SEO

Are They The Same Thing?

Published

1 month ago

November 5, 2023

Max

Confused about the difference between remarketing and retargeting? You aren’t alone!

These terms are used interchangeably these days. But are they the same?

Technically, no.

In online advertising, remarketing and retargeting have similar goals but key differences that are important to understand.

The biggest difference between remarketing and retargeting lies within strategy and who you are able to reach.

Read on to discover how they differ and when it’s appropriate to use each strategy.

Remarketing & Retargeting: Similar, But Different

Advertising managers spend a lot of time crafting audiences, testing creative, and obsessing over data.

It can be a long process, with only a small percentage of ad clickers actually converting.

While you might be getting a lot of new incoming web traffic, you may not see those numbers translate to sales quickly. And few become a sale the first time they land on your webpage.

It’s easy to forget the true role of marketing:

To win people over long before they make the decision to choose your product or company over others.

Often, the best people to target are those who have visited your site more than once or have already digitally interacted with you.

Retargeting and remarketing both give the opportunity to reach these customers. They are also more likely to purchase rather than first-time visitors.

This can be an extremely important strategy in your marketing efforts.

Now let’s explore remarketing and retargeting individually so that the differences become clear to you.

What Is Retargeting?

Retargeting can have multiple approaches.

It most often refers to online ad placement or display ads targeting users who have interacted with your site in specific ways without purchasing.

Once a visitor enters your website, clicks on a product, or takes a certain action that you want them to take, a cookie is set in their browser.

You can then use this information to “retarget” them with ads based on their interactions once they leave your site.

These ads are placed by third parties, such as the Google Display Network or Facebook. They allow your ads to trigger on other sites that your visitors go to.

Typically, retargeting can be categorized into two themes: “on-site” and “off-site” events.

Each has different strategies you can take depending on the kind of interactions you want to target.

Let’s look at these a little closer.

Targeting “On-Site” Interactions

This is the category often associated with retargeting. It involves targeting individuals who have already visited your site.

They have interacted with your products and services before – or they have taken some other action but may not have completed the sale.

Retargeting to those who have had on-site interactions can certainly increase conversions.

It can also help retain those who have already expressed interest in your brand but aren’t quite ready to purchase yet.

There are a bunch of ways to retarget potential customers.

Some of the ways you can target individuals who have had onsite interactions include:

Target based on a product that they interacted with but didn’t buy.
Target based on how they found your site (social media, a search, or other inbound events).
Those on your email list who have expressed interest in your brand but have not yet converted to a sale.

These parameters can be set up within different platforms, such as:

Google Ads.
Google Analytics.
Meta (Facebook) Ads.
And many others.

Retargeting campaigns almost always show higher engagement and conversions than non-retargeting campaigns do.

This goes back to the fact that it is much easier and more efficient to market and advertise to those who have expressed interest in your brand or industry.

Targeting “Off-Site” Interactions

Retargeting used to be pretty limited to on-website behavior.

That changed, though, as users spent more time on social media.

Product and brand information delivery was no longer housed in one place.

Instead, it started to disseminate across other areas.

This meant audience interactions now existed in several places that weren’t owned by the brand anymore.

Social media giants like Meta recognized this and started to make engagement targeting a possibility.

In other words, brands could make retargeting pushes based on what a user did on the platform as it related to their Page, Events, and other Facebook-controlled items that a brand participates in.

Retargeting could now include “users who interacted with your Page” and other similar options.

In practice, targeting these users was still retargeting because they had not yet converted to customers.

This became the brave new world of “off-site” interaction targeting.

Screenshot from Facebook Ads, September 2023 choosing a custom audience source

What Is Remarketing?

This is where it gets a little confusing, and there is some overlap in the industry.

Sometimes retargeting is referred to as “remarketing” (even though it actually is remarketing).

An example of this is Google’s Remarketing Tools – they are all retargeting tools in the classic sense, really.

While this may be a little confusing, just remember that remarketing and retargeting do share goals and that the terminology is not as important as the associated strategy.

So, what’s the biggest difference?

Retargeting is about moving not-yet customers down the purchase path.

Remarketing is about re-engaging existing customers through media platforms like email or even paid ads.

Tactics like emailing a customer to renew a service or upsell an accessory are traditional examples of remarketing.

It can also take the form of a brand “reminding” a user to act, using information about their purchase history.

This frequently happens in email marketing but also takes the form of paid ads targeted toward current customer segments.

The Blurry Line Between Remarketing & Retargeting

These two tactics used to exist in silos: email was its own island, and paid media was limited to top-of-funnel targeting and retargeting based on website actions.

However, these two have become somewhat interchangeable in recent years.

Why?

Well, platforms like Google Ads and Meta Ads added the capability to target on-platform using email customer lists years ago.

Email no longer exists as a separate silo of information from the paid media part of the world.

Here is the Facebook Ads version:

Screenshot from Facebook Ads, September 2023

Here is Google Ads’ version:

Screenshot from Google Ads, September 2023 Google Ads customer segment

When an email list is uploaded, the platform will then work to match those email addresses with user logins.

That matched list is used to show ads to (assuming it meets the minimum threshold of audience size, which varies by platform).

Or, that matched list is used to as an exclusion in campaigns, so they are not shown ads, which means the goal is still focused on new user acquisition.

So now you have that blurry line of targeting your email users, perhaps with the same message you’re sending in emails, but doing it with a paid advertisement.

Or, you’re using the same list of email users but sending them a different message based on how you’re using those lists.

When To Use Retargeting Vs. Remarketing

Deciding when to use retargeting or remarketing ultimately comes down to this: strategy.

Incorporating both tactics into your marketing strategy is a great way to incrementally increase conversions. It doesn’t have to be an “either/or” game.

On one hand, you’d be targeting ‘net new’ customers by retargeting interested customers via paid platforms like Google or Meta Ads.

On the other hand, you’d be remarketing to existing customers for the chance they become repeat customers.

Since both methods target interested customers, the cost efficiency is usually greater than non-targeted ads.

Now, let’s take a look at some examples of when you’d use one over the other.

Prioritizing Retargeting As A Strategy

As mentioned above, retargeting is all about reaching potential customers who’ve interacted with your brand in some way.

A sound retargeting strategy should be incorporated if:

Your main goal is gaining new customers.
Your brand has a product/service that is typically a one-time purchase.
You’re spending a decent amount already on paid ads for awareness building.

The most important one to address is if you’re already running brand awareness campaigns – and spending money on them.

If you’re spending those hard-earned marketing dollars trying to attract new users, you need to do due diligence with retargeting campaigns.

Most users won’t buy something the first time they’ve heard of a brand or the product/service.

That doesn’t mean brand awareness dollars aren’t worth it, though!

Nurturing those users down the funnel with retargeting efforts is where you’ll start to see those incremental conversions come in.

Prioritizing Remarketing As A Strategy

As a quick refresher, remarketing is all about re-engaging existing customers who’ve already purchased from your brand.

You should consider incorporating a remarketing strategy if:

Your brand has a product/service that is typically a repeat purchase.
You want to upsell customers with additional products that may fit their needs.
You don’t have a big marketing budget.

Remarketing options have come a long way throughout the years, which is great for marketers.

Utilizing ‘free’ channels such as email marketing or SMS messaging is a great way to re-engage current customers. Especially if your marketing budget is constrained.

It’s a chance to remind them that they need your product. Or, it’s an opportunity to introduce them to additional products that they might like.

Nurturing existing customers even after they’ve purchased allows for long-term customer relationships to form.

And typically, customers are truly a brand’s best advocates. And word-of-mouth marketing is something that’s extremely underrated.

Retargeting Vs. Remarketing: The Takeaway

When comparing retargeting and remarketing, the overlap and differences have become less clear over the years.

But that has also been true for digital marketing, in general.

Their shared goal, though, is to increase conversions from those most likely to buy from your brand; the difference really being the associated strategy.

Retargeting is really focused on targeting users who have interacted with your brand but have not yet purchased via paid ads (and can take a variety of forms and target a broad range of individuals).

Remarketing focuses on re-engaging existing customers, primarily through email campaigns or paid ads, and reaching out to those who have already had interactions, allowing for more specific upselling and messaging.

This merging of retargeting and remarketing is really indicative of what we see in digital marketing as a whole:

Attribution is not a clearly defined thing.

It used to feel like it was, once upon a time, but it was mostly due to platforms not integrating all the elements marketers had access to.

As these platforms continue to cross-reference one another, the questions become less about what defines a tactic and more about which blend of them yields the best results.

More resources:

Featured Image: Yalcin Sonat/Shutterstock

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SEO

4 Ways To Try The New Model From Mistral AI

Published

11 hours ago

December 11, 2023

Max

4 Ways To Try The New Model From Mistral AI

In a significant leap in large language model (LLM) development, Mistral AI announced the release of its newest model, Mixtral-8x7B.

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:5546272da9065eddeb6fcd7ffddeef5b75be79a7&dn=mixtral-8x7b-32kseqlen&tr=udp%3A%2F%https://t.co/uV4WVdtpwZ%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%https://t.co/g0m9cEUz0T%3A80%2Fannounce

RELEASE a6bbd9affe0c2725c1b7410d66833e24

— Mistral AI (@MistralAI) December 8, 2023

What Is Mixtral-8x7B?

Mixtral-8x7B from Mistral AI is a Mixture of Experts (MoE) model designed to enhance how machines understand and generate text.

Imagine it as a team of specialized experts, each skilled in a different area, working together to handle various types of information and tasks.

A report published in June reportedly shed light on the intricacies of OpenAI’s GPT-4, highlighting that it employs a similar approach to MoE, utilizing 16 experts, each with around 111 billion parameters, and routes two experts per forward pass to optimize costs.

This approach allows the model to manage diverse and complex data efficiently, making it helpful in creating content, engaging in conversations, or translating languages.

Mixtral-8x7B Performance Metrics

Mistral AI’s new model, Mixtral-8x7B, represents a significant step forward from its previous model, Mistral-7B-v0.1.

It’s designed to understand better and create text, a key feature for anyone looking to use AI for writing or communication tasks.

New open weights LLM from @MistralAI

params.json:
– hidden_dim / dim = 14336/4096 => 3.5X MLP expand
– n_heads / n_kv_heads = 32/8 => 4X multiquery
– “moe” => mixture of experts 8X top 2 👀

Likely related code: https://t.co/yrqRtYhxKR

Oddly absent: an over-rehearsed… https://t.co/8PvqdHz1bR pic.twitter.com/xMDRj3WAVh

— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) December 8, 2023

This latest addition to the Mistral family promises to revolutionize the AI landscape with its enhanced performance metrics, as shared by OpenCompass.

Mixtral-8x7B: 4 Ways To Try The New Model From Mistral AI

What makes Mixtral-8x7B stand out is not just its improvement over Mistral AI’s previous version, but the way it measures up to models like Llama2-70B and Qwen-72B.

mixtral-8x7b performance metrics compared to llama 2 open source ai models

It’s like having an assistant who can understand complex ideas and express them clearly.

One of the key strengths of the Mixtral-8x7B is its ability to handle specialized tasks.

For example, it performed exceptionally well in specific tests designed to evaluate AI models, indicating that it’s good at general text understanding and generation and excels in more niche areas.

This makes it a valuable tool for marketing professionals and SEO experts who need AI that can adapt to different content and technical requirements.

The Mixtral-8x7B’s ability to deal with complex math and coding problems also suggests it can be a helpful ally for those working in more technical aspects of SEO, where understanding and solving algorithmic challenges are crucial.

This new model could become a versatile and intelligent partner for a wide range of digital content and strategy needs.

How To Try Mixtral-8x7B: 4 Demos

You can experiment with Mistral AI’s new model, Mixtral-8x7B, to see how it responds to queries and how it performs compared to other open-source models and OpenAI’s GPT-4.

Please note that, like all generative AI content, platforms running this new model may produce inaccurate information or otherwise unintended results.

User feedback for new models like this one will help companies like Mistral AI improve future versions and models.

1. Perplexity Labs Playground

In Perplexity Labs, you can try Mixtral-8x7B along with Meta AI’s Llama 2, Mistral-7b, and Perplexity’s new online LLMs.

In this example, I ask about the model itself and notice that new instructions are added after the initial response to extend the generated content about my query.

Screenshot from Perplexity, December 2023 mixtral-8x7b perplexity labs playground

While the answer looks correct, it begins to repeat itself.

Screenshot from Perplexity Labs, December 2023 mixtral-8x7b errors

The model did provide an over 600-word answer to the question, “What is SEO?”

Again, additional instructions appear as “headers” to seemingly ensure a comprehensive answer.

Screenshot from Perplexity Labs, December 2023 what is seo by mixtral-8x7b

2. Poe

Poe hosts bots for popular LLMs, including OpenAI’s GPT-4 and DALL·E 3, Meta AI’s Llama 2 and Code Llama, Google’s PaLM 2, Anthropic’s Claude-instant and Claude 2, and StableDiffusionXL.

These bots cover a wide spectrum of capabilities, including text, image, and code generation.

The Mixtral-8x7B-Chat bot is operated by Fireworks AI.

Screenshot from Poe, December 2023 poe bot for mixtral-8x7b firebase

It’s worth noting that the Fireworks page specifies it is an “unofficial implementation” that was fine-tuned for chat.

When asked what the best backlinks for SEO are, it provided a valid answer.

Screenshot from Poe, December 2023 mixtral-8x7b poe best backlinks response

Compare this to the response offered by Google Bard.

Mixtral-8x7B: 4 Ways To Try The New Model From Mistral AI

Screenshot from Google Bard, December 2023 Mixtral-8x7B: 4 Ways To Try The New Model From Mistral AI

3. Vercel

Vercel offers a demo of Mixtral-8x7B that allows users to compare responses from popular Anthropic, Cohere, Meta AI, and OpenAI models.

Screenshot from Vercel, December 2023 vercel mixtral-8x7b demo compare gpt-4

It offers an interesting perspective on how each model interprets and responds to user questions.

Screenshot from Vercel, December 2023 mixtral-8x7b vs cohere on best resources for learning seo

Like many LLMs, it does occasionally hallucinate.

Screenshot from Vercel, December 2023 mixtral-8x7b hallucinations

4. Replicate

The mixtral-8x7b-32 demo on Replicate is based on this source code. It is also noted in the README that “Inference is quite inefficient.”

Screenshot from Replicate, December 2023 Mixtral-8x7B: 4 Ways To Try The New Model From Mistral AI

In the example above, Mixtral-8x7B describes itself as a game.

Conclusion

Mistral AI’s latest release sets a new benchmark in the AI field, offering enhanced performance and versatility. But like many LLMs, it can provide inaccurate and unexpected answers.

As AI continues to evolve, models like the Mixtral-8x7B could become integral in shaping advanced AI tools for marketing and business.

Featured image: T. Schneider/Shutterstock

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SEO

OpenAI Investigates ‘Lazy’ GPT-4 Complaints On Google Reviews, X

Published

1 day ago

December 10, 2023

Max

OpenAI, the company that launched ChatGPT a little over a year ago, has recently taken to social media to address concerns regarding the “lazy” performance of GPT-4 on social media and Google Reviews.

Screenshot from X, December 2023 OpenAI Investigates ‘Lazy’ GPT-4 Complaints On Google Reviews, X

This move comes after growing user feedback online, which even includes a one-star review on the company’s Google Reviews.

OpenAI Gives Insight Into Training Chat Models, Performance Evaluations, And A/B Testing

OpenAI, through its @ChatGPTapp Twitter account, detailed the complexities involved in training chat models.

Screenshot from X, December 2023 chatgpt openai a/b testing

The organization highlighted that the process is not a “clean industrial process” and that variations in training runs can lead to noticeable differences in the AI’s personality, creative style, and political bias.

Thorough AI model testing includes offline evaluation metrics and online A/B tests. The final decision to release a new model is based on a data-driven approach to improve the “real” user experience.

OpenAI’s Google Review Score Affected By GPT-4 Performance, Billing Issues

This explanation comes after weeks of user feedback about GPT-4 becoming worse on social media networks like X.

Idk if anyone else has noticed this, but GPT-4 Turbo performance is significantly worse than GPT-4 standard.

I know it’s in preview right now but it’s significantly worse.

— Max Weinbach (@MaxWinebach) November 8, 2023

There has been discussion if GPT-4 has become “lazy” recently. My anecdotal testing suggests it may be true.

I repeated a sequence of old analyses I did with Code Interpreter. GPT-4 still knows what to do, but keeps telling me to do the work. One step is now many & some are odd. pic.twitter.com/OhGAMtd3Zq

— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) November 28, 2023

Complaints also appeared in OpenAI’s community forums.

Screenshot from OpenAI, December 2023 openai community forums gpt-4 user feedback

The experience led one user to leave a one-star rating for OpenAI via Google Reviews. Other complaints regarded accounts, billing, and the artificial nature of AI.

Screenshot from Google Reviews, December 2023 openai google reviews star rating

A recent user on Product Hunt gave OpenAI a rating that also appears to be related to GPT-4 worsening.

Screenshot from Product Hunt, December 2023 openai reviews

GPT-4 isn’t the only issue that local reviewers complain about. On Yelp, OpenAI has a one-star rating for ChatGPT 3.5 performance.

OpenAI is now only 3.8 stars on Google Maps and a dismal 1 star on Yelp!

GPT-4’s degradation has really hurt their rating. Hope the business survives.https://t.co/RF8uJH1WQ5 pic.twitter.com/OghAZLCiVu

— Nate Chan (@nathanwchan) December 9, 2023

The complaint:

Screenshot from Yelp, December 2023 yelp openai chatgpt review

In related OpenAI news, the review with the most likes aligns with recent rumors about a volatile workplace, alleging that OpenAI is a “Cutthroat environment. Not friendly. Toxic workers.”

Screenshot from Google Reviews, December 2023 google review for openai toxic workers

The reviews voted the most helpful on Glassdoor about OpenAI suggested that employee frustration and product development issues stem from the company’s shift in focus on profits.

openai employee review on glassdoor

Screenshots from Glassdoor, December 2023 openai employee reviews

This incident provides a unique outlook on how customer and employee experiences can impact any business through local reviews and business ratings platforms.

Screenshot from Google, December 2023 openai inc google business profile local serps google reviews

Google SGE Highlights Positive Google Reviews

In addition to occasional complaints, Google reviewers acknowledged the revolutionary impact of OpenAI’s technology on various fields.

The most positive review mentions about the company appear in Google SGE (Search Generative Experience).

Screenshot from Google SGE, December 2023 Google SGE response on OpenAI

Conclusion

OpenAI’s recent insights into training chat models and response to public feedback about GPT-4 performance illustrate AI technology’s dynamic and evolving nature and its impact on those who depend on the AI platform.

Especially the people who just received an invitation to join ChatGPT Plus after being waitlisted while OpenAI paused new subscriptions and upgrades. Or those developing GPTs for the upcoming GPT Store launch.

As AI advances, professionals in these fields must remain agile, informed, and responsive to technological developments and the public’s reception of these advancements.

Featured image: Tada Images/Shutterstock

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SEO

ChatGPT Plus Upgrades Paused; Waitlisted Users Receive Invites

Published

2 days ago

December 9, 2023

Max

ChatGPT Plus Upgrades Paused; Waitlisted Users Receive Invites

ChatGPT Plus subscriptions and upgrades remain paused after a surge in demand for new features created outages.

Some users who signed up for the waitlist have received invites to join ChatGPT Plus.

Screenshot from Gmail, December 2023 ChatGPT Plus Upgrades Paused; Waitlisted Users Receive Invites

This has resulted in a few shares of the link that is accessible for everyone. For now.

Found a hack to skip chatGPT plus wait list.

Follow the steps
– login to ChatGPT
– now if you click on upgrade
– Signup for waitlist(may not be necessary)
– now change the URL to https://t.co/4izOdNzarG
– Wallah you are in for payment #ChatGPT4 #hack #GPT4 #GPTPlus pic.twitter.com/J1GizlrOAx

— Ashish Mohite is building Notionpack Capture (@_ashishmohite) December 8, 2023

In addition to the invites, signs that more people are getting access to GPTs include an introductory screen popping up on free ChatGPT accounts.

Screenshot from ChatGPT, December 2023 ChatGPT Plus Upgrades Paused; Waitlisted Users Receive Invites

Unfortunately, they still aren’t accessible without a Plus subscription.

Screenshot from ChatGPT, December 2023 chatgpt plus subscriptions upgrades paused waitlist

You can sign up for the waitlist by clicking on the option to upgrade in the left sidebar of ChatGPT on a desktop browser.

Screenshot from ChatGPT, December 2023 ChatGPT Plus Upgrades Paused; Waitlisted Users Receive Invites

OpenAI also suggests ChatGPT Enterprise for those who need more capabilities, as outlined in the pricing plans below.

Screenshot from OpenAI, December 2023 ChatGPT Plus Upgrades Paused; Waitlisted Users Receive Invites

Why Are ChatGPT Plus Subscriptions Paused?

According to a post on X by OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, the recent surge in usage following the DevDay developers conference has led to capacity challenges, resulting in the decision to pause ChatGPT Plus signups.

we are pausing new ChatGPT Plus sign-ups for a bit 🙁

the surge in usage post devday has exceeded our capacity and we want to make sure everyone has a great experience.

you can still sign-up to be notified within the app when subs reopen.

— Sam Altman (@sama) November 15, 2023

The decision to pause new ChatGPT signups follows a week where OpenAI services – including ChatGPT and the API – experienced a series of outages related to high-demand and DDoS attacks.

Demand for ChatGPT Plus resulted in eBay listings supposedly offering one or more months of the premium subscription.

chatgpt plus accounts selling ebay for a premium 🫡🇺🇸 https://t.co/VdN8tuexKM pic.twitter.com/W522NGHsRV

— surya (@sdand) November 15, 2023

When Will ChatGPT Plus Subscriptions Resume?

So far, we don’t have any official word on when ChatGPT Plus subscriptions will resume. We know the GPT Store is set to open early next year after recent boardroom drama led to “unexpected delays.”

Therefore, we hope that OpenAI will onboard waitlisted users in time to try out all of the GPTs created by OpenAI and community builders.

What Are GPTs?

GPTs allow users to create one or more personalized ChatGPT experiences based on a specific set of instructions, knowledge files, and actions.

Search marketers with ChatGPT Plus can try GPTs for helpful content assessment and learning SEO.

Two SEO GPTs I’ve created for assessment + learning 👀👇

1. Content Helpfulness and Quality SEO Analyzer: Assess a page content helpfulness, relevance, and quality for your targeted query based on Google’s guidelines vs your competitors and get tips: https://t.co/LsoP2UhF4N pic.twitter.com/O77MHiqwOq

— Aleyda Solis 🕊️ (@aleyda) November 12, 2023

2. The https://t.co/IFmKxxVDpW SEO Teacher: A friendly SEO expert teacher who will help you to learn SEO using reliable https://t.co/sCZ03C7fzq resources: https://t.co/UrMPUYwblH

I hope they’re helpful 🙌🤩

PS: Love how GPT opens up to SO much opportunity 🤯 pic.twitter.com/yqKozcZTDc

— Aleyda Solis 🕊️ (@aleyda) November 12, 2023

There are also GPTs for analyzing Google Search Console data.

oh wow. I think this GPT works.

Export data from GSC comparing keyword rankings before and after an update and upload it to ChatGPT and it will spit out this scatter plot for you.

It’s an easy way to see if most of your keyword declined or improved.

This site was impacted by… pic.twitter.com/wFGSnonqoZ

— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) November 9, 2023

And GPTs that will let you chat with analytics data from 20 platforms, including Google Ads, GA4, and Facebook.

Google search has indexed hundreds of public GPTs. According to an alleged list of GPT statistics in a GitHub repository, DALL-E, the top GPT from OpenAI, has received 5,620,981 visits since its launch last month. Included in the top 20 GPTs is Canva, with 291,349 views.

Weighing The Benefits Of The Pause

Ideally, this means that developers working on building GPTs and using the API should encounter fewer issues (like being unable to save GPT drafts).

But it could also mean a temporary decrease in new users of GPTs since they are only available to Plus subscribers – including the ones I tested for learning about ranking factors and gaining insights on E-E-A-T from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines.