The Daily Carnage

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

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Let’s Talk About Stories

OCTOBER 22, 2019

Stories are taking over. Seriously.

Over a billion of them are shared every single day across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Why should you care?

Because you’re a marketer and those numbers are staggering.

In case you got a case of Encino Man (if you know, you know), Stories consist of a vertical (9:16) piece of mobile content. Photos, videos, filters, frames, stickers, polls, etc. They are only visible for 24 hours once posted.

The power of stories.

During the Facebook F8 conference, Facebook dropped some data on Stories…

56% of people say they use Stories on three or more platforms at least once a week, and 57% agree that Stories make them feel part of a larger community.
1 in 2 people surveyed say they have visited a website—and 31% have gone to a store—to buy a product/service as a result of having seen it in Stories.
60% of businesses on Instagram Stories use an interactive element every month.

Keys to Creating Effective Stories and Stories Ads:

Facebook also dropped some knowledge on creating effective stories during the F8 conference. Here’s what they said:

Creative is really important: “56% of a brand’s sales lift can be attributed to the quality of the creative.” Don’t get lazy with your creative folks. Use high-resolution imagery and pixel-perfect video.
Speed is key: Stories are all about quick and dynamic content. Use stories for immersive and interactive content. Think…short attention spans.
Take advantage of the vertical format: Use the real estate that the platform is giving you. In other words, fill the frame. Don’t throw a landscape video or photo into your stories. Put in the extra work and go vertical with it.
Limit stickers: Use stickers to enhance the user experience, but don’t overdo it.
Open and close with your brand: Think, Brand Awareness. It can be as simple as adding your logo in a pre-roll screen.
Draw attention to your CTA: If you want folks to swipe up, make sure you tell them to swipe up. Don’t be shy.

We’ll end with the following stat; 50% of users report they have visited a website to buy a product or service first seen in a Story.

It’s time to step up your story game.

Email is Not Dead

OCTOBER 21, 2019

We made a t-shirt a couple of years ago. It read, “EMAIL IS NOT DEAD.”

Well, we’re sticking to that phrase and so are the folks at DigitalMarketer.

Today is all about those stats. We’ll bet if you’re not using email marketing now, you’ll be using it by the time you finish this email. 🤝

Stat #1: Almost 300 billion emails will be sent and received in 2019. Why it matters? People are opening and responding to emails. A lot of people.

Stat #2: According to EmailMonday, Email has an average ROI of $38 for each $1 spent. Why it matters? Email wins out over the average cost-per-click of Facebook, which is $1.72. This is obviously industry/product specific.

Stat #3: Emails reach 85% of the people they’re sent to. Why it matters? Who wouldn’t want to reach over 85% of their audience? Your goal is to get that potential 85% of reach to actually open your email.

Stat #4: Welcome and thank you emails with a link to download something have an 88.7% open rate and a 35.07% click-through rate. Why it matters? It’s all about the upsell. Consider adding a promotional discount, bundle offer or some other type of upsell. Take advantage of that 88% open rate.

Stat #5: Almost 60% of people check their email before checking anything else. Why it matters? People care about email. Give them something valuable to start the day and you’ll win.

Stat #6: Sending 3 abandoned cart emails results in 69% more orders versus sending a single email. Why it matters? We all know that it takes multiple touchpoints to close a deal. The same logic applies to e-commerce. Don’t be afraid to send it.

Stat #7: Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers over Facebook or Twitter. Why it matters? Email allows for a different experience than Facebook and Twitter. It’s more personal.

We just threw a lot at you there. If you want to check out a few more stats, smash that button below.

What Makes a Good Website?

OCTOBER 20, 2019

That’s a loaded question, right? ☝🏼

Unfortunately, the answer isn’t one-size-fits-all either.

Regardless of your industry, here are some tips on making your website good.

Your website satisfies user intent and has a clear goal: The ol’ build it and they will come days are over folks. The core of a good website is knowing who your audience is and why they’re coming to your website. What do they want? Are they looking to make a purchase? How did they land on your site? Map out your site based on these audience answers.
Your website has technical prowess: Before you get into the SEO weeds, focus on the basics. Website speed, easily crawlable, not bogged down with large images, etc. Good sites are without technical errors. If you’re a WordPress user, we’re big fans of Yoast. They’ll point out the errors for ya.
Your website is trustworthy, safe and secure: We all know what a sketchy site looks like. Don’t be that site. “Use up-to-date software, have your SSL in order, make strong passwords, use tools such as Cloudflare to protect your site from DDoS attacks, etc.”
Your website has a great design and stellar UX: Attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter. From your messaging to your CTA’s, focus on giving the user a great experience. Get to the point and get to it quickly.
Your content is on point: Take off your sales cap for a second and give your users the content they actually want. This ties back into tip #1…know your audience.
Mobile-first: It’s 2019. This a no-brainer. Design your site with mobile in mind first, not the other way around.

Social Media Metrics That Actually Matter

OCTOBER 16, 2019

Yesterday, we talked about dialing in your social media strategy.

Today, we’re talking about the metrics you should be tracking because there’s a good chance you’ll need to demonstrate your efforts are working to the higher-ups.

Higher-ups aside, tracking the right metrics will help you make better decisions.

The folks at Hootsuite did a bang-up job on this post, so we highly recommend checking it out for a deeper dive.

Here’s what you should be tracking and how you should be tracking it:

Brand Awareness: This refers to the attention your brand is getting across social media channels. Attention refers to @mentions, shares, links, and impressions. Track this by first determining what metrics you want to be associated with brand awareness and then determine your reporting period.
Audience Growth Rate: AKA…how quickly you’re gaining followers. Track it by measuring your net new followers over a given period of time. Then divide your new net followers by your total audience and multiply it by 100 to get your audience growth rate percentage.
Post Reach: This will tell you how many people have seen your post. Divide the reach by your total number of followers and multiply it by 100 to get your post reach percentage.
Applause Rate: This measures the number of approval actions, such as likes, favorites, etc. To track it, add up the total approval actions over a given period of time. Divide that number by your total followers and multiply by 100 to get your applause rate percentage.
Click-Through Rate: This metric shows the number of people who clicked on a CTA link in your post. To track it, measure the total clicks from a link then measure the total impressions on that post. Finally, divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions and multiply it by 100 to get your CTR percentage.

Alright, now you have some ammunition for the next social media meeting with your boss. If you want even more, smash that button below for 14 more metrics you should be tracking.

Build Out Your Social Media Strategy

OCTOBER 15, 2019

We talk a lot about strategy because it’s pretty dang important.

Today, we’re talking about your social media strategy. As the social media landscape continues to change, so will the costs.

Without a solid strategy in place, you’re gonna pay for it (literally).

Here are 5 tips to get your strategy dialed in:

Do Market Research: Before you start publishing content, you need to do a deep dive into what your competitors are creating. Where are they publishing? What’s their channel strategy? How often do they post? How do followers react?
Set Achievable Goals: We’ve shared this before, but it’s called the SMART framework. It’ll help you set specific goals. When you break it down, it spells out: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. “Each goal you create should focus on a single metric or aspect of your social media strategy.”
Define an Audience for Every Campaign: If you’re serving ads to the wrong audience, your engagement and content will fall flat. To ensure that doesn’t happen, spend some time creating your ideal buyer persona. Here are some really good examples.
Decide on Campaign KPIs: Every goal needs to be accompanied by specific KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Let’s say you’re tracking brand engagement, you’ll want to use a social monitoring tool to track @mentions, shares, links, and impressions. When you’re able to tie your KPIs to specific metrics, it’s a lot easier to get buy-in from the boss.
Try New Things Based on What Works: That’s a no-brainer, right? Your strategy will need to evolve on the regular. Make it a point to constantly evaluate your efforts to determine what’s resonating with your audience. If you’re posting to post, just stop.

Check out 3 more tips below.

How to Organize Your Content Like a Pro

OCTOBER 14, 2019

Whether you’re on a large or small team, content can get messy. Real messy.

You’d be surprised by the number of our clients that end up having way more content than they realized by simply organizing it. From presentations to images, videos, reports, etc.; content comes in all forms.

It’s not uncommon for folks who work on large teams to be siloed in their content marketing efforts. There’s a good chance that other departments are likely creating their own content simultaneously.

To avoid this mess of content, we’re gonna share a few tips on getting your content organization dialed in.

Put everything in one place: This might sound obvious, but if your assets are scattered across different Slack channels, emails, and storage services, it’ll be hard to find what you need when you need to find it. Save everyone some stress and create an organized central location for all of your marketing assets.
Take stock and define your popular assets: There’s no point in keeping low-res, unusable images. You’ll save a ton of time on the backend by taking stock of your current content inventory and trashing what you can’t use.
Tag your assets: Make it easier for you and your team to find relevant content by tagging your assets with themes, target audiences, usage restrictions, or whatever else you want. We use Airtable for its easy-to-use tagging feature.
Put your content in a calendar: We’re piggybacking off the above here, but when you can see your content efforts in one place, it’ll ensure that you’re aligned with your overall strategy. See the tools section below for a 🔥 recommendation.

What You Need to Know About Indexing

OCTOBER 13, 2019

Before you go all-in on optimizing your website, you need to understand how search engines work.

We’re here to help folks.

Where it all starts: Indexing

Indexing in its simplest form means that your content is added to the Google stratosphere.

When you create a new page for your website, there are a few ways to index it. Let’s talk about ’em.

Do nothing: Yes, you read that correctly. Google will eventually send its crawl bots your way and index your site. If you’re anything like us though, you don’t want to wait on Google. Well played.
XML Sitemaps: An XML sitemap gives search engines a list of the pages on your site. You can submit a sitemap through Search Console or a number of other programs. XML sitemaps are highly encouraged, but it won’t necessarily expedite the indexing process.
Request indexing: Head over to Google Search Console and click the ‘URL inspection’ link. Enter your domain and click ‘request indexing.’ If your page is already indexed, Search Console will let you know.
Host your content on Google: Keep this one on your radar. According to SEJ, “We’re seeing the ability to give Google direct access to our content via XML feeds, APIs, etc. and unplug our content from our design. Firebase, Google’s mobile app platform, gives Google direct access to the app content, bypassing any need to figure out how to crawl it. While we aren’t quite where we need to be in our technologies to stress too much about this side of things, just know it is coming.”
Don’t forget about Bing: Believe it or not, folks still use Bing. Sign up for a Webmaster Tools account through Bing (it’s free) and submit your URL’s.

Get your index on folks.

Podcast Advertising Secrets

OCTOBER 9, 2019

The fine folks at Hubspot put together a killer article 🔥 on podcast advertising. We’re gonna give you the highlight reel, but make sure you smash that button below to dive in deeper.

Podcasts are here to stay.

According to MusicOomph, over 32% of Americans listen to podcasts every month and 51% of the U.S. population has listened to at least one podcast. Those are some staggering stats.

More importantly for us marketers, podcast ads are producing some amazing results for sponsors. According to Midroll, 61% of podcast listeners say they bought something after hearing an ad, and podcast ads drive two to three times more engagement than radio ads. Cha-ching.

Before you go all-in on podcast advertising, let’s take a look at what the top experts in the space are advising.

– Rebekah Bek – Ahrefs:

Rather than being a tool for lead generation, podcast advertising is a tool for gaining exposure and brand awareness.
It’s not always about measurable ROI.
Organic, not scripted, mentions perform best.

– Jason Hoch – HowStuffWorks:

Ads read by the host perform better than scripted, third-party ads placed in the podcast.
Listeners feel like they are being shouted at with third-party ads.
Consider producing organic mentions for better results.

-Sam Balter: HubSpot

When sponsoring podcasts, trust the host to deliver a message in their own voice.
It’s better to go for frequency over reach. Pick a podcast where you can purchase three to five ads versus one ad on a large podcast.
Podcast listeners are millennials, well educated, and more affluent. You don’t need to sponsor the biggest podcasts, you can reach the same people on smaller podcasts.

Dive into a few more tips and information on podcast advertising rates below.

4 Outcomes and 4 Fixes for Bad Scheduling

OCTOBER 8, 2019

Facts: To be on your game as a marketer, you gotta be productive.

Productivity is inevitably tied to our calendars and schedules as they set the tone for the day. If you’re having problems maximizing your productivity, we’re here to help.

Here are 4 common calendaring problems and how to fix them.

Scheduling Wars: We’ve all been there. You set a time for a meeting and before you know it, it’s been rescheduled. And then it drops off entirely. Don’t let this happen anymore.

Fix: Send your guest a Scheduling Link with embedded meeting options and eliminate email back and forth entirely.

The Double Book: 2 calls at 1pm? Ya, not gonna happen.

Fix: Manage all your calendars – personal and professional – in one calendar view so that can always be on top of all of your commitments.

You’re late: Everything is on schedule, but you underestimated your travel time. Uh oh.

Fix: An integrated map view, built into your calendar, lets you see where you need to be and automatically calculates and schedules event travel time. Sign us up for that!