The Daily Carnage

The savvy marketer's hub for industry news, insights, resources, and culture.

Today’s Issue

Your Brain on AI 🍳

This is “AI Brain Fry.”

Issues

View All

PPC Strategies to Try for Your Business in 2021

JANUARY 4, 2021

We like to slice up time with useful reference points so we can improve our efficiency and measure success. Designating quarters in the year is a clear example. Many of us charge into each year with bold new strategies and then measure and optimize based on quarterly performance. Doing this enough can lead to stale practices, so it can be helpful to shake things up. A new year is a perfect opportunity. Today, Search Engine Journal is offering some PPC strategies to try for your B2B business in 2021

Call Recording. Do you know what happens when your customers leave your website and pick up the phone to call your business? Knowing whether or not the call resulted in a purchase is crucial in determining just how effective your paid ads are in boosting conversions. Google includes its own simple call recording feature so you can dive into your calls and connect the dots.

Audience Targeting. Keyword-only targeting strategies can be very effective, but you may not know what you’re missing if you’re not using audience targeting as well. Used alongside keyword targeting, audience targeting can better shape your strategy and get you the clicks that matter most.

Remarketing & Customer Match. Remarketing takes into account those who have previously visited your site and may be interested in your offerings. Customer match allows you to serve ads directly to individuals you have compiled in a customer list. Take the bird in the hand and target people who have already shown some interest.
Dynamic Search Ads. Google gets better and better at automating its ad capabilities. Dynamic Search Ads are helpful in uncovering some effective long-tail keywords by referencing quality content on designated pages of your website. Give it a test before plunging into the deep end and see how it works for you.

Can’t get enough PPC? Keep reading!

10 Content Proofreading Tips for Modern Content Marketers

JANUARY 3, 2021

Happy New Year, y’all! As the world resolves to rid itself of COVID-19, many of us are forming our own annual resolutions. Of course, there are the classics: join a gym, read more, stop ignoring Duo the owl and finally learn to parle français. And for those of us riding the train of continuous improvement for our content, Copyblogger has 10 content proofreading tips for modern content marketers.

Proofread backwards. It’s amazing what a fresh set of eyes can do for your copy. Even if it’s your own eyes after taking a break from what you’ve written. However, some things just can’t wait. Reading your content backwards simulates a fresh set of eyes by allowing you to view your content in a completely different way. Try a it give!

Stop at every punctuation mark. Noting punctuation is the easiest way to break up your content when proofreading. Additionally, by stopping at each instance you can verify whether or not punctuation is used correctly.

Scan the first word of each paragraph. Review your word choices specifically when beginning new sentences. Using the same words over and over can get boring, so vary the words you use to keep your writing engaging.

Verify spellings of people’s names. The baristas at Starbucks don’t have the time to look you up on Google in order to find the correct spelling of your name, but you do. While you’re writing, just open a new tab and search the person you’re referencing to confirm you’re spelling the name correctly.
Verify spellings of company names. This is just as important as the previous point, if not more. People will easily recognize when company names are misspelled – especially if the company is well known. Remember, misspelling a company’s name isn’t a typo; it’s a mistake.

Read on for more proofreading tips!

5 Reasons Why 2021 Will Be the Biggest Year for Podcasting Yet

DECEMBER 29, 2020

Video killed the radio star back in 1979. Well, the radio star is back and rebranded as a podcaster – and video is making room. Podcasts have offered listeners a new form of easily digestible content over the past few years, and there is nothing but growth in the forecast. Here are Wistia’s 5 reasons why 2021 will be the biggest year for podcasting yet.

Content marketing is fundamentally changing. The various media channels we access every day demand content in different formats. Written content still has a place, but the growth of podcasts cannot be ignored. Focus on how a podcast can fill gaps in your own content offerings.

Listenership and loyalty. 2020 was a record year for podcast listenership. According to data from Edison Research, the percentage of Americans tuning into podcasts at least once per month increased by 5% from 2019. This amounts to 37% of Americans listening to podcasts. People appreciate the varied podcast formats and the respite from channels saturated with quick, attention-grabbing, bite-sized reads.

Podcasts build brand trust and affinity. People who regularly listen to podcasts develop a connection to the podcast, and even the people or organization behind the podcast. This kind of connection can easily build trust between listeners and brands. This is exactly the case for Red Hat. Their Command Line Heroes podcast boosted Red Hat’s public opinion by 21% with 96% of listeners easily identifying the relationship between Command Line Heroes and Red Hat.
Podcast tools are easier to use and more affordable than ever. You don’t need the latest and greatest audio equipment or intensive technical know-how to get your own podcast going. At the bare minimum, you can get started with the microphone in your smartphone. What matters is you making and sharing the content. Don’t let the tools stand in the way, because they really don’t pose much of an obstacle.

Don’t miss reason #5!

8 Advanced Amazon Ad Tips to Improve Your Sales

DECEMBER 28, 2020

Amazon has seen another successful shopping season with tons of brands benefitting. It’s the ultimate marketplace, and its value to businesses and consumers cannot be understated. Visit your Amazon strategy with 8 advanced Amazon Ad tips to improve your sales from Neil Patel.

Use Long-Tail Advanced Amazon Keywords to Find Users With Strong Purchase Intent. If you target a niche keyword on Amazon, then people searching that keyword are more likely to buy since they already have a better understanding of what they want. Furthermore, the more focused your keywords are, the less competition there is likely to be. Focus on targeting the right people.

Use Sponsored Brands to Increase Brand Awareness. When people search for something and see your brand over and over again, they begin to recognize you as a brand aligned with their search. Whether or not they purchase from you the first time (or even the first few times), they will be more and more aware of who you are, what you offer, and how your offering can help them.

Analyze Your Product Level Profitability to Boost Your Profit Margin. As a business, you need to maintain a certain profit margin for each of your products. If the margin between cost and revenue for a specific product is small, then odds are PPC spend for that product will eat away too much of the already-small profit margin. Align your PPC efforts with more profitable items, so you can still keep a profit after taking your ad spend into account.
Use the Advanced Amazon Ad Placement Report to Tweak Your Campaigns. The Ad Placement report will do a lot to inform your decisions when it comes to spending on Amazon. Sometimes, your ad will perform better halfway down a results page. Refer to this report to gain insights into which campaigns need more of your attention.

Read on for more tips on priming your ad strategy for success.

Less Is Not More: Strategies to Increase Your Survey Response Rate

DECEMBER 27, 2020

We all become the people we are through feedback. If nobody ever told us we were doing something right or wrong, we might never know the difference. In school, your grades are feedback to help you reach higher levels of education. At work, we learn whether or not we’re heading in the right direction through client feedback or performance reviews. Feedback is also a crucial element in making the most of your brand. To help you collect feedback, Sendpulse is providing strategies to increase your survey response rate.

Segment your audience. It may be that your survey doesn’t apply to everyone on your mailing list. Make sure you target only those it pertains to. If you send it to everyone in one fell swoop, some may just see it as spam if it holds no relevance to them.

Incentivize responses. People are more likely to complete your survey if something is in it for them. Offer a discount coupon to those who fill it out. Or, allow them to enter their email for a chance to win a prize. It’s a two-way street, so make sure your audience feels it is worth their time to fulfill your ask.

Polish the user experience. If people become frustrated by your survey, then they won’t think twice about abandoning it. Make sure your questions are clear and the available response options are comprehensive enough to collect accurate feedback. Think about the flow of the survey with respect to the order of questions asked. A nice layout can work wonders as well.
Master the subject line. Subject lines are important in every email you send. When you send a survey, you want your subject line to indicate you need feedback without sounding boring or spammy. Oftentimes, email services move emails with “survey” in the title to the spam folder, so best to avoid using that word.

Read more tips on gathering more responses.

PPC Ad Copy: How to Write Ads That Convert

DECEMBER 22, 2020

Remember in school when your teacher allowed a single notecard’s worth of notes for reference on tests? (Cue you busting out your finest point pen and bringing a magnifying glass on exam day.)

Just like with PPC ad copy, you have to knock out the most important info within a limited word count. It’s not easy, but there’s a way about it. Visiture is delving into PPC ad copy and how to write ads that convert.

Make It About the Customer. Craft your message around the individual who will see the ad. Frankly, the people you’re targeting don’t care about the seller as much as they care about themselves. You want the person viewing your ad to feel that the product or service you’re providing is beneficial to them. Use words like “you”, “value”, “save”, and “results.”

Integrate Emotional Triggers. Data on emotional ads has shown fear, affirmation, disgust, and anger are the most effective and easily triggered emotions. Think about how clickbait plays into emotions to gain clicks. Play into affirmation with positive messages and humor, or tap into FOMO to prompt quick action.

Eliminate Objections. People have their reservations before purchasing products. Give them all the assurance they’ll need to feel comfortable purchasing your products. This could mean an included warranty, a satisfaction guarantee, or free shipping. If you include these in your ad copy, then you’ll effectively nip those objections in the bud.

Highlight Benefits. Highlighting all the great features of a product is an easy and tempting method of crafting a message. However, feature-selling lacks context. What will these features bring to the buyer? Highlight the benefits a user will see. Connect the dots for them so they don’t have to.

There’s still more to scribble down on your notecard, so save room!

8 Important Social Media Integration Strategies to Implement in 2021

DECEMBER 21, 2020

Have you ever introduced two different friend groups to each other? Ideally, they’ll hit it off and form a mega-group of friends. Then you won’t ever need to divide time between them. However, this isn’t always the case.

When it comes to your content living on different channels, you have a greater degree of control. Create a seamless experience for your audience with these 8 important social media integration strategies to implement in 2021 from Hootsuite.

Add social sharing links to your blog posts. When you’ve put time and energy into a new blog post, you’ll want to make sure it performs well. Give readers an easy way to share your content once they’ve reached the end. You don’t need a button for every social channel in existence but include those most relevant to your audience.

Add social posts to your website. Showcasing your social feed or posts with your branded hashtags is a great way to show site visitors what kind of content they’ll see if they follow you. It can also reveal quality user-generated content that reflects well on your brand.

Create a social login option. People have so many passwords for so many sites. Creating another one just adds more to their plate. If your site requires an account and logins, then allow visitors to login via their Google or Facebook account. People tend to prefer logging in with social accounts.
Remind subscribers of your social community (and incentivize them). Send out blasts here and there highlighting some posts from your social feeds. Give people a taste of your brand’s content on different channels. Talking about upcoming promos that will only be found on social is a great incentive for sign-ups.

Don’t miss the other integrations!

How to Define Your Target Audience for SEO

DECEMBER 20, 2020

Wish – Shopping Made Fun. Y’all have surely seen their ads on Facebook. Most of the time we don’t even know what their products are for. For that matter, we don’t even know who they’re for. Hopefully Wish has a good idea of their target audience, but it wouldn’t appear so. Knowing your audience is crucial. SEMrush is showing us how to define your target audience for SEO.

Understand Your Current Customer Demographics. Your ideal customers are probably very similar to the customers you already have. After all, they purchased your products. Chat with your sales team to get an idea of what the ideal customer looks like. Furthermore, head into Google Analytics and explore the audience tab to get a better idea of demographics, locations, and interests.

Utilize Social Insights. Similar to Google Analytics, insights from your social accounts will give you granular information on those who interact with your pages. Facebook Audiences is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to defining peoples’ interests, so start there.

Analyze the SERPs. Take a look at how your target keywords currently rank. Determine whether or not the results are focused on learning or purchasing. This is a great indicator of search intent. Also, pay attention to paid search ads and note any common content themes amongst ranking pages.
Know Your Competitors Inside Out. Your competitors have likely done much of the work you’re doing now. There’s nothing wrong with taking a look at who they’re targeting with their SEO strategy. Note which of their keywords rank high on the SERPs and their top pages. These are all keywords and positions you’ll want to compete for but look for any gaps where you can score quicker wins.

Read on for more tips on defining your target audience.

Marketing Research Strategies: Ideas and Approaches for Marketers

DECEMBER 16, 2020

Thanksgiving is well behind us, but we’re still in feast season. Whipping up a fabulous meal is an art. First, it’s important to identify the occasion, then the dietary preferences of those involved. We’ll need to find the right recipes and purchase the right ingredients to ensure the meal is the best it can be.

It’s just like market research. Perhaps the stakes aren’t as high when cooking a meal, but the process bears some resemblance. CoSchedule is walking us through some ideas and approaches to marketing strategies.

Define Your Purpose. Determine what you’re trying to accomplish and what problem you wish to solve. If you can identify a problem, then you can outline steps that will help you solve it. Some questions to guide you include:

- What’s the scope of the research?
- What kind of data do you need for your research?
- Which business decisions will you base on your findings?
- Which variables should you investigate?

Create a Research Plan. Now that you know what problem to solve, determine the kind of research that will help achieve your goal. Surveys, questionnaires, interviews, user tests, polls, and monitoring social media are all research methods you can conduct to gather data.

Look At Other Case Studies. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Other organizations may have put in time and effort to solve the same problem. Read up on case studies from your competitors and you’ll see whether or not they’ve faced the same problems and how they may have overcome them.
Identify the Personas for Your Research. As you gather data to inform business decisions, make sure you gather your feedback from people similar to your buyer personas. A survey completed by someone outside your audience won’t help you. Try targeting people who purchased from your competitors or even those who almost made a purchase. Use incentives to encourage people to take the time to give you the feedback you need.

Feast your eyes on even more strategies in the full article.