The Daily Carnage

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5 Steps to Becoming a Google Elite Partner

MAY 24, 2022

Platform partnerships can be extremely rewarding for more support and exclusive access. An “Elite” Google Partnership is an invite-only level of partnership that’s reserved for top-performing digital agencies. Each year, Google selects around 150 agencies.

Wanna join the ranks? Here are steps you can take to become an Elite Partner:

Get Certified: In every course you can, get certified in Google exams. Having your account strategists attached to your Google ads account certified is ideal, but only 50% need to be certified in at least one product area to make Google happy.
Strive for Results: Duh. But there’s more to it than just results. You should have a strategy and reporting process that is clear to Google when using their products. Always keep a close eye on Google’s best practices, and stick to using its recommended ad formats.
Diversify Your Products: Google loves diversification. Use different products and ad formats including Search, Display, Video, Shopping, and App ads.
Become an Industry Leader: This factor that Google looks for when choosing agencies to join involves staying up to date with best practices but also taking risks by trying betas and creating innovative processes.
Spend $: Google rewards ad spend. But don’t start fearing for your dollar signs. If you follow steps 1-4, your ad spend should increase organically.

None of these steps are necessarily easy as they all come with their own set of challenges to achieve, but they are great goals to have. Check out the full piece from The Drum’s Opinion section that pulls articles from digital marketing experts.

Keep Video Content Raw & Authentic

MAY 23, 2022

Lights, camera, action!

Actually…skip lights. And the studio. And all that editing business. When it comes to video content, you may be better off going all natural. This is especially true when it comes to eCommerce. Customers want to see how things really are, they’re not impressed by just the pretty, edited version of things.

Tips For Creating More Authentic Video Content:

UGC is always a winner – There’s power in real-person reviews! Leverage customer first-impressions, testimonials, and product reviews.
Get the team involved – Same with putting a personal touch on reviews, put a face to your offerings by showcasing your employees.
Mobile-shot videos are expected – Remember when you would be mocked for filming in portrait orientation? Well between TikTok, Reels, and Shorts, that’s now the more natural format.
Keep it on-brand – Some brands benefit from a little editing and polish. Others benefit from on-the-fly and raw footage. Think about how much editing effort your brand should have before going all-in on studio quality filming.

Check out the full Forbes article for more video shooting tips, stats on how customers react to video content, and ideas from other brands.

Dynamic Content Approaches for Personalization

MAY 22, 2022

Here’s a reminder with your Monday morning coffee on why dynamic content is awesome ☕️ sip, sip.

It’s not a secret that personalized content get the people going. As marketers, we have more and more resources to provide users more individualized experiences based on their data.

Benefits of dynamic content:

A more personalized experience
A more guided buyer’s journey
More relevancy
More automation
A higher chance of engagement

Types of behaviors to use for dynamic content:

Buying behavior
Pages visited
Events visited
Location data
Customer lifecycle
Buyer personas

Dynamic content strategies to try:

Guided Funnels: Use campaigns based on content the user previously visited versus new users to help guide repeat or warmed up customers differently than new ones.
New Content: Sometimes dynamic content is just about keeping your content fresh and new to returning visitors.
Targeted Ads: Dynamic content can create a custom ad experience that keeps more relevant content in front of them.

Check out the full post by Search Engine Land for brand examples more tips.

The Best Times to Post on Social Media in 2022

MAY 18, 2022

Now, we all know that there is nothing set in stone with it comes to social media. But that doesn’t mean it hurts to know what is working for thousands of other brands. Sprout Social audited these thousands of accounts so you don’t have to.

Here’s what they found:

Overall social media engagement is highest during mid-week mornings (9 or 10 a.m.).
The worst day to post on social media is Sunday.
TikTok isn’t included in this report, but TikTok has said themselves that they reward frequency so you gotta just keep on testing content when you can.

Best times to post on Facebook:

Mid-mornings or early (we’re talking the wee hours) during the week.
There’s an uptick in engagement on Tuesdays at 10 a.m. and noon.
The worst day to post on Facebook is Saturday.

Best times to post on Instagram:

Mondays at 11 a.m.
Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Thursdays and Fridays 10 a.m. and 11 a.m.
There’s also increased engagement on evenings and weekends.

Best times to post on Twitter:

Mid mornings and middays throughout the week.
But with the nature of Twitter, the faster you react to something, the higher your engagement can be.
The worst day to post on Twitter is Sunday.

Best times to post on LinkedIn:

Engagement on LinkedIn is highest during the US workweek, 10 a.m. to noon, and doesn’t extend too far out past 6 p.m.
Weekend engagement drops significantly.
The best days to post on LinkedIn are Wednesdays and Thursdays.

What’s been working for your posting schedule? Maybe it’s time to revisit the timing around your posts. Check out the full report for more stats and tidbits from Sprout Social.

11 LinkedIn Content Ideas in 2022

MAY 17, 2022

Don’t know what to post on LinkedIn? Wether it’s for a brand page or your personal branding, finding the right traction on LinkedIn can be tricky. Luckily, LinkedIn resources are out there. The platform has been growing in engagement, down-ranking engagement-bait, and even providing pocket guides.

PostBeyond has a handy guide of its own to give you ideas, too. Here are 11 content ideas to get you started:

Original, Long-Form Content – LinkedIn is great for white papers, guides, reports, case studies, and even LinkedIn-hosted newsletters.
LinkedIn Articles – We mentioned newsletters as one of LinkedIn’s new features, but you can also write articles natively into the LinkedIn platform.
“Adjacent-Industry” Content – Look at other, but related, industry content to your own. It gives you a chance to expand your network in those other areas.
Original Data – LinkedIn is about providing value and what’s more valuable than data? Investing in research helps with thought leadership and content to use across multiple channels.
Celebrations – Brands should be celebrating company-wide and individual employee achievements when they can.
Quick Tips, Hacks, How-Tos – If it has value, it’ll get eyes. If it’s bite-sized, it’ll get shared!
Clips from Webinars – Don’t forget to repurpose your long-form videos and webinars. Post highlights, teasers, and helpful clips from them.
UGC – Look for ways to use what employees and/or customers say about you.
Team Spotlights – Keep it human out there. Focus on the people that give your brand life. That way you can celebrate your team while also attracting more talent with a glimpse into company culture.
Discussions – This isn’t so much something to post, but something to take advantage of on LinkedIn. Seek out discussions and topics on other posts to put a spotlight on your expertise.
Customer Spotlights – If you don’t have testimonials about you, make one about your partnerships instead. Share the love and celebrate customer achievements or turn a relationship journey into a mini case study.

Check out PostBeyond’s full post for more examples and ideas for your LinkedIn content!

Website Design: Above or Below the Fold?

MAY 16, 2022

When it comes to anything visual in the world of marketing and design, you have probably heard the phrase “above the fold.” It’s old printing lingo meaning all the good stuff is above the fold of a newspaper. When it comes to digital design, though, the concept still applies.

How to Find Your Fold (aka, the Scroll)

Above the scroll is the content of a page that can be seen without scrolling. So it’s up to you to make sure the content is good enough to get them to scroll past it. How do you do it? Remember that 80% of time spent on a site is spent above the fold and attention often wanes as someone scrolls.

Ways to ensure your content is strong above the scroll:

Updating and testing your content often
Heatmap/Scrollmap tools
Helpful navigation cues

What to Include “Above the Scroll”

Your Brand Logo
Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
Navigation Tools/Menus
Calls to Action
Contact Information (when possible)

What About “Below the Scroll”?

Include captivating content throughout your page that is secondary to your above the fold content.
If you have secondary or repeating CTAs, include them below.
Contact Information again in the footer (as many people are accustomed to finding it there)

Above the scroll applies to almost every page on a site, but especially home pages and landing pages. Check out the full video and post by Thee Digital for more tips.

8 Instagram Reels Tips, Tricks, & Tutorials

MAY 15, 2022

Trying to find your Instagram content flow? Here are some helpful tips, tricks, and tutorials to help you with content ideas and how to actively help you make Reels.

Save Your Stories: If it’s good enough for your stories, it’s ideal for Reels. Just save the pics and videos you were looking for to post for your stories without any stickers or text to repurpose for a Reel video.
Give It a Why: For any Reel you post, make sure you have a reason someone would stick around to watch it. This doesn’t have to be too deep. It could be helpful tutorials, it could just be a joke.
Keep It Frequent!: Obviously we as marketers and creators try to put out the best possible final products they can. But because of competition and experimentation, you gotta keep Reels quantities high. That just means experiment with as many formats as possible.
Keep It “Neat”: Part of putting out a large quantity of Reels is putting out light, interesting content. You may just hit the right audience by putting out short Reels on niche topics.
Cross-Post: Share it to Facebook, too! Seems like a simple tip that people often forget.
Go Hands-Free: Having a phone in your arm can make for limited filming. Try to use your recording devices in ways that gives you a larger space to film yourself in and stay hands-free.
Auto-captions: Between accesibility and user-friendliness, autocaptions are an absolute must. If you have to manually add it, it’s worth it!
Be Original: You can grab inspo and copy formats all you want. But at the end of the day, you have to make content that is true to your brand to make it worth following.

Check out the full YouTube video by Jonny Keeley for more Reels and video techniques to explore.

Branding Across All 5 Senses

MAY 11, 2022

We all know the five senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. When it comes to branding, sight is usually what comes to mind for getting into a user’s mind. But what if you could be more memorable in more ways?

👅 Sense of Taste: Can you taste a company? We wouldn’t advise trying that. But you can associate taste experiences with brands. While not every brand is going to deliver on that, they can collaborate with brands that can. Experiences, events, gifts, or custom (edible) merch might be the way to go.

👂 Sense of Hearing: We talked all about sonic branding earlier this week. Developing an audio identity that is unique and memorable takes research and thought. It involves taking sounds associated with customer experiences. No sound involved with your brand? Time to make some music.

👃 Sense of Smell: Brands have spent A LOT of money researching “signature scents” and aroma marketing. And there’s some good science to back that since smells are some of the strongest triggers for memory.

👀 Sense of Sight: Visual ads, graphics, and logos are usually where companies put the most of their branding focus. The key is to be consistent with a visual identity.

✋ Sense of Touch: It’s all about feeling. Packaging, user experiences, textures, and physical products themselves should have some sort of tactical experience that is unique to a brand.

Brands who creatively engage all five of the senses are bound to stand out from others. Check out the full Forbes article on multisensory marketing examples from brands like MasterCard and Apple.

11 Landing Page Split Testing Ideas

MAY 10, 2022

Because there are so many variables in converting a sale or lead off of a landing page, it can be hard to pinpoint what to split test.

Possible variables to split test with landing pages:

Conversion goals -If your landing pages include multiple goals, CTAs, or offers, try testing a version of the landing page with only one offer.
Attention ratio – The attention ratio is the number of links on the page compared to the number of conversion goals. Ideally, you want a 1:1 ratio. Test out removing all other links like social media, internal, and footer links.
Message match – Test how closely your LP’s messaging and visuals match where your visitors originated from (ads for example).
Offer – Play with variations that have more urgent or valuable discounts.
Forms – You can test pretty much anything on forms! The microcopy, required fields, and columns are just some of the variations.
CTAs – Copy, color, button-type, triggers, hovers, and placement are popular things to test.
Social proof – You can test if you want any reviews or data present at all, how they look, and how many.
Layout – Your visual hierarchy, placements, and contrast play a huge role for page conversions and bounces so test out layouts with your existing content or rethink your structure entirely.
Headline – Don’t assume your copy is finished until the fat A/B tests sing.
Design – Test an image change or palette variation, but be careful testing out too many design elements at once.
Copy – We talked about CTAs, goals, and headlines. But you may need to test your overall tone, writing style, and formatting.

Remember, A/B tests isolate a single variable, multivariate tests do multiple at one time. Work systematically if you are choosing to go the multivariate route. Check out the full post by KlientBoost for more testing tips!