The Daily Carnage

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

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Is This Relevant?

MAY 14, 2019

Relevance Score.

Does it actually matter?

This came up in our Facebook Group, so we thought it’d be fitting to address it.

What is the Facebook relevance score?

A score based from 1 to 10 on how your ad is resonating with your audience.

Earlier this year, Facebook broke up the relevance score into 3 categories:

Quality Ranking
Engagement Rate Ranking
Conversion Rate Ranking

Why should you care about relevance rankings?

These metrics help you understand what your audience wants rather than just showing the success or failure of an ad.

Here’s a breakdown of each category and how you can optimize them:

-Quality Ranking: Think of this as you versus your competition. Facebook calculates this based on folks who have viewed or hidden your ad. To optimize your quality ranking, make sure you’re creating a fluid user experience. For example; completed landing pages, not using clickbait or engagement bait.

-Engagement Ranking: This metric tells you how likely your target audience is to react, comment or share. This is a great testing ground for your ad creative. As targeting and ad creative become more specific, you’ll likely see your engagement rank increase.

-Conversion Rate Ranking: This measures how likely a person is to convert, whether it’s an email submission, purchase, download, etc. Why it matters? This ranking comes down to your specific goals and strategy. It forces you to do a deep-dive into what’s actually working.

The new-ish relevance metrics are all about giving you better insight into your target audience. Facebook does a great job at breaking down how to use these metrics for better ads here.

How to Use Mailchimp’s Audience Dashboard

MAY 13, 2019

When he’s not working on the vision behind a new brand or project, our very own Creative Director, Rich enjoys writing an article or two.

In today’s tactic section, Rich breaks down how to use the Mailchimp audience dashboard.

Mailchimp is a robust platform for us marketers, but sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming.

Here are two features in Mailchimp we’re most excited about, why we love them, and how they can inspire your strategy:

-Email Marketing Engagement:

What is it?

Your subscribers’ level of engagement (frequency of opens and clicks) are broken down into three categories: Often, Sometimes, Rarely.

Why we love it?

Open and click rates tell you how individual campaigns are performing. On the other hand “Email Marketing Engagement” tells you how your audience is responding. In other words, this feature puts the focus on the people you’re communicating with not just the messages you are sending.

How can you use it? Go here.

-Likelihood to Purchase Again:

What is it?

This feature is for eligible paid accounts. Here you get a predictive model specific to your customers’ behavior. Subscribers are broken down into three categories based on their predicted likelihood to purchase again: High, Moderate, Low.

Why we love it?

Because we love machine learning, of course! (Well, we might change our minds when they become our robot overlords, but in the meantime…) The more likely a customer is to make multiple purchases, the greater their predicted lifetime value.

And, once again, these categories are instantly actionable right there on the dashboard.

How can you use it? Go here.

How to Approach Content for SEO

MAY 12, 2019

Today’s SEO Monday is a little different…

We’re chopping up a podcast with Viola Eva, Founder of SEO Strategy at Flow SEO. Viola was recently featured on the Search Engine Nerds podcast and dropped some serious knowledge.

How Viola approaches content creation for SEO:

Data-driven SEO and mindful marketing. Viola says that good content is content that is well-researched, provides value, solves a problem or satisfies a need.

Takeaway 1: Don’t forget to do your SEO homework.

Areas of content creation that Viola focuses on:

Viola takes a three-step approach when it comes to building sustainable content.

What you want to communicate
What people are searching for
What Google favors

Takeaway 2: It’s important to know your brand in and out. Having a brand voice, style guide and understanding who you’re creating content for is of the utmost importance.

How much should you be writing?

The game has changed with long-tail keywords. Viola recommends one page per keyword cluster.

Takeaway 3: Don’t compete with your own content.

On keyword research:

For young sites, Viola recommends ‘super long tail, super low difficulty’ keywords. Focus on search traffic and then keyword difficulty.

Takeaway 4: Study the heck out of page 1 on Google. You need to understand keyword difficulty and find the sweet spot with your content.

How Many Emails Are Too Many?

MAY 7, 2019

Here’s a short and sweet one for all you to B2B folks.

We’re assuming you’re no stranger to cold emails. It’s part of the job.

The first touch point typically results in crickets (aka no response). The real magic is in the follow-up. But, how many emails are too many?

The folks at Nutshell pieced together some interesting data on the importance of email communication and the magical follow-up.

Here it is:

Email marketing generates an ROI of $44 for every dollar spent.
Eight in 10 prospects prefer talking to sales reps over email.
However, at any given time, only 3% of your market is actively buying; 56% are not ready, while 40% are poised to begin.

The Follow-Up:

44% of salespeople give up after only one follow up.
Additionally, 92% of salespeople give up after four “no”s, but 80% of prospects say “no” four times before they say “yes”.
In high-growth organizations, sales teams make an average of 16 touches per prospect, within a 2-4 week span.

So, what’s the magic number for follow-up emails?

5 Emails! That’s certainly not set in stone and will vary based on your product or service, but 5 emails seem to be the standard. Unless you hear “NO,” we’re big fans of not giving up.

Create a Killer Landing Page

MAY 6, 2019

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

You’ve probably heard that one before. Well, the same logic applies to creating a killer landing page (kind of).

Before we get into creating landing pages, it’s important to assess your current landing pages to see what’s working. Today’s tool will help with that. 👇🏽

You need to look at your landing page as a product and a process. If you go into it with a ‘set it and forget it’ mentality, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Now to the optimization…

Make Your Offer Clear: You have less than 2 seconds to capture a visitors attention. Don’t confuse them with a bunch of jargon. Take a look at these examples of well-done landing pages.
Above the Fold: Above the fold refers to the point at which a user must scroll to see more information. You want your most important info above the fold on your landing page. Don’t confuse this with jamming a ton of information above the fold. Keep it simple with a headline, a brief sentence and a strong CTA (call-to-action).
Scarcity Sells: If you want your user to act fast, you’ll need to compel them with scarcity. Do this by using a limited-time discount, a limited quantity, and/or a countdown timer.

Check out more optimization strategies here.

Sell Tickets and Get Your Event Seen

MAY 5, 2019

Today’s SEO hot tip comes in the form of SEO for events.

If you’re in charge of events or the marketing of events on your team, it’s important to recognize the role SEO plays in audience awareness and visibility in search.

Before we dive into the tactics, let’s discuss where your event can actually show up in search.

The Event Pack: This is a search engine results page that is triggered by events based searches. For example; concerts, festivals, tickets, shows, etc. The Event Pack gives you the unique ability to rank in position one, which equivalates to a killer click-through rate.
The Google Event Carousel: This search engine result sits above the organic search results just like the ‘Event Pack.’ The main difference is the event carousel will send you to a new search results page. The ‘Event Pack’ sends you directly to the event page.

Ok, now the juicy part.

Use Event Schema: This will be the most important thing you do (talk about pressure). Event schema refers to markup code (semantic vocabulary) that you put on your website to help the search engines return more informative results for users. Here’s what you’ll need to have marked up for your event:
-Location
-Location Address
-Name of Event
-Start & End Date of Event
-Description
-Image
-Venue Name
-See more here
Use Keywords in Your Event Names: It’s important to research terms that trigger the ‘Event Pack.’ Let’s say you’re running a marketing conference in Pittsburgh on October 4th (ya, we are). You’ll need to know the behavior of the search engine. To do this, head over to Google and plug in a few different terms. To show up on the event pack, be sure to include the city of the event and the context. ie: Pittsburgh Marketing Conference. Easy, right?
Ticketing Marketplaces & Sites: Use a ticketing platform that is certified by Google. It’ll help you appeal to a wider audience and show up in broad event-related searches.

How to Get More Users to Share

MAY 1, 2019

When it comes to breaking through the ‘noise’ on social media, user-generated (UGC) content takes the cake.

Why?

It’s the most authentic form of content creation out there. Think about it…

No one is forcing your customer’s hand. They’re sharing your product because they want to. That’s a powerful thing.

From an engagement standpoint, UGC is huge. The more people who share, the better your posts will perform in the feed.

Enough about the why. Let’s talk about how to encourage your users to generate content.

Hold a competition: People love prizes. An easy way to fire up some UGC is to host a competition in which you offer a prize for the best photo featuring your product or service. Make sure to include some ground rules, such as; ‘To qualify, you must tag 3 friends.’
Hashtag: The hashtag game has changed a bit, but the premise remains the same; hashtags facilitate searches. Do some research on existing hashtags. Pick one that no one else is using and ask your audience to use it.
Backed by a cause: Doing good is good. What’s really good is when your brand can align with a social cause (aka cause marketing). Brand ethos matters to people, so whether you’re a big or small brand, think about ways to get your user base involved with a cause.
15-seconds of fame: If your customers know they can land on your website or other social channels, they might be more enticed to generate content. Make sure you’re re-sharing UGC on other channels outside of Instagram.

Master the Follow-Up

APRIL 30, 2019

Dear {Person},

Just following up on my last email. Would love to connect. Let me know a good time.

Thanks,

{Your Name}

Ah, the dreaded follow-up email. Let’s face it. We’ve all been there. A couple of days or even a week go by and crickets.

So, how do you nail the follow-up email?

Go back in time: Did your first email include a legitimate close? We’re not talking about a vauge one-liner stating “I’d love to connect,” or something along those lines. We’re talking about a close like this…”Are you free to talk on Friday at 1pm?” Takeaway: Always include a specific close.
Keep it fresh: As tempting as the copy and paste buttons are, stay away from them. Look at each email as a chance to try something new. From your subject line to your CTAs, treat each email differently.
Be chill: When you follow up too soon, you risk coming off as desperate. Don’t do that. Wait at least 1 week between your first email and your follow-up.
Say no to clickbait: We all want our emails to be opened and read, but clickbait for biz dev just ain’t cool. Don’t use subject lines like Re: Our call last week if you never had a call last week.
Don’t give up: If you sent 4 emails and haven’t heard anything, it could be time for a breather. By breather, we mean wait a few months and send a follow-up. Potential clients have different needs at different times. Be patient.

To Automate or Not…

APRIL 24, 2019

Love it or hate it, automation is here to stay.

For us marketers, it’s not a bad thing (until all of our jobs are taken by bots). 🤖 Let’s face it though, our jobs are safe for quite a while.🤞🏼

When we talk about the ‘Pros’ of automation, a few come to mind.

Time-savings
A/B testing abilities
A feedback loop between your sales and marketing team

Considering we’re ‘glass half-full’ kind of folks here at Carney, we’re gonna lean into the positives and discuss some ways to use automation.

Post Scheduling: We all know social media is a grind. It requires constant attention, strategic planning, and meticulous scheduling. Luckily, there are a ton of tools to use for scheduling purposes. Pro tip: plan out your social media posts at least 2 weeks in advance, so you aren’t making decisions on the fly.
Mention Tracking: There’s no need to waste time digging through search results looking for mentions of your brand. Why? Because Google Alerts is free and effortless to set up. Pro tip: Start using Google Alerts.
Ad Retargeting: We already know you’re using a Facebook pixel on your website 😉, so why not give folks an extra nudge to convert? Pro tip: Set up some retargeting ads to folks who are engaging with your site.

Dive in deeper to some automation tactics right here.