5 Seconds to a Click and Conversion

5 Seconds to a Click and Conversion

by | Dec 15, 2020 | Ad Tech, Blog

Clickbait: What is that?

I can’t believe you just clicked on that. What were you thinking??

Yes, that’s where this blog is going, it is time to be honest and really dig in.

The truth of the matter is that no matter who you are that first line did something for you. It caused an emotion for you. That emotion could be that you are confused as to what we are talking about. It could be you are literally trying to think what you clicked on. Maybe, you feel foolish initially because you may have clicked something you shouldn’t have or you are afraid you clicked on something harmful. 

Allow me to introduce you to the topic of this blog; hook lines. This can be known as clickbait or copy. We realize that clickbait has a negative connotation, especially in a world of ‘fake news’ that we live in. The reason that it is an issue is because some people try to mislead people to something that does not pertain to the content that catches your eye. 

However, it is not a bad thing to have content that baits people to click. Fish go for the bait because it is appealing but they die if they do that. Luckily, your consumers can go for the bait and get a high quality product. This is why it is important to provide value for your clients. 

If your ads are really misleading and your products do not align with the intention then you will have a lot of angry customers if any at all.

Clickbait gets a negative connotation but it shouldn’t be seen that way because it can provide you brand great value. Ultimately, you are achieving your goal and you are getting attention to your brand which is what every single marketer struggles with everyday. 

Human emotions are a wonderful thing and we need appeal to humans that are the ones seeing the ads even though it is a digital game. Headlines spark out natural human curiosity. We want to know more because that line caught our interest.

Curiosity isn’t the only emotion that is activated but we can also feel anger, lust, envy, fear, and many other emotions that will get people to take action. 

You’re really doing your customers a favor by providing them clickbait. Does that sound selfish? Maybe it is a bit selfish but e-commerce is a world with so many choices and can be incredibly overwhelming. Choosing the right product when you have so many options can be difficult so providing an engaging message to users helps them find your products and see how valuable they are. You can utilize storytelling to build interest and engagement with users and keep it light to interest them in receiving more information, thus building a lead magnet. 

The goal doesn’t always have to be a sale!

Building a strong following and leads can be very valuable and potentially generate a higher lifetime value for a client. 

Some of you may not understand what clickbait is so let’s provide some examples because it’s actually nothing new. The fact that it is online and you can click on the ads is what makes it specific and relevant but the concept is nothing new. It’s really about creating a captivating message that grabs your attention. 

He did what??

Clearly, this shows a farfetched story that sparks your interest because of the absurdity of it. I am sure you would be inclined to read this paper just to satisfy your curiosity. It is a clear example that “clickbait” is nothing new and marketers have been doing it since marketing began. We are seeing highly targeted campaigns reaching users that are actively ready to buy across our network. Campaigns offering deals and discounts in their holiday advertising have performed 5x better than simple branding campaigns. Driving more sales will allow you to justify the discounted rates for the holiday season. Depending on your product you can generate amazing lifetime value from converting them with a first time discount. Everyone is looking for deals right now. The trick is to make your deal so appealing that they can’t resist. 

We realize that you may be on the lookout for misleading clickbait but we have to see past those that are utilizing clickbait for evil purposes and wrongdoing. At the end of the day they are ruining it for the good marketers because clickbait is not all bad. 

If you have an amazing product or provide a great service then you must find the best ways to get the word out to more people. Customers will never be disappointed in clicking your ads because it led them to something of great value.

So keep testing clickbait and getting the word out about how amazing your brand is and it will be appreciated by your ideal customers.

Holiday Digital Marketing Tips

Holiday Digital Marketing Tips

by | Dec 4, 2020 | Blog, Strategy

Holiday Marketing

We know you keep hearing how important holiday sales are and how you have to stay out in front of your clients to continue to drive awareness for your brand. So why aren’t you listening?

Did you think this was going to be a nicer blog?

The truth is as a brand you have to be doing all of these things to continue to scale and grow. Unfortunately, we see lots of brands put marketing on the back burner and not commit fully to driving more traffic and testing out to improve results. In this blog we will cover strategies and tips that will help you get a better hold on your holiday marketing strategy. It is not too late to drive sales and it is never too late to drive more awareness for your brand. Get people interested in your brand and your mission. This will create a great loyalty and a solid customer base for years to come.

Holiday Marketing – Push For Sales

I can’t stress this enough, you must take advantage of the holiday season and use the opportunity of holiday shoppers to learn more about your customers and yourself. Active shoppers can quickly show you what they like and don’t like. This allows you to dig deep into the data and adjust your strategy accordingly. Holiday marketing is you barometer for the next year.

It is important to learn about your customers and follow them through their journey on your site. Although you are seeing a lot of other brands pushing and it may seem that the playing field is tough you still have to get out there and fight for those customers. Find a way to best appeal to customers and grab their attention.

We are seeing highly targeted campaigns reaching users that are actively ready to buy across our network. Campaigns offering deals and discounts in their holiday advertising have performed 5x better than simple branding campaigns. Driving more sales will allow you to justify the discounted rates for the holiday season. Depending on your product you can generate amazing lifetime value from converting them with a first time discount. Everyone is looking for deals right now. The trick is to make your deal so appealing that they can’t resist. 

 

Custom Links and Creatives

New marketers make the common mistake of sending users to a single page. Every shopper… lumped together with no consideration for what drives and motivates their wallet. If you want to truly create results, you must generate different landing pages that speak to your custom audience. This allows you to gather more data and provide users relevant information in conjunction with the ad creatives you are running.

Holiday Advertising and Checkout

If your ad has a discount but users can’t find the actual promotion they were offered, they are going to be quite. And fast (so watch those bounce rates in analytics!) This is a situation where sending users to the wrong page can actually be detrimental to your brand and make it look as if you are misleading buyers. I am sure you would be upset if you were excited about the brand you love giving you a deal only to find out that there is no deal. User experience is key. Trust is very important when you are looking to create a long lasting brand. 

Same goes for the imagery and copy that you add to your advertisement. You want to include imagery that goes with the season and continues to stay fresh and relevant. Using holiday relevant content will show potential clients that your products are not outdated. It shows that your brand is staying fresh and continuously catering to clients. Using the same general ads that you used at other times of the year will not stand out to clients because they become so accustomed to them that they just ignore them. “Banner Blindess.” Sadly, this is done subconsciously and I am sure you have done it yourself. Ads get stale and holiday ads have a small lifespan so you need to have enough ads to test and get data quickly. Remember you still want your branding and mission to stay consistent but you have to test imagery and copy to achieve the best results possible. 

This is relevant whether you are a CBD topical brand looking to provide users better skin or a car dealership looking to drive more car sales for gifts and end of year sales. Check out the examples to see.

Holiday Marketing Strategy 

As you can see, you definitely do not want to miss the opportunity to market to an active purchasing audience. Everyone is looking for guidance right now on what to purchase for gifts or simply treat themselves for the holiday season. So make sure you have all the landing pages and product pages ready to go and begin testing today. Traffic Roots gives you extensive data to make educated decisions on your ads. If you are tracking everything properly you will find that it is easy to scale up what works for you. Our team can always help out to make sure you have all these things in place. Connect with an experienced Traffic Roots media buyer today.

7 Cyber Monday and Black Friday Marketing Stats That Will Motivate You

7 Cyber Monday and Black Friday Marketing Stats That Will Motivate You

by | Nov 20, 2020 | Blog, Strategy

Black Friday Marketing

Marketers are looking for the best ways to pivot and adjust for 2020. Successful marketers are taking advantage of the situation. The 2020 shopping situation has definitely changed and has become an e-commerce dominated world. Digital marketers have foreseen this for many years with the rise of Amazon and the fall of many retail giants that could not adjust in time. 

Don’t allow your brand to fall into the list of brands that have fallen for their lack of innovation. Arm yourself for cyber monday and black friday with an appropriate marketing and advertising plan.

Now, Black Friday quickly approaches and launches the scramble for holiday sales. Big retail companies like Target and Walmart began their “Black Friday” deals weeks ago, which means you are already behind.

But you haven’t missed the boat yet, there is still time!

We realize that it has not been an easy year but this is the time to take it back and generate significant revenue to close the year off right. The numbers speak for themselves and show that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are definitely a must if you wish to generate revenue for the holiday season.

30% of all retail sales occur from Black Friday until Christmas.

Which means Black Friday is the starting line that begins the shopping trend. However, you gotta start pushing marketing before the day in order to generate awareness in your brand deals. 

In 2019 Black Friday sales hit a total of $7.4 billion.

So if you’re planning on sitting this one out, look at what you may be leaving on the table. Those numbers were an all time high and will continue to shift towards e-commerce given the current state of retail. 

The average adult spends about $400 on Black Friday.

A lot of shoppers want to get all of their shopping out of the way quickly all in one shot and Black Friday is a great opportunity for that. Create opportunities for shoppers to bundle and save. 

2019 saw retail in-shopper business fall 6%.

With COVID-19 restrictions I am confident that number will become even larger this year. If you have not created the systems to track and have an effective e-commerce site, now is the time to innovate. E-commerce is not slowing down so begin to invest in your e-commerce systems in order to track performance and increase revenue. 

Curbside pick up is the secret weapon of retail.

Although we think of brands that only sell online as e-commerce, they are not the only type of e-commerce brands. Curbside pick-up has allowed retailers to provide users a system that allows them to easily order online and pick up at their convenience. Which means that if you have a retail location you can significantly increase revenue by setting up pick up or local delivery systems depending on the structure of your business. We realize some products can’t be sold online, but they can be marketed and with the right systems you can generate amazing results. 

$2.9 billion worth of Black Friday sales in 2019 occurred through mobile web.

It is crucial to make sure your site is mobile optimized and responsive to users making a purchase via mobile web. Especially if you are spending resources for Black Friday marketing. Many brands design an amazing website that looks great on desktop but then has a terrible scaled down version for mobile web. I agree it should not be as elaborate as the desktop version but it should definitely be easy to use in order to create a smooth buying experience for customers. 

66% conversion rates on mobile ads. 

We can’t stress enough to have a mobile site that provides results. It seems that common sense is not always common sense but there are millions and millions of users with smartphones these days and they put so much attention to them. Your Cyber Monday and Black Friday Marketing plan are depending on your website being ready for the traffic.

  • Responsive Website – users want to access your site from any device without the need to zoom in
  • Fast Loading (example: running AMP) – users are not patient and will “bounce” from your website if it’s not loading quickly
  • One-touch checkout (Stripe integrates with Apple Pay. They never have to get off the couch for their card for that impulse purchase

Having a mobile site that converts is an amazing tool to drive revenue. However, you must remember that your marketing strategy should reflect that as well. You should have an entire strategy focused on mobile traffic. If you are running banners we recommend the size 320×50, which is a mobile banner that can reach mobile web and apps. Also the size 300×250 will help you reach users on mobile web. The difference is that mobile web is when you go to a site in your browser as opposed to utilizing an app.

The message is clear, Black Friday marketing and being Cyber Monday ready are important to the success of your brand. Don’t sleep on it. We understand that you may have lost hope and scrapped the year already but people are still shopping. A great example is the release of the new Playstation 5. It has been sold out everywhere and people are scrambling to get one. Keep in mind that it also has a price tag of over $500. Take advantage of this opportunity and don’t fall asleep at the wheel. Get your ducks in a row. Grab the low hanging fruit and you know, all those other cliches to get you motivated to take action and generate results.

 

Most importantly, remember that you are not alone and our team can help. Our media buyers can help provide you a strategy and show you how our technology can help you be hyper focused on your audience. Reach out and connect with a Traffic Roots media buyer!

Lookalike Audiences to Increase Sales and ROAS

Lookalike Audiences to Increase Sales and ROAS

by | Nov 16, 2020 | Ad Tech, Blog, Strategy

Finding your audience is the most important goal for marketers and it is always an ongoing journey. Marketers are consistently prospecting for new users and continuing to build from retargeting campaigns to re-engage existing users. In order to continue building that list of existing users, the prospecting has to continue as well. New users must be found in order for your retargeting audience to stay strong and scale. 

We do understand that prospecting can be difficult and it takes patience. More importantly, it takes data to find new users/consumers effectively. This is where things get interesting and we provide you the tools to attack this more effectively. 

Lookalike Audiences!

What is a lookalike audience, you ask?

increase return on ad spend with lookalike audiences

Maybe some of you have seen Lookalike audiences on mainstream platforms like Facebook but on Traffic Roots we build audiences a little differently. Also we don’t push away CBD and cannabis advertisers like they do, we welcome you with open arms! 

Now let’s talk about Lookalike Audiences. In a nutshell Lookalikes are just what they sound like. It is an audience built from your existing audiences to provide you a way better way to reach cold audiences that serve like warm audiences but much bigger. Our system takes your existing audience and begins to break down the attributes of the audience in order to build an audience that can compliment it with new users. Although the audience is a cold audience it isn’t freezing cold, we would say lukewarm. This is because when our system matches attributes of a warm audience in order to create it which gives you an audience that will definitely perform better than a traditional cold audience. While you may have a good idea of what your ideal user is, Traffic Roots provides you the tools to find your ideal client with more ease and scale. Lookalike audiences help you grow your reach significantly by finding new users interested in your brand. 

Let’s play matchmaker!

Traffic Roots’ system is a sophisticated system that allows you to build out your ideal audience attributes to create audience segments that can benefit your marketing strategy. More importantly, this informed audience building helps optimize your media spend, increase ROI, and decrease your cost per acquisition.  

Lookalike Audiences

Using Lookalike Audiences

Within the Traffic Roots platform you can utilize lookalike audiences in any campaign. Our system allows you to use multiple audiences on a single campaign as well as pair with other audiences built in our data platform. These audiences can range from geo-fenced audiences to demographic or interest based audiences. 

However, we must manage your expectation and let you know that if you run multiple audiences that are coming from different segments and parameters, performance can be difficult to decipher. Inexperienced marketers may see and increase in performance due to the effectiveness of the targeting but a true marketer needs to pinpoint what is working and why.  Which can be difficult to do if you stack many audiences along with multiple creatives that all have different points of view. 

As marketers we must keep track of our data and be very meticulous about our goals and strategies. Different custom audiences will match different goals, so It is important to recognize those goals and utilize your audiences accordingly. 

Successful Audiences

We all want to have successful marketing campaigns and when we begin to hone in on what works we definitely double down. Once you find what works then the fun begins and the sales start coming in in droves. This means you have an audience that has continuously driven sales for you and building from that audience will definitely generate results. If your warm audience has generated hundreds of sales already then it is probably a great candidate for a lookalike audience. 

expand target audience with Look-a-like audiences

Don’t get comfortable and keep testing and adding layers to improve performance. Take into account an audience that has proven success for your strategy consistently. This audience can continue to provide results for you as well as provide you data for valuable lookalike audiences.

Connect with our team to learn how to streamline audience building and generate effective lookalikes for your brand

How To Stay Safe With Age Gating

How To Stay Safe With Age Gating

by | Jun 22, 2020 | Blog, Cannabis

AGE GATE ADVERTISING

Marketing guidelines and laws are imperative in this industry and continue to change consistently. The key to staying safe is establishing avenues that are able to verify digital traffic. 

As we all know, when marketing adult products like Cannabis or CBD you must not market to children. California regulation for example states that 71.6% of your audience must be 21+. In Canada, it’s 100%. This can be difficult with outdoor media or magazines.

Do you have a trusted advertising platform and partner like Traffic Roots to help?

CANNABIS AND CBD ADVERTISING HAS STRICT REGULATIONS

Luckily, Traffic Roots has a solution and continues to keep advertisers safe. We continue to have advertisers approach us with a genuine concern to stay safe with advertising, due to the fact that we have seen brands take dangerous risks and pay dearly.

If you’d like to review current guidelines, we like Leafly for quick, state level guidelines.

THIS IS CRUCIAL, YOU MUST HAVE 21+ AGE GATING!!

When it comes to having a product site you must have an age gate on the site. This means that before a user is allowed to enter your site they must verify their age. This is crucial for every single brand and non-negotiable. I implore you to make sure your product site has age gating, it will keep you out of some serious hot water.

TARGET A 21+ AUDIENCE

Now comes the fun part, which is utilizing age targeting through Traffic Roots’ data platform. This allows you to create an audience of an age group you want to target in order to focus your ads on only that given age demographic. Utilizing this tool gives advertisers more control over the audiences they are looking to reach and provides them data on how certain age groups react to their advertisements.

How important is it for your company to stay safe?

In this industry it can make or break you, but with the right partners you can thrive.