How to Increase Conversion Rates with Google Shopping Feeds

If you sell tangible products online, you already know how crucial Google Shopping feeds can be. But did you know that with just a few simple tweaks, you can greatly improve your products' visibility in shopping feeds and thus get your products viewed (and possibly purchased) by more customers – thereby increasing your conversion rate?

And perhaps the best part is that it doesn't require any deep development or programming experience. Ready to learn how? Let's take a closer look.

Improving Your Feed with Attributes

According to a report recently released by ROI Revolution, simply having a shopping feed is no longer enough. Your feed is your product's packaging in a world where customers can't always try it on or feel it. From their point of view, they're putting themselves at a huge risk simply by choosing to potentially do business with you. A quality feed can show them that you're just as invested in their satisfaction as they are.

A properly optimized feed means that you don't just have more data than anyone else, but that your data is better quality.

Your individual product attributes can make a significant impact, so taking the time to do them properly can be the difference between “just browsing” and “I have to have that”. Of course, many merchants settle for filling the basics – title, description and keywords – with whatever's on the label.

But even doing the bare minimum is doing a huge disservice to your product and sabotaging it before it even gets out of the gate.

So let's look at how to properly optimize those points before moving on to the more technical aspects (it will be painless, I promise).

Title – Unless you're the manufacturer of the product itself, don't waste time or space putting in your company name. Customers don't care. Use words that they would use when searching for the product, including the brand. Look at these shopping ads for the Samsung Galaxy S6 smart phone:

Image Source: Whoopapp

Here, the customer is most likely to search the exact brand and model – Samsung Galaxy S6. Since you only have 70 characters, it pays to prioritize since only 25 of those show in the feed. So prioritization goes Brand Name > Exact Type of Product > Features/Characteristics – so the full product listing ad might read “Samsung Galaxy S6 Android Smartphone 4G”

Description – Here it pays to look at your product from the perspective of the customer again. Since they are likely only scanning quickly to find a match, it's a good idea to make your description as visually digestible and helpful as possible.  This is a great place to put features that may not have fit in the title. Here, you want to do your best to answer any questions a customer may have about a product before they click.

Keywords – this is the perfect opportunity to dig deep into those reports and see which words your customers are using to find your product in the first place. Look at the terms that convert best and use those in your description where applicable.

Make Optional Attributes Part of Your Feed

Oftentimes, retailers mistakenly assume that if an attribute is optional, it isn't necessary. But according to the ROI Revolution Google Shopping report, just because it's optional doesn't mean you shouldn't include it anyway.

Google has a quality score for feeds – and while we don't know the “secret sauce” of what makes up the algorithm, we do know that products which have all their information complete will have a better quality score than those who do not.  And according to ROI Revolution, certain optional attributes can help further optimize your feed and improve its performance and quality score.

The Alphabet Soup of UPCs, MPNs and Brands

The Universal Product Code, Manufacturer Product Number and brand of your items won't likely be searched for by customers. They will, however, be used by Google to group and optionally compare products, like the cookware below:

Image Source: ROI Revolution Google Shopping Feeds report

Here you can see that even big-name brands like Macys, Sur La Table and Bloomingdales haven't exactly done their homework on optimizing their product feeds. But as the report notes, take a look at Austin Kayak. Not only is it a Google Trusted store, which is an added bonus, but it also highlights their offer of free shipping and no sales tax.

You'd be forgiven for cringing when the thought of being stacked up there with your competition comes to mind. But Google Shopping calculates sales tax and shipping as part of the total – found in the “Total Cost” column. Businesses which offer free shipping and no tax automatically become the lowest price – even if they hadn't highlighted their offer

Now the question becomes, can Google find your products and accurately compare them with others in the same price/feature range? Not if you haven't taken the time to fill in the alphabet soup of brand, UPC and MPNs.

Size (And Color, and Material) Matter

Merchants are reluctant to input their products' sizes into their Google shopping feed because they feel like they have to painstakingly measure things like width, height and depth. But at this stage in the shopping experience, customers only need to know the basics.  Consider these examples from the report. Size is important on all of them, but only general information is there for filtering purposes.

Image Source: ROI Revolution Google Shopping Feeds report

The same applies to color. Even if one of your products is “charcoal grey” and the other is “ash grey”, customers are likely going to simply look for “grey” and filter their choices accordingly;  not to mention that even Google's filtering options tilt toward the very basic:

Image Source: ROI Revolution Google Shopping Feeds report

Material is another matter. Like size, you don't have to be specific. As the report notes, customers aren't going to care (in the beginning) about your 90% organic cotton blend when they're simply searching for “cotton”.

There are many other attributes you can set that will greatly enhance your product's performance (and therefore its sales and conversions) in your feed, including custom labels. To learn precisely how to set these, you're encouraged to download the official report from ROI Revolution's website (email required).

Are You Using Your Google Shopping Feed to the Fullest?

It can seem overwhelming to dive head-first into the details of your shopping feed, but as this report has shown, it's the little things that matter most. Whether you have 5 products or 5,000, taking the time to submit them right can make all the difference in search, product listing ads and paid ads.

Are you using Google shopping feeds for your own products? How has adding attributes improved your products' performance overall? Share your triumphs with us in the comments below and let us know your thoughts!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today! Follow @sherice on Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+ for more articles like this!

How to Make Analytics Work for Your Videos

When the word “analytics” comes up, most content owners immediately gravitate toward viewership counts. However, though views are important, they're only part of the larger picture. Truly comprehensive analytics help content creators ensure the videos they produce are providing real ROI.

Without proper analytics, businesses have no way of knowing whether their videos are just popular or are actually converting viewers into buyers. A video that has lots of views but doesn't lead to sales is little more than a money pit.

With a well-built analytics tracking system, companies can see exactly where their leads come from, how they convert through the funnel, and where their marketing dollars have the greatest impact.

Real Data and Deceptive Views

Most companies recognize how important good data is to their revenue streams. New marketing technologies allow even the smallest companies to get a firm understanding of how their programs are performing across various demographics.

In the recent past, view counts were king. Businesses understood that more viewers equaled more brand recognition and more sales. Views are helpful, true, but they're one of the easiest metrics to acquire and interpret. Anyone can go to YouTube and see how many views a video has, but that number only reveals how many people started the video - nothing more.

Views don't tell you whether users left five seconds in, bailed halfway through, or made it to the bitter end. View count could be double or triple the actual engagement figures, but without other indicators, companies have no way of knowing. Engagement is difficult to measure on the whole, but if one video has 10 percent of viewers watching to the end and another has 90, that's an excellent place to start.

Additionally, view counts don't say who is watching a video. A video geared toward Baby Boomers in Texas with an actual audience made up almost exclusively of Millennials in New York probably isn't accomplishing what the content creator intended. Fewer views within the right audience are worth much more than tons of views in the wrong one.

What You Should Measure

If view count isn't the end-all of video analytics, what is? Predictably, no single statistic is the answer. A comprehensive analytics strategy should include:

Engagement

Measure engagement with both average and time-based metrics. These numbers will show you what percentage of your video viewers are watching and where in your video they're leaving. You can tell whether people rewatch a specific part several times or whether one particular lame joke or long-winded section is leading people to lose interest and close the tab.

Monitor how far into your video viewers are watching to identify where you are losing them. Using heatmaps, you can see which sections of a video a viewer is watching more than once.

Play rate

Play rate refers to the percentage of users who encountered your video on a landing page or website and clicked the play button. In short, it tells you how much appeal your video has before engagement begins. More than a simple view count, this ratio can help you identify ways to optimize your video splash screen and where you locate your player.

Understanding where your viewers are watching from helps identify that you're hitting the markets you want.

Call-to-action response rate

If your video includes a call to action - such as “Click here for more information!” - your analytics should tell you how many viewers answer that call. This number is the most closely tied to ROI because it directly correlates with lead conversions.

Demographics

Look at where in the world your viewers are located. Are you hitting the markets you want? Are there opportunities arising in markets you didn't consider before? The more specific your demographic information is, the better prepared your marketing and sales teams will be to develop targeted programs and campaigns for different groups.

Understanding where your viewers are watching from helps identify that you're hitting the markets you want.

Unique views

Yes, views is still one of the metrics that, when taken as part of a larger whole, can help you form a better strategy regarding the content and placement of your videos. If you have 100 percent of your target demographic fully engaged and completing your call to action but there are only three of them, you might want to figure out a way to get your video in front of more people.

Used properly, analytics will quickly tell you things about your business that would take years to learn without them. A comprehensive analytics strategy will allow you to make better data-based decisions, save time using automatic forecasting models, view and analyze real-time trends, and save money, as all the wasted man-hours you used before can now be spent boosting your ROI.

Start Measuring the Right Way

You know what works, what doesn't, and what to measure. Now what? Follow these five steps to kick-start your analytics strategy and get better results from your videos:

Choose the right platform to host and track your videos

You have several great options available. YouTube and Vimeo provide the most cost-effective solutions and work well for most businesses, but they don't provide some of the more advanced analytics that other platforms do. Vidyard and Wistia cost a bit more, but they're worth the investment thanks to their great analytical tools and integration capabilities with most CRMs and marketing automation platforms, tracking viewers from first click to conversion.

Set monthly and quarterly tasks to analyze your analytics reports

Compare the results with previous numbers to see what changed to determine whether you need to alter your strategy, placement, or content.

Spend time reviewing engagement, total views, and play rate

Many views with little follow-through could indicate that your call to action is weak, while strong results on low numbers could mean your placement isn't optimal. If your play rate is low, the placement of your video on the page could be poor or your chosen splash screen might not be attracting an ideal amount of attention.

ABC: Always be creating

Marketing is about consistency, and video marketing is no different. Produce high-quality video content on a regular basis to keep people engaged and your message fresh. Analytics allow you to fine-tune your approach with each passing month to maximize your impact by seeing what worked well and what fell flat. Every new video - success or failure - is an opportunity to gather data and learn how to do better next time.

Too many companies mistake sparse analytics for good data or neglect the analytical approach entirely, leading to millions of dollars in lost potential revenue every year.

Don't leave money and customers on the table. Use analytics to gather and act upon the information you need to boost your ROI, broaden your brand appeal, and grow your company.

About the Author: Brandon Houston is the CEO of Switch Video, a video animation company that produces simple videos that “explain what you do” in an engaging and compelling format. Switch Video has produced more than 800 videos for clients, including LinkedIn, IBM, HP, Bayer, and American Express. Reach out to Brandon on Twitter.

4 Ways to Launch Just Another Mediocre E-Commerce Store (And How to Avoid Them)

Launching an online store is cheap and simple.

Just think about it. You choose a clever domain name, pick a beautiful theme, get a membership on your favorite e-commerce platform, and voila!…You can launch.

But here's the thing: anyone with half-a-brain can start an e-commerce…but only a few can do it successfully.

A 2013 study by ReferralCandy – a Singapore-based referral program software – revealed there were 23,587 established online retail stores in the United States alone at that time (and that number might be even higher now, considering how fast the ecommerce industry is growing).

And when I say “established,” I mean those companies were making at least $100,000 a year.

Just picture this image in your mind:

The Staples Center in Los Angeles at its full capacity (which is 18,118 people, by the way), but instead of seeing a legion of basketball fans, you see thousands upon thousands of entrepreneurs who own a successful ecommerce (and, some of them, might be your direct competitors).

Anyways, my point here is: you can't just launch, pray, and hope to succeed; you can't take a mediocre approach nor do what everyone else is doing – you need to stand out.

But how? You ask.

Well, you can start by avoiding the common (and sometimes fatal) mistakes most startups make. In this post, you'll find 4 of them. Take a look through them, and see if any describe you:

Mistake #1: Sell a Product That Doesn't Harmonize With The Market

The late Claude Hopkins once said that most marketers fail because they try to sell something people don't want.

God's truth.

Now, this might sound obvious at a first glance but make no mistake, it's really easy to get tricked by your instincts and take a fatal decision. In hopes of “being innovative,” you can spend thousands of dollars on a project that's bound to fail from the beginning.

The entrepreneurial graveyard is full of “original ideas,” hunches, and dreams.

Take Bobby Darin – the singer – as an example. Back in the 1950s – when he was an unknown young singer in New York – Bobby had a dream: He wanted to make an album of old popular standards, even though the “hottest” genre at that time was old rock and roll.

So he went from company to company, trying to “convince” them to record his music.

Every single music company in the city rejected him, of course. Nobody would take the word of a “nobody,” especially if his idea didn't harmonize with the market.

Anyways, Bobby finally threw his idea away and focused on what people really wanted – rock and roll. So, he recorded a song called “Splish Splash” (you might have heard of it), and a few months later he had sold over a million records.

All because he understood the importance of harmony.

What's that? You say Bobby Darin is just a weird case?

Well, you couldn't be more wrong.

Bobby isn't an isolated case. Dozens of products have failed because they didn't harmonize with their markets – The Ben-Gay Aspirin, Intellivision, The Laserdisc, Crystal Pepsi, and The Zune, to name a few.

Image Source

No, there's nothing wrong about being original, but instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, find what people already want and then create a product that satisfies that desire.

In other words, start with the prospect, not the product.

You need to become a student of markets. This way, your chances of succeeding will increase exponentially.

Now the question is: How can you study your market?

Three tips:

• Become a social media “listener” – you don't need to survey thousands of people to know what they want. More often than not, the information you're looking for is already out there, you only need to “listen.” Tools like Mention.net and Google Alerts allow you to track keywords and intercept relevant conversations. This way, you can be up to date about your market's desires.


• Study the SRDS (Standard Rate & Data Service) publications – these publications provide you with a database of all the media buyers and sellers in the U.S. This means you can easily figure out the size of your market and its earning potential. You should be able to find an SRDS in your town's public library, but in case you can't, you can get one on this website.


• Trust the numbers, not the words – when you interview or survey people, they tend to give you the answers they think you want to hear. So instead of relying on that data, you should always focus on the numbers – what are people really buying? Here's where an SRDS will come in very handy because you can see what kind of products are performing well in the market. Another option is to create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and measure performance based on actual sales.

Note: By no means am I saying interviews, questionnaires, and surveys don't work. When used right, they can give you valuable insights. However, numbers never lie. Better rely on them.

Mistake #2: Design Your Website Without Your Buyer Personas in Mind

If you design your store based on what you “think” will work, you're likely to fail. Why? Because you and your prospective customers think very different.

For example, it's proven that colors affect buying decisions, right? So let's say you're going to launch an online electronics store and your target market is Latin America.

Let's also assume that you decided to use a red color scheme because “you like red.” However, you didn't know that Latin Americans correlate the red color with religion and blood, so thanks to that dumb mistake many of your visitors will feel very anxious and will decide to leave your website without completing the purchase.

This example might seem silly for the experienced marketer, but it happens very often.

And there's another problem:

Not only you and your visitors think different, but your visitors' worldviews will always differ from each other, too.

Let's emphasize that point:

If you have children, I'm sure you know you can't educate them all with the same methods. The same way, you can't treat all your prospects equal.

Instead, you need to segment your audience into subgroups and, then, personalize your marketing message to each subgroup. It's the most effective way to strengthen your offer.

For instance, if you're running a vitamins and nutritional supplements store, you might target two different subgroups of people: Fitness enthusiasts and people who don't have time to cook.

So instead of marketing to those people with the same message, you should personalize it to fit each sub group's worldview.

Image Source

And you don't need to take my word for this. Recent studies suggest that 56 out of 100 people prefer to buy from stores that offer a personalized experience.

John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing understands this concept very well. When someone visits the site, he or she can self-select their persona choosing from Duct Tape Marketing's main buyer personas: Agencies, Coaches and Consultants, and Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs.

After people click one of the buttons, they'll see information that's relevant to their specific needs.

This is obviously a smarter approach than displaying the same information to all your prospective customers, don't you think?

On average, marketers see a 20% increase in sales when they start providing personalized web experiences.

Now, there's no one-size-fits-all method for web personalization. However, here are a couple of guides that will get you on the right path:

• Introducing The Definitive Guide to Web Personalization


• How Online Personalization Can Create Compelling Customer Experiences and Build a Better Business


• Personalization Drives E-commerce Revenue

Mistake #3: Neglect Customer Service

Tell me…what's the most valuable asset of any business?

Hint: Without it, your entire business would fall down in less than a New York minute.

Have you guessed?

It's your customer base, of course.

However, many companies don't seem to understand that. They focus on acquisition, spend thousands of dollars on conversion rate optimization, and even hire an in-house SEO guy, but they forget what is, without question, one of the pillars of any successful e-commerce:

Customer service.

And I'm not exaggerating. No. I brought with me a couple of stats to back that up:

• Some studies have revealed that 84 out of 100 customers have bailed on a transaction or not made an intended purchase because of a poor service experience.


• In 2011, 7 in 10 Americans said they were willing to spend more with businesses they believe provide excellent customer service, according to research by Help Scout.


• Some companies – like The PIG – have even seen a 250% increase in their annual revenue after improving their customer service.

I'm going to be straight with you:

If this doesn't help you understand the importance of an outstanding CS, you're…beyond all help!

So here are four effective ways to improve it:

• Reduce customer effort – it's all about making your customers' life easier, not the opposite. Make sure they can get support fast and avoid unnecessary steps. For example, instead of just having a dedicated page for customer service, you could add a widget that follows users all over your site, so at the moment they have any problem, they would be able to reach out to you very quickly.


• Offer Multichannel support – 9 in 10 people expect to receive a consistent experience across multiple customer contact channels.


• Provide online chat – as human beings, we tend to be desperate; we hate waiting. Well, online chat is one of the fastest mediums your customers can use to get help. Also, it's very simple to use. It's not surprising why 77% of customers prefer to buy at retailers that provide online chat.


• Take care of social media complaints – people tend to complain about products and services through social media. Make sure to intercept those conversations and try to fix the problem as quickly as you can – social media conversations spread like butter on hot bread.

Mistake #4: Rely On The “Popular” Marketing Channels

I know you think this is obvious and simple, and that you aren't that “stupid” to make this mistake, but I'd say…don't be too sure.

Listen. The majority of retail stores are built upon three main traffic channels:

• SEO


• Social Media


• PPC

It's not rare that a startup focuses 100% of its resources on one or more of the above channels in hopes of acquiring new customers, and it's ok. But, to be honest, there are plenty of other channels to focus on.

No, I'm not saying that SEO or PPC aren't good nor that you shouldn't focus on them. What I'm saying is that, maybe, you need to start thinking outside the box and look for ways that allow you to grow faster, and I mean, really faster.

To help you put your creative juices to work, here are two proven ways to start:

a) Start an affiliate program

Companies like Kiyonna and AbesMarket.com are crushing it with affiliate marketing, not to mention Amazon, Ebay, and Walmart.

Just think about it for a second. When you run an affiliate program, you only pay your affiliates for every new customer they bring to your company. It's like advertising but your affiliates take all the risk.

You literally have little to lose and much to win (especially in this day and age). With companies like OMNISTAR – The Voted #1 Affiliate Software for Ecommerce – and LeadDyno in the market, now it's really straightforward to start your own affiliate program.

b) Embrace word of mouth

Did you know that 65% of new business comes from referrals?

Not only that, according to a study made by Ogilvy, Google, and TNS, 74 out of 100 consumers identify word-of-mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decision.

If that doesn't sound interesting to you, I'm sure that nothing will.

Now you might be thinking:

Awesome, but, how can I leverage word of mouth to grow my business? I'm glad you asked. Here are three tips:

• Start a referring program – people are 4 times more likely to buy when referred by a friend, says Nielsen. And the best way to encourage those referrals is by giving away incentives. Dropbox is a famous example. They offered 500MB additional free storage space for every friend you referred. Evernote, on the other hand, offered premium accounts. Amuze's – a women's clothing store – gives you and your friends $25 off your next flash sale purchase. The point here is to give users a reason to share your company. This guide from Shopify will guide you step-by-step through the process of creating your own referring program.


• Provide an awesome experience – Texas Tech says that 83% of consumers are willing to refer after an outstanding experience. That's why you need to spend some time improving your customer journey maps, perfecting your customer service, and a/b testing your platform's key elements.


• Stand for something – HBR says people aren't loyal to companies at all. No, they are loyal to what the company stands for. TOMS' famous “One for One” campaign is a great example of this concept in action. TOMS said: “For every pair you purchase, TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need.” This campaign created a natural referring environment by triggering one of the most powerful needs in human nature: Altruism.

The Bottom Line

The e-commerce industry is insanely competitive. To get good performance, you need to start off on the right foot and keep the momentum without squandering the opportunity.

The best way to do it is avoiding all the mistakes you can.

And now you know 4 ways NOT to start.

Just remember the words of the late Sam Levenson:

“You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.”

What are some good stories you can share about launching an online store?

About the Author: Josue Valles is a content marketing evangelist, strategist and die-hard entrepreneur. He constantly blogs about Inbound Marketing, SEO and Social Media Marketing at Engagebit. You can also follow him on Twitter.

How Much of a Role Does Trust Play on Conversion Rates?

You wouldn't do business with a company you didn't trust – plain and simple. But what may be surprising is that the degree of trust we have in a company, and where that trust comes from, have a significant impact on our purchasing decisions. How much of an impact? Let's take a closer look, the results may surprise you.

The 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer, a yearly report by which CEOs, executives and governments alike use to determine consumer confidence, was recently released, and its discoveries reveal quite a bit about how consumers build and gauge trust. More importantly, it shows who we get our information (and subsequently our trust) from, and how that reflects back upon the company and brand as a whole.

Peers are More Credible than CEOs

In what comes as a surprise to no one, we trust our peers more than CEOs when it comes to company information. We tend to view CEOs as detached from the issues that are important to the public, and as putting profits before people. As a whole, the general public believe that CEOs are more interested in revenues than working toward the greater good, and as such, this skews our trust in them.

While our view of putting our trust in CEOs has increased from 2015 to 2016, it is still very much outpaced by other experts we rely on, including technical and academic experts, analysts and even company employees.

What's Causing CEOs to Flounder?

What made CEOs be viewed as untrustworthy? We can chalk this up to a number of factors, both globally and societally. There's not a single cause, but many. The Edelman Trust Barometer asked people to rank the importance and performance of the attributes that are commonly seen as trust-building in leaders. The results speak for themselves:

In everything from integrity to engagement, products to purpose and operations as a whole, CEOs just didn't make the cut. Now, compare this dismal performance to ones peers, who, while not involved in the operations of the company itself, still hold significant leverage and sway over the consumer when it comes to the “Moment of Truth” – that point where many buyers will back out because of perceived concerns or risks.

What Peers Do Differently

Very few peers are involved in bringing together a sense of community or understanding. They're not exactly brand advocates in the way a company would view them (as “ambassadors” to the brand rather than simply making an honest recommendation). But when the buying decision is at their fingertips, peers leap into action, often addressing concerns head-on and helping their fellow person make a more informed decision that isn't tainted with corporate chest-beating or glossy stock performance sheets.

What's more, peers aren't afraid to acknowledge any inherent risks in a product, unlike the corporate whitewashing campaigns that often try to portray the company in the best possible light. When was the last time you saw a company swallow their pride and admit their mistakes? Not often.

This implicit trust in our peers carries over through the media too, especially as the younger generation comes to embrace digital media over the presumably stale, old-fashioned traditional media channels like newspapers and magazines. Online-only media, which has no traditional media arm the way that news stations and other mega-conglomerates do, has surged in popularity, likely due to the fact that it isn't owned by any major news outlet and can therefore be viewed as more trustworthy.

And even within these media channels, the influence of peers can be felt strongly. Although most TV stations are simply mouthpieces of major corporations, both search and social are viewed as more independent and honest.

So What Does This Mean for Conversion Rates?

By now you can easily see the influence that peers have on everything from recommending a company to taking action on a purchase. But how does that affect conversion rates? It means that things like the shiny corporate announcements, big brand mergers and executive trumpeting matter very little to consumers. They don't build trust because consumers look at trust differently.

Customers and prospects want honesty. Ethics. Understanding. They want to feel as if they're understood and that the company, at the very least, listens to them even if it doesn't act on every suggestion. It means that in order to convince and convert, you have to get down on the customer's level and see things from their point of view. It means not being afraid to admit your weaknesses or acknowledge your mistakes.

Companies who doesn't just strive for authenticity, but make it a permanent part of their mission and values are the ones who really resonate with and “get” customers. People can spot a fake a mile away, and a truly authentic, peer-like shopping experience can only happen when a company looks introspectively at the way they do things – from executive buy-in and support, to whole company-wide shifts in working together collaboratively toward a common goal.

All of these intangible things may irritate those of you who are proud conversion rate number crunchers. But it's worth realizing that despite big data, split test results and analytics, there are people at the core of those numbers – people hoping they're not forgotten.

People who are looking to their peers for answers, advice and agreement.

And the sooner you can position your company in more of a peer-like capacity rather than a top-down communication silo, the better off your conversions, and your credibility with customers, will be.

Now It's Your Turn

Do you think peers truly hold this much influence over potential customers? Do you feel companies are taking the right steps toward creating a more one-on-one environment of mutual respect and reward or are they ignoring what their customers are saying? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today! Follow @sherice on Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+ for more articles like this!

5 Winning Strategies for Using Human-Driven Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing requires a human touch.

According to MarketingSherpa, “79% of marketing leads never convert into sales [and] lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance.”

In a world of automation, marketers tend to forget the power of human connection. It only takes a small change, like personalizing a white paper or mentioning someone's first name in an email.

Lead nurturing is too important in your sales cycle for non-customized messaging. You want prospects to know that you value their potential business.

Ditch your robot responses. Enhance your lead nurturing campaigns with these five human-driven strategies.

1. Email That Connects

Decades ago, receiving email was an enjoyable experience. People loved hearing AOL's “You've got mail!” It signaled that someone sent a message just for you.

Nowadays, your customers dread their inbox. Most of the time, it's filled with unwanted messages and worthless subscription emails.

Give your readers something to look forward to. Wow them with content that matches their needs.

“Leads who have expressed initial interest need a general welcome and introduction to your product and industry, while others might have already reached the bottom of the funnel and are more interested in advanced content such as case studies and white papers,” writes Valerie Levin, marketing at Oktopost.

Create email campaigns that motivate users to take action. The call-to-action should be a natural next step in the buyer's journey.

For instance, prospects in the consideration stage may want to know how your company compares to the competition. So, your team may send a comparison chart with features and benefits.

In the example below, Desk helps onboard new clients by offering a free toolkit to strengthen the relationship.

The purpose of email is further the business relationship. Your team should aim to understand the buyer's behaviors to predict their future needs.

2. Social Selling

Sam Kusinitz, former Hubspot editorial assistant, defines social selling as the dialogue that occurs “when salespeople use social media to interact directly with their prospects.”

Social selling isn't anything new. Sales teams have always provided similar value at networking dinners, trade shows, and promo events.

Even though the communication channel has changed, the message should stay the same.

Focus on answering the customer's questions and engage in conversations that offer solutions.

Train your team to nurture leads via Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook. They should provide prospects with thoughtful content that educates.

With social media listening tools, like Agorapulse, you can learn more about interested buyers and their behaviors.

Who influences them? Who do they follow? What topics grab their attention?

With that qualitative data, you can spark conversations that match their concerns.

Rich Brooks, a web marketing and social media expert, provides blog consulting to his clients. In a Linkedin Group, he crafted a practical question that attracted ideal prospects and ignited a discussion.

Also, be mindful that every social media platform has unwritten etiquette rules.

For example, some people prefer not to read posts about the latest wrestling match on LinkedIn. And some desire only tidbits of information on Twitter. Respect each network's social norms and then begin lead nurturing.

Social media is another tool to maximize your campaigns. Strive to nurture relationships through authentic interaction.

3. Real-Time Messaging

Technology has transformed the way we communicate. Back in the day, real-time communication involved people actually meeting face-to-face.

Today, businesses are taking advantage of live chat and help desk software to engage prospects online. It's simple and drastically cut costs.

Moreover, research shows that proactive chats increase ROI by up to 105%.

With live chat, marketing and sales teams can learn about their customers' goals and what product benefits top are must-haves.

The key is to ask prospects questions during live chat sessions. Without being intrusive, dig deep to find their real motivations.

So, after the “How can I help you?” greeting, teach your team to ask follow-up questions.

Below is a chat session between Annabelle, a Zappos agent, and a customer seeking shoes. Notice how the live chat agent asks questions to provide the customer with better service.

“The customer needs questions answered and wants more information. The live chat representative wants to help the user find what they are looking for and make their user experience as pleasant as possible,” states Jeff Mason, vice president of marketing at Velaro.

In the end, people just want help. When lead nurturing, position your team to give prospects the best service possible.

4. Conversational How-To Videos

Visual content is a powerful tool for any eCommerce business. Video can captivate audiences and quickly engage people.

But video is only effective when customers are actually interested in the topic. Don't bore your prospective clients with video clips that possess no purpose.

Rather, develop explainer videos that give prospects more insight about your brand and product. You want people to be invested in your message.

“Great video doesn't change the rules. A great video on your site isn't enough. You still need permission, still need to seek remarkability, still need to create something that matters. What video represents is the chance-if you invest in it-to tell your story in a way that sticks,” writes Seth Godin, best-selling author and marketer.

The best videos are conversational. They give people an intimate perspective. You want customers to know you care.

Amazon produced a remarkable explainer video for the Echo. It's a friendly representation of how to demonstrate the benefits of a product. Watch below.

In addition, videos aren't a one-use tactic. Andrew Angus, Director of Revenue Operations at PlanGrid, states:

“Videos are incredibly versatile; you can post them to the social networks your leads used to find you, integrate them into blog posts, or insert them into emails. In each case, you can customize the video to provide leads and prospects with insight into different aspects of your brand, products, or services.”

Don't just join the conversation. Use video to be the conversation.

5. Surprise & Delight Experiences

Surprise and delight is a marketing strategy that randomly selects an individual or group of people to receive a gift.

People want to feel special. Use this technique to keep prospects excited about participating in the sales process.

Here's an example from Biotherm, a French luxury skincare company, on how they surprise and delight their Twitter followers with free samples:

The Ritz-Carlton in Bali knows how to continue to provide their customers with great experiences despite unfortunate events. A family was upset when they learned that the allergy-friendly foods for their son had spoiled on their trip.

After becoming aware of the situation, the hotel's staff searched the town for the appropriate items. However, none was found.

The executive chef then instructed his mother-in-law in Singapore to buy the products. The Ritz-Carlton then hand-delivered the items to their guests.

Now, that's going above and beyond service. How can you infuse this into your business?

“Make 'surprise and delight' the mantra of your entire company just because it is the right thing to do. The immediate ROI might not show on a spreadsheet, but the loyalty and word-of-mouth it will generate will be worth it. And besides, it's just the right thing to do,” says Vebeka Guess, a product marketing manager for Adobe Experience Manager.

Treat your leads like royalty. Give them a reason to engage with your brand.

Real People, Real Value

Lead nurturing centers around building relationships. And the best value requires human contact.

Customize email campaigns based on the prospect's behavior. Use social media to gain valuable insight about your target audience. And create how-to videos that ignite conversation, not boredom.

Start winning. Use human-driven lead nurturing strategies.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

Using Dimensions & Segments in Google Analytics to Propel Your Content Marketing

As online marketers, we all have great web metrics at our fingertips….or do we?

Using hard facts to support business decisions requires two things: reliable data and knowing the key performance indicators of the business in an online context.

I have been using Google Analytics for 10 years (since just months after the Urchin acquisition), and I have seen some great customizations of this massively popular web metrics tool. However, it is common for organizations to not even scratch the surface of what Google Analytics can offer.

Using mere headline engagement statistics, like bounce rate, without a web metrics strategy can lead to some bad decisions.

While I'm sure some of you Kissmetrics readers are already champions of Google Analytics, in this post, I will cover some tips that might help you create your own analytical setup in A/B testing, social media, AdWords, and content marketing, as well as some of the slightly newer Google Analytics features.

So, let's get into it.

Measure User Engagement and Transactional Revenue with A/B Testing

User engagement and transactional revenue can be measured with A/B testing.

For the free version of Google Analytics, get yourself an Optimizely account (also free – up to 50,000 monthly unique visitors) so you can build variations for A/B and multi-variate testing. You can set up a “custom dimension” integration with your Optimizely experiments within Google Analytics to view traffic sliced and diced as you please.

Once the “custom dimension” integration is set up for you, you can build custom reports within Google Analytics. Instead of navigating into Reporting, start with Customization from the top navigation.

Create a new custom report.

Then, build your report to include whatever Metric Groups you are interested in – user engagement and/or transactional data. Click on “+ add metric,” and type in your metric.

It's key that you select the right dimension for Dimension Drilldowns and Filters and apply a regex that is the experiment ID from Optimizely.

Once you have saved your custom report, you can view the buckets of session data against the A/B tests.

This is powerful data. You can have up to 20 Google Analytics integrated tests running at any one time providing you with classic user engagement statistics as well as “the sharp end” of conversion-led data.

In the test results below, we see major improvement from enhancing the design of a shopping cart “search” function to make it more prominent. Check out how the variation wins on conversion rate:

Measure the Popularity of Web Content at a Page Level

The popularity of web content can be measured in visitors and shares. For social media gurus and content strategists, it's great to measure key social actions at a page level.

With this information (tracked as events), you can review a blog section more effectively, understanding the visitor/share picture instantly to support the direction of future blogging or content creation. View the data within social plugins once you have everything set up.

Optimize AdWords for the Highest Quality Visits with Smart Goals

Google AdWords provides some great tracking options, including dynamic call tracking where a unique number is displayed down to the keyword level.

Introduced by Google in December 2015, Smart Goals is a useful new addition for online marketers who strive to put together the whole picture of online and offline conversions. Using machine learning, Google Analytics cleverly combines a number of technological and user metric factors to identify the highest quality visits and define them as Smart Goals.

For many e-commerce and digital managers, this is a much more straightforward way of understanding the true value of their website's tracked sessions. Assuming you have Analytics and AdWords linked up, goal conversions can also be imported into your AdWords account to assist your paid search optimization efforts. In fact, this linkage is a prerequisite to using Smart Goals, which indicates that the primary reason for this recent addition is to assist AdWords management.

How to Set Up Smart Goals

Once Smart Goals is set up in Google Analytics, you can access it within your Google AdWords account by going to Tools > Conversions > Google Analytics.

Simply select Smart Goals, which will then allow you to optimize your AdWords performance toward the highest quality visits.

Build Remarketing Lists with Smart Goals

You can build remarketing lists (called smart lists) with Smart Goals. This could seriously improve your remarketing conversion efforts and potentially your AdWords results overall. Smart lists are built within your AdWords Shared library > Audiences and will appear along with a “lookalike” audience, which could be useful if your website is lower than 10,000 pageviews / 500 e-commerce transactions per month (the threshold for using the smart lists).

Note: your Google Analytics account and script will need to be modified for these lists to work (here's how).

Measure Audience Engagement with Google Analytics

Google Analytics has always been an SEO's best friend, slightly less so when Google's move to https screened out the vast majority of organic keyword data. But, with sales, traffic, and even Google Search Console data, there is plenty to work with.

Focusing in on the Hummingbird (released 2013) and RankBrain (released 2015) algorithms makes for more progressive SEO these days.

These areas of machine learning are getting stronger at understanding the semantics and intent of search engine users. We don't know how far along Google is in understanding user engagement, but we know Google is moving in the direction of ranking content based on reputation, content quality, and usability. So here are some nice and simple analyses to run with 2 simple segments that I've created and am making available to you to import into your Google Analytics account.

Low Engagement Segments – Pages per User

Analyze “low page view per user engagement” SEO traffic with this Google Analytics segment.

This basic segment looks at traffic from Google (organic) where unique pageviews are equal to or less than 1. You could run this over a time frame, like 3 months, to understand which pages are being accessed the least. Then pop into Behavior > All pages pageviews, and filter by your /blog/ directory or /products/.

If your blog area URLs do not have a distinct pattern, then you could use content grouping for this type of analysis. It's important to weigh this segment next to something like “new users” because, over a longer date range, you can see what percentage of users were “low engagement.”

Here is an example where we examined a homepage:

Only 2.48% of users to this website's entrances are looking at only one pageview, but the average time on page is nearly 7 minutes. This analysis would give a thumbs-up for this homepage.

Now see which pages aren't getting the SEO love. In this example, we can see that this page has 97% of its entrances equal to or less than 1:

The website's dwell time on average is nearly 5 minutes so we know these visits are below average, suggesting there is a problem with the relevancy of organic search terms creating the visits and/or the landing page quality. This is a basis for an interesting discussion past this point.

Generate a list and see if they're indexed on Google with the “site:” command. If they are, see if Google's cache date is recent or not.

Make a call as to whether you update the web page's content, work harder in general at optimizing it, or delete off server/301 redirect to a similar page.

Bounce Rate and Low Average Session Time Segments

Look at organic search traffic that resulted in a bounce with this Google Analytics segment.

Backlinko's recent study of 1m Google search results suggests that there is a correlation between low bounce rates and higher Google rankings. Other studies suggest that average session duration plays an important part in search ranking so why not cross-analyze by this factor, too, with this segment.

In this example, we've applied the 2 segments from the main “reporting” area of Google Analytics and isolated a page that has a low engagement issue. Here, 42% of users leave straightaway and 44% dwell on the page for an average of only 4 seconds.

This analyzes Google SEO traffic that is low engagement in terms of average session duration – set at 60 seconds. Needless to say, each website will have a different average session duration, so you might want to copy a segment like this and amend what you deem as a positive figure for your website. As Google's RankBrain gets cleverer, this is the type of SEO-led web metric that is getting increasingly popular.

Looking to Move Off White Belt for Content Marketing?

Analyze your blog performance over the years. I have learned a lot in this area from Skip Besthoff, a pragmatic content marketer who has a great understanding of where the content game meets search engine optimization in a harmonious manner. There is a simple, common, but potentially crippling, pattern that the vast majority of blog traffic is driven by a tiny number of blog posts.

How many websites that have blogs actually do this type of analysis? If you've done it before, do you review on a frequent basis? The “meat” of such analysis can be formed on basic Behavior > All pages pageviews and then filtering web pages from there:

• For your filter, use the directory that all blogs appear within (e.g., /blog/, /news/, or /articles/).


• If the blog posts aren't in one easily identifiable directory, this may be a bit of a blocker. In this case, you'll want to use content grouping.

Here is an example where we filtered for any URL with “guide” in it:

…which then shows us a common picture arising out of many blogs:

Here 94% of the blog pageviews are coming from just 2 posts. On average, we see around 80% coming from 2-3 posts/articles, but this information then allowed us to focus in on the numerous pages highlighted above.

Conclusion

The beauty of web metrics is that you can translate what is important in your marketing strategy into buckets of vital data. There are lots of interesting things you can integrate within Google Analytics, but you need to prevent yourself from going around in circles not finding what you're looking for because you didn't determine your KPIs in the first place.

Start with your implementation plan, move on to the technical setup and requirements, and remember that you will need to continuously evaluate your setup and measurement accuracy to establish Google Analytics as a key business tool at the top level.

About the Author: Duncan Colman is Founder and Inbound Marketing Strategist at Spike Digital. Spike specialise in ecommerce & international SEO, pay-per-click advertising management and conversion rate optimisation.