MARKETING
Using SEO to Energize Organic Traffic in First Year
Launching a B2B SaaS startup is no small feat. You have to start from scratch to build your brand and product awareness, especially in a market booming with competition from major brands.
In the beginning, you need robust marketing strategies to hit the ground running and generate business – seemingly out of thin air. Otherwise, you could end up with no clients, no revenue, and ultimately, no business.
Worse yet, most SaaS startups have minimal budgets, a virtually nonexistent marketing team, and a drive to put most of their resources into product development. Fortunately, search engine optimization (SEO) can get you plenty of organic traffic to boost sales, all without major marketing spend.
However, B2B SEO is a little different than B2C, and it’s important to know the differences.
B2B vs. B2C
B2B companies and B2C companies have many similarities, but the key differences lie in the buyer behaviors. B2B companies are selling to another business, so they can’t rely on impulse purchases or leveraging emotions to drive sales.
Remember, a B2B buyer is looking at a purchase as investment for their business to solve a problem they have. Often, this involves not just one buyer, but a group of stakeholders with different pain points, motivations, and concerns, all of which need to come together to get to “yes.”
How to Launch an Effective B2B SEO Campaign for SaaS Startups
Like any SEO campaign, your B2B SEO campaign starts with knowing your audience, your product, and how it benefits the client.
Segment Your Audiences
Consumer purchases are vastly different than a B2B buyer making a purchase as a business investment. Aside from the different stakeholders and longer sales process, B2B products are often more expensive and have higher stakes.
The buying decision is much more complicated. Business buyers are taking a risk on their purchase, hoping that it will translate in more operational efficiency, better workflows, more revenue, or a better experience for their end customer. If it fails, they’ve lost time and money, and they need to start over to find a better solution.
B2B purchases also have to be approved by different decision-makers, often managers, executives, department heads, and leaders. All of these stakeholders are considering the purchase from different perspectives and with different pain points. They want to know how the solution benefits them.
With all this in mind, your B2B content should be focused on the individual stakeholders as individual segments of your audience, not one monolith buyer. You have to address different pain points and questions, some of which may be quite different than the others. For example, a CFO is going to be concerned with ROI, whereas a CEO may be concerned with overall operational efficiency, but both are thinking about bottom line performance.
Build Brand Trust
B2B buyers need trust to make a business purchase. Their consideration process is longer because they want to be sure that they’re making the right choice for their business. Even with different individual goals, they’re all focused on the organizational goals.
Content needs to not only communicate the value of the software, but how your brand is a leader in your industry. You must showcase your understanding of your client base and their unique challenges and pain points so you can communicate why your solution is the best one. If the buyer feels understood, they’re more likely to trust you as the brand that can help them.
Choose Low-Volume Keywords
Keyword research is paramount to effective SEO, but B2B SaaS companies have different keywords to focus on than B2C companies. With all the stakeholders involved, you have to understand what they’re searching for and what phrases they will use.
All of your keyword research should target different audience segments and their search intent. You can target each stage of the buying process for each segment and create highly tailored content that speaks to them individually. Most of the keywords will have low search volume and lower competition than B2C keywords, however.
Three Pillars of SEO
No matter if SEO strategy is B2B or B2C, SEO has three pillars:
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is the front-facing website and its technical aspects. You want your website optimized by search intent and keywords, then tailored content that offers value for the audience.
Here’s how you can improve your on-page SEO:
- Research low-volume keywords
- Evaluate the content that already exists for your keywords
- Note the top search results
- Consider the existing content’s strengths and weaknesses
- Develop your content strategy to create content that’s better than your competitors
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO is often more challenging than on-page. It requires building backlinks, which has no shortcuts or fast tracks. It simply takes time and effort to build high-quality links, but it pays off in more valuable traffic and brand authority.
Linkbuilding is a valuable strategy that brings traffic to your site from external, authoritative sources. When you have links from these sites, you gain some of their existing authority to boost your own search engine rankings.
Though it may be tempting to use blackhat methods like purchasing backlinks or spamming, it’s not worth it. In fact, you may even be penalized by Google for doing so. Put in the work by creating quality content that other sites want to link to.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is everything that happens behind the scenes with your website and promotes a positive user experience. This part takes some technical knowledge.
Here’s how to improve your technical SEO:
- Evaluate your website load times
- Develop an internal linking model for your site’s hierarchy to help search engines understand how you value your own content
- Use nofollow links and follow links to help users navigate your site
- Include keywords in the title, meta tags, and URL
- Avoid duplicate content
- Search for broken links and remove or replace them
- Create an index for your content and website
- Ensure your site is mobile friendly
- Safeguard site security with HTTPS
Hit the Ground Running with B2B SEO Strategy for SaaS Startups
B2B SaaS startups can use SEO to target the different segments of B2B buyers and drive traffic to the site for more brand awareness, authority, and revenue. Though there are some important differences with B2B SEO, an effective strategy can make the most of your startup resources.
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.”