We’ve assembled the hottest tips, tactics and tricks that will help you increase your audience and boost conversions for 2017.
Let’s jump right in at number 1.
1. Know The Ocean You Swim In
- Identify your strengths and play to them.
- Read more than you write!
- Understand pay-per-action models.
- Embrace the online auction marketplace.
- Find a trusted paid advertising specialist.
Knowing what you are good at, and what you need to work on, are two of the most important factors you can identify in 2017. Since I am a content creator, knowing what others have to say is incredibly important to me and keeps my edge sharp, so I read constantly what is being presented online – and you should too!
Having a working knowledge of pay-per-action services such as Google Adwords is an important part of your paid online marketing strategies for 2017. What used to be a simple pay-per-click model that started in the late 1990’s, has grown into so many distinct types of actions that we can utilize in your marketing.
These include pay-per-call, pay-per-view, pay-per-impression, and a new system introduced by Google this week, the pay-per-message for SMS. Start sorting through available technologies by finding a trusted advisor who specializes in paid advertising. Better yet, find a certified Google Business Partner such as Davidson Belluso to help meet your online marketing needs in 2017.
2. Embrace Analytics and Metrics
- Make Google Analytics your base of operations.
- Learn what Google Tag Manager is and use it!
- Track and Audit your SEO often!
- Build a quarterly KPI tracking system.
The opening quote by Deming was given to me a few months ago and I have it hanging on my wall in a prominent location. When others are providing opinions, they are truly looking for hard data. Be the person who can provide that for them. In order to do that, understanding Google Analytics and learning to use it is going to be your most powerful tool in 2017.
The Tag Manager from Google is an excellent companion tool that will allow you to monitor hard to track metrics such as individual clicks off your website to third-party websites.
SEO has been, and always will be, the heart of your online marketing strategy regardless of your choice in pursuing organic or paid traffic. Find an excellent auditing tool such as SEMRush to perform this important job on a regular basis. Along with auditing, building a quarterly KPI tracking system is crucial to know where you stand and what progress you are making.
For instance, we have made our quarterly KPI’s a company-wide event and give out awards each quarter for people who are performing the best in each area. This not only keeps your staff aware of what everyone is doing but it is also an excellent method to build esprit de corps with your teams.
3. Always know your Quality Score!
- Understand the Real-Time Auction Concept.
- Do excellent and thorough keyword research.
- Everything is based on relevancy.
- Match landing pages to keywords to ads.
- Please don’t ignore the funnels!
Every pay-per-action advertising system is an online auction that changes with every search and click of the mouse. The days of setting and forgetting campaigns are over with the advent of real time artificial intelligence systems such as Google Rankbrain. Without an excellent and thorough research of keywords, both your organic and paid campaigns will suffer and cost you money.
Everything in 2017 is based on relevancy. SEO, your page rank and your campaign costs will all be judged based on the relevancy of each critical factor. This starts with the title of your page, the way you break out your headlines and the frequency of your keywords. This becomes even more important when building paid ads! The relevancy of your landing pages to your keywords, and to your ads, will determine what you pay for each action vs what you bid.
With a high quality score you can bid $1.00 for an action and only pay $0.70 cents if you do everything correctly. Conversely, if your Quality Score is poor you can be penalized as much as 600% for every action you pay for.
Please don’t forget your funnels! Not only do they help you determine what is successful, they aid in your ability to build completely relevant campaign segments. This will save you money and get you more advertising time in front of your audience.
4. Use Ad Extensions in Paid Advertising
- Expanded Text Ads provide better opportunities in 2017.
- Sitelink extensions engage users and provide additional ad content.
- Pay-Per-Call advertising can generate instant leads!
- Callout extensions extend the size of your ad and provide additional links.
- Pay-per-message advertising is the new kid on the block.
Pay-per-action systems are our primary method for paid advertising on the World Wide Web in 2017. While Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Bing and Yahoo all have viable advertising systems, Google is the clear front-runner for any paid campaign in 2017.
Google introduced several new systems in 2016 and will continue to lead the field going forward. Expanded text ads provide more copy to evoke emotional responses in our potential audience. Callout extensions and Sitelink extensions allow us to create larger advertising blocks on Google without any additional cost out of pocket. The introduction of Pay-per-message advertising in the past week is another indication of Google’s commitment to mobile advertising and is the hottest new technology for paid advertising today.
5. Plan your strategy, measure your results
- Develop a content marketing strategy.
- Optimize everything for mobile!
- Commit to a Social Media publishing schedule.
- Email advertising is still a viable technology.
- Repurpose everything you create for additional use.
Having a plan in place and measuring your results is critical to your long-term success. The first thing that should happen is for you to develop a content marketing strategy in your organization. As part of this content marketing strategy, I suggest creating a publishing calendar where you measure your ability to meet your deadlines and adjust your resources accordingly.
Committing to a Social Media publishing schedule is critical. Facebook is the clear front runner in the Social Media field that provides the ability to build an organic audience as well as targeting a paid campaign. As part of the Facebook model, you can also target Instagram at the same time. Video is critical to this process. We have learned from our experiences that users engage with video on a much larger scale than they do with any other ad type. Video can also be repurposed for YouTube and other platforms.
Speaking of repurposing, always build content that can be used across multiple platforms. When you publish a blog, publish to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and other pertinent systems that you target. Never build anything for single use in 2017.
Finally, email advertising is alive and well in 2017 and with the right funnel development can be an effective tool. Email advertising, by its very nature, provides you with low-hanging fruit opportunities from users that are already familiar with you and your product.
6. Bonus tactics for 2017
- Use Facebook live to build a repeatable audience.
- Follow my two favorite author’s – Neal Patel and Brian Dean.
- Build YouTube campaigns in Google for a fraction of the cost of Display Ads.
- Remarketing campaigns are inexpensive and provide a second bite at the apple.
- Challenge yourself, you may be surprised with the results.
The largest bonus tactic I can provide you for 2017 is to believe in yourself and never be afraid to challenge yourself. The world of online marketing is an ever-evolving environment and the information age is all about challenging the ideas of the past. The authors I read and follow inspire me and challenge me to be better. My co-workers believe in me and inspire me to be a better team player. My family loves me and inspires me to be a better person each and every day. Find what inspires you and brings your passions to the forefront and you may be surprised with the results.
The world is truly your oyster, so crack it open and grab your pearl. Until next time, you might consider joining our mailing list to receive our monthly newsletter with our best marketing blogs and tips.
