MARKETING
How Tagging Strategies Transform Marketing Campaigns
As a marketer, I understand how today’s marketing campaigns face fierce competition. With so much content and ads competing for eyeballs, creating campaigns that stand out is no easy task.
That’s where strategies like tagging come in.
It helps you categorize and optimize your marketing efforts. It also helps your campaigns cut through the noise and reach the right audience.
To help you out, I’ve compiled nine ways brands use a tagging strategy to create an impactful marketing campaign.
Let’s get to it.
How Brands Use a Tagging Strategy
Tagging involves using keywords or labels to categorize and organize content, products, or customer data. You attach tags to specific items or information to make searching, sorting, and analyzing data easier.
There are various types of tags, including meta tags, analytics tags, image tags, hashtags, blog tags, and more.
So, how do brands use a tagging strategy to make their marketing campaigns stand out?
Improve Social Media Engagement
With over 5 billion users, social media provides an easy way to connect with your audience, build relationships, and promote your offerings.
Use a tagging strategy to boost social media interactions. Consistently use hashtags that align with current trends and topics. This encourages people to interact with your content and boosts content visibility.
You can also use tags to monitor brand mentions of your products or your industry. This allows you to engage with your audience promptly.
Consider virtual social media assistants to streamline your tagging strategy. These AI-driven tools can suggest relevant hashtags, track mentions, and automate responses. Implementing them can save time and resources while ensuring consistent engagement across your socials.
Build a Personal Brand on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform, with over 1 billion members across 200 nations. It offers excellent opportunities for individuals and businesses to build and nurture their brands.
However, simply creating a professional profile isn’t enough to build a personal brand on LinkedIn.
Use various tags to increase your visibility, establish thought leadership, showcase expertise, and attract the right connections. For instance, use skill tags to showcase your expertise and industry tags to attract connections and opportunities within your industry. Use certification tags to help showcase your expertise and credibility to potential employers or clients.
Facilitate Customer Segmentation and Personalization
Personalization matters—more so in today’s data-driven world. In fact, 65% of consumers expect your brand to adapt to their changing preferences and needs.
To meet this expectation, consider using a tagging strategy.
Segment your customers based on shared characteristics, such as demographics, interests, purchase history, cart abandonment, and behavior.
Here’s a summary of the steps to customer segmentation.
With your customer segments ready, use tags to tailor your marketing messages and offerings to specific segments. Imagine sending targeted email campaigns based on what your customers need. That’s the power of segmentation and tagging in action!
Enhance SEO and Content Discoverability
Tagging content can have a profound impact on search engine optimization (SEO) and content discoverability. When users search for specific topics or products, well-tagged content is more likely to appear in search results, driving organic traffic to your website.
Additionally, tags can help you analyze the most popular topics with your readers. Then, the results of this analysis can help you adjust your content strategies accordingly.
And get this— certain AI tools can help analyze your content and suggest relevant tags and keywords. Using these tools in addition to a tagging strategy can help optimize your SEO strategies and boost content discoverability.
Partner with the Right Influencers
Influencer marketing has become a go-to marketing approach for modern brands. Recent stats show that 85% of marketers and business owners believe influencer marketing is an effective marketing strategy.
But how do you find the perfect influencer for your campaign?
Utilize tags to identify influencers who are relevant to your niche. Beyond this, find influencers who align with your brand values and target audience.
Additionally, look for influencers who use hashtags that are relevant to your campaigns. For instance, fashion influencer Chiara Ferragni uses #adv (advertising) and #ghd (good hair day) hashtags in this campaign.
Monitor industry-specific hashtags and mentions to discover influential voices and build profitable relationships with them.
Track Hashtag Performance
Tracking your hashtag performance helps you understand your campaigns’ engagement, reach, and effectiveness.
To achieve this goal, assign special hashtags to each marketing project. This helps you see which hashtags generate the most engagement and reach, enabling you to refine your tagging strategy.
Here’s an example of a hashtag performance report for the #SuperBowl2024.
This curated list of hashtag generators by Attrock discusses the top tools for your consideration. You can analyze each and choose the one that best fits your needs.
Categorize Content Accordingly
The human attention span is shrinking. The last thing you want is for your audience to have difficulty in finding or navigating your content, get frustrated, and bounce.
Untagged content can be difficult to navigate and manage. As any marketer knows, content is important in digital marketing campaigns.
To categorize your content, identify the main categories by topics, themes, campaigns, target audiences, or product lines. Then, assign relevant tags based on the categories you’ve identified. After that, implement a consistent tagging strategy for existing and new content.
Organizing your content using tags can also help streamline your content management workflow. Most importantly, readers can easily find the content they’re looking for, thereby boosting overall user experience, engagement, and conversions.
Boost Your Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing remains a powerful marketing tool in today’s digital world. It’s also another area where brands use a tagging strategy to directly reach their target audience.
Use tags to segment your email list and personalize your marketing messages. Then, you can send targeted emails based on factors like purchase history, interests, and demographics.
Personalization can significantly improve open rates, CTRs, and overall engagement and conversion rates. It’s a simple yet impactful strategy to make your email marketing strategy more effective.
Plus, you can use tags to track how well your emails perform with each group. This helps you understand what content resonates best with your audience and provides insight on how to improve your emails going forward.
Enhance Analytics and Reporting
Every marketer appreciates the immense value of data. For brands using tagging strategies, tags are powerful tools for gathering valuable data.
Analyze how users interact with your tagged content. See which tags generate the most clicks, shares, conversions, and other forms of engagement. Gain insight into audience preferences and campaign effectiveness.
This granular data about your marketing efforts allow you to make data-driven decisions, allocate resources effectively, and refine your marketing strategies.
Final Thoughts
There isn’t a single correct way for brands to use a tagging strategy in marketing. You can use a tagging strategy however you see fit. However, the bottom line is that this strategy offers you a simple yet powerful way to create attention-grabbing and unique marketing campaigns.
Fortunately, tagging strategies are useful across various marketing initiatives, from social media and email marketing to SEO and more.
So, if you’re ready to elevate your marketing campaign, build a strong brand presence, and stand out among the competition, consider employing effective tagging strategies today.
MARKETING
YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples [2024 Update]
Introduction
With billions of users each month, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and top website for video content. This makes it a great place for advertising. To succeed, advertisers need to follow the correct YouTube ad specifications. These rules help your ad reach more viewers, increasing the chance of gaining new customers and boosting brand awareness.
Types of YouTube Ads
Video Ads
- Description: These play before, during, or after a YouTube video on computers or mobile devices.
- Types:
- In-stream ads: Can be skippable or non-skippable.
- Bumper ads: Non-skippable, short ads that play before, during, or after a video.
Display Ads
- Description: These appear in different spots on YouTube and usually use text or static images.
- Note: YouTube does not support display image ads directly on its app, but these can be targeted to YouTube.com through Google Display Network (GDN).
Companion Banners
- Description: Appears to the right of the YouTube player on desktop.
- Requirement: Must be purchased alongside In-stream ads, Bumper ads, or In-feed ads.
In-feed Ads
- Description: Resemble videos with images, headlines, and text. They link to a public or unlisted YouTube video.
Outstream Ads
- Description: Mobile-only video ads that play outside of YouTube, on websites and apps within the Google video partner network.
Masthead Ads
- Description: Premium, high-visibility banner ads displayed at the top of the YouTube homepage for both desktop and mobile users.
YouTube Ad Specs by Type
Skippable In-stream Video Ads
- Placement: Before, during, or after a YouTube video.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Vertical: 9:16
- Square: 1:1
- Length:
- Awareness: 15-20 seconds
- Consideration: 2-3 minutes
- Action: 15-20 seconds
Non-skippable In-stream Video Ads
- Description: Must be watched completely before the main video.
- Length: 15 seconds (or 20 seconds in certain markets).
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Vertical: 9:16
- Square: 1:1
Bumper Ads
- Length: Maximum 6 seconds.
- File Format: MP4, Quicktime, AVI, ASF, Windows Media, or MPEG.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 640 x 360px
- Vertical: 480 x 360px
In-feed Ads
- Description: Show alongside YouTube content, like search results or the Home feed.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Square: 1:1
- Length:
- Awareness: 15-20 seconds
- Consideration: 2-3 minutes
- Headline/Description:
- Headline: Up to 2 lines, 40 characters per line
- Description: Up to 2 lines, 35 characters per line
Display Ads
- Description: Static images or animated media that appear on YouTube next to video suggestions, in search results, or on the homepage.
- Image Size: 300×60 pixels.
- File Type: GIF, JPG, PNG.
- File Size: Max 150KB.
- Max Animation Length: 30 seconds.
Outstream Ads
- Description: Mobile-only video ads that appear on websites and apps within the Google video partner network, not on YouTube itself.
- Logo Specs:
- Square: 1:1 (200 x 200px).
- File Type: JPG, GIF, PNG.
- Max Size: 200KB.
Masthead Ads
- Description: High-visibility ads at the top of the YouTube homepage.
- Resolution: 1920 x 1080 or higher.
- File Type: JPG or PNG (without transparency).
Conclusion
YouTube offers a variety of ad formats to reach audiences effectively in 2024. Whether you want to build brand awareness, drive conversions, or target specific demographics, YouTube provides a dynamic platform for your advertising needs. Always follow Google’s advertising policies and the technical ad specs to ensure your ads perform their best. Ready to start using YouTube ads? Contact us today to get started!
MARKETING
Why We Are Always ‘Clicking to Buy’, According to Psychologists
Amazon pillows.
MARKETING
A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots
Salesforce launched a collection of new, generative AI-related products at Connections in Chicago this week. They included new Einstein Copilots for marketers and merchants and Einstein Personalization.
To better understand, not only the potential impact of the new products, but the evolving Salesforce architecture, we sat down with Bobby Jania, CMO, Marketing Cloud.
Dig deeper: Salesforce piles on the Einstein Copilots
Salesforce’s evolving architecture
It’s hard to deny that Salesforce likes coming up with new names for platforms and products (what happened to Customer 360?) and this can sometimes make the observer wonder if something is brand new, or old but with a brand new name. In particular, what exactly is Einstein 1 and how is it related to Salesforce Data Cloud?
“Data Cloud is built on the Einstein 1 platform,” Jania explained. “The Einstein 1 platform is our entire Salesforce platform and that includes products like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud — that it includes the original idea of Salesforce not just being in the cloud, but being multi-tenancy.”
Data Cloud — not an acquisition, of course — was built natively on that platform. It was the first product built on Hyperforce, Salesforce’s new cloud infrastructure architecture. “Since Data Cloud was on what we now call the Einstein 1 platform from Day One, it has always natively connected to, and been able to read anything in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud [and so on]. On top of that, we can now bring in, not only structured but unstructured data.”
That’s a significant progression from the position, several years ago, when Salesforce had stitched together a platform around various acquisitions (ExactTarget, for example) that didn’t necessarily talk to each other.
“At times, what we would do is have a kind of behind-the-scenes flow where data from one product could be moved into another product,” said Jania, “but in many of those cases the data would then be in both, whereas now the data is in Data Cloud. Tableau will run natively off Data Cloud; Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud — they’re all going to the same operational customer profile.” They’re not copying the data from Data Cloud, Jania confirmed.
Another thing to know is tit’s possible for Salesforce customers to import their own datasets into Data Cloud. “We wanted to create a federated data model,” said Jania. “If you’re using Snowflake, for example, we more or less virtually sit on your data lake. The value we add is that we will look at all your data and help you form these operational customer profiles.”
Let’s learn more about Einstein Copilot
“Copilot means that I have an assistant with me in the tool where I need to be working that contextually knows what I am trying to do and helps me at every step of the process,” Jania said.
For marketers, this might begin with a campaign brief developed with Copilot’s assistance, the identification of an audience based on the brief, and then the development of email or other content. “What’s really cool is the idea of Einstein Studio where our customers will create actions [for Copilot] that we hadn’t even thought about.”
Here’s a key insight (back to nomenclature). We reported on Copilot for markets, Copilot for merchants, Copilot for shoppers. It turns out, however, that there is just one Copilot, Einstein Copilot, and these are use cases. “There’s just one Copilot, we just add these for a little clarity; we’re going to talk about marketing use cases, about shoppers’ use cases. These are actions for the marketing use cases we built out of the box; you can build your own.”
It’s surely going to take a little time for marketers to learn to work easily with Copilot. “There’s always time for adoption,” Jania agreed. “What is directly connected with this is, this is my ninth Connections and this one has the most hands-on training that I’ve seen since 2014 — and a lot of that is getting people using Data Cloud, using these tools rather than just being given a demo.”
What’s new about Einstein Personalization
Salesforce Einstein has been around since 2016 and many of the use cases seem to have involved personalization in various forms. What’s new?
“Einstein Personalization is a real-time decision engine and it’s going to choose next-best-action, next-best-offer. What is new is that it’s a service now that runs natively on top of Data Cloud.” A lot of real-time decision engines need their own set of data that might actually be a subset of data. “Einstein Personalization is going to look holistically at a customer and recommend a next-best-action that could be natively surfaced in Service Cloud, Sales Cloud or Marketing Cloud.”
Finally, trust
One feature of the presentations at Connections was the reassurance that, although public LLMs like ChatGPT could be selected for application to customer data, none of that data would be retained by the LLMs. Is this just a matter of written agreements? No, not just that, said Jania.
“In the Einstein Trust Layer, all of the data, when it connects to an LLM, runs through our gateway. If there was a prompt that had personally identifiable information — a credit card number, an email address — at a mimum, all that is stripped out. The LLMs do not store the output; we store the output for auditing back in Salesforce. Any output that comes back through our gateway is logged in our system; it runs through a toxicity model; and only at the end do we put PII data back into the answer. There are real pieces beyond a handshake that this data is safe.”
-
WORDPRESS6 days ago
2024’s Biggest Business Shift: What Will Happen If You Don’t Have an E-commerce Website?
-
SEARCHENGINES7 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: August 30, 2024
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Google August Core Update Data, SEO, Google Ads Features, Yelp Sues Google & More
-
SEO5 days ago
Vulnerabilities in Two ThemeForest WordPress Themes, 500k+ Sold
-
SEO4 days ago
How to Market When Information is Dirt Cheap
-
AFFILIATE MARKETING6 days ago
Unlock Simplified, Pro-grade Design Capabilities with Ashampoo 3D CAD Professional 11
-
WORDPRESS7 days ago
Dika Fei of Jelly Pixel Studio – WordPress.com News
-
SEARCHENGINES4 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: September 2, 2024