The saying goes, ‘you need to spend money to make money’. Although this is true, knowing what you are doing with the monetary investment is too often overlooked. The saying should go, ‘you need to know how to invest your money, and then spend the money to make even more money’ or something along those lines…

Without effectively planning, actioning, measuring and analysing your campaigns, you can’t really prove how much ROI you have generated. After all, you may have brought in 150 new product sales last month, valuing at £1,500, but how much did you spend to achieve this? What was your average Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)? Could said CPA be drastically lowered with a few simple tweaks? Are your ads really relevant? These are the sort of questions every PPC marketer needs to be asking themselves in today’s competitive climate.

To offer our own expertise into the matter, we have collated the top 6 reasons we believe a number of PPC campaigns tend to fail:

BROAD HEADLINES – INCLUDE MOST IMPORTANT MESSAGE IN THE HEADLINES (H1>H2)

What’s important to keep in mind when creating your ads is that even though the recently expanded text description allows, by far the largest amount of visible text, that does not mean you should target all of your top keywords and messaging within this section alone. Like any written content, headlines grab user’s attention. Let’s say you’re reading a blog, even this one for example, how many times do you skip through much of the jargon and find the headline which resonates with you? Well, PPC text ads are no different, and Google knows this.

Bear the above in mind, and remember that Google are pretty much the online police, as well as the judge, jury and executioner. It’s fair to say they expect your content to be extremely well optimised, with headlines as grabbing as the content you are promoting. Now, when it comes to inputting headlines into an ad, you will notice you have the options of H1 and H2. It states within ad set up that the headlines are both 30 characters long, this doesn’t, however, guarantee that all of the second headline will show. It may get truncated depending on device and placement of where it is shown. With this in mind, it is vital you fully optimize your H1 to include as much key messaging and relevant targeted keywords as possible (without keyword stuffing).

BROAD AD GROUP GROUPINGS – SCRUTINISE AD GROUP SPLITTING (MOST IMPORTANT)

The first and most vital part of any PPC campaign is keyword identification and grouping. When asked to review some of our clients current PPC activity, is has become apparent that a number of them tended to broadly group a variation of keywords together, and place all of them within a singular ad group. They will then target only one or two ads in this extensive list of keywords. THIS IS A BIG NO NO…

An Ad Group is formed by separating out the already ‘shortlisted’ keywords (initial phase of PPC campaign) into smaller keyword groups; when doing so, it is important to collate keywords that are highly relevant to one another. Ad groups should basically consist of the same keyword repeated with ever so slight alterations. For example, “Men’s Nike blue shoes, “blue Nike shoes for Men, “Blue Nike Mens Shoes”. You wouldn’t then add keywords such as “blue adidas shoes”, “blue shoes for men” or even “men’s shoes” into this ad group. This is because even though they are closely related, this technically isn’t what the user will have searched for.

Having an extremely refined ad group will basically tell Google that your ads are highly relevant to the users search term. If you were to include a high number of varied keywords, your ad group will be spread way too thinly trying to serve the ad up to a large number of searches, therefore the ‘quality score’ will suffer and the ad underperform. So make sure you’re making as many refined ad groups as you can, including highly similar keywords.

FOCUSING TOO MUCH ON CPA

Sounds strange doesn’t it, that focusing too much on your target CPA can actually be a bad thing, well, let me explain. The past few years have seen a huge shift from maximising clicks, to maximising conversions/leads. While this is most definitely a step in the right direction, (after all, clicks don’t mean conversions), your cost per acquisition can also be a falsified metric, giving you a misguided sense of success.

Think of it this way, let’s say you’re like us, a digital marketing agency, and your main goal from PPC advertising was to generate leads to then convert into direct sales. You may set yourself a target CPA of £50.00 per initial lead on a campaign level, which don’t get me wrong, can in fact be a good indicator. However, one major issue with focusing too heavily on vanity metrics such as CPA is that they don’t necessarily guarantee profitability.

Instead of solely focusing on CPA, why not focus on profitability by tying all of your PPC activity to your bottom line? Understandably, focusing on profitability can be much more time consuming, and actually may involve collaborating with the sales team to do so. But in the long run, the insights you generate from learning things such as; what keywords drive the most sales, which of these keywords provide the most revenue, which keywords have the largest ‘post lead’ drop off, and what ads pull in the most converting leads. All of this is absolutely vital to truly optimising your PPC for actual bottom line profitability. Give it a try and see how it works for you.

YOUR LANDING PAGES HAVE LOW QUALITY SCORES

One of the often overlooked, yet highly relevant aspects to generating a good quality score is the Landing Page the ad is directing traffic toward. Now hands up, who has fallen into the trap of just using your home page to direct ads toward?

Every keyword, or keyword grouping should be linked to a page focused on that particular topic or service area. Each individual ad needs to direct the user to a landing page that is as closely related to their initial search term as possible. Directing users to a home page, simply does not do this.

As a rule, here at MSA we always create bespoke landing pages when running PPC campaigns with the end goal been client leads, and not product purchases. By creating your own stand alone web page, you are able to create and customise each step of the users journey to resonate with what they have initially searched for. As well as this, using tools such as Hot Jar and other web monitoring software, you can then physically watch what the user is doing on your landing page and make edits accordingly in an attempt to increase conversion rate.

NON-OPTIMISED FIELD PATHS – INCLUDE TOP KEYWORDS IN THE PATH FIELDS

A pretty basic concept to pick up on, yet one that PPC marketers still aren’t utilising. The field path URL which you have the option to customise can actually have an effect on the overall click through rate.

By optimising the field path to include relevant keywords that highly resonate with the user’s search query, you are essentially re-confirming the end destination to the user and therefore putting more confidence into the user’s decision to click your ad.

NO AD EXTENSIONS – UPDATE FOR RELEVANCE

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that adding additional offerings and site links to already existing ads can ultimately improve click through rates. After all, the more options, the more likely you are to hit a user’s interest.

This is where implementing ad extensions, on a granular, and also campaign level can help your ad success. It is important to note, however, that since the update in ad description text length, Google will now disregard any ad extension that reiterates that is said within the actual ad copy. This is where you need to be clever and provide completely different offerings, or useful information, that A, will be of interest to the user, and B, will add relevance and superiority to your ad over your competition.

Another key benefit to including well formatted ad extensions is that they actually make your ad stand out more. Let’s compare two ads below:

No Extension Ad

Extension Ad

Which ad stands out more to you? By adding extensions, you are essentially ‘bigging up’ the amount of space your ad has to be see in search listings, ultimately catching the user’s eye. So don’t forget to implement them extensions into your campaign.

CONCLUSION

Google Adwords can be an extremely effective tool to compliment any organic or multi channel paid marketing campaign, but it must be approached in a strategic and thoughtful manner. Simply throwing money into unoptimised ads can cause serious damage to your bottom line.

If you aren’t 100% sure on how to fully optimise your PPC campaign, seek help from professionals. But first make sure you have mapped out a clear objective, target market and expectation.

We are happy to provide consultation to your business regarding all of the above, so if you are in need of help with your paid activity, feel free to give us a call or get in touch today.

IMAGES

First and foremost, Instagram is a picture sharing platform, so make sure your photos are top notch! But, art (and Instagram can be an art form) is subjective and appealing to absolutely everyone isn’t possible. To make sure you’re delighting the largest possible audience, consider the tips below.

Go #NoFilter

Studies have shown that the most popular filter right now, is no filter at all! The full study can be found, here, but the main takeaway is that bright, strong photos with no filter perform better than anything else (currently).

If you are going to filter…

Sometimes a photo is just not quite right without a filter, and if augmented colour schemes are part of your branding, then life without a filter might not be right for you. If you are going to use a filter, you might be interested to know that the Mayfair filter is the most effective at generating likes. We’ve linked the full study here for you to take a look at, but for now, filter on.

Use brighter photos

Even if you’re a cocktail bar which only operates after dark, this applies to you too! Did you know that photos with light levels between 65% and 85% have been found to gain 24% more likes? Don’t believe us? The full study is here, and it sheds plenty of light on the matter (see what we did there?).

Words of wisdom

How many times have you seen a motivational quote with just the caption of ‘this’ or a hands up emoji? It’s going to be at least 5 every day, they’re everywhere, and they make people feel good. Because words are often easier to interpret than images, quotes can help you boost your engagement figures. You can create your own quotes or work with quotes created by others (make sure to give credit where credit is due) by entering them into apps like Canva, or one of their many other competitors. Most of these external apps are free, and only charge for additional fonts or bonus features.

COPY

Whilst it may sound like common sense, you’d be amazed how many posts avoid copy all together. This isn’t something we’d recommend, unless you’re posting an inspirational quote image (more on those later…). And although Instagram is primarily a picture sharing platform, it has now become popular with individuals, companies and celebrities as a means of storytelling because you’re not restricted to 140 characters (it’ll be interesting to see what difference Twitter’s bump to 280 will have).

Creative never boring

You are competing with 800 million other daily users, let that sink in for a moment. Now consider that 4.2 billion likes are given every day. When you’ve narrowed down the numbers down to your audience pool (which will vary from user to user), it’s still going to be extremely competitive. So it’s not enough to just be on Instagram, you also have to be delighting your current audience in order to attract a wider one.

Storytelling

Don’t be boring, we cannot re-iterate that enough, don’t be boring! Tell a story with your photos, and your copy too! Since you’re not restricted to a lower number of characters the way you are with Twitter, you can write an epic story and convey your emotions in depth. Make the most of this character allowance, and connect with your audience on a deeper level.

Topically relevant hashtags

Even if you’re scheduling your posts in advance, it’s important to remain topically relevant, and up to date on current news. Tools like Buzz Sumo allow you to track topically relevant hashtags and see how many people are talking about any given hashtag. You can incorporate these hashtags into your scheduled content so long as they’re relevant, and tracking trending topics will also help you to avoid posting content which is inappropriate on a given day.

Dedicated hashtags

Create a hashtag which is specific to your brand and use it EVERYWHERE. Make it a hashtag that you can use on all of your platforms, and that connects directly to your brand, and then, make it short enough that your followers can use it easily. If you’re a B2C business, encourage your clients to use the hashtag when showing your products – this sense of community is the first step in generating a cult-like following for your product.

Completed bio, no spam

Consider this to be your business dating profile or your elevator pitch. Be upfront and honest about what you do and who you are, sell your product and include a link to your main sites.

Include a CTA

Internet users are smart, capable of making their own decisions. But, they’re also bombarded by information each and every day, so make sure you’re asking for what you want. Being ambiguous and artistic is great for generating interest in offers or competitions, but it won’t necessarily get you leads, conversions or purchases. Tell your audience what you want and use action verbs in your call to action (CTA), if you want someone to click on the link in your bio – just say it! It’s not too pushy, and it won’t scare people off.

Use the word comment in your captions

This follows on using a CTA in your copy, if you want to generate a buzz around your post to generate brand awareness, use the word ‘comment‘. It’s as simple as that, but it has a dramatic effect on the number of engagements and comments you’ll receive!

TIMINGS

How often are you posting?

We’re given two very different lines a lot in the social scheduling world, and currently, many companies are trending towards only posting higher quality content on a less frequent basis. This is something you should always remember, quality over quantity. Make sure that your images and copy are always of the highest quality before you go on reading this point. Once your content is of the highest possible quality, post it more often on Instagram. You heard us, more often. Despite what we’re typically espousing as marketers, there is no negative correlation between posting content more often and the number of interactions.

Post on Sundays

Did you know that there’s less content posted on Instagram on a Sunday than on any other day? Well, now you do!

What is the best time to post?

This varies based on your audience, if you’re aiming a product at stay at home mothers of 6 year olds, timing your content for just after the school run is perfect, but it won’t suit moms who work during school hours. There are a number of studies about what the best time to post is, but ultimately it will come down to trial, error and research on your part.

Schedule in advance (later, sproutsocial, hootsuite)

There are a number of programs which allow you to bulk schedule your posts on multiple platforms – including Instagram. No matter whether you’re looking for free software, or have a marketing budget to assign, there are options out there for you. Some of our favourites include: Sprout Social, Hootsuite and Later.

GROWTH DRIVEN

Keep to a theme

Because Instagram now lists posts in order of perceived relevance and interest to the audience, it’s important that your content will consistently appeal to your audience. So refine the kinds of posts your putting out there and make sure they attract the high quality and high value leads you’re looking for.

Use analytics programs to keep track of your growth

There are a number of programs out there to keep track of your engagements and follower growth. Here’s just a few:

• Piquora – allowing you to track the ROI of your images and interact with influencers
• Iconosquare – to track your competitors and engagements
• Instafollow – with this you can track not just your new followers, but also figure out what made you lose followers so you can avoid it in future
• Crowdfire – to learn about your followers and target new ones

Run a contest

There’s nothing quite like a competition to drive organic interactions, people will like and share and comment if there’s a pot of gold (or a free product) at the end of it. Not all of the engagements will turn into the repeat customers, but some will – and they’re the important ones to focus on!

WHAT IS HEATMAP TESTING?

A heatmap is a graphical and often visual representation of data, in this representation, varying degrees of a single metric are shown using colours to signify numbers. Many online marketers use heatmaps to understand which areas of web pages are performing best.

• click tracking
• scroll tracking
• conversion funnels
• visitor recording
• eye tracking

Each of these features offers you a different insight into your customers and their behaviours, you can optimise based on any or all of your findings; just remember that if you change more than one thing at a time it will be harder to pinpoint any one catalysing factor.

MOUSE TRACKING

Mouse Tracking (aka Cursor Tracking) allows you to gather data on where your user’s mouse has been on your page, this data doesn’t just relate to clicks but also to the patterns that the mouse has made when moved across the screen. This is similar to Eye Tracking which we will be discussing later, but we’re covering Mouse Tracking first, because it’s easier to test, and less costly. One study has shown that there is a strong correlation (84%) between the results of Mouse and Eye Tracking, so mouse tracking is a great way to start understanding your UX. Typically, this is because users will use their cursor as an anchor point for their eyes to come back to, so this is a first step to understanding where your user is looking.

There are many advantages to Mouse Tracking, one of the primary advantages is that Mouse Tracking doesn’t require lab conditions, so long as you have the user’s permission, it can take place anywhere. This removes the ‘observer effect’ which can skew your data, but it does come with a downside – you cannot run precise tests, so you’re at the mercy of following the user’s own goals.

CLICK TRACKING

Click Tracking on heat maps pretty much does what it says on the tin. It tracks where, and how often any particular spot is clicked on. The data you gather will not only show you which areas of any given page are most visually appealing, but also what areas of the page users perceive to be clickable, which can sometimes surprise you. At My Social Agency, we analysed a landing page we had created for a client and found that there was an unusually high concentration of clicks on an ‘about us’ section of copy which didn’t have any further links attached! Realising that this was an area that page users were especially interested in, we went back and expanded the copy to enhance the UX. It could be that you make a similar discovery to us and end up adding additional content, or it could be that your users are missing your Call To Action (CTA) entirely; whatever you find the data will give you a way to further optimise any given page.

SCROLL TRACKING

Your webpage is a lot like a traditional newspaper in some ways, in this case we’re referencing the attention that users devote to your page. If you take a look at Hotjar’s demo scroll map, you can see if or where users have scrolled to – from this you quickly see that after a certain point the number of people scrolling quickly drops off to nearly nothing! It would be easy to say that this means you should put all of your copy above the average “fold”, but that could be detrimental to your overall layout. Whitespace helps users process information and makes it easier to engage with, so trying to cram all of your information into a smaller space probably isn’t the way forward either. Finding the balance which is right for you will take time and testing, but the results are worth it. Some suggestions we’d give for optimising your scroll rate would be to:

• Use subheadings that clearly outline the value of each paragraph/section.
• Use the final line of each section of copy to link to subsequent sections.

CONVERSION FUNNELS

Companies such as Hotjar also offer Conversion Funnel analyses, whilst these are not on your basic heatmap page, they are offered alongside many heatmaps which is why we’ve included them here. Conversion Funnels are a great way to identify and correct any major barriers to purchase that your customers are experiencing. A conversion funnel analyses the steps/pages that your customer goes through leading up to a purchase, for example, when buying slippers your basic buyer’s process might be:

Homepage => Ladies slippers => Product page => Add to basket => Complete purchase.

A Conversion Funnel allows you to view each stage and see if, or where you are losing people. It could be that you have too many additional steps and and people are losing focus, perhaps there’s no time pressure on your purchase and customers are getting bored, or it could be that they’re not responding to the visuals on an earlier page. No matter what it is, a Conversion Funnel analysis will help you to optimise each stage of your buyer’s process, whether it’s a small drop on each page, or a large percentage drop on a particular page, there’s always something to learn.

SESSION RECORDING

Session Recording brings all of the above tracking measures together, because it actually records a user’s session and watch it back in its entirety at a later date. In this tracking mode you can watch the user’s complete session, including: where a user’s cursor is, which pages they have visited (in order) and how long they spent on each page. This is particularly useful because it changes your perspective from just viewing data, to watching the site exploration and buying process in a natural way. The downside is that you are watching one video at a time, and this doesn’t allow you to watch the trends of many users, so you could have your interpretations skewed by anomalies you view.

EYE TRACKING

This tracking measure is not typically offered by most heatmap providers as it incurs additional efforts and costs which cannot be passively accrued, nonetheless it is worth examining as it can have great returns. Put simply, eye tracking measures the movement of the subject’s eyes across a 2D screen on a 3D environment through recording the reflections on the subject’s corneas. Today, eye trackers work by using near-infrared technology alongside high-resolution cameras, you need an infrared light source to gain an accurate measure, so normal light sources won’t be enough. There are two main forms of eye trackers: remote and mobile. Mobile trackers are typically mounted to lightweight eyeglass frames, and as such better for anyone needing their subjects to move freely around a space. However, with this mode your subjects will have additional weight around their face which could cause them run the risk of the tracker moving as the subject’s head moves, so make sure that the glasses are fitted properly and securely. Remote trackers are fixed to a surface and are better suited to studies where materials are in a fixed location, they can be utilised with off and on screen materials, and although your subjects can’t get up and move around, they won’t be encumbered by additional wires or fittings around their heads.

What can you learn from this method? Many, many things. One study has discovered that users spend more time looking at the left hand side of the screen than the right, that copy is generally scanned in an “F” shape and that men and women prioritise different things when looking at the exact same information!

DETERMINING YOUR GOAL

First things first, you need to know what the goal of your campaign will be. Twitter gives your 4 easy options to choose from and 1 that’s more complex for the seasoned professionals out there, the options are clearly defined in a dropdown menu, so you can choose what best suits your needs!

1. Attract new followers
2. Increase your engagements
3. Increase engagements on a selected tweet
4. Increase app installations
5. Drive new traffic and conversions
6. Increase video views on your latest videos
7. Create a custom campaign

BEST PRACTICES

Before we go any further, let’s cover the best practices for creating Twitter adverts, because all the instructions in the world won’t save an average advert. Below are a list of things that you’ll want to do in some, or all of your campaigns, keep them in mind moving forwards.

Introduce yourself

If this is your first Twitter advert, or maybe even your second or third, the first thing you’ll want to do is introduce yourself and your brand. Tell your story and create credibility with your audience – no one wants to buy from someone they don’t know. Equally, if you’re rebranding or introducing a new storyline then it’s worth re-introducing yourself, customer focus often isn’t about the product itself, it’s about the brand and status that they’re buying from.

Include a clear CTA

Make your desired action simple, if you want people to click on a link which will take them to a landing page, use the word ‘click’, if your link leads straight to a purchase page, then the words ‘buy’ or ‘purchase’ should be included. Simplicity and authenticity is key here, your audience wants to be taken directly to what they were promised, they need for it to be simple because otherwise they’ll go to a competitor who makes their offering clear. Having a clear CTA will enhance your UX (User Experience) and continue the effort you’ve put into branding and building good customer relationships.

Include cards in your wider campaign

Beyond your typical adverts in Twitter, you also have the option of using Twitter Cards. These cards are larger than typical tweet boxes and promise to draw the eye in the hopes of attracting the attention of the speedy scroller who misses the majority of content. The images featured are also larger than the Twitter standard, and instead of a larger version of the image being displayed when clicked on, clicking will take the user straight through to your landing page.

• Customisation over generalisation

Whilst it can be tempting to try and appeal to everyone, not everyone is going to buy your product or be interested in your brand. So take the time and focus on creating on advertising that appeals to your ideal customer, the kind of lead that is more likely to make a purchase and share it with their own circles. This same kind of thinking will come in later when it comes to defining your audience distribution settings.

• Quality over quantity

If you’re creating a series of adverts, and want to have 10 separate posts that’s fine, just make sure that you have 10 high quality posts, not 5 great ones and 5 average ones. This goes back to building your brand and making sure that you’re attracting the right kinds of leads, people are buying your brand, not just your product. Ultimately, it’s your decision, but our recommendation will always be that it’s better to send out a smaller amount of exceptional assets as opposed to spamming people with large amounts of low quality material.

• Learn from your organic data

Your organic data is a great way to learn how many people are interacting with you and your product. It can give you insights into things like their age, sex and location, as well as things like the times of day they’re active and whether you gain more interactions from shorter or longer tweets.

With the best practises covered, it’s time to delve into what advertising options you have on Twitter.

ADVERTISING OPTIONS

• Promoted Accounts

A Promoted Accounts ad allows you to get your Twitter account in front of a highly targeted audience, with the aim of attracting relevant followers. Promoted Accounts are displayed in the audience’s timelines as well as the ‘Who to Follow’ tab, and generally feature “follow” in their CTA. This is good for encouraging generalised followings, but doesn’t particularly push your potential audience to find out more about you before hitting follow – so this may not lead to final purchases. However, despite this line of thinking, you should be heartened by the study which shows 85% of Promoted Accounts users believe that this ad format has helped them discover new business on Twitter.

• Promoted Tweets

Promoted Tweets do what they say on the tin, they focus on promoting a single tweet and boosting its exposure to the widest possible audience. Promoted tweets appear throughout your feed and other users’ feeds, automatically showing it in an expanded view, the tweets also appear at the top of search results for selected keywords which further highlights your visibility. Promoted Tweets are building your brand voice because they allow you to put a snippet of yourself out there, being as funny or serious as you want your tone of voice to be. Aside from building awareness and being a great way of sharing your content, Promoted Tweets are a brilliant way of promoting deals or offers you are currently running, gaining more traction for leads and sign ups which will hopefully lead to later repeat custom for you.

• Promoted Accounts vs. Promoted Tweets

These are the two major Twitter ad types, and the most accessible (Promoted Trends cost far more), and each has different pros and cons. Promoted Accounts are best used to increase follower numbers, whereas Promoted Tweets are best utilised for putting out big announcements and campaign launches, situations where you want to reach a wider audience than your organic follower list. If you use a Promoted Account ad then your following will go up, but the increase to engagements could be negligible, and Promoted Tweets will see a boost to your engagement, but may not have a dramatic effect on your follower size. Decide which you want to prioritise and go from there.

• Promoted Trends

Organic trends are a great way to track what masses of people are talking about, and these appear in the left hand navigation when on desktop. At the top of these you will often see Promoted Trends, which feature a promoted hashtag and the account name of the promoter. As with organically trending topics, users can incorporate the hashtags into their own tweets and view a page which has accumulated all the tweets using the selected hashtag. Promoted Trends are a great way of encouraging mass followings because they are integrated with organically trending materials, which drives users to interact with these hashtags more and as such become part of a larger, sometimes worldwide conversation.

CAMPAIGN TYPES – GOALS

We’ve organised the campaign types in the order that they appear in the dropdown list you’ll encounter on Twitter, however this doesn’t immediately make clear whether which ad option is used in each campaign. For that reason it is worth noting that all of the campaign types, with the exception of ‘Followers’, are Promoted Tweets based, whereas the ‘Followers’ campaign works with Promoted Accounts.

• Tweet Engagements

In this campaign type, you promote individual tweets with the aim of starting a conversation around your brand, which will later hopefully lead to conversions and purchases. Here, you only pay for the initial engagement with each user and not for any ongoing interactions after that point, you also do not pay for organic interactions with the monetised tweet, so you can be sure that your money is only being spent on interacting with people who are new to your brand or product.

• Followers

Using the Promoted Accounts ad type, you pay for each follower that you gain through paid methods. Impressions and all other engagements are free, to ensure that your budget is best spent.

• Awareness

Awareness campaigns are targeted at a broader audience and are the only campaign type charged by impressions per thousand (CPM) rather than engagements – so make sure your ad is strong enough to stimulate some kind of measureable response.

• Video Views

Doing exactly what it purports to do, a Video Views campaign is focused on increasing the number of views of your selected videos. In this case, you pay for each viewer who does any of the following:

• Watches for 2 or more seconds of playback
• Opens the video into fullscreen mode
• Takes the video off of mute

• Website Clicks/Conversions

Technically, these are two separate campaign types, but due to their many similarities we’ll be grouping them together. For both campaign types you promote selected tweets to a targeted audience that you want to have visit and take action on your site. You can include a Twitter Website Card in both as well, which will give your user a window into your website before they leave Twitter. In both campaign types you’re charged per click, but in the Conversions campaign you additionally have the ability to track the conversions you receive.

• App Installs and Re-engagements

The aim of this campaign type varies, and again, aims to do what it says in the title. For this campaign, you promote tweets with the intention of having new users download your app, or re-engaging users who already have your app but who haven’t used it in a while. Depending on your goal you will pay for app downloads or app opens, or both. Similar to the Website Clicks/Conversions campaign type, you have the option of employing a Twitter card, in this case a Twitter App Install Card. This kind of Twitter Card shows a preview image of your app, along with the app’s top ratings, and the option to install or open the app with a single click.

• Lead Generation

This is another Twitter Card led campaign option, in this case Lead Generation Cards, which allow the user to share their relevant details with you in just 2 clicks and without ever leaving the Twitter platform. The gathered information is stored in your Twitter Ads Account and is fully downloadable in a CSV format.

Now we’ve gone through all of the campaign types and best practises, let’s get to actually setting up your campaign. There’s only 4 steps, so it won’t take you any time at all!

SETTING UP YOUR CAMPAIGN

1. Create new campaign

   Get yourself over to the Twitter Ads Manager and choose from the list of campaign types outlined above, then click ‘Create Campaign’. Next you’ll be taken to an ad campaign screen where you’ll name your campaign, and decide whether you want your campaign to start immediately or at a later date. You can also choose whether or not to add third party tracking (which is currently in beta)

2. Choose your audience

   At this stage you have a number of options to choose from, so you can make your audience as broad and narrow as you’d like. If you have an existing list of contacts that you want to target, you have the option of uploading the list to Twitter and just targeting them. Or, you can also opt to target people who are similar to your existing follower base. Beyond all this, you can also design your own audience, refining the targets by the below options.

   • Audience Locations – this can be as broad as choosing a country or as specific as entering a post code.
   • Audience Device – not only can you target Apple or Android users here, you can also specify what operating system the device should be running
   • Audience Gender
   • Audience Language

   The list goes on, and to make sure you understand how each change will affect your potential reach, the Twitter interface displays and estimated audience size in the navigation. The interface is responsive depending on which audience targeting options you choose.

3. Set your budget

   As mentioned above, different ad campaigns types will charge you for different types of engagement, the interface will show which you will be charged by which makes setting your budget easier. You will choose your maximum daily budget and your maximum total budget. The interface will also show you bids based on what similar competitors are spending, and you can compare this against Twitter’s own recommended bids for each campaign type.

4. Choose your creative

   Now, you have to decide whether to promote an existing tweet or whether to create an entirely new one. Twitter will show you a list of your existing tweets, making life easier if you want to use one of your best performing tweets. You’ll also see a preview of your ad on the right hand side of the page as you create it, so you can see how changes are affecting your visuals.

5. Launch

   Just click Publish Tweet, and you’re done!

Now you’ve got your adverts up and running, make sure to keep track of what’s performing best so you can learn from it. Then, incorporate your learning into future campaigns!

Contrary to what you may think, even the most seemingly mundane industries are interesting. Working in B2B we get involved with a wide variety of clients, and there’s something interesting to learn in each of them. Sometimes, it’s not even that consumers find an industry ‘boring’, they just think it’s too technical or too far out of their comfort zone. It’s your job to prove them wrong!

Sometimes, your trouble will come from generating interest in purchasing, or helping your potential customers to actually understand the industry you’re working in. Then you have to convey how your offering is different to everyone else’s! No matter the challenge, there are things you can try. A big part of generating interest and setting yourself apart will come from your content marketing efforts, so today we’re going to give you 4 great ideas that you can use to make even seemingly boring industries fun!

CONTENT FORMATS

Infographics

Depending on the kind of audience you’re targeting, you’ll be writing things differently. You can’t expect someone who’s never interacted with your industry to suddenly understand highly technical information.

Conversely, you can’t expect someone with 15 years of experience to be interested in purely top level information. If you want to create 1 piece of content that appeals to these two very different audience types then it’s time to get creative. Infographics are a great way to cover the top level of information in a quick and engaging way. It can introduce top level content, without giving up on more in-depth topics. If you place them at the top of a post then you’re able to give prospective readers the chance to see whether or not they can learn from and engage with your work!

Below the infographic you can have a 2000 word blog that’s filled with engaging H-tags which will appeal to your more experienced readers. Having that shorter introduction makes the topic less ‘scary’ is a great way to generate excitement and interest. You never know, your content could be the first step to a whole new world for the reader.

Animations and videos

300 hours of video are uploaded to Youtube every single minute of the day. Almost 5 billion videos are watched each day, and autoplay leads us to videos we never thought we’d be watching. I don’t honestly plan to end up watching dog yoga videos ’til 3am, but I start by looking for one yoga tutorial and it just spirals. Animations and videos are a fantastic way to make any subject fun, introduce a protagonist, a challenge and a resolution and you have a potential viral video!

Make other people do the hard work for you

There is a time and a place for sarcasm and humour in content creation and advertising. My all time favourite advert is from 2010, when flashmobs were still a new concept. T-mobile organised a performance in an arrival terminal in Heathrow airport. They never mentioned a phone, not in the advert, nor in the song selection. There was absolutely no product placement on their part. However, you can see endless phones being taken out during the advert, with people videoing, photographing and sharing their experience. The consumer did all the work, they brought the product into view – all the advert did was highlight what an integral part of the day their product was.

Use real world applications and analogies

UX, or User Experience, sounds very technical, or at least it did to me the first time I heard about it. It didn’t help that I connected it to front end development — I really don’t understand that. In reality, it’s a very simple concept. UX is just making sure that the user enjoys navigating through your website or content. It also applies to wider life, you can talk about your UX of your last bus ride, or visiting a store! You can always make an experience better, because aesthetics aren’t going to solve all of your problems. My assumption had been that if a page was beautifully designed, users would automatically use the intended path. However, this isn’t always true. To help me understand UX in the real world, our designer showed me this.

The pathway is beautifully designed and more aesthetically pleasing, but it’s quicker for the user to cut across the grass. So why wouldn’t they? The user doesn’t really care about how much work the creator has put in, they just want an easy experience.

WHAT IS GDPR?

General Data Protection Regulation. Four little words that have companies across Europe, and the wider world, quaking in their boots. GDPR was agreed upon by the European Parliament and Council in April 2016. It replaces the Data Protections Directive 95/46/ec and will be the main law dictating how companies must store and protect EU citizens’ personal data.

In a nutshell, after GDPR comes into effect, people will have to opt in to receiving any kind of contact from your company. The new regulations also require companies to protect their databases’ personal data much more.  It takes a broad view of what constitutes ‘personal data’, IP addresses and cookie data will also need the same amount of protection as people’s names and national insurance numbers. All of the data types below are included in the GDPR, let us know many apply to you.

• Basic identity information: names, addresses, ID numbers, etc.
• Web data: location, IP addresses, cookie data and RFID tags
• Racial or ethnic data
• Sexual orientation
• Health and genetic data
• Political opinions

Furthermore, it’s not just as simple as getting permission, once. The GDPR also stipulates that data can only be held onto, and used for, the exact purpose that the customer agreed to. This means that you can’t restrict information based solely on a customer having to agree to receive all your marketing efforts. Beyond this, if the customer doesn’t actively agree to be contacted about offers/information other than the service they’re registering for, you can’t get in touch with them. If you do, there are hefty penalties that can, and will, be applied.

Cue scary music and chills running down the spine of many a business owner out there.

WHEN DOES IT COME INTO EFFECT?

That bit is simple. 25th May 2018.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR SALES PROCESSES?

Well… it means no more cold calls, no more cold emails, no spam without permission. For companies who rely on having hundreds of cold calls sent out and sending thousands of unsolicited emails each day, this is going to be an issue. But all problems have upsides, and often, they even have solution. So long as you’re willing to learn and adapt, GDPR can be a good thing, honest! The regulations are going to mean that the leads you do have will automatically be ‘more qualified’ leads, you’re just going to have to pursue other ways of acquiring them.

WHAT HAPPENS IF GDPR IS VIOLATED?

Of course, mistakes are going to occur, and there are first warnings, but be careful! Repeated or large violations can lead to exceptionally large penalties — up to €20million or 4% of a company’s annual worldwide turnover. 52% of US companies expect to be affected by this, so if you’re concerned, you’re not alone. The important thing to focus on is what you can do to generate leads in a GDPR compliant way.

WHAT OTHER LEAD GENERATION OPTIONS ARE OUT THERE?

As we’ve already said, GDPR means that the leads you do get are always somewhere towards being warm. Lead generation can come from paid or organic means, most likely, you’ll be using a mix of both. Let’s outline just a few of options that are open to you — these are a few of the tactics we employ here at My Social Agency, it’s by no way an exhaustive list. You may have other routes you want to pursue, and so long as they’re GDPR compliant, go for it! If you need a bit of help with this, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

GO INBOUND

Inbound marketing isn’t a new thing, but still not as widely practised as it should be. It’s a big part of how we do things here at My Social Agency. This marketing model flips the cold call process entirely, and leads your potential customers to contact you rather than the other way around. It’s really quite wonderful. So, how do you apply this methodology to your business?

Side note. We’re not going to be introducing the entirety of what Inbound Marketing is, here. It’s at least two articles all on its own, and today, we’re just going to stick to how to use Inbound to get you leads!

First things first

Provide value before you ever ask for something in return. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the form of a helpful blog, vibrant infographic, or as a downloadable tool — give first, ask second. In fact, over the course of a single purchase, your customer is likely to require all of the above.

Inbound preaches that there are 3 stages every potential customer goes through when buying any product or service. Those stages are:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Decision

The types of content you distribute should be targeted at each of these stages. For example, if a customer is trying to plan a party, at the awareness stage they may search:

“how do I plan a party?”

They’re aware of their problem, and are looking for a solution to their overall issue. They’re not focussed on fine details yet. So you might have a blog titled in the almost the exact same words (e.g. How to Plan a Party). This content would probably include a list of ‘to do’s’ including: buying food, putting up decorations, etc. When they have a complete list of things they need to do, they’ll start looking for products to meet their needs. That puts them into the consideration stage.

The consideration stage will lead customers to look for things like party supplies, and they’ll begin to weigh up their options. They’re looking for the best deal available, just one price check isn’t enough. At this point, you should be distributing content such as contact forms and discounts (placed behind landing pages to gather data).

Finally, when the customer is ready to make a purchase, you should still be distributing content to them. This should be things like ‘thank you’ pages, and emails asking for reviews, with social sharing buttons attached. Yes, this counts as content, and it matters because it rounds out the whole experience!

BE PREPARED TO PAY

It would be lovely to say that organic work will get you all the leads you need, and after an extended period of time hopefully it will. Until then, you’re going to need to pay for at least some of your leads. So, consider PPC.

PPC (Pay Per Click) ads are everywhere, and for good reason. They are one of the most effective ways to get the audience you need, which will become the leads you crave. The true beauty of PPC lies in your ability to be incredibly specific about who you’re targeting. You’re paying for your leads, but you are a lot more certain that they’ll be the right leads.

Facebook advertising is a prime example of fantastic PPC in action. There, not only can you choose what age, gender and location you’re targeting, you can also determine what purchase behaviours your audience should be exhibiting. You can also choose lookalike audiences so that you are targeting the same groups as your competitors, should you wish to do so.

These ads are easy to set up, and can be set to roll out for as long, or as little amount of time and money as you’d like. The total cost of setting up your ad and its budget for a month is likely to be less than you’d spend in man hours cold calling people for a week. Your ROI will almost certainly be higher too!