Mike spent $2,000 on a display ad campaign to get email subscribers for his state level political campaign in Oklahoma. He waited for 7 days and still there is no visible improvement to his user base with those display ads. The ad agency tells him that there were 4,000 clicks on his ad, but he got less than 200 new subscribers – costing a whopping $10/subscriber. What went wrong?

Mike is not alone. Over the past few months, marketers across the country are finding that the clicks on their display ads are not translating into new users or subscribers. That is surprising given the conventional wisdom that more clicks = more conversions. Now, there is research data to show why.

Effectiveness of display ads

In a study conducted by Pretarget and Comscore analyzing over 260 million ad impressions, it was found that there is almost no relationship between clicks on an ad and conversion. The correlation between clicks and conversion is 0.01 (0 meaning no relationship and 1 means perfect relationship). People are going increasingly ad-blind, most clicks seem to be chance hits that users clicks by accident, and that the landing target of the ad is not attractive enough to convert the user.

If clicks don’t matter, then what else should you measure? The study finds that hover/interaction with the ad as the highest predictor of conversion. The next important measure is viewable impressions – one that appear above the fold in your viewable area of the screen (at least 50-75% of the ad is visible to user).

This research validates our own view that interactions and engagements are far more valuable than atmospheric advertising (our term for relying on clicks). Users have gone far more sophisticated and ad-adverse over the past few years and have very little patience for poorly constructed ads that does not connect with the user, the instant the user sets his/her eyes upon. In social media the users want to be entertained instead of just being sold something.

 What can you do to make your display ads work?

1. Focus on creating great content that the user would love to hover and interact with.

2. Look to crowd-source ideas in ad campaigns. Give your viewer a chance to create something.

3. Include social elements in the ad and bring contests where possible. People love to compete and win things.

4. Create great, campaign-specific landing pages with great call to action that will convert your users instantly.

5. Try to make the ads viewable after the user starts scrolling. Having an ad that appears after the user start interacting with the website has a higher chance of getting viewed and acted upon.

6. Create heatmaps to understand the places where your user’s eyeballs focus. Try to use those locations to show your ads. Mix that up and be less predictable.

In summary, it is all about engagement. If your display ads stop engaging the users it will not work. There is no point throwing thousands or millions of dollars down the wrong pipe. Focus on the interaction metrics more than mere clicks. If you need further help in building an engaging campaign give us a holler and we will help in whatever way we can.

Are your social media campaigns yielding expected results? While some businesses and political campaigns have put social media to great use, for most small businesses and political campaigners it still has not yielded enough ROI. The biggest problem seems to be that the campaign managers are falling into very avoidable pitfalls.

Social media is a great amplifier — it can exaggerate both your faults and your positives. A single mistake can ruin the reputation you had painstakingly built. Thus, it is important to create a proper plan to avoid the most common mistakes. In this post I will cover the most common mistakes made in social media.

1. Excessive self-promotion — Are you constantly posting only those links that are related to your sales page? On social media channels, people don’t come to see your ads. Would you want to interact with a person who is constantly talking about himself? People want to connect with their friends and read interesting content. Excessive promotions will keep people off your pages. Keep your promotions subtle and transparent and have a highly relevant content-sales content ratio.
2. Not listening enough — Many campaign managers still have a hangover from the mass media age. They are used to posting content, but don’t respond to user’s comments. Social media is a two-way street and your subscribers want you to listen as much as you post content. Only by listening to others can you build highly engaging campaigns.
3. Updating too often or too little — In social media a fine balance must be achieved between posting too much and posting too little. However, many businesses are on the extremes — either posting 50 tweets/Facebook posts every day or posting only once in 5-7 days. Ideally you want to post 2-3 short posts every day supplemented with a long blog post every 2-3 days.
4. Mixing personal and business accounts – There have been instances of campaign managers wrongly switching between their personal and business accounts, ending up posting inappropriate messages on the business channel. Have a strong internal policy to prevent mixing the two accounts.
5. Posting inflammatory messages — Campaign managers are humans, too. As such, sometimes they react harshly or inappropriately to complaints and criticism. However, that can easily ruin your reputation. The media are very attentive to such interactions and once you post your message there is no way to completely erase it from the system. The following is a Twitter conversation between the top executives of two reputed companies that became a tasty treat for the media.

It is important to realize that majority of the social media best practices are common sense things that are as applicable in the real world as they are in the online world.

If Facebook were a country it would be the third largest in the world, just behind India. People spend more time on Facebook than any television network in the world. Unlike television networks and print media, Facebook knows who is using the content and how they are using it. In fact, Facebook knows more about you than any government does! As a marketer, how do you tap this massive treasure of user data? Here is where Facebook ads come in. Facebook advertising provides a great way to target this massive user base and build a great brand awareness for your product in a very targeted way.

How to create a great Facebook advertising campaign?

Let’s get started with our ad by going to the Facebook ad url: https://www.facebook.com/ads/create/

1.  Choose the right type of campaign based on your goal.
   

   There are 3 main types of Facebook advertising campaigns

   •  Ads that link to your landing page on your website – this is to capture the leads and convert them to become your customers/subscribers
   • Promotions for your Facebook fan pages/events/apps – this is to get more likes/fans to your properties within Facebook and build brand awareness to your product while connecting with the prospects and existing users. 
   • Sponsored stories that appear in the feeds of Facebook users – this is done after you have built a sizable fan base for your page. The sponsored stories appear in the feeds of friends of fans who have liked your page. These help in building the credibility of the brand and create viral sales through “word of mouth”.
     
2. Include a very catchy image in the ad that is both relevant to your product as well as attractive. The image dimensions cannot exceed 110px wide X 80px high with an aspect ratio of 4:3. Make sure your image can be seen well in that dimension.
3. Use text that jumps out. Make it short, attractive, conversational and written with a sense of urgency (signup now to get started or check out now to know about the offer). You have space for only 135 characters to do this.
4. Target as much as possible. With Facebook ads, quality trumps quantity. Use geography and demographics to create a very highly targeted ad. Even if only 5,000 people satisfy those parameters it is ok. However, don’t make it so targeted that only 10 people satisfy those conditions. Those ads will never work. If you are a small business, an ad targeting 5,000-50,000 Facebook users is ideal.
   
5. Try to set up an appropriate budget. If you are new to Facebook ads, try to set up a low daily budget ($10-25/day) running for a week.
6. There are two main types of billing options available:
   • CPC (Cost per click) — you are billed only when the users click your ad. This is best if you want to get the leads and make the user perform the desired action (liking your page, buying your product).
   • CPM (Cost per 1000 impressions) — you get billed for every 1000 times your ad appears on the user’s screens. This is best if you want to create brand awareness.
7. Price the bid for the ad appropriately. Try to set something in the middle of the range suggested. If your ads are time critical then price it at the upper bound of the range.
8. Constantly monitor the performance of your ads with Facebook insights, available here: https://www.facebook.com/ads/manage/campaigns/
9. Try 3-4 variants of the ad and check which one of them works well. The insights will help you understand the best performing version of the ad.
10. Mix it up. In social media, people tire out of ads pretty soon. Once a week try to modify the ads with different pictures/text.

Facebook advertising gives you a great way to run targeted ad campaigns at any budget and is best suited for small businesses who can’t afford the marketing budgets through mainstream channels. If you need any help in running the campaigns, we are always there to help you. You can reach us through the contact us link above.

Landing pages are single web pages whose goal is to convert your site visitors into sales leads. These pages are often linked from your online advertisement campaigns (Facebook, Google adwords, display ads, etc.) and display content that is relevant to the advertisement linked. These pages are usually stand-alone (with no menu or navigation) and are designed to be as less distracting as possible.

There can be multiple landing pages for a website – one for each ad campaign. For instance, you could be running a promo on Facebook  that offers 10% off on your new product to your Facebook fans. When the fans click on that link, a promo specific page will open in your website that gives more details on the offer and how they can get the discount. Another landing page could be targeted at your mobile app users who would get details on the features available in the premium version.

Create your landing page to quickly convey 4 main ideas

A well designed landing page clearly conveys the benefits of your product to your visitors and provides them an easy way to get started with your product. A good example is the following landing page at Fluidsurveys.com. A visitor to the page can get the following information in just 5 seconds.

1. What product it is? – It is an online poll creation tool
2. Who is it targeted at? – Website owners with less coding or programming expertise.
3. How do you get started? – Using the form at the top
4. Who is using the product? – UCLA, ExxonMobil, Autodesk

Tips on creating great landing pages

1. Write a top notch heading that says what the product/offer is. You would have just 1-2 seconds to get the user’s attention.
2. Tell the visitor what is in it for him/her. Make the writing conversational and write it in second person.
3. Create a clear call to action button (such as sign up/buy now). Refer to our earlier article on creating a great call to action button.
4. Have a high contrast in the page to emphasize the important elements. In the example above, the page has a blue section on the top that tells about the product with a form for the user to sign up. Following that, there is a gray section explaining more about the features.
5. Include imagery that suggests how the product can be best used. In the example above, there are screenshots of a webpage and a mobile app, suggesting that it could work well on mobile phones with native apps apart from the web app.
6. Include the major clients/users of the product. That is a validation for the product for your prospects.
7. Insert well-written testimonials that show the feedback of existing users. Avoid phony testimonials as seasoned web users can smell fake testimonials from a mile.
8. Include information for contacting your sales desk to get more info on the product. You could add things such your toll free phone number, live chat or email id.
9. Avoid having too many things on the page that could distract the user.
10. Cut out the menu and other navigational elements when possible. That is one of the mistakes in the example above. It can let the user escape out of the page by finding some other link more interesting.

You could also see examples of great landing pages at unbounce blog.

You have a great ad campaign that gets your users to your website. Now, how do you make sure the visitors do the action you would like them to do — buy your product or subscribe to your newsletter? This is where designing an effective “Call to action” holds importance. In this post, I will cover the best practices in developing the right call to action.

What is a “Call to Action”?

A call to action is a UI (User Interface) element that solicits attention from the user. They are usually clickable buttons that then makes users to perform further actions.  These are ubiquitous in modern websites. You must have seen the “Buy this now”, “Try now” buttons on most commercial websites.

Here are the top 10 most used call-to-actions buttons on the web:

1. Buy Now
2. Download Now (software)
3. Add to Cart (ecommerce)
4. Sign up for Free
5. Request a free quote
6. Take a tour
7. See plans and pricing (software services)
8. Learn more
9. Join Today/Subscribe to our newsletter
10. Register now (for events)

How to design a great call-to-action that can get user’s attention?

1. Never have more than 2 calls to action (CTA) buttons on a page. In fact, try to stick to just one when possible. By having more CTA buttons the attention will be diverted from the main action and the message will be diluted.
2. Design the color of the primary CTA button to be bright and in contrast with the background so that it stands out well. However, if the button is very big, you can choose to go for a subtler color so that it doesn’t hit the user’s eyes too much.
3. Place the buttons in a prominent area (such as below the carousal in the main page) where your visitors are most likelyto notice.
4. Design your CTA buttons to be at least 20% wider than your logo or other prominent feature in the page.
5. If you have more than one CTA on a page, design the important one with a bigger button and a bolder font.
6. Incorporate blank space around the button to make it stand out from the content around it.
7. Create a sense of urgency. Instead of saying “Buy” or “Donate”, say “Buy Now” or “Donate Now”.
8. Tell the users that it doesn’t take long. You can say it just takes 30 seconds in the button below “Sign Up”.
9. Entice the user. Below the “Buy Now” button you can include “30 day trial included” to entice the users to perform the action.

Even with the arrival of social media, email marketing is still relevant to a big chunk of the consumer and business demographic. Emails are the cheapest way to reach a mass audience and once you have built an audience they are a great way to connect with the audience. In this post, we will cover the best practices in email marketing that you should be aware of.

1. Unless you are a non-profit or political campaign that has acquired double opt-in voter email addresses from a reputable source (such as our firm), do not send emails to people for whom you have no permissions to send. The CAN-SPAM act has some exemptions for non-profits and political campaigns.  Otherwise, you have to make sure your subscribers have requested to be on your list. Breaking this can lead to blocking your email account by the ISPs, and might invite legal penalties under the CAN-SPAM act.
2. Always send only relevant content to your subscribers. Nobody wants to get junk mails. Respect your subscribers’ time and provide only the relevant content to them.
3. If you are sending a newsletter, make sure you provide relevant information such as:
   • Industry specific information
   • List of upcoming conferences
   • Q&A
   • Tips and tricks
   • In depth analysis of a recent issue in your industry
   • Pointers to articles that are relevant to your industry and audience
4. Create a campaign specific landing page that the users will click in your email. Do not point to your home page, as the users can get lost in the sea of content.
5. Understand when your audience typically open their emails. If you are sending it to business recipients, try to avoid Mondays, Fridays and the weekends. Try to send it between 9am and 3pm in the middle of the week to get their best attention. If you are sending it to consumers and the product/service is not related to work, then the best time to send is on evenings (5-8pm) and on Weekends.
6. Personalize your email. Most email services allow you to personalize the email with the first/last name of the recipient. Having their name increases the chances of them reading your content.
7. Include the most important at the top. If you are offering a 40% discount on your fall merchandise, say so at the beginning. The attention span falls dramatically and there is a very little chance that the readers will come to the fourth paragraph, if the first paragraph is not catchy enough.
8. In the footer of the email, let the users know why they are on your email list and how they can unsubscribe if they want to. Don’t try to force somebody to be on your list if she/he doesn’t want to.
9. Use a good language that is appropriate to the audience. Don’t try to be too complex and jargon filled, when you audience is more generic.
10. Proofread your content for grammatical errors, typos and other mistakes. Send the test mails to yourself and a couple of others in your organization, and verify that it works the same for everybody.
11. Use a subject title that is not spammy. Many email filters send your emails to the spam folder if you use cliché subject lines that are often associated with spam.
12. Use a good email template that is readable in most clients. Stick to less than 600px width and if a majority of your audience would read it on a mobile device use a mobile optimized template.
13. Include both HTML and plain text versions of your content. Be aware that some email clients might not render HTML correctly. Having no plain text version will make your beautiful email gibberish.
14. Integrate your email lists with your blogs, facebook pages and websites. Use widgets to capture the email addresses of the readers who might want to get your content.
15. Give users exclusives for being on your list. If you are a blogger, you can send preview of content that is not yet posted on your blog. If you are a small business, you can send coupons and discounts that are not available elsewhere.
16. Set a rhythm to your emails and make it a periodic one. If you are comfortable, sending a monthly newsletter, stick to that. While an occasional announcement in between might be ok, don’t change the frequency too much.
17. Don’t send too frequent emails. Sending anything more than one email/week is not acceptable in most cases.
18. Use A/B testing to test out your campaigns. In this method, you divide your subscribers randomly into two groups and send two different versions of the same content to them. The results will help you understand what you audience likes more.
19. Use the analytics tools provided by your email service to manage your campaigns. Track the number of emails opened, the times they are opened etc. Try to keep improving the metrics.

As the parents of three young children, my wife and I know full well what it’s like to have our kids pleading with us to buy the “cool” new toy.

Many times, it’s frustrating to watch them play with the shiny new object for only a little bit before growing tired of it.

Usually, they achieve more lasting entertainment by simply running around the backyard, or picking up sticks, or kicking a ball.  For our youngest — just more than a year old — he’s usually just as happy with an empty water bottle as he is with one of his many plush, stuffed toys.

Unfortunately, this same scenario may sound all too familiar to non-parents who work in the marketing field.

How many times do your bosses, clients or potential clients want to play around with the shiny new toy (Pinterest? Foursquare? Google+?) before they even have a basic communications strategy in place.

As we wrote several years ago in this post, too many people oftentimes put tactics ahead of strategy, simply because, well, the tactics seem so darn cool.

Several times during the past few months, we’ve had clients ask us about implementing a “Pinterest strategy.”  Nevermind the fact that they’ve just begun a coherent online communications program and have just begun to engage via email and Facebook.

Crawl before you can walk.  Walk before you run.  But first — determine your overall content strategy.

Many times — as my children often determine — the best path is to stick to the basics.

If anyone is at least appearing to embrace the “engagements vs. eyeballs” principle it is the major television studios.

One only has to view the rotating viewer tweets at the bottom of the screen during any “Dancing With the Stars” episode to know that the networks are working hard to push the “Social TV” envelope.

In their view, they can increase the marketing value of each show by encouraging people to “talk” about the show with their friends (i.e., Facebook “friends” and Twitter followers) during the show.

Today’s edition of USA Today carries a story of how the networks are touting their “Social TV” value as they sell their Fall lineup to advertisers:

“The water cooler used to be the next day, now it’s while the show is going on,” says Greg Kahn, executive vice president of ad-buying firm Optimedia … Kahn says he’d much rather have his ads in a show with 2 million active online followers, vs. a show with little online social interaction.

That same story quotes Mark Ghuneim, CEO of Trendrr, who notes that posting comments about TV shows on Twitter, Facebook and other social platforms grew 194% from April 2011 to April 2012.  (By the way, the Trendrr blog has some great daily stats and infographics of which TV shows are gaining the most social interactions.)

Hoping he can cash in on the “Social TV” boom is angel investor/Dallas Mavericks owner/star of the TV show “Shark Tank” Mark Cuban, who earlier today announced his investment in Flingo, an app tailored specifically around the Social TV experience.

Again, at its heart, the “Social TV” principle is about the realization that you get exponentially more value out of garnering engagements than from merely garnering eyeballs.  The same principle can and should be applied to any strategic communications program.  Don’t just push a button and launch your ads, direct mail, or email campaign.

Delivering the impressions is just the first step.  Use those impressions to engage your audience, interact with them, learn from them and mobilize them to engage their “friends” on your behalf.

Talk about value-added.

Is 2012 the “year of the online political ad”, as heralded by this Mashable piece?

As a firm that does plenty of online political advertising, we certainly hope so!

Here’s a great infographic from that blog post, courtesy of TheDigitalCampaign.com, that takes a look at the 2012 digital campaign landscape.  Enjoy:

The first step to building your successful (online) communications program should be the completion of your content audit.

As we like to say, such an audit can help your organization realize its “inner content.”

Truth be told, it’s more than just simply about content.  This audit stage provides a foundation upon which to build your communications strategy.

Following are a list of questions that can help in the discovery process to audit your existing communications program so that you can apply the above principles in an integrated, sustained manner.

(Please note: The following questions are geared toward political campaigns or advocacy organizations but can easily be tailored toward small businesses or other types of non-profit organizations.)

• Editorial Calendar:  Do you have an integrated editorial calendar (at least 30 days out) that has comprehensive schedule of all communications going out on behalf of TPP?  If is this editorial calendar fashioned in such a way that you are telling a “story” and creating a narrative (versus unconnected, random communications going out from different silos within the organization)?

• Editorial Calendar: Is there a central team member monitoring the editorial calendar?  Or is the fundraising team “in charge” of their communications, online in charge of theirs, etc?  A segmented, silo approach can cut into the great potential you have for educating and growing your lists.

• Email: Looking back at your emails from the past year, are they mostly (all) fundraising requests?  Have you missed opportunities to educate and utilize existing advocates to use simple email tools to help grow your email base?

• Email: Are you sending your fundraising emails to your entire list, or are you “qualifying” leads that come through the door?

• Email:  Are you fully tracking the “health” of your email list by tracking opt-ins, openers, clickers and activists?  If you are measuring these people — are you tailoring your email messages to these folks?  You should also be taking these steps to learn more about your list. Who is opening your emails on a regular basis? Who is clicking on your emails? Where do these openers and “activists” reside? What types of emails are they opening? Your email software undoubtedly allows you find out the answers to all of these questions. This isn’t just interesting information, it can allow you to segment your  lists by location, demographics, issue area. This further allows you to target your lists to deliver content of maximum value to each person.

• Email:  Emails should be short, with minimal graphics, a clear call to action, and timely, compelling content that is relevant to the lives of your recipients. Do your email communications fit this bill?

• Social Media:  Is your social media program folded in to your editorial calendar?  Or are there numerous people within the organization who have “rights” to post randomly on the page?

• Social Media:  Are you using a program, such as Hootsuite, in conjunction with Google Analytics, to track the return on investment and engagement of your Twitter and Facebook accounts?

• Social Media:  Are you utilizing Facebook insights to learn how engagements by your fans are leading to viral and social growth of your network?

• Social Media:  Are you strategically posting content to your page (please see editorial calendar question), or under-or over-posting to your page?

• Social Media:  Are each of your posts crafted with a clear to call to action?  You MUST craft each post to ask someone to LIKE, SHARE or COMMENT.  It this engagement that not only allows you to track the ROI or your program — but which ensures your content is being driven to the top of news feeds and leads to organic growth of your page.

• Social Media:  Are you running targeted Facebook ads to help grow your fan base — and testing numerous ads at a time to optimize targeting, creative, etc.?

• Social Media:  Have you enabled Facebook commenting on your Web site?  You can install a WordPress plugin to add facebook comments to your blogs thereby helping your content to go viral. By driving more traffic to your page, you can attempt to convert some them to your fan base.

• Online Advertising:  Are your ads designed to deliver a message and engage — or simply drive “eyeballs” and ask for money?

• Online Advertising:  Are you tracking your ad analytics on a weekly basis to optimize/revise message, creative and targeting?

• Online Advertising:  Are you online ads being run on an island or simply in one silo (such as fundraising) or working hand-in-hand with the overall online editorial calendar and strategy?

• Online Advertising:  Are your online ad tactics coming before strategy — or is your strategy (as it should be) driving the types of ads you’re running?

• Online Advertising:  Are you tracking your online ad “visitors” as they come through the site to tailor your landing pages and overall Web site to optimize the visitor path they take?

These are just some basic, yet important questions that can help you in following the online advocacy guide and principles outlined at the beginning of this memo.