A Few of Our Favorite Marketing Stories

 

As you start to plan your strategy for 2013 these digital marketing articles are worth a read. They are packed with valuable insights that can help you fine tune your digital marketing efforts in the new year.  In fact, we love some of the tips so much we’ve infused them into our own NTENT marketing strategy.  We hope you find them as helpful as we do.

 

 

6 Steps Toward Creating Great Marketing Content for Consumers

 

 

12 Social Thought Leaders Reveal Their #1 Tip For 2013

 

 

Digital Marketing in 2013: What’s In and What’s Out
 

 

NTENT and Search Engine Land

NTENT was featured in Search Engine Land: “For Google Shopping & More, NTENT!” by Barbara Starr

A Vertical Search engine, just for clarity’s sake, is defined as a search engine that focuses on a specific segment of Web content or on a specific topic. Examples would be Google Shopping and all the other items on the Google menu bar (Images, News, Recipes, Maps, YouTube, etc.). Read more on Search Engine Land

 

A Few of Our Favorite Marketing Reads

With an Eye Towards Discount Offers, Small Merchants Expect Holiday Sales Boost from Small Business

With the holiday season rapidly approaching, more small-business owners are making Small Business Saturday an integral factor in their holiday sales plans.

Premium Publishers Best Sites for Brand Marketing

Premium content publishers are the best media for brand-focused advertising campaigns — even better than social sites like Facebook.

Small Business Strategy: 10 Trends to Watch

Your business will now have to compete for the customers you know and additionally, a new breed of customers that you need to know.

Share your stories with us!

Holiday Camapaigns We Love!

This is a wonderful campaign from 360i! It’s one of the first ever living, donation-giving, tweet-powered snow globes. It totally interactive, totally social and killing it this holiday season.  We can all learn a few things about launching a wonderful social campaign that engages the masses and exposes your brand.

Tweet #twinterwonderful to be a part of action.

10 Paid Search Tips to Live by in 2013

As the year comes to a close and things start to slow down (hopefully), it is time think about what the new year will mean for your marketing strategy.  As paid search marketing experts, we’ve put together a list of top 10 tips to live by in 2013. If you got more, we invite you to share them us!

 

1)  Set aside some time before the end of the year to review all of your NTENT campaigns and other digital marketing efforts.

 

2)  Isolate what worked and what didn’t. Include the best of 2012  in your strategy for next year.

 

3)  Suppress the urge to only judge your campaign on CPA/CPL basis and look at the halo effect of your efforts in regards to traffic, repeat visits and value per visit.

 

4)  Create a promotional calendar for next year that includes holidays and seasonal peak times for your business. Make sure you ad a column that includes ideas for ad creative for each promotion.

 

5)  Build different ad templates for your business based on geographic regions and target demographics.

 

6)  Infuse keyword success into ad messaging for your NTENT campaigns.

 

7)  Be prepared to spend as much time on conversion rate optimization, building landing pages and user experience for your website as you do for ad unit optimization.

 

8)  Don’t be afraid to try new things, but make sure you put parameters around each experiment you run.

 

9)  If you haven’t already, take NTENT’s NEW 2U NTENT ad unit for a test drive!

 

10)  Set up a free planning and strategy meeting with your NTENT Account Manager. Call us at: 646-561-8629 

Holiday Campaigns We Love!

Gilt got it right this year with a campaign that taps into the giving spirit.  The “red” section is perfect for giving a unique gift to someone you care about and giving back at the same time. There product landing pages should serve as an example for online retailers. They are clean and simple to use.

Here are 8 tips that will help you this holiday season

1) Be Prepared for Black Friday and Cyber Monday: prepare now to launch specific NTENT campaigns for these two days.

2) Promos Peak Interests: discounts, coupons and free shipping can give consumers incentives and create urgency. For example, “Free holiday tin with purchase” or “Free Shipping” or “10% Today Only”.

 

3) Relate Your Message to Consumer Interests: find a way to relate to consumers and appeal to their interests through crafty messaging.  For example, “why do you think professional snowboarders choose these $4.99 warmers?”, “why do you think top chefs use our special spice in their recipes?”.

 

4) Tweak Your Messaging Often: skimping on time reviewing campaigns can cost you sales.  Check your NTENT ad performance weekly, even daily during, and tweak your approach based on increased response rates to specific messages.

 

5) Make it Easy: you’ve done a lot of work to drive consumers to your site so don’t loose them by putting barriers to check out.  Landing pages should be as simple as 1, 2, and 3.  Drive them to specific product pages with a clear check out process. Guest check out is a must.

 

6) Mobile can be Magical: consumers are always on the go and they expect instant gratification. Be where they are by making sure you have a mobile-web enabled site. Make sure your key info is visible: phone, email and address.

 

7) Specials for Social Connections: connections on social media outlets are key for reselling and gaining consumer insights. Reward this group with special holiday offers. Use this to incentivize consumers to follow you on your social outlets.

 

8) Don’t be Afraid to Speak Up! We know that the holidays are a busy time and we are here to help you make the most of it.  If you need some advice or just want to bounce off a few holiday ideas, give us call or visit www.NTENT.com: 646-561-8629.

Also take a look into the  6 key elements to keep top of mind for holiday campaign planning!

Part 4: Creating Effective Landing Pages

Consider Chat
Consider providing customers with live online support or “chat” on your website. This can help push customers further down the purchasing funnel. It allows you to engage with them during their peak time of interest which can be exceptionally helpful. If you have the bandwidth, try testing this feature on all or a few of your landing pages.

Social Landing Pages can be Effective too!
The majority of your landing pages will focus on driving sales and generating leads BUT there is another type of landing page that can help you capture consumers for future communications – social landing pages.  Creating a landing page that pushes interested consumers to your social outlets is a great way to capture them for future promotions.

Landing pages are a great way to build up your digital marketing success when done effectively. Remember, it is best to keep things simple, clean and direct as clutter and inconsistent messaging can turn off prospective consumers for good. Provide customers the information they need and a clear call to action – you’ll be on your way toward turning visits into conversions..  The time and effort it takes to set up and maintain your landing pages will be worth it

Part 3: Creating Effective Landing Pages

Don’t forget about mobile

 

 

The Red Cross Does it Right. Example provided by: PushDaddy.com

 

Mobile shopping is expected to increase this holiday season. Marketers will be creating mobile ads to target mobile consumers. That means mobile-optimized landing pages are a must! This will prevent drop-off from users who click on ads or email links via their mobile device. The same rules as online landing pages apply.

Part 4

Part 2: Creating Effective Landing Pages

Create Special Segments

 

 

Landing pages should be viewed as a tool to move interested consumers down the conversion funnel. Segment landing pages by offer, product feature and/or need.  As the holidays near, and the pressure to purchase builds, now is the perfect time to play off where consumers are in the buying cycle by changing the messaging on your ads and landing pages.

Part 3

Part 1: Creating Effective Landing Pages

Clarify the Purpose of Your Landing Page

Before you dive headfirst into creating landing pages, take a step back and ask yourself: What is the overall goal that you want to achieve? Is it to sell a product, provide users more information about what your company does, fill out a form or push users to your social pages?  What message/image/tagline will drive a visitor to action? All of these goals need different landing pages with different messaging that gives consumers a reason to convert, the ability to convert, and resolves any concerns or questions they have about your offering. All of the content on this page should support these specific elements; if it doesn’t, get rid of it.

 

Match Your Messaging

Each ad campaign should have a complementary landing page that matches your ads:

 

• Headlines and secondary messaging



• Image



• Call to Action


 

Start by creating a basic template page. Avoid clutter – keep messaging and layout clean, simple and direct. Then, begin tweaking the content to complement the messaging of each individual ad campaign. 

 

For more advanced landing pages, try testing dynamic content substitution for keywords. This automatically updates the copy on your landing page with the copy of the ad users clicked on.

 

Don’t do this:

Part 2 

Questions from Our Clients: Holiday Landing Pages

Q) Do I need a holiday-themed landing page if I already have a generic one?

 

A) Yes! If you are running a holiday-themed campaign, you will want to keep messaging consistent from your ads to your landing pages. It is also important to appeal to the consumer’s state of mind and having a holiday themed landing page during peak holiday shopping times does exactly that.

 

Here is a great example from PicturePeople.com: 

 

The reality is that the wrong landing page can lead to high bounce rates, bad traffic and poor visitor experience. Here are a few tips in addition to those provided under “Impactful Insights”:

 

• Keep messaging consistent with your holiday themed message.



• Don’t clutter the page. Keep it to one goal, one message and one action.



• Test different landing pages for different results.


 

Have a question? Submit yours to us. 

 

Have an answer? Tell us. We want to learn from your strategies.

6 key elements to keep top of mind for holiday campaign planning!

1) Evaluate Your Campaigns from the Past.  Take the time to understand which past holiday campaigns and ongoing campaigns have generated the most success and ask the question “why?”  What was the messaging? What days were the ads running? What targeting methodology was used? What yielded the most traffic to your site? What generated the highest conversion rate? Did your efforts increase in-store traffic?  What about an increase in social media?

 

2) Plan your Budget.  Your budget should account for a long tail campaign that begins end of October/early November and spikes on key purchasing dates. Review your holiday sales trends from 2011 and make a note of your highest sales days during the holidays.  Compare this to the most profitable days in ecommerce from 2011: Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Free Ship Days. Create an excel document that takes both trends into account and map out daily budgets for the duration of your holiday campaign.

 

3) Keep Holiday Campaign Messaging Consistent.  Build on past messaging successes and make it better for the holidays. Remember to make sure that your holiday messaging matches across all your marketing channels.  This means ensuring the promos offered in ads match the language on your site and social media outlets.

 

4) Landing Pages Must Complement Your Campaign. Make sure you present a clear and clean purchasing path for consumers.  Don’t bait and switch users; make sure that specific product pages or product landing pages match the product featured in your ad.  The language on your landing pages should complement the language and tone used in your advertising outreach and it should include a full description of product/service information – the more information the better recall for the user in the long run.   Last, but not least, keep the transaction process simple – three steps and done!

 

5) Venture into Mobile.  You can’t turn a blind eye to mobile this holiday. More and more consumers will be searching on the go as they attempt to feed their need for instant gratification. Mobile offers a perfect opportunity to geo-target consumers. Make sure you have a mobile/tablet friendly site and that your paid search ads extend to mobile platforms.   (NTENT is now available on mobile. Ask how you can be featured on mobile today.

 

6) Leverage Your Existing Consumer Connections. Leverage consumer connections you already have and kick your outbound email campaigns and social media efforts into high gear!  Existing consumer databases and social media connections present ideal opportunities to convert consumers this holiday. They already have some level of interest in what you have to offer and would welcome suggestions and ideas this holiday season. Make a calendar of when you intend to send out email blasts and social media pushes. Consider special offers for consumers who have made purchases in the past.

Keep these 6 tips in mind as you kick your holiday campaigns into gear. Remember, you can’t view marketing efforts in a vacuum; online campaigns should be looked at as a piece of the pie that works collectively to generate awareness, drive in-store traffic and increase online conversions.  Getting your brand/product/services in front of consumers early, online and on mobile is crucial to holiday sales success.

 

6 Tips to a Successful Holiday Campaign

 

Need help preparing for the holidays? Ask Us. Whatever your budget, one of NTENT’s dedicated account managers will be on call to help you prepare the perfect holiday campaign.