YouTube Ads Increase Sales

I’ve been doing YouTube advertising for one of my clients for six months, and it’s increased our business by an estimated 10%. While I had done Google and Facebook pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, I was new to video. Viewers are now spending up to six hours/day watching video, so the time is right. 

Be prepared for a learning curve 

The YouTube ads creation tool is the same as that for Google ads. But there are significant differences and some subtle nuances. I did a lot of reading as I was working on this. It’s also helpful to watch videos that explain processes. 

We created a series of explainer videos

Our videos were about 60 seconds or less. I wrote the scripts, and this is key—keep them crisp and focused on a single topic. A quick how-to that explains a process or, in our case, the benefit of using a product/service. 

Professional-looking videos can get expensive, but I turned to Fiverr—a website that hosts contractors offering a wide range of services. I found a graphic designer from Pakistan who created our videos for between $100-200/each. The quality of these is excellent. We’ve developed a good working relationship, and it helped that he’s creative and clearly takes a lot of pride in his work. Turnaround time is generally a week or so. 

I also made a few of my own little videos using Promo.com

I love this little application. Easy to use, you can produce a polished video with music and three-five frames in a couple of hours. Keep your message simple and focused. 

Keywords are critical to the success of our ads

This is where it starts. Keywords are fundamental to a successful campaign. I use Google’s Keyword Planner. You want to use words and phrases for which there is a significant amount of search, but relatively little competition. Identify how much you want to spend per day and per view. 

Your keywords/phrases need to be grouped into adgroups.

Ad groups  organize your ads by a common theme—the types of products/services you’re advertising. An ad group contains one or more ads that share similar targets. Set a bid, or price, to be used when an ad group's keywords trigger an ad to appear. 

Identify your target audience

Really think about age, gender, education and interests. Think about where your audience is hanging out. These will be the websites where you place your ads. You can also create custom audiences based on these values. 

Measuring success: Make sure you’re tracking your website traffic with Google Analytics

I created a landing page to sign up for our newsletter, monitored Google Analytics and watched our numbers increase for our range of services. We were clearly driving traffic to our website. By synching your Google Ads account with Google Analytics you can see the effectiveness of your campaign from a single sign-in that streamlines your effort.

Interested in YouTube/Google advertising? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing specialists. 

Clubhouse: The Hot, New Audio-Only App

Clubhouse is the hot new social app that’s generating buzz from those who suffer from FOMO-disease (Fear of Missing Out). This invite-only, audio-based iPhone app is like listening in on someone else’s phone call. After a year of Covid privation, Clubhouse fills a need by creating community. 

What sets this social app apart: It’s audio-only 

Clubhouse has gotten some media attention from celebrities who’ve joined the Clubhouse rooms and immediately drawn big crowds. The biggest draw was uber-rich Elon Musk, whose Clubhouse appearance broke the 5,000-person limit for a room. Users tuned in to secondary listening rooms and live-streamed on other platforms to follow the Musk conversation. 

Clubhouse lets you listen in, or you could get called on as a participant in the chat. But this is a virtual clubhouse; each discussion takes place in a different room of the house. You can host chat rooms, browse the discussions going on in each room, look at who’s participating in each, and pop in and out of chats.

Clubhouse has also hosted a live reading of The Lion King, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg recently joined a Clubhouse chat. Other Clubhouse celebs include Oprah, Kevin Hart and Chris Rock. California Congressman Ted Lieu and retired Yankee pitcher CC Sabathia have also joined the Clubhouse discussions. 

At the Clubhouse, it’s celebrities who draw attention

Clubhouse hype and its audience continue to grow. Some stats that will get your attention

This app is still in its infancy—it will celebrate its first birthday in April 2021. 

• Clubhouse has about 2M weekly active users, as of the beginning of March. 
• Clubhouse has just nine employees.

The app was initially valued at $100M. How is this possible?

• It began with 1,500 beta users in April 2020.
• Clubhouse’s owners haven’t done any significant press; it doesn’t have a real website. 
• Yet Clubhouse was valued at $100M in May 2020 after an initial round of Series A funding with a $12M investment from VC Andreessen Horowitz.
• Clubhouse has a large population of celebrities and elite users—exclusivity is, of course, a large part of its appeal. As it grows, it will lose some of that exclusivity. How will it continue to set itself apart? 
• Clubhouse remains invite-only. New users can allocate a select number of invites to whomever they choose. Some are selling Clubhouse invites on eBay for up to $125 each.

Join in the after-hours house party

At 10ish every night, there’s a group of 30-50 people in The Back of the Bus room. What goes on there? A host makes sure there’s no tech talk. Topics can range from dating advice to tarot card readings. 

Further contributing to the app’s exclusivity: No Android version yet

Given the app’s rapid growth, it’s easy to see why investors are watching Clubhouse closely. The app recently raised a new round of funding on a $1B valuation. As Rachel Maddow says, “Watch this space!”

Time to talk marketing? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing specialists. 

Oreos: The Secret Story Behind Their New Flavors

There used to be a time when we talked a lot about brand. This was before we had more social media platforms than we need and thousands of hot new apps and games. But the importance of brand has never diminished. It’s fundamental to how each of us is perceived in the marketplace. So here’s a pretty great brand story about Oreos, one of America’s favorite snack foods. It transcends demographics, because who doesn’t love Oreos?

There’s a dedicated Oreo team that comes up with limited-edition flavors

You may/not have noticed that Oreos periodically introduces new flavors. Their efforts are made public each time Oreo announces a new variety. There’s a special team with a unified goal: How to continue to excite fans and drive growth. The latest: A salmon-colored cookie with green filling, released with Lady Gaga in honor of her 2020 album, Chromatica. 

There have been 65 flavors since Oreo’s inception more than 100 years ago

Flavors have included Blueberry Pie, Pina Colada, Banana Split, Waffle & Syrup, Crispy Tiramisù and Carrot Cake.

Novelty Oreos sell reasonably well, but the goal is to drive sales back to the classic

According to Nielsen, sales of flavored, seasonal and other novelty Oreos were up more than 12% over the last three years. But get this: Sales really aren’t the point. Novelty Oreos play a more fundamental role: They help drive consumers back to everyone’s favorite, the 108-year-old original Oreo. The new flavors are ads that will remind us how much we love these cookies. In the same period that sales were up 12% for novelty flavors, sales of the classic were up almost 22%, according to Nielsen.

“When we do it well, it drives our classic Oreo cookie, as well as the sales of the limited edition,” said Justin Parnell, senior director of the Oreo brand.

Many consumers, he said, will “pick up that classic Oreo variety that they love, whether it’s the Original, Golden or Double Stuf, in addition to the limited edition.” Certain flavors have become classics, including the Golden; they’ve transcended novelty to become permanent fixtures in the Oreo pantheon.

Oreos works with chefs to identify food trends

Oreo’s innovation dream team includes marketers, product developers, researchers and food scientists, Mr. Parnell said. The team begins each new Oreo ideation period with a suite of 50 flavor options, then narrows them down to a dozen. New flavors are conceived 18-24 months before release. The team works with chefs “to understand what foods are trending.” I just googled and consumers are curious. Nostalgia is back, exotic spicing and international flavors, Immunity-boosting foods are also hot. 

Releases may focus on an event or cause

An example of Oreos doing the right thing: A regular flavored “Triple Stuf” Oreo with tricolor filling, released with the U.S. Olympic Team, continues Oreos’ tradition of celebrating an event or cause. 

It’s always a good time to be rethinking brand and marketing strategies. Contact Top of Mind Marketing. Writers and content marketing specialists.

Nine Easy Ways to Increase Website Traffic

Optimizing your website doesn’t have to be hard. With a little discipline and adherence to ongoing maintenance procedures, you can create an overarching strategy that will help increase your web traffic. 

1. Build an internal linking strategy. Creating links among related topics and pages encourages users to stay on your site and drill down. 
2. Keyword research. Research helps you identify the keywords that appeal to your target audience. There is a number of tools from which to choose. Ubersuggest is very easy to use, and there are third-party applications that come with a pricetag. I like Google’s Keyword Planner because it’s free, comprehensive, and it aligns with Google products. You’ll need to create an AdWords account and a gmail address. 
3. Improve loading speed. We’re an impatient group. Go to Google PageSpeed, key in your website’s url and check your load time. The violators may be your images. They should be in the 1500-2500 pixel range. I generally go for the lower end of this range. I often see people with beasty images that are 5000 pixels. Put these on a diet and your load speed will dramatically increase.
4. Page titles. Keep them short and concise. Google truncates anything more than 70 characters. Big tip: Populate your page title with those keywords for which you want to rank.
5. Identify keyword focus and write metadescriptions for each page. A metadescription should accurately summarize the page’s content. Use keywords and think about the value visitors are getting from your site. 
6. Use alt tags. Alt tags are text fields that you see when you upload images to your site. If an image doesn’t load, the viewer will see the description and understand what the image is contributing to the story. 
7. Check for broken links. It’s frustrating to click on a link and get a 404 error. If the page is no longer available, remove the link. 
8. Identify duplicate content. Bots look for content and index it. When there is duplication, they get confused and can’t identify the best result. The result is a stalemate. If you want to repeat something—which we often do—identify one home, then link to that content.
9. Optimizing for mobile is no longer optional. More than 70% of users are now accessing everything on their phones. Your site should be built in responsive design so that everything adapts. Implications for mobile users:
10. Small screens call for larger text.
11. All content should auto-adapt to the device on which it’s being viewed. No scrolling or manipulating the screen to see the website.
12. A navigation menu with lots of drilldown can be annoying on a mobile device. It takes time for new screens to load, so scrolling can be more efficient. It may require your rethinking your navigation. A simpler schematic with more scrolling may be appropriate.

A new year is the perfect motivation to optimize and update your website presence! Contact me at Top of Mind Marketing. Writers and content marketing specialists.

Is This the Year You’ll Finally Update Your Website?

Who besides me has promised that 2021 is the year you will finally create a new website? If so, focus on a simple, stable, mobile-friendly design. Think about your navigation; grouping information so users easily can find what they’re looking for.

Easy ways to add videos to your website

Thanks to YouTube, more than 75% of people now are using videos in their marketing. Videos are a great way to promote a new product, introduce a new member of your team or explain a process that can be confusing. One of my clients is rebranding, and we’re doing YouTube advertising using animated explainer and whiteboard videos. These 60-second animated videos have been very successful–our YouTube campaign has doubled our website traffic. I write the scripts and generally map out storyboards before handing these off to our vendor for development. This campaign is proving to be effective and affordable.

For a quick video fix, I’ve been using an application called Promo.com to make short little promotional videos. It’s easy to use—insert images, choose music, add some text, save and upload. They’re snappy and fun.

Forget sales pages; include informational pages

Build some informational pages where you answer questions that customers might have. FAQs have fallen from favor, but I think they’re staging a comeback. They’re most effective if you focus on answering very specific questions. 

Remember that SEO starts with words

Website optimization is based on keywords—the optimal word here is “words”. You have to have words to let Google do its job. I’m a writer, so I always advocate for more good content for landing pages. Will users read these? Maybe not. But content does two things—it helps with SEO and it provides important information about your products/services. Remember to frontload the content on your pages—the most important information belongs in the first few paragraphs. 

Building backlinks has become an important part of an SEO strategy

Backlinks include Yelp, Facebook, LinkedIn, including LinkedIn’s business page, and/or business directories. Google views links from external sites like a vote of confidence. Ask influencers—those who are well-known and respected in their industry with large social media followings–to recommend you in their posts, blogs, etc. This will drive traffic to your site. Influencer marketing in its purest forms involves a budget and paying for these referrals and links, but I’m doing a more modest form of this for one of my nonprofit clients. We’re working with some of our power partners to reference each other in our blogs and social posts. 

Install Google Analytics to track user response

Install Google Analytics so you can start tracking the effectiveness of your efforts. Be patient—it takes some time for Google to start indexing information on your new website. Benefits are cumulative; the longer a campaigns runs, the more benefits you will see. 

A lockdown and a new year—the perfect motivation to update your website presence! Contact me at Top of Mind Marketing. Writers and content marketing specialists.

Is Facebook Good For The World?

 

Has Facebook Lost Its Way?

Let’s start by giving Facebook credit for its attempt to combat disinformation. But has it done enough? The answer, increasingly, seems to be no. Facebook’s own staff, who have historically been positive about the platform’s impact, are now raising questions about the application’s broader social influence.

According to Buzzfeed, Facebook’s semiannual “Pulse Survey”, taken by nearly 50,000 employees in October, showed workers were losing faith that the company was improving the world. Only 51% of respondents said they believed that Facebook had a positive influence on the world.

Facebook on the wrong side of history

Facebook engineer Ashok Chandwaney quit the company over its failure to address concerns around racism, disinformation and incitements to violence. Other senior Facebook staff left the company over morality concerns and the direction the company is taking. Facebook can be a forum to do good, yet many believe that Facebook has no real interest in cracking down on dangerous and divisive hate speech because it sparks debate and interaction. Engagement is what keeps people coming back, though anger spills over into real-world incendiary incidents.

QAnon: Facebook missed an opportunity to do the right thing

QAnon is a dangerous group of conspiracy peddlers who found a home on Facebook in 2016, and there are millions of members and followers. Experts had long been warning Facebook about the group, yet only last month did they finally take down these pages. There were countless warnings, yet it took four years before Facebook finally acted on this. 

Many recall Zuckerberg’s speech to Georgetown University in October 2019

In this speech, Zuckerberg essentially capitulated, explaining that he was not responsible for monitoring what people were posting on the Facebook platform. “I believe in giving people a voice . . . with all of our individual voices and perspectives, we can bring the world closer together.” Sorry Mark. Incendiary rhetoric and disinformation aren’t bringing the world closer together. They’re tearing the world apart. Engagement seems to drive all major decisions at Facebook, with little regard for values such as honesty, authenticity and contributing to the greater good. Let’s not forget the endless data problems that seem to plague Facebook.

It’s difficult to conclude that Zuckerberg is motivated by anything other than profits. Congress has made lame efforts to regulate these big tech companies. In the case of Facebook, without penalties from enforcement, we’ll have more empty platitudes. In a better time, this might not be necessary. 

We’ve written about Mark Zuckerberg’s cozying up to Donald Trump

Zuckerberg clearly has no interest in being hauled in front of Congress again for long hours of testimony. If forging a relationship with Trump was a path to circumvent that, he was happy to take it. We’re now ushering in a new administration, and our social media companies may be in for more accountability. 

Marketing 2021

Everyone right now seems to be in the process of updating his/her website, including me! This is the perfect time to develop new marketing strategies or start working on a new site. Contact Top of Mind Marketing. Writers and content marketing specialists.

COVID Downtime: A New Website For an Old Client

I’ve been working with a client for nearly ten years, and we’ve taken his old website about as far as it will go. It was built in an ancient program, and we converted it to WordPress eight-plus years ago. There have been a few other Hail Marys along the way. 

Every year we think that this will be “The Year”

Every year we think we’ll be able to build a new website. But we keep getting bumped. The recession killed us. A couple of years ago we came in last behind a monster of an increase in workers comp insurance. Every business owner gets this. This year started out with a bang, but COVID has put a damper on all of our marketing initiatives. Yet we’re actually starting to work on a new website. I’m managing my expectations, but I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to start the new year with a sleek new site.

WordPress brought our site into the 21^st century and made it more accessible

These conversions can work, but the site has remained cantankerous with more than its share of workarounds. My client’s an electrical contractor, so we’ve kept the site updated with fresh contentand images as much as possible. We schedule photoshoots of new projects, and we generally show both before and after images. But it’s challenging. 

Contractors can show off their beautiful cabinets and hardwood floors, their new kitchens and baths. But an electrical contractor? Much more difficult. How do you showcase the wizardry of completely retrofitting the wiring for an older home to accommodate today’s electronics-crazed users so they won’t electrocute themselves? In the early days of LED lighting, I used to point out the unique undercounter or recessed lighting, but now LED is routine.

Look for WordPress themes that are SEO friendly

We’ve selected a WordPress theme that will give us a lot of exposure—today’s themes provide promo modules to highlight company features and/or events as users scroll down the page. They extend the homepage where you can use your keywords. There is a lot of SEO value in these themes. We’re writing case studies of residential and a commercial projects for which we also have good images. We’re rethinking navigation and paying attention to page speed—especially image size. We’ve removed a few old projects that are dated. 

• Images. Those great big graphics that are 5000 pixels? Easily resize to 2000 or less. I generally aim for around 1200. 
• Sliders. Use Less. Or useless. Research shows that people don’t stick around to watch your homepage slide show. Choose one great primary image. Swap it out when you want a change.
• Compress large images with Tinypng. 

My client’s site is 20 years old

I don’t know anyone right now who isn’t in the process of updating his/her website, including me! If COVID’s given you some downtime, this might be the time to start working on a new site. Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing specialists.