calendar. 

To help out posting on a social media schedule many companies leverage content calendars to make it easier to post consistently and frequently.

Content Calendar for Social Media

A content calendar helps you organize and publish posts on social media. You can schedule by date so you keep track of deadlines or you can see what you're missing. This really helps if you have multiple team members working on social media at the same time so posts don’t overlap and everyone is on the same page. 

Depending on the social media platform you post to your content calendar format will vary. With a social media schedule you will be able to map out the specific month, day, and hour you want to post. Having this detail of organization helps you to have your content done ahead of time. In turn, this will allow you extra time and reduce the stress and pressure associated with posting, as well as giving you time to review analytical data, research trends, or revamp your brand’s format and presence on the platform.

Creating a Content Calendar

There are hundreds of content calendars that you can download for free or you can pay for more advanced templates. If you have the time, you can easily create your own. The best way to create your content calendar is by using Excel or Google Sheets. 

The first thing you will want to do is make a new sheet for each social media platform you plan to post to. Each platform has its own niche, for example posts on Twitter might not make sense to also post on LinkedIn. The most used platforms are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest. Depending on your vertical you may or may not be leveraging Pinterest. Also, because each platform is slightly different you might want to slightly modify what you write in each one. This is why you have different sheets for each. 

Social Media Schedule on a Monthly Scale

Creating a monthly calendar tab will help you see the full scope of what you want to be promoting during your upcoming month. It will keep you and your team coordinated and everyone will know exactly what needs to be done and when it must be completed.

There are a couple things to keep note of. One is color coordination.  Having color coordination set up will help you clearly see what type of posts are due and must be completed. On your sheet make sure you set the month, the proper dates, and all of the types of posts you plan to have. 

Social Media Content Sheets

In our example,  you will see eight columns on each social media sheet. These columns include: Day, Date, Time, Message, Message Length, Link, Campaign, Image. 

The day, date and time are exactly what you would expect. It is when you plan to release your posts to the public.

Next is the message and message length. Your message is straightforward, however what can make things difficult are  character counts. On some platforms there is a character count that you cannot exceed. For example on Twitter each tweet can be a maximum of 280 characters. Creating a character counter is the best way to make sure you stay under the maximum number  of characters. 

Link, Campaign, and Image are pretty straightforward as well. The link is for a URL  if you are promoting a specific page or landing page. The campaign is for your tracking. It is to correlate what you have marked on your monthly calendar. This will be a quality check to confirm that the post you are generating is the post you chose beforehand. The image section is where you put the size parameters and a description of the image you are planning to post so that you know what you're posting.

Having a monthly content calendar is one of the best things you can implement to help organize and schedule your social media posts. As long as you have moderate skills in Google Sheets or Excel, we strongly  suggest creating your own content calendar. That way  you can continuously build and customize it to fit your needs and keep your posts on track and on target.

Google App Campaigns to Engage Existing Users

Google has dropped an App Campaign that is built around engagement. This new Google App Campaign can be used in Google Search, Google Play, Mobile Display Network, and YouTube. This campaign's main purpose was to re-engage past app users and foster brand loyalty again.

How Google App Campaigns Works

These ads are specifically used to target returning customers with new offers and content. Essentially it creates opportunities to bring the customer back to your app to use it. This can also be used in a few other ways, for example it can be leveraged to target a customer who has a product in their cart, but failed to finalize the order. You can also use it to create in-app purchases, or promote event sales. 

This campaign type will help past users who might have forgotten about your game or app, and also give you the opportunity to peak their interest again. 

To create these ads all you need to do is submit ad copy, images, videos, have a starting bid and budget. Your Google App Campaigns will start running and be displayed dynamically across the platforms. App campaigns for engagement can be linked to business data feeds or product feeds in the Google Merchant Center. Feeds will allow you to scale your ads with updates of your latest products and services. 

Custom Prompts

Eventually, the feeds you have linked to your Google Merchant Center will be used to show “custom prompt” On Google. And this will notify users they can complete an action in the app. This again is a feature that allows you to bring back past users that might have stopped using your app.

Are You Eligible For Google App Campaigns

You will need an audience size of at least 250,000 installations to be eligible for app campaigns for engagement. You will also need to create a separate account from your app campaigns for installs to ensure you’re optimizing for the campaign objective. There are a few more requirements you need to fulfill for eligibility. You can check them out here on Google’s post.

Google App Campaigns are a great way to bring back past users. Through this tool you can help your audience rediscover the fun of your game app or interest new and returning customers in new promotions you have on your app if it is ecommerce oriented.