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Episode 35: Jenna Snavely, Content Producer @ DigitalMarketer on Programming the Largest Marketing Event in North America

The Traffic & Conversion Summit is 3 days of actionable content teaching business owners how to drive more traffic and increase their conversions.

In this episode, Jenna returns to talk to us about the upcoming Traffic & Conversion Summit and how DigitalMarketer is able to put on the largest digital marketing summit in North America. She’ll talk to us about the backend processes of the summit and how to make sure that your own event provides actionable value over inspiration.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:

• How to plan a summit with 6,000+ attendees, 108 sessions, and 80+ speakers
• The 10 questions Jenna asks before approving of a speaker and their session
• The many challenges of an event this size and how to overcome them

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

My Brother, My Brother and Me Podcast
Jenna on LinkedIn
Traffic & Conversion Summit

Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to The DigitalMarketer Podcast? Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review!

iTunes not your thing? Find us on Spotify, Stitcher, or TuneIn.

The post Episode 35: Jenna Snavely, Content Producer @ DigitalMarketer on Programming the Largest Marketing Event in North America appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

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Instagram Motivation Pack - 30 Days Of Content + 1000 Followers Video Training

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Overcoming Money Baggage: 3 Steps to Finally Charge What You’re Actually Worth

You’re at a cocktail party. Someone approaches you and says:

“Hey, I hear you’re a _____ and you’ve do _____ for a living. I have this problem I need help with. It’s right up your alley. Here’s my question:___________________?”

What do you do?

Whip out your Freshbooks Mobile App and crush out an invoice for the soon to be rendered services?

Of course you don’t.

This is what happens:

A spark lights in your gut.

“Someone just showed interest in my passion project!”

Your posture shifts. Spine tingles. Pupils contract.

This is your element. This is your moment.

THIS IS WHAT YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR!

You confidently launch into conversation…

…and vomit free advice all over your new friend.

Contrary to the setup, this post is not going to discuss the how and why of giving free advice. Nor will it be about the Freshbooks app’s ability to seamlessly invoice cocktail party customers.

Instead, this article is all about money mindset. We’ll discuss:

• The money baggage we’ve been carrying since childhood
• How this baggage influences the pricing of our services
• Why it’s so darn hard to sell ourselves for what we’re worth
• But why it’s so darn easy to give free advice confidently
• And why everything changes when there’s a dollar sign attached

But we won’t leave you there.

Once story-time is over we’ll put the pain to bed and leave you with some action steps. Steps you can start taking today that may show results as soon as tomorrow.

Let’s get into it.

I Always Wanted to Be Rich When I Grew Up:

When I was a wee lad, I wanted to be a rich…older lad. I would flip flop between “doctor” and “lawyer” when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was envious of the kids with the new clothes, the new gaming system, the new bike.

Far from unique, I know. Pretty harmless right?

WRONG!

After my teenage years, these “harmless” ideologies began to crystallize into belief structures about people that I would begin to subconsciously act on everyday. These actions would have ripple effects outwardly broadcasting my beliefs to the world. And also like a ripple, the wave would reflect back upon me reinforcing these beliefs over time.

Here are some examples of the harmless childhood beliefs next to their harshly-crystallized adult evolutions:

• Rich people are lucky → Rich people are cheaters and prey on the poor
• Money buys cool things → Money might just be able to buy happiness
• Having money makes you cool → Money is how I should measure my entire self worth

…There are more…and they get nastier…but I think you get the idea.

The point of all this is that I never decided any of this! All of it was subconscious. I never knew I should be discerning about the money philosophies I was exposed to. No one told me that if I wasn’t careful I might accidentally adopt radical beliefs. They conveniently forgot to mention that these beliefs might block my way so much that I would be prevented from pursuing my most important dreams.

This money baggage might just be too heavy.

It might keep my business from ever lifting off.

Money Nature VS Money Nurture

Even the best childhood can leave one with invisible scars. This was certainly the case for me. I had a great childhood. I had friends, I was loved, I was praised. So why the hell did I have this nagging sense of falsity, this impostor syndrome when it came to pricing my product and/or services? Why didn’t I feel worthy of reasonable rates let alone premium rates?

We only have to look back at the first section for the answer. There were layers and layers of money scripts that were running my life. Beliefs had formed that were now influencing not just my perspective on money, but my self esteem, my ambition, my relationships, etc.

The irony is clear when we remove money from the equation. Remember our friend from the intro’s cocktail party allegory? What FIRE, what CONFIDENCE, what PASSION! The next scene in this imaginary scenario would have seen our friend nailing the free-advice conversation. They delivered expert insight, and the value of this insight was indisputable.

But wait, what’s this about “value”?

I thought only money could measure value?

How could this insight have been valuable if it was free?

If this is something you wrestle with, I would wager that you are also super charismatic at cocktail parties, but dismal at sales.

Here’s the thing: value can exist with or without price.

Expertise doesn’t change with the coming and going of a price tag, so why would the value change?

So, why doubt value when money IS part of the equation?

Again, the money baggage…

The 3 Super Steps We Promised

Some of these revelations will feel really obvious in hindsight. Often you may feel like a dumb dumb:

“Seriously?! I’ve been blind to that super-obvious, super-false belief?! Lordy…”

1.) Expose the Lies You Tell Yourself:

Unearthing this stuff doesn’t require any specialized mining equipment or badass bulldozers. Most of it is just chillin’ at your feet under a thick layer of dust.

Unearthing isn’t the hard part. It’s the looking at the unearthed stuff that’s hard. It’s the continual awareness of this stuff that’s hard.

There are still some valuable suggestions we can make for the unearthing. Here is a quick exercise offered by the folks who brought you The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge:

Write the first thing that comes to mind about the relationship of money when it comes to the following concepts. Be fast, don’t think, just write. You may surprise yourself!

• Happiness
• Politics
• Greed
• Debt
• Generosity
• Health
• Family
• Charity
• Religion
• Responsibility
• Environment
• Technology
• Education
• Love
• Hatred
• War
• Violence
• Equality
• Sex
• Power
• Honesty
• Corruption
• Deceit
• Beauty
• Business
• Independence
• Entrepreneurship
• Value

As mentioned, doing some writing on this is a great start, but there’s plenty more work to go.

2.) Challenge These Lies:

Regularly challenging the beliefs you deem false and want to change is the next step. Here are some ways you can start pushing back on the bull-crap.

Run Rejection Experiments:

A crazy guy by the name of Jia Jang once tortured himself for the betterment of us all by embarking upon what he called “100 Days of Rejection Therapy”. There are few better ways to get over sales fear than by plunging into a statistically hopeless situation with a ridiculous ask.

Walk into Walmart and ask to rebuild their website. Knock on your neighbor’s door and ask to borrow their sports car for the weekend. Suggest a “dog-trade” at the dog park…bonus points if you don’t have a dog with you during the ask

Increasing rates for your services after a good chunk of rejection experiments like this will feel like a vacation, trust me.

Interview Someone Who’s Richer Than You:

Ideally this’ll be a trustworthy friend or a family member, but it doesn’t have to be. Money rarely gets discussed openly, especially between folks with widely disparate incomes. The goal here is to illuminate the wealth-stealth and get to some useful truth!

Once you’ve identified some of those weird beliefs you never knew you had, it’s time to ask someone else about theirs. This is not you playing the therapist, attempting to get them to uncover their baggage. It’s an opportunity for you to learn about another person and what they went through early in life. How did their journey shape them?

***WARNING***

Other unrelated nuggets of awesomeness may result from this process such as:

a.) A generally bettered relationship
b.) Unrelated yet powerfully insightful life advice
c.) A good cry

Increase Your Rates & Burn The Boats:

This last belief-challenging recommendation should not be taken lightly. Nor is it a requirement to be taken immediately and regardless of your specific situation. If you and your business simply aren’t here yet, search your soul, be honest with yourself, and wait.

I’m really giving this recommendation to Young Fishbein. Young Fishbein at one time had a 60 hour weekly client workload that delivered a whopping $590/week in income. Yay entrepreneurship!

Freedom never tasted so…imprisoned.

My beliefs had me paralyzed and powerless to do anything about it.

If you happen to also be in a position where you’re working super hard, not making ends meet, and have a good chunk of evidence that the thing you’re selling is solving real problems…

IT’S TIME TO JACK UP YOUR RATES! Bring as many clients with you as possible, but fire the rest.

Write a clear and sincere email about why you’re increasing rates and why your time together has been great. Express that you hope they’ll come along for the ride, but you understand if they simply can’t.

Even if you’re not ready to take this drastic step this is still a great exercise. Write the message but don’t send it yet. Print it out and super-glue it to your bathroom mirror. When the pain gets great enough, and your business is ready, the trigger will be really easy to pull.

3.) Take Out The Trash Once And For All:

There’s a million ways to skin the cat of money-baggage-removal. Revealing subconscious motives and reprogramming deeply rooted systems of any kind are all similar journeys. Like most personal development journeys, they tend to start by dragging all the garbage to the surface…because when the garbage is on the surface, it must be dealt with.

SO! I send you off on your journey, dear fellow garbage person!

With work on your root issues, symptoms disappear. Money myths will fade when the spotlight of truth is shone. And when the myths fade, your confidence can blossom.

Your confidence is persuasive, it is the price, it IS the sale!

If your thing solves a real problem, and the value is there…

…your goal might just autopilot itself the rest of the way.

It’s truly magical what happens when you get out of your own way.

———————

Featured Image by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash

from Overcoming Money Baggage: 3 Steps to Finally Charge What You’re Actually Worth

10 Things You’ll Only Understand If You’re a Domain Name Junkie

It’s an addiction like any other.

Ten or twenty bucks will scratch that itch, but the high never lasts, and before long you’re craving the next hit.

And the worst part? Nobody understands.

Except just maybe a fellow addict…

“Hello. My name is Glen, and I’m a domain name junkie. My last domain purchase was three weeks, four days and seven hours ago.”

That’s how I’d introduce myself to the support group. (You know, the one that doesn’t exist yet.) I’d stand up and tell my story to a circle of fellow addicts, who’d nod their silent support.

My own addiction started with an act of vanity — I acquired the .COM version of my own name. That was 17 years ago, and owning a piece of Internet real estate was novel and exciting.

But that first domain registration, like the first high from an illicit drug, set me on the path to dependency.

The Telltale Signs of a Destructive Domain Habit

Like many addicts, I failed to acknowledge my problem until it was too late.

For years I told myself buying domains was just a harmless hobby. Something to do on evenings and weekends to help unwind after work. But over time my hobby became a powerful obsession.

I’d wake up each morning with a head full of new domain ideas and a burning desire to check their availability. At social occasions, I’d sneak out of the room to browse domain resale sites on my smartphone.

And despite plans to become a savvy domain “flipper,” I was selling almost none of the domains I bought, instead keeping them for personal use.

Eventually, my behavior became more erratic. I would buy any domains I could get my hands on — .ORGs, .COs, even .INFOs.

One Monday morning I hit rock bottom when I found a dozen GoDaddy receipts in my inbox for domains that had no practical purpose. Worse still, I couldn’t even remember buying them.

These days I’m on the road to recovery, and my mission is to help other addicts.

So take a careful look at the list below, and see if you recognize any of these destructive behaviors.

If so, you might just be a domain name junkie.

#1. You Just Can’t Quit GoDaddy

When you’re a domain name junkie, you struggle to think about anything else. You spend every idle moment brainstorming cool domains for your “someday, one day” online projects.

And once an idea surfaced, you simply must know — is the name already taken? It doesn’t matter where you are, at work, at home, even in bed. You have to know.

When you discover the domain has already been taken (the good ones usually are), you start the search for viable alternatives.

And once you’ve dived down the rabbit hole, you can hardly crawl back out.

#2. You Lie About How Many Domains You Own

When you start collecting domains, it’s fun to log in to your account and delight in the breadth of your online kingdom.

But one day you reach the point where that list of domains is a painful reminder of a habit that’s out of control.

When your partner catches you buying yet another domain and casually asks, “How many is that now?” you pretend you don’t know, or deliberately lowball the true number.

But of course, lying is a telltale sign your casual hobby has turned into a serious problem.

#3. You’ve Started Dabbling in the Newer TLDs

In the beginning (well, 1985), just six top-level domains (TLDs): .COM, .ORG, .NET, .EDU, .GOV and .MIL existed, but that list has since snowballed.

Today we have more than 1,500 TLDs including .COFFEE, .LAWYER and .PORN.

On the one hand, domains are more plentiful than ever, and even if your dream .COM is long gone, you have hundreds of other options for snagging a snappy name.

On the other hand,  who knows how much prestige these newer domains will hold over the longer term? Nobody wants to build their blog around the domain equivalent of a pet rock.

Some domain junkies won’t look beyond .COM, but if you’re exploring the murkier end of the market (.CM anyone?), it might be a sign that your hobby’s taking a worrying turn.

#4. You Tell Yourself You’re a “Domain Investor”

When your domain account lists tens (or even hundreds) of seemingly random domain purchases, there are two ways to explain it.

Either it’s the result of years of clueless impulse buying from a click-happy domain junkie with no more strategy than a half-blind pigeon pecking in the dirt.

Or it’s the culmination of a strategic acquisition campaign to build a valuable portfolio of undervalued digital assets for future sale.

Not surprisingly, most domain name “enthusiasts” favor the second version.

But deep down, if you suspect there’s very little method to your madness, it might be time to go cold turkey on domains.

#5. You Read the Thesaurus… for Fun

Not every domain you dream up will be available for registration. The truth is, most won’t.

That’s why a thesaurus is a domain collector’s best friend. In fact, uncovering snappy synonyms for your latest near-miss idea can be a lot of fun.

But if a thesaurus has become your favorite bedtime read (you know, just in case a cool domain idea jumps out) it may be time to seek professional help.

Because — wake up call! — it’s a reference book, not the latest Jack Reacher.

#6. You Secretly Stalk the Person Who Owns YourName.com

I was lucky. I grabbed my personal domain before anyone else could.

But if you have a popular birth name, or you were just too slow to the punch, your best options may already have gone. And that really stings.

Because when your name’s John Brown, telling people your treasured home on the Internet is TheRealJohnWBrown.info is plain embarrassing.

And that’s why you secretly stalk the person who nabbed your name online. You stake out their website, mentally mocking their pathetic efforts while waiting patiently for the right moment to pounce.

Because one day, they’ll forget to renew that domain and then, my friend, victory will be yours.

#7. You’ve Felt the Pain of “Lapsers Remorse”

Sometimes you see a domain for what it is — a dumb impulse purchase you’ll never be able to use or resell.

Maybe you tried to make money by listing it for sale at a couple of domain marketplaces but didn’t get the faintest sniff of interest.

So when it comes up for renewal, you do the sensible thing and let it lapse. You even feel good about your level-headed decision.

Weeks later, you casually check to see if anyone’s re-registered it and find it’s now listed on a “premium domains” site for $3,000!

Of course, just because it’s listed for thousands doesn’t mean it’s worth thousands.

But you can’t escape the feeling you let a valuable domain slip through your fingers.

#8. You’re Considering a Domain-Inspired Career Move

Sometimes you’ll stumble across a domain name that’s so good you simply have to own it… even though it’s totally unrelated to your work or hobbies.

The smart move would be to snag it and sell it for a profit to someone who can make good use of it. But like Gollum and that damned ring, you can’t quite bring yourself to part with it.

So your brain starts to explore a future possible world where you become the person for whom this is the perfect domain.

Sure it means throwing away years of hard-won experience and starting a blog in a new field.

But finding a domain this good must be a signal from the universe, right?

#9. You Lose Interest in Domains Moments After Buying Them

Once the buzz of snagging the name you’ve been lusting after subsides, a faint sense of regret can quickly follow.

“I can’t believe nobody bought this yet,” quickly turns to, “I can’t believe I just bought that.”

And the longer you hold onto a domain, the more money you rack up in wasted renewal fees.

The best way to take your mind off this painful predicament? Start scouting for your next domain name.

#10. You Have a Conspiracy Theory about Domain Registrars

Maybe this happened to you…

One day you check a new domain and find it available for the regular price. The next day it’s suddenly a “premium” domain, commanding several thousand dollars.

And you can’t help but wonder:

Did my search alert the registrar to the juicy potential of this previously unrecognized name?

You wouldn’t be alone in your suspicions. Type “do domain registrars” into Google and “steal domains?” is the top auto-complete suggestion.

Are registrars capable of dirty tricks like this? Maybe. It’s difficult to be sure.

But paranoid thoughts like these might be the first sign your harmless hobby is turning into a dangerous addiction.

Learn to Spot the Signs of Addiction Before It’s Too Late

Domain name addiction is real. And it can wreck your life if you don’t catch it in time.

If you suspect you might be addicted, ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you visit domain registration sites several times a day?
• Do you lie to friends and family about how many domains you own?
• Do you often “binge” and buy multiple domains at once?

If so, you’re likely a domain name junkie.

The good news? With the right support, a full recovery is possible.

But you must take that crucial first step. Acknowledge your addiction.

So repeat after me:

“I’m a domain name junkie. And today’s the day I get help.”

About the Author: Glen Long is Smart Blogger’s operations guy and a recovering domain name junkie. He’s holding a “yard sale” of the best blogging, copywriting and content marketing domains that he’s collected over the years — go check it out.

The post 10 Things You’ll Only Understand If You’re a Domain Name Junkie appeared first on Smart Blogger.

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274: How Stefano Changed Blogging Platforms and Started Blogging with a Plan

5 Essential Tips to Help Improve Your Social Media Strategy

Organic social media is dead…

Okay, not really. But, it sure as hell is not what it used to be.

Just a few years back, Facebook was essentially an all-you-can-eat buffet of free traffic.

Even those with a small audience and zero strategy could drive a considerable number of clicks back to their site with ease.

Fast forward to today and you’re stuck with the reality that every time you publish a post on Facebook it only reaches about 3% of your audience, possibly even less. Pair that with Facebook’s relentless attempt to keep users on their platform (not your website), and you’re left saying, “what’s even the point?”

Fear not, I have good news! You can still pay to play. Yes, that’s right… I’m talking about Facebook Ads.

(RELATED:  14 Tips to Help You Write Successful Facebook Ads)

A healthy combination of paid and organic posts—paired with a consistent posting schedule, a healthy content mix, and a bit of data analysis—is the key to a successful modern-day social media strategy that grows your audience and drives people back to your site.

Before you start pouring money into your social media advertisements you need to know what types of content perform well organically. With that in mind, here are 5 things that you can add to your social media strategy that will help inform what types of content perform the best, giving you a clear picture of what types of content will translate into high-performing social media ads.

#1: Optimize Your Content Mix

When I talk about a “content mix,” I’m referring to what proportion of your content should come in one form or another.

When you’re first getting started, just do something.

I like to think about the different content types in really simple terms. When you share something on social media (particularly Facebook), it’s usually one of these 4 content types:

• Photos
• Videos
• Links
• Curated Competitor Content

You may see ratios online about the optimal content mix. But everyone seems to have a different idea of what works best. And the truth is that none of these prescribed content mixes are ever going to be perfect for you, because your brand is unique. No other company in the world has the same size following, the same brand recognition, or the same target audience as you.

And that’s why the ideal content mix for your company is also going to be unique.

So how do I recommend figuring out what that content mix should be?

For starters, use those 4 categories listed above when determining your content mix, and keep track of how many photos, videos, and links you share on social media.

Then follow this process to optimize and improve that content mix over time:

1) Establish a Baseline

When you’re first getting started, just do something. Maybe you decide to start by sharing 3 links, 1 piece of competitor content, 2 photos, and a video every day.

So do that for a while. What you’re doing here is establishing a baseline—something you can use to compare your results against in the future.

2) Analyze

After a few weeks, step back and analyze how successful your social distribution has been so far. What’s worked, and what hasn’t? Have you succeeded as much as you wanted to? If not, what can you change to improve things going forward?

Maybe you’re finding that your videos perform really well, but your photos just aren’t getting a whole lot of engagement. This is valuable information to have for the next step, where you will…

3) Optimize

Now that you have a better idea of what’s working & what isn’t, try tweaking your content mix to improve your results. If you found that your videos are outperforming your photos, maybe you want to adjust your content mix to include 1 photo and 2 videos each day.

Do that for a while to establish a new baseline. Now you can repeat the whole process over again.

#2: Establish and Stick to a Schedule

When it comes to an effective social media strategy, consistency is King. To achieve the most success possible with your social distribution, I recommend setting up and using a schedule. This is hands-down the best way I know to stay consistent with your social media distribution.

I like to add this to my actual calendar and treat it like a checklist, so that I’m always reminded when I need to make another post.

I also highly recommend scheduling your posts in advance when you can. This is a form of “batching” that allows you to be much more efficient with your time. This strategy also gives you more freedom throughout the rest of your day.

You can do this using a paid tool like Sprout Social, or in many cases you can do it right inside of the platform itself. In Facebook, for example, all you have to do is click the little button that says “Share Now” and change it to “Schedule”:

Then you can decide exactly when you want your post to go live:

#3: Track Your Performance with Social Media Scorecards

Over time, you’re going to find that it’s easy to lose track of how well your social media strategy is working—that is, unless you have a system set up to help you keep your eye on it.

With that in mind, we created a new tool called Social Media Scorecards.

This handy download gives you a quick and easy 3-step system you can use to keep track of your social media performance.

Step 1 helps you track your posting and your content mix. Are you publishing as many posts as you want to be?

Step 2 is where you can track your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). And to make this as useful as possible, we’ve pre-filled the scorecards with the most important KPIs we recommend tracking for each social media network.

Finally, in step 3 you can track some more specific post quality metrics. Think of these as more fun “stretch” goals. In a way these are your leading metrics, because achieving them will help you hit your KPIs.

And when we’re all done, we add up our “Wins” at the bottom to calculate our total score. This total score gives us a quick way to track our social media performance over time for each social media channel.

Filling out these social media scorecards gives us actionable information that we can use to improve our approach going forward. If we didn’t hit our goal for comments, why not? Are we not posting enough? Do we need to make our content more engaging? Maybe start asking questions in some of our posts to generate more discussion?

In a nutshell, these scorecards are a tool that helps you start asking yourself the right questions about your social media strategy.

I recommend filling these out on a weekly basis. Once a week is frequent enough to let you make rapid changes if you need it, while also giving you enough data for a useful analysis.

(NOTE: Want to make sure your social media strategy is helping to grow your business? Download our FREE Social Media Scorecards and you can quickly find out what’s working and why, so you can do more of it! Learn more here!)

 

#4: Always Remember the Importance of Packaging

Now I want to talk about packaging for a minute. But first, I want to ask you a question.

Which one of these 2 pies would you be more likely to buy?

(Cue the “Jeopardy” music.)

OK, this isn’t hard. Obviously, the pie on the left looks a lot more appetizing than the pie on the right. The one on the left looks well made, baked to a nice golden color, and is really well-presented.

The pie on the right just looks like a mess.

Now here’s the thing: these pies were actually baked at the same bakery.

If your blog post looks unprofessional, is hard to read, or otherwise looks unappealing…

Most people simply won’t read it.

They’re both made from the exact same ingredients by the exact same bakers. They actually taste the exact same!

So why does everybody prefer the pie on the left?

Because of its packaging.

And this is something that’s really crucial to keep in mind with content distribution on social media.

You could have a blog post that’s profoundly insightful, well-written, and full of gems that will provide immense value to your target audience.

But if that blog post looks unprofessional, is hard to read, or otherwise looks unappealing…

Most people simply won’t read it.

Remember that social media today is full of ads and posts that are all competing for your prospect’s attention. If you want to catch their eye and make them not just click on your content, but actually take interest and read it, you can’t just push your content. You have to SELL it.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

This blog post on our 101 best email subject lines of 2018 is without a doubt one of our most popular posts:

But as successful as this post was, we weren’t seeing as much success on organic social media as we would have liked.

So what did we do?

We worked on improving the packaging.

And here’s the result of that. Notice how bold and vibrant the colors are now? You can just imagine how much more this post would jump out in your newsfeed compared to the original image, which had more muted colors.

I’ve posted to social media many, many, many times, and I find that when I use bright yellow or red I tend to get the best results. These “thumb-stopping” colors just naturally stand out against the blue theme of Facebook.

Also notice that we use the Gmail symbol here. This is a symbol that people are familiar with. Tons of people use Gmail and they’re used to getting notifications associated with this icon. So when people see it in a post on Facebook, it’s almost like telling their brain: “Oh, I need to check that.”

#5: Use CTR Analysis to Inform Your Paid Social Advertising

Now I’m going to share a process I use to help analyze and improve the performance of content on social media. This is a simple data-driven way to find out which content is performing the best. It can also help give you some ideas about what to do next time if a piece of content isn’t performing well.

(RELATED: 3 Google Analytics Reports Every Business Should Monitor)

It’s called doing a Click-Through Rate (CTR) Analysis.

The first step is to calculate your CTR for each post. Getting your CTR is pretty simple:

CTR = Link Clicks / Reach

Here’s where you’ll find those metrics:

(Notice you should NOT use “Post Clicks.” That will include people who clicked on your title or who clicked to “see more” without actually visiting your site to read the post.)

Do this for all your recent posts. Then I like to put them in a spreadsheet and rank them according to their CTR.

What I’ll do is separate the posts into 3 tiers (top, middle, bottom). Then I’ll take these actions based on where each post falls in that hierarchy:

Top CTR Posts

If a post is in the top 25% in terms of click-through rate, then I know that post is working well. So in that case I’ll just recirculate the post a week or so later, without changing anything about it.

(Remember, anytime you publish an organic post only a small percentage of your followers actually see it. So don’t worry about recirculating a post that you’ve already shared. There will be a lot less overlap than you think in terms of the people you reach.)

And after another few weeks, repackage and recirculate the post again! This time try something new—change the image or headline. In many cases you’ll find that you’re able to appeal to a different segment of your audience.

Middle CTR Posts

For any post that was middle-of-the-road in terms of its CTR, I won’t recirculate the post as it is. Instead, I’ll immediately repackage it to try and improve the appeal. Then I’ll recirculate the repackaged version to see if it gets more engagement than the original.

Bottom CTR Posts

For any underperforming post, you should also try to repackage and recirculate it. But in this case, if the repackaged version doesn’t improve performance then that’s a good indication that this piece of content just isn’t something that resonates with your social audience. If that happens I recommend you just stop trying to share this post on that network.

Now Translate This to Your Paid Advertising Efforts

Going through this CTR analysis process is fairly straightforward, but don’t underestimate it. It’s a really powerful way to find out which content is performing well, and it gives you a set of straightforward action items for each post based on its past performance.

And you can even use the insights you learn to help inform your paid social media advertising!

As you start to learn which posts are performing the best on social media, you’ll get a much better idea of which posts would be the smartest ones to boost. If you already know that a post had a high CTR when you published it organically, you can be pretty confident that that post will perform even better when you put a little money behind it.

And over time you’ll even start to learn which content topics are resonating best with your audience, which you can use to guide your content creation and paid advertising in the future.

Now Go and Implement!

Hopefully you now have a better idea of how to think about content in a way that can grow your brand while generating a positive ROI for your company.

Unless you’re a publisher, your content isn’t directly responsible for generating revenue. So you have to remember where your content fits into the customer journey, and optimize it to do a better job of achieving its top-of-funnel goals.

Whatever you do, don’t forget about the pie. It’s so important to make sure that you’re getting the best results possible from the effort you’re putting into your content. And that means presenting your content in a way that makes it as appealing as possible to your target audience.

(NOTE: Want to make sure your social media strategy is helping to grow your business? Download our FREE Social Media Scorecards and you can quickly find out what’s working and why, so you can do more of it! Learn more here!)

The post 5 Essential Tips to Help Improve Your Social Media Strategy appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

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real beginner

hey eveyone, im new to the forum, got a couple websites, a couple ideas, more than a couple projects, but im curious where to start? i mea.

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SPI 356: Everything Behind the Launch of My New Invention—the SwitchPod

Get the inside scoop on my first physical product—the SwitchPod—from idea to prototype, marketing, and more, with videographer and co-inventor Caleb Wojcik!

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#1706 Why is this founder breaking things on purpose?

Sometimes entrepreneurs feel that if they take a real job they are failing their true self. I think that’s bullshit. Joining me today is an entrepreneur who worked at Amazon and Netflix. He solved big problems for those companies. He took that experience and started a company to solve the same problems for companies that weren’t as big as Amazon and Netflix. Kolton Andrus is the co-founder of Gremlin, an on-call Chaos Engineering software platform. We’ll talk about what that means in this interview.

Kolton Andrus is the co-founder of Gremlin, an on-call Chaos Engineering software platform.

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Facebook eCommerce Case Study – $18,700 in Sales!

Servando: This is a guest post by Lucas Lee. Since we recently published an article about the best print on demand sites to get started with eCommerce Lucas contacted me to write a Facebook eCommerce case study which I think is an amazing read. We already have a ton of Facebook Case Studies here at Stream SEO but none of them was targeted at eCommerce/Shopify only. If you want to contact Lucas for more info you can find his bio at the end of this post.

Facebook Ads is one of the most popular traffic method when it comes to eCommerce. As a result, the platform has gotten incredibly competitive nearly every niche/vertical. However, I’m here to say that Facebook Ads are most definitely not ‘dead’.

In this post, I’m going to be going over a Facebook Ad campaign I ran for an eCommerce company. Over the duration of the campaign (about X months), it has generated over $18,700 in revenue at a 659% ROI.

I’ll be going over the basics of Facebook Ads and sharing the exact framework I used on this campaign (and on nearly every campaign I create). I’ll also be showing you how you can use this framework and strategy in your own ventures, projects, or businesses to drive consistent sales and revenue. By the end, you’ll have a solid understanding of how to create profitable Facebook Ad campaigns.

Let’s get started!

Facebook eCommerce Case Study – Getting Set Up

The very first step is to get the Facebook Pixel installed on our eCommerce store. The Facebook Pixel is a piece of tracking code which allows us to monitor and detect when website visitors take specific, important actions on our website (e.g. view a product, add a product to their cart, purchase a product, etc.). Luckily for us, most common eCommerce platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce, etc.) have built-in integrations to make installing the pixel simple and easy.

With Shopify (what this client was using, and what I recommend for 99% of eCommerce businesses), it’s literally a matter of copying your pixel ID and pasting it into the field that says ‘Facebook Pixel account’ under Online Store > Preferences in your Shopify admin panel.

After adding it, we can see all of the built in ‘Conversion Events’ that Shopify comes pre-built with. We can find this by clicking ‘Ads Manager’ in the top left of the Ads Manager, then clicking ‘All Tools’ and then ‘Pixels’.

Here all the Conversion Events that come with Shopify by default:

Conversion Events are specifics events that happen on your website that allow you track your campaign performance and build audiences around them. Most of these are self-explanatory, such as ‘Purchase’ and ‘AddToCart’. The only one that is a bit ambiguous (in my opinion) is ‘ViewContent’, which is simply when someone views a specific product page.

When we go through the process of creating our campaigns, these Conversion Events are going to become very important. Facebook campaigns work by asking us to first choose a ‘Conversion Objective’. This is the action that you ultimately want people seeing your ad to take, in this case, purchasing our product. The Conversion Objective that you choose is incredibly important as Facebook’s algorithm is going to attempt to learn and adjust over time to find people most likely to take our desired action. So, with a ‘Purchase’ Conversion Objective, over time Facebook will attempt to improve our campaign to show it to people most likely to purchase.

This is one of the most common mistakes I see marketers and business owners make when it comes to their Facebook Ads. They select a Conversion Objective that does not actually align with their goals. For example, I see a lot of eCommerce stores using ‘Brand Awareness’ or ‘Engagement’ campaigns. While I can understand their thinking, for 99% of businesses or goal is not to build brand awareness (nor should it be, in my opinion). Your goal should be to make more money.

Facebook Ads Basics

Facebook Ads are split into 3 ‘levels’ – the Campaign Level, the Ad Set Level, and the Ad Level.

Campaign Level:

The Campaign Level is where we select the Conversion Objective we want to set as our ‘goal’. Our options are as follows:

As I just discussed, the objective you choose for your campaign is incredibly important. We want to select the objective that most closely resembles what action we want people to ultimately take. In some cases, this might be liking our Facebook page, or joining our email list. In this case, it’s actually purchasing our product(s). For this reason, this campaign (and the vast majority of campaigns I set up) I set up using the ‘Conversions’ objective.

Ad Set Level:

The Ad Set Level is where we get into the nitty-gritty of our campaign. This is where we can select what audience we wish to target, select which countries we want to show our ads in, and narrow down to specific genders, ages, and even devices. We also choose where we want our ads displayed within the Facebook ecosystem (e.g. on Instagram, messenger, etc.) as well as set the budget for our campaign.

I’ll be talking a bit more in depth on what targeting and segmenting options I used, but for now understand that the Ad Set Level is where 90% of the ‘magic’ happens 🙂

Ad Level:

The Ad Level is where we actually write and design the ads that will be shown all over Facebook’s ecosystem. Here we can select from Facebook’s myriad of options for different ad formats (carousels, videos, single images, to name a few) as well as input our ad copy, creative, and desired landing page.

A lot of marketers and business owners spend hours obsessing in tiny tweaks to copy and images. In my opinion, this is a waste of time. Changing 1 word in your headline is not going to ‘move the needle’ on your campaign performance. Changing the targeting and audience and the offer will. For this reason, I recommend you keep your ads simple, direct, and to the point. Look at what your competitors are doing and emulate them as best as possible.

The 8 Figure Facebook Ads Framework

I call my framework for creating Facebook Ad campaigns the ‘8 Figure Framework’. Don’t let the name scare you off though – this framework can be applied to businesses of any size, even ones that are just starting out. Additionally, this framework is not exclusive to eCommerce. I’ll be giving specific examples of how each component of this framework can be applied to different business models in a variety of industries. I normally charge $1,000-$5,000+ to onboard new clients and build out their campaigns using this exact framework.

And the results speak for themselves…

Have I provoked your appetite yet? 🙂

It is vitally important as you read through this (and any other case study) that you keep your own projects, ventures, and businesses in mind. Think to yourself: How can I use these campaigns, strategies, and tactics to get me towards my #1 goal?

And when I say ‘#1 goal’, this should be the results you actually want to get out of your Facebook Ads, and ultimately your business in general. Is it more sales? More email subscribers? More potential clients? Having your goal in mind will give you a lot more clarity (and save you tons of time + money) in helping you figure how to structure your campaigns. Don’t let vanity metrics like Instagram followers or Facebook followers distract you. Focus on the bottom line: making more money.

Now! Without any more delay, let’s get into it…

Every Facebook Ad account I build out is built around 3 core campaigns:

• Retargeting
• Previous customer upselling/cross-selling
• New customer prospecting

That’s it.

I have worked with dozens of agencies, businesses, marketers, and entrepreneurs that overcomplicate this. And you really don’t need to. These 3 campaigns are going to the most effective, profitable campaigns you can ever run, regardless of what kind of business you run. Anything else is just going to be fluff, and is not going to get you closer towards your #1 goal and making more money.

Let’s dive deeper into what each of these campaigns entails.

Retargeting

Retargeting, also sometimes called remarketing, is the process of advertising to people that have already interacted with you/your business in some way. Retargeting is going to be your main driver of consistent ROI. This is because it is 5-10x easier to get someone to purchase/complete a desired action when they have previous history with you or your business.

Some common retargeting events:

• Viewed a specific landing page but didn’t sign up
• Added an item to their cart but didn’t purchase (abandoned cart)
• Watched a certain percentage of one of your Facebook/Instagram videos (yes this is possible)
• Follows you on Instagram or Facebook
• Scrolled down a certain percentage on a landing page (yes, this is also possible)

On retargeting campaigns, it is not uncommon to see ROAS (return on ad spends) in the 5-10x+ range.

Some examples of retargeting for various business models:

• eCommerce: Retargeting people who abandoned their cart
• SaaS: Retargeting free trial users with a paid plan
• Blog: Retargeting website visitors with a lead magnet (to join email list)
• Artist: Retargeting website visitors with their new album/project/etc.
• Agency/consultant/service provider: Retargeting people that had an initial discovery call but didn’t follow up
• Online coach/info-products: Retargeting people who watched a webinar but didn’t purchase

These are just a few basic examples. In this specific campaign, I used retargeting to show ads to people that had either 1. Added an item to their cart and didn’t purchase it (abandoned cart), or 2. Viewed a specific product but never purchased it.

Using Facebook’s Dynamic Product Ads technology allowed me to show the exact products to people that they had abandoned in their cart, or had viewed. So, if someone had added a Purple Widget to their cart, the ad would display the Purple Widget in their carousel.

To get this set up, we need to create what’s called a ‘Catalog’ within Facebook. This is essentially giving Facebook access to all of our store’s data so it can dynamically display them to people within ads. Getting this set up is pretty simple with Shopify. I used a plugin called Flexify, which creates a .csv file of every product on your store. Then, you would go to Ads Manager > All Tools > Catalogs and import it.

The ads we used for the retargeting campaign we’re also quite simple. As mentioned, used Facebook’s DPA format to create a carousel of products they interacted with. Our copy was also fairly simple. We offered a 20% discount coupon to encourage shoppers to complete their purchase, which worked quite well.

Using these strategies and techniques, the retargeting ad sets for this campaign generated $13,127.57 in revenue at a 1,443% ROI.

Previous Customer Upselling/Cross-Selling

Your previous customers are the biggest gold mine for your business that you are likely not using. Think about it: these are people that have already gone through the process of pulling out their wallet and purchasing something from you. Getting them over that ‘buying hump’ again is infinitely easier than finding brand new customers. All you have to do is show them other products/services you offer and that they might be interested in. And just like retargeting, these campaigns are also massive drivers of ROI when done correctly.

Now, this is process is pretty obvious for an eCommerce store. All you have to do is show them some of your other best-selling products. However, for businesses that don’t sell lots of products, this can be a bit trickier to figure out. If your business only sells 1 product/service or service (or none at all), the easiest way to do this is by upselling/cross-selling through affiliate partnerships.

The idea is simple: find a company that offers a complementary product or service to your businesses and promote it to your audience. For example, a woodworking blog might not have any products or services to promote. But they could partner with a tools manufacturer to promote their products. These campaigns work surprisingly well, and can be applied to nearly any business/business model.

Some examples of upselling/cross-selling for various business models:

• eCommerce: Promote your other best-selling products
• SaaS: Promote your other products/plans to your existing customers, or affiliate partnership with another SaaS that integrates or complements yours
• Blog: Affiliate partnership with a business in your industry, promoted to your most highly engaged readers
• Artist: Promote your new project to people that have purchased your other projects
• Agency/consultant/service provider: Upsell your more premium services to your existing clients, or partner with another service provider to cross-sell their services
• Online coach/info-products: Upsell your more premium products/services, or partner with someone else in your niche to cross-sell their products and services

Hopefully this gives you a good idea of how you can use post purchase upselling/cross-selling, even if your business doesn’t sell multiple products/services (or any at all). For this specific campaign, I set up campaigns upselling their newest products. In the ad copy, I made sure to call out these previous customers, thanking them for their support in 2018.

With this super-simple strategy, the upselling campaign generated $732.30 in revenue at a 451% ROI.

New Customer Prospecting

New Customer Prospecting refers to finding new people to interact with and engage with your business. This might be in the form of getting new email list subscribers, driving new purchases, getting new free trial signups, getting webinar attendees, etc. Regardless of what business you are in, you need new users, leads, and/or customers to grow.

The best way to find these new users, leads, and/or customers is by leveraging Lookalike Audiences. Lookalike Audiences work by feeding Facebook a ‘source’ audience, that it’s algorithm then scans for commonalities and attempts to find people most similar to them.

The most common method of creating Facebook Ads is to create as large a list as possible of your previous users and customers and feed it into Facebook. However, in my experience I have found that quality outperforms quality when it comes to Lookalike Audiences. In fact, I was told by a Facebook engineer personally that Lookalike Audiences perform best in the 1,000-4,000 range.

The way to do this is to segment your existing user/customer data down to your best segments. For this specific campaign, this meant figuring out who our best customers were. Logically, this makes sense. We’re essentially telling Facebook: ‘find us more of our best customers, not just our average ones.’

We did this in 2 ways:

1. Creating a list of all of our high average order value (AOV) customers. Most of our products were in the $6-$8 range. So, we defined over $20 as high AOV
2. Creating a list of all of our repeat customers. These were people that purchased 2 or more times from us in the last 6 months.

List 1 came out to around ~1,900 people and List 2 came out to around 1,100. Right in the range we were looking for!

Note: This strategy is the ideal setup for businesses that have high traffic and existing data. For new and growing businesses, you might not have enough data to segment down to specific audiences of this size. For this reason, you will unfortunately have to scrape up as much data as you can to get within the 1,000-4,000 range.

These 2 strategies allowed to achieve much higher ROIs than if we had simply used all of our previous customer data. By segmenting down to our ‘best’ customers, we were able to get more cost-efficient purchases and higher order values, thus resulting in higher ROIs.

It’s vital to understand that your ROI/results from new customer prospecting is going to inherently be worse than from retargeting and previous customers/users. Getting someone who’s never heard of you or your business to buy from you/give you their email/sign up. This is generally where most business owners struggle the most with when it comes to Facebook Ads. And who can blame them? Getting random people on the Internet to pay attention to you, much less buy from you, is extremely difficult!

Some examples of new customer prospecting for various business models:

• eCommerce: Getting more profitable sales + customers
• SaaS: Acquiring new free trial signups
• Blog: Adding more highly engaged readers to your email list
• Artist: Getting more Facebook fans/Instagram followers
• Agency/consultant/service provider: Booking more discovery phone calls
• Online coach/info-products: Getting more webinar attendees

For this specific business, our new customer prospecting campaigns were designed to showcase our best selling products in simple, clean ad formats. Our best performers were actually simple slideshow videos, which you can make within Facebook by just uploading images.

By targeting only our best customers, the new customer prospecting campaign generated $4,860.07 in revenue at a 274% ROI.

So that’s it.  Sounds pretty simple right? Almost a bit too simple! But this simple, repeatable framework is what I use for nearly every business I work with. So, regardless of your budget, business size, business model, or industry, I guarantee you can utilize this framework in your business to drive massive results. And the proof is in the pudding…

I hope you have found this post beneficial for you and will help give you some news ideas on how you can use Facebook Ads to grow your business and make more money, whether you’re in eCommerce or another industry.

Hopefully you enjoyed this Facebook eCommerce Case Study. Please share it with people who might be interested.

Lucas Lee-Tyson has been into Internet Marketing since he was 15. Today, he is the owner of Growth Cave, a place where marketers and entrepreneurs alike can learn how to create and manage their own profitable Facebook Ad campaigns. You can also find him on Twitter. 

The post Facebook eCommerce Case Study – $18,700 in Sales! appeared first on Stream SEO.

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