Google Ads introduces features to improve (and troubleshoot) your conversions
It’s all about the conversions, baby! We can do hundreds of things as marketers, but if the user doesn’t click “purchase” and enter their card details, we’re toast.
Google has just released several new features to keep us from being toast:
- Conversion goals. You can now tell Google which specific business goals you want to optimize for at the campaign or account level.
- Tag Assistant support. Google will make it easier to determine if your conversion tags are working, helping you diagnose issues like no recent conversions or inactive tags.
- Better explanations for Target ROAS and Maximize conversion value. Why did your conversion value suddenly change? This option should provide you with more understandable explanations for the conversion fluctuations.
Getting more conversions means not only getting more things right, but also getting fewer things wrong, and hopefully these features will help you with the latter.
Facebook wants you to become a Certified Analytics Ninja
If you want to improve your marketing attribution skills (and who doesn’t?), Facebook (or should we say Meta?) has some interesting news for you.
The social network has just launched two free certification courses. The first is for marketers, and the second is for artificial reality designers. Since you’re unlikely to draw virtual apples anytime soon, let’s focus on the first one.
Marketing analytics ninja: Facebook has partnered with Coursera to offer a course and a certificate on Marketing Analytics.
The reason: Jobs. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are over 96,000 marketing analyst job openings each year.
The certification is made up of six courses that cover topics such as data visualization, segmentation, statistics, and analytical skills.
Any catch? Facebook couldn’t care less about our money (they make millions from advertising already), so the course itself is free. Coursera is the only one who makes money if you additionally enroll in their expert-grading, portfolio-development programs.
Knowledge is power (and money): After completing the certification, Facebook says that you’ll get access to their Certification Career Network, which is basically a job search platform.
There are currently over 130 “big dogs” on the platform (think: Johnson & Johnson, VaynerMedia, GroupM) who are scouring for candidates who can crunch up marketing numbers.
Good luck!
SPONSORED BY TAPOINT
You must add text messaging to your marketing mix now. Here’s why!
Snap said Apple is the reason their Q3 ad revenue was bad. Facebook Ads are a mess. Now emails also got on Apple’s bad side.
Because of this, it’s clearly a must to include text messaging in your marketing strategy. Before you say it’s boring, limited, and annoying, hear us out…
How effective would it be to send multiple images and animated GIFs in a single text?The human brain processes images 60,000x faster than text, and it clearly gives you more ways to attract a sale.
Meet TapOnIt, the text marketing platform that allows businesses to include visual elements. And Stacked Marketer readers can use TapOnIt for one month for free.
Should you try it? Here are some results of who did it:
“We love TapOnlt! We continue to grow our sales by texting. We have seen an increase in new customers, but most importantly our existing customers seem to come in more often when we send a text!”
“It was crazy to see how strongly people responded! We had over 1,100 online and mail in orders, compared to 250 last year.”
Tap here to start sending captivating texts.
ADVERTISING
How to deflate your Google Ads CPA
The closer we get to holidays, the higher our CPC and CPM gets.
Right?
Although, there’s always room to push those numbers down and in this SEJ post, Justin Lugbill shared 13 ways to do it.
Shall we?
Budget re-balancing: Allocating more budget to the lowest CPA campaign is the lowest hanging fruit.
However, before doing that, evaluate how much room a campaign is left to spend. To do that, look at metrics like “Lost Is,” “impression shrew” and “abs.”
If these metrics indicate growth potential, evaluate if there are campaigns from which you can pull budget to allocate one the most efficient ones.
Bid adjustment: Sometimes even if you have an ad group that is converting, dropping your bids can help you get more clicks for the same budget.
The downside might be losing the position in the first page. However, the “first-page bid estimate” will help you find the minimum bid to stay in the first osage.
Keyword level optimization: You should constantly review which terms are triggering your ads. The goal is to make sure that your board, phaser and exact match keywords are relevant to search queries.
Ad personalization: Your Quality Score (QS) is one of the most important factors that influence your CPC. And ad relevance is one of the three QS pillars, you can increase it by:
- Making sure there’s a complete alignment between keyword, ad and landing page.
- Test lead from-based extensions, especially if your website experience isn’t top notch.
- Use ad customizers to personalize ad copy without segmenting keywords into a separate ad group.
Justin Lugbill shared 13 ways in total to cut off that CPA and if Google Ads is eating up your budget, you might want to check them out.
SPONSORED BY REALPHA
Short-term rentals show up to 70% higher revenue than long-term. Here’s how you can own a piece!
reAlpha is a tech-first company enabling anyone to own fractional shares in short-term rental properties to build wealth.
reAlpha stands out with technology: They leverage machine learning to choose the best investment properties for their members.
The best part? They’re taking democratization a step further and allowing anyone to invest as a shareholder in the company, meaning you can invest in reAlpha’s entire portfolio before individual properties are offered for investment.
THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
Writing checklist from a blog generating 70k in monthly traffic
Writing content that brings in thousands of users every month is hard. But, it’s not complicated. You just have to pay attention to the experts. In a recent deep dive for our Insights community, we looked at a brand called Pete & Pedro.
Pete & Pedro has a blog that, according to Ahrefs, brings in close to 70k in monthly traffic. (That traffic is also worth $54k per month, according to Ahrefs’ very rough estimate.) So, we learned from Pete & Pedro’s process and came up with a simple list.
Most brands aren’t doing everything you see below. Follow the list and you’ll be ahead of 95% of your competition:
- 3 to 4 sentences per paragraph. After this, paragraphs get too long for a readable internet format – especially for simple blog posts.
- H2s for big topics and H3s for subtopics. It’s basic, but most brands get this wrong.
- One header every 4 to 6 paragraphs. Much longer than this and it’s hard for people to skim your content.
- Total length under 1,500 words. No, writing a 4,000 word mega-guide doesn’t mean you’ll rank higher. Readers like short content.
- Well-written content. The blog posts on Pete & Pedro’s site align with their brand voice. Remember, the longer people spend reading your content, the more likely it is they’ll buy a product.
This stuff is simple. But most e-commerce brands that we analyze aren’t following everything on the checklist above, and that’s hurting their organic traffic (and sales!) potential.
You can find the full deep dive in our Insights membership.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
E-COMMERCE: Mercury is banking built for e-commerce businesses. Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, Amazon – connect seamlessly to payment processors, marketplaces, and platforms. Create virtual cards, send international wires easily, and never worry about account opening fees, monthly account fees, or minimum balances. Try Mercury for a tech-enabled banking experience.*
PINTEREST: Pinterest + TV = Shoppable livestreams. The social network has launched a series of live shoppable TV shows.
GOOGLE: Read receipts are coming to Google My Business.
ADVERTISING: How much did Apple’s privacy changes cost big companies like Facebook and Google? Ten billion dollars seems about right.
MARKETING: If you sell on WhatsApp, we have some good news for you. You’ll be able to do more useful things with the app via the web. WhatsApp is currently testing a cloud-based version of their WhatsApp Business API.
*This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
In Okmulgee, Oklahoma, you cannot take a picture of a man with a wooden leg. Why?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Influencers gotta influence
If you can’t go somewhere, pretend you are already there.
According to NBC, this is what many Chinese influencers have recently been doing, posing at Costco in Shanghai and pretending to be in Los Angeles.
The reason? Wanderlust.You’ve probably heard about the term, but not sure what it means. Wanderlust is a strong desire to travel to many different places around the world.
Currently, Chinese citizens cannot easily do that. There are many closed borders and outbound travel is expensive, leaving many people with wanderlusting.
Influencers have recognized this desire and are now selling followers the fantasy of a sunny Los Angeles with Costco in Shanghai.
Good or bad? You decide.