seo

Posted by Phil Sharp

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

I want to tell you a true story about a discount store from the 1970s called D.B. Sales.

Now, before you start yelling…

“Join me in the 21st century, Grandpa! We have the Internet, Snuggie blankets and millions of cat videos to watch.”

…give me a chance to explain. I promise to make it worth your while.

D.B. Sales was run by Morris and Tessie Benatar — friendly, hard-working folks who were trying help their small business succeed. The problem is, in the mid-70s, their business wasn’t doing too well. Sales were down, money was tight, and tensions between Morris and Tessie were rising.

Sure, they look nice, but you wouldn’t want to get Tessie angry. She had a mean right hook.​

Like any good businessperson, Morris doggedly tried everything he could think of to increase sales. He changed the window displays, ran promotions, offered free delivery, and placed ads in local newspapers. But, nothing worked.

Then, one day, everything changed.

Morris finally had a promotion that worked. In fact, the promotion worked so well that he ran it year after year for the next 10 years:

You don’t actually have to go out of business to have one of these sales, do you?

Now, why did I tell you this story? Because I think it contains a valuable lesson about how to increase the conversion rate of your website.

Morris spent a lot of his time testing out different ideas until he finally (and luckily) came across something that worked. As online marketers, we do the exact same thing.

We test different button colors, call to actions, headlines, images, and everything else we can think of. Occasionally, on our good days, we come across something that works and we feel good about ourselves.

However, we should learn from Morris. He could’ve saved himself a lot of money, stress, and dirty looks from Tessie, if he would’ve talked to his customers. They could’ve helped him answer one of the most important questions:

Why aren’t people buying from me?

This was an easy question for Morris to ask because customers would walk right into his store. But, as people who manage websites, how do we find out why people aren’t buying from us?

In my mind, this is what a website visitor looks like. It makes life more exciting.

That’s why I want to share with you my patent-pending approach* to finding out what your website visitors are thinking.

*Okay, you got me, it’s not patent pending. Does that make it “patent pretending”? <Insert Drumroll>

Five ways to find out why your customers aren’t buying from you

1) Chat transcripts

If you have a chat feature on your website then you can get really helpful feedback RIGHT NOW by simply reading through your chat logs. Whenever we’re going to revise a page at UserTesting.com we always start by searching for all of the chats that happened on that URL.

This is an easy way to learn about your customers’ main questions, concerns and objections.

If you don’t have chat on your site, but are considering adding it, then check out SnapEngage. They’re who we use and we’ve been very happy with them.

Chat logs make it easy to find out what questions your visitors ask on specific pages.

2) Surveys

If you have a question for your visitors, or want some feedback, then often times the best thing to do is ask. Use tools like Qualaroo, SurveyMonkey or 4QSurvey and ask open-ended survey questions like: “If you didn’t sign-up, can you tell us why not?”

Sometimes the easiest thing to do is ask.

3) Talk to your sales and customer support people

Your sales and customer support people spend all day communicating with your site’s visitors. This means that 1) they’re amazing people and 2) they understand the objections of your web visitors better than anyone.

So go talk with your sales and support people and ask them how they overcome the common objections. You can then take this learning and apply it to your site.

4) Eat your own dog food

Spend time pretending to be your customer and use your website and product. At UserTesting.com we have one of our team members pretend to be a customer each and every month, write up their suggestions for improvement, and then email them directly to our CEO.

This isn’t quite as good as unbiased feedback from someone in your target market, but you’ll be surprised at the amount of good ideas your team will come up with.

5) “Think aloud” testing

Look, I’m biased, but this is definitely my favorite way to find out why customers aren’t buying. With “think aloud” testing you can watch people in your target market speak their thoughts out loud as they try to accomplish common tasks on your website or mobile device.

When you run this kind of test you can see with your own eyes where your users get stuck or have problems.

You just think you know your users.

Remember, the people visiting your website are actual human beings – they’re not “uniques” or “pageviews”. To understand how to make your website better, you need to learn from Morris Benatar: either pretend to always be going out of business, or talk to your customers.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Posted by Phil Sharp

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

I want to tell you a true story about a discount store from the 1970s called D.B. Sales.

Now, before you start yelling…

“Join me in the 21st century, Grandpa! We have the Internet, Snuggie blankets and millions of cat videos to watch.”

…give me a chance to explain. I promise to make it worth your while.

D.B. Sales was run by Morris and Tessie Benatar — friendly, hard-working folks who were trying help their small business succeed. The problem is, in the mid-70s, their business wasn’t doing too well. Sales were down, money was tight, and tensions between Morris and Tessie were rising.

Sure, they look nice, but you wouldn’t want to get Tessie angry. She had a mean right hook.​

Like any good businessperson, Morris doggedly tried everything he could think of to increase sales. He changed the window displays, ran promotions, offered free delivery, and placed ads in local newspapers. But, nothing worked.

Then, one day, everything changed.

Morris finally had a promotion that worked. In fact, the promotion worked so well that he ran it year after year for the next 10 years:

You don’t actually have to go out of business to have one of these sales, do you?

Now, why did I tell you this story? Because I think it contains a valuable lesson about how to increase the conversion rate of your website.

Morris spent a lot of his time testing out different ideas until he finally (and luckily) came across something that worked. As online marketers, we do the exact same thing.

We test different button colors, call to actions, headlines, images, and everything else we can think of. Occasionally, on our good days, we come across something that works and we feel good about ourselves.

However, we should learn from Morris. He could’ve saved himself a lot of money, stress, and dirty looks from Tessie, if he would’ve talked to his customers. They could’ve helped him answer one of the most important questions:

Why aren’t people buying from me?

This was an easy question for Morris to ask because customers would walk right into his store. But, as people who manage websites, how do we find out why people aren’t buying from us?

In my mind, this is what a website visitor looks like. It makes life more exciting.

That’s why I want to share with you my patent-pending approach* to finding out what your website visitors are thinking.

*Okay, you got me, it’s not patent pending. Does that make it “patent pretending”? <Insert Drumroll>

Five ways to find out why your customers aren’t buying from you

1) Chat transcripts

If you have a chat feature on your website then you can get really helpful feedback RIGHT NOW by simply reading through your chat logs. Whenever we’re going to revise a page at UserTesting.com we always start by searching for all of the chats that happened on that URL.

This is an easy way to learn about your customers’ main questions, concerns and objections.

If you don’t have chat on your site, but are considering adding it, then check out SnapEngage. They’re who we use and we’ve been very happy with them.

Chat logs make it easy to find out what questions your visitors ask on specific pages.

2) Surveys

If you have a question for your visitors, or want some feedback, then often times the best thing to do is ask. Use tools like Qualaroo, SurveyMonkey or 4QSurvey and ask open-ended survey questions like: “If you didn’t sign-up, can you tell us why not?”

Sometimes the easiest thing to do is ask.

3) Talk to your sales and customer support people

Your sales and customer support people spend all day communicating with your site’s visitors. This means that 1) they’re amazing people and 2) they understand the objections of your web visitors better than anyone.

So go talk with your sales and support people and ask them how they overcome the common objections. You can then take this learning and apply it to your site.

4) Eat your own dog food

Spend time pretending to be your customer and use your website and product. At UserTesting.com we have one of our team members pretend to be a customer each and every month, write up their suggestions for improvement, and then email them directly to our CEO.

This isn’t quite as good as unbiased feedback from someone in your target market, but you’ll be surprised at the amount of good ideas your team will come up with.

5) “Think aloud” testing

Look, I’m biased, but this is definitely my favorite way to find out why customers aren’t buying. With “think aloud” testing you can watch people in your target market speak their thoughts out loud as they try to accomplish common tasks on your website or mobile device.

When you run this kind of test you can see with your own eyes where your users get stuck or have problems.

You just think you know your users.

Remember, the people visiting your website are actual human beings – they’re not “uniques” or “pageviews”. To understand how to make your website better, you need to learn from Morris Benatar: either pretend to always be going out of business, or talk to your customers.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Posted by CraigBradford

If you’re a consultant, you may not realise it, but a large (and difficult) part of your job is to manage people’s attitudes and behaviours. This task is made even more difficult because it is usually most apparent when clients are unhappy or disagree with you. Even the best consultants will have to deal with challenging clients at some point in their career. I want to share some of the things I’ve learnt from my experience so far as a consultant.

I firmly believe that when it comes to keeping clients happy, prevention is better than a cure. Most of the tips I’ve shared look at how to prevent clients from ever becoming a problem, but I also cover some tips to help resolve the problem as quickly as possible if things do go wrong.

1. Communication solves all problems

At Distilled, we have a saying that communication solves all problems. Over the years, I’ve found this to be true. If the problem can’t be solved by communication, it can almost always have been prevented by it. I don’t mean to recommend phoning your client “once a month” as standard, because good communication is a frequent a mix of formal and informal subjects. Don’t just call your clients regarding work; call them on a Monday to see how their weekend was and on a Friday to wish them a good weekend. These little bits of extra effort can make a big difference in the lifetime of a client relationship. As a general rule, I like to speak to my clients at least twice per week and meet face-to-face at least once-per month if possible.

If you have clients abroad, speaking frequently might not always possible, but even so, you should still make the effort — especially if they are a long standing client. For example, I’ve just spent the last two weeks in Cape Town visiting one of my clients. Obviously South Africa is a long way to go, but we’ve been working together for quite some time, and the value we both got from finally meeting face-to-face was invaluable. Lots of the consultants at Distilled have success stories that are sometimes directly related to a turning point in a client relationship as a result of taking them for a beer and getting out of the office to an environment where you can both relax and talk off the record. In general, the more communication, the better. It may feel strange at first, but you can always find an excuse to call a client.

2. Have a genuine care for the success of the business

Communication is closely related to my next point, because care generally comes as a result of regular communication and getting close to a client. If you speak to someone two or three times a week, you get to really know them — not just from a client point of view but what they like, what motivates or demotivates them, and even what they’re up to at the weekend. Hopefully the result of that is that you really want them to do well, and that the success of the business means more that just a job to you. You’ll enjoy your job a lot more if you genuinely care about the success of the business as much as the client does. Anyone that’s been in SEO for a while will know that it’s often not a 9-5 job; quite often, it’s evenings and weekends. Unless you really care, you’ll start to resent working with that client. Reaching this point in a client relationship is invaluable. Let me explain a bit further.

There are always going to be ups and downs with clients, and in general clients, will react in two ways to bad news. They either get angry, shout and scream (usually via email), or say it’s entirely your fault. The second reaction is to pick up the phone and talk about how it can be resolved. If your client knows that you genuinely care about the business, you’re more likely to get the second reaction. It means they are more likely to skip the shouting and pointing fingers part and start trying to find solutions to the problem. They know they don’t need to tell you how bad it is because you’ll also feel the same. Getting to this stage of honesty with a client is rare, but it’s a great place to be. This is what turns retainers into lifetime clients and testimonials.

3. If I do this, will you be happy?

You may recognise the following scenario: you get to the end of the month, you’re happy with the work you’ve delivered, you send the monthly report, and the client is disappointed. While this is a bit annoying, it’s easy to stop it from happening again. At the start of every month, create a plan of what you expect to get finished that month, show it to the client, and ask them, “If I deliver all of the things on this list by the end of the month, will you be happy?” If the answer is no, you have a bigger problem. If the answer is yes, then as long as you deliver what you said you would by the time you said, then it’s less likely they’ll be disappointed. As a side note, the things you say you will deliver should never be results. Only promise things like documents and meetings, and never promise results or outcomes as they are outside of our control and you’re likely setting yourself up for disaster.

4. Document everything

One of the most basic things you should do as a consultant is keep a record of all conversations. After every meeting or phone call, follow up with an email to the client and summarise the main points of the meeting. This is a pretty thankless task 99% of the time, but it can be your most important piece of evidence should the clients record of events ever be different to yours.

5. Never go above your contact

Another common problem you may run into as a consultant is struggling to get things done on the client side. This could be rolling out changes to the site, getting more budget, or just getting some budget in the first place. Whatever it is you are struggling to get done, never try to go above your point of contact to their superior. Not only does this come across as bad manners, it makes your main point of contact look bad to their management. Don’t forget, one of your roles as a consultant is to make your point of contact look good, not the opposite.

6. Provide useful and tailored monthly reports

Let’s be honest — writing monthly reports isn’t fun, and it’s made even worse by the fact that after you spend time writing them, they often don’t get read. However, they’re very important as part of the prevention phase. It’s even more important the closer you are to your client. Even if you speak to your client regularly, you still need to send a summary of what you’ve done every month, as well as the results. Put simply, if you don’t send reports, your clients will forget what value you added that month. For example, I’ve been in the scenario in the past where a client sent me an angry email and questioned the results from that month; I pulled up analytics to show that things were actually going very well. His response was, “Wow, that’s amazing, I had no idea we were doing so well. Unless you constantly remind me that we’re doing well, I’ll continue to moan at you.”

That’s pretty much a direct quote (you know who you are).

He was right; I fell into the trap of thinking that because I spoke to them most days, I didn’t need to send a report. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Use reports to show what you did, what the results were, and get sign off on the next month’s activity. Writing reports also helps to keep you accountable for your own work. By writing at the start of the month what you plan to do and showing it to the client, you’re more likely to get that work completed if you know that you’re going to review it at the end of the month with the client.

7. First mover advantage

Imagine the situation: you go into the office on Monday, only to find your client has dropped for all keywords. What do you do? Tell everyone that if anyone calls, you’re not in? Flee the country? No — you need to step up and call the client before they call you. If you don’t call and try to fix it before the client notices, you’ll end up with an angry client for two reasons: first, because of the drop, and second, they pay you to notice when things go wrong and they noticed (in their eyes) before you did. Always use the first mover advantage and call the client to let them know. It’s not going to be easy, and they might shout and scream, but they’ll appreciate that you noticed it straight away. Tell them the situation and that you already have the team working to find out the cause and find a solution.

The second part of the post focuses on finding a cure when things do go wrong, despite your best attempts to prevent that happening. For the purpose of this post, let’s assume you’ve received an email from an unhappy client, and they’re threatening to leave; let’s also pretend it’s an unjustified complaint, meaning you genuinely think you have provided value and there’s just a misunderstanding. Here are a few tips that have worked for me in the past in resolving the problem:

1. You can’t win an argument

I’ve taken this from How To Win Friends And Influence People, but I’ve found it to be true through life in general, so it stuck with me when I read the book. It’s always my first tip in resolving a conflict with a client. Don’t argue, because you’ll never win and even if you do prove the client wrong, you’ll lose the contract as a result. As Dale Carnegie puts it in the book:

“Why prove to a man he is wrong? Is that going to make him like you? Why not let him save face? He didn’t ask you for your opinion. He didn’t want it. Why argue with him? Always avoid the acute angle.”

Does that mean you need to let clients say whatever they like and walk all over you? Of course not, but you do need to help them see your point of view, not force them to see it otherwise you’ll just get resistance. I typically start with accepting it’s my fault in some way or another. This doesn’t need to mean it’s actually your fault; I usually word it as my fault for not explaining something clearly, or presenting information in an ambiguous way that was easy to misunderstand. Doing so helps to put the client at ease. Clients like to feel that they call the shots, and it makes them more willing to listen to your next point, which hopefully is the answer.

2. Delivery method

In the majority of cases, clients will deliver bad news and complains via email. Regardless of how nasty or challenging a client may seem, people generally don’t like conflict via the phone, and even less in person. Use this to your advantage. It’s too easy to fire off a counter aggressive email rather than pick up the phone; resist the urge to reply by email and try to arrange a meeting instead. I like to respond with something immediately to acknowledge that I’ve received their email but make it clear that there’s been a misunderstanding and that email probably isn’t the best medium to explain. In order of preference, try to respond by:

1. A face-to-face meeting
2. Skype, G+ hangout, or something that you can see the person’s face on
3. A phone call
4. An email

If you are able to arrange a meeting or a phone call, you’ll dramatically increase your chances of coming out with a success story than trying to resolve via email. If you do manage to get a meeting or a phone call, ensure you have your ducks in a row and responses to all the questions the client is likely to have. To help with this, something I’ve found useful is to actually write out an email like you would have responded, but don’t actually send the email. I’ve found this useful in working out exactly what I want to say and to be sure I have all the answers to their questions in a way that makes sense.

3. Disarming honesty

If you’ve messed up, admit it. Nothing says “I’m an idiot” and gets clients angry like coming back with excuses and trying to pretend that it’s not that bad. If you made a mistake, or even if the results just aren’t as good as you were expecting, admit it, your client will appreciate that you’re in this thing together it adds to the genuine care in the business as well if you’re first to go to the client and say you’re disappointed with the results. Otherwise, you’ll have a client that thinks he’s going mad because you see value that they don’t.

4. Know when to say goodbye

Finally, if none of the above is helpful, know when it’s time to say goodbye. Not all client engagements will work out the way you want them to, but it’s important to breakup on good terms. Even if you’re not the right solution for them at the moment, you could be at some point in the future, so take care not to burn your bridges. You never know where your client could end up working in the future.

I hope you’ve found my tips useful. All relationships are diverse, but I’d be interested to hear about any tips you have for dealing with challenging clients. Thanks to Caitlin Krumdieck for letting me pick her brain about previous Distilled clients and adding to the ideas above. Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Posted by Add3.com

No matter what type of product you’re offering, how your sales cycle flows, or what the industry you’re in looks like, there are a many different ways that you can leverage remarketing to target your audience.

In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Brian Rauschenbach and Nora Park share their tips and tactics for remarketing success so that you can turn those visits into conversions!

Have you had remarketing success? Leave your thoughts and experiences in the comments below!

Video Transcription

“Brian: Hello, I’m Brian Rauschenbach and this is Nora Park. We’re with Add3. We’re a search and display network and agency located here in Seattle. We’re here today to talk about remarketing and Google AdWords. We’ve got a couple of examples of some brands that are probably using remarketing and how they’re going after sort of the same user and some of the advanced tactics, and some ideas and suggestions that we have that have worked with some of our clients and to share them with you.

So, why remarketing, Nora? Why is it so important for brands to be remarketing today?

Nora: So there are a lot of reasons why all brands should really be doing a lot of remarketing. Depending on what type of product you’re offering, your sales cycle, the type of industry you’re in, there are a few different ways that you can really leverage remarketing to target your audience.

Kind of the first one, really, the core, basic reason to do it is to get back in front of customers who visited your site and didn’t take the desired action. They didn’t sign up for your free trial or make a purchase on your site.

So that sort of also links into, if you have more of a type of ecommerce site, the really great way to do it is to reengage those customers who actually spent a lot of time on your site, put things in their shopping cart, maybe even got to the payment page, and didn’t hit the Submit button and actually make a completed purchase. You can get back in front of those users with remarketing, and even use some dynamic product feed remarketing and show them specific products that they looked at.

Brian: Yeah. So I’ve seen that with some sites like Levi’s, where I might put a pair of jeans in a shopping cart, and then I abandon the shopping cart and don’t do the purchase, and then come back, like the next day, and I’m just surfing the web, and then I’ll see that pair of jeans still in there inside of a banner.

Nora: Exactly.

Brian: So that’s a dynamic product feed. But it’s a remarketing of that piece.

Nora: Yeah, exactly. It’s going to be really effective.

Another good scenario is to target your existing customers and upsell or cross sell them. So for example, if you’re a software company and you have people who you know have purchased a certain product, based on the way you’ve cookied them and set up your lists, you can show them ads that promote other similar products that somebody who purchased the other product will be likely to buy in tandem, or might also need down the road.

Brian: Okay. These remarketing lists, how is the time piece sensitive? If you have a remarketing list, and you’re like, “I know this person is coming to purchase a product,” and what’s the learning that you can gather from setting up your custom lists with time segments in them?

Nora: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a really great question. A good thing that you should do some testing around is to kind of find out when it’s most effective after that initial purchase, whether it’s 10 days, 20 days, 30 days later, that you can effectively reach that customer. Right away they might say, “You know, I already just gave you some money. I don’t need to make another big software purchase.” But in 30 days, “Well, great, I really like this product. I like this company.” They might be more likely to do that.

Brian: Oh, so it might be like a brand, like a Brenthaven, like I really like their bags. They have a lifetime warranty. I might have just purchased a backpack, but I might be back next month buying an iPad case or whatever.

Nora: Yeah, exactly. So it’s like, great, that kind of leads us into our last one, which is that when you have a really strong brand with really loyal customers, is knowing who those existing customers are, who have made purchases in the past, and being able to reach out to them with other products that you have they might be interested in.

Brian: Okay. So for any of you that might not be using remarketing yet today with your product or brand that you represent, let’s talk a little bit about just setting up campaigns. Where do you find it in the Google AdWords interface, and then what’s your best practices for setting these campaigns up from scratch?

Nora: Yeah, absolutely. It’s pretty simple. Kind of the core is setting up your custom combination lists. So you can go in the AdWords interface to the Audiences section, and that’s where you’ll be able to find the pixels you need to place on your site and then be able to create these lists to segment people based on what pages they’ve visited. So you can add lists based on different products, so if they’ve visited any page related to this certain product, and then you can show them an ad that is aligned with that.

Brian: So the page could be just a URL that’s like the shopping cart URL or the success confirmation page or the thank you confirmation page, if it’s just a sign-up that someone’s looking for.

Nora: Exactly. That’s where you can get really kind of creative and advanced in terms of how you set up the combinations of the list, is to be able to include and exclude people based on how far they got in the cycle. If they did put something in their shopping cart and didn’t reach the confirmation page, you might want to target them separately than somebody who didn’t even put anything in their shopping cart yet.

Brian: So if you have like a subscription-based model for your company and the person has already upgraded, like they’ve upgraded to a Moz Professional account, you don’t want to be following them around and remarketing back to them. So you put them in an exclusion list?

Nora: Exactly.

Brian: Okay.

Nora: That’s another great example. When you have a subscription service, to be able to use those exclusion lists to take out people from the remarketing pool that are already subscribed, based on a visit to, for example, a login page using that URL.

Brian: Okay. Great. Then talk to us a little about user segmentation and the duration thing again, why that’s so important.

Nora: Yeah. That one’s important too. You may have some insight already into the sales cycle for your product. So basically, if somebody visits your site, it might take a consideration time of one week up to a month, depending on what it is, before they are actually ready to make a purchase. So you can kind of start and use that as how long you want to set the duration of your cookie pool.

Brian: So these would be good for clients or brands that have, basically, a free trial maybe, and then to upgrade the free trial to a paid trial.

Nora: Exactly.

Brian: Okay.

Nora: At the end of that 30 days, or whatever it is. But another great way to do it is just to set up a test and kind of do increments of 10 days, where you give those people, you treat them differently, so you can just see how they act if you target them within 10 days after they first visited your site, within 20 days, and within 30 days.

Brian: Okay. So these are the actual user list pools that you’re doing these time segments?

Nora: Exactly.

Brian: Your total cookie pool might be 30,000 users. So after 10 days, you’re cutting off remarketing to those people, and then you go into a 10 to 20-day window and then a 20 to 30.

Nora: Exactly.

Brian: Then you’re looking at those as three different lists and their effective CPA that they might be achieving.

Nora: Yeah.

Brian: Okay.

Nora: Exactly. So you kind of get those learnings, and then you can start to use some custom messaging. Instead of just saying, the people after 10 days didn’t convert as well, we’ll give them a different message and see if you can get them to convert as well, whether you’re using a promotion code with an expiration date that you put directly in the ad, or offering a higher discount. Or a third example would be . . .

Brian: Well, we’ve got a couple of examples up here. So the discounted example is if you’re booking a flight. This example that we’ve drawn out here is some guys that are planning a mancation to Alaska. So they come in. Someone’s been to Alaska Airlines, and they’re going to pick up a cookie there. Then, a day later, they might be getting a leader board banner that’s targeted to them for a cheaper flight up to Alaska. Then that person’s also looking to get some outdoor gear for that trip, and REI might hit them a couple of days later with a marketing message around free shipping. So it’s basically a promo, one that’s a little bit more time delayed.

Then Airbnb might have a call to action that’s like, “Are you still looking for a cabin to rent?” I think a lot of those, if you make those messages custom, and don’t repurpose what you’re running in your existing AdWords campaigns, but understand the audience that you’re actually remarketing back to these people. They’ve been to your website. So you don’t need to really talk about the brand too much. But give them a promo or a time-sensitive call to action or something that’s like a question.

Nora: Exactly.

Brian: Going back to the user segmentation duration thing. I found that, when you ask this to a client a lot of times, like, “What’s sort of your sweet spot of when your person converts,” this is also a way that, if your brand doesn’t really know what that is, you could get the learnings from this.

Nora: Yeah, exactly. It will definitely give you a good idea of where that sweet spot is. Another thing, too, is how many times those people see those ads. So you can set frequency caps, as well as set up the duration settings to see how effective it is to show them 10 ads a day versus 10 ads a month.

Brian: Oh, so there’s a good segue there. After you’ve had your remarketing campaign up and everything is just chugging away, what are some tactics that you’ve sort of used to enhance the remarketing strategy with all this learning that you’re gaining, from setting up custom combination lists to time-delayed market segmentation? What have you been doing to sort of keep the meter going? Because it seems like the remarketing comes out really strong after you’re learning, and then it sort of has a little tail.

Nora: Yeah. With any AdWords campaign, it’s always important to kind of keep up with the marketplace. So optimizing your bids is sort of standard. But something else, the really great thing Google provides, is looking at the managed placement, so the actual list of the sites that your ad showed up on and the performance by each of those sites, so you can find that maybe there are 20 sites . . .

Brian: Maybe some pockets.

Nora: Yeah. Either a category of sites or just specific sites that you can bid higher on that will allow your ad to show in more prominent positions, potentially more above the fold, and just more frequently.

Brian: Then, on sort of the bid management side of things, I’ve seen some different market or duration list segments where I see if you’ve run 10, 20, 30, 40 day segments, sometimes they’ll pause out, like the 30 or 40, and then really focus in on the ones that are very optimal. Then you mentioned frequency caps. What’s a good generic setting for frequency caps, given that some of these ads might appear below the fold, and so even if you’re winning in this auction against three different brands, what should you have your frequency cap set to?

Nora: Generally, let some of the initial data kind of show you where that drop-off is. You actually can see in Google, after how many impressions in a given week, where your click-through rate starts to drop off or your conversion rate starts to drop off. I’ve typically seen that it’s around eight a week.

Brian: Eight a week. Okay. That’s good to know. So we talked a little bit about some Google beta programs that are out there. There are a couple other ones that we’re testing with different clients that are in different verticals, so it makes sense for them. Can you talk about any of those?

Nora: Yeah. The one I think I’m most excited about that we’ve started to test and see some great success with is the search companion beta. What that does is it enables you to remarket to people who haven’t necessarily been to your site. So you choose keywords that you want to retarget. So anybody who’s searched for those keywords on Google, then when they are on sites that are part of the Google Display Network and accept AdSense ads, then you can get in front of them that way.

Brian: So if you were brand like REI and someone did a search for hiking shoes, and then they visited the REI website, can then one of their competitors, like an outdoor emporium or, something like that, go after that user even though they didn’t even visit the site?

Nora: Yeah, absolutely.

Brian: Okay.

Nora: So they would just say anybody who searches for hiking shoes, we want to be able to remarket to them.

Brian: Okay. So that’s a pretty powerful beta that’s out. How about anything in YouTube? Have you done any work with their network?

Nora: Yeah. That’s another great opportunity, that Google allows you to kind of repurpose your remarketing list and show YouTube ads, in-stream ads. It’s within the same log-in account, and they kind of talk to each other. You can set up a campaign and use that same list of people.

Brian: So this is the same custom combination list, but just in YouTube.

Nora: Exactly. Exactly.

Brian: So you don’t have to just throw impressions away, basically.

Nora: Yeah. So it makes it really targeted.

Brian: Well, cool. Well, we’ve been doing a lot of discovery with remarketing here this last year and paying close attention to it, because all these new beta programs are coming out. Do you think that there’s going to be an end to this?

Nora: Probably not.

Brian: This is our industry crack we have right now. What do you think is going to be on the horizon with Google?

Nora: I’m sure more like this. With traditional remarketing, you’re sort of capped in terms of how much you can grow just based on the visits you’re getting to the site in a given month. Something like the search companion beta really opens that up to a much larger population of available impressions. It just makes the marketplace that much bigger. So I’m sure that they’ll come up with more things along the same lines.

Brian: We forgot to mention that, in order to sort of participate in this universe, you do need to have content running, right?

Nora: Yeah, absolutely. That’s what the campaign setting is.

Brian: So this used to be one of those check boxes that you used to leave unchecked, but now it’s like the Google Content Network or the Google Display network, it’s pretty big now, right? Quality’s really gone up on it.

Nora: Yeah, absolutely. There are so many different ways you can target the Google Network. Remarketing is just one of them. But it’s sort of part of the same thing, where you can target on the Google Display Network by keyword content, categories, and interests as well.

Brian: Then if you didn’t have the resources to get banner creative, this stuff can also just be contextual only, right?

Nora: Yeah. You can use text ads. Actually, Google has a really cool thing called the Google Display Ad Builder, and they will just kind of take images from your site and put banners together themselves. I’ve actually used that, and they look really great. It’s a free and effective way for some clients that might not have the resources to get their ads out there.

Brian: I was going to say that kind of sounds a little scary, if they’re just grabbing images from your site.

Nora: Well, you get to see them. You have a lot of choices in terms of the layout and the language, and they actually look great. I don’t know how they pick the right images, but from what I’ve seen, they do a really good job.

Brian: Okay, cool. Well, I think that sort of wraps up our segment on remarketing. We’ll be online listening and replying back to any commentary or any questions that you might have. Thanks.

Nora:  Thank you.”

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Posted by Erica McGillivray

You may have heard the rumor that MozCon 2013 tickets are on sale! I’m pleased to announce that this year’s MozCon Command Crew is busy planning the best MozCon yet.

Launch your inbound marketing skills into outer space by attending this year’s MozCon, July 8th-10th at the WA State Convention Center! This year, we have 400 early bird tickets, which are flying out the door faster than you can say “Roger Mozbot.” Snag yours now!

Early Bird $999 $799 for SEOmoz PRO members
Early Bird $1499 $1299 for SEOmoz non-PRO members

Bonus! This year your ticket price includes MozCon 2013 videos.

For three days, we bring you amazing, future-thinking content from industry leaders, deep diving into SEO, social media, marketing analytics, content strategy, data science, and so much more. See who’s coming to speak and share their expertise with you. You’re sure to come back home with a universe’s worth of actionable knowledge to start implementing. Get a sample of MozCon caliber speakers by watching Wil Reynolds’ talk on #RCS from MozCon 2012. 

You’ll rub elbows with the brightest minds in the industry. (Hint: you’re one of them!) Whether you’re posing with Roger for photos; eating bacon while chatting with a speaker; meeting other community members from all over the world; or chilling with the Mozzers who make the magic happen, you’ll have an out-of-the-world time.

For those of you who’ve attended MozCons in the past, you might’ve noticed that we’ve changed venue to the WA State Convention Center in downtown Seattle. That’s right — we outgrew our last venue with 850 attendees in 2012. We’re expecting up to 1,200 community members, plus around 150 Mozzers and various crew, for MozCon 2013!

Yes, we’re already working with our new venue to get Wi-Fi that actually works. Leave your MiFis at home!

We only expect MozCon to become even more amazing!

For 2013, we’ve secured MozCon attendees deals in two fabulous hotels within blocks of the WA State Convention Center.

Hotels:

Grand Hyatt Seattle
721 Pine Street
Seattle, Washington 98101

Hyatt at Olive 8
1635 8th Avenue
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Hotels come with complimentary wifi, and for those of you driving in, we’ve gotten parking deals to save you some money.

You’ll be able to easily walk from your hotel to MozCon and back again in this relatively safe neighborhood. Not to mention, there’s tons of food and shopping, and it’s also within walking distance of the MozPlex and Pike Place Market. (Stay tuned for more information about office tours.) Plus, everything’s right by Seattle’s light rail, which gives you easy access to and from the airport. No need for a rental car or an expensive taxi!

If you aren’t already dreaming of Seattle, browse Rand’s killer list of restaurants and bars and even more restaurant, sightseeing, and shopping recommendations. Did you know there’s a cupcake shop across the street from the MozPlex? And pay attention to the 15 things you should know about Seattle. We’ve got a haunted underground, the weird park featured in 10 Things I Hate About You, a Dalek inside a Frank Garrity building, and 1,030,000 search results for “hipster bar Seattle.”

Our community rocks. We can’t wait to meet you face-to-face. See you in July!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!