Local SEO is definitely not new in 2022 but it does continue to grow in importance–if that even seemed possible. Nearly a third of consumers search for a local business online every day, and almost 50% of all searches on Google are for local information.

Just look at these local SEO statistics:

• Google Maps searches for “curbside pickup” grew 9,000% year-over-year
• Searches containing “local” and “business” grew more than 80% year-over-year
• Nearly 80% of smartphone searches for local businesses lead to an offline purchase
• Local searches lead to purchases 28% of the time

These stats show that if you don’t have a local SEO strategy in 2022, you’re missing out on local searchers looking for businesses like yours.

To help, I’ve put together this handy 13-point local SEO checklist featuring the top areas you can optimize around to get found by local customers in your area, and I’m sharing some actionable tips and examples to help you get started.

Local SEO checklist

By checking off the items in this local SEO checklist, you can increase your chances of getting found for relevant local searches while driving more (potential) local customers to your website.

Keep reading, or skip to the checklist item you want to learn more about below:

• Solid website
• Structured data
• Local keywords in web content
• Optimized title tags + meta descriptions
• Keyword-rich blog content or FAQs
• Claimed + optimized Google Business Profile
• Good reviews (with responses)
• Consistent local listings
• Local backlinks
• Social media strategy

1-4. Create a solid foundation with your website

You can’t have good local SEO without a solid foundation to build on. And your website is the most important component—without a great website that adheres to SEO best practices, no amount of optimization is going to get you the results you want.

Make sure your website includes the following:

1. Mobile-friendly or responsive design. Google now indexes the mobile version of your website over your desktop version, so this is a must for local SEO.
2. Fast page speed. Page speed is an increasingly important ranking factor—plus, searchers will leave a website if it doesn’t load quickly.
3. The right URL structure. The way your website is structured matters to both searchers and search engines. Make sure you have an easy-to-navigate site with a clear path for users to take from the moment they land on your site until they become a lead. (You should also submit your sitemap to Google to help here!)
4. Internal links. Linking relevant pages of your site together can help Google and searchers find information on your site.

5. Use structured data

Structured data is a standardized format of code that you add to the backend of your website to provide information that can help Google and other search engines decipher your content and what your page is about. This is often referred to as Schema markup.

You can add Local Business structured data to give Google information about your hours of operation, what your business offers, your reviews, and more to help you show up better for relevant local searches.

6. Identify and incorporate local keywords

Speaking of local searches, it’s important to know the types of local searches you want your business to rank for in local searches. The best way to do that? Conduct local keyword research to build your keyword list.

Keywords are the words or phrases that people use to find information on search engines. By targeting specific keywords as part of your local SEO strategy, you can increase your chances of appearing for those searches.

You want your keywords to be related to your business, your products or services, and your location so you can target searchers in your area. Here are some examples of good local keywords for a plumber:

• Best plumber in Anaheim
• Anaheim plumbing
• Plumbing company Anaheim

Examples of local keywords from WordStream’s Free Keyword Research Tool.

You should also identify some long-tail keywords, which are longer and more specific phrases customers are using to find businesses like yours. You can use these phrases to create valuable content that will drive more traffic to your website from search engines. Here are some examples of long-tail keywords for a plumber:

• How to fix a clogged drain
• What to do if my toilet is leaking
• How do I keep my faucet from dripping

Your keywords should be included in your title tags, meta descriptions, and on-page content for your website but can also be used in your Google Business Profile and social media profiles, which we’ll talk more about later.

7. Optimize title tags and meta descriptions

Once you know that your website is in good shape and you have a strong local keyword list, you can start optimizing for local searches. One important way to do this is by optimizing the title tags and meta descriptions for each of your web pages.

Title tags are the HTML code that shows the title of the page—this is also what shows up in search results.

Your title tags should be between 50-60 characters long and include your target keyword and potentially your location (depending on the page).

Meta descriptions are the HTML code that shows under the title of a page in search results to give users a better idea of what content to expect on the page before they click.

Your meta descriptions should be between 50-160 characters long and include your target keyword and a description of the content on the page.

8. Consider a blog (or an FAQ page)

Expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness are three key ranking factors Google looks at to determine whether or not the content on a website will be useful for a searcher. Creating regular content in the form of a blog can help you exponentially in these areas. A blog gives your business a place to showcase your expertise and authority while keeping your website consistently updated with fresh, keyword-rich content.

Plus, you can use the content you’re creating for your website throughout your marketing. For example, you can share links to your posts on your social media sites, feature your blog posts in a regular newsletter, and create more in-depth downloadable content to capture web visitors’ information like their email address and phone number.

If you already have a blog for your business, make sure you’re creating content that is keyword-focused (this is where that long-tail keyword research comes in handy!). If you don’t already have a blog for your business and you want to start one, you can do keyword research, use tools like Google Trends to find out what people are searching, and even ask your customers what they might want to see from you. (You can also check out this guide for how to start a business blog!)

If you don’t think you have the time or resources to maintain a business blog (it does take time and planning), you can still create helpful keyword-rich content in the form of an FAQ page. An FAQ page can provide answers to commonly searched long-tail local keywords while also giving search engines and searchers valuable information that can help you rank or win business.

9. Claim and optimize your Google Business Profile

Your Google Business Profile can help you get found in local searches happening directly on Google Search and in Google Maps. Google Business Profiles contain a ton of information that can help customers take action (like calling your business or getting directions!) right from your profile. Plus, they’re typically the first batch of results that show below ads for any local search.

The first step here is to make sure you claim your Google Business Profile. You can now do this directly from Google Search! Simply:

1. Search for your business on Google
2. Click into the result for your business and click “Own this business?”
3. Then follow the prompts to claim the page

If your business isn’t already listed on Google, you can add it:

1. Go to business.google.com
2. Click “Manage now”
3. Click “Add your business to Google”
4. Then follow the prompts to add your business

Make sure that you verify your Google Business Profile after claiming or adding it so you can make changes to the page as needed.

Once your listing is claimed, you can take steps to optimize it. Multiple components of your Google Business Profile can give your local SEO a boost, so this is an important step.

Here are some crucial ways to optimize your Google Business Profile for local SEO:

1. Make sure all information is accurate. It’s important that your hours of operation, business website, business phone number, and address are correct (and consistent with other listings—which we’ll talk about more later.)
2. Fill out all the sections. It’s best to add as much information as possible to your Google Business Profile so you can present the best picture of your business to prospective customers.
3. Add the right business categories. Many SEO experts believe the primary category you choose has the most impact on your local search rankings, so choose wisely! (You can also change it later if needed.)
4. Upload relevant pictures. Google allows you to add a number of pictures and suggests including your logo, a cover photo, the interior and exterior of your building, your team, and action shots of your team at work.

10. Manage reviews (and get more!)

Reviews are another important local ranking factor that your business can’t (and shouldn’t) ignore. Nearly 90% of people read reviews for local businesses—and search engines want to give the people what they want. Which is clearly: reviews.

Google looks at your reviews, including how many reviews you have, when determining your rank for specific searches. Certain keywords or phrases within your reviews can also help (or hurt) your performance in local search results.

And, having a higher star rating can also help you in local search—when a person conducts a search containing “best,” Google will only source businesses with a 4.0 star rating or higher.

All this to say that it’s extremely important to make sure you’re getting good reviews!

You can get Google reviews by:

• Asking your happy customers to leave you feedback
• Including a link to your Google Business Profile on your website
• Including a link to your Google Business Profile in customer emails
• Sending an email survey

Once you have reviews, the work doesn’t stop. It’s also important to respond to reviews. Google lists “Manage & respond to reviews” as a way to improve your local ranking on Google.

11. Keep your local listings consistent

Local listings are a huge component of local SEO. Listings show up in local search results and can help your business get discovered on specific maps, apps, or sites (as well as search engines), so it’s important to have your business listed on the top local listings sites.

But it’s even more important that your business information across all those sites is consistent. Search engines want to make sure they’re showing searchers the most accurate and useful information. They do this by using signals from across the web—if they see that all the crucial information about your business (specifically your Name, Address, and Phone Number—AKA NAP) is consistent, then they have a high level of trust that they’re showing the correct information.

However, if they find conflicting information or inconsistencies, they have a lower level of trust and may not show information about your business on the first page of search results (or at all 😱).

This is why it’s important to add local listings consistency to your local SEO checklist. You want your business name, address, and phone number listed the EXACT same across every directory—including Google Business, Yelp, CitySearch, and more.

An example of consistent vs. inconsistent Google Business Profile listings.

12. Build local backlinks

Link building remains an important SEO tactic. And local link building can boost your business’s SEO by sending signals to search engines that other local sites find your website authoritative and trustworthy.

Here are some ways to build local backlinks:

Manage local listings. We already touched on the importance of local listings, but these provide built-in backlinks to your site.

Guest posting. Guest posting allows you to build your business’s credibility by sharing useful posts on other websites/blogs to reach your target audience. Many websites accept guest posts with links to your brand website and brand mentions. Aim to get your posts published on authoritative websites in your niche and neighborhood.
Sponsor local events. Aside from being a great way to support your local community, sponsoring events brings publicity to your business, guarantees valuable links to your website on the event page, and can earn your business media mentions. All of these boost traffic. To sponsor local events, start small and don’t limit your idea of sponsorship to funding. You can sponsor events by donating snacks to attendees (if you run a catering service)—don’t be afraid to think outside of the box!

Local digital news sites. Don’t underrate local newspapers. A 2019 survey showed that local newspapers remain, by far, the most significant providers of journalism in their communities. Write press releases to be published on local news sites or talk to reporters and supply them stories relating to your business. You can even become a columnist in local media and publish regular commentary on brand-related topics.

13. Use Social Media to add some juice as needed

It may not seem intuitive to include social media marketing as part of your local SEO checklist, but hear me out. It can actually benefit your business’s SEO in a few different ways.

For one, social media sites like Facebook and Instagram give you opportunities to include your business address—which can act almost like their own little listing sites.

Plus, social media sites routinely show up in local search results for your business name, so by managing profiles across social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you can give your business more real estate on search results pages when a person searches for your business.

It’s also important to remember that while search engines are still the primary place that people are searching for businesses, they’re increasingly open to finding new businesses through social media. So by investing in a social media marketing strategy, you can increase your chances of getting found in multiple channels by potential customers.

Check all the boxes for your local SEO checklist

Local SEO is a valuable addition to your marketing plan and is one of the best ways to drive more traffic to your website and get in front of local searchers.

Here’s your 2022 local SEO checklist:

• Have a mobile-friendly or responsive website
• Test your site speed
• Use SEO-friendly URLs
• Create internal links with locally-relevant anchor text
• Add structured data
• Identify and incorporate local keywords into your web content
• Optimize title tags and meta descriptions
• Write keyword-rich blog content (or FAQs)
• Claim and optimize your Google Business Profile
• Manage reviews (and get more!)
• Keep your local listings consistent
• Build local backlinks
• Use social media

For more information on any of these topics, you can always reach us here!

What Is Website Maintenance?

Website maintenance is the act of regularly checking your website for issues and mistakes and keeping it updated and relevant. This should be done on a consistent basis in order to keep your website healthy, encourage continued traffic growth, and strengthen your SEO and Google rankings.

Keeping a website well maintained and attractive is important to companies big and small in order to engage and retain customers. It’s easy for businesses, especially startups, to cut corners and let a few tasks slide.

Website maintenance can easily become one of those things as it doesn’t always present immediate issues. However, just like your health can fall apart if you go too long without a regular check up, so can the health of your website.

Regular monitoring of your website is a must for keeping your business running smoothly.

What Are the Steps in Website Maintenance? A Quick Checklist

There is a laundry list of tasks that should be done to keep your website running smoothly. The most time-sensitive of these are website security updates and patches. Without these, your website has the potential to be an actual danger to those who click on it.

With that in mind, here is a list of website maintenance tasks that should be completed regularly:

To be done weekly:

• Check that all of your pages are loading without errors
• Run a backup and make sure a previous version of your site is stored
• Make updates to website software and plugins
• Check that all of your forms are running properly
• Remove any spam comments from pages and posts
• Check your pages to see if there are any broken links
• Search for 404 errors and fix or redirect
• Write one or more blog posts to keep your community engaged and encourage SEO traffic.

To be done monthly

• Check the load speed of your website and ensure that nothing is bogging it down
• Review your security scans and make sure nothing is out of place
• Analyze website statistics from the previous month
• Check your blog to see if there are any articles that could be updated

To be done quarterly

• Review your website design and structure – can be it improved?
• Check graphics and images – should anything be updated?
• Review SEO and meta titles and descriptions to ensure they are as effective as possible
• Test and tweak popups, forms, and calls to action
• Review your workload for efficiencies to see if anything can be automated
• Test your website on all devices and browsers to see if it displays correctly
• Review advertising and marketing campaigns to see if anything needs to be changed or updated.
• Restore a previous version of the website to check your backup health

To be done yearly

• Update any reference to the current year
• Review each page for content accuracy, grammar, typos, and relevancy
• Check any active email addresses and see if any are excessive and can be deleted
• Ensure that your website domain name is renewed
• Consider whether a website design update is due
• Review all of your top performing blog articles and see if they can be updated with new content

A Proper Website Maintenance Plan Is a Circle

As you can see from our checklist, website maintenance should be a consistent part of your business. It grows on itself, and if not correctly implemented, can cause some serious problems and setbacks to your potential growth and business health.

Staying on top of website health takes awareness and organization. This is particularly the case for a large site with hundreds (or even thousands) of pages.

With the introduction of new tools to make website building easier, website sizes are growing each year. While it’s easy to add pages to most websites, it’s not as easy to keep all of your pages in a good state.

All that to say: keep on top of your website maintenance.

Why Is It Important to Do Website Maintenance?

Many new businesses already have a lot on their plates without worrying about constantly checking in on their website. It’s tempting to buy a domain name, throw up something temporary, and just worry about it later. There are many reasons why this is not a good idea. Maintaining a current, healthy, and active website is important for a number of reasons.

SEO

The whole point to starting a business is to have customers, clients, or an audience. To drive traffic to your website, you’ll need to keep it regularly updated.

Google wants to rank websites that have the most relevant and up-to-date information on their search engine results page . They may even de-index your website entirely if it hasn’t been updated recently enough and if they suspect it has been infected by malware. You must keep your website regularly updated with current content, news, keywords, and articles in order to rank well in search results.

Regularly website maintenance is invaluable for SEO strategy.

Customer Attraction/Engagement

If your website is gaining traction and traffic, it’s important to keep those potential customers. If they aren’t able to find what they are looking for, current information and relevant content, there is a good chance you’ll lose interest quickly. In order for your website to be the useful tool you want, you’ll need to ensure it is free from typos and grammar issues, has any and all information a customer could want, and looks engaging and consistent.

Security

This is the single most important reason to keep website maintenance on your radar, particularly if your website is storing any form of customer information. If you are using a website building platform like WordPress or Wix, you must ensure that you are installing regular software updates and security patches. It can be easy and attractive for hackers to find and target websites that have sat dormant for too long.

Corporate Image

It’s becoming more and more simple to create a website that looks well-designed and professional. There is an expectation for a professional website from professional companies. If your website doesn’t deliver on the promise of professionalism, your customers will often go elsewhere.

Your Sanity

Your website is a very important element of your business. If it is up-to-date and running smoothly, it can be a valuable support and asset. If it is not in a good state, it can cost you dearly. Once you are behind on your maintenance needs, it can be quite the process to bring the website back up to speed. Sometimes, if your maintenance has been ignored for too long, it is easier just to scrap everything and rebuild from the scratch.

Do yourself and your business a favor by staying on top of your website. This will repay you with simple ease of mind.

Keep up with Trends in Design and Technology

The sleeker your website is, the more you’ll convince potential customers that you are their ultimate choice. If you’re staying on top of your website maintenance, you’ll also have the opportunity to be an early adopter of new website technology that will help the back-end run more smoothly. If you’re installing software updates regularly, you’ll be able to take advantage of new features that install along with the updates.

You’ll also be able to tweak your design to stay on top of the latest website looks. It’s far more tempting to employ a company with a polished and modern website than one that looks like it hopped on a time travel device from 2003.

How Much Does Website Maintenance Cost?

There are different cost expectations based on what your website is used for, the size of your audience, and how much content is hosted. We’ve discussed the different pricing brackets below.

Small Personal Blog

A small blog typically does not have a lot of traffic and has very few needs. This can be hosted on a blogging site like Google Blogger with no costs whatsoever. Or, it could be self-hosted using a platform like WordPress with low monthly costs stemming from domain name renewal and hosting service.

Medium-Large Sized Active Blog with a Wide Audience

If you have a blog that is bringing in an income with an active audience, you will likely want to be self hosted with some customizations. This will require more frequent maintenance, updates, marketing and backups and a slightly larger monetary investment.

Company Website for the Purpose of Marketing Only

Similar to the medium-large size blog, this will need to be self hosted with a simple design template and limited content. It will be low maintenance for upkeep with with regular updates, marketing, and backups.

Large Customized eCommerce Websites

This will be a larger financial investment as you’ll need to be vigilant about website maintenance. You’re handling a lot of content, code customization, and customer data. If you do not have an IT team on staff, we would recommend finding a web maintenance package to stay on top of your website needs.

Custom Built Web Application

This will be your largest financial investment. Your web application was custom built from the ground up for a specific purpose and it needs to be in top-notch working condition at all times or your company will suffer. This likely needs a dedicated staff of developers keeping a close eye on the maintenance.

Paying for Website Maintenance Services: The Advantages

Now that we’ve established that website maintenance is a must for websites of any size, it’s time to discuss the advantages to employing someone else to do that maintenance. You can, of course, take on these tasks yourself, but it will save time and stress to pay an agency for several reasons.

• You’ll be hiring a team of experts who take care of these tasks every day. They know what to look for and what to expect.
• You can focus on other areas of your business that need your attention.
• Hiring an outside agency is cost-effective and can scale with your company. Your package will reflect the needs of your company.

Determining If You Should Buy Website Maintenance Packages

There are several elements that go into determining whether you should purchase a website maintenance package.

• The size of your website
• The purpose of your website
• How much of your website is customized content
• How quickly is your business growing?
• How much experience do you have with website maintenance?
• Is your website currently out-of-date?
• How much time do you have to dedicate to website maintenance?

If you’ve read this whole article, you probably have a good idea if maintaining your own website is something you are currently capable of. If your website is simply sitting and taking up space on the internet, you should absolutely consider purchasing a website maintenance package. Your website should be a tool that is supporting and helping your business grow. It is a living and breathing entity that deserves your time and attention in order to fulfill its potential.

Let Us Help You

At Team Debello we offer reliable and affordable website maintenance packages with no long term contracts. We offer SEO, hosting, security and updates, backups, support, and peace of mind.

Ask yourself honestly whether you are keeping your website in good health and consider contacting us. If you were to drive a car miles every day without regular tune-ups, you wouldn’t expect it to work for you long-term would you? Your website is the same. . But don’t worry, We’ve got your back.

5 Email Marketing Benefits for New Businesses

Why Email Marketing Is Crucial For Businesses

The goal of every new business is to generate revenue with a quick ROI. With today’s technological advancements, marketing communication has never been easier. The modern marketer can reach prospects through several digital channels, from search engine marketing to social media platforms.

With so many innovative ways to reach prospective customers, it can be challenging to determine the best marketing strategy for your new business.

The answer is simple: Share your message where your audience will most likely see it. As of last year, there were 3.9 billion email users around the world. Email marketing remains a successful platform for converting contacts to sales. Not sure how to develop a solid email marketing strategy? Campaign Monitor can help.

What is email marketing?
Email marketing is the distribution of promotional messages via email to a carefully defined target audience. It can be utilized to boost sales, strengthen brand recognition, and build customer loyalty. Regardless of how many digital marketing channels develop, email marketing continues to be one of the best ways to contact and engage your target audience.

For more than ten years, email marketing has been the leading channel to deliver the highest ROI for marketers. It currently brings $38 in ROI for every $1 spent, a rate of 3800%. There are several contributing factors to email marketing’s success.

Email is one of the most utilized forms of communication. Most people use email daily, often several times a day. With the advent of smartphones, users can now check their email from anywhere. Last year, 293.6 billion emails were sent and received each day. These emails aren’t just person-to-person contact. They’re also a way for people to connect with their favorite companies. In fact, more than 70% of consumers prefer email communication as their source for updates from the businesses they follow.

Email marketing is cost-effective, so it appeals to businesses of all sizes. It’s possible to reach a large audience for very little investment. You gain direct access to inboxes of quality prospects while avoiding the costs associated with print advertising. Email marketing is a smart way to connect with your target base, identify new customers, and grow your business.

What makes email marketing successful?
The beauty of email marketing is that it enables you to keep in touch with your audience regularly. From welcome messages to follow-up thank you notes, email is an effective way to engage your audience and build customer loyalty. Personal messages can go a long way, and a customer who feels valued is more likely to support your business in more tangible ways.

A recent study revealed that 68% of businesses had lost a customer due to indifference. Email marketing is an easy way to avoid this. Through email messages, a business can further enhance the customer experience and continue to boost ROI.

5 email marketing benefits for startups
As a new business, determining where to allot your marketing spend is critical to your success. It’s vital to generate new leads. However, your marketing strategy should be cost-effective and yield results. Here are five benefits that email marketing offers your new business.

1. Create individualized content with targeted messages.
Email marketing enables you to customize content. Messages can be personalized with the recipient’s name. Emails that include a customer’s first name in the subject line have a higher click-through rate than those that don’t. The more emails are opened, the more information you can learn about your audience. This allows you to discover their needs and pains and helps to develop strong relationships.

Additionally, you’re able to create customized content by segmenting your contacts. This allows you to tailor your marketing campaign to different target groups, like one-time customers versus return visitors. Identify your prospects’ needs. Consider geography, demographics, interests, and even behavior. By targeting your messages in this way, you’re increasing the relevancy of your content, which can lead to more conversions and higher ROI.

2. Drive traffic to your website.
Email marketing campaigns allow you to include links in your message that take your audience directly to your website. Whether it’s a hyperlink or a CTA button, sending readers to your site can positively impact your SEO. By promoting targeted content, you drive qualified traffic to your site. This tells search engines that you’re providing valuable content, which can boost your website’s online rankings. Higher rankings lead to more visitors, which can lead to higher ROI.

You can drive more traffic to your site by solidifying your email list. Build your database by making signup forms easy to complete. Only ask for the most basic information. Make sure your emails can scale to any device. Most people now access their emails from mobile devices. Therefore, your emails should function on a variety of platforms. Effectively reaching more people can bring even more business to your site.

3. Build brand awareness.
In addition to reaching current customers, email marketing is an effective way to reach people who are unfamiliar with your business. Email is nearly 40 times more effective than social media in gaining new customers. It’s an easy way to share information about your business. There’s also an excellent opportunity to send coupons or discount codes.

Use email to set your brand identity that people will recognize when they receive your messages. People are creatures of habit. Set standards early on for what readers can expect to find in your emails. Display your logo in the same place on each email. Ensure messaging includes corporate colors. Establish patterns in your emails that help create brand recognition. Consistent communications will increase the likelihood that people will think of your business when looking for products and services that you provide.

4. Track with ease.
Email marketing allows you the opportunity to see the effectiveness of your campaign easily. An important metric to track is your open rate. Be sure you’re using compelling subject lines to entice people to open an email. Click-through rate tells you the number of people who click on the links in your messages. Clicks per link offer you further insight into the type of content your audience prefers.
Conversion rate shows how many new users you’ve converted with your campaign. Unsubscribe and forwarding rates reveal how people perceive your messages. Are they removing you from their contacts, or sharing you with theirs? Regardless of which information you track, set a campaign goal that includes a CTA. If people aren’t getting to your site, it’s time to re-evaluate your messaging.

5. Create brand advocates.
Email is one of the simplest communications to share with others. With the click of a button, your current customers can do your promoting for you. If you build a strong relationship with your client base, they can become advocates for your products and services. Word-of-mouth advertising is taken to a new level with email marketing. Make it easy for people to share your information by including clear CTA buttons that encourage readers to do so.

Consider special discounts to people who help promote your business. Ask long-time members to share your message in return for premium access to a new product. Encourage customers to refer a friend to build your contact database. Develop strong relationships with your current customers. Brand loyalty can lead to new prospects, exponentially increasing ROI.

Email marketing best practices for small businesses
It’s easy to see that emails are an effective marketing tool, and you can develop a successful email marketing campaign by following these best practices.

Run a test.
Before you blast a message to your contact list, send a test copy to yourself. Check for errors, typos, and broken links. CTA buttons must take viewers to your website. Be sure content appears correctly on a computer as well as a mobile device. Don’t give this campaign an excuse to fail.

Schedule with intent.
Be deliberate in your email campaign schedule. Studies have shown that the best day to reach an audience with email is Tuesday. Keep this in mind when setting your campaign. Use your own data to adjust based on your customers’ needs.

Send to a healthy list.
Develop a quality contact list and only target people who sign up for your email communications. Don’t use purchased email lists or enroll people against their wishes.

Wrap up
Email marketing remains a preferred channel for today’s marketers, as it allows businesses to reach a wide target audience easily and affordably. Email marketing allows your company to:

Create individualized content with targeted messages
Drive traffic to your website
Build brand awareness
Track analytics with ease
Create brand advocates
Email marketing is an effective and beneficial way to boost business and improve your ROI. To ensure success, follow best practices like testing your messages, scheduling with intent, and sending to a healthy list.

We can help your new business develop a beneficial email marketing strategy. For more information, contact our sales team today.

That’s the most important question marketers are asking today. With social distancing, self-isolating, and remote working becoming the new normal, there’s been a shift in the market from the supply and demand side, due to which there’s a shift in the marketing paradigm. For brands and marketers navigating the COVID-19 crisis, simply reaching the customer has become a challenge.

Furthermore, according to a Survey Monkey survey, 92% of Americans are worried about the impact of the corona-virus on the national economy. All these factors can influence business prospects and further cements the need of a crisis road-map.

To help marketers and their business steer through these uncertain times, 11 leading marketers share tips on how to be relevant to customers in this time, how they plan to work through this crisis, and how to keep up the momentum.

Here’s what they had to say:

1. Reassure Your Customers About How Your Company is Responding to the Pandemic
Mark Lieberman, President and CEO, Viamedia

“Stay relevant to the consumer’s needs today that means reassuring them about how your company/brand is responding to the pandemic.

“Apply a calming, reassuring tone with a positive message (as a welcome reprieve from the seemingly 24/7 negative news).

“Use video with strong, warm, embracing visuals. After all, TV is the best medium for site, sounds and e-motion.”

2. Move Your Brand Online to Stay Connected to Your Customers
Andrew Walker, CEO, Shift7 Digital

“First, an overall theme to your strategy: KEEP GOING! Moving your brand even more online will keep you connected to your customers and enable a unified customer experience. Three key areas to focus on: your story, website and data. Second, revisit your current content marketing and keyword strategy. Leverage keyword research and social listening tools for topics that provide insight into specific information they are seeking. Check your PPC, too. Keywords targeted yesterday may not be the most relevant today, as search volume and term trends could be fluctuating.”

3. Refresh Customer Experience (CX) Strategies to Relook at End-to-End Sales Processes
Richard Blatcher, Director of industry marketing & business intelligence, PROS

“COVID-19 has created unprecedented disruption and uncertainty of when things will improve, meaning marketers must pivot their strategy in three crucial ways. Marketers should refresh their customer experience and look at their end-to-end sales processes to ensure they’re able to respond with agility, engage across different sales channels and optimize processes.”

4. Focus on Strengthening Your Relationship With Your Customers
Tony Kavanagh, CMO of Insightly

“First, you must communicate regularly. Customers today want a relationship with the companies with whom they do business and to go beyond the transaction to a more engaging, human place. If you do not already have a regular cadence of communication to your customers, now is the time to build one. Second, shelve the ‘hard sell.’ COVID-19 is an unprecedented pandemic. Be empathetic. Focus on strengthening your relationship with your customers but for reasons that are genuine and thoughtful, ask how they are doing, exchange life stories of caution and triumph.”

5. Infuse Empathy in Your Marketing Communications
Tara Kelly, president and CEO, SPLICE Software

“Marketers, now more than ever, need to ensure they are using empathy in their marketing communications. Without that, communication is seen as “taking advantage of the situation”, and no one wants that label. Marketing technology can still support the automated distribution of messages and provides invaluable insights to how people are engaging with new messaging.”

James JC Ramey, CEO at DeviceBits

“Empathy is likely the key part of staying or connecting with customers and prospects. Marketers should be working with the organization to understand how they are shifting in customer experience from, for example, phone support to self-service. Marketers should keep in “high touch” with their customers during this time. Keeping in contact with empathy and new innovative programs will create loyalty and a happier customer base as we exit this current challenge.”

6. Implement an Agile Strategic Pricing Model to Improve Margins
Richard Blatcher, director of industry marketing & business intelligence, PROS

“Focusing on short-term strategic planning by implementing tools to enable valuable insight gains from vast amounts of customer and market data will enable marketers to make rapid changes, protecting revenue.

“Marketers must also implement an agile strategic pricing model, which is the most effective way to quickly improve margins. Working in real-time and offering products or services at the most profitable price is imperative for short-term profitability.”

Learn More: Your 2020 Crisis Marketing Strategy: Marketing Communication and the Coronavirus (COVID-19)

7. Reflect on Your Company Values During this Lockdown & Refocus Your Engagement Strategies
Tricia Binder, co-founder and president, Muros

“At Muros, staying top of mind is all about creativity. While keeping creativity and authenticity at their core, marketers should consider the following tactic to pivot their strategies. More than ever, we have time to reflect on our values and mission. For us, that’s getting more art seen and supporting the artist community. Refocusing can get you thinking about new, relevant ways, to engage your customers, employees or clients in these uncertain times.”

8. Avoid the Hard Sell and Reaffirm Your Commitment to the Long Run
Mark Lieberman, President and CEO, Viamedia

“Tailor messages to be consumer-focused top-of-mind, as most are shopping “in the moment of fear and anxiety – e.g., I don’t have enough toilet paper. Ask is your message relevant now, today, and tomorrow? Step back from the hard sell and provide messaging that reaffirms your commitment to be there over the long term and through thick and thin. Almost everyone is at home, so video advertising has never been able to be more impactful and serve as the cornerstone to connecting communities. And remember, that many people will mute the TV, especially when it is on 24/7. So, the video imagery is key.

“Today digital and now linear TV advertising decisions are based increasingly on data, we like to say, “Data is the new creative.” Transaction speeds, cost efficiency and flexibility are more crucial at a time of rapidly developing events such as COVID-19. Access to linear TV programmatically will be the next wave, combining automation and data.”

9. Use Marketing Technology to Stay Connected to Customers When Working Remotely
Andrew Walker, CEO, Shift7 Digital

“Further enable your work-from-home marketing, sales and customer service teams through cohesive customer 360-degree views and data via your customer data platform. Help sales continue pipeline growth by feeding customer behavioral insights via your marketing automation system, while also implementing a well-designed lead scoring program to help them prioritize efforts.”

James JC Ramey, CEO at DeviceBits

“Marketing technology plans a huge role during this time. Brands can roll out new programs, innovative approaches and products but without getting the message to the customers, they will have low adoption and frustrated customers. Marketers can show how their brand is here during this challenge and can best deliver the customer value to consume. Marketing technology will drive the shift that we are seeing in every business through what has traditionally been lagging. Things like self-service, chatbots and asynchronous messaging will now take a front seat in the technology roadmap.”

10. Help Your Customers Navigate the Situation and Pivot as Necessary
Tony Kavanagh, CMO of Insightly

“Lastly, be helpful. The recently announced stimulus bill in the US is incredibly important, but many businesses don’t know what this means for them or how it benefits them. Do the research on their behalf and help your customers understand exactly the steps to take to avail of what could be a lifeline for them and their families. All the above can be helpful and is necessary in times like these for pivoting marketing strategies.”

1. Control for visual attention

If you don’t think about how you manage attention on your site, users are going to have a rough time trying to find what they need. The elements on your pages are not of equal importance – why should they have equal visual weight?

You should drive visual attention to the elements that matter most.

Here are some things you can use:

• Size – make the important elements larger without making them so large that the web site becomes tacky
• Shape – if your template allows for irregular shapes, use irregular shapes like rounded corners on your calls-to-action (CTA). Irregular shapes attract more attention than straight lines
• Color contrast – your theme should largely be one color, and the CTAs should have a high contrast with that primary color to attract more attention

2. Have a clear call-to-action

Every page should be intended for a specific kind of user intent.

• People who are researching a product should go to your educational pages rather than your product details
• Users looking for options should be driven to your category pages
• Visitors who are near the bottom of the funnel but not ready to pull the trigger should go to your trial pages

The CTAs on those pages should match the objectives of the user. You need to think carefully about your buttons:

• CTAs should complete an “I want to” statement (e.g. “I want to … complete order/download trial”)
• CTAs should be adjusted to the stage of the customer journey (don’t immediately give people in the

3. Format copy for scannability

Humans are satisficers.

That is, on the web, we are not likely to seriously weigh options and then decide on a plan of attack. Rather, we are likely to examine one option, and if it’s good enough that we don’t see serious issues, we plow ahead without examining the other options.

What that means for web sites is that people scan a lot, read very little, and upon finding a good enough option, they’ll proceed to click without thinking if the other options you provide are a better fit for what they need. You need to have a web site that supports that behavior.

Your web site needs bullet points, bolded headlines and sub-headlines, and good grouping, so it’s easy to scan.

4. Make your content easy to read

Everyone prefers simple language on the web, even experts and specialists. That means you need to make sure your content is written the right way:

• Avoid jargon where possible
• 5th grade reading ability is the sweet spot. Use tools that implement Flesch–Kincaid readability tests. Then, refine your content until you get at least close to 5th-grade-readable-content
• If you have an international audience, limit the use of idioms

5. Limit choices

We can only use our short-term memory to remember 5-9 things. So, if you have a category list that spans 13 items, for example, you need to trim the options even at the cost of asking the users to make one more click.

Deep content where people need to make easy clicks are better for web usability than fewer, more difficult clicks.

If you make sure you don’t put a strain on the user’s memory load, your visitors will thank you.

6. Get users to trust you

If people don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you. There are proven techniques to increase visitor trust:

• Put trust symbols above the fold – a lot of companies have trust symbols, but lower on the page. Don’t make that mistake – if people can’t see your trust symbols easily, they might as well be invisible
• Borrow trust – use your media mentions, and display logos of large companies who have bought your goods and services to increase trust
• Social proof – if you have a large enough customer base, display the number of customers on your pages to take advantage of the bandwagon effect

7. If you have ads, make sure the headlines line up

For people running search ads, one of the most common mistakes is not aligning the content of the link on the ad to the headline of the page the ad goes to.

The headline needs to match the ad so you deliver on your promises. This means more work creating landing pages, but you’ll give your landing pages a higher shot at making visitors convert.

8. Make your pages focused

Outside your web site (on a Google result page, etc.), you need to be loud and compete for attention. Once people are on your web site, you need to quiet down and get people to focus on what they need:

• Limit the use of visual distractions, especially stock images
• Avoid moving elements like rotating banners

9. Earn the right to ask for information

Establish a relationship before you ask for information. When your business relies on signups as part of the conversion path, you can’t afford to be a greedy marketer. You need to stop sending people to 15-field forms before they’ve had the chance to get to know you:

• Ensure you have a ready set of loss leader PDFs or trials that you can “trade” for user information
• Users are not likely to give you information until you provide value, so don’t bombard them with signup forms immediately

10. Nudge users to convert using scarcity

If people are just about ready to convert, but they need a final nudge to act now, your pages can include the following elements:

• Limited time offers – this can make people act sooner rather than later
• Stock availability – for those items where the scarcity can make people act on that same visit

 

Improve Website Conversion Rate with Best Practices

Don’t rely on tests for everything. Your site needs to be sound before you run your tests. If your pages are terrible, your champion and challenger pages will both suck. And you’ll just find the more viable of two bad pages.

If you follow best practices, then run your tests, you’d be more likely to make your site succeed.

Digital Marketing

• eMail & SMS marketing
• SEO SEM Services
• Social Media Services
• Online Reputation Management
• Full Lead Generation Services
• Special Services For Veterans!

Technical Services

• Custom Software Development
• eCommerce Website Implementations
• Website Speed Increase
• Website Development
• On Demand Support Requests

On Line Strategy Services

• Digital Strategy
• Digital Marketing Performance
• Digital Marketing For Business

There’s no doubt about it: retargeting works.

Kimberly-Clark, a global leader in selling paper products, reported 50-60% conversion rates from their retargeting efforts.

It makes sense to sell to consumers who have already expressed interest in your product than pitching to someone who is not familiar with the brand.

To understand how retargeting (sometimes called remarketing) works, Retargeter sums it up in a simple illustration.

 

When a potential customer browses your site, a cookie will be installed in his browser. This will ‘follow’ them as they browse on other sites and allow ad platforms to serve very specific ads – your site, or the product or service that they were looking at. This web retargeting strategy provides a way to re-engage anonymous users and is also called pixel-based marketing.

Another way to do this is through list-based or email remarketing. Advertisers provide their platforms with a list of email addresses (for example, those who abandoned their carts) so users can see ads of the same products the next time they browse on the internet.

These two are examples of how you can implement retargeting. Other retargeting techniques include retargeting on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), mobile apps, dynamic retargeting (personalized ads up to the specific product/service level), and search retargeting (retargeting based on keywords a customer used to search instead of website visits).

Advertisers can choose to get the services of a ‘middle man’ (Adroll, Retargeter, Perfect Audience, etc) or to go directly to the exchanges (Google, Facebook, Twitter) to run their own retargeting campaigns.

Here’s an illustration from Sitescout on the process of how advertisers can run retargeting campaigns through platforms:

 

Both have their own advantages and disadvantages in terms of cost, manageability, and extent of reach. To help you understand different retargeting platforms, here’s a list of 9 retargeting/remarketing services:

1. Google AdWords Remarketing

 

Let’s start with what the search engine giant has to offer. Google makes it easy for advertisers with existing Adwords account to start with a remarketing campaign. With Adwords’ retargeting solution, you can re-engage your audience when they visit sites part of the Google Display Network/Google Adsense, browse on YouTube, and use Android apps. Google offers CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions), CPC (Cost per Click), and CPA (Cost per Acquisition) pricing models.

First, you’ll have to create a remarketing list to define who should be shown the ads: are you looking at all visitors of your site or visitors of specific pages only? Next, create the new campaign and tag your site for remarketing. If you have a mobile site, you can also implement remarketing for your app.

Google offers different ways to remarket:

• Static/normal remarketing – refers to the standard way of following customers on the web using a cookie after the visitor viewed a web page. Then the customer gets a banner ad on a third-party website with a static offer.
• Dynamic remarketing – allows marketers to show ads up to the specific product level which the customer visited previously. Then the customer gets a banner on a third-party website, but in this case with dynamic banner, which contains visited products or items on visited pages.
• Search Ads (RLSA) – Remarketing lists for search ads uses search keywords as parameters for remarketing. For example, marketers can use the keyword ‘hotel in Amsterdam’ so when someone goes on a search engine and uses that keyword, Google can serve them with your ad.
• Video remarketing – Video remarketing works on YouTube. If you wish to reach out to previous viewers of your video or those who subscribed to your channel, use the video remarketing solution.
• Email-list remarketing (Customer Match) – Upload a list of your customers’ emails. Once customers sign in to their Gmail account, they will see your ads.

Visit this page to view extensive instructions for setting up an AdWords remarketing campaign.

There are no additional costs for minimum spend and set-up fee to start retargeting with Adwords. You have access to a 24/7 support too in case you have questions. Google Adwords is a good place to start for businesses new in advertising and still testing the waters for remarketing.

Here’s a sample remarketing ad done on Google Adwords. If a customer visits a third-party website, they will get Dynamic ads with products they viewed.

Details:

Pricing: Free setup. No minimum spend required. Charges on CPM, CPC, or CPA

Services: Standard, Dynamic, Mobile Apps, Search Ads, Video, and email list remarketing

Network: Google Display Network, YouTube, Mobile Apps

2. Adroll

 

If you’re ready to take remarketing to the next level, it’s time to evaluate Adroll. Adroll has access to advertising partners such as Google, Facebook Exchange, Yahoo, Bing, and Twitter. That makes up for about 95% of the web; imagine the size of audience you can reach on the platform.

Adroll offers CPM pricing model and as stated on their support page, the company believes that CPM paired with a no minimum spend model maximizes the benefits for the advertiser. They recommend starting with a budget of $25 and from there, you can start gauging how much you will need for your campaigns.

Advertisers on Adroll cite their user interface as a big plus. It is simple to use and advertisers can easily do customer segmentation, ad management, and report generation on the dashboard. remarketing retargeting services.

To learn more about how to create campaigns on Adroll, visit this page. Adroll also provides online and phone support and once you start spending more than a specified amount ($5K), you’ll be provided with a personal account manager plus access to additional capabilities for A/B testing.

Details:

Pricing: Free setup. No minimum spend required. Charges on CPM

Services: Web, Twitter, Mobile, Facebook, CRM, Instagram, dynamic, email marketing, and AdRoll Prospecting

Network: Google, Yahoo, Bing, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, AdBrite, OpenX Market, RightMedia, Appnexus, etc.

3. ReTargeter

 

Built in 2009, ReTargeter is a fairly new player in the industry yet they have already gained traction with clients such as Zendesk and Hireology. ReTargeter has a wide portfolio of remarketing solutions for sites with bigger volume. Choose from web, Facebook, CRM, Audience, Search, and Dynamic Retargeting solutions.

For sites with less than 40,000 unique visits in a month, advertisers can avail of Site Retargeting or Retargeting for Facebook services. For websites with more than that number of visits, they can also avail of CRM Retargeting solutions, a Custom Audience tool, as well as the services of a dedicated account manager.

Packages start at $500/month for Site and Facebook Retargeting. What’s good about ReTargeter is that they have a variety of strategies to choose from. For example, you can use their CRM retargeting service for your contact/list-based remarketing goals while running a Facebook Retargeting campaign.

Audience retargeting uses demographics, geographic information, interests, and contextual data to pinpoint your brand’s users. It can be quite costly starting at $2500/month but a more targeted approach brings in more conversions.

Here’s how you can keep track of conversions on ReTargeter’s dashboard:

 

For a comprehensive guideline on how to create campaigns, visit this link to Retargeter’s FAQ.

Retargeter is ideal for websites with high volume of visits and who are looking to explore a mix of remarketing strategies.

Details:

Pricing: DIY packages starts at $500/month for Facebook and Web Retargeting. Managed Service includes additional packages that start from $1000 to $5000/month minimum

Services: Web, Facebook, CRM, Audience, Search, and Dynamic Retargeting

Network: Google, Yahoo, Bing, Twitter, Facebook, OpenX, Rubicon, etc

4. Facebook Retargeting with Custom Audiences

With more than 1 billion people active on Facebook, the advertising possibilities are endless.

If you’re already running your Facebook Ads but there’s still room for more conversions, consider setting up Custom Audiences on Facebook. Create a Facebook pixel, put it on your website, and build your custom audience.

Custom Audiences allows for flexibility too as you can create a separate list for audiences who have visited a particular page on your website or a more inclusive ‘website visitor’ category. Your list will be ready for use as soon as the pixel identifies 20 or more customers. remarketing retargeting services.

Aside from website visitors, you can also create one based on your email subscription list and mobile app users.

Facebook Ads also allows creating a list of Lookalike audiences. It will help brands to reach out to new customers who are similar to your existing audiences. After collecting a list of visitors, create an ad, apply it to your custom audience and start re-engaging customers.

One of Facebook Ads main selling point with Custom Audiences is that it can generate more results than Google AdWords and it costs cheaper. This is according to a guide published by AdEspresso. Here are other success stories:

 

Look at how Custom Audiences work:

 

Details:

Pricing: No minimum spend. Charges per CPC/CPM.

Services: Facebook Retargeting (in-app and browser, newsfeed and right section ads)

Network: Facebook

5. Perfect Audience

Have you just started your business? If you’re running a small-to-medium scale business and are looking to explore remarketing techniques to increase your sales, find your right match in Perfect Audience, just like the way others such as American Apparel and 99designs did. These online sellers reported an increase in revenue and lower CPA (cost per action).

Perfect Audience offers solutions for Mobile, Dynamic, Web, and Facebook Retargeting. In terms of audience segmenting, the platform offers diverse choices, from website and specific page visitors, users who clicked on a JavaScript event, and mailing list subscribers who opened your mail.

For display retargeting, Perfect Audience also has access to other ad networks aside from Google Display Network.

To reach out to a new group of clients, consider teaming up with your brand partners. Perfect Audience’s Partner Retargeting solution serves ads to your partner’s audience list. It’s the best way to highlight your brand partnership and it will open opportunities to gain new customers too.

Once you’ve identified which sites are performing well and which ones are getting poor conversions, you can choose to use the domain blacklisting functionality. By doing this, you can make sure that you are getting your advertising money’s worth.

Details:

Pricing: Free 14-day trial. Free setup. No minimum spend required. Charges per CPM

Services: Mobile App, Cross-Device, Display, Partner, Dynamic Product, Hubspot, Twitter, Facebook Exchange, and News Feed Remarketing

Network: Google, Yahoo, Bing, OpenX, Rubicon, Facebook, Hubspot, Twitter, Appnexus, Pubmatic

6. SiteScout

Retargeting is one of the features in Sitescout’s long list of advertising DSP (Demand-side Platform) solutions.

Create an audience list, get the pixel, and include it on your site’s landing page. The list will be populated once someone visits the landing page. Sitescout recommends having at least 1000 on the list before running a retargeting campaign. It will depend on how much traffic your site gets before you can populate a large enough audience list. You may want to employ other marketing techniques to drive customers to your site. Alternatively, you can use your conversion list as an audience list.

For mobile retargeting campaigns, your audience list will be based on Device IDs. Either upload a list or run SiteScout’s Audience Capture tool on your mobile app to start collecting device IDs.

Sitescout serves ads in numerous networks.

Details:

Pricing: Free to sign up but requires 500USD minimum deposit. Charges per CPM but has an auto-optimization feature where you can set CPC or CPA goals.

Services: Mobile and Web Retargeting

Network: Google, Yahoo, Bing, OpenX, Rubicon, Appnexus, Pubmatic, etc.

7. Exact Drive

Exact Drive is a self-serve advertising platform that offers web, Facebook, and Search Retargeting.

The company, on their extensive write-up on retargeting, shared insights on how advertisers can further improve remarketing campaigns. Some of the points that need to be considered include proper audience segmentation, customized ads creation, and first-party data utilization. Aside from these, Exact Drive also recommends strategies such as giving your audience a good landing page and experimenting with your ads.

Exact Drive has a strong portfolio when it comes to search retargeting, with some of the known names in the industry as their clients.

Use search retargeting to maximize your SEM efforts. The solution works by keeping track of search keywords to detect potential customers. Unlike standard retargeting where you are re-engaging customers who have previously visited your site, this solution will enable you to introduce your brand to new customers who have shown interest in your brand’s field. remarketing retargeting services.

In terms of support, Exact Drive has a Support Center containing helpful links so you can easily create your own campaigns. For more questions, they offer email ticket support and for those with more than $5K spend, a dedicated account manager.

Details:

Pricing: Advertisers with more than $5000 USD spent each month get more features such as dedicated account manager and monthly customized reports. Pricing models are CPM and CPC. Visit their pricing page here for more details.

Services: Facebook, Dynamic, Standard, and Search Retargeting

Network: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Bing, Hubspot, etc

8. Twitter

Does your brand have an active following on Twitter? Are you already using Twitter Ads? To maximize your reach on the social media platform, consider running a remarketing campaign.

Twitter cites success stories from Hubspot, Krossover, and New Relic with increased engagement and conversion rates as well as a decrease in CPA (cost per customer acquisition).

To use Twitter for web retargeting, start by installing a Twitter website tag on your page. Once a user checks their Twitter account, they will see your ad on their feed. Here’s a sample of a promoted tweet:

Social Media Examiner discusses another way to use Twitter’s Tailored Audiences capability. Start by finding Twitter usernames of people who meet your target audience criteria. Next, do an automated search of your main list of users’ followers as well as whom they follow. This way you will be able to expand your list with a bigger group of users who have the same interests. remarketing retargeting services.

After collecting Twitter usernames, SME suggests to further segment your audience into smaller groups such as according to location or weather. Once you’ve finalized your audience list, start creating customized ads for each group and run the campaign.

Take note that Twitter users have the option to opt-out of ads. Add more usernames on your list just in case.

Details:

Pricing: No minimum spend. Price depends on your budget and bid. For an estimate, check this post from Penna Powers

Services: Twitter Retargeting (followers, conversions, video view, tweet engagement, app engagement)

Network: Twitter

9. Criteo

This Paris-born retargeting company is the go-to provider of big names such as Lenovo, Sony, and BMW.

Reach out to your customers regardless of the device they are using with Criteo’s cross-device advertising solution covering desktop and mobile sites as well as social media. For web retargeting services, Criteo has a direct relationship with publishers and purchases inventory with CPM pricing. As of writing, the company has 16,000 publishers and they ensure advertisers of a high-quality inventory.

Advertisers commend how Criteo prices CPC, taking the majority of the risk as they buy CPM-based from publishers. Here’s how CPC bids look like on Criteo’s dashboard:

Along with their retargeting services, Criteo also offers supplemental services such as Kinetic Design, which combines your own branding with personalized content sure to catch your users’ attention. The solution comes with a dedicated creative team.

If there’s anything that you need to know about running campaigns, check the knowledgebase or you may reach out to the support team via email ticket support. remarketing retargeting services.

Details:

Pricing: Charges CPC

Services: Dynamic, Email, Facebook, Instagram, Mobile App Retargeting

Network: Google, Facebook, Instagram, individual publishers, etc

credit: https://www.adwordsrobot.com/en/blog/9-remarketing-retargeting-services-which-drive-your-online-sales

9 Remarketing/Retargeting Services which Drive your Online Sales

By now, most of us are familiar with the trendy term account-based marketing (ABM). At its core, ABM is used to nurture specific high-value accounts and reach stakeholders in a personalized manner, with the primary goal of generating more revenue and retention.

The focus is on the quality of engagements with your targeted accounts, but there’s nothing fundamentally new about the concept of ABM. For decades, highly profitable enterprises have been executing high-touch marketing programs and finding creative new ways to drive engagement with their brand.

Done well, its ROI is high — so it’s no wonder the popularity of ABM continues to grow. Recent research shows 56% of marketing departments plan to boost their resources (e.g., time, budget, personnel) to support an ABM strategy in 2018. Only 11% of marketing departments said they don’t plan to put any resources toward ABM this year.

At the same time, more than 50% of marketers said they need more education and best practices to improve or launch their ABM strategy and effectively set and measure KPIs.

Some of the demand for more education stems from confusion around ABM. As with any hot marketing trend, misinformation is rampant, and current myths about ABM’s purpose — and what it takes to execute it successfully — are everywhere.

We’re going to do our part to end the confusion and bust some of most common ABM myths.

Myth #1: ABM should only be used to grow existing accounts

ABM is about selling to a targeted list of high-value accounts, both existing and new. But regardless of whether the target is a current customer or a prospect, a comprehensive go-to market strategy — created in collaboration between sales and marketing — is necessary to yield success.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach.

What you do to engage each account can vary greatly depending on the brand. ABM allows you to focus on a narrower set of accounts that are crucial to driving your business forward, but it still requires a significant amount of creativity and personalization to influence both existing and prospect accounts. Bottom line: Don’t confuse account-based marketingwith selling.

The goal of ABM isn’t to simply sell products – it’s to influence the right stakeholders from the right accounts.

Myth #2: A successful ABM strategy requires a specialized team

Hiring a specialized team isn’t necessary, but creating a specialized approach is. You can leverage your existing marketing team to drive results in a new way. Chances are, someone on your marketing team is already targeting the accounts you selected for your ABM strategy.

But now, you can take a strategic approach and dedicate more time and resources to engage them in new, more effective ways.

Your strategy might include gathering customer insights for each account, or activating top sales reps to engage the executives in your targeted accounts. Ultimately, while the approach may be different, your existing marketing team can execute your ABM strategy, so long as they collaborate closely with sales.

In fact, alignment with the sales team is a must-have for any organization to successfully run an ABM program.

Myth #3: ABM success can’t be measured

ABM is about driving higher growth from your targeted list of accounts. The easiest way to measure success is to align with your sales team and determine which campaigns or tactics are driving the most growth.

For example, you can measure the number of meetings you set up with your ABM accounts, new contacts you’ve developed, or opportunities you’ve influenced.

At the very least, you can measure success by comparing growth of the accounts targeted through your ABM program to other accounts not targeted through ABM. And once you’ve reached your ABM goals, the momentum doesn’t stop there. It continues through nurturing relationships with the stakeholders in your targeted accounts so they become evangelists for your business and references for new prospects.

Myth #4: It’s only useful to deploy ABM if you’re going after large enterprises

False again! When ABM emerged, many marketers believed it was only worthwhile (from an ROI perspective) to target large accounts, because only those accounts could spend enough to justify the ABM investment.

However, ABM helps you target segments that you believe are most likely to convert and grow your business the fastest. If that’s the mid-market, then target those accounts. Businesses don’t have to be a certain size — in terms of revenue or employees — to drive your ABM strategy forward. But keep in mind that your marketing investment per account needs to make sense in the context of your potential return.

At the end of the day, ABM isn’t a new B2B marketing strategy, but we’re applying new terms and technologies to make it more effective. As marketing technology continues to evolve, there will be even more new, innovative ways for sales and marketing teams to execute successful ABM strategies.

Don’t let misperceptions limit your scope when using this approach to cultivate new and existing accounts.

– by Sanjay Castelino

Choosing a holiday can be difficult, there is literally a world of choices to pick from. What if technology could help you pick?

We are not talking about AI that suggests you options based on popular destinations for people your age, or based on previous holidays. A new tool being introduced by online travel company ebookers.com uses facial recognition and multisensory displays to suggest travel destination based on user reactions to being shown different options.

The SenseSational online tool works by showing the user video of various stages of the travel journey, and tracks their facial reactions and where their gaze. Recording this user data than allows it to calculate the findings and present the user with a set of personalised destinations to consider.

“New technology is revolutionising the travel sector and enabling our digital world to become a personalised, multi-sensory immersion that provides travellers with the vital ‘try before you buy’ experience,” explains Mark McKenna, Commercial Director at ebookers.com.

Travel in the digital age

Social media has changed the way that people share their travel experiences and plan where they want to go. Sites like Instagram are filled with a constant stream of real-time imagery and video content that lets people show how they have pushed their boundaries.

With SenseSational, ebooker.com is looking to tap into this key feature of the digital age. By seeing how consumers react to images and videos of different kinds of trips, the company should be able to provide better, more targeted services to its customers.

“SenseSational mimics this emotive storytelling and analyses the way we engage with certain textures, tastes and sounds, giving us an insight into how technology will continue to shape the consumer journey and help us form completely tailored travel experiences, engaging our senses every step of the way,” explains McKenna.

– by Colm Hebblethwaite

As businesses evolved from the mass-producing factories of the Industrial Age to the global, consumer-savvy forces they are today, so too have the techniques they’ve used to promote their products and services.

During the early half of the 20th century, companies believed it was necessary to show customers what they need but didn’t yet own – introducing us to the traveling encyclopedia sales rep cliche we’re all familiar with today.

But, as time continued and technology improved, consumers reacted less to hard sells and more to brands that seemed to understand their individual needs.

Eventually, marketing morphed into much of what we see today – data-driven analytics that create a narrow, personalized understanding of each customer to create targeted campaigns – while sales seemed to lag behind.

Consumers, including the clients of B2B products and services, want to build personal relationships with the brands they use. Despite being separate from marketing within an organization, sales teams have found great success using traditional marketing techniques to achieve the personal, long-lasting relationships that their clients want.

Data-driven sales process

Until recently, sales reps would reach out to prospects at the beginning of the sales process with the generic marketing materials handed out to all employees at an organization.

But, as SaaS subscription models became increasingly more popular, sales reps found that these tired concepts didn’t work when trying to establish relationships that would help retain clients year after year.

One trend that sales has successfully adopted from marketing is using data analytics to better understand the customer. Now, when a sales rep fires off a pitch to a prospect, the rep immediately receives data about their behavior – What was the open rate for a particular subject line? How many people moved to the next step after reading this email?

As prospects continue through the sales process, or as existing clients work with the company, the sales rep is able to gather more information about their behavior to create a true understanding of their needs. By analyzing the data, reps are able to understand what methods worked with their customers and know how to recreate this success in the future.

Customer relationship management in sales

Marketing teams learned early on that a strong relationship with a customer is key to their returning to the company’s products or services.

From this understanding sprang forth tactics like customer relationship management that allowed these kinds of relationships to grow. Marketing teams use the customer data they have to craft valuable offerings and targeted campaigns for their customers.

For sales, understanding the motivations and drives behind a potential lead’s actions through data analytics allows the sales rep to send similar targeted campaigns.

No more emails beginning with “To Whom It May Concern,” – now, sales reps are able to provide their prospects with enriching and useful information specific to any questions that they may have regarding the product or service.

Sales and marketing alignment

Although they still provide different functions for the company, marketing and sales stand to learn a great deal from each other as technology and consumer preferences continue to change.

With sales teams being called upon more often to close deals with recurring clients, it is more important than ever that they embrace customer relationship management and data analytics in order to provide the best customer experience possible.

The siloed business model is becoming increasingly ineffective, and this trend points to an emerging trend of overall sales and marketing alignment. Companies are finding that when a technique successfully works for one department or team, the actions can and should be adapted across the organization in order to reap similar rewards.

While sales and marketing are the first aspects of business to embrace this, we can expect to see this more as business models continue to innovate and change.

– by Chris Rothstein