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Money Down the Drain: 5 Google Ad Mistakes You Need to Fix

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Money Down the Drain: 5 Google Ad Mistakes You Need to Fix

Imagine you are a chef trying to cook a delicious meal. You have all the ingredients you need, but if you don’t follow the recipe correctly, your dish is likely to turn out subpar. The same is true with Google Ads. Even if you have a great product or service to offer, if you don’t set up your campaigns correctly, you’re not going to get the results you want.

After auditing literally 1000s of Google ad accounts at my agency Digital Street, even the top-spending ad accounts have one or more of these costly mistakes.

The numero uno on the list is:

1. Conversion Tracking Not Set-up Properly: The Blindfolded Marketer

Imagine walking into a labyrinth without a map or any sense of direction. That’s exactly what happens when you neglect to set up conversion tracking. Without conversion tracking, you’re merely guessing which campaigns, keywords, or ads are generating actual results. It’s like wandering in the dark, hoping for the best.

 Let’s say you’re running an e-commerce business, and your goal is to drive online sales. By implementing conversion tracking, you can track and attribute sales to specific ads or keywords. Without it, you’re left unaware of which campaigns contribute to your revenue, making optimization an uphill battle.

2. Irrelevant or Excessive Keywords: The Scatterbrained Advertiser

When it comes to keyword selection, quality trumps quantity. Overloading your campaigns with irrelevant or excessive keywords will not only drain your budget but also dilute your targeting efforts. Remember, relevance is the key to capturing the attention of potential customers.

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Suppose you’re promoting a luxury travel agency specializing in exotic destinations. Using keywords like “cheap flights” or “budget accommodations” would attract budget-conscious travelers, not your desired high-end clientele. Instead, focus on terms like “luxury travel packages” or “exclusive resorts” to target the right audience.

 Studies indicate that narrowing down your keyword list to 10-20 highly relevant keywords can increase click-through rates by up to 200%. Quality beats quantity every time!

3. Neglecting Negative Keywords: The Wasted Impressions

Imagine if your ads were shown to people searching for something entirely different from what you offer. That’s where negative keywords come in. Failure to utilize negative keywords can result in wasted impressions, clicks, and ultimately, wasted budget.

Let’s say you’re selling premium dog food and want to target dog owners looking for healthy options. By adding “cat” as a negative keyword, you prevent your ads from showing to people searching for cat-related products. This way, you ensure your ads are displayed only to those genuinely interested in your dog food.

Including negative keywords can decrease your cost-per-click (CPC) by up to 50%, maximizing your ad spend and filtering out irrelevant clicks. Don’t let your budget go to waste!

4. Search Copy: The Bland & Boring Approach

Your ad copy is the hook that reels in potential customers. However, if it fails to engage or lacks relevance to the search query, it becomes a missed opportunity. Remember, you have a limited number of characters to captivate your audience, so make sure every word counts!

Suppose you’re running a digital marketing agency offering SEO services. Instead of a generic headline like “Best SEO Services,” try something more compelling and relevant, such as “Unlock Your Website’s Potential with Expert SEO Strategies.” This way, you immediately address the searcher’s needs and stand out from the competition.

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Ads with a high relevance score (based on click-through rate and engagement) can lead to a 50-100% increase in ad visibility and a significant decrease in cost-per-click. Engage, captivate, and conquer!

5. Ignoring Location Settings: The Disconnected Advertiser

Picture this: You’re running a local business catering to a specific geographical area, but your ads are being displayed to people thousands of miles away. Ignoring location settings is like casting a wide net without considering the waters you’re fishing in. It’s crucial to optimize your ads to reach the right audience in the right place.

 Let’s say you own a boutique coffee shop in New York City. If you neglect to set your ads to target users within a reasonable radius of your location, your ads may be shown to people in Los Angeles, London, or even Tokyo! This wasted exposure not only drains your budget but also fails to attract customers who are actually within reach of your establishment.

1688169365 415 Money Down the Drain 5 Google Ad Mistakes You Need

Studies have shown that ads with localized targeting have a 200% higher click-through rate compared to campaigns with broader targeting. By narrowing down your audience to specific locations, you ensure that your ads are seen by those who are most likely to convert into loyal customers.


Money Down the Drain 5 Google Ad Mistakes You Need

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How to Use Chatbots to Improve Sales Automation

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How to Use Chatbots to Improve Sales Automation

Every business owner dreams of skyrocketing sales without doubling their workload. You want your sales process to be a well-oiled machine: potential customers pour in, conversions increase, and your team is free to focus on qualified leads.

But that’s not always the case. Too many brands struggle with sales automation for various reasons. In fact, only one in four companies has automated at least one sales process.

The good news is, for these struggling companies, there’s an easy way to improve sales automation. Enter chatbots.

These programs that ensure human-like conversations are effective, too. Businesses adopting automation in their sales processes witness significant growth, with reports showing an astonishing 67% increase in sales attributed directly to chatbot technology.

That said, here are five ways to improve sales automation with chatbots and exceed your sales goals.

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1. Use Them for Lead Generation

Lead generation is the first step in building a robust sales pipeline. However, any seasoned salesperson will tell you that not every lead is a “good” or “quality” lead. Sifting through the masses to find those ready to engage or make a purchase is often a time-consuming and frustrating task.

That’s where chatbots come in: they enhance customer engagement by interacting with visitors the moment they land on your site.

Unlike traditional forms that passively wait for a visitor’s attention, chatbots like the one above actively initiate conversations, and encourage visitors to share information like contact details. Once this data is collected, you can use outreach tools to verify emails and maintain effective customer communication.

Chatbots are also equipped to qualify leads on the spot. Through a series of predefined questions, custom chatbots can assess a visitor’s needs, preferences, and readiness to buy.

2. Leverage Them for FAQs

Remember the last time you had a question about a product’s advanced features before you decided to buy? Did you enjoy digging through an endless FAQ page with common questions, or did you wish for a simpler, more direct way to find answers with a faster response time?

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Faster assistance doesn’t necessarily mean putting in more human resources; AI-powered chatbots are a more cost-effective way to provide immediate and accurate responses, without the risk of human errors or the need for repetitive tasks.

When customers land on your website and type their questions into a chat window, they receive instant responses tailored to their needs. This personalized experience helps build credibility and trust in your service.

Chatbots also offer valuable insights, like what customers are asking about. This feedback will help you refine your FAQs and even product offerings, to suit your customers’ preferences and needs.

3. Automate Sales Funnel Navigation with Them

One of the trickiest parts of any sales process is sparking interest and actually crossing the finish line—closing a sale. Push too hard, and you risk scaring a lead away. If you’re too passive, you might lose them to your competitors.

So, why not seize the opportunity to improve sales automation with chatbots? You can automate your sales funnel navigation in a way that feels both personal and timely.

For instance, when a visitor looks at a specific product page, a chatbot can immediately jump in and offer relevant recommendations, comparisons, or even product demos and customer testimonials. Or they can offer better options that fit the potential customer’s criteria better. All this is meant to move them closer to a purchase.

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This is exactly what Sephora’s Virtual Artist chatbot does.The powerful tool helps potential customers find a Sephora lipstick that matches the color they’re looking for. All potential customers need to do is upload a picture that contains their preferred color:

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Remember, though, that the effectiveness of your sales funnel isn’t solely reliant on chatbot interaction. The tools and platforms you use to build and manage these funnels are equally important. For instance, tools like Leadpages and other Leadpages alternatives can help you create high-converting landing pages and capture leads effectively. You also need customer relationship management tools like HubSpot to track interactions, personalize customer journeys, and ensure timely follow-ups.

All these combined will help ensure a boost in sales conversion rates, enhanced customer satisfaction, and improved retention rates.

4. Get Customer Feedback with Chatbots

Did you know that 95% of customers read online reviews before making a purchase? It’s an integral part of the buying process. You need to collect feedback on your products and showcase it on your marketing channels to get people to buy. You also need to get feedback on your customer experience. Companies that provide good customer experiences boost their sales at a rate that’s 4 to 8 percent higher than the average.

But traditional methods of gathering customer feedback—like sending out surveys via email or making direct calls—are not very efficient. This is where you can seize the opportunity to revolutionize feedback collection using AI.

With chatbots, customers don’t need to fill out lengthy forms or wait on the phone. They can share their thoughts and experiences directly through the chat interface, making the entire process feel seamless and unobtrusive.

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The above is an example of a chatbot collecting customer experience feedback on HostPapa

Moreover, these smart tools can sift through responses in real time, categorizing feedback into actionable insights. This means you can quickly spot trends, identify areas for improvement, and even catch minor problems before they turn into complex issues.

5. Use Them for Sales Performance Monitoring

Gone are the days when sales performance analysis was a monthly ordeal of spreadsheets and guesswork. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence, monitoring sales performance has taken a quantum leap forward.

Chatbots track interactions, conversions, and customer engagement in real time, offering data that can be used to gauge sales performance.

But they don’t stop at data collection and analysis. AI chatbots can help scale your business by alerting sales teams to areas requiring immediate attention.

For example, if a particular product is seeing higher-than-usual abandonment rates at the checkout stage, the chatbot can flag this issue in real time. This will allow the team to investigate and address any underlying issues promptly.

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Moreover, chatbots can personalize performance feedback for individual sales reps. This data encourages sales representatives to set personal goals, experiment with new sales tactics, and continuously refine their approach based on real-time feedback.

Conclusion

There’s no denying that businesses can significantly improve sales automation with chatbots; the question has been “How?’’. While chatbots cannot take charge of the entire sales process, they help streamline the sales funnel navigation from the time a lead enters the funnel to the point of closing.

Chatbot solutions have also been instrumental in offering excellent customer service. They initiate proactive communication, can schedule appointments, respond to customer inquiries promptly, and offer personalized product recommendations, all leading to improved conversion rates and customer satisfaction.

Let’s not forget the invaluable data chatbot platforms can provide. The information helps identify common issues, and pinpoint areas for improvement. It also plays a crucial role in helping businesses refine their sales strategy to better meet customer preferences and needs.

What are you waiting for? Invest in AI-enabled chatbots and your sales team will reap the wide range of benefits they provide.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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