Awesome Reporting for Winning at PPC #HeroConf

Today I had the pleasure of speaking at the first ever Hero Conf in London. This is an event that has been running in the US for years but has only just headed over the waters to the UK. It has been a great event and one of the only events in the UK that is fully dedicated to PPC.

The event attracted around 200 attendees and 40 speakers from around the world and there have been some great sessions. In my session, I spoke about making use of Google AdWords, Google Analytics and Excel to really make the most out of the data you generate off the back of running PPC campaigns.

It’s all about the money

Google and Bing are super smart and essentially, they rely on advertisers not always using their platforms properly because they generate a lot of revenue off mistakes being made.

Last year in 2014, 90% of Google’s revenue came from their advertising platforms such as AdWords, YouTube and AdSense. When you look at this as a value in revenue, it was in excess of $59 billion dollars! The graph of their annual revenue year on year is a trend that any business would love; a nice steady increase every single year.

Now this increase is not only a result of advertisers not all understanding how to use the platforms properly, it is also down to the sheer amount of changes that happen across the AdWords platform and the features that become available to us.

HeroConf Slides

My slides from the event can be viewed below and as you work your way through, you will be able to uncover some of my favourite and sometimes underutilised reports available across AdWords and Analytics.  Each slide should be pretty self explanatory but if you do have any questions, feel free to tweet me (@Koozai_Sam) or get in touch here.

Awesome Reporting for Winning at PPC #HeroConf from Samantha Noble

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Web Design: Be My Judge

Your website is a static advert that customers will consider when deciding whether they want to go into business with your company or not.

It represents your brand and should therefore show off what your brand is all about and offer a positive experience for every user. As it’s out there for everyone to see, it should be something that you are proud of and what your users want.

I’ve worked on a number of web development projects and in doing so have identified a number of common errors made by webmasters when developing a website. These vary from opportunities missed to elements not executed well.

User Intent

One very important factor in web design is clear channelling. Your site design should clearly illustrate to users the path they should naturally take through your site to get to where they want to be.

You want to make it very easy for a user to reach their ‘intent’, be it to convert or to gather information. If you’re making it difficult for them, what’s stopping them from going to a competitor?

Quite often web designers get lost in ‘what looks pretty’ and forget ‘what works best for the user’. Design for your user and their intent – the rest should come afterwards.

So how can you clearly channel intent?

Get your conversion optimisation up to scratch with clear and unique CTA’s, buttons and navigation, all designed with the user in mind. Compliment this by continually asking what users are coming to your site for, and provide that valuable information, product or service offering where applicable. You can do this by looking at the search queries that brought users to your site within Google Search Console, and then build on this, amending it gradually for continuous improvement.

One Goal For Every Page

Ideally you should have one goal per page: when you’re looking at a page, you want to be able to answer ‘what is the goal of this page?’. If you struggle to answer this yourself, how is your user supposed to know? Users will struggle to make a decision when they’re given too many options.

Decide what each page’s goal should be before filling the page with content and styling, as this will save you time in the long run. Work out whether this is a learning resource, or whether you want users to sign up to contact forms or encourage a purchase.

By ensuring you have one set goal for each page this will improve time on site, bounce rate and other key metrics that help you assess site performance.

Avoid Clutter – White Spacing

Whilst your call to action is arguably one of the most important components of any page, its position and the space around it is almost as vital as the CTA itself. Make sure there’s a big enough space around the CTA so that it stands out; if you clutter this up, your message will be lost and users will be less likely to convert. Remember: the more space there is, the more the CTA will stand out for the user.

Site spacing is probably one of the most important aspects of your website. White space is vital – a bit of simplicity never hurt anyone and some colour also wouldn’t go amiss. I’m not suggesting that web design should work against SEO (i.e. you must have some content above the fold) but I just mean it should look appealing. After all, your website says far more about you than a business card ever will. Your site is an open book that users will judge to assess whether they want to work with you or buy from you.

Navigation

There are numerous sites that have failed because users either can’t understand how to use it or they can’t be bothered to work out the snazzy navigation the web developer has worked tirelessly to put in place. Either way, this isn’t going to help users navigate your site or helps drive conversions.

To ensure that visitors find your site easy to use, I recommend running some simple usability tests with a small number of people from your target demographic(s). Just ask them to perform a few simple tasks on your website, such as navigating to one of the main service pages, sending an enquiry through the contact form and downloading a white paper, for example. You may find there are some surprises to help you realign some of your site’s navigation to make it clearer for users to understand.

Content

With accessibility in mind, managing content correctly is also an extremely important aspect to consider when building a website.

The importance of content on a website can often be overlooked in favour of web design. From an SEO perspective, this is detrimental as you’re missing an opportunity to provide relevancy for certain keywords to crawlers. From a user perspective, you’re not giving them much reason to stick around on a website.

All too often I have seen websites with next to no content and it just makes no sense. If you’ve worked hard to create a website, why wouldn’t you enrich it with content that’s going to help you build links, engage audiences and enable your company to excel in your field?

Get to the point quickly and concisely, your user won’t stick around for very long to try and find what they’re looking for. The more concise the content of your website is, the quicker the user can decide whether you’re offering what they’re looking for.

On the flip side, content is often ignored when there’s too much waffle.

Use Of Multimedia

I can’t stress enough how important good images are for your site. They allow you to say less in a simple and effective way. Branded images are a definite bonus, as are images of staff members to help build trust in the brand and to allow users to relate to your company and even see themselves working with you.

It’s also advisable to use a vector image for your logo so that it isn’t distorted regardless of screen size – there’s nothing worse than a low-res, pixelated logo. To me, this instantly sends alarm bells telling me not to trust the site as it’s such an easy fix, so why wouldn’t you just do it?

Good images will sell your product or services, while bad images will do the opposite. There are so many royalty-free sites now, so there’s no excuse to not use these resources to your advantage.

Using photos and videos in the right way will help transform your content from a word-heavy page to an appealing page that’s broken up and engages users.

Avoid Clutter

Although I mentioned this earlier from a channelling perspective, you should also avoid clutter from a content perspective. Having a page that’s covered in images and text can be daunting for a user visiting your page for the first time, and they’re likely to bounce back to the previous page.

Make sure you’ve got a page with a nice balance of text and white space, as this will make it easier for your user to digest information and will also increase the likelihood they’ll engage or take the desired action.

Contact Details

Whilst including contact details clearly on your site is an essential trust signal, it also helps the user get in touch, alleviating the user’s confusion with important CTAs.

For the most clear and consistent layout, I recommend including your company phone number within your site header and your full business address within your footer.

If users can see that your company is legitimate and easily understand where to find more information, they will be more likely to perform each page goal that, in turn, will help generate site revenue and enhance your return on investment.

Final Thoughts

I’m not sure I believe that anyone’s site is beyond optimisation, but if you feel you’ve done all of the above then awesome – you’re well on your way to a site that’s optimised for your users in terms of usability and the overall look and feel.  As it’s out there for everyone to see, it should be something you are proud of. My main tip from this post is:

Look to continually improve your site, and make sure it is designed for your user and what they want

Tweet this

If you think of any other web design features that I should have included, please comment and let’s chat about it. Alternatively feel free to ask me a question on Twitter via @Koozai_Sally.

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14 ways to reduce your site's bounce rates

Here are several suggestions for ways to keep visitors from leaving your site and enticing them to stick around and view more pages.

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Ad Blocking and The Future of Online Advertising

(This is the transcript from our new video so it may not read as well as a normal blog post would)

Pills, buy them now. Weight loss, buy it now. Earn five grand a week now. These are examples of the annoying ads that everyone sees every day. They’re on sites you love. They’re on sites you’ve only visited for the first time. They’re everywhere.

Well, people started getting annoyed with them, and that’s why ad blockers were invented. So now, instead of going to your favourite site or one you’ve been to for the first time and seeing annoying ads pop up everywhere and jiggle about and do that kind of thing. “You’re our thousandth visitor today. You’ve won an iPad. Just click here.” You’ve not won an iPad. Everyone knows you haven’t won an iPad. But there it is anyway.

Ad blockers let you get rid of those now, and they’ve become pretty popular. It’s kind of a big deal now that Apple has introduced them on their mobile browser, because it means there’s a huge, extra big chunk of audience that’s not going to be able see ads on their mobile if they choose.

So what does that mean? Well, it means one thing for a start. It means that ads have been ridiculously, badly targeted for so long. All of these things here, they’re not of interest to me. They might be of interest to some people. The point is that the advertisers just sort of threw them against the website and let them land wherever they may and hope for the best.

The only times I ever click on these kind of things and most people I’m guessing is by accident, when I’m scrolling through something. That’s not just a waste of money for the person advertising. It’s kind of brain killing as well.

So I don’t see how this sort of stuff ever really worked. But hey, you know people are still doing it, and people are still annoyed by it. So they skip that kind of stuff on YouTube that isn’t really targeted. They’ll block everything else that they can with a content blocker.

Now it’s not really Google’s fault. I personally think that their search ads are really useful now. Stuff like PLAs and Google shopping is amazing. It’s really, genuinely useful. You can search for something. Find it straightaway. See what it looks like. Find prices and compare stuff. And even the search ads themselves, they’re actually useful. They serve a purpose. They can get you to the right location. They can get you to the right landing page like that, and that’s genuinely good stuff. So they’re kind of an innocent bystander in all of this, which is a shame because they’ve only just really gotten good.

So with all these ads stalking around, appearing everywhere, not really targeted, totally irrelevant to the site you’re on, it’s not really any wonder that people have decided to block them. But it doesn’t mean that the PPC is dead or anything like that. It doesn’t mean that at all.

All it means is it’s really time to start thinking about doing it right. You have to target the right people. You can’t just use your TV ad on YouTube any more, because people just hit the Skip button. It doesn’t translate. The attention span is too short. So you can’t have a 30 second ad on YouTube for a video that’s 15 seconds long or whatever. It’s just not fair. It’s annoying. People don’t get their point across quick enough. You’ve got to do that sort of thing when it comes to video ads. You really just have to bang. You just be there straightaway, and it’s done. Two seconds later no one bats an eye. No one is really phased by it.

But please, everyone, just start targeting your ads properly. Think about who you’re going for. Stop the scattergun approach. It just doesn’t work. If all your eggs are in the advertising basket, if you’re a publisher and you rely on your income from advertising, start thinking about other means, because if people start using ad blockers on scale, your whole income is all in one place. You can’t really have that.

Start thinking about apps. Start thinking about merchandise. Start thinking about other avenues that you can get your income from. Or be more sort of discerning. Be a bit more sort of strict on what kind of ads you want on there. Obviously, an advertiser will choose where their ads go for display. But be a little more sort of scrupulous with it and think about the kind of content that you have and the kind of people that are coming in. Just think about the audience a bit more. That’s all I’m really saying, because we’re kind of tired of all this stuff.

Another knock-on of ad blockers is content blocking in general. So JavaScript won’t fire with some of them, and that means that Google Analytics that it can be skewed. So just be wary of that as well. So if you start seeing a lot of traffic coming from unknown places or you just get naught set or none, I think it will just be flagged up as general direct traffic. That means that it could be from an ad block enabled browser as well.

So just be careful with this kind of stuff. But I guess the moral of the story is don’t ruin it. Don’t ruin it. Ads are still good. There’s still hope. There’s still life in the old dog yet. But just stop with this stuff. Stop chucking it in our faces. We’re done with it.

Thanks, guys. I am @Koozai_ali. You can find me on Twitter. Follow our other social media channels as well. Thanks. See you later.

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How paid search marketers can prepare for the 2015 holidays

For paid search marketers the holiday season is already in full swing and competition is going to be tough.

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Using Facebook Insights to Monitor Your Social Campaigns

Social media is a powerful tool, which all businesses should be using if they want to prosper in the digital age. However, it’s all very well using platforms like Facebook, but without tracking what works and what doesn’t, how can you be sure that you’re using social in the best way possible? As Facebook is the largest social platform in the world, we take a look at how the network’s Insights tool will help you to maximise this channel.

What Is Facebook Insights?

Facebook Insights tracks user interactions on your own business Facebook page and allows you to view which type of content is performing well on your page. Access to Insights is given to all of the admins who are permitted to view and/or edit your profile.

Why is this information so valuable? Because it allows you to establish:

• The posts that have received the most likes, shares and comments
• The exposure and reach of all your updates
• The percentage of males and females who follow your page
• The city and country your fans are located in
• The most popular times/days to post content

All of this information can be used to work out what type of content you should be sharing from your Facebook page and when’s best to share it.

Accessing Facebook Insights

When you log into your Facebook account, you’ll find the ‘Insights’ button at the top of the page next to ‘Notifications’ and ‘Publishing Tools’, as shown highlighted below.

Click on the Insights option to take you to an overview of your data. By default, the range of information displayed usually spans the last week.

This time frame can be extended by clicking on some of the individual tabs at the top of the page, such as, ‘Likes’, ‘Reach’, ‘Visits’ and ‘Videos’.

So now you know how to access the data, let’s get stuck into what Insights can offer.

The Best Time To Share Content

Navigating to ‘Posts’ will allow you to work out the amount of active users online on a given day and also the amount of users online at a specific time.

In the example below, we can see that the most popular day in the week was Sunday, with 8pm being the most popular time across the whole week.

What the data tells you: Understanding when the largest proportion of your users are online, as well as which day and time they’re most active will allow you to target your posts to the widest audience possible.

You should monitor this on a regular basis so that your social media posting plan and strategy can be adapted to meet any changes you spot.

The Type of Content to Share

The ‘Post Types’ button under ‘Posts’ (as displayed below) will also give you some decent insights into the type of content to share in order to maximise exposure and engagement.

Once you click through to this section, the following information will display:

Here you can see which form of content has the widest average reach; in this case, the running order from top to bottom is shared videos, photos and links.

This doesn’t mean to say that links should be neglected. It depends what you are trying to use social media for. As an example, you might want to draw attention to a particular news story on an external site and build relationships with specific sites, so in this case links would be worth investing your time in.

However, if you want the widest number of people to see and engage with your content via likes, clicks, comments and shares, shared video content would be the best approach in the example above. If you’re after post clicks, the same content type would also apply based on the data we can see.

What the data tells you: Viewing this information allows you to use social media to meet the goals of your campaigns – so if you want comments in the future for example, you’ll know which content type is best for this.

Demographic of Your Users

Finally, to work out the percentage split of male and female users who like your profile, the most popular age categories and where your followers are from, click on ‘People’ and ‘Your Fans’.

This section in Facebook Insights will also show you the countries and cities your users are from and the languages they speak.

This provides you with in-depth and interesting information that can be used to target a particular audience based on gender, age, city and more.

The data you view is easy to analyse and will be displayed like so:

Using this data as an example, you could determine that in order to gain the most interaction you should share content with females aged 35-54 who are based in London and speak English.

Alternatively, if you wanted to increase male followers, you could create social updates aimed at those aged 35-44, again who are based in London, as this is the majority male audience.

What the data tells you: Having access to these insights allows you to work out which demographic, or segment of a particular demographic, you need to target in order to maximise your Facebook activity.

Final Thoughts

Start using Insights on your own Facebook Business profiles and you’ll soon discover how accessing this knowledge will make your social strategy more targeted and successful than it’s ever been before.

If you need more advice on creating a social media campaign or you’d like a professional Digital Marketing Agency to manage your social accounts, speak to Koozai today.

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How To Create a Successful Content Marketing Strategy

We all want to create successful content marketing strategies and have our clients’ names up in lights receiving the acclaim they deserve. But how achievable is this?

In truth, it’s not an unreachable target; it just requires a vast amount of preparation and dedication, which is where some companies fall short.

When you consider the supporting role that content plays for SEO, it seems a shame to let all that hard work go waste. Here are just a few effective methods for creating a successful content marketing strategy.

Creating great copy doesn’t guarantee you instant social media shares and high-quality backlinks. There’s no magical ‘go viral’ button you can hit. Instead you need to make sure that your content marketing strategy is targeted from the get-go.

Defining Goals

Before you start your campaign, make sure you take the time to clearly define the main goals. These will be the backbone of your strategy and will help ensure that your content marketing efforts are driven towards an end goal. Whether this is increased brand awareness, boosting traffic, link acquisition or social shares, putting definitive aims in place will help you achieve them.

When your client first comes on board, set up a meeting to talk through their current content marketing strategy and establish what has and hasn’t worked for them in the past. This will save you time when you come to the ideation stage later on.

Micro Goals

Once you’ve established the main goals of your campaign, it’s time to think about your micro goals. These are the individual goals that you want each piece of content you create to achieve. Your content won’t stay the same, so neither should your targets.

Both your main and micro goals need to fit in with your overall strategy so always make sure that your content ties into the bigger picture.

Audience Identification

Before you start creating your amazing content with its sights set on success, you need to establish who your audience is. This may be one particular demographic, but in most cases your audience will be made up of several groups of people.

A handy way to segment your audience is by defining their characteristics and social standing. Sites like YouGov Profiles are an effective tool to use for this.

Take a look at the example below:

Group name

• Age
• Gender
• Social grade
• Interests
• What they are looking for

By establishing the groups of individuals in your audience, you can include content tailored to them in your Content Marketing plan. This ensures that your content resonates with the right people. Otherwise you’re just creating content and hoping for the best – and your clients deserve better than that.

Title Creation and Content Ideation

On-page SEO isn’t something that you should shy away from. By using tools like Übersuggest you can strengthen your copy, help support the SEO strategy and make your content more targeted.

Übersuggest is a free keyword tool that provides targeted suggestions based on a base term. It’s an effective resource if you’re struggling to come up with strong titles, or just need some content topic inspiration.

“Being noticed is not the same as being remarkable. Running down the street naked will get you noticed, but it won’t accomplish much. It’s easy to pull off a stunt, but not useful.” – Seth Godin

When it comes to creating your content, the tried and tested approach may work for you, but it’s well worth trying alternative methods. For example, larger pieces of content can offer you a great deal of value that you may struggle to achieve in the same timeframe with smaller content pieces.

Ahrefs is another fantastic tool at your disposal. In addition to the backlink analysis you can run, the software also allows you to search for the top 10 most shared pieces of content by topic. So it’s great for getting an insight into what your competitors are creating and also the topics that your intended audience are interested in. When you come to plan the content you will create, this will help to support your strategy and ensure that it is as targeted and relevant as possible.

Tracking Results

So you’ve put your content marketing strategy in place and have achieved great things, but rather than patting yourself on the back an idly continuing, you need to compile your results.

Once your content goes live it’s important to ensure that you track how it performs. Using software like Google Analytics, you can collect a whole range of information that will give you an invaluable insight into its value.

These include, but are not limited to:

• Unique page views
• Downloads
• Average time on page
• Bounce rate

Having access to this data will help you identify what content is and isn’t working and gives you the opportunity to refine your plan. Remember that your strategy doesn’t have to be set in stone. Ideally it should as flexible as possible.

Get In Touch

Let me know your thoughts on what makes a successful content marketing strategy. Leave a comment below or tweet me @Koozai_Ruth.

If you don’t have time to resources available to create a comprehensive content marketing strategy then contact Koozai today.

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Utilising Pattern Matching Methods for SEO

(This is the transcript from our new video so it may not read as well as a normal blog post would)

Hi, I’m Graeme, and I want to talk to you today about pattern matching and SEO. I’ve been quite interested in pattern matching as a concept over the past year or so, mainly from the point of view of Google’s search product being built upon pattern matching technology.

So when considering a web page from the point of view of what you can do proactively to help increase the usability of that page and drive conversions and from the point of view of visibility, of increasing the ranking position for that page with the ultimate end being to drive more people to the site who are going to convert more, I think there’s a number of angles that we can use pattern matching to help improve our pages. Then SEO is certainly taking on a defensive aspect from the point of view of ensuring your site doesn’t receive any kind of action from Google, whether it’s a manual penalty or whether it’s an algorithmic review. Ultimately, both are going to cause massive loss in organic traffic, which means less visitors, less conversions, and potentially more cost in that you’ll need to find other channels that require investment in to grow, to offset what you’ve lost.

So in terms of on page, I think we need to look at what we’re trying to target on the page and consider the themes and the keywords, the related phrases and look at those as hints to a pattern matching tool. We need to be giving as many hints — actually hints is a rubbish word — signals is a much better word. We need to be giving as many signals of relevance to a pattern matching tool as possible if we’re going to stand a chance of increasing our visibility through better rankings.

So you may start off with a theme before you actually find a keyword. But looking at the themes and what those subsets or subtopics or related themes is going to help to build out that page, because there is going to be merit in referencing those, and it may even give you ideas of more content that you can create on the site and build your site’s scope of relevance by having more content about more relevant things.

Google’s index is growing at such a rate that it’s getting more and more complex, and the pattern matching is a means of being able to get through that index quicker. The ultimate aim is that pattern match or the faith [they’re putting in it] is that the pattern matching is going to return a really good result for that user that’s using the search engine.

So if you have a keyword, make sure you’re looking at the related keywords, and I think that the auto suggest function in Google and the related terms at the bottom or related phrases at the bottom of the search engine result page are a great indicator of where you can take a keyword and then make sure that page is an authority on that particular keyword by referencing those other related terms. That keyword is going to exist in the past tense as well. It’s going to exist with different kind of appendages as well. So taking that approach is going to ensure that your page of content has a lot of signals for a pattern matching tool to come in, not the least that keyword as well. But that keyword needs to be seen as one big tick, but not all the boxes being ticked as well.

Defensively, as I said before, search engines now need to be ensured against from actions that are going to cripple your site. So you can think of pattern matching when you’re analysing the backlink profile of your site and looking for that kind of non-existent network of backlinks that are going to be harmful. They may not have any real relation to each other. However, looking in the domain links or SEO, those domains may not have any real relation to each other, but they will from a pattern matching point of view, because the likelier it is that those domains exist just for a link to live on. There’s no real user benefit of those domains and subsequently of those links, and, as a result, your site, your domain is going to be affected by having that relationship established via a link. So pattern matching comes into this again from the point of view of ensuring your site from any search engine action.

You can take this a step further, from a proactive point of view, off page, and that’s by using things like the site colon operator, related colon operator, looking for how the link graph or how the link graph might look in terms of where your site needs to relate to another domain by achieving a backlink and paying close attention to those related sites. Then within those sites, the pages that have the most kind of relevance to the particular theme or keyword that you’re targeting is going to give you the opportunity to reach out and build a relationship that’s going to end up with a backlink. Keep scaling that and you are going to be beefing up your own page signals with this authority that’s coming from relevant, authoritative of sites. The end result is going to be that the index is going to have this picture of your particular page that shows that on the page you’re talking about all the right things, and off the page you’ve got great links from authoritative, relevant sites saying that this page is a great asset. The end result is going to be better rankings.

For more information, please see the social profiles at the end of this video or get in touch with us via our website. Thanks very much.

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How to use PPC in a PR crisis

When it comes to online reputation management (ORM) there’s no doubt the strong role PPC can play if you need something quick to address a problem.

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Why Building a Brand and SEO Are So Closely Linked

When someone declares that SEO has died, they are usually referring to one particular type of SEO that is based on exploiting some loophole in older search engine algorithms. As long as the Internet remains popular, search engines will be necessary and improving search presence will remain crucial for online success.

Brand building has been a recognised part of business since before the early days of Coca-Cola. The marketing mix provides the basic outline for creating a brand image, stating the promises on which a business will deliver to its customers.

So why is customer perception important for SEO, and why is creating an image important for where a site will rank on Google? Much like SEO, brand building encompasses a range of areas that also fall under other classifications of marketing.

The benefits of building a brand can be seen in the case of large organisations such as Paddy Power, where an image helps lead press stories, social media mentions and conversations up and down the UK and Ireland.

Modern search engines are becoming very effective at detecting brand mentions online and, with the extra difficulty of finding high-quality natural links to a website, brand mentions are more than likely to be a leading search ranking factor in times to come. However, this is not the only correlation between the two; the brand strategy should also directly influence the SEO targeting strategy based on the target audience and brand proposition. Furthermore, as SEO can also cover site usability, user journey and improving conversions, the two have major aspects that overlap.

SEO and Brand Strategy

When devising marketing strategies, there is a real need to know whom the brand is targeting in order to perform effective SEO. A strategy that doesn’t account for the target audience is almost certainly flawed. A brand will resonate with a particular audience based on a range of factors, including socio-demographics, location and interests. A strong brand will have an image and presence that connects specifically with a specific subset of the population, and an SEO campaign should seek to discover and build upon the brand image at the right level.

If you don’t know where the people who will pay for the goods/services are spending time online, it is impossible to gain relevant links or interact with prospective customers. It also makes it much more difficult to provide content that they will actually read or engage with on your website.

By aligning the brand image with effective content and outreach, your SEO project will be more successful in delivering relevant traffic to the site. There is also the opportunity to support the brand building campaign by developing content, targeting keywords and planning site pages that accurately respond to the brand objectives.

A stronger brand is also likely to enjoy benefits such as corporate news being shared by news outlets, users describing their experiences, both negative and positive, as well as any promotions being disseminated by more people compared to a smaller brand. All these areas lead to an increase in citations, mentions and often naturally occurring links.

Site Design, User Journey and Site Usability

Improving a user journey can be complicated because there is no one way to optimise a website. Sure, the payment process can be shortened and made easier, but users buy products in different ways depending on who they are, what product they are buying and how much they trust the brand.

By understanding the user’s expectations of the site and brand, the site can be much more effective at turning visitors into customers. If the brand is well known, the user journey from landing page to conversion can be much more straightforward, whereas a smaller brand may need to look at including more detail to help encourage trust and persuade users to get in touch or complete a purchase.

Designing the site to make it fit users’ expectations is vitally important to keep them on the site, and this can only be achieved by combining a brand image and site design that works effectively for search presence.

A clear example of sites which are based on brand perception can be seen in the UK newspaper market, and specifically in the differences between tabloids and broadsheets. The Financial Times website has been designed to be clear and rely on text to get its message across, whereas Metro, a free tabloid, uses more images and short, sharp headlines to encourage users to click through.

Trust Signals and Conversions

A strong brand can also bring additional benefits beyond increasing the search visibility of a website. Traditionally, brands that are well known to consumers have a much higher conversion rate from organic and paid search, largely down to a new visitor’s trust in the website. By increasing brand awareness, a well-optimised website can take advantage of this competitive advantage to help drive its conversion rate.

SEO and a Strong Brand: Perfectly Matched

A strong SEO strategy can help properly focus the digital marketing side of a brand building project by finding the right audience and producing the right content for it. High-quality SEO and conversion rate optimisation can be the final cherry on the cake to make the most of the visitors that arrive at a website and get the best return on investment for all the advertising dollars, PR costs, site design expenses and content production resources that have gone into building a brand and attracting users to the site in the first place.

For more Search & Digital Marketing news & views follow me on Twitter – @koozai_james

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Koozai’s Free Digital Marketing Clinic

Following the success of our previous Digital Marketing Clinic we are very excited to announce that we will be holding a second one on Friday 20^th November. The event will be held at The Solent Hotel near Southampton.

This free event is designed to help businesses (large or small) get more from their digital marketing in particular, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) and Content Marketing. Whether you work for a large multi-national organisation or a small local business, we would like to invite you to come along and have a coffee and informal chat with our team.

Book your place here.

Your tailored 1 to 1 session

The beauty of our Digital Marketing Clinic is that you get a free 1 to 1 session which is entirely tailored to you and your needs. It gives you the chance to come along and talk to us confidently about your online strategy and any problems or issues you may be having. During your allocated time slot there will be no more than one other business in the room who will be talking to someone else in the team. This is where we differ from some of the other events which can get pretty busy and loud.

Prior to us meeting you on the day, we will have spent some time reviewing your website so that we can really make the most out of the time we have with you on the day.

We have access to all the most popular SEO, PPC and Content Marketing tools so we will be making good use of those during the time we spend with you to highlight areas that may need improvement. You may be surprised with some of the quick wins that can be implemented to improve your SEO and/or PPC conversions!

If we get to the end of the session and we still have more to discuss (we do like to talk!), then we will be more than happy to arrange a follow on call with you.

Securing your place!

As we mentioned above, the hour is tailored to you and your business. Once you have reserved your place, we will get in touch and find out the best time for you to come along to meet with us. We appreciate that you are busy and this format of event means you only need to take a couple of your day at a time that suits you. You can either come along by yourself or with a colleague. If you would like to bring more than one other person with you, just let us know when we get in touch to confirm your time slot.

The following time slots are available throughout the day (subject to availability):

• 09:00 – 10:00
• 10:30 – 11:30
• 12:00 – 13:00
• 14:00 – 15:00
• 15:30 – 16:30

Click here to book your place via EventBrite.

Who will you meet?

Our clinics will be run by three of the team who will be on hand to get you a nice cuppa, a slice of cake and of course answer any questions that you may have. On the day you will meet Rob Arkell, Andrew Curtis and Oliver Ewbank.

Your secrets are safe with us

It goes without saying that your data would remain confidential but if you would like us to sign an NDA, we can of course do that.

Please note this clinic is available for brand side marketers only, not agencies.

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Google Customer Match and the Future of Remarketing

On 27 September 2015 Google announced Customer Match. It gives advertisers the ability to upload their user base to AdWords and specifically market to those individuals.

The Benefits

AdWords Customer Match will become a potent remarketing tool because users can be signed in across multiple devices and therefore be served ads wherever or however they are using any Google property online.

This is unlike previous remarketing which is based on cookie collection and thus limited to showing ads only on particular browsers or sessions. This can be a worry for advertisers as some users may clear their cookies or even change their device.

The Concerns

AdWords Customer Match will only be able to target users whose email address matches the email address that they used to login into a Google property.

The CSV import needs to include a hash code for each email, though this isn’t very helpful to non-techies. You can, if you really want to, learn more about the required SHA256 algorithm on Wikipedia.

Lastly you’ll need a specific page where users can manage their email preferences and unsubscribe if needed. Typically unsubscribe links are customised to the user within the actual email they receive, rather than on a dedicated webpage.

Targeting Options

You’ll be able to target users on the Search Network, in Gmail Ads and on YouTube.

Let’s look at some examples.

1. Better target visitors that have signed up to your newsletter by applying a bid multiplier to that customer match remarketing list within your search network ads.
2. Target users that have signed up to your travel offers by showing recent promotion when they are using their Gmail account.
3. Show users YouTube Trueview adverts of new products from your online shop from which they have shopped in the past.

How Does it Compare?

Google is a bit late to the custom audience game as Facebook launched its Custom audiences feature a couple of years ago.

According to a recent test by Wordstream, AdWords customer Match identified the highest percentage of customers from their list over Facebook Custom Audiences and Twitter Tailored Audience.

Match rate is a really important factor for a custom list based remarketing system to be effective.

There no doubt that Facebook Custom Audiences is still going to be a highly effective targeting platform as it has been for a while now. Facebook advertising is particularly useful for its insights into audience demographics and interests. However Google is beginning to catch up on this type of reporting.

A recent Twitter chat hosted by PRWD highlighted that typically users have an email for work and an email for personal use so Customer Match may not reach the right audience all of the time. This is opposed to Facebook where pretty much everyone will have a single login.

The End of Cookie Remarketing?

Privacy, as a whole, has recently become a big concern for internet users.

Google is quite hot on user privacy at the moment.

A while ago, Google removed keyword data from its analytics software to help users keep a degree of anonymity.

More recently, Google has been adjusting its remarketing advertising policies to exclude audiences where being shown certain types of services or products could damage their personal reputation or depict them in a negative way.

An example of this is the recent exclusion of audiences that have visited a website offering bad credit loans and services associated with financial difficulties.

The Future of Remarketing

Personalised remarketing technologies are helping us head towards delivering better targeted advertising to specific individuals. Hopefully this will help curb the recent need for ad blockers as users are becoming increasingly frustrated by generic online advertising messaging.

If we can tailor ad messaging to specific individuals without creeping them out, then I believe customer-list based remarketing will be a very valuable tool to advertisers.

Get started with AdWords Customer Match.

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5 Essential Elements For Outreach

(This is the transcript from our new video so it may not read as well as a normal blog post would)

Hello. So I am going to talk to you today about the five essential elements for outreach. Creating quality content doesn’t necessarily guarantee you high quality links, citations, and things like brand awareness. You need to put the time in to consider your outreach approach, because if you get this right, then that’s going to be the key to your success.

Outreach is when you go towards bloggers and sites, and you’re actively promoting you’re content. That’s with the intention of them sharing it, linking to it, or perhaps hosting it on their site.

So if we look at the first factor, that’s relevancy. So right at the ideation stage, when you’re creating your content, have your audience in mind. Think about who’s going to read it, but also who’s going to share it.

The second point is research. Make the time to make sure that you’re approaching the right industries, because if you approach them with something that they wouldn’t talk about, then you’re wasting both of your time. So using tools like Gorkana, you can hone it down to the right industry, and then in terms of the site, the department, and even the right person to speak to.

The third essential element is timing. If a story breaks that is relevant to your industry or just to your business or your clients’ business, then it’s really good to get something out there. But I must stress, don’t do it just for the sake of it, because it’s essentially like having a room full of people all having the same conversation, and if you’re not adding to it, then you’re not going to get the full effect. So if you are going to put something out there, make sure you include stats and sources and quotes.

The fourth essential element is storytelling. So with that I’m not talking about when you’re creating the content necessarily. This is more when you’re doing your outreach. You’ve got to think that these bloggers and journalists receive thousands of calls and emails a day. So you really need to make your message stand out. A great tip that I’ve come up with is to promote your story in one sentence. If you can’t sell your story in one sentence, then why should someone else be invested in it? So you need to really make the time to sell what you’re talking about.

The fifth and final essential element is goals. I would say that it’s best to aim high. Yes, there is the low-hanging fruit out there. But if you aim higher, and let’s say you get some national press, it’s going to make it so much easier when you’re going to talk to the local press.

With these five essential elements for outreach, we have used them at Koozai, and it’s helped us to gain local and national press. That’s online and in print as well as radio airtime. So I really don’t see why if you utilise these elements, you can’t achieve the same for yourself, for your business, and for your clients.

Thank you very much for listening, and if you need anymore information, visit Koozai.com, or take a look at the social profiles on the next slide. Thank you.

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How to get most out of Yahoo Gemini

Here’s why search marketers that are currently refining campaign strategies in anticipation of the upcoming holiday shopping season should consider using Yahoo’s Gemini platform.

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How To Leverage Social Networking For SEO: Link Building

It’s well known that in order to produce a good backlink profile, you need to earn high-quality backlinks to your site and disavow low quality domains. However, we all know that link building can be a dangerous game to play at the best of times, especially when you need to keep in check with Google’s guidelines. The rules change regularly and spammy link building techniques just won’t do any more!

In order for you to be successful, link building essentially needs to be a natural process, which is where social networking with others in your sector comes into play.

Today I will be running through a few tactics on how to develop relationships with key influencers in order to earn high quality links.

Blogging

Starting a new blog in order to obtain links can be a long and tedious process. It can, however, be very effective in the long run, depending on the quality of your content and how it is promoted. Patience and persistence are required to grow the blog in order to build your online reputation.

Targeting relationships with bloggers within the same industry can be a good way to get links to a blog from other blogs; however, this is not something that can happen overnight.

Moz recently carried out a study with Buzzsumo about the types of content that have a strong positive correlation of shares and links. Research backed content and opinion forming journalism proved to be great contenders for earning high quality links. Also, content that contained 1,000 words or more seemed to accumulate more links.

Before setting up your blog, brainstorm ideas about your audience, goals and strategy, as only high quality content is worth linking to!

Social News and Tagging Sites

The focus of social news and tagging sites is about being a positive contributor and active member of the community. Don’t try to game these sites as you will get caught out! The sites below can place your content in front of audiences that are actually interested in your content, therefore providing you with potential link opportunities.

• Reddit
• StumbleUpon
• Delicious

Forum and Blog Posting

Posting comments and questions on others’ forums and blogs enables you to engage with them and possibly develop a relationship. Set up a Gravatar account and start to develop a name for yourself in the community. Establish yourself as a trusting and helpful member, as this may increase the chance of obtaining a natural backlink. Signing up to create a few spam links is not a great strategy – be helpful to others!

Question and Answer Sites

Question and answer sites such as Quora, Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers are great networking tools for building authority and gaining potential link opportunities. Many people post questions about specific topics, in search of an answer. You can include links in your answers to their questions – an example of a good strategy is linking to a blog post from your site. Don’t add in a link that doesn’t relate to the question asked, otherwise you will lose trust from the users on the site and will appear to be a spam user.

Quora especially is a great site to use, as you can actually link to your websites in your bio:

Offline Relationships

Do the major players speak at conferences? Go to these and introduce yourself. You can then contact the publisher of an authoritative site and offer them a free webinar/seminar with you as the speaker. You can then begin to build relationships within this space.

Social Media

Social Media can be great for amplifying content, but do bear in mind that this is an indirect link building tactic, as the content you share will be nofollowed. The more you interact on your social sites, the more exposure you will receive, giving you potential for building quality relationships and, in turn, earning natural links.

There we have it – a few ideas to use when thinking about developing relationships for link building. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to comment below, or alternatively you can contact Koozai today.

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Google Shopping: three updates to be familiar with this holiday season

In anticipation of the holidays, Google has made several enhancements to Shopping Campaigns and Product Listing Ads (PLA) to help streamline the experience.

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Getting To Know Your Audience Online

The success of any product or service comes down to a benefit that meets the needs of a customer and then achieving this at a larger scale. In spite of this, it’s all too common that although businesses know their product inside out, the opposite is true of people whose cash is needed to sustain that business.

Behind every success product is a group of delighted consumers. They have had their needs met and are happy enough that they are willing to tell other like-minded folk. Drilling down to the unifying factor will help you identify features of your audience that can be used to define your target market.

Once you know what your audience represents, you will be better placed to source compatible individuals to grow your tribe. As Kevin Kelly said, if you delight “1,000 true fans” you’ll see dream-like average lifetime value from each customer, as well as product evangelists happy to market your wares to their respective networks.

Getting to Know You

Profiling your customer group is a great starting point, as you will get to know the nuances of your tribe. In the main I’m not a fan of the “average user” approach. To use one very simplified example: rich folk, although in big houses, may still shop down the road from paupers like you or I because they are as financially stretched as you are. This can lead to having a composite view of many aspects, as opposed to specifically identifying the motivations a consumer needs to buy your product.

If you’ve enabled Audience Demographics in Google Analytics (and remember to update your privacy policy, people!), there is a stack of insight you can extract from here.

Age and gender, whilst seemingly obvious, are very important, as they can go a long way to define your approach to the content you’ll create. Themes, copy and branding will be significantly different depending on the age and gender segments that are most valuable to your business.

Gender is really interesting as you may find that men and women use your site in different ways. User session testing (comprehensively done) with a tool like Clicktale will help to highlight any differences and, more importantly, where the barriers to conversion are. Age too poses key questions, namely around the Call To Action. For instance, people in more senior age brackets are going to be more influenced by the people they know and trust than a compelling piece of copy, as opposed to impulsive professionals with more desire for social objects (latest iPhone etc.) and the disposable income to pay for them.

Ask the Audience

Don’t put all your eggs in the Google Analytics basket, though. There are quality tools out there that enable you to directly survey your audience to uncover the vital statistics of your user base. Deploying these can be achieved by email, embedding quick surveys in your website, creating pop-up polls or exit surveys.

The Book of Faces

Once laughed at as a marketing tool, Facebook is now everybody’s favourite toy. Facebook offers a means of reaching out beyond your existing users with the lookalike feature within the Custom Audience remarketing option. I talk a bit about that here:

Couple this with the interest level data that draws a vivid picture of the types of users you can attract, and you can develop a target audience that is highly specific.

Nice to Know You

Knowing who your audience is is an important aspect of any form of marketing. It is actually getting easier to do this online. Whilst it may not feel like the proactive thing to do because you’re not making something or publishing something, I do believe it leads to less wastage. Talking to the right people in the right way means you can convert more and more efficiently and probably generate a better return on your investment. Wouldn’t that be nice.

For more information on identifying the right audience for your brand, take a look at our marketing blog, or get in touch with a member of our team to see how we can help today.

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3 Configurations For Creating A Mobile Website

(This is the transcript from our new video so it may not read as well as a normal blog post would)

Hello. Today we’re going to be talking about mobile configurations. There are three types of mobile configurations — responsive web design, dynamic serving, and separate URLs. I’m going to be taking you through all of these, explaining what they are and the main pros and cons of each mobile configuration.

So first you have responsive web design. Responsive web design keeps the same HTML code and URL as the desktop website. The only difference is how the website actually looks. This is done by media queries, which have to render the page differently, and by a viewport, which sizes the page down to the device’s screen.

So the main pros are authority consolidation. As a responsive website is on the same URL, any link juice that is passed to that URL doesn’t have to be then passed on again to the desktop equivalent, as you realise later on with separate URLs. It’s all consolidated on just the one URL. As it’s one HTML file, there’s not multiple versions, it is easier to maintain. A con is limited limitation to differ offering. If based on your research you’ve realised that your mobile user search is different to your desktop user, responsive web design doesn’t actually allow you to differ the offerings. So if you actually need to target different keywords on your mobile site as you would to your desktop site, responsive web design doesn’t allow this.

Dynamic serving. Dynamic serving serves content on the same URL but with different HTML. This is done by a Vary HTTP header. This helps detect the user agent. Dependent on the user agent is dependent on what content is being served. So if a mobile user was to visit a website, they will be served the mobile content and vice versa with desktop.

So again, like responsive web design, you have authority consolidation. Again, as it’s on the same URL, all the link juice that’s passed through to the URL stays on one URL. No duplicate content concerns. This is the same as responsive web design, but as the HTML changes, this obviously could be a concern. So no duplicate content concerns. As we are on the same URL, again Google and crawlers alike are aware that you’re not duplicating the content across your website. This is on just the one page.

Then, the con is two implementations needed. As I mentioned, the HTML does change. So you’ve got different files for different devices that you need to maintain. As with responsive web design, you have the one file, with dynamic serving you have the two.

Separate URLs. Separate URLs are separate HTML files and URLs. So this is often done on a subdomain or directory level, quite often subdomain. So you’re serving different content on a different URL, dependent on the device that is viewing the website. So if a mobile user was to visit a domain, a desktop domain, say for example Next do, something similar, if a mobile user was to visit Next’s website, they, in theory, should be redirected to their mobile website. That doesn’t happen, but that’s what should be the case.

The pros with separate URLs, the main pro is the ability to differ offering. Because it is a separate HTML, you’re able to target different keywords. Similar to what I have mentioned up here, if you’ve found that your mobile user searches differently to your desktop user, then you may want to target different keywords to target that specific type of user.

One of the big concerns for separate URLs is duplicate content. With separate URLs, you have rel=alternate, which notifies crawlers like Google that there is a mobile alternate to a desktop page. You have that on the desktop page of a website, and on the mobile equivalent of that desktop page you need to have a canonical tag. The canonical tag will tell Google that any link juice, any content on this page should be passed back through to the desktop equivalent, and this would remove the duplicate content concerns. Quite often this is quite a common case with websites that use separate URLs, and it can often be forgotten.

So these are your main mobile configurations. If you’d like more information on these or assistance in getting your site mobile friendly, then please contact us today. Thank you.

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Paid Search Budgeting Tips: Avoiding Budget Horror Stories

Whether you use Bing Ads or Google AdWords, these suggestions can help you avoid common grievances that can arise while planning and managing budgets for paid search efforts.

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A Guide To Instagram Ads For Businesses

With Instagram recently announcing that they’ve reached a whopping 400 million users on their platform – bypassing Twitter’s 304 million monthly active users – I wanted to take a look at how you can benefit from some of the exciting new features of Instagram ads for businesses. Instagram revealed that from 30^th September 2015, all businesses are able to create Instagram ads on a self-service basis (via Facebook Power Editor). They have also made the platform available to more than 30 new countries. Previously, Instagram ads were only available to big brands with big budgets; but us mere mortals have now been given the opportunity to experiment with this platform (wahoo)!

What Are Instagram Ads?

Instagram ads typically come in the form of a photo or video. An Instagram ad has the “Sponsored” tag, which sits at the top right-hand corner of the photo/video and can be shown from an account that you don’t necessarily follow. The user being advertised to can follow the brand’s account and can like and comment on the ad. Check out the video ad example below that popped up on my own Instagram account recently:

 

Instagram Ad Formats

Instagram Ad Formats come in three different styles – Images, Videos and Carousel Ads.

Source: Iconosquare

Image Ads – Image ads normally consist of one clear image with a call to action button at the bottom of the ad, such as “Install Now”, “Sign Up”, “Shop Now” or “Learn More”.

Video Ads – Video ads enable you to share videos up to 30 seconds long with the power of sight, sound and motion. Videos can be uploaded in portrait, as well as landscape format.

Carousel Ads – In March, Instagram announced the introduction of carousel ads, which is where the user can swipe the ad to see additional images. A call to action button can be installed, which takes the user to a landing page of your choosing.

How To Create Instagram Adverts

Below I will run through how to create your campaign and ads on Instagram via the Facebook Power Editor Tool.

1. Facebook Business Account

First of all, you need to create a Facebook Business Page in order to advertise with Instagram. If you have more than one Facebook Business Page, you can use the Facebook Business Manager Tool to manage multiple business accounts.

You can connect your Facebook Business Page to your Instagram account in the account settings; however, this isn’t required to set up the Instagram ads initially.

2. Create A Campaign In Facebook Power Editor

When you log in to the Facebook Power Editor Tool, select the account you want to use and then click “Download to Power Editor”.

From here you can create a new campaign. There are currently three options you can use with Instagram ads: “clicks to website”, “mobile app installs” and “video clicks”. Select the option most appropriate to your Facebook goals.

Make sure you select “Auction” under “Buying Type” in order to buy adverts based on your target audience and duration. Name your campaign, advert set and advert – then click “create”.

3. Choose Your Advert Settings

When choosing your campaign settings, make sure you are in the “Manage Adverts” section and have clicked on the “Advert Set” level by clicking on the middle box in the navigation bar on the left. Tick your campaign name, so in this instance “Instagram Campaign – Test” and press the edit button located on the right-hand side of the screen in order to access the settings.

Set your budget, advert schedule, optimisation and pricing, advanced delivery and then the fun part – audience! There are granular targeting options available in the audience section, so make sure you fill this in as much as you can.

When you reach the placement section, check the Instagram box – this option cannot be used alongside the other options in the list. You can also specify which mobile devices to target, such as Android or iOS only, or alternatively all devices.

4. Create Instagram Ad

The final step is to create your actual ad. Choose the “Adverts” level in the left-hand column, select the current ad and click “edit”.

When you reach this point, you need to ensure you have selected the correct Facebook page and connected your Instagram account to your page. With this option, you can even create a new Instagram account if you need to.

From here you need to enter the text for your ad (there is a 300 character limit) and input your destination URL (the page you want the user to land on). Choose your image and call to action.

Available call to actions are:

• Book Now
• Contact Us
• Download
• Learn More
• Shop Now
• Sign Up
• Watch More

If you want to try out using video ads in Instagram, you can see an example of the set up below. It provides you with the specifications of video that you would need to upload. Be sure to select “video views” in the campaign objective, which is located in the “campaigns” section, when using this ad format.

On the right-hand side, there will be a preview tool, so you can see what your ad will look like. Facebook has very strict rules on using high quality images. For example, I removed the image in the Creative section above and replaced it with the one below because Instagram does not allow text on Instagram Ads, so it is worth reading the Facebook Advertising Policies to find out what is permitted.

And that’s it! If you’re happy with your settings and how your ad looks, press “Upload Changes” at the top of the page. Your ad will be reviewed and this can take up to 24 hours. Bear in mind that it won’t appear on your feed but you can access it via a permalink in the Power Editor under Advert Links.

5. Conversion Tracking

Setting up your Conversion Tracking Pixel is essential to measuring your success. Whether it is to measure checkouts, registrations, leads, key page views, adds to basket or other website conversions, you need to make sure that you are tracking the most valuable conversion type from your post, so you can test which adverts work the best.

Conclusion

There we have it – a step-by-step guide to setting up your own Instagram ads. If you need any help setting up Instagram ads on your own website or you simply do not have enough time to do so, please don’t hesitate to contact Koozai today. If you have any comments or questions regarding this post then please leave them below.

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Should Your Business Invest In Bigger Pieces of Content?

In the past year there’s been a greater emphasis on more visual, interactive, scrollable and ultimately, larger pieces of content marketing. It’s a trend that more and more businesses are picking up on, and one that’s going to continue in the coming months. So if you’re using content to market your brand, should you invest in these bigger pieces, and how exactly will they benefit your campaigns? Let’s take a closer look.

Advanced Forms of Content Marketing

Content takes many forms, ranging from a 250 word blog post, to a HTML5 interactive or technical-based piece which actively encourages user engagement.

Higher and more advanced forms of content usually incorporate all, or a range, of the following:

• Moving visuals and graphics
• Imagery
• Text
• Animation
• Videos
• Scrolling or clickable sections
• Sound clips or music
• HTML5 coding

To put this into context, here’s a look at four examples that factor in a number of the above elements.

GJW Titmuss – Cats vs Dogs

GJW Titmuss: Cats Vs Dogs

Thomson – Man’s Fascination With Flight

Thomson: Man’s Fascination With Flight

St George International – Must See Sights In London

St George International: Must See Sights In London

Phillips – Designed to Play

Phillips: Designed to Play

Using the above examples, it’s easy to see the distinction between these pieces in comparison to other, more basic forms of content, such as blog posts or press releases.

It’s also likely that you’ve probably noticed similar examples of this form of content being used online before too.

So now you know what bigger pieces of content entail, what value do they hold for marketing your brand?

The Power and Influence of Bigger Content

If you work in a competitive industry, such as car insurance, there will already be a vast amount of content online, presented in a range of formats.

For your target audience, this means that there’s a huge quantity of information to digest, so how do they decide which pieces to consume and which pieces to ignore?

Creating interactive and bigger pieces of content is one way to stand out from the crowd and ensure that your brand’s messages are heard over the noise of everyone else’s. In order to do this however, you need to come up with a decent, justified and targeted idea to work with first.

Whether simple but effective or elaborate and creative, ideas presented in this way can make your campaigns more successful by:

• Encouraging greater social engagement
• Increasing brand awareness
• Driving more traffic to your site or blog
• Acquiring more links through content promotion PR and outreach
• Generating more leads for business
• Increasing revenue and sales

All of these benefits combined seem like a worthy reason to invest in this form of content – however there are some potential limitations and restrictions to be aware of beforehand.

Budget and Time

Like any campaign, you’ll want to see work being carried out, as well as results pushing your business and brand forward at the earliest stage possible.

If you don’t have budget available to create bigger content in one go, it can still be achieved, it just simply means that the work will be spread out over a longer period of time.

In this instance you still have the potential to achieve the above listed benefits, but due to this restraint, your results won’t be observed until much further down the line.

This isn’t a substantial reason to neglect bigger content, because the results you gain can be far greater than utilising smaller pieces of content on a more frequent basis.

As long as the content meets the goals of your business, you shouldn’t be afraid to wait a little longer for results.

Content Promotion

It’s also important to remember that because a bigger piece of content takes longer to create, you need to invest more time in promoting it. Why? Because great content won’t just promote itself.

In order to see results, you need to outreach to industry influencers, communities and journalists and use your social and branded profiles to get your content seen.

The amount of time you invest in promotion will ultimately depend on the resources you have available, as well as the content you’ve produced. If your content is evergreen (meaning it doesn’t have a timescale or deadline to it) then there’s no harm in continuing to promote the same piece on a regular basis.

Remember, it’s not just about investing in the creation of bigger content, you also need to spend time promoting it too. The more you put in, the more you’ll get back.

What if You Lack Resources?

If you don’t have the resources available in-house to focus on writing, producing and promoting larger content, then using designers or a digital marketing agency are your next best options.

This will free up time internally and allow you to either focus on creating other forms of content alongside bigger pieces, or letting a marketing team manage your whole campaign.

In both instances you’ll still be able to benefit from these advanced forms of content, regardless if they take longer to create or the cost is spread out across a wider timeframe.

Consider if your business would need to use external resources in order to really benefit from this type of content creation and promotion.

Final Thoughts

Every industry can benefit from creating bigger pieces of content marketing.

In instances where budget and time are limitations, results can still be achieved, but over a longer period of time.

Business shouldn’t let these potential restrictions act as a barrier for creating larger forms of content, because if it meets their goals, then it can ultimately pay off in the long run.

There are a number of benefits to producing content of this nature and as long as enough time is invested in promotion alongside creation, businesses can reap the rewards.

If your business is looking to invest in more advanced forms of content marketing, speak to Koozai today.

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