But is one-click checkout the right choice for your business? Keep reading to find out.

What is One-Click Checkout?

One-click checkout enables repeat customers to complete a purchase on your website without re-entering their information. If this process sounds familiar, that’s probably because it is. Amazon originally created and deployed one-click check out for its own business and at the time, they owned the patent on it, which meant it was the only company able to use the technology. However, in 2017, the patent expired and now merchants everywhere are able to adopt it for their own websites.

With one-click checkout, shoppers are able to store their address and payment information on your website for future purchases. Their information is encrypted and stored securely by your payment provider and when the shopper logs into your website in the future, your website can recall their information and auto-fill forms for a quick, hassle-free checkout process.

The Benefits of Using One-Click Checkout

One-click checkout is a great way to make it easier for your customers to purchase an item quickly and conveniently. Using the technology on your own website can actually increase your conversions. According to Dynamic Yield, a market research firm, 71.68% of online shoppers abandon their carts with 21% of those shoppers saying they abandoned due to a lengthy and inconvenient checkout process. That goes to show that a quicker checkout process has the potential to increase conversions.

Other benefits of one-click checkout include higher impulse buy rates and a broadened customer base thanks to information stored in your system from past one-time buyers. Provided you’re complying with anti-spam legislation, you’ll be able to use their stored information to market to a wider audience and, hopefully, encourage repeat business in those who wouldn’t otherwise return.

Risks of One-Click Checkout

While one-click checkout is a useful tool to keep repeat business booming, it’s not without risk.

Chargeback rates tend to be higher in businesses that offer one-click checkout, and while some cases tend to be the result of buyer remorse from impulse buys, they’re most often because the process is so convenient that shoppers don’t take time to read the fine print.

In the event your customer doesn’t take time to review shipping or tax charges, the amount they pay for their purchase could come as a surprise when it appears on their credit card statement and often, that could result in a chargeback.

If you plan on utilizing one-click checkout for your e-commerce business, it’s crucial to make all charges and fees obvious for your customers.

Is One-Click Checkout Right for You?

It depends. If your business doesn’t instill service or shipping charges, chances are you won’t be taking a huge risk when it comes to chargebacks and if that’s the case, one-click checkout could be a great way to drum up some extra repeat business.

However, if you pass shipping or service charges on to your customer, it’s a good idea to consider this when determining if you want to offer one-click checkout.

Additionally, if you already have a relatively high chargeback ratio, it might be best to take any measures you can to avoid extra chargebacks and that means not introducing one-click checkout as a way to pay.

The post Is One-Click Checkout Right for Your Business? appeared first on Upward Commerce.

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Facebook always presents the most pertinent ads before a user and relevance is one of the biggest factors in achieving better ad rankings on Facebook.

What is Facebook Relevance Score?

Facebook Relevance Score is a metric that Facebook uses to determine how well your ad is performing on the Facebookadvertising platform. The higher the relevance score, the better the chances are of reaching your target audience.

Relevance score can be seen in the ads reporting tools as displayed in the below screenshot:

Ad relevance score isjudged on a rating between 1 and 10, with 10 being the highest and 1 the lowest. If you buy ads with guaranteed delivery like those bought through reach and frequency then such ads are not impacted by relevance score.

How is the Relevance Score Calculated?

Relevance score is calculated based on the positive and negative feedback received from your target audience(s). The feedback is provided by people in real time and Facebook calculates the number of positive interactions an ad receives.

You can check the relevance score by clicking on the Performance and Clicks reportin the Ads Manager as displayed in the below screenshot.

Importance of Relevance Score in Facebook Ads

Every advertiser wants to increase ROI from their marketing campaigns. Having a good relevance score improves your ROI and improves the bottom line of every advertisement campaign.

Here are the top reasons why relevance score matters when you are advertising on Facebook.

• Low cost of reaching new audiences– Having a high relevance score means you need to pay less in order to reach your target audience. In other words, Facebook will charge a low CPC which will increase the number of impressions your ad receives. (Please note that relevance score is not the only factor for ranking ads, the bid placed by the advertiser also matters. Suppose your relevance score is good but the bid is below average then your ad might receive less impressions).
• Offers a testing ground for ads before running larger campaigns– If you are planning to run a large campaign then you can check the relevance score for each ad combination prior to starting the entire campaign and identify which combination works best.
• Regular monitoring of relevance scores helps to optimize campaigns – If you regularly monitor the relevance scores of your ad combinations then you can easily gauge the effectiveness of every ad campaign, thereby optimizing the ones that have lesser scores. This will lead to higher visibility and increased leads.

How to Get a 10/10 Facebook Ads Relevance Score

Achieving a score of 10/10 is difficult but not impossible. If you aim for a perfect 10/10 score then definitely you will get great scores for your ad campaigns.

Here are some tested strategies to achieve a perfect relevance score of 10/10 on Facebook:

• Your target audience must match the type of ad. If you are displaying a picture of food and targeting tech enthusiasts then such a combination will lessen the relevance score. Use the audience insights tool to identify audiences based on the individual pages they like. Opt for affinity scores of 100 and above because this means your target audience is 100 times more likely to like your page.

• Use the age filter in Facebook Ads Manager to gain valuable insights about the age group of your target audience who are regularly buying your product/services. You can then create specific ads to target audiences in that age bracket.

• Ensure that your ads are eye-catching and valuable. Ads that don’t attract the audiences or don’t offer value are less likely to be clicked. It is recommended to create proper buyer personas in order to have a better understanding about the likes and dislikes of your target audience.

• Use “retargeting” to target audiences who have previously engaged with your ads and website. You can do so by creating a Facebook Custom Audience and then displaying ads to that set of audience. This tactic is extremely beneficial to achieve high relevance scores.

• You can also create Facebook video ads instead of image ads as video ads have higher engagement rates.
• Create location specific ads because people who reside in NYC won’t order a pizza from Atlanta. I have seen tons of advertisers waste a lot of money creating ads that aren’t location specific.
• Exclude converters from the last 90 days as this will ensure you are not annoying customers who have already purchased your products in the recent past. You can use the EXCLUDE feature in the custom audience section to exclude all the converters.

Conclusion

Last but not the least, constantly test and improve the relevance score of your ads by conducting A/B testing. Follow the words of Facebook which says “Relevance scores should not be used as the primary indicator of an ad’s performance. As has long been the case on Facebook, the most important factor for success is bidding based on the business goal you hope to meet with an ad.” Happy advertising!

The post The Definitive Guide to Improve Facebook Relevance Score appeared first on Upward Commerce.

Let’s tell you more about who micro influencers are, and how you can work with them to improve your social media customer acquisition.

What’s A Micro Influencer?

Micro influencers are people of influence with a social media following of about 10,000 to 100,000. Though the amount of followers these influencers have is not huge, they make up for it with the deep engagement they enjoy with audiences.

Whereas influencers tend to broaden and branch off their audiences exponentially and into often unrelated directions, micro influencers are more targeted in their approach, and hence are known to deliver much more conversions than influencers with substantially more followers.

Now, onto the strategies you can use.

Choose The Right Micro Influencers for Your Social Media Campaigns

Micro influencer social media campaigns can deliver superior ROIs than routine social campaigns, provided you choose micro influencers with a firm focus on your campaign goals. Here are some key selection variables to keep in mind.

Niche

Which subjects are at the core of your branding and content strategies? These are the micro niches that become the starting point of your micro-influencer search. Look for influencers that are not likely to branch off into peripheral niches.

Engagement versus Followership

Micro influencers, because they need to engage with a manageable number of followers, are expected to spend more time in establishing personal connections with subscribers. Use a tool such as Twitter Report Card to get a quick snapshot of the engagement and followership aspects of any Twitter account.

Audience

You need to understand the kind of audience that a micro influencer has, and map it to your social media campaign goals. For instance, with a social campaign that aims to get more brand awareness for your organic foods brand, you want a fitness-foods niche micro influence whose audience is aligned to the idea of ‘organic’ as a lifestyle choice, instead of those more focused on bodybuilding.

The Content They Share

Starting a whole video production effort, just because that’s what a micro influencer prefers, is not really the best way forward, especially when you’d want to repurpose your content for your micro influencer powered social media campaigns. So, get an overview of the content formats that the micro influencer operates in, to be able to quickly ramp up social media visibility, using content that’s already done well on your blogs.

Plan Ongoing Micro Influencer Campaigns

When your goal is to reach more customers on social media, a limited period or one-off micro-influencer marketing campaign will not work. That’s because even the best micro influencers need time to be able to churn up a good quantity of impressive content to be able to make your brand and products stick in the audience’s mind. Here are some points to remember:

–   Look to sign long term contracts with micro influencers, with remunerations tied to number of conversions, revenue generation, etc.

–   Plan your micro influencer campaign keeping in mind that you’d need to keep it active for a few months; this will help you plan on content creation.

–   Look to work with micro influencers with a track record of long-term collaborations; for instance, Natalie Kay of @sustainablychic has been promoting eco-luxury shoe brand Atelier Alienor for some time now.

–   Avoid working with micro influencers who’re known to switch focus to their latest endorsements.

Sponsored Posts For High Impact and Instant Conversions

Successful micro influencer social marketing campaigns leverage a mix of subtle and sponsored promotions. So, throw in the odd sponsored post, such as a detailed product review, an event-coverage, or an interview with your brand’s CTO or CEO on the micro influencer’s page as a sponsored post for high impact. Some points to remember:

–   Look to leverage your micro influencer’s content creation capabilities for this.

–   Throw in freebies to have the micro influencer agree to the sponsored post, if that’s not a part of your contract.

–   Conduct social media searches using hashtags like #sponsored, #sponsoredpost, etc to check examples and see if you can manage your sponsored post campaign.

–   Don’t forget to add in an irresistible offer for your audience; for instance, an influencer specific coupon code (this incentivizes instant conversions, and also helps track the success of the campaign.

Final Thoughts

Remember, finding and reaching out to micro influencers is not a problem; there are easy and affordable tools to help you with that. Making sure that your micro influencer marketing campaigns actually reach out and engage with thousands of relevant and valuable social media users, however, is challenging. The strategic level suggestions shared in this guide will help you do better. Onward and upward!

The post The Art of Leveraging Micro Influencers For Social Media Customer Acquisition appeared first on Upward Commerce.

If you can keep up with all of the new features and tools that Facebook is rolling out, you will be ahead of the curve. There’s only a small window of opportunity when other advertisers are not utilizing the new features, so be the first to reap the advantages early.

Creating your Facebook Ad Campaign

When creating your ad campaign, you will need to set up your (1) Objective (2) Ad Set, and (3) Ad. Below is a screenshot from Facebook’s ad manager that shows you the steps you need to follow to create your ad.  You will see different steps depending on the objective you choose.

1.  First, select your marketing objective.

2.  After you select your objective, you will follow the simple steps of setting up your ad set by defining your audience, placements, budget, and schedule.

3.  Once you define your ad set, then you create how you want your ad to look by selecting an ad format, media, text and links.

Marketing Objectives

Before you start allocating spend, think first about what you’re trying to accomplish. Facebook gives you 3 main types of marketing objectives to choose from, and from there you can drill down even further.

Facebook’s 3 Marketing Objectives you can choose from are: Awareness, Consideration, Conversion.

Depending on what stage in your sales funnel you are choosing to use Facebook for advertising will determine your main marketing objective.

It’s important you define what you want to accomplish.

• Drive traffic back to your website?
• Capture email addresses?
• Have people install your app?
• Drive people into your physical store?
• Increase product sales?

Once you understand your main objective, then you can drill down even further and select from one of the options below:

• Brand Awareness: Reach people more likely to pay attention to your ads and increase awareness for your brand.

• Reach: Show your ad to the maximum number of people.

• Traffic: Send more people to a destination on or off Facebook.

• Engagement: Get more people to see and engage with your post or Page. Engagement can include comments, shares, likes, event responses and offer claims.

• App Installs: Send people to the store where they can purchase your app.

• Video Views: Promote videos that show behind-the-scenes footage, product launches or customer stories to raise awareness about your brand.

• Lead Generation: Collect lead information from people interested in your business (ie. emails).

• Conversions: Get people to take valuable actions on your website or app, such as adding payment info or making a purchase.

• Product Catalog Sales: Create ads that automatically show products from your product catalog based on your target audience.

• Store Visits: Promote multiple business locations to people who are nearby.

In this step, Facebook also offers “Split Testing” which is similar to A/B testing where you can test different ads between two audiences. This offer is only available for the following marketing objectives: Traffic, App installs, Lead generation, and Conversions. 

Ad Set

After you select an objective, then you create your Ad Set.

Here you will define your audience.

You have 3 audience choices:

1. Core Audience – manually select characteristics you want to target
2. Custom Audience – target people you’ve already engaged with (via lists)
3. Lookalike Audience – target new people that are similar to your best audience

A Core Audience allows you to manually select your audience based on demographic, behavior, location, and more.  Facebook sources third-party data from Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon.

Here’s the list of characteristics to choose from:

A Custom Audience allows you to target people you have already engaged with. For example, existing customers, people who have visited your website or engaged with your Facebook page, and people who have activity within your app.

Here are your options when creating a Custom Audience:

You will need to have the Facebook Pixel installed on your website, this way Facebook can tag a visitor’s behavior on your site and also identify that user in the future once they are logged into Facebook.

A Lookalike Audience allows you to target new people that are most similar to your most valuable audiences. Lookalike Audiences uses data about your present customers and site visitors to find other potential customers with similarities.

After selecting your audience, you then choose your Ad Placement. This is which platform you want your ad displayed – Facebook, Instagram, or Audience Network. Facebook recommends selecting “Automatic Placements” which lets Facebook optimize your ad placements for you at the cheapest average cost.

Next, you simply choose your budget allocation and ad schedule.

Ads

The last step in building an ad campaign is creating your ad. The Ads section is where you add images, videos, messaging, headlines, destination URLs, etc. This is your final step before launching your ad campaign.

You can choose from one of the following ad formats:

With the recent launch of Canvas ad format, brands now have the ability to create a “post-click, full-screen, immersive mobile ad experience on Facebook that loads nearly instantaneously”. Canvas allows advertisers to use creative imagery and interactive elements like video, tilting and zooming views, and image carousels to create engaging ads that are perfect for storytelling. Advertisers can display visually stunning digital stories embedded with call-to-action buttons. Canvas is truly what advertisers have been waiting for.

Side note – Instagram Connections are Instagram ads now connected to Facebook and offer a setup similar to Canvas.

Additionally, Facebook just launched the “Collection” ad format. This format is great for e-commerce retailers or brands that want to showcase up to 50 products on Facebook mobile, and at fast load speeds. Retailers can combine a storytelling video with a mix of product images and the ability to direct users to their website to make a purchase.

Extended Reach of Facebook Advertising

There’s little doubt that Facebook is offering an effective marketing strategy for today’s brands. Facebook has demonstrated success in the last few years, and the obvious expectation is that it will continue to advance. With the merge of mobile users and availability, users are spending a bulk of their time engaging on Facebook. According to Facebook, people in the US spend 1 of every 5 minutes on Facebook or Instagram, which is why it’s critical brands are connecting on Facebook.

The post How to Create a Facebook Ad Campaign appeared first on Upward Commerce.

1)   Be Consistent with Posts

Users interact differently on each platform. For instance, tweeting just one time per day is not enough because the feed moves constant and fast. Other platforms like Snapchat or Instagram don’t move as fast so you won’t need to publish quite as often. The goal is to develop a routine for posting and stick with it. As you are planning a social media campaign these four questions can help shape your posting routine.

–  Which social media platform should you use to best reach your target audience?

–  What type of content will you publish?

–  How frequently will you post?

–  When is the most productive time to reach your target audience and influencers via each platform?

I found this great chart by Matthew Barby that puts a visual perspective on how frequently you should crank out your content and on which platform, using a 2-month campaign length.

It can be complicated trying to nail down a precise time for social media posts. It can vary based on your audience, the network, your goal and the type of content being shared. However, research and data analysis has offered some insight as to the best general time to post on the major platforms.

–  Optimal time to post on Twitter is around 3 PM on weekdays.

–  Facebook is slightly more complicated with ideal times being from noon to 3PM Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday as well as from noon to 1 PM on Weekends.

–  Prime time to post on Instagram is from noon to 1 PM on weekdays.

2)   Add Value to the User

Posting just for the sake of posting is not an effective way to reach any audience. Of course, you want to post consistently, but it needs to offer the user value. Shared content should be relevant to the audience, offer helpful advice or information, or it can simply be entertaining. No matter what type of content media you choose to share, it should offer your audience enough value to which users are encouraged to share it with others in their online communities.

The question would then be, how do you offer your audience real value? There are several ways to ensure you offer readers or viewers value with your posts. Here are a few samples to get you started:

–  Spotlight your clientele
–  Demonstrate how your processes are done
–  Send an update from the CEO
–  Post inspirational or funny images matching the lifestyle of your customers
–  Ask open-ended questions that elicit a response
–  Post lists such as “Top 5” or “Top 3 Ways to”

3)  Interact, Contribute, and Participate

Social media marketing is far more than just sharing links. Ultimately, you want to use the platform to build an online community with which is engaged. This will require interaction on your part. Interaction can take many forms and occur on a variety of levels. Social media was not designed to be one-way, remember you want to create and encourage online conversation and interaction. Here are a few ways to interact with the community you are building:

–  Always reply when you are mentioned, even if it’s just with a “thank you” for the mention or share.

–  Reply in a timely fashion to comments on your posts, tweets or any other content.

–  Ask for questions, opinions or feedback – and respond when you get it.

Engagement can’t be created, it must be earned and this means you’ll have to be the first participant. This may involve taking the time to visit other’s blogs or forums, commenting on what they are contributing to your industry, following and responding to their tweets and getting “out there” online frequently. Get involved in what they are doing, check out their sites or send them a “thank you” via Twitter or email. Make it personal. When it’s appropriate, mention your audience or influencers. This will make your content “shareable” and create advocates of your content.

4)  Measure, Analyze, and Proceed

It is imperative to know if a social media campaign is successful or not. Each platform has unique trackable metrics to help determine its level of effectiveness. Metrics should be tracked weekly, monthly and quarterly so you’ll know what is working, what is not and what changes may need to be made to a social media marketing campaign.

There are four key metrics that should be measured for every social media campaign. Thoughtful consideration of these factors can help you better shape your campaign or develop strategies for your next campaign.

–  Volume: This metric may seem over simplified, but don’t underestimate its value. You need to know how many people are discussing your brand and how many messages you are sending. By monitoring these numbers, you will be able to isolate the times people talk about your brand and can focus your posts strategically to get more engagement.

–  Reach: Reach measures more than just how big your audience is, but also tells you the size of your potential Reach, when compared with your other engagement metrics is a powerful tool.

–  Engagement: When you’re looking at social media, engagement is perhaps the most important metric. It tells you how your audience is engaging with your brand and how they contribute to spreading your content.

–  Influence: There are many tools for measuring influence and this makes it a controversial metric when it comes to social media. No matter which tools you put confidence in it’s important to note the size of the audience does not equate to influence, especially if followers are not engaging. However, determining your brand’s influencers allows you to shift your focus from just followers to those who will spread your content, message and brand.

The post Social Media 101: Marketing Tips appeared first on Upward Commerce.

The old glory days of SEO where you could win the algorithm with basic backlinks, metadata, and keyword-rich content has been replaced with actual, value-added content that audiences are seeking. And not only is unique content so competitive these days, but the web has become saturated with content, and good content.

Which is why you have to truly go above the great, and be 10x greater. Create shareable, compelling content that signifies you as an authority in your space.

Ever heard of “10x content”? Well, if not, be prepared to be enlightened. Moz Founder and Former CEO Rand Fishkin introduced the now infamous term in a Whiteboard Friday video (watch here- “Why Good Unique Content Needs to Die”).

Fishkin defined it as “Content that is 10 times better than the best result that can currently be found in the search results for a given keyword phrase or topic.”

So, out is “Content is King” and in is “10x content”.

Easy breezy? Here are some tips on how to optimize your site for search engines, and increase traffic to your ecommerce website.

Remember the Basics (Site Architecture, Inbound Links, General Content)

Site speed, crawlability, mobile friendliness and duplicate content are just some of the success factors you must master in order to get your foot in the door. Without these SEO basics, your shot at being heard or seen will be limited. Set up the foundation and pillars on which your site rests, and then you can truly begin optimizing.

10x Content, Again

10x content can take the form of buying guides, industry white paper, ebooks, essays…and so forth. 10x content must possess overwhelming value; it can’t be good, it can’t be great – it has to be 10x greater than great.

You have to be a renowned innovator, accredited professor, or guru of some sort…or so it seems. “The hard truth is that if you can’t become this kind of an expert, then you probably don’t deserve to rank highly for your keywords”.

Know the Influencers and Become an Influencer

In today’s world of SEO, you can’t become an authority in your industry sector unless you actually provide expertise on the services & products you sell.

Every business must have an embedded connection within its community. Find the most relevant bloggers, websites and aggregators in your community and become a valuable asset to them. Share your knowledge and expertise by becoming a content contributor, answering questions, and allowing influencers to do the same for you – work together. The relevance, trust, and traffic will naturally begin to unfold.

Links

Google and other search engines rank your site by considering a number of key SEO elements.

Google, which is still the web’s largest search engine, accounts for over 90% of global organic search traffic. Google’s algorithm takes into account a link value and scores accordingly based on quality, relevancy, and quantity of incoming backlinks pointing to your website.

– Quantity: The number of backlinks pointing to your site indicates to search engines that you are an active & respectable force within your industry, and that people like you! It means you need to make connections, contribute guest posts, and churn out lots of on-theme, relevant, and shareable content that people will link to.

– Quality: It doesn’t matter if you have a ton of backlinks pointing to your site if they’re not quality links. Quality links have to come from quality sites. For example, search engines consider web addresses ending in .edu and .gov and .org more valuable than .com – primarily because these are typically resourceful domains and have excellent content to share. So, if one of these types of domains links to you, then it must be for a worthy reason – and deserving of organic rankings. Additionally, you want links from sites that have a lot of credibility with search engines; If you can get your website submitted to the DMOZ directory, then you might gain a little more credibility yourself.

– Relevance: Search engines factor in the relevancy of your incoming links. The links must be on-theme and part  of your industry realm. If you are selling bikinis and have a ton of automobile links pointing to your site, then the  value isn’t there. Keep it relevant.

Social Media

Social media is here to stay. Whether or not you’re fan doesn’t matter because if you’re in ecommerce then you better become best friends with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and the likes.

Likes, shares, promotions, followers, sales, & relevance are all part of the social media ecosystem in which every business must think about.

Share then Promote

Sharing comes first. Promotion comes second.

First try sharing non-promotional, valuable content with your followers before shameless self-promoting.

Inspire your pages with personality, ensure you are optimized for all device screens (mobile, desktop, tablet), be openminded when it comes to feedback from your users, and genuinely create shareable content that appeals to your audience, preferably in a fun and informative fashion.

I’ll Scratch Your Back

Help the people you are trying to attract. Providing amazing content is great, but seek out opportunities to help your audience. Believe me, everyone will return the favor.

Follow them, promote them and ask for nothing in return. 15% of Twitter users unfollow brands within three weeks. Don’t be part of the statistic.

Know Which Platform to Choose

Know which social media platforms garner the most popularity and influence in your space. For publishing, maybe it’s Twitter; for photography, maybe it’s Instagram. LinkedIn might be your drink of choice if you’re a recruiter looking for candidates. Think about your business goals, and then choose your channel wisely.

Optimize for Mobile

Mobile, mobile, mobile. Ecommerce shopping is taking over smartphones. A huge percentage of online shoppers are taking it to a mobile device. 89% of the time people are using their phones, many times on social apps like Instagram and Facebook. Think about how your social posts and landing pages render on a mobile screen, and how the mobile experience can dramatically affect your business. Think about posting more videos as opposed to still images; studies show it’s more engaging. Speaking of videos, use long captions with emojis and numbers – studies also show this gets more clicks.

Sales

Many social media sites, Facebook for instance, have integrated shopping functionality into the platform, allowing shoppers to make purchases on Facebook.

And Facebook is just the beginning, folks. Instagram has turned its platform into a place to shop (unofficially) for photography, art, fashion, and more.

It’s a Commitment

Social media requires investment & commitment. Understanding your audience, posting compelling content, engaging with followers, contributing to your community, creating groups, updating profiles, and running social ads isn’t something a small to mid-sized retailer should underestimate. Having a robust social strategy requires genuine time and commitment. Social media is growing and transitioning into a marketplace. Don’t take it lightly.

Lastly…

Follow and engage with the people that are engaging with your competitors.  These are people who are interested in what you do, it’s free advertising and it’s a great approach at driving awareness to your brand.

AdWords and Pay-Per-Click Advertising

The quickest way to gain traffic is to pay for it.

But pay-per-click advertising might need to take some notes from the art of war when it comes to competing with big-box retailers.

How can you compete without outbidding them? The market sets the bid price, and the price can be exorbitantly high.

But there are some rules of thumb you can do to even the playing field.

Quality Score

Your Quality Score and bid determines your Ad Rank in AdWords. As a smaller retailer, you might not be able to compete with competitive bidding against big retailers, but you just might with Quality Score. Ad Extensions are one way to boost your Ad Rank.

Bid Modifiers

Day Parting: Maybe it only makes sense for you to serve ads during certain times of the day. If customer service is important for your business, then you might serve ads only during work hours when your staff is present.  If you’re business is international, you might set your campaigns to run according to specific timezones.

Geo-Targeting: You can deliver specific content to different markets based on their physical location. If you’re selling snow boots, don’t serve ads in Florida.

Mobile

If your business relies on phone calls to seal the deal, then you should consider a bid modifier to serve ads to those already on their phones.

Match Types

Broad Match and Modified Broad Match leave a lot of interpretation into the hands of Google and can be quite costly.  Exact Phrase Match gives you more control over your spend while providing the awareness you need.

Overspending on Retargeting

Be sure to remove successful conversions out of your retargeting list. No need to spend more money on the ones already converted.

Google is Not Alone

There are other search engines besides Google. If you’re on a tight budget or just starting out, you might want to serve ads on Bing, as an example, for lower conversion costs. The competition might not be as extreme on alternative search engines.

Google Shopping

Think of Google Shopping as a search engine completely dedicated to shopping. Every shopaholic’s dream come true.

Google Shopping is different from Adwords in that retailers can display product images & information within search results. Shoppers can then compare prices for the same product between different merchants/retailers. Shoppers can go granular and filter by price point, brand, size, etc.

Google Shopping is a paid search initiative, just like AdWords, but the rules are different. Today’s ecommerce retailer must be proficient at converting these comparison shoppers.

Feed Optimization

Your Google Shopping feed is what matters most. It is the most critical factor in driving success for this channel.

Here are some tips on how to optimize your feed:

Product Titles: It is thought that Google adds value to title keywords & descriptors from left to right. When writing titles, make sure to place your most important keywords first. For example, you might use a title like this: “UGG Adirondack Women’s Waterproof Snow Boots in Black/Grey Size 7”. This title is using the following in order by importance – “Brand, Gender, Product, Color, Size.”

Product Descriptions: Try to keep it short and stay under 1,000 characters. Just like the product titles, add your most important info first and least important last.  Make sure it includes targeted keywords that shoppers are using. Consider the format you are presenting; maybe bullet points is all you need to list specs and dimensions or maybe adding a cool story in a short paragraph form is better.

Last Click Conversion

Google Shopping is full of bottom-of-the-funnel shoppers. They’ve done their research and are ready to buy. So you might want to optimize your bids accordingly.

Budget

As Google Shopping continues to grow, so should your budget allocation. As an online retailer it’s important that a fair portion of your marketing budget be allocated to this channel.

Driving traffic to your ecommerce website can be a grind, but if you can effectively build campaigns via SEO, Social Media, Adwords/PPC, and Google Shopping – then you’ve got your bases covered.

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For global automobile-maker Mercedes-Benz, Instagram proved to be a successful vehicle to promote a new line of compact SUVs. Influenced by a popular hashtag, #ThingsOrganizedNeatly, the company used the GLA’s cargo mat to organize trip items that potential Benz owners might pack. The results were astounding. The company boasted a 14-point lift in recall for Mercedes Instagram ads, a 54% increase in site visits from cross-targeted ads, and a whopping 580% increase in site visits when integrated with their Facebook direct response ads. Mercedes concluded that Instagram’s growth and outreach coalesced well with their overall desire to connect.

Mercedes-Benz also encourages fans to post aesthetically visual photos of Mercedes-Benz using a branded hashtag, #mbfanphoto, which the company also includes in their bio description.

General Marketing Manager, Mark Aikman, said “Imagery is everything on Instagram”. If you take a look at the Mercedes-Benz IG, you can see their photography is perfectly-crafted, and strategy is very well executed. Engagement is high – with posts generating between 50k-100k likes per post.

Likewise, Australia’s flag carrier airline, Qantas, experienced major marketing returns after employing a strong Instagram campaign. Qantas sought to connect with the younger Instagram audience by presenting stunning seasonal visuals to engage users emotionally. By showcasing original summer images coupled with short video clips of real people meeting up at airports, the airline became the first Australian brand to successfully run a joint video and photo campaign on Instagram. As a direct result, the brand saw significant lifts in both ad recall and message association.

The biggest brands benefit from Instagram’s vast user base by presenting compelling imagery, creating cross-targeted posts, and capitalizing on seasonal hashtags. For smaller businesses, knowing the best practice for using the service will give similar results without a significant budget. Staying on brand, remaining consistent, and creating well-crafted and concept-driven visuals will allow you to succeed too.

For the most engagements, conversions, and connections companies should first identify their brand’s unique message and create content that reflects their point of view. This can be accomplished via logos, taglines, color, or any other iconic brand element. Next, brands must stay consistent when incorporating these elements in their posts. Users should be able to briefly scan a company’s Instagram page and identify their unique point of view through even a small sampling of posts. The most successful brands also focus on meaningful, concept-driven campaigns. Original and bold imagery, carefully constructed composition, and highly stylized visuals are key to lasting brand footprints on the app. Using the best practice for Instagram will allow your business to flourish while meeting personal marketing goals on the social media service.

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Third-Party Tools

Atop the conversion funnel platform, Instagram is the go-to service for expanding brands and selling products. Ecommerce businesses have been creating successful online markets on the site for years due to innovative tools like Like2Buy and LIKEtoKNOW.it. Employed by big brands in various industries, these third-party platforms circumnavigate Instagram’s few advertising limitations and turn likes into confirmed mobile sales.

Like2Buy by Curalate

Launched in September 2014, Like2Buy has become one of the simplest ways to make Instagram shoppable. Created by Curalate, a visual marketing and analytics firm, Like2Buy solves the known issue of having only one hyperlink available in a bio by creating an accessible Like2Buy landing page with a grid of featured products. From there, users can select photos featured on the company’s Instagram feed and easily purchase the available items. The process streamlines the buyer’s journey by eliminating the need to open a separate browser to search for a particular product. With fewer clicks, Curalate offers a better user experience while shopping on mobile compared to its desktop counterpart.

LIKEtoKNOW.it

Similarly, LIKEtoKNOW.it offers a simple shopping solution for companies wishing to sell on Instagram. Signing up with the service gives companies the opportunity to create a product page with all the items seen on their site. Users are emailed a detailed description of products after liking photos that have a LIKEtoKNOW.it link and are forwarded to product pages with a quick click. This is an especially useful tool for businesses posting multiple photos of their products but are unwilling to create cluttering captions for each post. The service also fosters relationships with affiliate programs by providing a space for featured products from third parties on your LIKEtoKNOW.it page. This effortless tool will generate likes and engage your follower base while driving traffic to your company website.

Instagram’s Features

In addition to the third-party tools offered by Like2Buy and LIKEtoKNOW.it, there are other means to make your Instagram a user-friendly shopping experience. Utilizing the site’s established features is a great way to drive traffic and earn revenue from Instagram. Launching campaigns based on popular hashtags, for instance, will send users to your company’s page with little marketing effort. Showcasing lifestyle photos with real people using your products will also drive a remarkable amount of traffic. Even highlighting seasonal products with a unique image will give your Instagram personality, a vital element to making your business shoppable on the widely popular platform. If your goal is to create a tailored shopping experience for Instagram users, remember to offer easily accessible and varied content when taking your online marketing strategy to the next level.

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