Happy Tuesday!
In today's This Week in Internet Marketing, we're focusing on the customer journey and how search, content and multi-platform optimization all play key roles. We also look at tips for creating social media posts that readers will want to click and Google's Smart Shopping campaign. Let's dig in!
Google Shopping Now Solves 4 Critical Problems Retailers Face
60% of a retailer's paid clicks are generated through Shopping ads, so it’s no wonder this is their preferred ad format. With Google’s new Smart Shopping campaign, it aims to make Shopping ads more accessible and to solve past challenges. Frederick Vallaeys covers four challenges that Google has addressed with this new smart campaign. The first being the Merchant Feed. Before, Shopping ads were generated by a merchant feed (a data feed with information about products structured in a way for Google to read and understand). For retailers with a small offering, this posed no problem as manually creating a feed could be done with a Google Spreadsheet. But for retailers with a large inventory, a manual feed was out of the question and so tools needed to be used. With Smart Shopping, Google has addressed this issue with Automated Shopping Feeds. Retailers will be able to generate feeds right from their website. Read more about Google’s smart solutions for Shopping ads here.
Improving the Customer Experience Means Getting Search Right
Search is more powerful than it has ever been—in fact many would agree that it has changed more within the last two years alone in comparison to 10 years ago. With the rise of mobile, digital assistants, and smart home devices, consumers can search more through voice, image, and text. Marketers now have the task of delivering great customer experiences at every search touch point.
Jim Yu looks at ways to do just that in this article and his first tip is to be discoverable. Consumers want information at their fingertips, and they want it fast. Research is key before making a purchase decision and with just a few clicks, they can find out what they need to know about your product. So be discoverable when they search for you or seek out inspiration/ideas. To ensure your business is discoverable, create a finely tuned website by removing duplicate content and technical errors. Next, optimize your site for mobile, ensuring it loads quickly and is secure. Find out what long-tail keywords are relevant to your business and target them, use structure data and engage with your users. For more tips on the customer experience, click here!
5 Tips for Creating Clickable Posts Your Audience Will Want to Share
Adding images to your social media is necessary—posts that feature an image will generate more attention and engagement. But just because you post an image doesn’t mean it’ll translate with your audience. Tabitha Jean Naylor looks at ways you can create posts that will resonate with your audience and entice them to share and click away!
First, be relevant. Keep your target audience in mind when posting images. They want to relate to your content. Afterall, they are following you because they have connected with your brand in some way. Next, ensure that you include a strong call to action. Sure, your post can be a great piece of content but if your audience has no clue what to do with it, they won’t take action. Don’t be afraid to tell your readers what steps to take! When it comes to design, avoid making your images too busy but do make sure they stand out enough to catch your audience’s attention. Remember that each social media platform attracts a different audience so it’s important to keep your posts aligned with that particular platform. Lastly, to create a clickable social media shareable to generate brand awareness and traffic, be unique! Your image should reflect your brand personality and be recognizable.
How Content Can Ring Up a Better Retail Experience
From trade wars to the GDPR, it’s a changing retail marketplace and content marketing is a tactic that can suit any business size and budget. Jodi Harris looks at content opportunities you can explore to remain competitive and also some of the biggest factors impacting retail and e-commerce businesses. The first is using content marketing as a means to decrease paid traffic. A tactic like blogging creates warm traffic that you can re-market to later.
With the rapid change and trends in technology such as new devices, media channels, and platforms, better opportunities are created for retailers. Retailers can respond with consistent and quality content. The key here is to track all the data for the audience that your content is creating and to consistently deliver a customer experience that is flawless across all platforms. Read on for Harris’ examples of how some well-known brands are creating quality content to drive the retail experience and to sell their brand.
Desktop, Mobile, or Voice? (D) All of the Above
Confused about where your optimization strategy should be focused on? Dr. Pete from Moz looks at why you should be optimizing for a multi-platform journey instead of one touch point. The first mistake that businesses make is by looking at their numbers and seeing that a majority of their traffic is coming from one platform. Based on this data, they make the decision to only focus on that one platform while ignoring the others. Say, your traffic is mostly directed from desktop and so you ignore mobile altogether. The problem with this is that by focusing on this platform, you ignore the mobile experience and therefore when a mobile user lands on your site, it’s not optimized and they leave. By providing a lousy mobile experience, you’ve lost that visitor completely.
The other mistake made is that your desktop audience is different from your mobile audience and voice audience. We need to treat these groups as separate and so strategic decisions need to be based on this. A customer’s journey happens between multiple devices and this is why businesses need to be optimized for all platforms. A perfect example of this is a consumer watching TV. They see an ad and they’re interested so they search on their phone for more info. Later on, they conduct some research on their laptop. The next day, they decide they want to make a purchase but at work on a desktop. This example of the customer journey and operating between devices is only going to increase. Read more here.
