The Ultimate Guide to Content Creation

Where is the first place you go for expert advice or an answer to a burning question? My guess is Google (or your preferred search engine). You’re not alone — Google alone answers over four billion search queries every day.

When you enter a question into the search bar, those links that appear in your search results are content. Whether you know it or not, you consume content on a daily basis. 

That marketing strategy guide ... content.

Those articles that diagnose your symptoms ... content.

The video tutorial on how to create Victoria's Secret-level hair volume ... content.

News stories, Instagram feeds, blog posts, cat videos, GIFs, memes ... all content.

Content is a large part of your everyday life. It’s hard to avoid, but why would you want to? Content keeps us informed, answers our questions, entertains us, makes us smile, guides our decisions, and more.

Content helps you attract, engage, and delight prospects and customers, bring new visitors to your site, and ultimately, generate revenue for your company.

In other words, if you’re not creating content, then you’re behind the curve.

Why Is Content Important?

Content creation is the ultimate inbound marketing practice. When you create content, you’re providing free and useful information to your audience, attracting potential customers to your website, and retaining existing customers through quality engagement.

You’re also generating some major ROI for your company, as these content marketing stats demonstrate:

• Content marketing brings in 3X as many leads as traditional marketing and costs 62% less.
• SMBs that use content marketing get 126% more leads than those that don’t.
• 61% of online purchases are the direct result of a customer reading a blog.
• Companies that publish 16+ blog posts per month get 3.5X more traffic than those that post four or fewer posts per month. 

Content equals business growth. So, let’s get started with the types of content you can create and then review your content strategy.

Content Creation Examples

1. Blog

One type of content creation (the kind you're consuming right now, actually) is blog posts. Blogs are meant to educate, entertain, and inspire your audience through the written word. When someone types a query in Google, the posts that pop up are usually blog posts.

2. Podcast

Podcasts, one of my favorite types of content to consume, are like listening to the radio, except a dedicated podcast host talks about dedicated topics, has guests, etc. These are especially interesting to listen to when the audience likes the host and wants to learn something from listening.

3. Video

Whether you want to post videos on social media or YouTube, creating a video is one type of content creation that becomes more popular as the years go by. Short-form and long-form videos both have their place in your content creation strategy, so it's important to come up with ideas for this type of content.

4. Graphics

In your blog posts, or in your social media posts, you might want to post original graphics. These can be infographics, animations, etc. This type of content creation usually requires a graphic designer or at least a graphic design tool to help you get the job done.

5. Content Offers

Another type of content is content offers. These are templates, whitepapers, worksheets, or ebooks that your audience can download. This is gated content -- meaning your audience will need to fill out a form and provide their email to have access to it.

Content Planning and Strategy

You wouldn’t start building a house without a blueprint, a sculpture without a sketch, or a company without a mission statement. So, there should be no content creation without a plan. Otherwise, you risk getting derailed from your objective.

A content strategy includes everything from brand and tone to how you will promote your content and eventually repurpose it. Let’s go over how to create your content plan, step-by-step.

Featured Resource

• Interactive Content Marketing Workbook

Set Your Content Goals

Similar to a traditional marketing campaign, your content strategy should be centered on your marketing goals (which should, in turn, be derived from your company goals).

Your goals could range from attracting more visitors to your site to generating more leads to anything in between — as long as they’re SMART goals. An example of this kind of goal would be to increase organic traffic to the blog by 25% in the next quarter. 

Once you determine that, each piece of content you create should be aligned with your goal and contribute to your desired outcome.

In sum, start with your goals, then create your content.

Create a Buyer Persona

Building a content strategy is more than considering what type of content you want to create. You first need to know who you’re speaking to, how you want to speak to them, and where to find them. 

The key to creating successful inbound content is to make each reader feel like you’re speaking directly to them.

The only way to do this is to get intimate with your visitors, leads, and customers — you need to know them like you know an old friend. You should be aware of their obstacles, their pain points, their challenges, and their fears. Similarly, you should understand their best possible outcome, their dream solution, and their biggest fantasies. 

Always remember that you are marketing to humans that want to feel connected.

Ideally, you’d know and be able to speak directly to every individual that visits your website, but you can’t. The solution? Create a buyer persona. 

Your buyer persona is the person that you want to reach with your content. This semi-fictional character serves as a representation of your target audience, i.e., the people who are most likely to benefit from your message and become customers. 

Creating a buyer persona takes a bit of research, some guesswork, and tweaking. But the end result is a clear picture of the person you want to market to and someone who will happily consume your content. 

Not sure where to start? Use MakeMyPersona to build out your buyer persona.

Rely on the Buyer’s Journey

If you’ve ever had a headache, the first thing you likely did was try to figure out the cause. Perhaps you were dehydrated, or caffeine-depleted, or maybe you were sick. After you diagnosed the problem, you moved on to solutions — drink some water, grab an espresso, or take some medicine. Finally, you decide between solutions: Evian or tap water? Starbucks or Peet’s Coffee? Aleve or Tylenol? Hopefully, your headache then subsided and you were able to go about your day. 

This is a representation of the buyer’s journey. Each of your prospects follows a path to a solution — that path involves awareness, consideration, and decision stages. But each of your prospects is in a different part of that journey, so it’s important to use your content to appeal to each stage.  

Source: HubSpot

By creating content for each stage of the buyer’s journey, you’re ensuring that no visitors fall through the cracks and that every individual that comes to your site feels like they are receiving relevant, useful information.

You also want to select a format for your content so that it’s tailored to each stage of the buyer’s journey. A new visitor in the awareness stage won’t want a live demo of your product, but they would read a quick checklist or blog post that helps them better understand their problem. A prospect in the decision stage doesn’t need to know about all the possible solutions, they need a consultation or demo that shows them that your product is the right solution. Always meet your audience where they are.

Here’s a guide to the best content formats for each stage of the buyer’s journey:

Awareness: Whitepaper, Blog Post, Checklist, Tip Sheet, Infographic, Ebook, Game, Quiz

Consideration: Podcast, Webinar, Worksheet, Comparison Matrix, Template 

Decision: Demo, Free Trial, Product Guide, Consultation, Coupon

Perform a Content Audit

Whether you’ve been creating content for a while without any clear direction or you’ve been following a strategy all along, every marketing department can benefit from a content audit. Just because you didn’t start out with a clearly defined strategy doesn’t mean that the content you already have won’t fit into one.

A content audit is simply taking inventory of the work you’ve already done, then organizing it to fit under your new content plan. 

The process might involve some re-writing, or it could reveal gaps that need to be filled with content that appeals to your persona and their journey stage. 

Here’s how you’d perform your content audit: 

1. Gather all of your content in a spreadsheet.
2. Create columns for target keywords, buyer persona, buyer’s journey stage, format, and main topic, then fill these in for each content piece.
3. Add columns for your key metrics, like page views, shares, engagement, etc.
4. Finally, categorize each post (using highlights or another column) by those that are doing well, need improvement, should be rewritten, or can be merged with another post.

While a content audit may seem tedious, all the manual labor will be worth the increased traffic and leads. Plus, you’ll have a verified plan moving forward.

If this process seems a bit overwhelming, check out this post for some more guidance.

Choose the Right Format

Remember that buyer persona you created? You’re creating content for them. That means you should be crafting content in a format that is most easily and enjoyably consumed by your prospects.

The format you choose might be a blog post, video, slideshare, graphic, ebook, whitepaper, podcast, or whatever your creative mind can conceive. As long as it serves your persona, you’ll be in good shape. 

Also, you don’t need to stick to one format for every piece of content that you create. But you should be able to create content — in whatever format — on a consistent cadence. What I mean is, a podcast series might be a great marketing tactic, but if you lack the resources (and patience) to stick to it, then a blog might be a better route.

Digital content creation is the process of choosing the format (usually digital), and then utilizing the right tools to publish and promote your content online.

Use these questions as a guide when choosing your content format:

• What stage of the buyer’s journey is this for?
• How easy is it for your audience to consume this content?
• Where does your persona spend their time online?
• What format can you create on a consistent basis?
• Are you able to produce this content at a quality level that’s competitive?

Choosing Content Creators

At this point, you're ready to start creating content, but first, you'll need to build a team of content creators. To get started, categorize the type of content you want to create and the type of content creator it takes to produce that content. Below is an example list:

• Blogs -- Writer
• Social media posts -- Social media coordinator
• Podcasts -- Podcast host/producer
• Graphics -- Graphic designer
• Webinars/Lead Magnets -- Lead acquisition expert (content offer producer)
• Videos -- Videographer/editor

As you can see, there are many different types of content creators you'll need to either outsource or hire to produce high-quality content that converts your audience from viewers to customers. In many organizations, there is one person responsible for a lot of this content, and that is a content marketing strategist. While having one content marketing strategist might make sense, expecting one person to be able to produce all of that content doesn't.

The best way to go about content creation is to collaborate with freelancers, use influencer marketing to increase your audience reach, and hire a content strategist (or several preferably) to help you organize your content creation.

Content Promotion

What good is it to create all this great content if no one sees it? In a perfect world, herds of people would flock to your site every time you published a new post. In reality — especially when you’re just starting out — you’ll need to entice people to consume your content and even shepherd them into your online space.

Hence why content promotion is just as important to your strategy as whatever content you create.

Your promotion plan should be guided by your persona. Where do they spend their time online? What time of day do they use a particular platform? How often do they want to see content from you? How do they like to consume content? What email subject lines get them to click? 

Content promotion varies by medium, and there are specific rules to follow for each.

Social Media

While social media is a relationship-building tool, it can be used to promote content. It’s all about finding the right balance between self-promotion, sharing useful information, and entertainment. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat are all great mediums to both create and share relevant content. The key is modifying that content to fit the platform.

Featured Resources

• How to Use Twitter for Business (+ Follower Growth Tracking Template)
• 30 Days of Instagram: A Guide for Businesses
• How to Attract Customers With Facebook

Email Marketing

Email is one of the best ways to reach your audience for any reason, especially to promote content. The reason is anyone on your email list has opted in to hear from you and you can guarantee that they’ll get your messages. Better yet, you can improve your open rates by sending relevant content to segmented lists, meaning they’ll be eager to read everything you send their way.

Featured Resource

• The Beginner's Guide to Email Marketing

Paid Promotion

Pay-per-click (PPC) helps you get your content in front of new audiences through targeted, paid advertisements. These ads can run on social media, search engines, or other websites. Once you define your buyer persona, you’ll want to go the paid route so as not to waste money targeting uninterested parties. Once you have your audience down, paid promotion can yield a great ROI.

Featured Resources

• The Ultimate Google AdWords and PPC Kit
• 34 Digital Advertising Myths

Syndication

Getting your content promoted through authoritative, third-party channels is a great way to build your audience. Syndication gets your brand in front of fresh eyes (and wallets) that you wouldn’t otherwise reach with your own efforts.

Repurposing Content

When you repurpose content, you’re reusing something you spent a lot of time creating and transforming it in various formats so that it can be more widely consumed.

Think of it as recycling. You want to spend less time creating and more time getting your content in front of your audience. For example, that blog post that you wrote on marketing stats can also serve as a great infographic or even a video.

If you created something in one format, try to think of all the other ways that you could reuse that information that might be just as effective.

The Content Creation Process

We, marketers, are busy. We don’t have time to waste on inefficient systems. That’s why we create processes for everything we do. We devise a system, roll it out, tweak it until it works, then repeat that system over and over to generate the results we want. Think about every marketing campaign you’ve ever done — webinars, autoresponders, surveys. Each of them had a process. Content creation is no different. 

Follow these steps to create content, remove the guesswork, and allow for more creative mental space.

1. SEO Research

Creating your buyer persona likely gave you some ideas about what topics to write about and what questions your audience might have, which is a great start. Now, you need to confirm if those ideas can apply on a bigger scale to a larger audience. Sure, it would be great to write a blog post directed toward a single person, but, boy, would it be a waste of energy.

SEO research — a.k.a. keyword research — will show you the search volume of a specific keyword phrase and whether it’s worth the investment of creating a piece of content around it.

A good way to go about keyword research is to write down some questions that your persona might have based on their obstacles and goals. Then, perform some keyword research around those queries to see if enough people are searching for them. A rule of thumb is to target keywords that are attainable, meaning that have a monthly search volume (MSV) and keyword difficulty that corresponds to your domain authority. Trying to target high volume (read: highly competitive) keywords when you’ve just started blogging won’t pan out too well for you.

Before we go any further, let’s detour into a quick-and-dirty SEO explanation:

One important factor that helps you to rank in search engines is domain authority. You gain domain authority by how many external sites link back to your content. In order for this to happen, you need to have a pretty large library of content that is valuable enough to cite. That means, the longer you write high-quality content, the higher your domain authority and the easier it is to rank for highly competitive keywords that will put you on the first page of Google.

If you’re not quite there yet, the best thing to do is to target long-tail, low-volume keywords with minimal keyword difficulty (<50) — we’re talking 200-1000 MSV. This will give you the best chance at ranking for keywords and getting your content in front of more people. 

SEO lesson concluded. Back to our scheduled programming.

There are a few ways you could perform your keyword research: 

• Use keyword research tools, like SEMRush or Moz Keyword Explorer.
• Type your keyword into a search engine and take note of the auto-filled queries.
• Check out the related searches section on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Featured Resources

• How to Conduct a Technical SEO Audit
• 22 SEO Myths to Leave Behind in 2019

2. Ideation

Now that you’ve determined which keywords to target, it’s time to brainstorm some content ideas. HubSpot research shows that the best way to organize content is through topic clusters, meaning you create a long-form, comprehensive pillar page based on a keyword that then links to content you’ve created on related subtopics (think blog posts).

To illustrate the point, it looks something like this.

The topic cluster model makes brainstorming so much easier because now you have structure to follow (... told you we like processes). You can use your main keyword to create a pillar piece that covers that topic in-depth, like … say a guide to content creation. Then, you can create shorter pieces of content — infographics, blog posts, templates — that help your audience dive deeper into the topic and target long-tail keywords. 

If you’re stumped for ideas, you might want to consider looking for inspiration from books you’ve read, industry studies, your competitor’s sites, or related searches on SERPs.

Once you have all of your ideas down, you can develop your editorial calendar and start creating.

3. Writing

I’m going to talk about the writing process because … well, that’s what I do. Your specific content creation strength might be videos or graphics or podcasts. Whatever it is, the creation process follows some pretty similar guidelines: 

• Write to your persona. Use their voice, their euphemisms, even their humor to construct a piece that resonates.
• Use titles, meta descriptions, and other teasers to compel your audience to read your content. Put the benefit of your content right in the title to let them know why they should read it.
• Create something unique. Don’t simply regurgitate the information that’s already out there. Infuse a unique style or cite new research to emphasize your points.
• Stick to one idea and use your content to reinforce it. Don’t confuse your reader by going on tangents or trying to explain multiple semi-related topics in a single piece.
• Stay true to your voice. Don’t try to impress your audience with eloquent prose or an expansive vocabulary if they don’t speak that way.
• Be concise and clear. You want your audience to relate to you and derive value from your content … and not have to sift through jargon or confusing metaphors.

Featured Resource

• HubSpot's Guide to Writing Well in Marketing

4. Editing

The way you edit your (or others’) work is a very subjective process. You may want to edit as you go, or you might wait a few days and review the work with fresh eyes. You might care a great deal about grammar, or you might aim for a more colloquial piece. 

Either way, there are a few things that should definitely look out for as you refine your content, like active voice, clear language, short sentences, and plenty of whitespace. Consider having a colleague or manager review your work, too. 

Some tools that will help you cut down on your editing time are Grammarly and Hemingway Editor.

5. Uploading

Now that your content is ready, you’ll need to put it somewhere that people can access it. A content management system (CMS) is software that hosts digital content and allows you to display it on your website (or anywhere else on the web). 

The benefit to a CMS is that it connects all of your content and stores it in one place. So, you can easily link to a landing page in your blog article or insert a content offer in an email. Not only that, but you can analyze the results of all the content you created for a specific campaign (which can help with content audits). A CMS saves you from having a disjointed content marketing system.

For example, CMS Hub is home to our blog, where you get access to all of our great content and useful free offers.

6. Publishing

Publishing content is as simple as clicking a button. So, why include a section on it? Well, because it’s not always that simple. Yes, you can publish your content immediately after uploading, or you can maximize its impact by waiting for an optimal time.

If you’re just starting out, then clicking publish right away probably won’t impact your audience too much. But if you have committed to a regular publishing schedule, like delivering a new post every Wednesday, your audience will expect to see posts published on Wednesdays.

Something else to keep in mind is to publish according to trends or time-sensitive events. For example, if you create content about national holidays or current events, then you’ll want to publish those at specific times. 

A CMS will allow you to schedule posts for a future date and specific time, so you can click, schedule, and forget.

7. Promoting Content

Finally, it's time to promote the content you've created. You can do this through various mediums including social media, email marketing, and even pay-per-click advertising.

To promote your content, think about what channels your audience is on. Are they on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube? Wherever it might be, it's important to meet them where they're at and promote your content on that medium.

Additionally, collaborating with influencers or other brands will help you promote your content and reach more people.

Content Creation Tools

While a CMS will help you manage your content, it won’t help you create it. That’s where content creation tools come in handy. These are especially useful if you’re artistically impaired, like me, or if you don’t have the capacity to hire help. From GIFs to infographics, these content creation tools will help you look like a professional, regardless of what kind of content you’re making.

1. Canva

Canva will help you create beautiful designs for any platform, from social ads to Facebook cover photos to infographics. The software features aesthetically pleasing templates that you can customize with colors, images, and text ... for free.

2. Giphy

Giphy The GIF has replaced emojis as a completely normal form of communication, and, therefore, an acceptable way to present content. Giphy allows you to search millions of pre-created GIFs in their database or even create your own. 

3. Vidyard

Vidyard is a video hosting platform that was made for marketers. The software allows you to customize your video by adding overlays, text, or CTA buttons, split test, transcribe, and has SEO features.

4. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a leading survey creation platform. Why might you need such a thing? Because a good marketer knows that customer feedback is critical to an effective marketing campaign. 

5. MakeMyPersona

MakeMyPersona is HubSpot’s own nifty tool that will walk you through the process of creating your buyer persona. You can generate a document to reference throughout your content creation process.

6. Anchor

Anchor is the podcasting tool for beginners. It’s free, allows you to record and store unlimited episodes, and you can easily upload to any third-party platform.

This is far from an exhaustive list of all the great content creation tools out there — this list is much better!

Creating a Content Plan

Content exists everywhere, but its success relies on your ability to adapt it to the medium on which it lives. One size does not fit all when it comes to posting on different mediums — or the platforms within those mediums, for that matter.

Social media content varies from blog content, which is different than website content. So, you need to know how to tailor your creation to reach your audience where they are. 

Let’s dive into some guidelines for sharing content on various platforms.

Social Media Content

There is an art to creating content for social media. But it’s well worth your time since there are 2.6 billion users across social media platforms worldwide. Plus, someone who follows you on social media is like a warm lead — they already like you and are interested in what you have to say. So, you have an eager audience that’s ready to engage with your content. 

Here are a few quick tips for creating content on some popular social channels.

1. Facebook 

Facebook can be used to build micro-communities via Facebook Groups or to share to a mass audience on Facebook Pages. When it comes to sharing content, questions and videos reap the most engagement.

2. Instagram

Instagram is best for sharing high-quality imagery and short videos with brief captions. Hashtags work well on this platform as long as they’re relevant to your account and business. Instagram Stories has introduced a new way to engage with your followers, from quick polls to questions to real-time videos. 

3. YouTube

YouTube has 1.3 billion users and counting. Users frequent this platform to watch content ranging from DIY videos to parodies. Some of the most successful content on this platform are how-to guides, vlogs, product reviews, and educational videos. 

Featured Resources

• The Ultimate Video Marketing Starter Pack
• YouTube for Business: A 30-Day Roadmap for Channel Growth

4. TikTok

TikTok has become one of the most popular social media platforms of our time. It's best known for fun, short-form videos. It can be used to engage with your Millennial or Gen Z audience.

5. Twitter

Twitter best practices include short messages, supporting images, relevant hashtags, and retweets. And, of course, replies go a long way to win over your audience.

Website Content

Website content should focus on three things: your persona, your target keywords, and your solution. Not unlike your blog content, the copy on your website needs to guide visitors to your solution in a cohesive and natural way. Think of web content like a map to your product.

Be careful not to turn visitors away through social media feeds and other distracting elements. Once you’ve attracted a potential customer, you must do everything you can to keep them there, and that’s the key function of your website content.

Blog Content

The purpose of blog content is to support your business by attracting strangers and bringing in qualified leads. Blog content is a free resource that’s not often directly tied to sales, but don’t underestimate the power of a well-crafted blog to ultimately generate revenue for your business. Research shows that companies that blog more get more traffic and more leads than those that don’t.

Featured Resources

• How to Start a Successful Blog
• 5 Free Blog Post Templates

Analyzing Your Content

The final, and arguably most important step in content creation is analyzing your content. Without data, you can’t know what’s working or how to improve it.

There are several data points you could track when analyzing your content, so use your goals as a guide to set some parameters. Whatever you want to accomplish with your content will help you choose your metrics. (Remember that initial goal we talked about?) 

What you analyze is completely up to you, but here are some ideas for metrics to track:

Page Views

The number of users that visit your content. For blog posts this page views, but for any type of content, there is usually a "views" metric that will let you know how many times your content has been viewed and by how many unique users.

Organic Traffic

The amount of traffic that comes from search engines. This is unpaid traffic that you get from ranking high on Google or other search engines.

Bounce Rate

The percentage of visitors who leave your site after visiting only one page. This is an important metric to track because it can let you know that people are interested in clicking your posts, but then the content is immediately unsatisfying.

Conversion Rates

The percent of visitors that engage with a CTA -- whether it's a content offer, or filling out a form.

Engagement Rates

The number of people that interact with your content through likes, shares, comments, or in other ways.

Audience Growth

The new subscribers or leads that are generated from a piece of content.

Time On Page

The amount of time a user is on your page, whether it's a blog post, or a video (for video content this might be average watch time). It's important to keep track of where users drop off. Do they stay on the page long enough to read the post or consume the content?

Paid Campaigns

The amount of traffic that comes in from paid campaigns. If you sponsor posts on social media or pay for search engine ads, it's important to track how much traffic comes from those campaigns.

If you need more tips on analyzing your content, check out this free HubSpot Academy course.

Start Creating

Content creation is an iterative process that pays off tremendously with your audience. Once you have the content creation process down, you’ll be able to generate creative work that not only delights your audience but also grows your business.

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

The Ultimate Guide to Content Creation was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

Online Advertising Trends to Look Out For in 2022

Being on the pulse of online advertising trends could be crucial as we move into 2022, recent findings have suggested. According to Statista, digital buyers have been increasing year-on-year worldwide between 2014 and 2021. Some 2.14 billion people are expected to purchase online in 2021, that’s up from 1.32 billion in 2014.

It also found revenue in the e-commerce space alone is predicted to reach £89,591 million by the end of 2021 and hit heights of £104,043 million by 2025.

The Global Internet Advertising Market Report, from Research and Markets, adds that internet advertising will increase at a CAGR of 24.7% between 2020 and 2027. Indeed , it’s a fascinating time to be working in online advertising – and with knowledge of the latest trends, your brand can steal a march on the competition for 2022 and beyond.

In this guide, we look at the biggest and best online advertising trends the new year has to offer to help your creative team kickstart 2022’s ROI success story.

The biggest online advertising trends for 2022:

1. Cookie alternatives – will a winner emerge?
   • Moving forwards without cookies
2. Onsite advertising and dynamic ‘content’ optimisation
   • Bringing together onsite advertising and DCO
3. Expansion of gaming platforms as advertising channels
   • Where are the opportunities within gaming advertising?
4. Amazon and retail marketing – the continued growth

1. Cookie alternatives – will a winner emerge?

Google’s upcoming plans to eradicate third-party cookies have the online advertising industry in flux. Third-party cookies have been integral to many advertising strategies, as more people shop online worldwide and use social media via multiple devices.

Head to Facebook after visiting your favourite brand’s website and you’ll be met with an ad for the product you were just browsing, thanks to cookies.

In fact, 83% of marketers in the US were reliant on third-party cookies as of July 2021, according to Statista. Between 2017 and 2019, $19.7 billion was spent on third-party audience data in the US alone.

2022 will see much change in the way publishers serve content and advertisers target consumers. All of us consume articles and online content for free in exchange for the publisher displaying targeted advertising on their platforms, for instance. But 2022 brings a complicated shake up and, as the year unfurls, it will be a race against time to establish the best way forward for online advertising.

This remains an extremely uncertain space, with ample room for movement. Therefore, remaining aware of latest developments throughout 2022 will be crucial for your team’s success.

Moving forwards without cookies

The online advertising industry is exploring ways to replicate the behaviour of third-party cookies, and many companies are developing alternatives. In the US, spending on identity solutions between 2020-2024 is expected to hit $8.2 billion. Meanwhile, this expenditure is set to reach $4.1 billion in Europe by the same date.

There are hundreds of suggestions in the pipeline! But which will emerge as a leading choice, and will there even be a winner from this?

A Statista survey showed that 60% of US marketers believe multiple solutions will be required. Plus, 62% have developed first-party strategies and 74% are collaborating to share data.

One of the leading solutions in advanced developments is Unified ID 2.0, an open-source system. It will allow users to log in and set their ad preferences, thus creating an ID. Big companies such as BuzzFeed and Newsweek and millions of people are taking part in a trial. Other developing alternatives include netID and Authenticated Identity Infrastructure.

Remember, first-party data is crucial for your brand, and Google will still allow first-party cookie usage for targeted ads online.

Other options for your creative team to research include:

• Targeted social media ads
• Closely look at social insights
• Utilise first-party data from your CMS/website
• Conversion measurement APIs
• Aggregated reporting
• Look into Google’s Privacy Sandbox
• Harness the power of your email marketing data
• Contextual advertising

2. Onsite advertising and dynamic optimisation

In a cookie-less world, a partnership between onsite advertising and dynamic creative optimisation (DCO) could be crucial. E-commerce and retail brands operate in a competitive landscape. So, with third-party cookies unable to entice users to your site, it will be key to capture attention and provide seamless experiences when customers arrive on your site.

Statistics highlighted by Forbes show the importance of customer experience (CX). Your brand relies on customers and customer loyalty. Which helps to explain why spending for global CX is predicted to reach heights of $641 billion during 2022. Additionally, Econsultancy found 95% of large organisations think CX job roles are key for their business growth.

These numbers show the shift towards the focus of site performance for brands as we move into another year.

Onsite advertising and dynamic optimisation could, therefore, be one of the biggest online advertising trends for your brand to tap into in 2022.

Bringing together onsite advertising and DCO

By combining onsite advertising with DCO, your team is empowered to launch data-driven onsite placements with creativity at their core. What this means in practise, is your experts have the capability to use HTML5 ad placements to replace any generic site content – this might be video, copy, or an image.

These HTML5 placements then alter according to who’s viewing them, resulting in pinpoint personalisation and contributing to excellent customer experience.
With such innovation your brand can personalise onsite messaging for several audiences, whether they’re regular customers or new prospects.

With Creative Personalisation, your marketing team can optimise live dynamic ads without using cookies and in real-time – what’s more you can even use your existing ad tech.

During 2022 and beyond – and as the industry evolves in a landscape free of third-party cookies – personalising your onsite advertising could set your brand apart.

3. Expansion of gaming platforms as advertising channels

With an estimated 3.24 billion global gamers in 2021, it’s no surprise gaming platforms are increasingly popular among advertisers. Earlier this year, we discovered gaming has a turnover of $159 billion, and during 2020 esports alone had a worldwide audience of 495 million.

Gaming has quickly emerged as an integral segment of the entertainment industry, leading the way in turnover. This has translated into the speedy expansion of gaming platforms as advertising platforms.

In fact, research covered by The Drum shows video game advertising has risen by 17% in 2021, while ad spend for console, streaming and distribution is up 36%. When it comes to online advertising trends, this is a big one.

Where are the opportunities within gaming advertising?

There are three main areas for advertisers to target within the gaming industry, they are:

• Around game – banners, videos and pop-ups not included in the gaming experience itself.
• In-game – or IGA, this type of advertising can be static or dynamic, but is part of the gaming experience.
• Advergaming – games specifically designed based on the advertised service or product

The opportunities are wide-ranging within this segment. Your brand can invest in rights for advertising purposes, opt for product placements, invest in branded elements, or create completely branded games.

Read through our essential guide to gaming for digital marketers for an overview of how to incorporate this burgeoning space into your advertising strategy and watch your ROI soar.

4. Amazon and retail marketing – the continued growth

The impact of Covid-19 on traditional shopping experiences has made online retail key. Although online retail numbers are lower than in 2020, IMRG figures from May 2021 show that sales volumes were up 46% from the same period in 2019.

Leading online retail is Amazon. By the end of 2021, Statista projects that Amazon’s market share of the US’s e-commerce retail market GMV will hit 50%. Meanwhile, Edge Retail Insight anticipate the company’s gross sales in the UK will reach £77.1 billion by 2025 – outsprinting Tesco, current market leader, by £1 billion.

There’s huge opportunity for advertisers and brands to build both trust with Amazon customers and brand equity in equal measure. Helping your brand to thrive with ranking and sales uplift through advertising can be crucial. Investing in sponsored ads and looking into Amazon DSP could be an ROI-building aspect of a great online advertising strategy.

A Salesforce study found 60% of customers say they’ll do more online shopping after the pandemic than they did before. There’s so much happening in the online retail marketing and advertising space as we move into 2022, it’s impossible to ignore.

Key takeaways

With cookie alternatives up in the the air, and online advertising is moving into unknown territory, keeping up to date with trends is important.

We predict that in 2022, advertising in gaming will expand even more rapidly and be an exciting and fruitful space to place ad spend. Along with Amazon and retail marketing flourishing, there’s lots for your creative team to work with in 2022.

Not only that, but social commerce is a hotbed for advertising activity. With the option to buy directly on Instagram, plus the presence of native advertising products, your online ad strategy has extensive possibilities for growth.

Harnessing the power of a premium ad creator to automate the production of your creative, fast and at scale, can help you accelerate past the competition. Additionally, with Bannerflow’s campaign management and personalisation tools, it’s simple for your team to control, target and tailor campaigns from a single source. To experience every feature these solutions have to offer, it’s easy to request a demo. One of our experts will help you get started and guide you through the process.

The post Online Advertising Trends to Look Out For in 2022 appeared first on Bannerflow.

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How Benefit Segmentation Will Take Your Marketing Campaigns to the Next Level

If you're a fan of HubSpot's Inbound Marketing Methodology, you probably understand the importance of customer success. In fact, 70% of businesses with growing revenue prioritize customer success as "very important." So, if you want your business to succeed you must make sure your customers do, too.

By doing so, you can stack the odds in your favor, ensuring the leads you’re passing to your sales team are a good fit for your business through benefit segmentation. In this post, we'll go over what benefit segmentation is, why you should use it, and where it can be seen in the real world.

Why should you do benefit segmentation?

Benefit segmentation will help you gain a better understanding of the different needs of your customer base in addition to the following:

1. Benefit segmentation makes it easier for sales reps to convert leads into customers.

That's because your marketing campaigns will attract customers who are better suited for your product or service. Since the campaigns are targeted to the people who need your business the most, your sales team should have an easier time closing deals.

2. Marketers and salespeople can use benefit segmentation to engage customers.

By identifying the key value that your business provides, your team will create more compelling marketing campaigns and sales pitches. They'll know exactly how to differentiate your product or service to make it attractive to your target audience.

3. Benefit segmentation improves customer retention.

Converting leads that are a good fit for your organization will decrease your churn rate over time. Customers will be happy your product or service is fulfilling their needs and will be less likely to shop with your competitors.

Now that we understand what benefit segmentation is and why you should use it, let's take a look at some real examples where this marketing technique helped businesses attract and close leads.

Benefit Segmentation Examples

1. Samsung

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The cell phone has become one of the most fundamental products of modern technology. Almost everyone has a cell phone to get them through their day-to-day tasks. But, depending on who you are, how old you are, and where you're from, your cell phone needs may differ dramatically from the next customer. Most of us need a cell phone, but often for a different reason. So, how do phone companies manage to fulfill these customer needs?

Samsung uses benefit segmentation to personalize ads for different target audiences. In the cell phone industry, age is a major determining factor of customer needs. As customers get older, what they need from their cell phone changes. It goes from fun features like cameras and apps to more practical benefits like battery life and security.

We can see this play out in the two advertisements pictured. The first one is aimed at a youthful audience and inspires them to "Do bigger things." The phone comes with two cameras and lets the user draw on images using the included stylist.

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Compare this to the next ad where Samsung focuses on the practicality of the phone. Its tagline, "Designed for humans," lets the reader know the phone is user-friendly and easy to set up. The phone is designed for optimal performance so that it never slows down no matter how many apps are running at once. This is particularly useful for an audience that may have a busy professional schedule and is working on multiple tasks at once.

Highlights:

• Samsung used it’s “Do bigger things” campaign to attract a younger audience by reeling them in with sleek new camera features.
• Conversely, the company was able to attract older users who may not be as tech or gear savvy with the tagline “Designed for humans,” implying the phone is user-friendly for all.

2. Ford

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Car companies often use benefit segmentation to position different types of vehicles. For example, we can look at Ford to see the difference in advertisement between its Ford Fusion and F-150 models.

The Ford Fusion is a practical, four-door sedan that's described as "sophisticated" and "cool." Ford recognizes that people who are interested in this car will value its style in addition to its performance and price. The company highlights this by using vibrant colors in its advertisement to compliment the car's eye-popping design.

Now, compare that image to the image of the Ford F-150 below. The F-150 is a work truck designed for people who need a powerful, durable vehicle. Customers who are interested in the F-150 would value the truck's impressive towing capacity and ability to navigate difficult terrain. That's why the image below shows the truck towing a large piece of equipment with a tagline of "Built Ford Tough."

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Highlights:

• Ford marketed the Fusion sedan to users who were more interested in having a practical, but stylish car to get around town.
• For the F-150, Ford used it’s “Built Ford Tough” campaign featuring the rugged outdoors to attract buyers looking for a durable, all-terrain truck that could handle the toughest jobs.

3. Airbnb

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Airbnb's market segmentation is interesting because it has to account for two main target audiences: hosts and guests. Not only does the company have to find customers to book the rooms, but they must also attract welcoming hosts with desirable living spaces. This forces Airbnb to perform benefit segmentation to create ads that appeal to both guests and hosts.

In the example above, we can see how Airbnb uses benefit segmentation to attract hosts in New York City. New Yorkers have a lot of pride for their city and value companies sharing that passion. So, Airbnb created these subway ads to educate New Yorkers on why Airbnb is good for local business owners as well as community development.

We can compare that educational message to the inspirational one below. This ad is aimed at potential guests who are planning a future trip but haven't made concrete travel plans. Airbnb capitalizes on this opportunity by creating a message that embraces uncertainty. Rather than pointing to a specific location, Airbnb makes the destination irrelevant and instead focuses on how the company will help, no matter where you go. This makes Airbnb look more trustworthy to customers who may be nervous about making a major financial decision.

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Highlights:

• To attract NYC hosts to use their service, Airbnb embarked on a campaign that tapped into the pride New Yorkers have for their city and local businesses.
• For guests, Airbnb established themselves as a trustworthy accommodation option – no matter where they decided to crash – by using the uncertainty of the audience’s destination to their advantage.

4. Nike

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Nike offers a wide range of products to a variety of target audiences. It needs to use benefit segmentation to develop different marketing campaigns that appeal to each group of customers. The most notable example we can pull from Nike is its ads featuring tennis superstar, Serena Williams.

These ads are aimed at Nike's female target audience, particularly at its youthful demographic. Nike understands that these customers value the athletic confidence they experience when wearing Nike products. That's because Nike's apparel is not only stylish but designed for elite performance. The company uses the tennis phenom, Serena Williams, as an icon to demonstrate how this added confidence can improve your athletic ability.

Highlights:

• Nike expertly leveraged it’s reputation for creating high-performance gear by using tennis star Serena Williams.
• Additionally the brand was able to tap into youthful nostalgia and appeal to female buyers by using images of Williams as a youth to inspire their audience to greatness.

5. Hulu

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Amidst the "cord-cutting" phenomenon, Hulu has been able to position itself as a viable alternative to cable TV. Hulu's users value convenience and efficiency and don't want to spend money paying for television channels they never watch. So, the company has created an ad campaign that explains how Hulu users can save money while maintaining access to their favorite content.

In the ad above, we see how benefit segmentation influenced Hulu's marketing campaign. For example, the copy highlights how users can view "current episodes" and "hit movies." Since many cord-cutters worry about losing access to new content, this lets users know that Hulu's content is updated so they'll never miss a recent episode. That's incredibly important for people who follow series like Game of Thrones, where it's vital to watch the episode as soon as it airs.

Highlights:

• Hulu’s ad campaign assures potential cord-cutters they won’t miss current episodes of their favorite shows.
• Hulu found what was most important to their customers (missing their favorite shows) and then tailored their messaging to address their needs.

The Advantage of Using Benefit Segmentation

With benefit segmentation, you can organize your customers and leads based on the value you provide them. This ensures you're attracting customers who will develop a strong relationship with your business over time. <>By pursuing these customers, your organization will improve lead acquisition and ensure customer success.

This article was originally published June 3, 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Campaigns

From P&G’s “Thank You, Mom” to American Express’s “Small Business Saturday” to Dos Equis’s “Most Interesting Man in the World,” marketing campaigns have a way of sticking with us long after an impression or purchase. Why is that? Well, campaigns make companies memorable. They promote a focused effort that guides consumers towards the desired action. They also give brands an identity, personality, and emotion.

Marketing campaigns can do the same for your business. That’s why we’ve compiled this guide — to provide a clear, concise approach to your next marketing campaign.

Keep reading to get started or use the links below to jump ahead.

Marketing campaigns don’t include all marketing efforts for a brand. In fact, the word “campaign” is defined as “a connected series of operations designed to bring about a particular result.”

That’s why politicians campaign for a specific election and militaries campaign for a specific battle.

For example, every Nike advertisement you see or hear on the way to work probably isn’t part of a campaign. But, if you see a Nike billboard, scroll past a Nike-sponsored Instagram post, and receive a Nike email all promoting the same product, you’ve witnessed a marketing campaign.

You’ve also probably heard the word “campaign” used for both marketing and advertising. What’s the difference?

Marketing Campaigns vs Advertising Campaigns

Advertising is a component of marketing. Marketing is how a company plans to raise awareness of its brand and convince customers to make a purchase, while advertising is the process of creating persuasive messages around these broad goals.

In terms of campaigns, an advertising campaign might be a facet of a bigger marketing campaign strategy. For example, if Nike were campaigning about the release of a new product, their advertising would be one piece of its broader marketing efforts, which might also encompass email, social media, and paid search.

Now that we understand the difference between advertising and marketing campaigns, here's a list of a few more types of marketing campaigns you might run.

Marketing Campaign Components

Multiple components go into the planning, execution, and benefiting from a stellar marketing campaign.

• Goals & KPIs: These identify what the end goal of your campaign is, quantify it, and explain how you’ll measure this result. For example, your content creation campaign might be measured by organic traffic, with each post aiming to drive 1,000 views per month and 10 new contacts, and metrics being measured in Google Analytics and Looker.
• Channels: Where will your content and messaging be distributed? For example, if you’re running a social media marketing campaign, you might specifically prioritize growing the channels most relevant to your audience and omit those where you’re least likely to grow a loyal following.
• Budget: Not all marketing campaigns require an incremental budget, but many still do. Factor in the agency, advertising, and freelance costs, if appropriate, and factor these numbers into any ROI analysis for your campaign.
• Content Format(s): Determine what kind of content you will be creating to fuel the campaign. It’s common for marketers to include multiple content formats in a singular campaign. For example, a branding campaign could include video ads, press releases, and guest blogs.
• Team: Who are the individuals you’re relying on to get the job done? Before kickstarting your campaign, make sure you have a roster of people who can help you with copywriting, website building, design, budget planning, video, or whatever elements you’re employing in the campaign.
• Design: Finally, a great marketing campaign has a noteworthy design. Whether it’s a sleek website design, a logo at the end of a video commercial, or an interactive infographic, make sure your design is professional and fitting for the purpose of the campaign.

How to Create a Successful Marketing Campaign

Creating an entire campaign is a big task, but the process is pretty straightforward. Planning your campaign is just as important as designing the fun stuff, such as the creative advertisements and conversion assets, so take the time to do this important step.

Before you create what your audience will see, you must consider what you want them to do when they see it (or read it or hear it.)

I’ve organized this section as a marketing campaign template. All you need to do is answer the questions — as accurately and in-depth as possible — to ensure a thorough, successful approach to your next marketing campaign.

Planning Your Marketing Campaign

This step is crucial to the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. The planning stage will determine how you measure success and will guide your team and campaign when things (inevitably) go awry.

Featured Resource

• Free Marketing Plan Generator

1. Set a purpose and goal for your campaign.

Let’s start simple. Why are you running this campaign? What would you like your campaign to accomplish for your business?

If you’re having trouble defining your campaign purpose, start broad. Take a look at the goals below. Which one is most aligned with your own?

• Promote a new product or service
• Increase brand awareness
• Gather customer feedback or content
• Generate revenue
• Boost user engagement
• Advertise an upcoming event

This is hardly a definitive list, but it gives you an idea of some general business goals that a campaign could help reach.

We'll use the third option as an example: Gather customer feedback or content.

Let's take this broad campaign purpose and turn it into a SMART goal. Here's what that looks like:

“The goal of my marketing campaign is to gather user-generated content from 100 customers via a branded hashtag on Instagram featuring our new product line by December 31, 2020.”

The goal is Specific (user-generated content), Measurable (100 customers), Attainable (via a branded Instagram hashtag), Relevant (featuring the new product line), and Timely (by December 31, 2020).

See how this broad campaign purpose instantly transforms into an actionable, attainable goal?

Pro Tip: Setting SMART Goals is simple when you have the right tools. Check out the free SMART Goal-Setting template below to get started on this critical piece of your marketing campaign.

Featured Resource

• Free SMART Goal-Setting Template

2. Establish how you’ll measure your campaign.

This will look different for everyone. You might measure “email open rates,” “new Facebook Page likes,” “product pre-orders,” or all of the above.

These answers will depend on your overarching campaign goal. Here are a few examples of metrics based on the campaign goals I mentioned above.

• For promoting a new product or service: Pre-orders, sales, upsells
• For increasing brand awareness: Sentiment, social mentions, press mentions
• For gathering customer feedback or content: Social mentions, engagement
• For generating revenue: Leads, sales, upsells
• For boosting user engagement: Blog shares, social shares, email interactions
• For advertising an upcoming event: Ticket sales, vendor or entertainment bookings, social mentions

If your campaign involves multiple marketing efforts (such as social media, direct mail, and radio ads), it’s wise to define how you’ll measure your campaign on each medium. (Read more about these channel-specific metrics below.)

For example, let’s say I was running my user-generated content (UGC) campaign on social media, email, and on our blog.

First, I’d define my key performance indicators (KPIs) for each medium, which may look like:

• Instagram engagements (likes and comments) and profile tags
• Email open rates and click-through rates
• Blog views, click-throughs, and social shares

Then, I’d define my primary campaign KPI: Instagram branded hashtag mentions.

While the above KPIs indicate how well my campaign is reaching and engaging my audience, my primary KPI tells me how close I am to reaching my SMART goal.

Lastly, let’s think about another question: What does “success” look like for your company? Sure, it’s exciting to reach a predetermined goal, but that’s not always possible. What (outside of your goal) would constitute success for you (or serve as a milestone)? What would make you feel like your campaign is worthwhile if it doesn’t involve meeting your goal?

Pro Tip: When determining how you’ll measure your campaign, consider setting up some checkpoints along the way. If your campaign involves boosting brand awareness and your goal is to reach 50 PR mentions by the end of the year, set up some benchmark notifications at 10, 25, and 40 mentions.

Not only will it remind you to keep pushing toward your ultimate goal, but it’ll boost morale within your team and remind you that your time and money investments are paying off.

3. Define your target audience.

Imagine constructing a bulletproof marketing campaign only to be met with crickets.

In that case, you might think you chose the wrong marketing medium or that your creative wasn’t witty enough. Regardless of what it might be, all of those decisions come back to one thing: Your audience.

The first step to resolving this problem is figuring out what stage of the buyer’s journey your campaign is targeting. Are you trying to bring in new customers, or are you attempting to gather feedback from existing clients? Are you marketing your brand to those who recognize it, or are you introducing a new brand identity altogether?

Your marketing message will vary depending on whether your campaign audience is in the Awareness, Consideration, or Decision stage. It’s important to note that a marketing campaign can include collateral for people in various stages of their journey. For example, while your campaign might target current customers, it might also bring brand awareness to new consumers.

Next, identify your audience's interests and pain points. Here are some questions to ask yourself and your team to better understand your audience.

• What are my audience’s general interests? What magazines do they read? What TV shows do they watch? How do they spend their free time?
• Where does my audience hang out online? For what purpose do they use Instagram, Facebook, and other networks? Do they engage or merely browse?
• What kind of content gets my audience’s attention? Do they respond to straightforward sales messages, or would they rather consume witty, humorous content? What cultural references would they understand?
• What kind of problems do they have that my product, service, or brand could solve?

Becoming well-acquainted with your campaign audience will help you confidently answer these questions and any others that may arise during the campaign.

Pro Tip: Defining your target audience should be done with as much data as possible. Survey your existing customers as well as potential customers in your market. Then, use this data to create your buyer personas — you can even enter that data into a free buyer persona generator like the one below.

Featured Resource

• Buyer Persona Generator

4. Set a concept for your campaign and get in contact with the right team.

Marketing campaigns require a mission, vision, and visual identity. Great campaigns are an offshoot of their parent brand, both visually and creatively — they stay consistent with the business brand but maintain their own identity.

When creating their campaign assets, some businesses use an in-house team while others opt for an agency. Another alternative is hiring a freelancer or contractor to complete a specific portion of the project, such as the copy or design.

Pro Tip: Depending on your specific campaign goals, I’d recommend starting with your in-house team and moving forward from there. They are the experts of your business and can speak to what your campaign needs to succeed.

This step will likely take the longest since you’ll be creating your campaign concept from scratch. Next, we’ll dive into how you’ll distribute your campaign assets and connect with your audience.

Featured Resource

• Market Research Kit

Distributing Your Marketing Campaign

This stage is all about the public-facing part of your campaign, including what your audience will see and when. If you’ve combed through the previous section, you should have all the answers you need to guide you through this step.

5. Choose the channels you’ll run your campaign on.

What type of marketing campaign will you use? This choice depends on your audience preference, budget, and brand engagement levels, among other factors.

Take a look at the current media channels you use to promote your company. Which ones perform the best? Which ones allow you to pay for advertisements? Which ones have the best engagement? Most importantly, where are your customers hanging out?

Need a few ideas? Take a look at the PESO model, which breaks up distribution channels into Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned.

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What type of marketing campaign will you use? This choice depends on your audience preference, budget, and brand engagement levels, among other factors.

Take a look at the current media channels you use to promote your company. Which ones perform the best? Which ones allow you to pay for advertisements? Which ones have the best engagement? Most importantly, where are your customers hanging out?

Need a few ideas? Take a look at the PESO model, which breaks up distribution channels into Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned.

6. Set a timeline for your campaign.

Establishing a deadline for your campaign (the Timely part of your SMART goal) gives you a much better idea of when, how, and how often you’ll promote it.

To begin, build a general campaign timeline. Then mark your campaign start date and deadline on a calendar.

Next, take a look at your marketing assets and chosen promotional marketing channels and work backward from the campaign launch date. Based on your resources, how often can you afford to post and promote your campaign content? With this information, you'll create a promotional calendar for each marketing channel. Decide on a cadence for each channel and map out your scheduled posts, emails, etc. on your calendar.

Visually mapping your marketing campaign will help you evenly disperse your campaign promotions and publish equally on each medium. It’ll also give you an idea of where your time and energy are going so that you can look back when assessing the effectiveness of your campaign.

Pro Tip: If your promotional calendar seems full, don’t fret. Social media and email scheduling tools can alleviate the pressure of posting daily. Check out tools like HubSpot, Buffer, and MailChimp to help you schedule and manage your campaign promotions.

The promotional stage is all about getting your campaign in front of your audience. But, how are you supposed to get your audience to understand the purpose of your campaign? We'll cover this next.

Converting Customers Through Your Marketing Campaign

This stage — the conversion stage — is all about how your campaign can lead to a specific result.

7. Ensure your campaign is driving users toward a desired action.

Even if your campaign is effective and drives a ton of traffic, it still needs to complete its desired action. By “the desired action,” I’m talking about that SMART goal you initially defined. Let’s take a moment and reiterate that goal.

For my sample campaign, my SMART goal was “to gather user-generated content from 100 customers via a branded hashtag on Instagram featuring our new product line by December 31, 2018.”

This step is all about calibrating your marketing efforts and channels to lead your customers to complete your desired goal. This is done through conversion assets like calls-to-action, landing pages, and lead forms.

Pro Tip: Lead conversion assets can be used separately or in conjunction with one another, such as featuring a lead form on a landing page, or creating a call-to-action asking your audience to fill out a form.

8. Monitor the right metrics.

The campaign effectiveness metrics you’ll monitor will depend on what type of marketing campaign you’re running and what channels you’ve chosen. This section merely serves as a baseline list to give you an idea of what to watch.

Also, it’s tempting to focus on vanity metrics like generated traffic, click-through rate, and impressions. A bump in these areas is definitely a good thing, but since they don’t necessarily indicate a bump in revenue, they can’t be the only metrics used to measure the effectiveness of your campaign.

Pro Tip: Bookmark this link to all the marketing metrics to watch. It's organized by marketing channel so you can quickly scan the list for new metrics to track for your campaigns.

This may seem like a lot (depending ocn your campaign), but keeping an eye on these numbers can help you assess your campaign accurately and better understand how to improve.

Assessing Your Marketing Campaign

The post-campaign stage determines your success just as much as the planning stage. Measuring and analyzing your campaign data can provide unique insight into your audience, marketing channels, and budget. It can also tell you exactly how (or how not) to run your next campaign.

9. Establish success numbers and metrics.

The easy way to figure this out is to understand whether or not your campaign met the initial SMART goal outlined in step one. If it did, great! If it didn’t, there's still hope.

For example, if your goal was to increase organic blog views by 100K, any bump in views would be considered successful. But there’s a difference between a campaign that works and a campaign that’s worthwhile. A worthwhile campaign gives you an ROI that’s proportionate to the time and energy you put into it.

Pro Tip: While it’s okay to celebrate any bump in pre-orders, leads, views, or engagements, don’t assume that’s enough. There’s a reason the very first thing to do is set a campaign goal. Sticking to that goal and calibrating your investment will ensure your campaign is worthwhile.

10. What will you do with the campaign data?

This step helps maximize your campaign’s business impact. When you analyze and apply your data, its value increases tenfold — not only did it help you measure and assess your campaign results, but it’ll also give you direction and clarity on your audience, marketing methods, creative prowess, and more.

Let’s return to my UGC Instagram campaign. Of course, images shared by my customers are helpful because they help me gather user content for my social channels and they promote my product to my audience’s followers. But this “data” also provides insight into who my audience is, when and how often they post on Instagram, what language they use, and how they use my product (assuming it’s the same as in the shared photo).

See how my campaign “data” provides more value than simply reaching my campaign goal? The same can go for your data. Whether you collect lead information, pre-orders, social engagements, or offer downloads, your data can equip you to not only meet your campaign goal but also expand your marketing efforts as a whole.

Pro Tip: The campaign isn't over once you've pulled that final report. Spend time with your team in a retrospective meeting. Ask yourselves questions like:

• What could’ve been done differently?
• How could we have saved money?
• For anything that went wrong, why do we think it went wrong?
• What did we learn about our audience or marketing channels?
• What kind of feedback could we gather from participants or customers?

So, marketing campaigns involve a lot of information, decision-making, ideas, and observation. But the process of creating and running one isn’t as scary as you thought, was it?

If you’re not sure where to start, take a look at some great campaign examples below. Now that you know what goes into each one, you might have a better idea of how to build one for yourself.

Great Marketing Campaign Examples (and Why They’re So Great)

This wouldn’t be a HubSpot Ultimate Guide if I didn’t show you some examples from the pros. Sometimes it’s helpful to see concepts at work, and that’s why I collected some of the best below.

1. Meta (Formerly Facebook): "The Metaverse"

In Q4 2021, Facebook announced the rebranding of its parent company. The new name, Meta, comes with its own marketing campaign that introduces the world to a new concept called the "metaverse."

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The campaign is still in its infancy stages, but it has taken over social media networks, including the Facebook app itself. The video posted to the new @wearemeta Instagram account showcases an alternate reality in which people can interact in 3D.

Why Meta's "The Metaverse" campaign is so great:

Reception of the campaign is still developing, but so far, it's successfully stopped the world in its tracks — and that's a recipe for success with just about any marketing campaign. The idea of a Facebook rebrand had been speculated prior to the launch of the campaign which piqued the public's interest. That meant even if they didn't like the change, they would still be interested in seeing what happens next.

2. Popeyes: "Megan Thee Stallion Hottie Sauce"

If Popeye's wasn't sure that it hit the ball out of the park with the chicken sandwich marketing campaign, then it nailed it for sure with the Megan Thee Stallion Hottie Sauce collaboration.

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Arguably, Popeyes created one of the best chicken sandwiches on the fast-food market in 2019. At the same time, artist Megan Thee Stallion was becoming the hottest rapper in the industry. So, it made sense that in 2021, the two would join forces to debut a remix of the successful chicken sandwich.

Why Popeyes' "Megan Thee Stallion Hottie Sauce" campaign is so great:

This marketing campaign was intentional about targeting the younger crowd with not just chicken sandwiches, but merchandise, too. Popeyes was able to tap into this segment of the market and increase sales while continuing to capitalize on its success without the campaign coming across as stale.

3. Cheerios: #GoodGoesRound

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General Mills ran a non-profit campaign called Good Goes Round via their Cheerios brand, lobbying to raise enough money to fund one million meals.

Why Cheerios' "Good Goes Round" campaign is so great:

The campaign featured its own landing page, video marketing assets, and hashtag (#GoodGoesRound), separating it from its “parent” brand and making it shareable among its audience. It also paid to promote the Good Goes Round URL on Google, giving the campaign even more visibility.

4. Apple: “Shot on iPhone”

Image Source

Apple's “Shot on iPhone” series highlights the high-quality videography and photography that customers can capture on the iPhone X. It’s a product launch campaign that focused on one specific feature of the new Apple smartphone.

Why Apple's "Shot on iPhone" campaign is so great:

This campaign was unique, because it’s similar to a user-generated campaign but was also promoted heavily by the brand itself. Apple launched its own Instagram account to share the #ShotoniPhone content, collaborated with professional photographers and videographers, and ran official TV advertisements.

5. The General: "Re-brand"

When it comes to cheesy commercials, The General's old marketing strategy fits the bill. The brand became synonymous with pixelated animations and low-quality production which inevitably had a negative effect on the way potential customers perceived the quality of service.

In 2020, the company changed its marketing campaign to target a more rational customer who appreciates a little humor. Shaquille O'Neal became the face of the brand, appearing in commercials alongside other notable celebrities like Montell Jordan and Ernie Johnson.

Why The General's "Re-brand" campaign is so great:

The General listened to its customers' opinions of the brand before moving forward with the new campaign and saw great success as a result. The tone of the marketing campaign remained light-hearted but took a more mature approach to the humor — toning it down and letting the key selling points of The General shine through.

6. Airbnb: “Made Possible by Hosts”

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, travel companies such as Airbnb saw unprecedented losses in profit. Well, how did the company respond? It created a series of videos called “Made Possible by Hosts” that shows appreciation for the hosts who have continued to accept guests on the platform.

 

What’s most curious about the campaign is that it doesn’t put Airbnb customers at the center. Instead, it spotlights the hosts who accept customers in the first place. In doing so, Airbnb focuses on the human aspect of its platform. You’re not renting an Airbnb property; you’re renting someone’s home.

Over to You

Marketing campaigns aren’t easy, but they’re valuable and integral to growing a successful brand and business. Campaigns set apart certain deliverables from general promotional efforts and touch your audience in creative and exciting ways. If you’re not sure where to start, consider what would be valuable to your audience, and go from there. Your audience is, after all, the lifeblood of your campaigns and company.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2017 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Campaigns was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

The Straightforward Guide to the Google Display Network

Millions of dollars are poured into the Google Display Network (GDN) every day. But why? Google offers endless options for marketers to promote their products, so how is this network different?

Frankly — because it works.

When industry competitors' congest search engines, the GDN can be a great alternative. Here, we’ll explore why you should use Google Display Network (GDN), how GDN differs from search ads, and how you can target your GDN ads to reach the right people in the right places.

What is Google Display Network?

The Google Display Network is a collection of over 200 million sites, apps, and videos where your Google ads can appear. As this network reaches 90% of global internet users, joining will greatly increase the number of eyes on your ads.

Why use the Google Display Network?

The value for GDN boils right down to reach and affordability. Prospecting, brand awareness, and remarketing can come with a hefty price tag when pursued for traditional search ads. GDN, by comparison, bypasses a lot of costly competition from other networks.

With Google's search ads, you're essentially throwing out a wide net, which can be largely hit-or-miss, both with whom you're targeting and with how you're spending.

Is it better to use GDN over search?

Whether or not you should choose GDN over search ads largely depends on your marketing goals. Generally, you’ll want to use GDN when the goal is to build brand awareness in a more cost-effective way.

There’s less competition for inflated keyword bids, so you're more likely to reach users actively searching for your products and services. Though the audience intent is not as strong, you get a much lower cost-per-click and many more impressions. There are also endless options for customizing your audience targeting.

Ultimately, you don’t need a fat wallet to set up a campaign through Google Display — you just need to choose the right targeting factors for your marketing goal.

Google's Display Network allows you to define your audience in a way search engines can't. Since you can target more than just keywords, you aren't limited to the Google results page. Instead, GDN allows you to target websites by audience affinities, in-market segments, and custom intent keywords. You can even hand-pick website placements that fit your target audience.

The other differentiator is volume. Where do the fancy image ads appear when you market with GDN? Across millions of websites that your prospects are visiting every day.

But really – what's the difference between GDN and a simple search ad? Let's explore that, now.

Google Search vs. Display Network

You need a different mentality when using Google's Display Network than when you're using the search network and others available on Google Ads. Let's define some use cases and expectations.

According to a study from Wordstream, the average GDN click-through- rate (CTR) was just 0.46% compared to 3.17% across search. This may seem minuscule, but it’s important to note this is because you're targeting users that may not be familiar with your brand at all. The Google Display Network is first and foremost a tool for prospecting and brand awareness.

The standard CTR for this network is still under 0.5%. But, for targeting prospects outside of search engines and social networks, that's still pretty good.

The next key differentiator is the fact that the user's primary interest is the website content itself — the display ad has an indirect, secondary role in the website's appeal to the viewer.

Marketers are hoping the prospective user will view their GDN ad along their journey to fulfilling another purpose. That makes the user intent different than when an ad appears at the top of a Google results page for a high-intent search phrase. It should be no surprise that the click-through rate and conversion rate for GDN are below 1%.

Unlike with search, there is a variety of targeting options outside of keywords that span across a network of millions of websites. You can access the majority of internet users through website placements. Your number-one goal with GDN is finding the right audience size with strict targeting criteria.

There are ways to approach this network with tighter, more relevant targeting. Ultimately, remarketing is limitless — but it involves audience development outside the Google Ads platform. Let's start by exploring the default prospecting options Google provides and work our way toward opportunities customized for your brand and those who have engaged with your website.

Google Display Network Remarketing or Prospecting?

On the GDN, you can target in two ways. First, you can target prospects on the internet who may have no previous knowledge of your website, brand, products, or services. Second, you can remarket to users who have engaged with your website in some form. Option two allows you to leverage the audiences you find in Google Analytics for your website. If you don't have any Google Analytics website audiences built, doing so is incredibly easy — simply set up an audience for a user that completes specific actions.

Some of the most common remarketing audiences include:

• General website visitors
• Users who have submitted a form
• Users who have downloaded content
• Users who have viewed specific product pages
• Users who have signed up for an account or trial offer
• Users who have completed a transaction or purchased a product
• Users who have begun any of the above actions but abandoned the page before completing it

Remarketing and prospecting are two vastly different initiatives that you can execute through GDN. Some businesses prefer to focus only on remarketing because reaching users familiar with one's brand drives leads and sales for the most affordable cost. However, other businesses aren't focused on the return as much as generating awareness of their products and services. It all comes down to your company's marketing goals.

Google Display Ad Examples

Once you know how to target, you'll want to create the collateral that gets the attention you need from your ad placements. Here are some great examples of Google display ads:

1. SEMrush

SEMrush uses large white font across an eye-catching blue background with bold oranges and pinks, making it colorful and stark enough to attract attention.

Why We Like It

• The copy of this ad does two things: states the value ("skyrocket your marketing") and provides social proof ("like our clients did")

2. Conversica

Conversica utilizes the large vertical format, which takes up a lot of real estate space on a page, enough to hopefully stir any website visitors out of "banner blindness." Their strategy is not to promote their company but rather an offer: research on virtual assistants in sales.

Why We Like It

• The vertical ad is large enough to catch the attention of the person browsing the site, plus entices them with an offer rather than a hard sell.

3. E*TRADE

This is one of the skinnier horizontal banners, and E*TRADE uses it to make a bold statement: "$0 commissions" in large letters across the center. The call to action (open an account) is much smaller than the value proposition so that they recognize the value first before taking action on it.

Why We Like It

• This ad emphasizes the value of using E*TRADE — zero commissions fees. The company sets itself apart from the competition by assuring customers they won’t be nickel-and-dimed with extra fees.

Google Display Network Audience Targeting

1. In-Market Segment Targeting

In-market segments are Google users interested in broad categories of products and services, including real estate, education, home and garden, sports and fitness, and more. Google defines these segments based on users' historical views, clicks, and conversions on previous content. There are sub-categories for specific types of each segment, but the criteria Google uses for these aren't public. The size of each sub-category is easily millions — and sometimes billions — of users. It's safe to say that testing a GDN in-market segment is a good starting point.

However, layering demographic qualifiers, device targeting, and other affinities is necessary to create a focused pool of users.

An easy way to control audience size for in-market segments is by comparing with Google Analytics data. The in-market segments on Google Analytics line up perfectly with those on Google Ads. Google Analytics should show you which in-market segments on your site have the highest conversion rates.

Educated guesses for targeting on the Google Ads platform can only go so far. Google Analytics has the tools for identifying and building data-driven audiences from which Google Ads can learn and optimize. Ultimately, using Google Analytics can help ensure you're reaching highly qualified users.

2. Affinity Audience Targeting

Like in-market segments, affinity audiences are Google users with similar interests, including cooking, fashion, beauty, gaming, music, travel, and more. These are very expansive categories of internet users, so it's equally important to find targeting criteria to narrow down the size of any one affinity interest, or its sub-categories.

Strictly relying on the default options for in-market segments and affinity audiences within Google Ads can leave a giant dent in your budget for marketing spend. Google Analytics can be a huge help in pinpointing exactly which affinity audiences yield the highest conversion rates on your website.

Google Ads will also create a "similar" audience based on the Google Analytics' audience created. These audiences are usually more focused in size, making them ideal for testing.

3. Custom Intent Audiences

Custom intent audiences is another valuable contextual targeting method.

How does it work? Simply put, Google can show your ads to users who are "likely to be interested" in specific keywords and website URLs. It may also show your ads to people who have recently searched for your suggested keywords.

The key difference between custom intent audiences and other targeting methods is that you aren't targeting websites that use these exact keywords, and Google is not placing your ad exclusively on specified website URLs. Rather, Google serves your ads to users on various other websites that have some contextual connection to the website URL or keyword given to Google.

4. Placement Targeting

Google can show your ads on specific websites when provided with placement URLs. This option offers tighter, more controlled targeting because it limits display ad placements to custom websites selected by the marketer.

You could save money being so specific, but you could also be missing out on mainstream websites that your target audience is more actively visiting.

Simply put, users who visit your website also visit other websites. With custom affinity (interests) and custom intent (keyword and URL) audiences, Google can target these users at other online destinations. Picture your specified website as the center of a digital spiderweb — Google uses the central URL to target the users in other URLs within the spiderweb, amplifying your reach to include websites you may not know about.

These websites may or may not have content related to your suggested keyword or URL, but Google knows that these websites are sites that users of your suggested keywords and URLs also visit.

5. Topic Targeting

Google can show your ads on web pages only about your specified topic. Some of these topics could be similar to interests or affinities, or they may fall outside the default categories that Google offers (e.g., they may be along the lines of hiking, camping, or agriculture).

This targeting is an alternative to researching and selecting website placements for one interest without knowing the impact of those placements.

Three Key Audience-Building Factors

Now that you know the basic mechanisms for targeting and creating an audience, let's dive into three essential tips to ensure you build those audiences better. Here are some high-impact areas for tightening audience targeting where it counts.

1. Select the right devices.

When setting up a display campaign, it's important to consider where the target audience will be using the product and how they will be signing up. If the user experience is compromised or not nearly as good on a particular device, consider excluding that device altogether.

For example, is mobile really the right platform for your landing page offer? Can your products or services be used easily on tablets and other small devices? If your company produces games or apps, mobile is ideal. But if you're marketing business software used on desktop computers, mobile targeting could be costly and unnecessary.

2. Choose the right demographics and locations.

Google lets you customize several demographics when targeting for a display campaign. For example, age and household income are broken out into seven different ranges. If you know your audience is not within 18-24 years of age, or the top 10% of household income, you can easily exclude those users when creating ad groups.

There could also be some states in the U.S. or territories internationally to which your business prefers not to drive sales. The bids of these locations can easily be adjusted to redirect your budget to more profitable locations.

3. Mark the box for content exclusions.

Before launching a campaign on GDN, it's easy to make the mistake of skimming past the additional settings for websites with explicit content. Some advanced content settings are available for preventing your site from appearing on parked domains, sites with sexually suggestive content, sites with sensitive social issues, and more.

Google doesn't mark these boxes by default, so they must be manually selected to prevent your ads from appearing on undesirable sites.

Optimizing Your Google Display Network Results

Now that we've explored targeting methods as well as specific audience-building factors, let's dive deeper into how you might optimize your GDN results.

1. Assess demographic performance, and then recalibrate if necessary.

Some of your audience demographics may be ideal for traditional marketing but could perform poorly in a digital setting. Even after setting up specific demographic and location targeting, it's important to review the performance of what hasn't been excluded. For example, there are some demographic categories (e.g., "unknown") and ages (e.g., "65+") that can become costly after launch.

2. Assess placement performance and use those analytics to continually improve.

Google makes it easy to review where your ads are appearing on a daily or weekly basis after campaign launch. You can find this information under "Placements > Where Ads Showed."

Filtering placements by unusually high spend or CTR can quickly identify websites that are more of an immediate threat to your campaign's health. If you're considering bulk exclusions, you may find it helpful to export web placements within the timeframe of "all time".

Focus on blocking the duplicate placements that yield no results, since repeat offenders are a higher priority than websites that appear once with only a few impressions. After identifying duplicates, review the relevance of these sites, how much they have spent, and whether they have led to any conversions.

3. Consider which ad style and location will yield the best results.

There are two main ad types available for a GDN campaign — standard image ads and responsive ads. Standard image ads have a number of formats, including square, rectangular, skyscraper, and banner. These ads are an image-only display option. Here's an example:

Responsive ads, on the other hand, offer a combination of text and image options that display in a variety of formats, depending on where the ad appears. The complete ad is composed of three image types, up to five short headlines, one long headline, up to five descriptions, and a business name. The short headlines and descriptions rotate to find and show the best-performing combination. Here's an example:

If you're limited on time, budget, or creative resources, it can be tricky to know which display ads will work best for your campaign, and you might not want to risk time testing different ones. If this is the case, it's important to note studies have shown that 300 x 250 and 728 x 90 receive more impressions than other ad formats. Half-page ads and large rectangles receive higher CTRs than other ad formats, as well. So if you're not sure where to begin, try out the rectangular formats and leaderboards!

Additionally you could opt to enlist the help of an agency, like CleverAds, to do the heavy lifting of ad creation and management.

Figure Out Whether Google Display Network Is The Right Choice For Your Business

You can amass a very powerful reach on the Google Display Network with the right attention to targeting. The network's affordability, as well as the separation from the competition, makes it a viable marketing option.

This guide has covered several audience-building and optimization factors to help you hit the ground running with Google Display Network campaigns. Whether you're just starting out or have some room for improvement, check out the custom audience capabilities to see if one might work for your next campaign.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

The Straightforward Guide to the Google Display Network was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns