Month: March 2016

Facebook Marketing: Lead Generation Adverts

Posted on by Jen Mottram

Facebook Marketing: Lead Generation Adverts

The Facebook advertising platform is becoming increasingly advanced as more advertisers are starting to use the medium. There are a number of new ad formats available in the interface, with one of the most recent being lead generation adverts.

The new lead generation adverts have now been rolled out globally and are available to all advertisers. These can be created by selecting ‘lead generation’ as the campaign objective in the advertising interface (this may need to be done in Power Editor beforehand). The advert itself is easy to create, and uses a customisable enquiry form whereby the only the data that is important to you can be requested.

One of the main advantages of the lead generation adverts is that the user’s details can be captured without them leaving Facebook itself. The enquiry form is prepopulated with the user’s name, email and phone number (provided they have entered these into Facebook). Usually, the user would see the ad on Facebook, click through to the website, and then manually type in their own information – however, the lead gen adverts need only 2 clicks, making the process much easier for the user.

The information submitted by the users is likely to be of a higher quality, as most users have provided their full names and main email addresses to sign up for their Facebook account. In addition to basic contact details, up to 3 of your own custom questions can be added, which is great for helping to pre-qualify the leads that are generated. This also makes following up on the leads much easier, with more valuable information provided to the sales teams beforehand. Examples of the customisable questions could include the user’s location or the type of products they may be interested in.

The enquiry forms also offer the user the choice to visit the website after, however as this is optional, the user may not always visit the site straight away. Although this may increase the number of leads that are generated beforehand, a potential impact could be that less traffic is driven towards the website. This confines the user’s engagement to Facebook itself, making it ever more important for brands to increase customer engagement on the platform. Remarketing is also an effective way of generating leads- but if users do not visit the website, this will not be possible.

Initially, the lead generation adverts were only available to show on the mobile news feed, but they have proven so successful that they have now been extended across to desktop devices too. They will also be rolled out across video and carousel ads in the future, so we look forward to testing these across a variety of different ad formats.

We have already started implementing the lead generation adverts for some of our clients, and have seen great results so far. Just in the last week, we have seen an uplift in enquiries of 400%, with the average cost per lead reduced by over 50%. The below screenshots show some examples of the lead gen adverts:

 

 

 

We’re Going Through Instachanges…

Posted on by Jenny Connelly

Instagram has announced yesterday that they are following in the likes of Twitter and parent company, Facebook, by changing users’ feeds to a personalised algorithm. A user will not wake up to a reverse chronological order of posts that reaches back to where they last logged in. Instead, posts will be ordered by relevance to the specific user. In practice this means breakfast posts will be mixed with sunset posts. Instagram is now truly a global platform, with more than 75% of users living outside the US. The countries with the strongest growth in 2015 were Brazil, Japan, and Indonesia. Users typically follow other users from all over the world.

Instagram’s new algorithm reflects that rapid growth and internationalism – users are no longer typically following only those whom they know personally. In theory, new feeds will contain less pictures of forgotten school friend’s brunch snaps, and will include more relevant content tailored to the likes of the user. Businesses can take advantage of this change, and continue to create dynamic and inspiring content that will now flow more seamlessly through users’ feeds.

Should Instagram be prepared for a backlash? Users have been positively engaged with the format currently, as it places celebrity, news, and friends in simple chronological order. Backlash surely depends on how accurate the new algorithms are able to show engaging and desired content to users. The feature could theoretically be tweaked and users could be sated with a ‘see more posts like this’ and a ‘see less posts like this’ feature attached to images on their newsfeed.

Critics of the move seem to overlook that this is a natural progression for Instagram. In September 2015, the social media platform surpassed the 400 million users mark. The site now has over 3.5 billion likes daily. This means an incomprehensible number of images passing through an ever-growing amount of screens. A curated feed on one’s homepage means that superior content will get through to the user, and drive up engagement and reach, should it be relevant for the end user.

However, this means that organic reach will presumably dwindle on Instagram because of this move and is a stumbling block for businesses looking to organically reach their followers. Content, once again, has to get smarter and advertising has to be employed to reach new (and now, already engaged) fans when campaigns or content need to be amplified.

Google’s new layout: the impact so far

Posted on by Jen Mottram

Google’s new layout: the impact so far

Last week’s hot topic in the world of digital marketing was the rollout of Google’s new layout on desktop. The new layout sees up to four text ads displayed at the top of search results, right hand side text ads removed and up to three text ads displayed at the bottom. Both product listing ads and the knowledge panel, however, will still appear at the right hand side of search results.

Some insist that there will be little impact for PPC marketers from the new layout, as ads at the right hand side and bottom of search results account for just 14.6% of total clicks. In addition to this, desktop now accounts for less than half of all searches, suggesting that the new layout will effect just 7.3% of search queries.

According to some, the change will provide improved usability and a better user experience due to its’ presentation. The new layout unifies mobile and desktop, synergising the two. In addition, it reflects a feed experience like those on Facebook and Twitter that we’re all so used to. Similar to Google, ads displayed on the right hand side of the Facebook feed have an extremely low CTR in comparison to those in the feed.

Reporting

Ad extensions, such as sitelink extensions and call out extensions, were exclusive to ads at the top of search results and unavailable to ads at the right hand side prior to the new layout. As this is no longer applicable, the change resolves the top ad versus side ad issue, where in some instances text ads included ad extensions and in others they didn’t. This enables more accurate reporting.

Fewer ad positions also means more accurate reporting when looking at average positions. Prior to the new layout, there were up to eleven ad positions up for grabs. For advertisers with strong average positions, their average position was skewed by their most frequent position by ads which appeared further down the page. This previous inaccuracy will be reduced now that there are just seven ad positions available.

What have we seen so far?

As a result of Google’s new layout, most predicted an increase in CPCs. Although this isn’t something we’ve seen to date, it’s perhaps a little too soon to tell. It’s probable that advertisers will adjust their bidding strategies as they react to one another for the top of the page spots, in which case, it’s likely that the smaller advertisers will suffer.

In addition, most projected higher CTRs, something we’ve seen take effect already. Google maintains that the change will improve traffic quality for advertisers at the top of search results, however, some disagree with this due to the fewer click options available. More traffic on high ROI keywords, however, allows advertisers to access more and better traffic than ever before. A focus on conversion rate optimisation is paramount following the new layout, in response to the possibly negative impact it will have on CVR.

Product listing ads

As anticipated, we’ve seen an uplift in product listing ads as high as 32% the week following the change in comparison to the week prior. Similar to text ads, however, we haven’t seen an increase in CPCs, at least for now. This is likely to change, however, as most product listing ads are used by big brands. As a result, it’s possible that the competition for those spots will start to become more intense. In response, some suggest that Google is more likely to take advantage of the revenue generated here than improve usability and experience.

Some report that Google will continue to test the layout of product listing ads and that they may take up more screen real estate or move to different parts of search results pages. Others suggest that Google is currently testing an expandable view of product listing ads which takes the total number of viewable ads from five to fifteen!

As product listing ads are becoming more dominant, it’s important for advertisers to proactively respond to this and seek out any feed issues from Google. Other than bid adjustments, an improved feed is vital following Google’s recent change and one of the key ways to maintain or improve performance following the change.

Fusion SEO Market Updates: February 2016

Posted on by Joshua Carter

Feb - Market Updates

Google updates AdWords, stalls Search Analytics

Donkeys

Last month, Google made major changes to the way ads are displayed page, with the removal of right hand side results from the right side of SERPs. Instead, a block of four Ads will be displayed at the top of the search results, followed by a further block at the bottom of the pages. It’s currently stated that the four AdWords block will only appear for “highly commercial queries” (e.g. “new car”, “home insurance”).

This means that in many instances organic listings will be pushed below the fold, with many speculating that this could lead to a lowered click through rate for natural search results.

Although there has been speculation as to how the Google ad changes will affect paid search, as of yet there has been fairly little comment on the changes from an SEO perspective. Alongside this, as Google’s Search Analytics report is currently stalled on February 23rd – coincidentally, around the time of the update – an independent analysis of the effect the changes could have on organic click through rate cannot yet take place.

Changes made to Knowledge Box

Platypus Knowledge

As of February 2016, the Knowledge Graph boxes that appear in Google’s SERPs can be manually updated by an of the account associated with the graph.

Previously, the information in knowledge box results was largely taken from structured data and schema mark-up on relevant websites. For example, if a business wanted its phone number, location, or social profiles to be displayed within its knowledge graph, this information would need to be included within the site’s schema mark-up.

With the recent update, “official representatives” of the company, person, or website associated with the knowledge graph can now “suggest a change” to the graph. However, this does not make schema redundant, and having valid and rich structured data is still important.

Although it’s not guaranteed that suggested changes will actually take place, the update gives a further degree of power to webmasters or account owners in ensuring that their site is visible in the SERPs.

Accelerated Mobile Pages now live

AMP

After being trialed in a mobile demo site, Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages are now showing as live in mobile results for all users.

Initially announced by Google in October 2015, the Accelerated Mobile Pages project is designed to help boost page speed, cut load times, and result in a faster mobile search experience.

The open source initiative is currently backed by around 6000 developers, with thousands of sites currently signed up to show AMPs.

At the time of writing, Google has declined to comment on whether accelerated mobile pages are likely to receive a ranking boost. However, when asked about AMP and natural search, Google’s David Besbris reiterated that page speed and load time are both relevant ranking factors. This hints that at some point in the future, Accelerated Mobile Pages could be treated preferentially in comparison to regular pages.

Study shows outbound links could affect rankings

In January, Google’s John Mueller stated that outbound links are not used as a ranking signal.

However, the results of a recent study suggest that this might not be the case. To test Google’s claims, US based SEO agency Reboot Online conducted an experiment to find whether outbound links really do have no effect on rankings.

Reboot created 10 new web pages, each containing similar but not identical copy. Each page contained a control nonsense keyword – Phylandocic – that before the experiment resulted in 0 search results. 5 of the 10 webpages linked out to high authority sites like the University of Oxford, and 5 contained no outbound links.

Once the webpages had been crawled, a search for Phylandocic resulted in the 10 webpages being displayed in the SERPs. It was found that the top 5 webpages were those that linked out externally, whereas the bottom 5 were those that had no links whatsoever.

Whilst the conditions of the experiment were by no means natural, the results seems to indicate that linking externally could in fact have some benefit to a site, going against Google’s recent comments.