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“What could we expect from another $1k in spend?”
Planning and estimating campaign performance can be a daunting task, especially for those who have clients wanting to know about your expected results before they hire your services.
It’s a tough question to answer!
However, thanks to Google’s updated Performance Planner which uses auction data, seasonality and recent history, you can now predict performance at various spend levels, performance targets or total conversion goals.
Forecasting: You can simply create a plan and find insights on Conversions, CPA and Spend and then make changes to these metrics to estimate your campaign performances.
You can also see how your performance numbers will change in real-time and share that information before implementing anything. It’s a safe place to forecast.
Seasonality: You can also customize the dates of your forecasts to suit the periods that matter most to your business. Every time you update your date range, the forecasts will take seasonality into account.
This is based on several factors such as historical search queries in similar periods, geographical areas, and categories from previous years.
Budget estimation and allocation: This tool also helps you calculate and allocate budgets across campaigns and accounts. It will look at your proposed bidding and budget settings and give you the estimated performance for each spend point.
Got more budgets to play with? This tool will tell you how best to spend it.
Got budget cuts? It will tell you the best areas to cut while maintaining performance.
Keyword level estimations: Click on the “Things to try” section, where you can add/remove keywords to discover how these changes will affect the performance.
Here are a few additional things to keep in mind:
- Make sure you are comparing apples with apples. Your campaigns and accounts in each plan should have similar objectives.
- Not all campaigns are eligible to be planned. There needs to be enough data to get accurate forecasts.
- The closer you are to your forecast period, the more accurate the plan is.
- These forecasts are based on auction data, seasonality and recent history from your campaigns. So, bear in mind that they are just estimates and your actual performance levels may vary.
INSTRGRAM
Instagram Feed Algorithm insights, straight from the horse’s mouth
Do you follow Instagram’s @Creators account?
Recently, they shared some insights on how their algorithm works, answering some popular questions and debunking some myths. Shall we have a look?
Does the type of account you have impact ranking? Apparently, the algorithm doesn’t favour posts from business or verified accounts. Rather, it depends on the kind of content you’re creating and interacting with.
Does Feed ranking favour videos over photos? Again, the answer lies in what the user interacts more with. If the algo finds that you engage more with pics, it will prioritize pics in your feed.
Do engagement pods work? This is about those groups of people that agree to like and comment on each others’ posts to spike the engagement. Instagram says that these “tricks” might provide a short term benefit, but in the long term the algorithm prioritizes authenticity and transparency. Plus, the algorithm recognizes inauthentic behaviour.
More insights are:
- The algorithm does NOT prioritize posts that get more engagement in the first 30 minutes.
- And Instagram DOES count comments that have less than 3 words.
Sounds interesting. They basically crushed some very popular theories on how the app works.
That being said, a savvy marketer will know that sometimes these official statements don’t always tell the whole story. So, if some of these things have worked for you in the past, don’t change anything based on this post.
SPONSORED
😉 New push notification format gets around Chrome and iOS restrictions for advertisers!
Yeah, you heard that right! RichPush, a high quality push traffic ad network, is bringing all its advertisers some good news after these last weeks made marketers worried.
As you know, with the latest updates from Chrome, advertisers have a harder time subscribing new users to their push lists. But there is a solution and it comes with an extra upside…
It’s called in-page push notifications! This new format offered by RichPush has quite a few things going for it:
- Visually, they are no different from push notifications, but work in a different way on the technical side of things.
- They let you avoid obstacles put in place by Chrome when it comes to getting new subscribers.
- You can reach iOS devices too, which was unavailable for this type before.
- No delay so the time between when the ads are displayed will be about the same as the time of a click.
So it’s kind of like push but with a twist. And it’s something you want to get to know better now, or you’ll be left behind another possible traffic type boom!
Try in-page notifications traffic right here from RichPush.
What do you have to do in your campaign? Pretty simple, just select in-page push notifications in the campaign settings page.
To build your appetite for this even more, you can get 10% extra on your first deposit too. Just tell your account manager the promo code WTAFF10 and they’ll handle everything for you.
Early-bird gets the worm, so sign up and set up your campaign now.
What, when and how to create a $40k email camp
This is a BFCM case study shared by Joshua Chin, but hey… it can be replicated for every product launch, or for other big events such as the upcoming Valentine’s Day.
There are three key tactics:
Hype builder
In this phase, you gotta start teasing your list about your next launch/sale and also create a VIP list for engaged prospects.
The goal of this phase is to build some hype around the launch while also building up a sub-list of ‘hot leads’, which will result in higher open rates and less unsubscribed contacts during the actual launch.
These hype-builder messages shouldn’t aggressively sell, but you should still use discounts to start getting those conversions flooding. In this phase, Joshua generated around $2-3k.
VIP Launch
This email gets sent out to your best customers a day earlier than the general list, drumming up some early anticipation for the sale. Not much to say here, just recognize who your best customers are and let them know about the sale event in advance.
The Closing
This part is about urgency: Send two reminders 6 and 8 hours before the discount ends, but only send them to the more active subscribers (such as the ones that opened your previous teasers).
This is how the launch evolved. However, Joshua shared three more takeaways:
- Use a timer in your messages to spike that feeling of urgency.
- Communicate product scarcity.
- Make your CTA stronger by adding discounts in it.
Finish line!
Easy steps for high ROAS camps!
ROUNING UP THE STACK
- SEO: Google has announced its plans to test more variations and changes to the desktop search results based on the feedback from users about the favicon and black ad label rollout.
- SOCIAL MEDIA: Vine successor, Byte, has finally been launched. Some say it will compete head to head with TikTok… Mh, not easy, but let’s see.
- SHOPIFY: Shopify shares its take on the future of e-commerce and 10 trends that will shape the future in 2020.
- CONTENT MARKETING: When was the last time you upgraded your website content? Here’s the right manner to go about it and the ways in which it can be beneficial for your business.
BRAIN TEASER
A doctor and a nurse have a baby boy. The boy’s father is not the doctor and the mother is not the nurse. How is it possible?
You can find the solution by clicking here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
The 10 most innovative countries in the world
Bloomberg’s Innovation Index recently revealed a list of the most innovative countries in the world.
Maybe you have a burning pride at living in one of them? Or, if not, we hope your country can at least ease that pain with beautiful beaches, towering mountains or delicious food.
Anyway, going back to the list, the most innovative country is none other than Germany, with mechanical engineering and automotive industries being responsible for a large portion of Germany’s success in this year’s rankings.
Surprised?
What about the US? Surely they’re up there, right? Well, 9th position is the best they could do, leaving many disappointed with the ranking.
Although, we all know that these rankings don’t always reflect the whole truth.
Anyway, you can see the ranking here:
If you want to know how and why these countries made it to the top 10, head here.