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Insights & News

Jul 25
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The Digital Marketing Trends Shaping New Customer Experiences

By Brand Engagement, Content Marketing, Insights & News, Social Commerce, Uncategorized No Comments

It can be increasingly challenging to keep up with digital marketing trends as they change so quickly.

To help marketers and digital leaders navigate this new landscape, we’ve identified the key trends to help you improve engagement and drive conversions this year.

1. SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS

TikTok Will Continue to Grow & Brands Need to Take it Seriously

The rapid rise of TikTok has seen the app reach 1 billion users and counting. The platform has enormous engagement (U.S. users spend up to 850 hours a month on the platform) and enables brands to create hyper-personalized content that truly connects with customers.

In terms of the platform’s revenue, TikTok was the top-earning non-game app in 2021 with more than $110 million spent by users. This just shows the earning potential of the app for marketers looking to drive sales amongst young consumers. 

The Next Big Digital Marketing Trends in 2022

Influencers have also played a role in TikTok’s rise with many earning huge amounts through sponsorship deals. Battisby believes that brands are now taking notice of influencer marketing on the platform.

In the platform’s early days, it seemed to be a place for kids and teens and the influencer who want to reach them. But, today, we are seeing influencers like Gordon Ramsey and financial influencers like @johnefinance and @breakyourbudget who help GenZers learn about planning for their financial futures.

Social Commerce Will Become Seamless

During the pandemic, social commerce took off and is expected to reach $1.2 trillion globally by 2025 according to an Accenture study – a growth that’s three times faster than traditional ecommerce, aided by hashtags like #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt.

2022 is set to see the experience of social shopping evolve as platforms work behind the scenes to enable customer payments without leaving social media apps, creating a seamless customer experience. Gen Z and Millennials are predicted to be the biggest spenders as they will account for 62 percent of global social ecommerce revenue by 2025.

The Next Big Digital Marketing Trends in 2022

The key to driving engagement is for brands to create compelling shop windows on Instagram. It’s no longer enough to rely on one great image, companies need to have multiple images per product and add keyword-rich descriptions. Video is also crucial as the popularity of the format  – as witnessed by TikTok’s growth and Instagram’s recent transition – is exploding across all audiences. 

YouTube Advertising Will Explode

YouTube is going to explode in terms of investment from advertising in 2022. As more people move away from linear TV, fragmentation with subscriptions, and streaming services all means that more advertising spend is going to move to YouTube.

Last year YouTube’s global revenue (through its parent company Alphabet) grew to nearly $29 billion, up almost 46 percent from 2020. This level of revenue puts the social media platform on par with Netflix and is a result of the rise in more traditional TV advertisers on the channel, direct response ads, and brand advertising.

The Next Big Digital Marketing Trends in 2022

2. DIGITAL MARKETING JOB TRENDS IN 2022

Marketers Need to Upskill in Digital

As brands clamor to engage, promote, and convert successfully online, the need for digital talent across industries is intense.

A recent whitepaper, ‘Perpetual Evolution’, from The Economist Group, revealed that securing talent with the right skill set is the number one challenge that the digital marketing industry faces, while the lack of training to upskill marketers ranks seventh.

The Next Big Digital Marketing Trends in 2022

This demand is great news for marketers but poses a challenge for many in the industry who lack digital know-how or experience in digital marketing. So what digital marketing skills will be in demand in 2022? Social media skills remain in high demand, along with SEO and SEM.

The Next Big Digital Marketing Trends in 2022

The Digital Gig Economy is on the Rise

Over the past decade, many workers are pursuing a more flexible ‘gig’ lifestyle for their professional lives. The emergence and rise of online services and apps such as Airbnb and Deliveroo have offered new ways of working for people rather than a 9 to 5 traditional job.

In fact, according to a recent Mastercard study, half of the U.S. population will do gig work by 2028.

This gig economy opens up the door for marketers with in-demand skills. We are seeing more creative or digital marketing professionals choosing the digital nomad route as this enables them to dictate their own working hours and have flexibility.

3. DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY TRENDS IN 2022

The Metaverse Will Become a Marketer’s Playground

While it has existed and evolved for years, the metaverse saw a boost in interest after Facebook changed its parent company’s name to Meta in October 2021.

This move, according to Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg is because “the metaverse is the next frontier in connecting people, just like social networking was when we got started. Over time, I hope we are seen as a metaverse company, and I want to anchor our work and our identity on what we’re building towards.”

So what is the metaverse? Basically, it’s virtual worlds in 3D that people can connect through Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). Imagine having an avatar that looks exactly like yourself with you exact measurements shopping in a virtual store. You would be able to try on clothes and see what they look like on your body from the comfort of your own sofa.

While we are still a few years away from reaching critical mass with the metaverse, brands are beginning to embrace it now to build on their customer experiences.

According to eMarketer research, there will be 65 million people that use VR and 110 million using AR every month in 2023. That’s a lot of potential young customers to have in one space.

The Next Big Digital Marketing Trends in 2022

Artificial Intelligence Will Hinder & Help Data Privacy

Privacy issues continue to plague brands as more customers demand transparency and control over their own data and we are seeing increasing concerns as AI continues to evolve the customer experience.

According to a Gartner study, 40% of privacy compliance technology will use AI by 2023 while global spending on privacy is expected to reach $8 billion by 2022.

However, companies can use AI in their data privacy initiatives to classify sensitive data and use it to search data to identify individuals that have asked to be forgotten (a specification covered under privacy regulations like GDPR).

The bottom line is the digital marketing space is changing rapidly and brands need to ensure they are testing new tactics and technologies while building the right presence across these new channels. If you need assistance taking a future-forward look at your brand’s digital presence and engagement, contact us today. Our experts are here to help.

Jul 19
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Ten Important SEO Trends To Leverage Before The Year’s End

By Insights & News, Mobile, SEO No Comments

Staying current with SEO trends is like hitting a moving target while sitting in a roller coaster. From changes in algorithms updates to evolving search behaviors — the goal post is always moving as the tactics to boost your rankings look different from year to year.

With only twenty-five weeks remaining this year, brands should make sure they’re leveraging the most important SEO trends of 2022.

1. User Intent. Understanding the buyer’s journey and how to ensure your content connects at each stage of the funnel is more essential than ever before. At Acronym, we combine data insights with a neuromarketing approach so we take advantage of the emotional triggers behind purchase intent and intersect that with the keywords that feed search algorithms.

2. Content Quality. If your content isn’t valuable, it won’t convert. It’s that simple. Make sure you are creating the right kind of content in the most desired format so it’s seen at the right time for conversion.

3. SERPS. Google’s continued focus on SERPS creates both opportunities and challenges for brands. IT’s important to consider intent when optimizing for SERPS.

4. Visuals. Search engines continue to reward sites with unique images that feel authentic. In fact, SERPS will become more image-focused this year.

5. Automation. Finding the right tools for analysis, research and content creation is becoming increasingly important to improve efficiencies and results.

6. Machine Learning. We are seeing rapid advancements in natural language models and content generation. AI is also driving strategic planning as tools like Acronym’s KO and Synergy help brands to see the full picture of SEO opportunities.

7. Mobile and UX. Mobile-first indexing and exceptional UX will continue to drive the complete journey from consideration to discovery thought engagement and conversion.

8. Sustainability. Google is adding enhancements to incentivize sustainable shopping habits. Brands that meet this need will see early wins.

9. IndexNow. The days of waiting for search engines to crawl websites are over as IndexNow delivers those results immediately.

10. E-A-T Scores. there is no doubt misinformation is creating trust issues online making is more important than ever to ensures E-A-T qualities in your content and link-building.

If you need assistance with your SEO strategies, please contact us today. We are here to help.

Jun 21
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Meta’s Recurring Notifications Helps Brands Reach Customers Anywhere In Their Journey

By Insights & News, Social Media No Comments

Meta launched ‘Recurring Notifications’ on its Messenger Platform, which now enables businesses to send “proactive, automated messages, to people who have opted-in to receiving them.”

Recurring Notifications in Messenger

Marketers may now send sales notifications, updates, newsletters, and more with the frequency options ranging from daily to monthly, “so businesses can reach customers at any moment in their journey”.

This is a significant shift in Met’s previous Messaging policy which strictly limited the frequency with which a business could message users, even if they’ve opted-in.

As explained by Hootsuite:

“Businesses can only contact someone after receiving a message from them first. Once you’ve received a message, you have 24 hours to reply. After that, Facebook used to let businesses send one message. But as of March 4th, 2020, that option will be gone. Beyond that, the only remaining option is to send a Sponsored Message. These ads can only be sent to existing conversations.”

In fact, Meta’s Messenger Platform and IG Messaging API Policy Overview explains:

“Businesses will have up to 24 hours to respond to a user. Messages sent within the 24 hour window may contain promotional content.”

Brands can now use ‘One-time Notification’, which enables businesses to send one follow-up message after the 24-hour messaging window has ended. But Meta has been careful about allowing businesses to overuse its messaging API, to avoid spamming spamming.

It seems this is no longer a concern, and with users having to opt-in, it appears that is now enough for Meta to allow increased messaging to potential customers.

If you’d like assistance leverage Meta or any social media platform in your marketing campaigns, please contact us today. Our experts are here to help.

Jun 13
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Why You Should Integrate Data Across the Entire Enterprise — and How to Do It Effectively

By Analytics, Insights & News No Comments

Every day, the world produces 5 exabytes of data. By 2025, we will produce data at a rate of 463 exabytes per day. Insights from this data can help companies understand exactly what their customers want, as well as inform a company’s processes and activities. Data can reveal whether you’re moving in the right direction, which areas can be improved, and how you might implement those improvements.  

Still, with all the data available to companies today, Forrester reports that 73% of corporate data goes unused for analytics and is rarely shared across the enterprise.

Why does data-sharing matter?

Leveraging data within your organization has the potential to deliver value in many areas. It can help lower costs and increase profits while also reducing risk. Pivoting to a data-driven approach will allow your organization to anticipate changes and challenges more effectively and accurately.

Insights derived from real-world data will allow you to look farther into the future. Customers openly provide insights to help brands understand their wants and needs. With an integrated data strategy, you’ll be able to set solid, measurable goals several years into the future and transform your business, through:

  • Personalized customer experiences. Your communication, products, and services will be tailored to your customers based on insights derived from data, which leads to greater customer satisfaction.
  • Improved decision-making. Key processes will be optimized, allowing you to make smarter decisions faster.
  • Improved efficiency.  Automate time-consuming manual tasks, which reduces costs and ensures more accurate results.
  • Stronger cybersecurity. Using AI-driven data limits the scope and impact of potential cyberattacks by identifying potential vulnerabilities before they become issues.
  • Ambitious social goals. Greater insight into your organization’s data won’t merely benefit you financially. It also helps identify new opportunities, such as increasing diversity or pursuing sustainable business practices more effectively.

So, how do you ensure your data is shared and leveraged?

Here are tips to make your data more discoverable, pervasive, and reusable across the company:

  • Foster a culture of “data-sharing” vs. “data ownership.” Data that resides only within one department must be analyzed and shared more broadly across the leadership team. To do this, you must foster a culture of “data-sharing” versus “data ownership.” We recommend creating data stewards who are responsible for company-wide dissemination of all insights.

You will also need to gain Leadership buy-in to remove the inherent obstacles to data sharing. Within your IT department, distinguish your data management strategy between data warehouses, data lakes and data hubs. This will help prevent silos.

  • Heighten accountability with a data ecosystem strategy.With increased transparency into your data comes greater accountability. When you create a data ecosystem with clear expectations around the purpose of data sharing across all departments, it’s helpful to have a single leader who is entrusted with the oversight of company-wide data sharing.

Often, CIOs or Chief Data Officers can fill this gap while addressing privacy concerns, ethics and cybersecurity. This leader can establish the expectations for data-sharing, including what data should be shared internally, what data should be sourced from partners and how to align the insights from the total ecosystem for a model that works best for all teams. In some cases, your agency partner can help establish this strategy with your data leaders.

  • Embrace unwelcome insights. Data analyses often challenge conventional assumptions about your customers’ wants and needs, including changes to the journey. This can mean your data reveals information that leaders don’t necessarily want to hear. But, as the saying goes, you cannot change what you don’t know. View all new insights as an opportunity to transform your business processes or user experiences.

Meanwhile, Many brands struggle with existing analytics solutions. According to Gartner, only 12% have the ability to collect online data at an individual level, and though 65% of brands report using digital analytics software, more than half (53%) say they’re not completely satisfied with their current solution.

At Acronym, we employ 40 billion data points daily and offer our Clients custom dashboards to ensure these insights are easily digestible and can be applied across the entire organization.

If you need assistance with your data ecosystem strategy, contact us today. Our Analytics teams are standing by.   

Apr 12
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Making the Social Commerce Landscape Work For You

By Insights & News, Social Commerce, Social Media No Comments

This year, change has been a constant in the social media world. In addition to media measurement changes, increasing privacy concerns, pandemic shopping fluctuations, platforms are leaning into their product capabilities. These changes, spurred by iOS 14.5 – such as decreased audience sizes, reduced targeting capabilities, and increased platform costs – have ushered in 2022 as a major transition period for social.

While there have been stock fluctuations, new modeled data, and much adversity for social platforms (especially Meta), there have also been improvements in the eCommerce world. And, social’s role is now recognized as not just a view-through channel, but as an important part of the user journey that is instrumental to product success.

Covid-19 expedited the online shopping experience and created digital touchpoints that bridge the gap between online and in-store shopping. Thirty-three percent of sales are made through e-commerce this year, whereas this metric was twenty-three percent pre-pandemic.

Customer Experience

Social media is a channel that showcases customer experience, feedback & engagement. The unsolicited communication of messages on social platforms and at-mentions (i.e.: Twitter) are great ways to get learnings/insights from customers and because it is self-reported, it increases the authenticity of the data. By keeping open communication/transparency, social provides an avenue to obtain direct product feedback for improvements to eCommerce features. Consumers will create their own path to purchase, and social provides guidelines regardless of where they are in the process (discovery, or ready to buy immediately.) Therefore, it’s important to create experiences that lead to brand recall; experiences like sharing recipes/coupons for a restaurant brand to drive users to dine (WARC guide)  

Social Listening tools like Sprout Social or Hootsuite can help you search for keywords, monitor trends, and develop content capable of impacting messaging and ultimately guiding product success; an example of this has been the impact of users’ feedback on corporate sustainability and ultimately consumer responsibility. 4.62 billion of the world’s population is on social and the incremental reach/impact with this platform is unparalleled. One out of every two consumers look for deals specifically on social, making this a great channel to tout promotions and special products and offers.

With data depreciation, first-party data, lookalike modeling & customer personalization are the keys for customer success in a cluttered landscape. You need to define your key audience, use contextual marketing insights, and use the top performing segments for retention, re-engagement and brand loyalty. Be sure to store this data in a compliant way and check you are targeting the correct user on the right platform.

Online channels are now the primary driver for social eCommerce, with over 60% of customers saying they find browsing online easier than being in store. The ease of use of social media lends itself as a great discovery channel. “Online window shopping is also higher,” with sixty-one percent browsing online and only thirty-four percent in store. Correlate store locator data with Snapchat/Meta, but make sure the online experience continues to be king.

While there is no one-shop answer and users will still probably want to buy a significant number of mattresses/televisions in-store, brands can create digital touchpoints that lend to effective shopper journeys, as well as incorporate assets that are engaging, snackable, and drive performance.

Social is growing

In 2020, the average person spent three hours a day on social, vs. 90 minutes in 2012.

Messaging has grown forty percent since 2020, and mobile is key at over 4 hours of activity on average per day.

There is unparalleled time spent on these apps, and you want to make sure your products are being shown and you are fully monetizing on this growth of online activity and subsequent shopping behaviors. Social is not just a place for discovery/awareness: fifty-one percent of users said content they find on social media sites does lead to them to buy a product, adding social to the mid-funnel success, consideration phase.

More than 80 million people made purchases via social in 2020, and the projection is set to be 101.1 million by 2023.

Even industries like travel, which have faced major struggles from the pandemic, have increased their usage of eCommerce investments and tools. This is partly due to demand, but also consumer willingness to employ new tactics like virtual shopping and live streaming, the latter of which has attracted the likes of retail brands like Burberry and Louis Vuitton.

There is less and less separation between in-store and online experiences; the two need to continue to merge and syndicate. In fact, specifically for higher priced, luxury brands like Burberry, customers are coming back eight times to research products, so you want to make sure there is a personalized, robust customer experience, that takes individuals through the funnel while listening to customer needs/expectations.

Platform Capabilities are Growing

Facebook and Instagram (Meta) developed Shops in 2020, bringing stores where users can make purchases to the platform. IG Shop Tags and posts were also developed, so users can have seamless clickable access to products based on the ads they see. There is already a beta with live shopping/influencers on the platform; with the rise of these features in Meta, we anticipate more AI/shopping capabilities as well as integrations with feeds/user behaviors through platforms like Shopify that are not as affected by cookie-based marketing. FB/IG Shops make purchasing an item seamless and the tie-in with influencer marketing is specifically large with Instagram. Even though Facebook has seen some dips in revenue/users, its shop capabilities are growing, and we do anticipate some virtual reality shopping features in the future.

A large part of influencer marketing success is through Meta, and this is set to grow to $15 billion this year. As platforms realize these results, they are expanding these features at an exponential rate. With social’s access to first and third-party data, as well as these new features at play, social helps guide the user purchase.

Pinterest integrates the same shopping feed as “Meta,” allowing you to retarget/remarket those that have added a product in the cart, viewed products or actively searched for relevant keywords. You can customize your collections within product groups, ensuring personalization in tandem with dynamic retargeting, and use a Shopify integration to import seamlessly, while implanting conversion API.

Twitter, like Meta, has dabbled in Live Shopping, and has tested e-commerce for organic tweets that drive tweets to a shop button with product, shop name price, and product details. This is also a great area for customers to @ your brand and share e-commerce feedback/information.

TikTok is impacted largely by the influencer market, as well as YouTube. Now, just like with Pinterest, there is a Shopify Integration, so users don’t have to exit the app to explore products. In addition to live stream integrations, TikTok shopping has been piloted, allowing for shopping tabs on the profile, like with Meta.

LinkedIn is a great platform for niche audiences, especially in verticals like education. The first-party data and self-identification for member groups helps reach a professional audience, which can be used for e-commerce. For instance, if you are selling software to teachers, you can schedule appointments with “lead generation” or “start conversations” forms. This is a great place to nurture those relationships.

As you can see, most of the platforms use similar features. For a good e-commerce strategy, it is important to have strong creative assets, with a particular preference for video/short form; measure audience impact on each channel; and focus on multi-media measurement through another partner. If you can see where social lands in the user journey, and for what purpose, the impact from social on e-commerce is unparalleled.

Influencer Marketing is Key

With privacy as a key focus, it is more important than ever to show engaging, authentic, and personalized content, especially for the awareness and consideration phases of the funnel.

While users are likely to ad block/opt-out of traditional ads, this is not the case for influencer content, making this impactful during cookie deprecation.

Additionally, there is more clout when it comes to influencers. Forty-nine percent of Consumers depend on Influencer recommendations, and forty percent have purchased after seeing influencer content. In fact, ninety-two percent of consumers trust influencers more than traditional ads/celebrity endorsements, showcasing the effectiveness of the strategy. With a wide range of micro vs. macro influencers, there is certainly an engaged market by content type available for the taking.

This form of paid media continues to grow, and we anticipate this becoming an important phase of the e-commerce journey for social, especially considering growth trajectory. Influencer marketing has expanded exponentially over the past two years. Worth just $1.7 billion in 2016, the industry is set to reach $13.8 billion this year.

With the willingness of platforms to invest in influencer capabilities, and some even investing in influencers themselves (TikTok Creator’s Fund), it’s more important than ever to properly vet influencers through brands like Influential that are equipped with special consumer insight tools.

Specifically, Influential uses IBM Technology that helps you learn the brand presence, interests and potential reach of consumers who are engaging with niche communities and interests (i.e.: beauty brands would work with beauty influencers vs. targeting a beauty interest in platform). This audience is key to success. It’s important for brands to find effective content and markets based on properly vetting content creators and using their community to drive brand interest and endorsements your users can trust.

Align your Team

Each brand and stakeholder must work with internal and external parties to ensure it is clear on KPIs and how to gauge success; and to ensure it keeps the consumer in mind while being privacy compliant. Make sure you are clear with your goals, and drive purchase intent on each platform.

The Journey

Customers are looking to brands for experiences, but each brand needs to do its own deep dive of success. Ensure you use best performing assets at different touchpoints (prospecting vs. remarketing) and across channels.

“A strategy for different verticals will require a bird’s eye view and remember to build the brand for long time retention,” Head of eCommerce at WaveMaker, Mudit Jaju, said. “Building strong bias before a consumer begins an online shopping journey improves a brand’s odds of being considered before purchase by fourteen percent,” he also stated.

Ensure you are personalizing your messaging, but continue to test, monitor, and optimize as this is a fast-paced, changing landscape. You want to make sure you stay relevant and noticed among the clutter.

If you’d like a consultation on how to make the social commerce landscape work for you, please contact us. We are here to help.

POV By Gellena Lukats, Acronym’s Director, Paid Social

Apr 05
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Why Budget Liquidity Matters When Utilizing CBO in Facebook Campaigns

By Insights & News, Paid Media, Social Media, Uncategorized No Comments

When evaluating and measuring your Facebook campaigns that utilize Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO) and Lowest Cost Bidding Strategy, performance should be evaluated in terms of the sum of the whole, not the individual ad sets and ads.

Source: Meta for Business

As Meta explains, when individuals review a report like the one above, a common misconception is that Meta’s machine learning moves more budget to underperforming ad sets – a phenomenon dubbed “The Breakdown Effect.”

In reality, this is not the case: it only appears so because marketers aren’t exposed to the real-time costs of results in the auction (the machine learning system that takes place to determine which ad is shown to a person). For example, it may look odd that an ad set with a higher cost per conversion was given more budget (as above), but this was likely because the auction system determined that the cost per conversion of the other ad sets would increase if given more money.

Campaign Budget Optimization with Lowest Cost Bid Strategy enabled allows the system to dynamically shift budget to ad sets and ads that will result in the highest number of results for your campaign. This is the opposite of assigning specific ad set budgets, or giving specific budgets to specific audiences, in a single campaign.

“The Breakdown Effect” gets to the heart of how Meta’s auction system works, and can be a common point of confusion. It’s important for marketers to understand this concept so they can discern why reports may look a certain way, and so they aren’t tempted to turn off CBO by assigning specific budgets to specific entities in the same campaign to drive more budget to entities with lower costs. This will deliver fewer results and an overall higher cost per result for your campaign.

For brands with nimble budgets, it can be tempting to make every dollar count by designating dollars to specific ad groups based on previous performance costs. But doing so based on an evaluation of campaigns using CBO will deliver the opposite effect because individual ad sets & ads should not be viewed in isolation as performance costs of individual entities in a CBO campaign are not the best indicator of success. And, also because this limits the system’s ability to learn and move budget in a fluid manner based on real-time happenings in the auction. Flexibility in budgets and assets – what Meta calls “liquidity” – optimizes the system’s machine learning capabilities. 

Remember, the more flexibility, the better as the cost per result of a specific entity in CBO campaign is not a good indicator of success. While reviewing overall campaign performance of a CBO campaign is ideal, the amount of budget assigned to different entities is a better indicator of success when trying to evaluate different ads and ad sets.

If you need assistance in how to structure and optimize budgets to the platform’s machine learning capabilities with CBO, please contact us.

Feb 28
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Protecting Your Brand’s Digital Presence In a Crisis

By Brand Engagement, Insights & News No Comments

There are many types of crises that can impact your brand’s online presence or alter the context of your message. This is why it is imperative that you consistently monitor local, national and global news and have a clear “chain of command” in place with defined roles and checklists so you can quickly and seamlessly pivot when necessary.

Here are a few tips to help you prepare for some common contingencies.

Security

Cyber-attacks are an increasingly common threat, so it is important to stay vigilant. The US Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) monitors for these kinds of attacks 24/7 so it is a good resource to help keep you apprised of any possible situations.

  • We recommend adopting a heightened stance for protecting your organization’s assets to make sure your team is ready to respond if something were to occur.
  • Ensure that multi-factor authentication is being used, when possible, company-wide
    • Ongoing employee training is essential to mitigating security threats to your organization.
    • Encourage your employees to say something when they see something.
      • In 40% of global businesses, employees have hidden an incident when it happens, which can lead to further destruction and down the line.

Paid Search, Shopping and Display

  • In the event of a local, national or global crisis, you should negate targeting for news sites, blogs & non-profit sites to ensure your brand does not show up among tragic or controversial news, politically charged POVs, or causes that may be off Brand.  
  • Further build out negative keyword list to include cyber attack, shooting, names of prominent political figures, etc.
  • Review messaging under the scope of the current situation to ensure there is nothing that could be construed in a negative light.

Social Media

  • During a significant local, national or global crisis, we recommend at minimum pausing any scheduled posts to ensure something does not go live that may be poorly timed.
    • For example, if something happens overnight and a post is scheduled for 6am, your team may not have time to pause ahead of time and, therefore, runs the risk of your brand seeming insensitive. The “something” that happens need not be a major global event. It could be something like a celebrity death. For example, when the news hit recently that the singer known as Meatloaf died, the grill company, Weber did not pause a post about “BBQ Meatloaf” and saw immediate backlash for their insensitive post.
  • Similar to paid search and display, we recommend an evaluation of where ads are appearing to negate any potential areas where misinformation or news could appear.
  • Be cognizant of the ever-changing news cycle and be prepared to shift messaging to avoid seeming tone-deaf and a public backlash.
  • Monitor comments on social ads for customer sentiment surrounding messages to ensure you protect your brand from any misinterpretations.

If you need assistance developing a crisis contingency plan for your brand’s digital presence, please contact us. We are happy to help.

Feb 22
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How UX and CRO Work Together to Help Brands Meet KPIs

By Analytics, Insights & News, Optimization, Web Analytics No Comments

When considering your website’s performance, it’s important to understand the commonalities between Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and User Experience (UX) and how they compliment each other.

What is CRO, and what is UX? 

Testing different versions of web pages to improve conversions by deploying the “winning” version is known as as Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), also known as A/B or Multivariate testing and website optimization. Most people are familiar with the term “A/B testing” which refers to tests that compare a variation to a control. Multivariate testing goes beyond that, testing multiple variations at a given time. Both A/B and multivariate testing allows CRO strategists to find optimization opportunities backed by user behavior data. 

On the other hand, the term UX stands for User Experience, meaning how a user interacts with and emotionally responds to a website. UX is an important component of any optimization process because improving lead generation starts with improving the user’s experience on the site.

All of this may sound extensive, but a CRO team can deliver testing ideas, optimization opportunities, and friction points on your site in a digestible way. CRO teams can put together robust UX and data audits or smaller outlines detailing the next steps needed to get your site to where you need it to be.

How can you leverage a CRO/UX team? 

CRO teams help companies save time and money. This is especially valuable to teams who operate on budgets, such as paid media teams, because CRO and testing do not require any additional paid media efforts. CRO teams can help to improve ROI since UX reduces user friction and thus wasted spend. Marketing teams spend time and money to drive users to their websites, so having an optimal website experience is imperative. 

This optimal user experience isn’t limited to certain pages on a website either. UX optimization extends to landing pages and even emails. This is why it’s so important for CRO teams to work closely with paid media teams, because paid media strategists are constantly monitoring their spend and looking to increase their ad click rates to send the user to a dedicated landing page. Once the user lands on that landing page, their experience with that page matters. If they encounter too much friction, they will leave… which ultimately creates wasted spend for the paid media team.

Some of the more common KPIs (key performance indicators) that a CRO strategist may target for paid media landing page tests include improving:

  • Bounce rate (time on page)
  • Scroll depth, clicks on buttons
  • Completion of forms and more.

Moreover, CRO strategists can focus on improving UX without a measurable KPI (key performance indicator), meaning they focus on improving the overall experience of the user on the website or landing page with an aim to gain trust, build brand authority, create returning visitors and for a generally pleasant session experience.

These factors may not fall under “measurable” KPIs but they do affect business KPIs albeit indirectly.

CRO strategists work closely with digital analysts to find opportunities by dissecting the page performance and user behavior data. This data feeds into web analytics platforms such as Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics among others.

So how do CRO strategists know what kind of improvement a page needs? Or what the industry standards are for user experience? One of the many responsibilities of a CRO strategist is to stay up to date with industry standards and to have an “always learning” mentality. This allows the strategist to not only look for relevant opportunities but also to back up any of their ideas with industry baselines and tested data.

Let’s Get Started

By this point, you’re probably wondering what you can do right now to kick start your optimizations. Well, you’re in luck, because Acronym’s CRO team is ready to share paid media landing page best practices.

1. Keep landing pages short. Because the audience for paid media may be visiting from their phone, on the go, and they may even be unsure if they’re interested in your product at all, you want to keep the page short and sweet and straight to the point. Scroll depth – no more than 2x the initial height – Maria include as general statement. 

2. Add important buttons and forms above the fold. Ensure that your CTA (call-to-action) buttons are prominently placed above the fold. These CTAs will capture the users attention when they first land on the page, and even if they do not interact with it on the first pass, they will know its placement and are more likely to scroll back up to click. You may also consider making your CTA “sticky” where it follows the user as s/he scrolls on the page.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term “the fold” it simply refers to the area of the page that is visible on the first load without any scrolling. The space “below the fold” is what can be seen after the user starts to scroll down. This goes for desktop, mobile and tablet views.

3. Keep your copy concise, but don’t divulge too much information. This one can become a tricky balancing act. For paid media landing pages it’s best to give the user valuable information without losing their interest. This means that you’ll want to give just enough information to peak their interest and motivate them to become a lead to find out more information. Including keywords to match whatever leads them to landing page – ad copy – consistent with what was in the ad.

4. Don’t forget about the hero image. The hero image or hero banner can be used to set the tone for the entire landing page. Do you want to target a certain audience? Find an image that reflects that audience to create a connection. Do you want to highlight an incentive? Make sure you include it in your hero image space. The same goes for creating brand authority. Hero image and/or banner space can be used to showcase brand colors, brand logos and other valuable marketing assets that reinforce user trust and brand awareness.

We’re here to help.

Your website should be constantly growing, improving, and changing to meet your users’ needs.

By analyzing user behavior on your website or landing pages, you’ll begin to detect patterns that help you better understand these needs. However, understanding their needs and meeting them are two very different things. Establishing a solid analytics foundation/set up is the key to success. You can’t measure anything if the analytics platform is broken. Optimization is about continuous feedback, build out test, learn from it, build out future tests from the learnings.

Thankfully, a CRO and UX team can both analyze your users’ behaviors, identify the patterns and address their needs, all while testing different ideas to hone in on what works and what doesn’t. Furthermore, an objective UX/CRO team can work with any development and design team to optimize your site based on their findings. Let us do an audit for you today so you can increase your conversion rates and meet or surpass your company KPIs.