How to Run an Instagram Contest: A 10-Step Guide

With more than 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram has established itself as an obvious platform for brands looking to expand their reach and engage with their audience.

Figuring out how to launch a successful Instagram contest, however, is much less obvious. Sure, it sounds like an effective strategy for stirring up conversation -- it capitalizes on user generated content (UGC) and typically requires very little commitment for participants. But where do you start? And how can you be sure that you're covering all the bases?

How to Run an Instagram Contest: A 10-Step Guide

To help give you some direction, we put together a detailed list of steps to run through when planning an engaging Instagram contest. From setting goals to monitoring submissions, we've covered all of the basics below -- and we've included some inspirational examples along the way. Check it out ...

Disclaimer: This blog post includes some information on legal issues surrounding internet marketing, but legal information is not the same as legal advice -- applying the law to a specific circumstance. We’ve conducted research to better ensure that our information is accurate and useful, but we insist that you talk to a lawyer if you want professional assurance that our information, and your interpretation of it, is accurate. In a nutshell, you may not rely on this information as legal advice, nor as a recommendation or endorsement of any particular legal understanding, and you should instead see this post’s info as for entertainment purposes only.

1. Plan objectives and goals.

Before you dive into an Instagram marketing contest, it’s important to plan it out first. The key to running a successful contest is to have a purpose -- one that aligns with the interests and behaviors of your target audience.

Whether you're looking to grow your brand presence on Instagram or build out your list of followers, it's important that you set a specific goal so that you're not left wondering whether or not you were successful in the end.

To help narrow your focus, think about the audience you’re trying to reach: What kinds of posts do they like seeing on your account? What kinds of posts do they enjoy posting on their own feeds? How do they behave on the platform? If you're looking to drum up a lot of engagement, you should aim to center your goals and purpose around content that your audience actually wants to post and engage with.

Don’t forget to establish a time frame and budget for your contest, as determining these logistical details upfront will help you design a more effective contest.

2. Create an entry method.

Although the most effective and engaging Instagram contests are those that actually prompt your audience to post their own photos, there are number of different ways brands can create contests on Instagram. Because of this, it’s important to establish and emphasize what it takes for your audience to actually enter the contest.

Here are some ideas for how your audience might enter your contest:

• Have your audience post a photo or a video to Instagram with a specific hashtag and a specific theme.
• Have your audience solely follow you or do so in addition to creating a post.
• Have your audience tag your brand in their post.
• Have your audience Like or comment on one of your posts.

(For more ideas, click here.)

Make sure you establish what the guidelines are for entering the contest, and make that clear on your promotional materials. Maybe your contest is centered around a hashtag that doesn’t include your brand name. If you still want your brand to be tagged to gain recognition, you have to make that clear in your rules.

3. Find the perfect hashtag.

A good hashtag is a key to any engaging Instagram contest. Without it, there’s no link between the contest and the content being generated. In other words, hashtags help create brand and/or contest recognition by serving as a mechanism for sharing and driving participation.

Trouble is, creating the perfect hashtag can be tricky. If your contest is going to have a time frame (and it should), you want to create a hashtag that you’re not going to want to use over and over again. Not to mention, there are tons of hashtags being created each day, making it difficult to land on something unique and catchy.

To help you come up with the best fit, consider these contest hashtag guidelines:

• Short: Create a hashtag that sticks in people’s minds. The more readable and identifiable your hashtag is, the better it is for your contest.
• Relevant: Make sure you’re creating a hashtag that is very clearly related back to your brand name, product, or services. If you settle on a generic, crowded hashtag such as #ThrowbackThursday, it's likely that you'll have a hard time figuring out who your participants actually are.
• Memorable: Users are likely to see promotions for your contest prior to actually posting the content. This means your hashtag needs to be memorable enough for users to think about it once and remember to act sometime later. Try to make your hashtag catchy, easy to search, and easy to write. Avoid weird spellings and confusing word choices.
• Universal: Think about your audience. Does everyone speak the same language or use similar words? If you have an international audience, make sure you’re careful about using slang words or region-specific terms that might confuse people.
• Rare: Do a search before you choose a hashtag. Are there lots of users using your ideal hashtag for some other purposes? If so, you may want to head back to the drawing board.

An example of an effective, engaging hashtag:

Mint.com, an online personal budgeting and financial management company, hosted their #MyMintMoment contest.

The contest was well-designed for a number of reasons, one of which is its hashtag. The hashtag -- #MyMintMoment -- is simple, short, memorable, and easy to understand. It stayed on-brand and had a clear theme.

The goal of the contest was to get users to post about the things they were saving for. Participants posted pictures of tattoos, vacations, weddings, children, cars -- you name it.

This is a great example of an effective hashtag, but it’s also a great example of how UGC can be used to drive marketing decisions. Think about it: Mint asked participants to share posts about things they were saving for. Sounds like an easy way to gain insight surrounding the unique motives and interests that fuel the usage of their service, doesn't it?

4. Clearly define a theme.

Because most Instagram contests are UGC-based, it’s important to pick a theme so your users know what kinds of pictures and videos to post.

Ideally, you want to a pick a theme that aligns with your market, product, or services. But you can also take advantage of holidays, seasons, and events that align with your product or brand.

An example of an effective theme:

Last summer, D Magazine, a city and lifestyle magazine based in Dallas, used the Texas summer heat to create an effective #StayCoolDallas contest. The contest encouraged participants to submit photos of ways to stay cool in the Dallas heat. Submissions included everything from cold drinks at favorite bars and restaurants to fun summer activities.

This contest and hashtag worked particularly well because of the double meaning of the word “cool” -- which ultimately left room for participants to get creative with their interpretations. This is a great example of how to make engagement super easy.

While the hashtag wasn't totally brand-specific, the theme was very much in line with their brand and passion for all things Dallas. And as a result of the contest, they were left with a ton of new material to get ideas for their next issue.

5. Decide how winners will be chosen.

Part of a well-designed contest is informing your participants of how the winner will be chosen. Most contests are determined based on one of two ways: a vote or a jury. Let's explore how each option works ...

Voting:

A great way to boost the virality of your contest is to have participants compete for the most Likes. If the prize is valuable enough, your participants will likely share their posts with their friends across channels in order to get as many Likes as possible.

This strategy helps maximize your audience’s reach. At the same time, it can be detrimental to your contest, as you run into issues with folks using “Like bots” to gain artificial Likes. To avoid any complications here, you'll want to put forth very specific rules that address the use of these types of workarounds.

Jury:

For the sake of quality and overall fairness, the jury method is the clear winner. With the jury method, you select a group of experts to decide upon a winner, rather than relying on a voting system.

There are pros and cons to votes or juries, but no matter the way you choose, make sure to clearly state your method so your users know what they’re vying for. Many brands choose to have a mixed-method approach and use a combination of voting and jury to determine the winner.

6. Choose an appropriate award.

When determining what the award for you contest should be, you need to consider your target audience, your budgetary constraints, and how aggressive your goals are.

Remember that by asking your audience to participate in the contest, you’re asking them to take action on something. As with any effort like this, you'll need the value of the prize to outweigh the cost and energy required to enter the contest. While people might gloss over an opportunity to win a free t-shirt, it's likely that they'd be willing to jump through a few hoops for something like a free trip.

While your prize should match the entry action, it should also align with the interests of your target audience. Ask yourself: What might my target audience like to have? Your list of answers for this -- budget not considered -- might be huge. Sure, everyone wants that free trip we mentioned earlier, but that's not the point. The goal is to find a prize that's both valuable and relevant to your brand.

Gift cards, free services, coupons, giveaways, and product goodie bags are all common prizes that brands use for contests, but we’re always in favor of getting creative, too.

Example of a creative contest prize:

One of our favorite examples of contest prizes was Sperry’s Photo Real Design Contest. Sperry encouraged users to post “epic photos” that represented an “odyssey.”

Participants then submitted photos of all kinds of things -- nature shots, colorful art, real people, etc. -- to be judged based on creativity and the number of Likes it received.

The winner that was chosen received a unique pair of Sperry shoes featuring their photo. Talk about a creative prize, right? Not to mention, it served as a great example of how brands can use contests to inspire real product ideas.

7. Create terms & conditions.

Don’t forget that when you create a competition with a prize, you must follow legal guidelines. The laws that will apply to you depend on where you’re based and who you allow to enter your contest, so you should consult your lawyer for help drafting your terms and conditions. Creating a terms & conditions page is a must.

Here are some common terms people include:

• The name and contact details of the promoting brand
• The dates of the contest
• The rules of who can enter (such as age and employee restrictions)
• The guidelines for how people enter
• The guidelines for how a winner is chosen
• The date and way winners will be announced
• The date and way the winner will be informed
• The time period the winner has to respond and claim their prize
• The specific of the prize (including number of prizes, description of prizes, and any caveats)
• The details of how the prize will be delivered
• Acknowledge that the promotion isn’t sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Instagram or any other social media used throughout the contest.

Note: Check out Instagram’s Promotion guidelines and make sure to comply with their rules.

8. Promote like crazy.

Now that you've got a solid plan in place, it’s time to promote the heck out of your contest.

Where's the best place to start spreading the word? The possibilities are seemingly endless, but here are a few ideas to inspire your promotion efforts:

• Your blog. Write a post on your site detailing the contest, and use it as a launch point for your contest's landing page.

• Social media. What better place to launch a social media contest than on social media? Direct your existing followers to the contest by including a shortened link in your bio and referencing that link in your promotional posts.

• Email. Extend the invitation to participate to your email subscribers by sending over a quick and friendly email to announce the offer.

9. Monitor submissions.

Monitoring both your promotional efforts and the level of participation during your contest is essential for meeting your goals and creating a plan to follow up on your contest.

Make sure to determine what metrics you’d like to use and how you’ll keep track of them. Here are some metrics to consider using:

• Number of submissions - Total number of posts submitted in compliance with your terms and conditions.
• Likes per submission - Helps you keep track of potential winners if your contest is decided by vote.
• Number of participants - If users can submit more than one submission, how many unique participants contributed to your contest?
• Top participants - Who shared the most content during your campaign? Keeping track of this helps you better engage with your biggest fans.
• Total Likes - Measures the total number of Likes on all submissions in your contest.
• Total reach - Captures the number of followers of your participants at the time of submission. Meant to show you the potential reach of your campaign.
• Follower growth during contest - Measure how much your following increased during the contest’s time period.

If your current audience is relatively small, and you don’t expect more than 30 submissions to your contest, you may decide to monitor your contest manually. To do this, assign someone the task of keeping track of submissions each day. At the end of the contest, someone will have to go through each submission and measure and write down the results from each submission.

If you’re monitoring your contest manually, try using a tool like Tagboard or Google Alerts to keep track of when your hashtag is being mentioned online, making it easier to track submissions. (HubSpot customers: You can set up a custom Stream in your Social Monitoring tool to keep tabs on a specific hashtag. Learn more here.)

If you’re expecting well over 30 submissions, however, you can imagine how difficult monitoring your submissions might be. If that's the case, you may want to explore an Instagram-specific tool such as Iconosquare.

10. Follow up accordingly.

Once the contest is over, you can’t forget to follow up on the rules you set in the first place. Keep your terms and conditions in mind when reviewing the submissions to ensure that you're being 100% fair in your evaluation.

Again, this is why establishing your terms and conditions early on is so important, as it will provide you with an documented plan for selecting, contacting, and awarding the winner.

Once you've selected and notified the winner, don't forget to make the announcement publicly. Here's an example of how to do so from D Magazine's #StayCoolDallas contest:

Instagram Contest Ideas

Now that you know how to run a contest, you'll need to dream up ways to make your contest interesting, compelling, and appropriate for your brands. Here are some of the top contest ideas for Instagram:

1. Caption Contest

The perfect caption can make or break an Instagram post, so why not source the creativity of your audience and get some laughs along the way?

The caption contest is a great choice for Instagram because it allows your audience to stop and think about the contest (and, in effect, your brand) while providing a low-friction way for them to participate.

2. User-Generated Content

User-generated content — or any content produced by unpaid contributors — is a win/win for a brand. They get to participate and possibly win prizes; you get to enjoy extended reach by tapping into your audience's audiences (say that 10 times fast). Not to mention that your brand benefits from the social proof of de facto testimonials from their participation.

Plus, to get even more mileage from the contest, you can ask participants' permission to feature their content on your channels, giving you more content to promote.

3. Trivia Contest

With a trivia contest, you're challenging your audience to demonstrate what they know. This encourages engagement on your posts and generates awareness for your brand and/or the topic that you're shining the spotlight on. All you have to do is ask a question and reward those who get the answer correct. That reward may come in the form of a prize or as entry to win a prize.

4. Engage to Win

These types of contests are perhaps one of the more popular on Instagram because they solicit direct engagement as a way to enter. This may come in the form of likes, follows, shares, or tagging people. By doing this, you receive a ton of engagement as a result of the incentive, and this can increase your brand reach.

5. 1 Like 1 Vote

This contest usually relies on user-generated content but takes it a step further. The content gets promoted, and the audience is asked to vote (with a like) on the best entry, whether it's a song, drawing, selfie, or other showcase of talent/personality. For this reason, your "contestants" are further incentivized to promote your contest to their audiences.

6. Raffle or Game

A raffle is just as possible online as it is in person. You can direct your audience to participate in whatever way you see fit to choose a random number or receive a raffle ticket. At the end, use a random number generator to select the winner. You can also do games such as "guess how many marbles are in the jar" or "how many differences can you find in these two pictures" as a way for participants to win/enter.

7. Offline Challenge

Just because you're spreading the word of your contest through Instagram doesn't mean it has to be based or held on Instagram. You can incentivize your audience to do something outdoors, participate in a fitness challenge, or perform some other activity.

Ready to Run a Contest on Instagram?

Now that you know everything it takes to run a successful, engaging Instagram contest, go put your knowledge to work for your brand.

Not only will you end up engaging and expanding your audience, but you’ll also end up with great new content you can use to inspire future content and contests.

 

Editor's note: This post was originally published in July 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

How to Run an Instagram Contest: A 10-Step Guide was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

How to Create Social Media Buttons for All the Top Social Networks

Social media is an extremely valuable tool for promoting your marketing content.

Additionally, embedding your social profiles on your website or blog posts can help increase traffic to your social networks, and ultimately create brand consistency across platforms. 

But with so many social networks providing their own individual sharing and follow buttons, it's often difficult to know which social media button to use for what purpose.

To address this, we've put together a comprehensive guide to help you understand the differences between the share and follow buttons for six of the biggest social networks — Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest — as well as how to implement them on your website, blog, and other content.

Jump to instructions for: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | YouTube | Pinterest | Instagram

The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Creating Social Media Sharing Buttons

Differentiating between social media sharing buttons and social media follow buttons lets you identify which type of button you should be using for what purpose.

It's the first step in understanding the nuances of all the various social media buttons available to you. Let's clear that up right now.

Social Media Follow Buttons

These buttons serve to promote your business' presence on various social networks and help you generate fans/followers for those particular accounts. By placing these buttons on your business' website, you can help to create visibility for your social media accounts and easily extend your reach there.

You can put these buttons anywhere on your website, but we recommend at least placing these buttons on your website's 'About Us' page and your blog's homepage/sidebar. The Twitter Follow Button, Facebook Follow Button, LinkedIn Company Follow Plugin, and YouTube Subscribe Button (and more) that we'll cover in this article all serve as social media follow buttons.

Social Media Share Links/Buttons

These links and buttons enable your website visitors and content viewers to easily share your content with their social media connections and networks. Adding these buttons to your content allows you to expand the reach of your content to new audiences and generate new visitors back to your website.

You should add social media sharing links/buttons to every piece of content you create, including landing pages, web pages, individual blog articles, email content, etc. The Tweet/Share Button, Facebook Like and Share Buttons, and LinkedIn Share Button (and more) that we'll cover in this article all serve as social media sharing buttons.

Now, let's dive into the most important social media buttons available for each of the top six social networks. (HubSpot customers: Many of these buttons come out of the box with HubSpot's Social Media Apps.)

Social Media Buttons for Twitter

1. Twitter Follow Button

What It's For:

The Twitter Follow Button is great for generating new followers for your Twitter account. Users can start following you on Twitter with just one click -- without ever having to leave your site.

How to Add a Twitter Follow Button:

Visit https://publish.twitter.com/# and select "Twitter Buttons" to customize your button's featured account (i.e. the account you want people to follow). 

Then, select "Follow Button":

Finally, copy and paste the HTML code it generates where you want the button to appear on your website.

Alternatively, click "set customization options" above the embed link if you'd like to further customize aspects like language, or size of button. 

See it in action. Follow HubSpot on Twitter:

Follow @hubspot

 

2. Twitter Share Button

What It's For:

Use this button to enable site visitors to easily share content (e.g. blog posts, landing pages, other web pages, etc.) with their networks on Twitter, extending the reach of your content to their connections.

How to Add a Share Button:

Visit https://publish.twitter.com/# and select "Twitter Buttons". Then, Choose "Share Button":

We recommend adding your company's Twitter username to increase your account's reach and generate new followers.

Once customized, grab the HTML code for your new button and place it on your site where you want the button to appear. 

See it in action. Tweet this blog post:

3. Twitter Hashtag Button

What It's For:

This button is great for encouraging visitors to tweet about certain hashtags you're promoting, like for events or specific marketing campaigns. Add these buttons to pages for these campaigns or events to spread and promote the event and its hashtag. (For more information about hashtag use, check out this blog post.)

For instance, if you're promoting an event with a hashtag, you can grab the HTML code and place it your event's website or registration page.

How to Add a Twitter Hashtag Button:

Visit https://publish.twitter.com/# and click "Twitter Buttons" to customize your hashtag button. Then select "Hashtag Button". Next, you can either customize or copy-and-paste the code as-is into your website. 

See it in action. Tweet about HubSpot's annual marketing and sales event, INBOUND:

4. Twitter Mention Button

What It's For:

Use this button to encourage website visitors to communicate with you via Twitter. Add this button to pages on your site like your 'Contact Us,' 'About Us,' or 'Help' pages. It's great for customer support.

How to Add a Twitter Mention Button:

Visit https://publish.twitter.com/# and click "Twitter Buttons" and then "Mention Button" to customize your button. Then grab the HTML code and paste it into your website's HTML where you want the button to appear.

See it in action. Tweet a message to HubSpot:

5. Twitter Message Button

What It's For:

Use this button to helps users connect with you via a private direct Twitter message. This is another great Twitter button to add to your site's 'Contact Us' or 'Customer Service' pages so customers can easily connect with you for problem-solving.

How to Add a Twitter Message Button:

Visit https://publish.twitter.com/#, and click "Twitter Buttons" and "Message Button" to customize your button. Then grab the HTML code and paste it into your website's HTML where you want the button to appear.

See it in action. Send a direct message to HubSpot:

Message @HubSpot

6. Pre-populated 'Tweet This' Anchor Text Links

What They're For:

Have you ever wanted to create an anchor text link that pre-populates a specific Twitter message for your visitors to share? We call these links 'Tweet This' links, and at HubSpot, we use them in blog articles a lot to make sharing content easier.

Usually, these tweet links are used on landing pages to promote offers using specific messaging, and within content itself such as in blog posts. Similar to the official Tweet Button, 'Tweet This' links enable marketers to have more control over the message a visitor shares about their content on Twitter.

How to Add a 'Tweet This' Anchor Text CTA:

Luckily, there's a great, free tool to help you easily create 'Tweet This' links for your content. Simply visit http://clicktotweet.com, enter the message you want to populate the tweet and click "Generate New Link", and then copy/paste the generated URL into your anchor text (e.g., "Tweet This!"):

As a best practice, include a URL in the tweet message to direct people back to the original piece of content you're trying to promote, and be sure to shorten the URL to save room for the tweet copy. It's also a great idea to include your business' @username in the tweet to help increase reach.

See it in action:

(Remember, you can customize the anchor text however you like.)

Tweet This Blog Article!

7. Twitter Timeline Widget

What They're For:

Twitter's Timeline widget allows you to embed your entire business' Twitter profile onto your website, so users can see all recent Tweets right from within your website. 

How to Add a Twitter Timeline Widget:

Visit https://publish.twitter.com/#, click "Embedded Timeline", and paste your business' Twitter profile URL, lists, or favorites. Then grab the HTML code and place it on your website where you want the widget to display.

See one in action:

Social Media Buttons for Facebook

1. Facebook Page Plugin

What It's For:

The Facebook Page Plugin enables you to promote your business' Facebook Page on your website/blog, highlight other users who have already Liked your page, display your follower count, and feature recent posts on your page.

The box also allows visitors to like your Facebook Business Page with just one click -- without leaving your site -- enabling you to promote your Facebook presence and easily increase your page's Likes.

How to Add a Facebook Page Plugin:

To generate a Facebook Like Box for your website, visit https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/page-plugin. Include the vanity URL for your Facebook Page as well as your customization preferences. Then generate the code (available in HTML5, XFBML, IFRAME, or a URL), and place it on your website where you want it to appear.

See It in Action:

2. Facebook Like Button

What It's For:

Facebook's Like Button is a button that enables users to easily give your content a virtual thumbs up. By clicking the Like Button, a story also appears on the user's Facebook Timeline and in their friends' News Feeds with a link back to your content, whether it's a blog post or a specific landing page.

Use this button to make it easy for visitors to endorse your content and share it with their Facebook connections, but keep in mind this button doesn't allow them to add personalized messages to links before sharing them. To allow users to add a personalized message, use the Facebook Share Button (see below).

How to Add a Facebook Like Button:

Visit https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/like-button to customize your Like Button and grab the code (available in HTML5, XFBML, IFRAME, or a URL) to place on your website.

See it in action:

 

3. Facebook Share Button

What It's For:

Facebook's Share Button acts similarly to the Like Button (sharing your content on their Timeline and in friends' News Feeds), but it also gives users the option of adding a comment or message to the link when sharing it. This button also allows them to share the content in other ways -- in Facebook Groups and in Facebook Messages to specific users.

How to Add a Facebook Share Button:

To generate a Facebook Share Button, visit https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/share-button and specify the URL you want people to share as well as the width. Then generate the code, and paste it into your site where you want the button to appear. (Note: The share button is only available in HTML5 or XFBML, and it requires the JavaScript SDK.)

See it in action:

 

4. Facebook Anchor Text Share Links

What They're For:

There may be times when you prefer to use an anchor text share link over a button. These links are easy to create and can be added to web pages, blog articles, landing pages, or within content like ebooks and whitepapers.

How to Add Facebook Anchor Text Share Links:

To create your own Facebook share links, replace the orange section of the URL, below, with the URL of the content you want to promote. Then link the full URL to the anchor text you want to appear in your content.

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=hubspot.com

See One in Action:

Share This Post on Facebook!

More Facebook Buttons: We've covered the most commonly used social media buttons for your business here, but to find all of Facebook's official social media plugins in one place, visit https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/.

Social Media Buttons for LinkedIn

1. LinkedIn Follow Company Plugin

What It's For:

The LinkedIn Follow Company Plugin, similar to Twitter and Facebook's follow buttons, makes it easy for visitors to follow your Company Page on LinkedIn. This enables you to increase your business' reach on LinkedIn.

How to Add a LinkedIn Follow Company Plugin:

Visit https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/linkedin/consumer/integrations/self-serve/plugins/follow-company-plugin to configure your button. There are a few different styles to choose from, with options to show your follower count above, to the right, or not at all. 

Next, copy the HTML script, replacing the "data-id=1337" part with your own company's ID number. You can find this under the admin section of your company page.

How They Look

2. LinkedIn Share Button

What It's For:

Adding LinkedIn's Share Button enables visitors to easily share your content with their connections on LinkedIn, whether it be a blog post, a landing page, or another web page. Like Facebook's Like and Share Buttons and Twitter's Tweet Button, incorporating this button can help extend the reach of your content to the LinkedIn audience and drive traffic back to your site.

How to Add a LinkedIn Share Button:

To create and install this button, visit https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/linkedin/consumer/integrations/self-serve/plugins/share-plugin, and copy the HTML code. Then, swap out the data-url="https://www.linkedin.com" with whichever URL you'd like visitors to share, i.e. the blog post visitors are reading or the web page they've landed on.

More LinkedIn Buttons: Although we've covered the most commonly used buttons above, you can find all of LinkedIn's official social media buttons and plugins in one place at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/linkedin/consumer/integrations/self-serve/plugins?context=linkedin/consumer/context.

Social Media Buttons for YouTube

1. YouTube Subscribe Button

What It's For:

This button is an easy way for an organization to promote their YouTube video channels. You can embed this button on your homepage or 'Contact Us' page to increase the reach of the content you promote on your channel and to increase your subscriber base.

How to Add a YouTube Subscribe Button:

To create a YouTube Subscribe Button, visit https://developers.google.com/youtube/youtube_subscribe_button, enter the name of your company's YouTube channel, select a button size and color theme, decide whether you want to display your logo, and decide whether you want to display your follower count shown or hidden. Then, copy and paste the code onto your website where you'd like the button to appear.

See it in action. Subscribe to HubSpot's YouTube channel:

Social Media Buttons for Pinterest

1. Pinterest Follow Button

What It's For:

Just like the other popular social networks, Pinterest also offers a Follow Button to enable you to promote your Pinterest presence and generate new followers for your account.

How to Add a Pinterest Follow Button:

Visit https://developers.pinterest.com/tools/widget-builder/?type=follow, and configure your button by typing in your Pinterest account's URL and account name. Once you input that information it will automatically generate the code, which you can paste into your website.

See it in action. Follow HubSpot on Pinterest:

HubSpot

2. Pin It Button

What It's For:

This is Pinterest's share button, enabling users to share your content on Pinterest and expand its reach. The Pin It button is great for visual content. Place these buttons next to images, infographics, and other visual content on your site.

How to Add a Pin It Button:

Visit https://developers.pinterest.com/tools/widget-builder/?type=pin to create your Pin It Button. Paste in the pin's URL and pin size. Then, copy the generated embed code to use on your website.

See it in action. Pin this blog post:

More Pinterest Buttons: Other Pinterest widgets include a Profile Widget for showing a preview of your pins, a Board Widget for showing off specific pinboards, and a Pin Widget for showing off specific pins. Build them at https://business.pinterest.com/en/widget-builder.

Social Media Buttons for Instagram

1. Adding Instagram Profile to Your Website

What It's For:

Instagram offers a "View on Instagram" badge for organizations to promote their accounts on their blogs and websites. The badge also helps organizations promote their social media accounts without web visitors having to navigate using their mobile devices. The badges keep visitors looking at your content and engaging with you on the same web browser.

How to Add an Instagram Icon:

Most popular website builders, including HubSpot, WordPress, and Wix, come with social media icons, including Instagram, to easily embed into your site. From there, you'll simply want to link the icon out to your business' Instagram account (http://www.instagram.com/yourusername).

Alternatively, there are third-party plugins that enable you to embed your entire Instagram feed. Some options include Powr and Juicer. It's important to note, you might not want to embed your feed into your website since it might dissuade users from checking you out on Instagram. In that case, simply having an Instagram icon linking to your profile is the best option.

How They Look:

(This is how the button looks on HubSpot.com, but you can design your own to match your website's aesthetic.)

Note to Sharers: Social Media Terms of Service

Before modifying social media buttons on your website, take a look at the Terms of Service for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram. Modifying logos and branding could result in your website being penalized, so when in doubt, use the exact logos populated by the widgets we've listed above. Happy sharing!

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in December 2011 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

 

How to Create Social Media Buttons for All the Top Social Networks was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

What is a Web Crawler? (In 50 Words or Less)

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't describe myself as a "technical" person.

In fact, the technical aspects of marketing are usually the hardest ones for me to conquer.

For example, when it comes to technical SEO, it can be difficult to understand how the process works.

But it's important to gain as much knowledge as we can to do our jobs more effectively.

To that end, let's learn what web crawlers are and how they work.

You might be wondering, "Who runs these web crawlers?"

Well, usually web crawlers are operated by search engines with their own algorithms. The algorithm will tell the web crawler how to find relevant information in response to a search query.

A web crawler will search and categorize all web pages on the Internet that it can find and is told to index.

This means that you can tell a web crawler not to crawl your web page if you don't want it to be found on search engines.

To do this, you'd upload a robots.txt file. Essentially, a robots.txt file will tell a search engine how to crawl and index the pages on your site.

So, how does a web crawler do its job? Below, let's review how web crawlers work.

This means that a search engine's web crawler most likely won't crawl the entire Internet. Rather, it will decide the importance of each web page based on factors including how many other pages link to that page, page views, and even brand authority.

So a web crawler will determine which pages to crawl, what order to crawl them in, and how often they should crawl for updates.

For example, if you have a new web page, or changes were made on an existing page, then the web crawler will take note and update the index.

Interestingly, if you have a new web page, you can ask search engines to crawl your site.

When the web crawler is on your page, it looks at the copy and meta tags, stores that information, and indexes it for Google to sort through for keywords.

Before this entire process is started on your site, specifically, the web crawler will look to your robots.txt file to see which pages to crawl, which is why it's so important for technical SEO.

Ultimately, when a web crawler crawls your page, it decides whether your page will show up in the search results page for a query. This means that if you want to increase your organic traffic, it's important to understand this process.

It's interesting to note that all web crawlers might behave differently. For example, perhaps they'll use different factors when deciding which web pages are most important to crawl.

If the technical aspect of this is confusing, I understand. That's why HubSpot has a Website Optimization Course that puts technical topics into simple language and instructs you on how to implement your own solutions or discuss with your web expert.

Simply put, web crawlers are responsible for searching and indexing content online for search engines. They work by sorting and filtering through web pages so search engines understand what every web page is about.

What is a Web Crawler? (In 50 Words or Less) was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

How to Build and Analyze Marketing Reports [Examples & Templates]

As marketers, we’re making important decisions on behalf of our company every day.

We use our best judgment when making these decisions, and we also weave in data and metrics when we can.

You’re likely already tracking marketing metrics such as traffic, leads, and customers — these are all critical parts of the bigger picture of your marketing funnel and flywheel. But they’re not enough to inform broader marketing decisions that impact your entire organization.

This is where marketing reporting comes into play. This guide will help you further explore the marketing reports you can run to properly analyze your data and make truly informed decisions.

Marketing reports vary depending on what data you’re reviewing and the purpose of each report. They can assess where your traffic and leads are coming from, what content they interacted with, if and when they converted, and how long it took for them to become a customer.

Take our free, 20-minute HubSpot Academy course on marketing reporting to measure success and optimize your efforts.

To reiterate: Marketing reports inform decisions.

You wouldn’t run a marketing report to review data performance or check on an ongoing goal — for these purposes, you’d glance at your marketing dashboards.

Look at it this way. Compiling a marketing report for knowledge’s sake is synonymous with scheduling a meeting to simply review a project. Who likes to attend a 30-minute meeting to simply review what could've been shared via email? Not me.

The same goes for marketing reporting. Reports should help you make a decision or come to an important conclusion — similar to how a meeting would help your team deliberate about a project or decide between project resources.

In short, marketing reporting is a highly valuable process if used and crafted properly. In the next section, we’ll dive into how to build a marketing report.

How to Create a Marketing Report

As we said above, there are plenty of different marketing reports you can run; we’ll be reviewing some examples in the next section. For this reason, this section won’t focus on what specific data to put into your marketing report — that will depend on what type you decide to run.

(Remember, if you’re building a marketing dashboard, that process is a bit different.)

We’re going to discuss how to build marketing reports that inform your decisions and benefit your audience, whether that’s your team, CEO, or customers.

Most of your marketing reports will contain a few of the same elements:

• Title: What is your marketing report analyzing? Whether you’re running a report on campaign performance, quarterly blog performance, or monthly leads, be sure to title your report so the intent is clear. This is especially important if you’re sharing your report with people outside of marketing.
• Reporting period: Your marketing report should reflect a certain time period. This period can be a few days, months, or even years. Analyzing your data within a time period allows you to compare performance to past periods.
• Summary: Your report summary should reflect the key points of your report, including your wins, losses, and goals for the next reporting period. It’s basically the TL;DR of your report.

Next, let’s dive into the report specifics. Valuable, insightful marketing reports recognize two distinct components: purpose and audience.

What's the purpose of your marketing report?

A marketing report should help you make a decision. Choosing the content of your marketing report (i.e. the data you’re analyzing) is simple; however, it’s how you’re going to use this data to make a decision or draw a conclusion that’s more difficult.

This is true for two reasons:

1. Marketing reporting is more often than not performed to simply review data, which is a waste of time.
2. Data points can be used to draw multiple conclusions or make multiple decisions, so you should know precisely how you’re going to use the data before you draw it.

You should determine the goal of your marketing report before you pull any data. Once you make this impending decision, list all the data that might be relevant. From there, you’ll have a much better idea of what reports to run and how to use said data.

Who's the audience for your marketing report?

Marketing reports are highly valuable because they can inform so many different decisions — decisions made by a wide variety of people across your organization. Whether you’re delivering a marketing report to your team lead, department manager, or CEO, your marketing report must be tailored to whoever may be reading and using it.

Here are a few ways to do this:

• Ask your audience what they need. If you know the decisions your audience needs to make, you’ll know what data you need to pull and analyze. Knowing this will also help you avoid running reports your audience doesn’t care about.
• Speak in their language. Marketing involves a lot of acronyms and jargon. While your team members understand what you’re saying, your executive team and co-workers outside Marketing may not be so fluent. Consider your audience when writing your marketing report and be sure to choose words and descriptions that they’ll understand.

• Don’t mix audiences. If you’re creating a marketing report for a mixed audience, it’s best to create separate reports for separate audiences. For example, you wouldn’t create the same report to give your CEO and Marketing co-workers; you’d likely break this into two reports with different data and verbiage. This will allow your audience to be able to focus on the data and analysis that’s most relevant to them.

Marketing reporting can take up a lot of your time (and waste some, too). Here are some best practices to help you work smarter, not harder.

1. Schedule your marketing reports.

Whether you create a recurring reminder on your calendar or set your reports to automatically run, schedule your marketing reports ahead of time. This will take the guesswork out of when to run your reports and when to send them to the relevant audiences.

Schedule daily, weekly, or monthly reports and send them directly to your team’s inboxes with the HubSpot Marketing Hub Reporting add-on.

2. Collect feedback from your audience.

As you send out your marketing reports, ask for feedback from your audience. Whether you ask an open-ended question like, “How did this report help you?” or provide a short Google Form, gathering feedback from those using your reports can help you improve them in the future.

3. Create marketing report templates.

If your marketing report will be designed the same way each and every time you send it out, consider turning it into a template. This will save you time and energy building each template and provide a reliable, predictable report design for your audience to read.

Make your monthly reporting faster and easier with these free monthly marketing reporting templates.

4. Put your most valuable data first.

Long marketing reports are fine as long as all the data you include is valuable and helpful for whatever decision you or your team need to make. However, you should place the most impactful data first so that your audience can stop reading once they’ve made up their minds. Nobody wants to read an entire report to only utilize the final page.

5. Visualize your data as much as possible.

Did you know that humans process visual data 60,000x faster than written data? Illustrated data (e.g. graphs and charts) are also more believable, according to this study by Cornell University.

When possible, include visual data in your marketing reports. Not only does this help your reports pack a greater punch with your coworkers and executives, but it trims down the time and effort needed to digest your data. To do this, include charts from Excel or screenshots from your reporting tools (like HubSpot Marketing Hub). You can also use heat maps if you’re reporting on website performance.

Marketing Reporting Examples

There are hundreds of reports that you can run to dig into your marketing efforts. At this point, however, you’re likely asking, “Where should I start?" and "What are those basic marketing reports I can run to get more comfortable with all the data I’ve been tracking?”.

Well, we’ve pulled together these five marketing reporting examples for you to use to get started.

Note that you will need some type of marketing software (like HubSpot Marketing Hub) to do this. You should also make sure your software allows you to export the data from your software and manipulate it in Excel using pivot tables and other functions.

Learn how to create an Excel graph, make pivot tables, and use VLOOKUPS and IF functions with this free guide and video.

Since we use HubSpot for our reporting needs, I'll show you how to compile these reports using the Marketing Hub tool. (The data below is sample data only and does not represent actual HubSpot marketing data.)

1. Multi-Touch Revenue Marketing Report

As a marketer, you’re a big part of your company’s growth. But unless you can directly tie your impact to revenue, you’ll be forever underappreciated and under-resourced. With multi-touch revenue attribution, you tie closed revenue to every marketing interaction — from the first-page view to the final nurturing email.

That way, marketers get the credit they deserve and marketing execs make smarter investments rooted in business value instead of vanity metrics. As a bonus, multi-touch revenue attribution can help you stay aligned with your sales team.

HubSpot customers can create multi-touch attribution reports quickly; HubSpot’s attribution tool is built for real people, not data scientists. (It also connects every customer interaction to revenue, automatically.) Navigate to your dashboard, and click Add Report > Attribution Report. Select from the set of pre-baked best-practice templates, or create a custom report of your own.

Note: Enterprise HubSpot customers can do this in their software if they have their Salesforce integration set up with Account Sync turned on.

How to Analyze Revenue Reporting

To analyze revenue reporting, figure out what’s working and double down on it. Look at the revenue results from different channels and see where you had the most success. Use this information to decide what marketing efforts to invest in moving forward. For example, if you notice that your Facebook campaigns drove a ton of revenue, run more Facebook campaigns!

Multi-touch attribution reports should be run monthly to understand the broader business impact of your marketing channels. While revenue is important, you should also dig into some of your other metrics for a more complete picture.

2. Channel-Specific Traffic Marketing Report

Understanding where your traffic is coming from will help you make strategic decisions as you invest in different marketing channels. If you see strong performance from one particular source, you may want to invest more resources in it.

On the other hand, you may actually want to invest in some of the weaker channels to get them on pace with some of your other channels. Whatever you decide, source data will help you figure that out.

HubSpot customers can use the Traffic Analytics report (under Reports > Analytics tools in your navigation) to break down traffic by source.

Want to get an even deeper understanding of your traffic patterns? Break down your traffic by geography. (Example: Which sources bring in your most traffic, in Brazil?) You can also examine subsets of your website (like your blog vs. your product pages).

How to Analyze Channel-Specific Traffic

Take a look at what channels are performing well. Based on your goals, that could mean looking at the visitor data or focusing on the visit-to-lead and lead-to-customer conversion rates. Here are a couple of different ways to think about your data:

• If you get a lot of traffic from a certain channel, but the channel is not necessarily helping your visitors move down the funnel, it may mean that you should invest more in other channels or optimize that underperforming channel for conversion.
• Think about how you can invest resources in your strongest channels. Did you run a campaign that helped the channel perform well? Was there a piece of content you created that set it off? Consider how you can replicate your past success.
• If you haven't worked on a particular channel, it could be a good time to test it out. Think about how you can incorporate multiple channels into the same campaign.

Pulling this data weekly will allow you to stay up-to-date on how the channels are performing. If a channel took a turn for the worse, you'll have enough time to remedy the situation before it gets out of control or you waste resources.

Pulling the report daily may be a bit overboard since some channels take multiple days to be effective and pulling it monthly would prevent you from responding with agility — so, weekly data is ideal.

3. Blog Posts by Conversion Marketing Report

Blogs have become a marketer's best friend. There’s a direct correlation between how often a company blogs and the number of leads they generate (not just the amount of traffic they drive). So, it's critical you monitor how well your blog is helping you grow that critical metric.

Reporting on your blog leads is a quick way to see how many leads you're generating on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis — and by what channel. This report is a great way to understand what channels are strongest for your blog, where you should spend more promotion time, and how well your content is performing over time.

If you're using HubSpot, creating a blog leads report is easy. Navigate to Add Report from any of your dashboards, and choose Top blog posts by contact conversion. This report shows the posts that were most often seen by contacts immediately before filling out a form on your website.

How to Analyze Blog Posts by Conversion

Look at how many leads you're generating from your blog over time. If you see spikes in leads, you know to dig into your content to see if certain topics are more successful at generating leads than others. The more you can run these reports to figure out what works and what doesn't work, the better off your marketing and blogging will be.

This type of data should be pulled on a monthly basis to ensure you’re writing the most relevant content over time.

4. New Contacts by Persona Marketing Report

Every marketer needs to be well-versed in their buyer personas — but you need to do more than just understand them. It's important to track how many new contacts you're actually adding to your database based on each persona.

This will help you determine how accurate your buyer personas are and how successful your marketing is in targeting and reaching them.

To report on this in HubSpot, plot your contacts by Create date, which will show the date on which you added a new contact to your database. Then, break down your report by persona.

How to Analyze New Contacts by Persona

Did you run a marketing campaign around a particular topic? Did you focus on promoting your content through specific channels? What did you do that led to an increase or decrease in persona acquisition? Digging into this report can help you allocate resources more wisely to grow different segments of your business.

Pulling this report on a monthly basis can give you insight into how your campaigns affect new contacts by persona — and might even shed light on an imbalance in resources dedicated to certain personas.

5. Lifecycle Stage Funnel Marketing Report

Another way to segment your contact database is to look at how they appear by lifecycle stage. This will give you a sense of how many leads, subscribers, customers, and opportunities you have in your database in a certain time period.

This data will help you understand if you need to generate more leads or if you should be more focused on closing your current leads. It will also give you a general understanding of the quality of your contact database.

As a HubSpot customer, create a funnel report by clicking Add Report from any dashboard, then choosing the Funnels category. Pick which stages you’d like to include, select your visualization, and you’re off and running.

How to Analyze a Lifecycle Stage funnel

This report will give you an overview of how your leads are progressing through the buying process. Use this report to see what areas of your funnel you need to address for greater efficiency.

For example, if your report shows that you’re doing a great job of generating leads, but not converting any to MQLs, update and optimize your nurturing program. Pulling monthly funnel reports can help you stay on top of the efficiency of your marketing process

Create Your Marketing Report Today

Marketing reporting is a vital part of your marketing efforts and the growth of your business. By understanding how efficient and effective your marketing is, you can better allocate time, resources, and money — and make well-informed decisions, to boot.

Start with these marketing reporting examples and expand your reporting as you begin to utilize more data.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in April 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

How to Build and Analyze Marketing Reports [Examples & Templates] was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

5 essential e-commerce display advertising trends | 2020

E-commerce and online shopping is set to increase this holiday season – as is the importance of display advertising. And knowing the key display advertising trends offers the potential to unlock revenue.

To help marketing teams prepare, Bannerflow recently analysed data from 2019 and the first half of 2020. Download our full infographic on general display advertising trends now.

Focusing on e-commerce, a recent survey by Delotte in the UK found About 40 percent of respondents did more online shopping during lockdown. Indeed, Covid-19 has drastically altered consumer behaviour and this holiday season (and beyond) things will never quite be the same again.

To help retailers here are our essential top 5 e-commerce display advertising trends based on our exclusive European data. Expert to learn the following insights:

1. How preparing your best ever holiday ad campaigns is a must
2. Why creating mobile optimised campaigns efficiently is essential
3. How video can increase e-commerce display advertising CTR
4. Why using dynamic ads allows you to stay agile and relevant
5. Why going beyond the top display ad sizes means better results

1. Preparing your best ever holiday ad campaigns in advance

According to CLickZ “shoppers aren’t planning to significantly change how much they spend” this holiday season. In fact the big change this year is that more shoppers are likely to purchase online than go into physical stores.

Indeed, the importance of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas to brands cannot be understated this coming winter. And having the agility and in-house production capabilities to produce the volume of ads needed to be seen by customers will be critical.

Key shopping days CTR and ad view data

Even before the onset of Covid-19, data for 2019’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday indicated changing consumer habits. In fact, it’s clear that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are now one mega online event that stretches over four days.

In 2020, having a display campaign ready to go for these dates is a minimum. However, just scheduling ads to drop isn’t enough this year.

Instead, we believe that preparing your best ever display campaign is something all brands should be looking to do this Autumn. Indeed, our hypothesis for 2020 is further increases in display CTR and conversion rates (CVR) due to a European consumers being more accustomed to shopping online.

This season it’s all about creating your best, optimised creatives, displaying your best offers, and using dynamic ads that use product targeting. Not only are these display ads simple to build and scale using a creative management platform (CMP) such as Bannerflow but they provide better performance too.

2. Why creating mobile optimised campaigns efficiently is essential

Mobile is now the number one device for e-commerce and retail display advertising. And it’s a trend that has long been coming. However, what it also means is that brands stuck in costly and slow ways of working need to change! If you can’t optimise ad experiences to different devices then now is a time to upgrade.

Mobile is number one device for e-commerce campaigns

Display campaigns must be able run across a variety of devices – even tablets. But how do you ensure that your display ads are perfectly optimised for 54% in the case of mobile ad views in 2020, and just 6.2% in the case of tablets?

By using the auto-optimisation feature found in an ad creator, such as Bannerflow Creative Studio, marketers can avoid long and lengthy production processes. It is essential in the Autumn of 2020 for advertisers to easily build the volumes required for multiple messages and markets. This ensures a campaign works across multiple devices smoothly and no additional time is spent editing individual ads.

It is also worth remembering that earlier in the year Google, announced a crackdown on resource heavy ads. If you wish to create impactful ads for multiple devices then having the best technology to reduce ad weight and optimise quickly is essential. In fact, it is one of the best practices when it comes to display advertising.

3. How video can increase e-commerce display advertising CTR

Before Covid-19 hit, use of video across display advertising was on the up. In fact, across all industries, it grew by 82% in 2019. Yet, for many e-commerce brands using video assets in display campaigns is still in its infancy.

Click-through rate and video usage increases

Just 5% of all e-commerce and online retail display advertising featured a video in 2019. Which is tiny when you think of how impactful this type of creative is. Indeed, in-banner video offers a cost-effective way of engaging with a target audience by reusing creative assets within display ads.

When Covid-19 surged in early 2020, video usage fell – however, it’s CTR did not. Instead it rose slightly, seemingly suggesting that viewers still find this form of creative content engaging. Display ads containing video can cost more to publish, so it is also likely that this is the reason for the drop in usage.

However, we believe the use of video in display advertising is a great opportunity for e-commerce this Autumn – especially when optimised for mobile devices. Findings from a recent report by WARC found that brands are effectively engaging with consumers via combining video and mobile advertising.

Our data suggests that more brands could benefit from doing this within e-commerce and retail display advertising too.

4. Why using dynamic ads allows you to stay agile and relevant

The use of product feeds and dynamic advertising should be a key tactic for e-commerce display advertisers. What’s more, the technology required is already readily available and enables marketing teams to stay agile with a variety of messages and content during rapidly changing periods.

Growth of data feeds and dynamic content

Personalisation, through the use of dynamic advertising, has long been seen as a driver for increasing performance and getting a better ROI from display advertising. After all, which consumer doesn’t prefer ads that are relevant and timely? In fact our research found that there was an 8% increase in click-through rate for personalised ads in 2019 compared to 2018.

However, within e-commerce only 10.79% of the total volume of all display advertising in 2019 used a product feed. This is astonishing considering how easy they are to set up and use. Indeed, with such dynamic ad usage, there is a huge potential for many brands this Autumn.

Combining the use of product feeds, retargeting, and scheduling tools enables advertisers to create ads that are more impactful. Furthermore, this form of creative automation enables brands to stay consistent across devices and speak directly to customers.

Indeed, it can be no surprise that during 2020 the use of dynamic ads and data feeds rose by 5.53 percentage points. With in store opportunities less, staying personal with your customers through your display advertising is a winning strategy.

5. Why going beyond the top display ad sizes means better results

The top two banner sizes take up nearly 50.37% of all e-commerce display ad views in 2019. And these top sizes are mobile – which should come as no surprise!

Once again, this highlights the best practice of designing e-commerce campaigns mobile-first. However, in 2020 you need to do more than that! Instead you must also rapidly scale campaigns to hundreds of different ad sizes and versions too.

The top 5 e-commerce display advertising sizes

Indeed, the top two mobile sizes dominate; they account for nearly half of all e-commerce ad views. However, after the top two sizes there is a long tail of various other ad sizes. And these remaining half of display ads should not be overlooked for your e-commerce campaigns!

In particular, this display ad inventory represents billions of ad views and potential conversions. Moreover, when running an e-commerce programmatic campaign, being able to create all the different ad sizes of creative could prove very beneficial. Not only will more views see your campaign but they might be cheaper to serve too.

And the ad creator of a creative management platform is the best way for even the smallest in-house marketing team to produce effective campaigns, at scale. For example, it means your retail brand can match the largest investment of the year with massive volumes across a variety of ad placements.

What’s more, by being able to produce a range of formats, marketing teams are able to tap into some surprising benefits. Such as:

• Easier to deliver campaigns – leave buying impressions to your demand side platform (DSP).
• Reducing the cost per mille (CPM) since there is less competition lower for uncommon sizes.
• Enabling your DSP to perform better since it can learn from more sizes.

The post 5 essential e-commerce display advertising trends | 2020 appeared first on Bannerflow.

5 essential e-commerce display advertising trends | 2020 was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns