Marketing Advice That Matters
If you have an online business and run pay-per-click advertisements to promote it, you need to be vigilant about preventing click fraud. This type of illegal activity can waste your advertising budget and prevent you from getting the return on investment that you deserve. Fortunately, there are various ways of click fraud detection, and you can use these to ensure that your PPC advertisements reach your target customers.
What is click fraud?
Click fraud is the illegal activity of generating fraudulent clicks that business competitors, ad publishers, and fraud rings engage in to exploit online advertisers. The fraudulent clicks happen with pay-per-click advertisements, and generally, individuals, software programs, or bots are responsible for generating them. Such clicks drive up advertising costs to the detriment of the advertisers.
Additionally, since the clicks are not by real visitors, they lower conversion rates. They also mess up the user data and may cause many companies to make wrong business decisions due to the skewed information available. This type of click fraud can have long-term repercussions on businesses, and that is why it is necessary to use various click fraud detection techniques to prevent it.
What to do to prevent click fraud?
You may find the following click fraud detection techniques helpful for preventing click fraud with your PPC campaigns:
Advertise on reputable websites: When you advertise on websites, the website gets a percentage of what you are paying Google for each ad click. So, if there are more clicks, the website will get higher revenue. That has led some websites to engage in click fraud. When you advertise with trustworthy people and monitor user activities regularly, you may be able to prevent click fraud.
Use industry-specific keywords: It can help if you research and use industry-specific, specialized keywords and phrases that your business competitors have not yet targeted. You can also make sure that your ad copy, landing pages, and ad format are unique and of the sort that will appeal to your target customers. That can increase the chances of your advertisements reaching real customers and increase your conversion rates.
Monitor user behavior: You can detect suspicious activities by regularly monitoring user behavior. For instance, you can check if you are getting too many clicks from the same IP address and whether the user is generating the clicks using the same device, internet browser, and software. You can check if there are too many click timestamps (a log of people clicking on your advertisements and visiting your website) and comparatively negligible action timestamps (a record of the actions visitors took on your website). If you find these issues, it might point to click fraud. You can then exclude the suspicious IP addresses with the IP exclusion feature that Google Ads offers. It is possible to exclude up to 500 IP addresses per PPC campaign. If the fraudulent clicks come from a specific geographic location, you can exclude the postcode.
Invest in click fraud prevention software: Since there are various options in click fraud prevention software, you may be able to find one that suits your budget. This type of software can protect your Google Ads account from unwanted and wasteful ad clicks by allowing you to control your paid traffic. It can automatically detect and block IP addresses using the same device, flagged click sources, VPN IPs, and different level bots, spiders, spyware, and malware.
Remarket PPC campaigns: When you remarket your PPC campaign, you target people with a record of having visited your website before and purchased or downloaded your products or services. Since only these targeted customers will see your advertisements, the fraudsters will be left out automatically. That can protect you from unwanted clicks on your ads.
Use the Google Traffic Quality program: This program offers one of the best-automated click fraud detection methods available. With the help of machine learning and complex algorithms, the automated system detects fraudulent clicks in real-time. Google will not charge you for these clicks, and the program will take immediate measures to block the click sources. Additionally, you will get second-level protection from the regular traffic monitoring and analysis that the Traffic Quality program team will undertake to detect and block suspicious clicks.
Advertising and marketing often take up significant portions of a business’ budget each year and they should. Effectively communicating a company’s brand is essential for the growth of any organization. How the advertising and marketing budget is spent makes a huge impact on the future of a company. Hiring one of the best advertising agencies in LA ensures that each dollar spent is going to get the best returns possible.
What Exactly do Advertising Agencies Do?
Smaller businesses commonly handle their own marketing and advertising needs, but in order to compete in the larger market it is important to hire professionals. The scope of services available at advertising agencies in LA has changed over the years. They used to be charged with creating campaigns for print, television, and/or radio and ensuring excellent placement on these platforms. These days, advertising agencies can do all of this and much more, including:
• Develop a cohesive brand message across all platforms
• Produce high-level design work
• Create targeted advertising campaigns designed specifically for their clients
• Include all forms of digital marketing into their scope of service including social media, web design, and online ad placement.
• Provide detailed data analytics that tracks consumer behavior and allows for fine-tuning of digital ad campaigns
• Provide long-term brand and messaging planning or one-off campaign assistance
The Four Benefits of Hiring the Best Advertising Agencies in LA
Since advertising agencies are responsible for so many different aspects of a company’s outward facing brand, it is essential to hire the best. Working with one of the elite advertising agencies in LA can almost guarantee a brand’s growth.
There are a few key benefits of working with the best:
1) Individualized Marketing Strategy
The best advertising agencies in LA employ exceptional teams of highly regarded experts in a variety of fields. These talented individuals come together to create something truly extraordinary for their clients. Elite agencies work hard to understand their clients’ businesses, goals, strengths, weaknesses, and long-term plans. They then research the brand’s audience, where they would like to grow that audience, and how to reach them. The best advertising agencies do not use cookie cutter solutions. Each client is provided with a unique plan that has been specifically developed for that company.
2) Exceptional Plan Execution
The unique plan that was developed by the ad agency is then followed with incredible execution. The best advertising agencies get to their level because of their ability to outperform any other firm. They produce content and results that often astound their clients (and their competition).
3) Extensive Data Analysis
The backbone behind all of the best advertising agencies in LA are their data analytic departments. High-level data analysis allows ad agencies to know exactly where to find new customers and how to appeal to them. Understanding the data also allows for tweaks and changes throughout an ad campaign to ensure that each advertising dollar is getting the highest possible return on investment.
4) Full-Service, Hands-on Approach
When a company works with one of the best advertising agencies in LA, they are not just ordering an ad campaign and waiting for delivery. The advertising agencies are generally very hands-on. They will need to know everything they can about a company and how their work is helping to grow that business.
Choosing the Best Agency
There are advertising agencies in LA on practically every street. The market is flooded. There are only a few exceptional ad agencies, though. The trick is to find the right advertising agency for a business’ unique needs. The fit has to be just right.
The best advertising agency teams have exceptional communication skills. They should be able to easily understand where a company is coming from and where they want to go. They should also be open to questions and suggestions. The process should be hassle-free for the client.
Working with an advertising agency should be a positive experience for an organization. Finding the right fit can take some time, but the effort will be well worth it. Companies that work with the best advertising agencies in LA get access to a talented pool of experts who all work together in order to help organizations succeed. To get the most out of the ad budget, businesses should work with the best possible ad agency that they can afford.
To begin with, let us answer the question that may have brought you here. Is video marketing worth it? Yes, it is. Every smart business is hiring a video marketing agency. Video marketing is a versatile and profitable digital marketing tool. Here are a few compelling reasons why it is a clever choice for you to consider video marketing.
1. Videos boost conversion and sales
A report states that adding a product video on your landing page can increase conversions by 80%. That is a whole lot of potential income! Furthermore, studies have pointed out that 74% of users who watched an explainer video about a product or service subsequently bought it. These statistics themselves should tempt you to look up a ‘video marketing agency near me’
If you give it enough food for thought, it is not surprising that videos are highly effective. Vision is a human’s most dominant sense. Most information transmitted to our brain is visual. If mere images can boost engagement (as exemplified in the millions of social media posts), imagine the scope and of the impact of moving images.
2. Videos translate in high ROI
Return on investment is the fuel of every business. Now, if we tell you that 83% of businesses confirmed that videos provide a good return on investment, would you not want to join the bandwagon? Granted that video production is not easy or cheap, yet it pays off big time. Besides, video editing tools are improving as you read, offering professional results in affordable rates. Additionally, smartphones in the market are proving to be useful for shooting videos too. Now, this is important because it is more important for the content of your videos to be than for their quality to be top-notch. Essentially, you don’t need high-end equipment; you need a great idea.
3. Videos build trust
The entire concept of content marketing is to provide information in an interesting manner to the people who need it the most. One cannot practice this notion without building trust and long-term relationships with your target audience. Videos serve this purpose rightfully. Video content, if produced smartly and under the supervision of a video marketing agency, engages viewers and ignites emotions in them.
Furthermore, although e-commerce has sky rocketed and brands are using platforms on the Internet to promote their products, there are still some folks who are skeptical about buying products and services off the internet. They fear fraudulent transactions and being cheated on. However, video marketing bridges this gap. It effectively presents your products in a conversational form. If you don’t believe this, hear it from the consumers directly. Fifty-seven percent of consumers have said that videos gave them more confidence to purchase online.
4. Search engines love videos
Videos enable people to spend more time on a website. Longer exposure builds trust and signals search engines that your site has good content.
Did you know that your business is 53 times more likely to show up first on a search engine if you have a video embedded on your website?
However, simply uploading a video will not be sufficient. You will need to optimize your videos on for SEO. Write interesting titles and descriptions; provide links that redirect the viewer to your website, products, and services. End videos with impactful calls-to-actions, which clearly state the next step in the course; explore interactive videos, to encourage actions even more. If you find your plate full with all these demands, you can consider hiring a video marketing agency.
5. Videos engage even the most difficult buyers
With dwindling attention spans, long product descriptions are turning to prove futile. However, this change has only opened the doors for video content. The modern consumer would like nothing more than a product in action. Imagine a lazy consumer, video marketing works perfectly well to turn them into leads.
In summation,
Video marketing is now becoming increasingly affordable; hence, more widespread. If your brand does not join the bandwagon, some other will, reaping the insanely large benefits of video marketing. Lookup for a video marketing agency and get going.
There are many video production companies out there to create video assets for your organization. But finding the right company offering quality video production service Miami is hard.
You may have very little subject matter expertise and experience in video production. So, it’s pretty evident that you will find it difficult to make the right decision.
If you have never gone through the process before, or even if you have, it can still be challenging to evaluate proposals from production agencies.
How will you measure positive return on investment (ROI)?
How would you know if you got the correct value for their price?
So, to make your job easier, we have listed down some questions that you should ask every production agency applied for to produce videos for your business.
#1 How Long Have You Been in the Industry?
Asking this question will help you determine if the agency offering video production service in Miami has enough experience and competence.
The question also will help you get an idea of the time required in the creative process.
Ideally, the longer a business has been around, the higher the chances of producing a quality end product. Business longevity also means the agency in question had a higher opportunity to serve more clients.
However, longevity doesn’t always guarantee competence. You may come across video production companies claiming 25+ years of experience but never explain how they calculated it.
Is that the combined amount of years between the team? Or is that the years of experience of the promoter?
Do not hesitate to ask for an explanation if you feel there is a lack of clarity.
#2 What Type of Videos Do You Produce?
You may find some video production companies specialize in niche industries while others are more generalists. So, do not forget to ask if the company offering video production service in Miami has experience in your industry segment or has made a video like your concept before.
The reason you need to ask this question is to ensure what the agency does fits your requirements.
#3 How Do You Concept Ideas?
Asking this question would help both parties understand each other’s working processes and culture and if the agency works more collaboratively or not.
You should expect great ideas because that’s what you would pay for. The agency should conceptualize a few rough ideas in real-time quickly after a concept is pitched.
If they cannot, then there could be two reasons. They are either unclear on what you want to convey, or they don’t understand your business and market.
#4 Can You Share a Successful Case Study of a Past Client?
Asking this question may catch video production agencies off guard, so you should be clear enough why you are asking.
An agency can not release any information if it was a direct revenue goal. They can, however, say general assumptions such as their videos increased their client’s website traffic by 300% in 2 months.
Long story short, the agency should be able to show the ability to prove revenue.
It’s not hard to list vanity metric wins, such as the video got over 200k views. That’s a significant number if the goal was awareness.
But if your objective is lead generation, you should ask how many leads those 200k views generated. If you find the results stated are vague, ask more profound qualifying questions.
#5 How Much Would My Videos Cost and Why?
This question is quite obvious. Understanding why video production companies charge what they do is crucial before you judge whether the price is worth it or not. How an agency offering video production service in Miami outlines their pricing speaks volumes to how process-oriented they are.
If they ask for a flat fee of, let’s say, $20k and simply tell you that it costs this much because they are worth it, that’s a red flag.
The agency should tell you why they arrived at the price they did. They should break the project into three categories: pre-production, filming, and post-production. Also, the agency should give you itemized pricing so that you are well aware of where your investment goes.
So, do you have any questions?
There are various strategies for lead generation that are followed by customer conversion and retention. The dynamic sales world has two kinds of methods: sales funnel and lifecycle marketing or customer journey. As a lifecycle marketing agency will tell you, these strategies have unique goals and structures of their own. This guest blog intends to reflect on the two strategies and their similarities and differences. After reading this article, we assure you that you will gain a better understanding of these models so you can decide which is best for nurturing leads.
Sales Funnel
The sales funnel method has a fundamental principle that works by factoring in a customer’s mental makeup from the initial stage, piqued interest in a brand, researching the brand, and the final call-to-action for making a purchase. The end goal of the sales funnel method is to boost customer conversion and revenue.
Companies review the analytics at each stage of the funnel to plan their annual budgets and determine which ideas are paying off.
Before choosing between a sales funnel and the customer journey marketing model, it helps to know the facts. So here’s how the stages of the sales funnel unfold, involving the four points of customer contact, generally known as AIDA.
Awareness: Here, the customer discovers the brand, and their interest is piqued. The awareness stage is where you need to educate them. Marketing strategies, such as paid advertising, social media marketing, SEO, and organic search engine results, play a role in subtle lead generation.
Research: The research stage of the funnel provides your future consumer with the required information to learn about your company. Several tools, such as FAQs, custom content, live videos, apps, and images help navigate and ultimately create interest in your brand.
Decision-making: Every customer needs a little nudge from time to time to make a final decision to purchase a service or product from your business. Customers are paying extra attention to what you have to offer. As a result, lead generation at this stage involves free trials, exclusive offers, and incentives.
Action: Prospects make it to the final portion of the funnel and become customers. Your next task is to convert them into loyal and repeating customers by renewing interest in them.
Lifecycle marketing
Lifecycle marketing, or customer journey marketing, covers the business’s outreach, the customer’s experience from brand discovery to making a final purchase, and the retention of those leads. Similar to a sales funnel, lifecycle marketing has distinct stages to achieve targeted goals for a brand.
Lifecycle marketing agency creates long-term returning customers, and in turn, fosters brand loyalty. This model helps brands revamp their products and services according to a customer’s needs. A lifecycle marketing agency will support brands from the initial phase to the end.
Gain a thorough understanding of the marketing model of customer journey by going through the stages mentioned below.
Awareness: The customer discovers your brand and has the interest to learn more. Lead magnets and high-quality content will ensure that the future customer receives the necessary information that will turn them into a potential lead. Your content must be value-focused and less aggressive because leads can easily get turned off by a pushy sales pitch.
Intent: Marketing efforts aim to make customer interaction through live chat or video chat using different applications. This appears more informal and human and thus reduces the time spent by your marketing teams. Make sure to use strong and clear CTAs, webinars, client success stories, and lead magnets. This stage combines the “research” and “decision-making” stages of the sales funnel method.
Decision: Based on your brand’s hard work displayed in the previous stages, the customer is finally ready to make a purchase. It’s best for lifecycle marketers to encourage customer feedback on third-party websites to engage these new customers, understand their likes and preferences, and answer questions related to your products.
Loyalty: This stage focuses on retaining customers and converting them to brand advocates. Lifecycle marketing strategy is more interested in a customer’s overall experience based on their trust and loyalty. Regular follow-up emails, thank you cards, email marketing, and exclusive access to new services will keep the customer experience fresh to build a strong and successful business.
Choosing the right support: a lifecycle marketing agency can help
The sales funnel appears deceptive, dishonest, and will not guarantee long-term customers. It’s more focused on repeated purchases rather than the customer itself. Modern customers have way more information at their fingertips and require much more than just a sales pitch. Lifecycle marketing is not easy, which is why you should choose an excellent lifecycle marketing agency.
Whether you’re a young business just starting out or an established brand looking to expand your advertising, hiring an ad agency can be a fantastic investment for your business. However simple it is to just hit ad agency near me into your search engine, it’s worth the time to ask the right questions and find the advertising agency in Austin that will get the best results for you and your brand. Don’t be afraid to talk to prospective agencies very clearly on some details.
Strategy
What is this “ad agency near me” that you’ve searched up hoping to do for you? And how? What kind of plans are they planning to use? Your advertising agency in Austin should have a custom strategy based on knowledge of your company and clients.
There are many online marketing tools that your ad agency could take advantage of, and they should have specific examples for you. Social media ads or promotions, email lists and newsletters, video marketing…the “ad agency near me” for you should definitely have a comprehensive plan for your brand’s online presence.
Timelines
Marketing results are almost never felt overnight, but it’s not unreasonable to expect a timeline proposal of when the advertising agency in Austin will deliver some effect. At the same time, be suspicious of timelines that seem too quick or too long for your business’s tastes. A too quick timeline could indicate that this agency is either not doing very well or is inexperienced, while a far too lengthy timeline could suggest they plan to string you along and not deliver on their promises.
An ad agency’s ability to meet deadlines can be absolutely critical to a brand launch. If your products hit the store shelves but you can’t advertise it to your clients, how are they going to know to come buy them? It’s an important part of marketing, and not delivering on products can result in lost sales, which is the exact opposite of what you want for your business. You should be able to trust your advertising agency in Austin to be there when they say they will.
Results
At the end of the day, the overall goal of marketing is to increase sales, and your “ad agency near me” needs to be able to make that happen. Advertising agency in Austin should be able to point to statistics and numerical results that prove their methods, strategies, and tactics in advertising can produce results. Look into what industries they have experience advertising for and make sure yours is on the list.
Transparency
Partnering with an advertising agency in Austin can leave some people apprehensive because contracts can, at times, be nebulous and unclear. Read over your contract documents and be sure that you know what you are agreeing to. What might constitute any overtime or additional charges to you and your company? What are the terms of the contract regarding each party’s responsibilities to each other? Being clear about what you expect your “ad agency near me” to do for you up front leaves less room for misunderstandings and problems later on in your working relationship.
Their “About Me” Section
Get to know your “ad agency near me” a bit. Find out a bit more and ask how their team operates on a project. Be aware that small firms might not have a wide range of experience and capabilities, or they may have a longer turnaround on campaign timelines, but they may also be able to give you a more comfortable personal customer treatment as a result. A larger corporation may bring many resources to the table, but conversely might not see your business as an important client.
When you’re going to pair up with an advertising agency in Austin, it’s probably best to pick someone whose business style and pacing matches your own. Finding a good fit can be incredibly important. Hiring an agency is more than just an investment in your company; it’s really a lot of trust. Trusting someone else to represent your business’s name, brand, and reputation can be a very difficult decision, so go with your instincts and work with someone that will really be on your team.
It is significant to build your brand image deliberately and thoughtfully. You can never establish your company successfully by uploading a simple logo and writing some content on different social media platforms. To set up a real identity, companies have to put in a lot of effort and time. Most of the time, a business owner does not have the required time and skip over the research and identification of the competitors.
Missing this segment will be the biggest mistake that an owner makes. However, if you consult with one of the best and professional branding agencies in Atlanta, you can avoid these mistakes and help your business to expand. In this article, we have shared the primary mistakes you make, and a branding agency will help you in avoiding them.
Fail to do the competitive research
Competitor research is especially significant if you are new in the industry. Researching thoroughly about your competitor will assist you in understanding what others are doing, where they have failed or succeeded, and in which segment your brand will give you an advantage.
If you skip this part, you will not be able to judge the competitors correctly and will end up copying the tactics of others without truly understanding them. The branding agency researches the targeted audiences, services, websites, products, and social media platforms and helps you ignore the above mistakes.
Taking Feedback from the wrong people
Based on the services or products you will sell in the market, you need to take feedback from the correct sources. But if you limit your sources to positive reviews, you cannot measure or set up an appropriate goal. Family members, relatives, friends, and employees will always give you a positive review, no matter how the product or service is. So do not accept reviews from them. Any reputed branding agency will prevent you from making such a mistake and consider only the review from the good sites and social media channels.
Inconsistency
Brand consistency includes a massive impact on any business. Consistency will assist you in building loyalty, credibility, and familiarity. That is why you need to be consistent with the personality, communication, promotion, and interaction that you should establish with your targeted audience.
Do not know about the targeted audience
Before you start pitching or selling anything, you need to understand and know what kind of audiences you are dealing with. You need to understand their expectations, demands, and the type of products or services they prefer. The branding agencies help you in this process to find the target audience and make the branding of your company much easier.
Branding is not only about logo designing
The branding of a service or product is not just about a tagline or a logo. Branding includes everything that a company represents, including the content style and the voice you will create. You can find your targeted audience when you have a distinct style and a competitive advantage.
Some organizations rebrand their logo by spending thousands of money without assessing the brand assets. For profitable e-commerce branding, the agencies will concentrate more on the customer service team, offline and online advertisement, competitive pricing, and product or service quality.
Do not concentrate on the first impressions
There is no reason to get to an audience before establishing the brand entirely. Branding is one of the first steps to enter the marketplace, and you should prioritize it before making any money. The packaging design of the product leaves the first impression on the customer about your brand.
Do not always remain in a hurry to change the packaging of the products. It will cost you a fortune, and if the customers reject the packaging, you have to incur a huge loss. A branding agency will stop you from making this mistake and primarily focuses on the first impression of the company on the customers.
No presence of any Plan B
Managing a brand for a product or a service is not easy, but you have to understand that your company is more than that. Success is dependent on the way you might shape the customer experience. Thus, always have an alternate plan for your business.
