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The Correlation and Impact of SEO on Lead Generation

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The Correlation and Impact of SEO on Lead Generation

Lead generation isn’t easy by any means, and it’s one of the most challenging aspects of marketing that businesses face online. It may not be a major challenge getting followers or views on social media, but driving traffic to your site and turning visitors into potential customers is another game entirely. How do you optimize your site to not just fulfill a viewer’s immediate need but collect their info? It takes more than the power of persuasion to make a visitor a lead.

Strong lead generation requires a dynamic SEO strategy designed to meet your current needs and help you acquire enough customers to help your business grow. Sustainability and growth have to be handled parallel; if you try to prioritize them together, one always suffers. SEO allows you to satisfy returning customers while gradually attracting new ones as well. In addition, search engine optimization for lead generation also helps you build brand awareness.

What Is Lead Generation?

Potential customers are leads that you follow and target to convert into paying customers. Those who land on your site aren’t automatically guaranteed to become a customer. The process of converting another viewer into a customer is called the buyer’s journey, and it occurs through a personalized sales funnel that you develop.

The sales funnel addresses the various questions that arise as people move toward a purchase and can enter at any stage, and you need to have a firm grasp on how each one differs in order to provide the most relevant, effective content. When you have a good sales funnel, you’ll know what your leads are thinking at every stage. Are they just looking for general information, or are they already comparing your product to your competitors? Lead generation tackles the three primary stages of a buyer’s journey:

  • Top funnel: awareness through marketing efforts
  • Middle funnel: interest, education and application
  • Bottom funnel: decision-making through price comparison and value assessment

How to Improve Your Leads Through SEO

The more visible your brand is, the more potential leads land on your site. Google doesn’t just reward you for being online. You have to create engaging, recurring content that answers questions, provides value and ultimately serves a purpose to more than just your company. One of the biggest mistakes businesses make online is designing solely for themselves. Their entire website is one big advertisement, and it fails to deliver any real value to visitors. There are plenty of reasons to click off of a website. Good SEO can stop that from happening with targeted content and effective web design.

Get an Audit

A site audit involves analyzing the on- and off-page elements to address any potential issues. A professional SEO audit looks at keywords, site structure, content formatting and more to pinpoint areas you could improve. You can grab your instant SEO audit for free online right now. The entire process takes a matter of seconds, and you’ll have personalized feedback on why your site isn’t ranking higher in top search engines.

Once you know where your SEO falls short, you can come up with a strategy to make incremental improvements. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a good website. In fact, search engine optimization requires ongoing dedication to thrive. Trends will evolve, and even in industries with a fairly standardized consumer base, there are still particular topics that are more likely to generate traffic at any given time.

Make Your Pages Mobile-Friendly

In addition to a fast server and responsive design, you have to structure the layout of your pages to be skimmable and mobile-friendly. People don’t want to read blocks of text or navigate around bulky images to get what they want. Keyword-rich headers, natural language and alt-descriptions on useful images will all help you rank higher. People will also be more likely to engage with more pages on your site if it’s easy to read.

Compare Your Content to Your Competitors

Make a list of your top three or five competitors, then explore their service pages and content posts to see how yours measure up. When you Google some of your target keywords, what sites come up, and what do they have that’s different from your website? You don’t have to outrank everyone, and your goal shouldn’t be to copy what you see on the top-rated sites. After all, there’s no point for Google to award you a higher ranking than a competitor if both of your sites have the exact same information. Instead, use these sites as inspiration to improve your content and evolve your site. Leads aren’t just looking for a one-time answer; they want to know that your business is able to fulfill their needs and offer ongoing solutions. If their experience at your site is memorable, they’re likely to come back again.

Keep Track of Your Potential Customers

Have landing pages and freebie prompts that encourage people to leave their email and gain exclusive information or offers. Once you have their email, you’ll be able to target them again later. Make sure that you’re also using a dedicated customer relationship management (CRM) software to track leads. With the help of a CRM, you can keep profiles of all your clients and leads in one place. You can also document your interactions with them, ensuring that you’re able to meet them no matter where they are in the buyer’s journey. When it comes to leads, a CRM is the best way to keep track of data. Prospective customers can be rated based on factors that influence their likelihood of converting. Criteria like budget and interest can then be sorted and easily retargeted through marketing efforts.

With new insights, you can refine your SEO to convert more traffic into leads. This also makes it easier to identify what aspects of your current content strategy aren’t appealing to your audience. If people are highly responsive on one web page but consistently leave another in less than five seconds, what’s the reason? Putting all of these elements together, you’ll be able to create a search engine optimization strategy for your brand that does more than just rank. It will help you grow, evolve and gain a better understanding of your top customers.

Author:
Drew is a financial enthusiast, seasoned blogger, music and sports fanatic. He enjoys spending time outdoors with his wife and daughter fishing and boating. He is dedicated to his 15+ year career in the banking, mortgage, and personal finance industry.

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YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples [2024 Update]

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YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples

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!

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Why We Are Always ‘Clicking to Buy’, According to Psychologists

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Why We Are Always 'Clicking to Buy', According to Psychologists

Amazon pillows.

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A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots

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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.”

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