Three Ways Services Firms and Marketing Agencies Can Counteract Revenue Loss

Lost revenue among professional services firms (including marketing agencies) averages 5%. Most factors contributing to it are often preventable. Here's a look at three ways to prevent revenue loss. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Source MarketingProfs: Marketing Opinions http://ift.tt/1UGRJ2C

April Fools’ Day 2016: Google gets the ball rolling with Flick keyboard, Gmail mic drop & more

Google wasted no time getting into the April Fools' Day spirit, making a number of fake announcements before the day even started.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Source Marketing Land - Internet Marketing News, Strategies & Tips http://ift.tt/22TMBfP

Marketing Day: More Amazon Dash buttons, Interview with Salesforce VP & DocuSign’s CMO

Here's our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Source Marketing Land - Internet Marketing News, Strategies & Tips http://ift.tt/1RNY8So

Amazon adds 100 new Dash buttons & triples the number of available brands

The e-commerce giant says Dash button orders have jumped 75 percent over the last three months.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Source Marketing Land - Internet Marketing News, Strategies & Tips http://ift.tt/235wYyq

Salesforce VP: In the age of predictive and self-learning tech, marketing is turning into goal-setting

Marketers, Leslie Fine said, will increasingly focus more on their destinations and less on the step-by-step turns to get there.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Source Marketing Land - Internet Marketing News, Strategies & Tips http://ift.tt/1RNMfMd

Video ads are coming to Facebook Instant Articles

Facebook Instant Articles open to all publishers on April 12, and publishers will be encouraged to take part and make money on advertising with video ads.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Source Marketing Land - Internet Marketing News, Strategies & Tips http://ift.tt/1MWuucy

14 stop-motion animations that celebrate kick-ass women

In the beginning of March, we asked our Vine community to join us in a month-long celebration of Women's History Month using #WCWProj2016. To kick things off, we chose to honor Sally Ride, first American woman in space, in our call-to-action Vine.

Sally Ride, first American woman in space

We also posted two Vines created by some of our favorite female stop motion animators. The first one came from Mighty Oak, an all-female studio based in Brooklyn. The second one came from Meagan Cignoli, the founder of a female-led studio called Visual Country in lower Manhattan. Read more...

Lotte reiniger, silhouette animation pioneer

More about Women S History Month, Wcw, Community Challenge, Art, and Animation

Source Social Media http://ift.tt/1MEt4bF

DocuSign CMO aims to bring his brand to life by giving it more of an emotional POW!

Get to Know: DocuSign CMO Brad Brooks

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Source Marketing Land - Internet Marketing News, Strategies & Tips http://ift.tt/1PHRPi0

A century of celebrating Mom: smart ad strategies for the mother of all holidays

Want to make the most of your paid search campaigns this Mother's Day? Columnist John Cosley of Bing Ads shares Mother's Day insights for digital marketers.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Source Marketing Land - Internet Marketing News, Strategies & Tips http://ift.tt/1UWGYsf

Passenger on hijacked EgyptAir plane makes excellent case for keeping his contraband chicken

This week's hijacking of an EgyptAir flight by a man wearing a fake belt of explosives could have been a tragedy, but the worst, thankfully, was averted. 

That means, especially in Egypt, it's time to joke about it. The Egyptian tradition of "nokat," or jokes, in the face of "mossiba," or catastrophe, is a treasured part of the national character. 

That's why Egyptians — and many others — have been sharing a darkly hilarious post from one of the passengers on the EgyptAir flight recounting the reactions of his fellow passengers when they thought the worst was coming. 

The 'farkha baladi'

The best story, if we could choose, is the one the man who valiantly defended the frozen Egyptian chicken he had smuggled onboard.  Read more...

More about Egypt Air, Social Media, Media, and Business

Source Social Media http://ift.tt/1RNtcBJ

How to Make Your Mobile App Stand Out in the Crowded App Store

Making your app stand out in today's hypercompetitive app market is tough. But don't lose hope. It doesn't have to be as hard as you may think it is. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Source MarketingProfs Daily: Marketing Strategy http://ift.tt/1ME8xnJ

Let Demographics Help Guide Your Marketing Strategy

To engineer the perfect marketing strategy, you first must understand your customer base. Demographic data helps you identify your typical customer and use that data to focus your efforts. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Source MarketingProfs Daily: Marketing Strategy http://ift.tt/1UF7Q0o

Is your marketing organization struggling with the pace of digital? “Hacking Marketing” is the answer [Review]

Scott Brinker’s book explains how modern marketers should adopt software development practices. Columnist and Third Door Media CEO Chris Elwell reviews the new release.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Source Marketing Land - Internet Marketing News, Strategies & Tips http://ift.tt/1VazzEL

Are our leading brands also optimization leaders?

Are well-known brand name e-tailers taking advantage of the tools available for optimization? Columnist Brian Massey shares his analysis of 7 top sites.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Source Marketing Land - Internet Marketing News, Strategies & Tips http://ift.tt/1UWzNAj

Want real results from social? Start paying.

If you think your organic social media posts are delivering diminishing returns, you're not wrong. Columnist Blaise Lucey explains why pay-to-play is becoming the new norm for all social marketing.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Source Marketing Land - Internet Marketing News, Strategies & Tips http://ift.tt/1pNxNNW

How SMBs Are Using Social Media

More than two-thirds (67%) of small and midsize businesses are are already using social media as part of their marketing efforts or plan to start doing so sometime this year, according to a recent report from Clutch. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Source MarketingProfs Daily: Social Media http://ift.tt/1RNiZoS

How SMBs Are Using Social Media

More than two-thirds (67%) of small and midsize businesses are are already using social media as part of their marketing efforts or plan to start doing so sometime this year, according to a recent report from Clutch. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Source MarketingProfs Daily: Social Media http://ift.tt/1RNiZoS

Three Steps to Maximizing ROI in a New Era of Content

Most CMOs view content as the future of marketing. But the job doesn't end with simply producing content... Making sure it performs is critical to driving engagement and reaching target audiences. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Source MarketingProfs Daily: Metrics & ROI http://ift.tt/1WZZGND

Dictionary of ad buying: key terms and acronyms

For beginners, buying ads can be a confusing labyrinth of jargon and acronyms. To help you make sense of them, we’ve compiled this helpful glossary.

If you’re new to buying ads, you may not know where to begin. There are a lot of terms; some, like targeting, are fairly obvious, while others just seem like an alphabet soup of acronyms. If you’re like, “AMP, CPC, DSP, what?” fear not. We’re here to help.

We’ve separated this glossary into three categories:

• Before – where we define the different kinds of ads.
• During – is about the terms you’ll come across while in the purchasing stage, such as “ad exchange,” which is very different from an “ad network.” 
• After – breaks down some of the things that happen once your ad has made its way to the Internet.

First, let’s go back to the beginning.

Before

The first thing you should know is the difference between the various kinds of ads you may be buying. In case you missed our beginner’s guide to display advertising, here’s a brief refresher.

Display ad: ads on webpages that are obviously advertising. Display ads are measured in pixels – picture elements, or the dots that make up pictures – and come in several forms. There are the rectangles and squares we’re not going to bother defining because we’re confident you’ve been to first grade, as well as a few others whose names aren’t so self-explanatory.

• Banner ad: The horizontally long, vertically short ads most commonly placed at the top (leaderboards) or bottom of the page. According to Google, the ones that perform best are 728×90 and 320×110. Banners can also take a more tall, narrow form in skyscraper ads, which run alongside the page.
• Billboard: similar to banner ads, but a bit taller. With that extra height, billboards better lend themselves to text.
• Button: a small display ad. Common sizes are 120×90 or 125×125.

Native ads: native ads are designed to blend in with their surroundings, as commonly seen on Yahoo’s digital magazines.

Pop-ups: ads that pop up in a new window. They can also appear underneath your window, so as not to be disruptive (pop-unders) or in between activities (interstitial). Another form of pop-ups ads are the overlays, which close on their own after 15 to 30 seconds.

Responsive ads: ads designed to adapt to different devices and screen sizes.

Rich media: ads with audio, video, or some other interactive element.

During

Now you know the kind of ads you can buy. Here are some terms from the next stage: actually buying them.

Ad exchange: a technology platform that enables advertisers and publishers to buy and sell advertising space. AOL’s Marketplace, Google’s DoubleClick and Microsoft are a few of the big ones.

Ad network: companies that connect advertisers with the websites that want to host their ads. Networks vary based on transparency regarding where the ads will run (vertical networks are transparent, while blind networks are not), whether the advertiser is looking to reach a specific demographic, and formats, such as mobile and video.

Ad serving: the technology and services that place ads on webpages:  providing the software, counting them, deciding which ads will be the most profitable, and ultimately tracking the ads’ performance.

Ad verification: a system ensuring that an ad is a good one, from a quality standpoint.

Auction: the process that determines who sees ads, and when and where they see them on a page. In Google’s AdSense auction, for example, advertisers determine the maximum amount they’re willing to pay for an impression, and the winner is chosen based on a combination of targeting, format, and Quality Score. That determines how useful someone is likely to find an ad, taking into consideration its relevance, keywords and predicted click-through rate (CTR). This can be done instantly, on a per-impression basis, known as real-time bidding (RTB).

Audience buying: Using data to target specific groups of consumers.

Cost per click (CPC): how much an advertiser earns each time someone clicks on one of their ads.

Cost per mille (CPM): a unit of measurement that refers to the price of advertising. The name can be confusing; “mille” is the Latin word for 1,000, and doesn’t mean 1 million.

Data aggregation: the practice of pulling together different kinds of data – ad-serving, conversion, third-party – without attaching anyone’s personal information.

Demand-side platform (DSP): the technology that allows advertisers to purchase ads automatically via real-time bidding exchanges. The publisher version of this is known as a supply-side platform (SSP).

Dynamic creative: segment-based advertising that changes automatically, depending on who’s seeing it.

Inventory: the number of ads or the amount of space a publisher has available to sell.

Management platform: audience management platforms (AMP) automate the process of segmentation, while a data management platform (DMP) serves as a one-stop shop for all of an advertiser’s data.

Programmatic buying: an automated way to purchase ad inventory. This is a particularly hot topic now, as agencies beef up their programmatic capabilities.

After

You’ve purchased your ads. Here are some helpful terms for what comes next.

Ad blockers: browser-enabled software users use in order to avoid seeing ads.

Ad fraud: the practice of serving ads that will never be seen by human eyes, in order to illegally profit off the clicks.

Banner blindness: the idea that there users see so many banner ads that they don’t even notice them.

Conversion: when a clicks leads to something valuable for the advertiser, such as a purchase, sign-up or pageview.

Cookie: small files passed from a web server to a browser, allowing advertisers to track people throughout the internet.

Frequency capping: a restriction limiting the number of times someone will see the same ad.

Impression: the measure of ad views.

Viewability: a metric regarding ads actually being seen by people. The current rate is inadequate, according to senior leadership from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Media Ratings Council (MRC).

This article was originally published on our sister site ClickZ.

Source Search Engine Watch http://ift.tt/1M3fFdi

How B2B brands perform on social (spoiler: better than you think)

In B2B social media there are a few accepted ‘truths’. B2B can’t work on Facebook or Pinterest. Instagram is a waste of time. LinkedIn is the only place for us (and we should set up a group, not a page).

All of these are total claptrap of course. B2B works just as well (or better than) B2C, because the content and information they have to share is incredibly deep and engaging.

Things have changed a bit recently of course. One only has to look at giants like GE or Maersk to see incredible work, but just in case, how about a few stats to clear things up once and for all?

TrackMaven has compiled an overview of content from 300+ B2B brands across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest to see which verticals were performing well. 508,060 social media posts and more than 100 million interactions make for some fascinating insights…

Firstly, the old adage about B2B needing to stick to LinkedIn can be put to bed. B2B brands on Instagram saw engagement levels more than 20 times higher than on LinkedIn, with median engagement rates (defined as “Interactions per post, per 1,000 followers) at 22.53 on Instagram, compared to just 1.09 on LinkedIn (Twitter bought up the rear, with an engagement rate of just 0.86).

With that said, the hierarchy of familiarity clearly plays a part here, as B2B brands had an average of 109,000 followers on LinkedIn, almost 36 times more than Instagram, with just 3,000.

Engagement rates vary wildly by sector and platform:

Of course, these topline figures don’t take into account the type of content being shared by different sectors. the aerospace and defense industry performs incredibly well on Instagram, with an average engagement rate of 29.10.

Because, well, this looks amazing:

Over on Twitter, it’s an entirely different story. Engagement rates for the same industry are just 0.54. There are two obvious reasons for this: Firstly, Aerospace news tends to surface on Twitter, so rather than images of jets launching missiles, you get press releases informing you of… less interesting developments.

The other reason may be the nature of the platforms themselves. Twitter’s most engaged users are usually part of small niche communities, whereas it’s larger user groups are less engaged with brand updates. A digression, but an important one.

While overall follower numbers don’t tell us a huge amount, the rate of growth from different industries is more illuminating:

Comparatively ‘new’ industries like Biotech are flying ahead, with small but very engaged followers. Similarly there’s an interesting split between ‘Professional Services’ and ‘Financial Services’. The former has a huge audience but they are less likely to engage.

In the past I’ve experienced engagement as sluggish in this sector partly due to a glut of lightweight content that is often hidden behind registration walls, but also because regulation has discouraged individuals from sharing information without consent.

This should of course, also be true of finance, but it’s inherent newsworthiness, combined with a love of data viz and stats (not to mention the rise of the Fintech sector) seems to have overridden this, driving average annual growth of 81.77%.

Overall, finance, biotech and engineering saw the best performance, with consistently high engagement across channels. This is of interest as it indicates a dedication to content marketing and (hopefully) some awareness of extended attribution models – it is after all, rather difficult to sell complex financial products in 140 characters.

The results also show the importance of relevance by channel. Software brands have seen phenomenal growth (an 82% average increase) but very low engagement, possibly indicating an over-reliance on glossy product photography and traditional PR techniques that don’t engage users.

Overall these figures show that there is a place for B2B on newer, more visual channels and it’s a mistake to assume that you are dealing in ‘boring’ content that won’t appeal to users on those channels.

Source Search Engine Watch http://ift.tt/1Vao14q

Let Demographics Help Guide Your Marketing Strategy

To engineer the perfect marketing strategy, you first must understand your customer base. Demographic data helps you identify your typical customer and use that data to focus your efforts. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Source MarketingProfs: Marketing Opinions http://ift.tt/1UF7Q0o

5 engaging visual content formats that aren’t infographics

Are you producing infographics on autopilot? Columnist Kerry Jones shares innovative content formats which may communicate your message more effectively.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Source Marketing Land - Internet Marketing News, Strategies & Tips http://ift.tt/1WZPbdh

Ad network AdTheorent can now forecast if you’re likely to visit a physical store after seeing an ad

Partnership with location analytics provider Placed tracks which ad-targeted users actually visit, so its machine learning-created model can predict others.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Source Marketing Land - Internet Marketing News, Strategies & Tips http://ift.tt/21UzV2q