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New CTA stickers for Page Stories!
Facebook Stories were introduced only a couple months ago and they are yet to become an integral part of our online experience.
However, Mark seems to be hell-bent on making them work. ‘If it’s not already a trend, make it one’ seems to be his mantra.
And to fuel Facebook Stories quickly, the FB team has launched a new set of CTA stickers to entice marketers to take FB Stories more seriously.
These new CTA buttons are the same that you generally see in the header of your Business Pages. But now allowing your Stories’ viewers to take actions such as ‘Shop Now’, ‘Get Directions’ or ‘Book Now’ directly from the Stories feed.
Though, on another thought, wouldn’t we all have wanted to see this feature in Instagram ahead of Facebook? Desperation, favouritism or farsightedness, only time can tell.
Google Shopping figures: why you should use it more.
Google Shopping figures: why you should use it more.
Considering the volatile market conditions, we find it very hard to talk about predictions – we just don’t like to be wrong – but there are some trends that simply can’t be ignored.
One trend that a marketer, and particularly, an e-commerce owner should consider, is Google Shopping. According to Andy Taylor, 2018 Q4 indicates Google’s runway for Shopping growth is far from over.
For the first ten weeks of the quarter, Google Shopping clicks grew 34 percent year over year, a massive acceleration from Q3, as impressions skyrocketed. The increase was even stronger on smartphones, where impression growth went from 55 per cent in Q3 to 111 per cent in Q4.
While it’s still not clear where all the clicks came from, it seems they are partly coming at the expense of older ad-formats. Especially since non-brand text ad clicks decreased 26 per cent year over year over the first ten weeks of the quarter.
Talking about keywords, they’re still important, particularly in Google Shopping: using keyword negatives and campaign priorities intelligently can help map Shopping traffic to the best product offerings with the most appropriate bids for the queries being searched, limiting wasted spend and maximizing return.
On one hand, there is Amazon starting to absorb marketers’ ad-budgets previously dedicated to Google. On another front, Google is fighting with Google Express. Yet this is a marketplace considered to be for offline retailers.
The Crew’s Take:
Though Amazon’s market share in digital advertising is starting to gain more points, Google is still a huge platform to meet your customers.
And Google Shopping, particularly after these numbers that show consistent growth, is a weapon you shouldn’t underestimate when it’s about making more sales in 2019.
GENERAL
4X your conversion rates by revolutionizing your sign-up forms?
Generating quality traffic is getting expensive every year and CPMs are on the steep rise for every marketer.
Your businesses may not be generating a lot of organic traffic or may not even be a well-known brand. We still reach most of our potential customers using paid ads with higher and higher CPCs.
Hence, it’s crucial for us marketers to make sure our basic back-end mechanisms are spot-on before pouring more money into new acquisitions.
You don’t necessarily need a huge percentage of people visiting your site to convert more. You need to focus on improving conversion rates on your sign-up forms.
Marketo spent $8k on ads over 3 months to test various strategies around this.
The results? Increase in conversion rate from 11% to 41% – that’s 4X increase with the same ad spend.
Using “The LIFT Model”, which focused on cognitive biases to update their sign-up forms was the simple key.
They recognized 5 key upgrades for their sign-up forms:
– A clear value proposition.
– Asking simple, relevant questions to segment the audience based on their responses.
– A clear CTA.
– Removing distractions by including a plain background.
– Communicating that it’s 100% free and only takes 15s to complete the action.
Here’s how they played with these elements to achieve their goals:
Interactive content: Using interactive images to segment the audience. A multi-step discovery process with questions and a set of answers in the form of image boxes for users to identify themselves.
This interactive content converts 70% of the time compared to static content which converts at a mere 36%. They made sure this form was the first thing users see after they land on their website.
Conditional Logic: Also, known as Auto-fill. It makes things easier for the user with fewer info-fields for them to fill in and lesser time to complete the qualification process.
That was the final step for them to create a perfect form as it included a lot of personalization and a bit of automation. Which is exactly what modern-day shoppers expect and prefer.
Final pointers to keep in mind:
– Placement is critical. Always place your forms above the fold.
– Single Column Layout. Which means a short piece of text on the left side and a simple actionable form on the right side of the page.
– Include Privacy Policy. When it comes to providing their information, 84% users worry about data privacy. Have a clear and well-defined privacy Policy on all pages seeking information from users.
– CTA Optimization: Play around with your CTA and go beyond the regular “Submit”, “Buy Now”, “Enter”. Focus on CTA’s which highlight the benefit for your visitors. For example “Try Free for 30 days”. “Free Sign-up No CC Reqd” etc.
The Crew’s Take:
Having the perfect forms isn’t an easy task. While something may work for a particular niche, it may not work for another one. Test for yourself.
You don’t have to start from scratch but play around with different variations and split test the placement, layout, CTA until you have found the one that works for you.
Planning your email strategy.
In 2018, email turned 40 years old. And after all this time, this traffic source is still something you can make a sweet amount of Benjamins from.
However, while the effectiveness of email doesn’t change, there are some things about the content and how the readers interact with them that change.
Let’s have a look at how you can change your email game in this new year.
Personalization: There is no excuse to not use your data to personalize your message. You should make it a priority to collect and use more data for personalization in content execution.
The growth of mobile average order value: Historically, mobile average order value (AOV) has lagged behind its desktop counterpart because consumers are less likely to make big-ticket purchases (e.g., large, expensive items) on-the-go.
In the year ahead, it will become more common for subscribers to purchase larger orders on mobile devices as the user experience gets better.
To take advantage of this trend, you need to gain subscribers’ trust by offering detailed product content, more images, videos and testimonials in your emails.
Interactive Content: The more you allow your subscribers to engage within emails in new ways – whether it’s a personality quiz or the ability to make a purchase without leaving the email – the more engaged and ready-to-buy your subscribers will be.
Quality over quantity: Deliverability can become a serious problem for marketers. Given that the major inboxes like Gmail, AOL and Yahoo are increasing their standards, email can easily land in the spam folder.
To make sure you reach the inbox every time, you should focus on sending relevant content to quality subscribers instead of focusing on the number of emails sent.
What does this mean? Embracing best practices such as segmentation, data hygiene, email verification and preference centres.
Loyalty programs to collect more data: Sales aren’t the only thing you can squeeze from your list. It’s even about data. Many marketers are starting to use loyalty programs to collect more data from their subscribers.
You can track the behaviour of your most loyal customers/subscribers and better understand their needs when it comes to email. What time of day do they want to receive emails? What types of products do they typically browse and purchase? What promotions work best for them?
The WTAFF Crew’s opinion? Honestly, we don’t like emails. They’re boring and no one reads them. 2019 will surely be the end of emails…
Jokes apart, while the advent of bots and Messenger marketing drove many people to discuss the effectiveness of emails, no one can say that emails will go anywhere over the next several years.
SPONSORED
Making waves in the New Year!
Now that you are probably back to work and focusing on launching those campaigns, we thought we’d let you know about TopOffers, named Best CPA Network by 2 different publications! Business of Apps and YNOT Awards both considered TopOffers the best network of 2018.
You’ve probably seen them around conferences and meetups… Or maybe you haven’t. Let’s fix that.
They are not just a CPA network. They started with laser-focus on dating because they have real, in-house offers. How? Well, when Together Network closed their affiliate program, TopOffers got the exclusive on it and essentially runs their program now.
So, point 1: truly exclusive dating offers (not just adult) that you could once find on Together Network. On PPL (SOI and DOI), PPS, RevShare…
Point 2: There’s no shortage of offers. Boasting a database of over 1.5k offers, you will find almost any country you wish. More than 50 countries on a PPL model actually! And it’s not just dating. They’ve launched sweeps, crypto and games.
Point 3: Some of the biggest bonuses for new affiliates. A $1k welcome bonus about which you can read here. Then you get a $500 on top of your first withdrawal.
AND… If you send Italian or German traffic, make at least $1k in revenue, you get $500 on top.
You get all that, plus instant support, weekly payments and their in-house smartlink technology called ProfitSocial.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
“You Musk Have Free WiFi!”
Internet everywhere! That is the latest that Musk seems to be promising to all planet Earth netizens.
While other companies including Facebook already tried something similar with its ill-fated project named Internet.org initiative, SpaceX wants to re-attempt the same but in its own way.
SpaceX has requested permission from US Government to operate a network of 4,425 satellites to blanket the Earth to provide high-speed, global internet coverage.
If successful, it would be able to provide a space-based alternative to cable, fiber-optics and the other terrestrial based internet access currently available.
Musk is not fighting over the quality of internet connectivity with other ISPs. He’s more focused on the ability to deliver them to much more remote areas, which could also earn him millions of more customers than other major players.
Well, with his ambitious plans to colonize Mars, he might need this global communications system to complement the effort.
And add to it his upcoming hyperloop concept, it would be crazy to dismiss the billionaire genius’s words just for hot air.
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