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You may have read our introduction to keywords and ad formats in September, but this is a topic that deserves to be revisited regularly. If choosing keywords for pay-per-click (PPC) ads was simply a matter of picking out some relevant phrases, PPC success would be easy. The truth is, a strong keyword strategy requires research and testing, and it’s one of the main things that separates a high-performing PPC campaign from a mediocre one.
Similarly, appropriate targeting is a prerequisite for an effective PPC campaign. Great ads are worthless if they are reaching the wrong people. Let’s take a closer look:
Keywords
First and foremost, you need to conduct robust keyword research, with a focus on long-tail keywords. In addition to identifying the phrases that align with your offerings, conduct live Google searches to assess the competitiveness of each keyword. Also look for what searches bring up your competitors’ ads. This may provide insight into where they are finding their customers.
A successful keyword strategy doesn’t end with tying your ads to specific searches. Because of how Google’s algorithm works, it’s critical to align keywords in your ads and on the landing pages those ads lead to. This isn’t just for Google: your audience is more likely to stay on your site if your ads lead them to the information they expect to find when they chose to click in the first place. Instead of just creating ads based on your landing pages, do your keyword research to determine what will attract your audience, and make adjustments to your landing pages as necessary.
How you group your ads is also important. As we’ll take a closer look at in our next post, using ad groups to organize keywords is one way to help align ads and landing pages as you work with your marketing team. Additionally, you must use keyword match types, which limit the specific searches that will trigger a display of your ad, making sure that it reaches the most relevant people at the times they are looking for it.
Targeting
Not everyone who searches for particular terms on Google is actually a member of your desired audience, and that’s where targeting comes into play. There are several types of targeting that can help make your PPC ads more effective. Geotargeting allows you to specify where your ads should be served, while interest-based targeting segments your audience by common behaviors and indicated preferences. You can even target by device type.
With each type of targeting, you can also use bid target modifiers when a click in one category is more valuable to you than a click in another category. For example, an international company could use bid target modifiers to allocate a greater portion of its PPC budget to ads in the country where it expects to see the greatest ROI.
A great PPC campaign deserves to be paired with stellar marketing campaigns of every type. Are you looking for more insights to jumpstart your marketing? Browse our white paper library.
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According to ICMI, one in five consumers is more likely to respond to a marketing text message than a phone call. While many think of texting campaigns as a B2C-focused method of offering quick product discounts or coupons, this method has many applicable uses across industries.
In today’s post, we’ll be taking a closer look at two of the distinct benefits of healthcare texting campaigns. Read on for some tips on how to execute a successful campaign.
Acquiring new patients
If you’re considering a healthcare texting strategy, one of your goals may be to grow your patient database. One of the best examples of this is New York City’s Community Health Net. In order to increase appointments, the organization turned to text message marketing and used their existing social media strategy to put it in place.
In order to generate awareness among potential patients, the organization used their social networks to invite followers to receive dieting tips right on their mobile devices. Along with these tips, the organization also promoted local screenings for diabetes and related health issues to their texting list.
Ask yourself: how could a similar approach benefit your own healthcare marketing? This campaign enticed people to sign up by offering real value in the form of health advice. Moreover, it fulfilled that promise through both the diet tips and the invitations to health screenings. Patients won’t opt-in or stick with your texting campaigns if they aren’t enjoyable or useful, so make sure any of the campaigns you craft offer benefits for your audience as well as your own lead generation.
Promoting long-term wellness and patient satisfaction
While it’s true the core of patient relationships are formed inside the doctor’s office or consult room, fostering that patient connection shouldn’t end the second they leave. According to a study by the Department of Health and Human Services, those who opted in to receive “text-messaging interventions” saw “significant improvements around smoking cessation, diabetes management, asthma and other chronic conditions.”
As with any form of marketing, a well-done texting campaign can help keep your organization top-of-mind and help make you into a trusted resource. It’s all about striking the right balance in terms of timing and content.
Texting campaigns provide support in between check-ups and work to retain patients and increase overall satisfaction. Text message marketing is also a great way to ensure a streamlined communication system. These texts can act as appointment reminders, give patients the option to cancel, and give you the opportunity to send them some tailored content.
Are you looking to improve upon your healthcare marketing? Contact us here.
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This past week was a big one for baseball, and for the city of Chicago, Movéo’s hometown. After the much-discussed 108-year drought, the Chicago Cubs finally did it: they won the World Series! And they won in what may be one of the most exciting baseball games ever played.
Their win, not to mention the stellar season that preceded it, is the product of a carefully crafted team of great talents. Each player brings a special set of skills and talents, and it was the optimal combination of these players that laid the groundwork for the Cubs’ success.
How did Theo Epstein, president of baseball operations for the Cubs, do it? The same way marketers build great campaigns: he took a hard look at the data. Epstein is known among baseball fans for his focus on analytics — he brought data-driven leadership to the Red Sox before leading them to a championship season, and now he’s done the same for the Cubs.
Analytics and data-driven marketing are our focus here at Movéo, but we bring them to bear for brands making everything from specialty chemicals to smart grid technologies, rather than sports teams. So while you’re celebrating the Cubs’ success, think about how you could improve data use at your own organization. Here are a few things to keep in mind.
Keep your data insights up-to-date
Evaluating data isn’t a one-time task, it’s an ongoing project. Epstein didn’t make one round of changes to the Cubs and then sit back and wait for success. As a marketer, you can’t either. Set regular intervals to evaluate your marketing’s performance and make appropriate adjustments.
Look for the most relevant data
In the era of big data, it’s easy to collect data of all sorts, but that doesn’t mean it’s all equally useful to your work. One of the most important lessons a marketer can learn is how to sift through the data noise and identify what’s truly relevant in order to optimize marketing campaigns. Data hygiene is also key, as “dirty data” can lead to erroneous conclusions and wasted resources.
Put data insights into action
Data can’t do anything for your organization if you don’t put it into action. The new marketing value chain relies on the application of data insights for marketing success. If your organization isn’t yet incorporating robust data into marketing decisions, it’s time to change the game. Today’s many resources and marketing touchpoints for collecting and processing data offer the chance to make marketing truly predictable, a longstanding goal. Talk to leadership at your organization about the resources you need to become more data-driven.
If you’re looking to build a championship-worthy brand in any industry, it’s time to take data seriously. For more on the role of data-driven insights, read our white paper, The new marketing value chain.
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If you’re new to the world of marketing texts, your first thoughts may be of the exciting possibilities of having an even more casual, personal way to communicate with your audience. And you’re right. But conducting a successful texting campaign is much more than just shrinking your marketing messages into bite-sized texts. Consider the following as you get ready to launch a new texting campaign.
How will you drive engagement?
Texting is its own marketing medium, but a successful texting campaign has to be strategically integrated throughout your marketing plans. For example, your audience needs to specifically opt-in to your texts, and that means you have to entice them to sign up. One best practice for attracting audience members to your new texting campaign is to incorporate the texting CTA on all of your other marketing collateral, from digital ads to fliers. Create an eye-catching image and pair it with an expression of the value your texts will offer, and you’ll see members of your audience respond.
Does your texting campaign align with the rest of your marketing?
Think of your texting campaign as an extension of your existing marketing. It should have a similar brand voice and style, even though your messages will be shorter and may be less formal than in other mediums.
Consider carefully how often and when you use text messaging to reach your audience. Exactly how many texts you can send per month and how many keyword responses you can automate will depend on the program and plan you use to create your texting campaign. All the same, how these messages and responses are used should be grounded in strategy. With our clients, we always commit to a few of the same best practices. These including never texting the same person two days in a row, generally sending texts around lunchtime when readers are more likely to engage and encouraging responses that are specifically tied to our clients’ strategic goals.
Do you know your limits?
All marketing texts are subject to certain regulations, and healthcare marketers need to be extra careful to comply with the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) as well. Marketers who do not comply with opt-in and opt-out regulations may be subject to hefty fines, and HIPAA violations can result in even greater penalties. To ensure that your texting campaign respects all regulations, you may want to work with an experienced marketing agency with a history of texting campaigns.
Want to know more about what texting campaigns and other marketing tactics can do for your organization? Don’t hesitate to contact us.
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As a marketer, you are likely aware of the importance of having a SEO strategy to ensure that your brand rises to the top. However, if your landing pages aren’t optimized to ensure that incoming visitors travel further through the marketing funnel, you may very well lose out on the qualified traffic you worked so hard to get.
In today’s post, we’ll discuss best practices for optimizing your landing pages for lead conversions.
A/B Testing
Only about 22% of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates, and in the end marketing success is all about strong conversion numbers. One of the most critical ways to improve your landing pages is to run rigorous A/B tests. These tests give you a clearer view of the details that impact a site visitor’s decision to leave your page without taking action — or to offer you their contact information in exchange for your content.
A/B testing allows you to run two versions of your landing page to different audience segments and compare their performance against each other based on a specific metric. This offers insights into the impact of slight variations in a given element on the page, whether that be a headline or button. Are users more likely to click on a call-to-action button that says “download our white paper” or “learn more now”? A/B testing can tell you.
By monitoring how your users interact with your site in this way, you can best adapt your landing pages to align with the behaviors that drive your most qualified leads. You may want to work with a marketing partner to ensure that your tests incorporate appropriate sample sizes and your decisions are based on statistically significant results.
Maximizing page relevance
Aside from A/B tests, maximizing the user experience through relevant content and imagery will also help you avoid high bounce rates and help keep qualified traffic on your site.
One way to do this is through customized landing pages, which show users certain landing page content based on the path an individual user took to your site. For example, if a user clicked on an ad for a specific segment of your business, that landing page would contain information on that topic only. In fact, one company that tested generic and specific versions of the same landing page saw its ad-specific landing page increase form submission on the page by 115%.
When your landing pages are optimized to meet your users’ needs and expectations, qualified users are much more likely to convert to leads. For more information on converting leads, don’t hesitate to contact us.
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Do you remember a time before the ubiquity of mobile devices? For better or worse, the days that all emails were read on a desktop or laptop computer are well behind us.
That means if you’re not optimizing your content for mobile, you could be missing your best chance to impact a large segment of your audience. In fact, 69 percent of mobile users delete emails that aren’t optimized for mobile. If you’ve invested in developing a robust content marketing strategy, the last thing you want is for such a sizeable number of your prospects to toss it without a second glance.
Today, we’re taking a closer look at how you can optimize the design and content of your emails to reach your audience on any of their devices.
Understanding responsive design
Given the prevalence of mobile, responsive design is the gold standard for both websites and emails. A responsive design will automatically adapt to differences in screen size, allowing you to present consistently impactful marketing across every medium.
Responsive design is especially crucial if you regularly use images, columns and templates in your emails. Unlike plain text, which people can more easily resize or scroll on a small screen, images and formatted templates are not easy for a user to control. When these elements of your marketing do not respond to your audience’s mobile devices, they look unprofessional and unappealing.
The good news is that web designers can easily implement responsive design with media queries. In some cases, your email platform will even do this for you, so it’s an important element to consider when choosing an email marketing solution.
Calls to action
Well-designed and well-placed calls to action (CTAs) are also key in optimizing your emails for mobile devices. While you can lose leads at any stage of the buying cycle, it doesn’t make sense to throw away potential users who are already engaging with your content.
To engage mobile users, you need to design your CTAs with touchscreens in mind. Buttons should be large, clearly identified and well spaced out from other email elements. This way, when a user presses the button, they will be taken to the link they want to visit, rather than accidentally pressing another element or needing multiple tries to engage the link.
We also recommend sticking to one prominent CTA per email to make it clear what action you would like your recipient to take. If you’re still not noticing the engagement you want in your emails, you can also optimize the effectiveness of your emails through A/B tests to decide what design elements and subject lines are most resonant with your audience.
For more tips on optimizing your emails for mobile, contact us today.
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With programmatic media buying growing into a larger force in the advertising and marketing space, it’s time for every marketer to make sure they’re up to speed on this topical trend. Are you?
Today, we’re taking a look at two of programmatic buying’s biggest trends. If you’re not familiar with the basics, read our blog post on programmatic media buying 101 before you dig into these other resources.
Programmatic direct comes to TV
As reported by Digiday, TV is turning to programmatic for advertising more than ever before. While Hulu first opened its doors to programmatic direct (also know as “automated guaranteed”) last year, a larger shift in the TV media buying landscape seems to be underway.
With programmatic buying, TV advertisers move away from the traditional model of choosing television shows and channels to work with based on ratings. Instead, audience data becomes the central factor in purchasing decisions. Of course, audience demographics were always part of TV advertising, but programmatic lets marketers reach more targeted audiences.
If you work with television ads and you held out on learning about the programmatic landscape, now is the time. Keep an eye out for additional changes in this fast-moving field, such as the ability to purchase specific ad slots programmatically, and systems that move programmatic direct closer and closer to real-time buying.
Header bidding changes the game in programmatic RTB
Header bidding opens up ad auctions to more equitably allow publishers to compete for ad spots, rather than offering spots first to the providers that have historically had a larger ad spend. As explained in Ad Age’s recent guide to the technique, “with header bidding, everyone bids at once, which often drives up the price and in turn gives publishers more money. At the same time, it gives advertisers a more even shot at the inventory they most want.”
While header bidding promises to give advertisers more buying control, it’s also likely that the details of these auctions will continue to change. Marketers need to stay on top of the changes and associated best practices. For a more in-depth look at header bidding, read these explainers from AdExchanger’s and MarTech Today.
Do you have questions about the nuances of programmatic? We can help. Call Movéo today.
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If you’re in charge of marketing or advertising for your organization, you’ve probably heard the term “programmatic media buying” — but are you confident you could describe it, much less perform it?
While programmatic buying has soared in popularity, Forrester reports that only a quarter of marketers understood and have conducted programmatic buying — and a striking 41 percent say they don’t know or don’t understand it.
If you count yourself among that 41 percent, fear not. We have an introduction for you.
What is programmatic media buying?
Programmatic sounds like a complex concept, and while executing a strong programmatic strategy is complex, at its core this type of advertising is simple: it’s just automated ad buying.
While programmatic in fact makes marketing simpler, the concept can also be confusing because it describes an ecosystem of advertising rather than a single type of media buying. This ecosystem includes both programmatic RTB (real-time bidding), a form of auction-based ad buying, and programmatic direct, in which ad purchases are automated but guaranteed. (Note that programmatic direct is known by many names, including “programmatic guaranteed,” “programmatic premium,” “premium direct” and “automated guaranteed.”)
Marketers conduct programmatic RTB through demand side providers (DSPs), which are centralized media buying platforms. Using DSPs, marketers can buy ad impressions across a variety of sites, while targeting specific types of users. The actual purchasing is done through automated real-time auctions. In programmatic direct purchasing, marketers work with specific publishers to buy ad space. Though this is more like traditional media buying in some ways, it is still a simplified process with more automation and targeting than the older form of ad purchasing.
Why use programmatic?
The goal of programmatic is to optimize ad buying by streamlining the process. Programmatic RTB does this by replacing the old system of digital ad buying, in which marketers had to manually purchase individual ads from individual sites, with a new system in which buying is centralized and ad orders can be executed automatically in real time.
In programmatic RTB, this centralized ad buying platform streamlines data collection and reporting in addition to the actual act of ad purchasing. By consolidating this customer behavioral data in one place, it makes analyzing it and using it to shape marketing strategy that much easier and more reliable.
Programmatic direct streamlines media purchasing in its own way. While buyers must still deal directly with publishers in this system, the long and complex process of the past has been substantially reduced. This new process helps both publishers’ sales teams and the marketers working to secure space in their publications.
While programmatic is known mainly as a tool for display advertising, its role in the entire digital ad landscape continues to grow, including for video advertising. Get to know programmatic now — its influence on media buying is here to stay.
Finding a partner for your programmatic buying
While some organizations handle programmatic media buying in-house, there are many benefits to partnering with an experienced agency. All media buying, including programmatic, is most effective as one part of a robust marketing and media buying strategy. A partner agency will work with you to assess your organization’s target market and messaging, and craft a strategic plan that incorporates all of your marketing efforts before launching a programmatic campaign.
A partner agency can also offer expertise in the confusing world of programmatic buying. Your partner can draw on experience with a wide variety of clients to determine the optimal share of your media buying to put towards RTB versus direct methods. Similarly, your partner agency will know the ins and outs of the various demand side platforms (DSPs), which are the programs through which programmatic media buying is actually conducted.
And finally, a partner agency can put your programmatic strategy into practice, meaning you can stop worrying about the nuances of this method as it continues to grow and change. Instead, you can work with an expert to craft and execute a results-oriented strategy, and look forward to having centralized, streamlined results and customer data to share with your sales team.
Do you want to know more about what Movéo can do for you? Get in touch today.
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If you were to ask us what the most effective media buying tactics are, you might be surprised that we wouldn’t answer with specific tactics at all. No, we’d say that the most effective tactics are those guided by a strategic media buying plan.
A plan organizes your objectives and how you will achieve them given a certain timeline and set of resources. Having that structure in place means every action you take clearly works toward your overarching goal, rather than taking a scattershot approach in which each decision may or may not align with a core strategy. Let’s take a closer look.
What guides a media plan?
When developing your media plan to guide your advertising decisions, you need to answer the following questions:
- Which channels will most effectively reach your target audience?
- At what times of day will your audience be most receptive to your marketing messages?
- What’s your budget? How can you use it to impact the most people in your target market?
- What is the optimum frequency with which you’d like members of your audience to see your marketing messages?
A robust media plan gathers the answers to all of these questions strategically and in one place. It defines your target audience and where they can be found, and then lays out a plan to influence them.
Depending on your brand, media objectives and budget, certain media platforms will be better fits for you than others. Your media plan should set the mix of platforms you will use and types of ads you will run. For example, your strategy may include a mix of sponsored content in online and print publications, digital ads on news sites and social platforms, radio and TV spots, billboards and more. Which of these channels you rely on will depend on your budget, target market and marketing goals.
Your media plan will fit each of these tactics into a timeline based on when they will be most effective and how they will work together for maximum effect.
Why work with a media planning partner?
Although media planning is sometimes managed in-house, organizations often hire outside media partners because of their experience and existing media relationships. If you work with a partner agency, they will likely begin the media planning process by working with you to analyze existing brand strengths and recognition. They will listen to your goals for the media process, and create a plan that will help you build toward and achieve these goals over time.
Even if you intend to execute on a media plan in-house, working with an outside partner adds value. A partner agency can share perspective on the likely ROI for various combinations of tactics for an organization similar to yours. An agency will also know the ins and outs of media buying tools and options, both long-standing and brand new, and can present options you may not even be aware of.
For more advice on creating a strong media plan, contact us today.
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From thought leadership to social engagement, brand messaging should drive your every decision. Messaging must align with your overall brand strategy in order to create a unified sense of your brand for your audience. Moving from a rough sense of the ideas you want to convey to robust messaging for use throughout your marketing is a sensitive process. Here’s what we recommend:
Research comes first
Before putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) to craft that perfect tagline, you need to conduct robust market research. Use quantitative and qualitative methods to understand the existing perception of your brand, as well as where it may have room to grow or better influence its target market.
This research needs to be thorough enough to inform how you will segment your audience, and the sorts of messaging that will work well for each segment. Include a large sample size and work with a data scientist to collect and analyze valuable findings.
Remember, when crafting your message it’s key to think about what your audience wants to learn, not simply what you want to tell them. The research phase provides insight into what your audience is looking for, which will inform your educational content marketing especially.
Crafting strong messaging
That research should provide you with a framework on which to build your marketing. The best messaging begins simply, with a central statement that sums up how you intend to position the brand. This should be based on your evaluation of brand strengths as well as the impact you want to make on your audience.
From there, you should expand this statement into key messages for each segment of your audience. Ultimately, you need to be able to say a lot more than a sentence or two about your brand — just think how much you need to write support a strong content plan!
How brand architecture and messaging relate
Earlier this week, we took a deep dive into brand architecture, which is all about how multiple products or services align under one or more brands. Brand architecture can have major implications for your messaging decisions, and the impact of that messaging.
For example, Movéo worked with one client that made high-end surgical gloves. Initially, the company offered surgical gloves under a number of different names in order to promote them for use with different specialties. We worked with them to replace the range of product names with one family of gloves.
What did that mean for messaging? Marketing materials no longer had to work overtime to reeducation audience members about the gloves for each separate application. Instead, marketing could build a strong brand once and have it benefit each specific glove model. The team could market one line of surgical gloves, and then introduce the gloves in the family as specialized for orthopedics, cosmetic surgery and so forth.
Do you have a collection of products that could benefit from a similar messaging overhaul? We can help. Contact us today.
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