I still agree with most of what I wrote back in 2017. However, no matter if you’re just starting out with Facebook ads or rely on what you learned a couple years ago, revising the latest best practices will help to get up to speed with high-ROI testing.

And if you’re not yet running split tests on your online ad campaigns…

Well… Consider improving your cost-per-result 5% with each of 10 consecutive tests. If your CPA is around 5€, it would drop to 3€ after 10 x 5% improvements. That is close to half of the initial CPA!

Here’s a quick overview of best practices that will help you get high ROI out of your Facebook A/B tests. You’ll find a detailed explanation on each point below.

1. Test high-impact ad campaign elements
2. Test one campaign element at a time
3. Prioritise your A/B test ideas
4. Test a reasonable number of variables
5. Make sure your split tests are statistically valid
6. Calculate the right budget for each A/B test
7. Focus on the right metrics & conversion events
8. Run as many (good) split tests as you can

But before we jump to all the best practices, here’s what is wrong with many of the “We did an A/B test that improved our results by 1000%” clickbait articles in many (sadly, including the top) marketing blogs.

Key mistakes in Facebook ad A/B testing

Back in 2017, I read an article about a Facebook ad A/B test of 26 design variations.

The article drew several conclusions, showing which ads outperformed others. However, there was no word about the experiment’s setup and budget.

Which left me wondering… Were the test results even statistically valid?

Most likely, they weren’t.

However, this wasn’t just one bad example. Many marketers make the same mistake of running Facebook A/B tests without realizing their results are skewed or statistically insignificant.

Here are some of the key reasons Facebook split tests fail to bring meaningful results:

• Trying to test everything at once – it will be impossible to later tell what tested element resulted in success/failure
• Concluding tests too fast + using too low test budgets – you need a proper amount of conversions to conclude that one variation outperforms the other
• Wrong test setup – you need to give each variation equal opportunity to deliver results
• Testing low-variance elements – changing one line or word in your ad creative will not result in meaningful split test results

Ok, so how to run Facebook ad A/B tests that actually help to improve your CPAs and reduce cost?

⬇⬇⬇

Rule #1: Test high-impact ad campaign elements

Not all your split testing ideas are gold. 💡💡💡≠💰

And with limited marketing budgets, you’ll need to find the test elements that have the highest ROI.

When searching for Facebook ad A/B testing ideas, think which ad element could have the highest effect on your click-through and conversion rates.

AdEspresso studied data from over $3 millions worth of Facebook Ads experiments and listed the campaign elements with highest split testing ROI:

1. Countries
2. Precise interests
3. Mobile OS
4. Age ranges
5. Genders
6. Ad images
7. Titles
8. Relationship status
9. Landing page
10. Interested in

However, take this list with a huge grain of salt. As you already know your target audience’s locations and demographics, this list becomes irrelevant to your A/B testing strategy.

Instead, you might want to split test the following Facebook campaign elements:

• Ad visual
• Ad copy, especially the headline
• Ad delivery objectives

Consumer Acquisition found that images are arguably the most important part of your ads — they’re responsible for 75%-90% of ad performance.

Not surprising, considering that most of an ad placement on Instagram or Facebook mobile newsfeed is filled with…🥁🥁🥁… The image.

So improving your ad visuals is a good place to start from. Here are 25 hacks for improving your Facebook ads’ design.

Here are some more things to test after you run out testing ideas for image, copy, and ad delivery objective:

• Ad placements
• Call-to-action buttons
• Campaign type

Rule #2: Prioritise your A/B test ideas

A/B testing Facebook ads doesn’t only require money, it also requires time.

Even if you’re lucky enough to not be constrained by budget, consider how much time and effort your design/copywriting/PPC team will put into preparing a split test.

You need to carefully consider which split tests to work on first.

The best way to do it is on a prioritisation spreadsheet.

Create a prioritisation table for weighing all your A/B testing ideas. You can assign up to 10 factors with different weight to validate the ideas with highest potential.

If you haven’t created a prioritization framework before, check out the ones by Optimizely and ConversionXL.

Start by A/B testing the most promising ad elements – image source

Rule #3: Test one element at a time

As you get started with Facebook advertising, you’ll realize that there are soooo many things to test: ad image, ad copy,  Facebook ad targeting, bidding methods, campaign objective, another ad image, another ad copy, another… You get the point.

The rookie mistake you’re likely to make at this point is to create an A/B test with more than one variable category.

Let’s say you want to test 3 ad images, 3 headlines, and 3 main copies. This makes 3x3x3 = 27 different Facebook ads. It would make much more sense to test one of these ad elements at once, e.g. three different images.

📍 The fewer ad variables you have, the quicker you’ll get relevant test results.

Here’s a great illustration by ConversionXL, showing what will happen if you try to test too much stuff at once.

It gets super messy – Image source

Test one element per split test, and use your prioritisation table to define which one to examine first.

P.S. this doesn’t mean that you should only run 1 experiment at a time. You can have five A/B tests running if you have enough audiences and marketing budget to play around with.

Rule #4: Test a reasonable number of variables

Even when testing a single ad element, you may be tempted to create tens on variations with small alterations.

Here’s an example of an A/B test that overdid the number of tested ad design variables.

It will cost them $1k+ to get valid results – Image source

It doesn’t make sense to test that many ad variations at once as Facebook will either start to auto-optimize the ad delivery too soon or your target audience will see 20+ different ads by you.

That’s going to be one expensive (and most likely, annoying) experiment.

What is a good number of variables per campaign? Ideally, it’s 2 (old vs new version). But you can include up to 10 variables in your test IF you have budget for each test cell to collect minimum of 50 conversions.

In most cases, there is no need for more than 5 ad variables. If you test too similar variations, the test won’t bring meaningful difference between results.

Rule #5: Test 3-5 highly differentiated variations

If you haven’t yet found your perfect ad copy or ad design, you should aim to experiment with highly different ad variations.

It won’t make much difference to your target audience if you change a few words or move your product around in the image a bit.

However, as you test highly differentiated variations, you can get insight about the type of ad design or ad copy people prefer and expand on it later.

For example, at Scoro, we’ve tested many various ad designs to find the one that works best.

First, we A/B tested 3 highly different ad designs

Each of these ad designs has a completely different design angle.

Later, we could use the winning ad variation to develop similar designs for further testing.

Later, we split tested the winning design’s alterations

Here’s the formula:

A/B test 3-5 variables ➡ Find a winning variation ➡ A/B test winner’s alterations

Rule #6: Use the right Facebook campaign structure

Update: We have published a dedicated article on Facebook ad campaign structure. Check it out for improved results. 😉

When testing multiple Facebook ad designs or other in-ad elements, you’ve got two options for structuring your A/B testing campaigns:

1. A single ad set
2. Multiple single-variation ad sets

Soon after I published this article in 2017, Facebook released the Split Test feature in Ads Manager that helps you to quickly set up a multi-cell split test (option 2).

However, you can still set up A/B tests manually in Ads Manager if that’s what you’re more comfortable with.

Let’s check out both options.

1. A single ad set – all your ad variations are within a single ad set.

A/B test campaign structure 1

The good side of this option is that your target audience won’t see all your ad variations multiple times as with multiple ad sets targeting the same audience.

However, this A/B testing campaign structure has a huge negative side: Facebook will start to auto-optimize your ads and you won’t get relevant results.

Use the single ad set option when launching a set of completely new ad creatives to a new audience to quickly learn what works. And then run A/B tests to improve the initial campaign’s results.

2. Multiple single-variation ad sets – each ad variation is in a separate ad set.

A/B test campaign structure 2

As you place every ad variation in a separate ad set, Facebook will treat each ad set as a different entity and won’t auto-optimize based on little results.

That is the best option for getting relevant experiment results. This is the setup you will get when using Facebook’s Split Test feature.

Rule #7: Make sure your test results are valid

Do you know when’s the best time to analyze your A/B test results and conclude the experiment?

Is it three days after the campaign activation? Five days? Two weeks?

Or what would you do if Variation A had the CTR of 0.317% and Variation B the CTR of 0.289%?

For example, how would you conclude the experiment below? 👇

Would you conclude this A/B test?

Truth be told, the test above should not be concluded yet as there isn’t enough data to really tell which variation performed best.

To make sure your A/B tests are valid, you’ll need to have a sufficient amount of results to draw conclusions.

The best way to guarantee the quality of your Facebook ad test results is to use a calculator, a very specific kind of calculator.

Rule #8: Calculate statistical significance

If you want your Facebook tests to give valuable insights, put them through an A/B significance test to determine if your results are valid.

Test your test’s validity – Image source

Instead of website visitors, enter the no. of impressions to a specific ad variation or ad set. Instead of web conversions, enter the no. of ad clicks or ad conversions.

Look for a confidence level of 90% and more before you consider one variable to win over the other.

Tip: Wait at least 72h after publishing before evaluating your split test results. Facebook’s algorithms need some time to optimize your campaign and start delivering your ads to people.

According to an article on ConversionXL, there’s no magical number of conversions you need before concluding your A/B test.

However, I’d suggest that your collect at least 100 clicks/conversions per variation before pausing the test. Even better if you’re able to collect 300 or 500 conversions per each variation.

Rule #9: Know what budget you’ll need

The logic is simple: The more ad variations you’re testing, the more ad impressions and conversions you’ll need for statistically significant results.

So, what’s the best formula for calculating your Facebook ad budget?

What’s your perfect Facebook testing budget?

It’s quite simple:

Average Cost-per-conversion x No. of Variations x Needed Conversions

Start by looking at your other Facebook campaigns and defining your average cost-per-conversion.

Let’s say your goal is to get people clicking on your Facebook ad and the average cost-per-click for past campaigns has been $0.8.

Let’s continue the hypothesizing game, and say you’re looking to split test 5 different ad variations.

To get valid test results, you’ll need around 100-500 conversions per each ad variation.

So, the formula to calculate your budget would be:

$0.8 x 5 x 300 = $1,200

Now, before you bury all the hopes of getting statistically significant A/B test results, consider this:

You can cheat a little.

If one of your test variations is outperforming others by a mile, you can conclude the experiment sooner. (You should still wait for at least 50 conversions on each variation.)

Rule #10: Track the right metrics

As you look at you Facebook A/B test results, there will be lots of metrics to consider: ad impressions, cost-per-click, click-through-rate, cost-per-conversion, conversion rate…

Which metrics should you measure in order to discover the winning ad variation?

It’s not the cost-per-mile or click-through rate. These are the so-called vanity metrics that give you no real insight into your campaign’s performance.

Always track the cost-per-conversion as your primary goal.

Cost-per-conversion is your single most important ad metric as it tells you how much it costs you to turn a person into a lead or customer. And most of the time, increasing sales is the ultimate goal in your Facebook ad strategy.

Facebook ad split testing rulebook

To sum up, here’s the list of all the Facebook split testing rules discussed in this article. 👀

Rule #1: Test high-impact ad campaign elements

Rule #2: Prioritise your A/B test ideas

Rule #3: Test one campaign element at a time

Rule #4: Test a reasonable number of variations

Rule #5: Test highly differentiated variations

Rule #6: Use the right Facebook campaign structure

Rule #7: Make sure your A/B test results are valid

Rule #8: Calculate statistical significance

Rule #9: Know your test budget in advance

Rule #10: Track the right metrics

And, finally, keep some tests running all the time. Small improvements will incrementally lead to big improvements.

The post Facebook Ads A/B Testing in 2019 – Why, What, and How to Split Test appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

• It’s about real growth, not “a 400% growth without any mention of the initial traffic numbers” (growing 400% from 100 website visitors to 500 visitors is no big deal. Growing from 1.6k to 30k+ is a real deal).
• All the tactics mentioned here really work. They’ve been tried and tested, not copied from other blogs.
• It’s also an honest account of what didn’t work. It’s not just shiny victories that paved our way to 30k+ monthly blog visits.

In September 2015, our startup’s blog had the total of 1,615 organic visits from Google. By March 2017, this number had grown to 31,375 visits.

A quick calculation shows that in the past 12 months, our organic blog traffic increased by 1,843%. This has also translated into a significant growth in the number of leads and sales.

However, the fastest growth has happened in the past 11 months while we grew our traffic from 6k/month to 31k/month.

To be honest, this good-looking growth curve did not always result from a solid SEO strategy. Rather, it was a series of a-ha moments and sudden revelations that guided the process.

We got an abrupt idea, applied it to our website, and kept our fingers crossed to see whether our (often crazy) ideas work. Sometimes, they did.

And that’s how we grew from 1,6k organic blog visits to 30k+ visits.

You know how some people say there are no golden nuggets and it’s only the long-term strategy that leads to goals… That’s not entirely true – the best results appear when a strong long-term plan gets mixed with bold ideas.

This article’s about the hacks and growth tactics we used to build our website traffic. The best part is that they can be easily applied to your marketing strategy as well.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I’d also like to give credit to our brilliant colleague Merily who’s been rocking our SEO, content, and CRO.

Here’s another article you might like: After Guest Blogging 50+ Articles to Top Blogs, Here’s What I’ve Learned

How we got started:

When I joined Scoro, I was eager to get started with content marketing right away.

Up to this point, the SaaS startup had been buying generic 800-word articles from an agency. Nobody wanted to read them, and it showed in the blog’s readership numbers.

Key takeaway #1: Don’t outsource your content marketing to an agency as they can’t see your SEO results nor do they plan for your long-term growth. (At least the agencies I’ve seen in action)

What you should do instead, is to establish a solid content strategy and a growth plan with two main goals:

• Building brand awareness and acquiring fans
• Publishing content that will bring you traffic in the long run

Rather than publishing three short articles per week, we aimed to publish one really good article once a week. This tactic’s also been explained by Rand Fishkin in his Whiteboard Friday episode on 10x content.

Key takeaway #2: Don’t publish for the sake of publishing – focus on quality, not quantity. (I bet you’re tired of hearing this, but it’s 100% true)

Our initial content marketing strategy was simple. It included a topic, headline, keywords, and a publishing date. We’re using a similar approach to this day.

Building a growth-focused content marketing strategy

At the beginning, our content marketing strategy was like a vacant parking lot – there were so many potential keywords and opportunities waiting to be employed.

Not to waste a single opportunity, every article we published had to show a huge organic traffic potential.

According to research by Ahrefs, the average Top10 ranking page is 2+ years old. It takes nearly three years to land the #1 spot.

The fact that it may take 2+ years to have your blog articles rank on Google means that you need to focus on the long-term strategy and build “content bundles” with articles complementing each other.

#Key takeaway 3: Plan and create content with long-term gains in mind. It may take up to two years for an article to start ranking in the TOP10 on SERPs.

Actually, I can assure you that some articles only take a month or two to start ranking high on SERPs. But it doesn’t change the fact that the focus should be placed on the long-term growth.

Instead of brainstorming fun headlines, we defined the five main topics to center our content around. I like to call those overarching topics the “content bundles”.

Creating content bundles as an SEO strategy

When analyzing our past three months’ website traffic, we noticed that 75% of the organic traffic resulted from two types of articles – software lists and KPI-related content.

I’ve never been a big believer in the 80/20 rule, but it sure seems to apply to our blog strategy. Most of our organic traffic comes from two content bundles that we’ve been expanding since 2015.

Just to be clear, here’s how I like to define content bundles:

• A series of articles around one key topic
• Each article focuses on a different (yet related) keyword

By interlinking the articles inside a content bundle, you’re able to create a keyword bubble. And for what I’ve seen, Google loves these kinds of bubbles around a specific topic. After some time, Google will begin to perceive your blog as an expert resource in the given field, assigning your articles a higher rank in SERPs.

Key takeaway #4: Create content bundles – a series of articles centered around one key topic.

For example, we’ve been working on the content bundle focusing on the keyword “KPI dashboard” for over 15 months. It’s a sweet keyword – the exact match has over 1k monthly searches in the US alone.

The other pages ranking for this keyword have a considerably higher domain authority. However, we’re now ranking as the #4 result in SERPs in the US.

Slowly but surely developing the content bundles has certainly been one of our highest-ROI tactics. The best part is that it’s easily applicable even to sites with a low domain authority – to blogs just starting out.

https://www.mindtitan.com/?utm_source=aggregate&utm_medium=paid-ads

The secret SEO tactics that bring skyrocketing results

Alright, it’s time for the best part of the article – the no-BS tactics that helped to grow our organic blog traffic at a fast pace.

As you might have guessed, it all starts with keyword research and identifying the best opportunities.

?SEO hack 1: Learn to do SEO research the right way

Instead of simply checking the Google Keyword Tool to see the monthly search volume of specific keywords, you can take your research to a higher level. I’ve also written about this method in-depth here.

Step 1: Google your keywords

After you’ve discovered some keywords with a great monthly search volume, head to Google and, well, google. (You can use a tool like ISearchFrom to see the results in specific countries)

Let’s say you want to create a list of Top SEO Blogs.

A quick Google search will reveal a list of results:

While it’s a good general overview of your competition, there’s a simple way to learn a lot more.

Key takeaway #5: Don’t limit your SEO research to the Google Keyword Tool. Dig deeper.

My personal favourite tool for competitive SEO research in the Moz SEO Toolbar.

Step 2: Use the Moz SEO Toolbar for advanced research

Use the Moz SEO Toolbar to get more insight about the articles in search results. Most of the features are free, simply add the extension to your web browser.

The SEO Toolbar will show you the Domain Authority and Page Authority of each website on the search engine results page.

What you want to do is to look for pages with a low domain authority that have managed to get listed among the high-DA pages. This means they’ve published such good content that Google thinks it’s necessary to refer to their site.

For example, an article from a site with the DA of 29 could appear between other pages with a DA of 80+.

The guys over at the low-DA site must have done something right. Analyze what differentiates their content from all other results.

Often, you’ll find that those low-DA pages have 10x more comprehensive content or have an exact keyword match. That’s what you’ll want to copy when creating content to rank for the same keyword.

Key takeaway #6: Find content marketing and SEO opportunities by discovering low domain authority sites that rank among pages with a high domain authority.

Once you’ve discovered that another low-DA site is able to rank in the TOP10 SERP results for a particular keyword, so can you.

?SEO hack 2: Spend more time interlinking

Remember when we talked about the content bundles in the first half of this article?

Adding links in between your blog articles helps to strengthen your keyword bubbles and make them visible to Google (and get your new articles ranking more quickly).

While most websites make an effort to add links to older articles inside the newer content, we took it one step further. After we had published a new article on a given topic, we went and edited older articles around the same subject, and added links to the new article.

For example, when we published this article on KPI Reporting in February 2017…

We went ahead and linked to it in a KPI-related article published one year before.

As a result, the new article picked up more quickly and appeared in the TOP20 SERPs two weeks after publishing.

Key takeaway #7: Interlink all the articles around a related topic to create keyword bubbles and improve your search rankings.

By interlinking our blog articles, we steadily built a network of links, supporting each individual keyword and helping our articles rank higher on Google SERPs.

https://www.mindtitan.com/?utm_source=aggregate&utm_medium=paid-ads

?SEO hack 3: A/B test new headlines and meta descriptions

The two SEO tactics mentioned previously helped us to grow our blog’s organic traffic by over 1,500%.

However, it’s this third trick that gets credit for the latest improvements in our SERP rankings. It’s about rewriting and A/B testing your article’s headlines and meta descriptions.

Hearing about this SEO hack was definitely one of the few a-ha moments on our journey to 30k+ monthly organic (blog) traffic.

Key takeaway #8: Rewrite and A/B test your article’s headlines and meta descriptions.

Here’s how it works…

Step 1

Select an article that’s ranking in the TOP20 search results and is optimized for a high search volume keyword.

I like to use Moz’s keyword ranking reports for that.

The keyword “What is a kpi” has a considerable search volume, and the current ranking #15 shows that it has a potential to move up the ranks.

Step 2

Google the keyword to see what other articles rank next to yours.

In this phase, you’re going to sherlock on your competition, looking for their article’s headlines and meta descriptions.

We like to approach this stage by asking: What would make our article differentiate from the crowd and make people click?

In this case, all the headlines seem pretty generic and boring. What if we could rewrite the headline to make it more noteworthy (and clickable)?

Key takeaway #9: Rewrite your headlines to increase the CTR on search result pages, and thereby raise your SERP rankings.

We usually rewrite both the primary and SEO headline – if we come up with a better solution, we also want to have it in our blog.

The key tactics we use to write powerful headlines:

• Create a curiosity gap so that people will click on the headline.
• Include your main keyword in the headline to be highlighted in search results.
• Create comprehensive lists with odd numbers.
• Make your headlines actionable by using action verbs such as “Learn”, “Get”, etc.

Google evaluates search results based on their click-through rates. It makes a lot of sense to put effort into increasing your top article’s CTRs.

Higher SERP click-through rates = higher rankings

Step 3

Use the Google Search Console to A/B test and measure results

A marketing tactic is useless without proper measurement.

What if you rewrite your blog headlines, but instead of increasing, your CTR actually drops?

We’ve seen both success and failure with this SEO hack. It’s a good thing we measured the results and were able to restore some changed headlines and meta descriptions to their original state.

By using the Google Search Console, you can easily track your keywords’ and article’s click-through rates on Google.

To get a report that looks like this…

Follow these steps:

1. Log in to Google Search Console
2. Select “Search Traffic”, the “Search Analytics”
3. Tick the box in front of CTR
4. Change the columns from Queries to Pages
5. Select the dates you’d like to compare

Using these reports has been of tremendous help in optimizing and A/B testing our article’s meta descriptions and headlines.

Key takeaway #10: Measure your marketing experiments’ results to see what actually works.

And now, it’s time for the sweetest part of the article – the fuckups.

You can’t always win – our biggest failures

I promised to also share our failures. While some of them being embarrassing to think of, we can at least say: We tried.

In retrospect, many of these failures make us feel like this…

But there are also the mistakes that make us feel more like…

It’s up to you to guess which failures make us feel in certain ways. (I’ve boldened my favourite ones)

• We tried Outbrain for content promotion, but it never delivered the anticipated results.
• We forgot to add UTM codes and REF codes behind our paid promotions’ links.
• We sometimes created content that stole our landing pages’ place on SERPs. We fixed this by adding CTAs inside blog articles.
• We created a Christmas infographic on productivity that we published 20 days too late.
• We tried some crazy headline and meta description changes that significantly decreased the CTRs to our articles. Luckily, the rankings recovered in a few weeks.
• Once, I mistakenly thought Outbrain’s budget signifies the total campaign budget. It was the daily budget. You might have guessed why I don’t like Outbrain…
• We waited for too long to update our blog layout and redesign the article page.
• We didn’t do enough outreach and collaborate with other industry blogs.
• For the first 8 months, we focused on vanity metrics such as social shares, instead of website traffic and lead conversions.
• We spent 30+ hours on an eBook campaign that returned only 4 leads.

For us, guest blogging didn’t work. At all.

While everyone’s praising guest blogging as a brilliant SEO tactic, I’m going to play the devil’s advocate here.

We did lots of guest posting on other sites, like here, here, and here. However, considering the time and resources spent, this is not a high-ROI way to grow your blog traffic.

I would recommend that you do PR, but forget about guest posting – focus on publishing excellent content in your own blog instead.

Over to you

As you can see, nothing too serious went wrong. We were able to happily test away all our new ideas.

If you intend to grow your organic blog traffic, know that there is no instant way to win (Ahrefs’ case study perfectly illustrates it). Use what you’ve learned in this article to accelerate your journey to tens of thousands monthly blog visitors.

I hope this helps and would love to hear the hacks that have helps you to grow your website traffic. Let’s have a discussion in the comments.  ???

The post From 1.6k to 31k Monthly Blog Visitors in 20 Months – How We Did It appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

And marketers know it.

Recently, GIFs have made a comeback in social media posts, blog articles, email newsletters, messenger conversations, and even corporate Slack channels.

Including GIFs in your articles and tweets can help to increase both the average engagement and the number of shares.

The only headache with GIFs is that when time comes, it’s difficult to find the suitable animations that alig with your message.

So, whatcha gonna do?

For one, you could go hunting for GIFs on your own, starting with these sites:

• Giphy
• Tumblr
• Imgur
• 9GAG

If you’re too lazy for that, you can simply bookmark this article for future reference and use these 35 emotional GIFs across your marketing campaigns and ad designs. Depending on your love for GIFs, this list should get you through a couple of months! ?

P.S. If you also dig into emojis, check out this list: The Very Best Emojis to Apply in Marketing Campaigns

Happy

For the times you feel like the world’s your oyster…

Surprised

For the moments you recall forgetting to instagram your amazing-looking breakfast. Too late, it’s a mess now…

Confused

Whenever you’re having trouble understanding why someone doesn’t love ping pong or caramel lattes…

Shy / Embarrassed

For the moments you’re feeling like the world’s sooo confusing…

Cool

For when you come out of those embarrassing moments by keeping your cool…

Liked the GIFs? Don’t forget to bookmark this page for the future. ?

+ Share your fave GIFs below in the comments section! ?

The post 36 Magnetic GIFs for Mesmerizing Marketing Campaigns appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

The magnetic urge that drew me to marketing was a book. Just a single book. It was written by David Meerman Scott and named The New Rules of Marketing and PR. Ironically, I’d grabbed the book from the bookshelves of a PR agency I was working at back then. (There’s your reason not to buy books to your employees…)

I bet that if I’d read the book now, it wouldn’t have the same impact on the course of my career and life.

However, back then, this book combined with long hot summer days full of reading marketing blogs (I’ll tell you later which ones) grew my passion for marketing so high that I was ready to jump the ship sailing on a steady course. Soon, I found myself on board a lot smaller ship – a B2B SaaS startup.

I’m writing this story because lately, we’ve interviewed lots of enthusiastic candidates to join our marketing team. One of my favourite questions to ask the person has become “Which marketing blogs do you read?”

Usually, by this time, the previously confident candidates start to lose their ground.

“Oh, yes… The marketing blogs…” ??

The regular answer goes along the lines of “Erm… HubSpot … Um … This guy I-can’t-remember-his-name …” And silence.

For me, this answer’s an almost immediate deal breaker, at least one raising some long-brewing concerns.

A marketer not reading any work-related blogs could mean two things: They’re so good that no new insights can improve their work or they’re too indifferent to search for the latest tactics and hacks. A beginner- or medium-level marketing candidate’s most likely guilty of the latter.

Many people calling themselves marketers don’t really care about marketing as a craft.That’s fine, they’re still needed to carry out regular daily marketing tasks to keep the engines running.

Nevertheless, if you want to be in the Top 1% of the “marketing royalty”, simply completing your daily work tasks is not going to cut it.

You need to read.

The lasting benefits of reading

Read the following paragraphs with a small reservation: I love reading (and writing) way too much to claim I’m able to stay 100% objective.

So what is it about reading that turns it into a make or break interview question? How can reading make you a better marketer compared to those working harder and having a longer career path behind them than you?

1. Reading reflects on your curiosity

Many famous scientists, artists, and politicians are remembered by their curiosity to discover various aspects of the world. Take Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Richard Feynman – during his lifetime, the man was both a successful physicist as well as a hobby painter, dancer, and code breaker.

As a marketer, curiosity’s a sign that you’re driven by the wish to find new marketing tactics and test them out as often as possible. When working with companies betting on fast growth, frequent amendments and tweaks to the marketing strategy bring the long-term home run.

2. Reading makes you build new associations

Speaking of tiny improvements and coming up with the tactics to put on trial, you’ll have to be able to produce many ideas. And I mean many.

James Altucher, an American hedge fund manager, has long been preaching about the “idea muscle”. In his blog, Altucher explains that the more ideas you demand your brain to produce, the more brilliant ones you’ll get.

In his book Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, Adam Grant, an influential management thinker, explores the fact that famous composers produced over five thousand works during their lifetime. The classical music we’re celebrating today is the result of a strenuous process of hit and miss.

A divergent reading list of literature, marketing blogs, and business books will open your mind to a whole new level of idea generation. One that can introduce you to many eureka! moments and ideas to take for a test drive.

3. Reading grows you into a better marketer

Marketers are a weird bunch in that they compete in sharing their best secret tactics in tens of blog posts. By reading the blogs of individual marketers, apps, and agencies, you’ve got the unique chance to learn about all their best practices. You’ll also learn about different PPC channels, seeing what works and what doesn’t.

Why would marketers share all their best hacks? I guess it’s because people are lazy, and only very few can really pull off the tactics and make them work.

On these premises, you can browse tens of marketing blogs on the topics ranging from copywriting and paid advertising to web design and conversion rate optimization.

4. Reading makes you a better writer

If you’re wondering where the Top bloggers and marketers got their copywriting skills, it’s not about how they got there. It’s about how the developed those skills by making reading and writing their bread and butter.

Reading the works of literary classics and other marketers not only gives you a wide vocabulary and writing skills, it also teaches you the language of potential customer groups.

I had a friend recently telling me that the way business blogs are written is completely different to any other type of writing. And he was entirely right– you’d probably never talk to a family member in the same language you find in marketing blogs. Nevertheless, you’d use this language to communicate with business partners and people at work.

In addition to expanding the “idea muscle”, regular reading also rubs off on your copywriting skills – an incredibly valuable asset as a marketer.

5. Reading’s kind of like meditating

If you feel that reading’s a chore rather than a pleasant way to spend an hour or two daily, you likely won’t find any zen in the process.

It’s easy to get stuck with a boring book or give up on the search of marketing blogs worth your time. All things considered, there are tons of generic articles that do not deserve your attention. (Or anyone’s for that matter…)

But as you find some gems along the way, the outlook becomes a lot more positive. For me, having a Feedly feed of my favourite 20-30 blogs and keeping a to-read book list presents more than enough attention-worthy reading material.

If someone recommends you a book or life advice… Sometimes it’s just not the right time in your life It’s OK to put the recommendation aside for now and return to it later. Rather, look for the resources that seem the most interesting to you.

Creating your reading framework as a marketer

Everyone’s reading habits are unique. However, here’s a framework that you can use to get started:

1. Consider what you’d like to learn/read about
2. Create a list of marketing blogs sharing high-level insight
3. Add 1-2 hour blocks of reading time into your schedule
4. Constantly think how new ideas could be applied in your company
5. Keep notes of the best ideas and key takeaways
6. Revisit your notes when in need of new ideas

As time goes by, the blogs you visit and the books you search out will likely change, both in terms of topics and the expectations you set.

As I started out 2 years ago, I was more focused on content marketing and copywriting. Then, the focus shifted to paid advertising and conversion rate optimization. Switching the topics you read about gives you a wider scope of knowledge and expands your skill set. (And makes you a winning candidate to join any marketing team…)

+ see the list of my fave marketing & business blogs here ?
+ share your go-to marketing blogs in the comments ?

The post Want to Become an In-demand Marketer? Start Reading More appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

Is it the alluring ad copy, laser-focused target audience or irresistible value offer?

What do you think: out of these two Facebook ad campaigns by MailChimp and Litmus, which one performs better?

Made your guess?

Whichever your answer, it’s incorrect. That’s because was set on false premises.

There’s really no way to tell which one of these ad campaigns (if any) was successful unless you know what the campaigns’ goals and results were.

This example illustrates a frequent problem of PPC advertising and marketing in general — dismissing the ultimate goal for vanity metrics and short-term gains.

The two types of Facebook ad goals

Facebook advertising metrics can be divided into two main categories: the nice-to-haves and the imperatives.

The nice-to-have ad metrics include:

• Total impressions
• Cost-per-click
• Click-through rate
• Cost per 1k impressions

These metrics can indicate which one of your A/B test versions is performing at a better rate compared to other variations.

But they won’t show the ROI of your Facebook ad campaigns.

The imperative ad metrics are:

• Cost-per-conversion
• Conversion rate
• Click-to-conversion rate

These must-track ad metrics show the true ROI of your Facebook ad campaigns in that they materialize in your sales results.

To illustrate the importance of tracking the right Facebook ad metrics, here’s an example:

If you look at the Campaigns A and B and compare their results in terms of CPC, it’s easy to conclude that Campaign A outperforms Campaign B by over 105%.

However, the tables turn when we compare the click-to-conversion rate. In this case, Campaign B has a significantly higher return on investment.

When tracking wrong goals, you can easily end up creating Facebook ad campaigns that have loads of likes, clicks and website visits, but few conversions that contribute to sales.

A similar problem is apparent in Facebook ad A/B testing.

As marketers evaluate their ad variations based on the cost-per-click instead of cost-per-conversions, it may happen that the best-performing ads will be discharged in favour for the ones with the lowest CPC or CPM (Cost per mile).

Always opt for Facebook A/B test variations with the highest conversion rate.

Low cost-per-click ≠ Low cost-per-conversion

Ad goals and Facebook campaign objectives

When creating Facebook ads, setting the right goal is ever more important as it will help to determine your campaign objective.

The campaign objective tells Facebook what’s the ultimate goal of your advertising campaign, and helps its algorithms optimize your ad delivery for best results.

As you can see, there are plenty of Facebook campaign objectives.

In order to pick the right objective, you’ll need to know your ad goals.

Depending on the objective you choose, Facebook will let you select between various ad types and bidding methods.

It is important that you select the right ad goal right at the beginning of the campaign creation process as it will determine your ads’ delivery and cost-per-result.

For example, if your real goal was to sell X pairs of sneakers, but you told Facebook that you want to raise brand awareness, chances are that you’ll see poorer ad results than if you had set the right goal in the first place.

Why selecting a wrong ad objective may result in low campaign ROI?

Because Facebook will optimize your ads to get you the results you asked for.

If you ask for maximum reach, Facebook will deliver the maximum share of ad impressions, not the maximum number of purchases.

How to choose the right Facebook ad goals

Determining your Facebook ad goals is a simple process.

Just ask yourself:

What do I want to get as a result of this campaign?

? Your Facebook advertising goals could be:

• Driving more sales
• New leads
• Increased brand awareness
• New people in the sales funnel
• Higher customer engagement

Your goal should have a direct impact on your company’s growth and success.

? Not to be confused with goals:

• 100,000 ad impressions
• Thousands of ad clicks from no matter whom
• Many likes under your Facebook post

These ad metrics do not reflect on any tangible results and shouldn’t be perceived as Facebook advertising goals.

Make sure that you select the goals that actually increase your revenue, not just look nice in ad reports.

Quick wrap-up

As you complete reading this article, go over all your active Facebook campaigns and evaluate their performance based on the right foundations.

Whenever you discover a campaign with misguided goals, change the ad sets’ delivery optimization settings or pause the campaign and set up a new one.

Remember:

Right advertising goals = More sales = Growth

Read more: 25 Facebook Ad Design Hacks to Make Every Single Ad Viewer Click

The post How to Set Facebook Ad Goals for Phenomenal Results appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

While I don’t know the exact number, I bet there are thousands of blogs writing about marketing.

So what makes a marketing blog stand out?

For beginners, it’s the in-depth know-how available in the blog. For seasoned marketers, it’s more about the originality of content – is the blog introducing new ideas and hacks?

I decided to list my go-to marketing blogs that, in my humble opinion, publish the best content on their chosen topics.

You’ll find the blogs listed by topics as well as a quick overview (+links) below:

Ideas & inspiration: Contently | Harvard Business Review | Inside Intercom

PPC: KlientBoost | Jon Loomer | AdEspresso | WordStream | Kissmetrics

Growth & Analysis: Hiten Shah | ConversionXL | Unbounce | Avinash Kaushik

Content Marketing & SEO: Copyblogger | Ahrefs | Backlinko | Copy Hackers

1. Contently

This blog is about: Content marketing, freelancing, marketing strategy

Why it’s good: Contently differs from traditional marketing blogs in that it’s targeting multiple audiences from content strategists to freelancers. You’ll find smashing insights on many marketing topics, and you’ve just got to love their blog design.

Read first: Weekend Update: Should You Publish Every Day?

2. Harvard Business Review

This blog is about: Marketing, psychology, business

Why it’s good: While The Harvard Business Review isn’t exactly a marketing blog, it should be on the weekend reads list of every marketer. This online magazine’s packed with fresh ideas and original research from the world’s Top experts.

Read first: How Marketing Changes When Shopping Is Automated

3. Inside Intercom

This blog is about: Growth marketing, startup, product marketing

Why it’s good: Intercom’s blog has a more personal touch — they’re sharing everything across their journey to becoming a popular marketing tool. And their growth mindset is to die for.

Read first: Intercom’s Matt Hodges on Product Marketing

4. KlientBoost

This blog is about: PPC, AdWords, Facebook ads, CRO and landing page design

Why it’s good: Whenever you read on of KlientBoost’s top-shelf PPC guides, you’ll become the Top 1% of marketers knowing this stuff.

Read first: Secrets Revealed: 47 Closely Guarded Facebook Ad Tips

5. Jon Loomer

This blog is about: The latest Facebook ad news and hacks

Why it’s good: Jon Loomer is unparalleled in his ability to break the hottest Facebook news and publish detailed guides.

Read first: All Facebook Image Dimensions and Ad Specs [2016]

6. AdEspresso

This blog is about:  Facebook advertising hacks, Twitter marketing, Instagram, everything social media

Why it’s good: The sweetest articles in AdEspresso’s blog are those of their original research. This blog includes all the latest Facebook ads updates together with actionable insights.

Read first: 18 Genius Facebook Ad Hacks for Winning Campaigns

7. WordStream

This blog is about: Google AdWords, Facebook advertising, other varying marketing topics

Why it’s good: WordStream’s blog has existed for a while, so they have guides on any PPC topic imaginable. If you see their article in Google search results, you’ll know it can be trusted.

Read first: The Ultimate Guide to Quality Score: 15 PPC Experts Discuss Google AdWords Quality Score

8. Kissmetrics

This blog is about: Paid advertising, startup marketing, content marketing, growth

Why it’s good: Like other Top marketing blogs, Kissmetrics rarely lets you down – all their articles are top-notch, containing an in-depth overview on a given topic.

Read first: The Ultimate Guide to Startup Marketing

9. Hiten Shah

This blog is about: Growth marketing, SaaS marketing

Why it’s good: Hiten Shah has built up multiple multi-billion companies, including Kissmetrics. Now, he’s sharing the hacks and ideas that have worked for him. You’ll get an original account on many fascinating topics.

Read first: How to Focus When You’re Overwhelmed By Marketing Options

10. ConversionXL

This blog is about: Conversion rate optimization (CRO), paid advertising, growth

Why it’s good: Run by Peep Laja, every article in the ConversionXL blog is guaranteed to be on-point and dense with marketing research.

Read first: The Complete Conversion Optimization Guide

11. Unbounce

This blog is about: Landing page optimization, marketing trends, Unbounce’s marketing journey

Why it’s good: Unbounce blog in the best resource for learning about CRO and building beautiful landing pages. If you want to convert more visitors into customers, read the blog.

Read first: A 50-Point Checklist For Creating The Ultimate Landing Page

12. Avinash Kaushik

This blog is about: Google Analytics, reporting, digital marketing

Why it’s good: Avinash Kaushik is Google’s evangelist. He’s the guy who knows everything about Google Analytics and reporting hacks. And he’s sharing it all in his blog.

Read first: Measuring Online Engagement: What Role Does Web Analytics Play?

12. Copyblogger

This blog is about: Content marketing, copywriting, consumer psychology

Why it’s good: If there’s one blog that consolidates all the copywriting goodness in the web, it’s Copyblogger. By reading this blog, you’ll develop successful copywriting skills in no time.

Read first: The Ultimate Copy Checklist: 51 Questions to Optimize Every Element of Your Online Copy

13. Ahrefs

This blog is about: SEO, content marketing, research

Why it’s good: Ahrefs shares the latest SEO hacks and complements these with original research worth pursuing.

Read first: How long does it take to rank in Google? (A study by Ahrefs)

14. Backlinko

This blog is about: SEO, keyword research

Why it’s good: Backlinko’s knows for their in-depth guides that are always up do date. If you want to learn more about SEO, it’s a good place to start.

Read first: Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List

15. Copy Hackers

This blog is about: Content marketing, copywriting, marketing psychology

Why it’s good: Copy Hackers publishes lots of original content around copywriting for various marketing channels. They’re often the first to cover new exciting topics.

Read first: The Beginner’s Guide to Writing Facebook Ads

Quick Recap

There you go – this was the rundown of all my favourite marketing blogs.

For quick reference, here are all the blogs with links once more:

Ideas & inspiration: Contently | Harvard Business Review | Inside Intercom

PPC: KlientBoost | Jon Loomer | AdEspresso | WordStream | Kissmetrics | Quicksprout |

Growth & Analysis: Hiten Shah | ConversionXL | Unbounce | Avinash Kaushik

Content Marketing & SEO: Copyblogger | Ahrefs | Backlinko | Copy Hackers

P.S. what’s in your weekend reading or podcasting list?

The post 15 Five-star Marketing Blogs 110% Worth Your Time appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

Or do they?

Emojis have received their admittance to the modern marketing arsenal long since. But as you scroll around on Facebook and Twitter, only a few brands are rocking ‘em.

This could mean two things. A: emojis don’t work or B: nobody really knows how to use them. There’s also C: people are too lazy to copy-paste a few emojis to their messages.

So, what’s in it for you?

It means that you haven’t missed the boat just yet. You can still build up an emoji-strategy and be among the first to apply it.

We’ve done a fair share of emoji-testing at Scoro, and I’ve also applied the same techniques when promoting this blog.

This article will introduce three applications to emojis that work like a charm.

➕  Scroll to the end of the article to see the list of my Top 20 fave emojis.

1. Use emojis in Facebook ads

We ran a test at Scoro to see whether using emojis in ad headlines helps to get better results. It does.

The ad with emoji in the headline had a 241% higher click-through rate than the ad with no emoji.

(Full disclosure: We didn’t have 10 000+ impressions and a sufficient amount of click-throughs to say this test was 100% statistically significant. So look at it as a fun test to replicate.)

In fact, emojis can be added into every part of your Facebook ad copy:

• Headline
• Text
• Link description

And it doesn’t have to be limited to Facebook advertising — apply the same technique on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram ads.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to getting started: How to Use Emojis in Facebook Ads [Complete Guide]

2. Tweet with emojis

I recently observed a simple Twitter hack: using line spacing to cover more real estate in the Twitter feed.

Instead of sharing content the good old way…

I used emojis and started each link from a new line, like this:

If you compare the length of these Tweets and the space they take up in the Twitter feed, guess which one gets more clicks?

Using emojis in your tweets does several things:

• It makes your tweet more engaging
• It takes up more space in the Twitter feed
• It makes your brand differentiate
• It helps to give your tweets more personality

The next time you’re scheduling tweets, don’t forget to drop in an emoji or two.

3. Use emojis in emails

A report by Experian said that 56% of brands using emoji in their email subject lines see higher open rates.

✉️ + ? = ?

Here are a few good examples of brands using emojis in the subject line:

In my personal opinion, adding emojis before the subject line draws more attention than at the end of line.

What about emojis inside the email?

I had to crawl my inbox to see whether any brand is using emojis anywhere else than the subject line.

I found only one by Tech Ladies:

So here’s your untapped potential: insert emojis in the email copy in addition to subject lines.

Emoji inspiration

I promised to share my Top 20 fave emojis. So here they come:

?  ?  ?  ?  ? ? ?  ?  ?  ?️  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?

You can find more emojis in Emojipedia.

—

What other use cases have you found for emojis? If you don’t want to comment, send me a private email ?

The post 3 Must-Know Tactics for Marketing With Emojis appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

Every year before Super Bowl, there’s a discussion around what else could you buy as an alternative to the $5 million ad placement.

According to AdWeek, $5 million can buy you:

• 17 Snapchat lenses, the fun filters that overlay selfies. Each costs roughly $329,400
• 22 sponsored BuzzFeed videos, each $254,500
• 370 million display video impressions
• 800 million impressions from banner ads

Alright, let’s be realistic – most advertisers don’t carry millions on their sleeves.

For most people, it’s a question of where to spend the $2,000 – $50,000 monthly ad budget.

And that’s where things get interesting as there’s no room for crazy-expensive mistakes. If you’re an SMB or a startup, you simply can’t afford a month of slow growth.

? Finding the right PPC channel matters. A lot.

The best way to find out which PPC channel returns the highest return on investment is to test all of them.

But as testing takes a tremendous amount of time and money, it makes more sense to read what’s worked for others.

This article will compare five PPC channels, based on insights I’ve learned in 3 years while creating and managing ad campaigns on Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

We’ll review three aspects of each advertising channel:

1. What’s the average cost-per-click?
2. Is the PPC channel worth your money?
3. What’s the best way to get started?

1. Facebook Ads

Average cost-per-click for B2B in UK with smart audience targeting: $0.20 – $2.00

Facebook Ads are a real wildcard when it comes to your ad campaigns’ success. In my experience, there’s no way to tell how Facebook’s algorithms will act upon your new ad campaign.

The only problem with Facebook Ads is the unpredictability. We’ve seen similar blog article promotions have a $0.50 – $4.30 cost-per-click. With the same ad audience and bidding methods!

? Read more: 5 Steps to the Perfect Facebook Blog Promotion

But even if you’re at Facebook’s mercy when advertising on the platform, it’s mostly worth your money. Facebook’s laser-sharp audience targeting options make it a go-to place for both awareness and remarketing campaigns.

Reasons to use Facebook Ads:

• Reasonable cost-per-click
• Huge potential audience: you can reach 1.23 billion daily active users
• Amazing audience targeting options, including Custom Audiences for remarketing
• Brings great results when targeting a warm audience
• Accurate ad tracking and simple A/B testing
• Insightful reporting and highly optimizable campaigns
• Variety of ad placements: Facebook news feeds, Instagram, Audience Network
• When someone likes or shares your ad, it’ll also organically reach their Facebook friends
• Lots of options for playing around with Facebook ad designs

Reasons not to use Facebook Ads:

• If you’re unsure who your target audience is, you’re likely to get poor results
• It takes some time to learn and become an expert
• Campaigns might fail to take off and won’t deliver
• You might have to deal with random comments

As you can see, there aren’t any severe counterarguments against using Facebook Ads. It’s one of the top PPC channels that you should definitely use and test.

2. Google Search Network

Average cost-per-click for B2B in UK with smart audience targeting: $2.00 – $12.00

(The CPC really depends on the keywords you’re bidding on)

? It is predicted that by 2020, Facebook And Google will serve 71% of the total mobile ad spend.

And there’s a reason for it: these are the two PPC channels that deliver the best results across all industries, both B2B and B2C.

The best thing about Google Search Network (ads that appear on Google’s search pages), is that you don’t have to exactly know your target audience. Instead, you’re targeting people who are specifically interested in your product.

With Google Search Network, you’re not targeting people based on their interests, but their search terms.

Reasons to use Google Search Network:

• Great match between the search term and your offer
• No need to know your target audience, only the relevant keywords
• High ad relevance helps to get better leads that convert more easily
• Reasonable cost-per-click
• Complete overview and control over your campaigns’ results
• Efficient bidding options

Reasons not to use Google Search Network:

• If you use too broad keywords, you’ll get many irrelevant clicks, spending lots of money
• Basically, you need to know what you’re doing before you can set up a PPC campaign on this channel
• For some keywords, there’s a huge competition and high cost-per-click
• You’ll need multiple landing pages to keep your offers relevant to search terms

All in all, Google Search Network is a critically important lead source for both B2B and B2C advertisers.

But you need to be aware that in order to be successful with this PPC channel, you first need to read and learn about the topic. Or hire a PPC agency to help you out.

3. Google Display Network

Average cost-per-click for B2B in UK with smart audience targeting: $0.80 – $2.00

Google Display Network allows you to deliver image ads or GIFs to Google’s display network partners’ websites. These include millions of top websites such as news publications, blogs, and many more sites.

? Google Display Network is a great channel for remarketing and reminding past website visitors of your offer. But it could also serve as an awareness channel.

Reasons to use Google Display Network:

• Works well when retargeting past website visitors / purchasers
• Your ads will appear on well-known sites
• Reasonable cost-per-click prices
• Insightful reporting and optimization possibilities
• Good awareness building channel

Reasons not to use Google Display Network:

• Tech-savvy people might have blocked display ads in their browser
• It takes some time to learn and master  this PPC channel
• You’ll need many ad designs in different sizes
• When targeting a too vague audience, you’ll get poor results

Google Display Network can potentially deliver great results, especially with remarketing. Similarly to Google Search Network, it’s best if you spend some time learning about this topic before creating any ads.

4. Twitter Ads

Average cost-per-click for B2B in UK with smart targeting: $1.00 – $2.00

The main problem with Twitter Ads is the poor audience targeting. You won’t be able to reach a niche audience like on Facebook, and often this might mean paying for low-quality ad clicks.

To give you a proper comparison of Facebook Ads vs. Twitter Ads, here’s a brief overview of a 10-day experiment conducted by AdEspresso:

? When promoting an eBook with Facebook Lead Ads, the average cost-per-lead was $3.48. With Twitter Lead Cards, the average cost-per-lead it was $11.7.

Facebook Lead Ads outperformed Twitter Cards by 336%.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Facebook always outperforms Twitter, but if you have to choose whether to bet money on Facebook or Twitter Ads, I’d recommend that you lean on Facebook Ads first.

Reasons to use Twitter Ads:

• You can target people based on hashtags and topics
• If you’re promoting a cool and witty ad, it might work out really well
• It’s a good addition to your other PPC campaigns
• Quick and simple setup

Reasons not to use Twitter Ads:

• Limited custom audience targeting, e.g. can’t exclude Custom Audiences
• Sometimes, new ads are under review for days
• I personally have never seen any good results from Twitter Ads
• Limited reporting and it’s difficult to optimize your ads

As the final verdict, I’d say that if you’ve got a limited ad budget, try Facebook Ads and Google Search Network first.

Later, if you still have some extra budget left, you might want to run a test campaign on Twitter to see if this PPC channel works for you.

5. LinkedIn Ads

Average cost-per-click for B2B in UK with smart targeting: $3.00 – $12.00

? If you want your ad campaign to reach the CEO of a specific company, LinkedIn makes it possible… Kind of…

LinkedIn allows you to target people based on their employers and career levels, but you need to have at least 20 people in your target audience to run an ad campaign.

Another nice thing about LinkedIn ads is that this PPC channel rewards advertisers who regularly update ad copy & images with better engagement and a lower cost-per-click.

If you’re willing to update and optimize your campaigns, LinkedIn’s super high CPC might come down to a reasonable sum.

Reasons to use LinkedIn Ads:

• You can target people based on their job titles % employers
• LinkedIn’s a great place for B2B marketing as many C-Suite members use it
• You can reach a super narrow target audience
• Ad campaigns are simple to set up

Reasons not to use LinkedIn Ads:

• High cost-per-click
• Limited targeting options, poor interest-based targeting capacity
• Smaller potential audience than on Facebook
• Limited ad placements
• Reports only show, CPC, impressions, and CTR
• Difficult to optimize and improve
• Fewer ad formats than on Facebook

Just like with Twitter Ads, you shouldn’t use LinkedIn Ads over Facebook Ads or Google Search Network. Rather than spend your limited budgets on LinkedIn, focus your efforts on Facebook first.

However, if you’re targeting a very narrow B2B audience that might not even use Facebook, you can use LinkedIn Ads to amplify your campaigns’ reach.

How to get started with new PPC channels:

Now that you’ve got an overview of five different PPC channels but are a total newbie, here are a few awesome resources to get you started.

Facebook Ads:

The best resources to learn about Facebook ads: AdEspresso blog, Jon Loomer
Become a Facebook remarketing pro with this guide I wrote for KlientBoost blog: 101-Point Guide to Master Facebook Custom Audiences
Golden Facebook ad tips that apply to every marketing campaign: Secrets Revealed: 47 Closely Guarded Facebook Ad Tips

Google Search Network:

The best resources to learn about Google Search Network: KlientBoost blog, WordStream blog
Here’s a complete Google AdWords guide by KISSmetrics: How to Create a Profitable Google AdWords Campaign (from Scratch)
Awesome course on traffic acquisition with Google AdWords by CXL.

Google Display Network:

The best resources to learn about Google Display Network: KlientBoost blog, WordStream blog
Quick guide to getting started by WordStream: 7 Tips to Master the Google Display Network
Super comprehensive Display network guide for hacks and tips by KlientBoost: Your AdWords Display Network Master Plan [67 Tips For More Conversions]

Twitter Ads:

The best resources to learn about Twitter Ads: HootSuite blog, Social Media Examiner
The guide that’ll give you a quick overview of Twitter marketing by HootSuite: How to Use Twitter Ads: The Complete Guide for Business
If you want to get more guides on Twitter Ads, see this post by Neil Patel: 9 Twitter Advertising Guides That’ll Help You Generate Better Results for Less

LinkedIn Ads:

The best resources to learn about LinkedIn Ads: KISSmetrics blog, Social Media Examiner
Top guide to for beginners by KISSmetrics: The Kissmetrics Guide To LinkedIn Ads – Part I: The Basics
A cool overview of how LinkedIn markets itself on the platform by AdWeek: How LinkedIn Markets on LinkedIn (Infographic)

As you might already know, this blog is about 60 days old. Help to spread the word by sharing this post. ? ?

The post What’s the Best PPC Channel? Facebook vs. AdWords vs. Twitter vs. LinkedIn appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

Don’t act surprised – everyone’s doing it.

It’s not just some shady Twitter accounts and armies of bots. Many beloved brands and well-known influencers are using follow-unfollow tools to inflate their follower numbers.

And the weird part is, it works.

This article will explain who?, why?, and how? are using the automated accumulation of Twitter followers. You’ll also find the answer to the question Should I do it?

Here’s an honest account on why brands can benefit from inflated Twitter follower numbers, but also why this monkey business is a waste of everyone’s time.

The popularity of automated Twitter following

As mentioned before, many prominent people and brands are using automated Twitter follower tools.

We recently analyzed Twitter accounts of top 145 marketing tools.

Out of 145 MarTech Twitter accounts, 33.1% are potentially inflating their follower numbers by using follow-unfollow tactics.

This chart illustrates the concentration of mutual following between a Twitter account and their followers. (The accounts were randomly chosen among the 145 accounts analyzed)

Accounts with high red and purple columns follow thousands of users who never followed them back.

Now, why would a marketing tool want to follow hundreds of thousands of Twitter accounts?

How to recognize a Twitter account with “fake” followers:

The first sign that a Twitter account is using an automated following tool is a high ratio of people they follow vs. people following them.

Another red flag is an account following hundreds of thousands of people – no social media manager could’ve possible followed all those people.

I didn’t have to look hard to find these examples, there are millions of similar accounts out there. And these aren’t bot accounts. These are brands trying to increase the number of Twitter followers, earn people’s trust via social proof, and drive more sales.

Automated Twitter following tools are wildly popular. A quick Google search reveals that this is quite a competitive industry with tens of different tools promising you more Twitter followers. Look at the second result.

Increasing Twitter follower count – how it works

In case you haven’t heard of this technique before, here’s how it works: a Twitter account owner uses automated tools follow another Twitter user’s followers, up to 1000 people per day (that’s a limit set by Twitter).

As a few days pass, they’ll unfollow all the users who haven’t followed them back. Meanwhile, they’re following new Twitter profiles every day.

In this automated click-and-follow routing, there’s no consideration who’s being followed. The sole goal is to inflate the numbers on a Twitter profile’s follower parameter.

Yet, as someone who has used the follow-unfollow tools, I must say – it is borderline addictive.

Right after following hundreds of people, your Twitter notifications light up. You’ll get tons of new followers and automated welcome messages.

There’s just one important question people forget to ask – If these people are automatically following me back and sending a welcome message… Aren’t they using the same tools as I am?

Is “fake” Twitter following working?

Yes.

There’s a time in a Twitter account’s lifecycle when automated follower inflation can help. It’s right after creating the profile.

When seeing a cool tweet and being on the verge of following the profile behind it, people usually look for social proof – Are other following this account?

If your new Twitter profile’s follower account is 20, you won’t look like the most popular kid on the block. If it’s 1000+, you’ll be perceived as someone worth following.

Automated Twitter following tools can help you get to the first 1000 followers in a matter of days. If your goal is to share high-quality content and weighty opinions, the rest will follow organically.

No.

If your goal is to become a well-known Twitter influencer and accumulate thousands of engaged readers, while being lazy and relying on fake following, you won’t get very far.

If you’re just publishing low-value content and spamming other Twitter users with your offers, not even 100k “fake” Twitter followers won’t help you.

What’s the point of having 100k Twitter followers if all of them follow back thousands of profiles like yours? These people and brands never see your tweet, lest to speak of engaging with it.

Using automated follow-unfollow tools will bring you followers that are just as indifferent of your tweets as they are of yours. These “fake” followers will never like, retweet, or mention your tweets.

Stop using automated following tools

When starting the Aggregate blog, I finally realized one thing:

Using the automated Twitter follow-unfollow tools is never worth the time spent.

With an extra 15 minutes each day, one can:

• Create 8 high-quality tweets to share
• Start conversations with Twitter influencers
• Brainstorm new ways of engaging with your audience

All of these activities have a higher return on investment than any mechanical follower hack you can pull.

The post Everyone’s Using Automated Twitter Following Tools. Stop. appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

There’s not enough reading power in this world to work through every article published. Whether people click on the link to your article depends on the allure of your headline.

A magnetic headline is concise, fascinating, and has a touch of magic✨  to it.

But there’s also a quantifiable side to writing irresistible headlines: the length, the right wording, etc.

We gathered all the data analyzing the anatomy of a perfect headline and topped it with original research. Up next, you’ll find six visualizations that help you understand and compile headlines people want to see.

1. Start with a number

Turns out that the type of headline you use plays a significant role in your article’s success.

Research by Conductor shows that people prefer headlines that contain numbers. Their second choice is the headline directly addressing them.

Just to be clear, here are some examples:

• Headline starting with a number: 22 Ways to Write The Perfect Headline
• Headline addressing the person: 22 Ways You Can Write Perfect Headlines
• “How to” headline: How to Write a Perfect Headline
• Regular Headline: Guide to Writing a Perfect Headline
• Headline Including a Question: Did You Know About These Headline Writing Hacks?

Key takeaway: Test headlines that start with a number, but make the number impressive, not 5 or 8. Aim fo 65, 101, or 36 (this also keeps your content quality high)

2. Use the right words

People’s reaction to different words and adjectives varies heavily, depending on their mood and background.

When analyzing 23,858 tweets by 145 Twitter profiles (we’ll publish the entire analysis soon), we discovered that the Top 5% best-performing tweets started with the following words:

The thing is, also the Top 5% worst-performing tweets contained similar words. So we extracted the words that were present in the Top 5% but less popular in the rest of tweets.

• Words to use in your tweets and headlines (words that were frequent in top 5% but not so widely used in other tweets): Thanks, Our, Check, In, Don’t, Top
• Words to avoid (words that were frequent in the 25% lowest engagement tweets but unpopular in the top 5%): 6, See, Get, 4, Are, Do

We explored the matter a little further ad discovered that there some words had a statistically significant higher possibility to get your tweets noticed and engaged with.

We discovered that the words “Thanks”, “Top”, “We”, “Congratulations”, “Learn”, and “Great” at the beginning of your tweets could help to reach higher engagement.

Key takeaway: Test the words “Thanks”, “Top”, “We”, “Congratulations”, “Learn”, and “Great” at in your headlines (and tweets) to reach higher engagement.

3. Don’t be that lazy

A web traffic chart published by NewsWhip revealed that Upworthy generated about 75,000 Facebook likes for each article.

What about the rest of the best-performing sites? They each generated fewer than 10,000 likes on average.

The reason why top publishers’ articles get thousands of Facebook shares often lies in the science of perfect headlines. Upworthy is said to write 25 headlines for each of their articles.

Why should you write 25 headlines?

The formula is pretty simple: Out of 25 headlines you’ve managed to brainstorm as fast as possible, 20 are crap, and the remaining 5 have an opportunity to be great.

Key takeaway: Don’t settle with the first headline that comes to mind. Brainstorm at least 10 different ideas and the choose the best.

4. Use odd numbers

Outbrain collected data from 150,000 article headlines and discovered that headlines with odd numbers have a 20% higher clickthrough rate than headlines with even numbers.

Instead of creating a list of 12 tips, make it a list of 11 tips. One of the reasons odd numbers work better is that they’re more uncommon. Bet you’ve seen more “10 tips” articles than “9 tips” posts.

Key takeaway: Test using odd numbers in your headlines.

5. Find the perfect headline length

Another study by Outbrain found that headlines with 60-100 characters earn the highest click-through rates

To confirm these results, we looked at the headlines of popular business magazines’ most shared articles in January 2017.

Forbes headlines that gathered the most Twitter shares:

• 10 Ways To Push Your Business Further In 2017 (28,000+ Twitter shares) – 45 characters
• Seek These 7 Character Traits To Avoid The Risk Of Bad Hires (21,000+ Twitter shares) – 60 characters
• Resilience: The Skill Above All Others That Helps Entrepreneurs To Excel (19,000+ Twitter shares) – 72 characters
• 10 Influential American Business Leaders Today (8,000+ Twitter shares) – 46 characters
• Seven Habits Of Extra Interesting People (4,000+ Twitter shares) – 40 characters

As you can see, none of these articles really included over 75 characters. So maybe Outbrain’s research isn’t the best to follow. Having 60+ words in your headline doesn’t work out so well for SEO either.

We decided to check the headline character count of 20 top shared articles by Fast Company, Inc., Forbes, and Entrepreneur.

60 characters seems to be the most-used headline length. (It’s also a good choice SEO-wise)

Key takeaway: Keep your headline length around 60 characters.

Quick recap

Before you move on to the next article, review everything you just learned.

• Start headlines with numbers
• Use the right wording
• Brainstorm more than 1 headline per article
• Use odd numbers more often
• Keep your headline length around 60 characters

Now that you’ve mastered some new copywriting skills, go ahead and check out these 25 Facebook ad design hacks to also improve your ads’ visual identity.

The post How to Write Adorable Headlines, Answered by Data appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.