Romit @malhotra_harpreetkaur ) got together and I still remember after our marriage in Shimla we got an update that we won our first project.
Since then there is no looking back.
We’ve lived many sleepless nights and many challenges of running a business. But it never stopped us. We kept going on every time we came out learning a new lesson of life.
Today, we stand here to look back and cherish those hard worked days.
MY SUGGESTION TO EVERYONE IS THAT “Life is not easy” SO BE READY TO BE A WARRIOR.
Everyday there is going to be a new fight, just focus on how to conquer it.
As a marketer, the power of Google Analytics cannot be ignored today. The Universal Google Analytics model took the market by a storm unprecedented and has made its roots stay here. Today, it is next to impossible to be an online marketer without an in-depth understanding and use of Google Analytics. This is what makes the improvement and changes this important along with being needed to be understood well.
The bottom line of the tools at Google Analytics is to give you a complete and comprehensive picture of consumer behavior and activity patterns. This core need and idea is what has led to Google Analytics 4 being rolled out. Before we can get into how you can transition from the old system to the new one, let us understand what all the new one entails.
What are the four key features of Google Analytic 4?
Smarter AI-powered insights and predictions
Machine learning has been a part of Google Analytics since its inception. What has changed in GA4 then is the inputs it gives and what they are. GA4 does more than before by detecting changes in trends when it comes to what your business has to offer. This can help you:
Stay updated to something like increased demand for your offerings
Make better predictions in terms of potential revenue or churn rates.
The way this helps is simple yet powerful. These insights when put together or even taken independently, help you as a marketer take better decisions. Working on accurate predictions, trends, and data that is well-founded, helps you plan your campaigns and supply chain better. After all, while you certainly want to avoid being over-prepared for sales you don’t also want to be caught with more demand than you can cater to. Given that you are using the best tools in the kit should allow you to find the balance.
Deeper integration with Google Ads
Google Analytics 4 works better than ever with the other marketing tools that Google has to offer. This is nowhere truer than Google Ads. The increase in precision and decision making that this allows is worth seeing.
The integration allows you to:
Make and maintain a custom audience basis your site and app visiting/ usage. This will allow you to cater to those who are actually your audience or potentially so; rather than working on ideas only. A sure shot way for increased Return on Investment in ads.
There is also the integrated feature that allows you to view conversions from YouTube, be it on the app or the web, as also for other channels. These channels could be organic growth, paid ads, paid search, social media, emails, etc. This directly presents a better and comprehensive view of the marketing efforts you make.
Customer-centric measurements and customer life cycle reports
Till this point, Google has performed analytics on very fragmented metrics and data sets. GA4 allows the complete life cycle of a customer to be measured and analyzed through more compact and comprehensive metrics and forms.
This is achieved by Google Analytics 4 by making the use of multiple identity spaces to the likes of marketer provided User IDs and Google signals. The latter of course is only from users who have opted into personalized ads
In all, this will help you see how your customers and potential customers intact with your business throughout their journey. This includes all stages from first visibility to conversion and beyond that as well. Even feedback revisits and customer experience sharing online if done on Google platforms is integrated.
There are also updated engagement and retention reports that allow an analysis of what is working and what isn’t for you online. This can help immensely better your business presence and decisions.
More granular data control
One of the biggest changes that GA4 has seen is the field and form of data control. The control of the data has not only been taken seriously by the analytics tool kit themselves but also more control mechanisms have been awarded to users and marketers such as you. This applies to all aspects of the data such as collection, retention, and usage.
This level of control means you can choose even whether or not you would like to use the data only as a measurement or would you rather want it used for optimization.
Another key feature of the update in this aspect is that it is made to work for the future where cookies and identifiers may reduce or become entirely different. The idea GA4 has is to make use of conversion modeling which helps fill the gaps in the customer journey.
Steps to do transition from old analytics to Google Analytics 4
Setting up your first data stream
This is the first and likely the most crucial step in setting yourself up in GA4 and in the transition. To keep your tags from the Universal GA to GA4 you must have both tags firing on your site. This can be achieved through the admin section where you have to upgrade your property. This upgrade will lead to a new property being created for tagging. This new property begins with G-.
This you will have to follow up by connecting the new property to your data streams. After this, you will be given the full G property and code that you must install on your website.
When doing this you must not remove your Universal GA firing on your site or through Google Tag Manager. This should allow for data to flow to both versions of GA.
Real-time refresh
After you are done installing the code, the next step is simpler. You need to navigate to the real-time report in other to confirm the flow of data into the GA.
The new reports work in a manner where all individual reports are combined into one mega report. Also, to note here is the fact that the map now updates in real-time along with showing a 30-minute history.
Another major change is that all user activity is now counted as events. This is done as GA4 wishes to focus on engagement. This is complemented by the change where “important actions” are now labeled “conversions” and you can track up to 30 of those now.
Events editing by you
Last but not least relevant part of the process is for you to edit and define your events. When you go to the events menu for the first time, the standard events that are a part of GA4 are visible. You will see modify and add options in this menu as well. One more ease is that a click on a slide allows for events to be converted to and tracked as conversions.
Defining and adding/ modifying events allows you to have what matters to you counted instead of a one size one count fits all model.
While this change may appear daunting at first, we hope that as you start to work on it report by report and data set by data set, you find the journey exciting and you learn to work well in the new system at the earliest.
Do you use Facebook business Page to sell your products?
Well, most businesses do.
Facebook Shops is a new feature to make your selling easier through Facebook and Instagram.
Launched on 19th May 2020, Facebook Shops let businesses of all sizes to create a single online store for customers. This store can be accessed on both Facebook and Instagram.
It lets sell directly through their Facebook page or take the visitors to their website. Facebook Shops is powered by third party eCommerce services such as Woo, BigCommerce, and Shopify.
Setting up a Facebook Shop is easy and free.
Businesses can list the products they want to feature and then personalize their store’s appearance with a cover image and colors that represent their brand.
Facebook Shops is available for all vendors, irrespective of their size or budget. They can have an online store and connect with customers anytime.
Customers can access Facebook Shops on a vendor’s Facebook Page or Instagram profile, or through stories or ads. From there, they can explore the products, save items they liked, and place an order—either on the vendor’s website or without checking out the app.
With Facebook Shops, businesses can also provide customer support through messaging on WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram Direct. These apps let the customer track deliveries, get help, and ask queries.
Facebook is also looking to facilitate the purchasing directly from a WhatsApp chat, Messenger, or Instagram Direct.
How to Create Facebook Shops using Commerce Manager?
If you have a previous business account as Facebook Page Shop, you can easily add this section. Otherwise, you can use the Commerce Manager.
Commerce Manager is a platform to create a store and manage sales on Facebook and Instagram. This tool lets you choose where you want your buyers to complete their order—on your website, on Facebook, or on Instagram with checkout.
Commerce Manager has many tools and settings such as—
Creating and managing a Facebook shop and collections.
Checking the summary of sales, catalogs, and suggested actions.
Viewing and managing items in a catalog.
Discovering advertising options.
Letting customers buying directly on Facebook and Instagram (for businesses with checkout feature).
Here’s How to Set up Facebook Shops Using Commerce Manager.
Commerce Manager lets you create a store for direct selling through Facebook page (shop with checkout) or take the customers to your shopping site from the page. The steps are different for both purposes.
Here we will explain the steps for both objectives.
First of all, let’s find out how to create Facebook Shops with Commerce Messenger if you want to send buyers to your website to complete the purchase.
Before getting started, make sure to create a commerce account in Commerce Manager.
To create a store on Facebook, you should be a Business Manager Admin and the owner of your Facebook Page. You are also required to have Manage Page permissions for the catalog in Business Manager.
For setting a shop on Instagram, you should be a Business Manager admin and own an Instagram business account, Facebook Page, and catalog. You also need Manage Page permissions to connect the Instagram business account with the Facebook Page. Manage catalog permissions are also required for the catalog.
Set Up Your Store:
This requires you to use your PC to create your shop in Commerce Manager.
Visit Commerce Manager
Choose to Get Started to visit the Create your Shop Page.
Under the Choose a Way to Sell part, choose Create a Shop, and click Get Started.
In the Assets section, upgrade your shop or click +Create a shop.
Move to the Start Setting up your shop section and select Your Website. Choose the Get Started option.
Choose your business section shows a list of Facebook Pages owned by you. Choose the business you would like to add to your store top. Click NEXT.
Fill up an account name and choose a business account as you enter the Account details section.
With the Where people can view your shop section, you can choose Facebook or Instagram to create your shop. Or you can choose both.
The Catalogue section lets you chose an existing catalog or created a new one. Choose NEXT.
Check your shop details, review, and accept the Seller Performance and Accountability Policies. Click Create Your Shop.
Once you set up your shop, you can create a collection of 6 to 30 products. Besides, you can personalize the store with accent colors. It will take 24 hours to publish your shop as Facebook reviews and approves your collection.
How to Create Account If You Want to Let People Shop Directly from Facebook or Instagram?
Commerce Manager also lets you set up a store that allows buyers to shop directly from Facebook or Instagram instead of sending them to another website. This is known as a shop with a checkout. Anyone can explore and buy your products instantly from your Facebook and Instagram accounts. However, this feature is available in the USA and to a limited number of vendors for the time being (as of October 2020)
Before you get started, make sure to sign in to your Facebook account.
Visit Commerce Manager
Choose Get Started to visit the Create your Shop Page
Under the Choose a Way to Sell part, choose Create a Shop, and click Get Started.
In the Assets section, upgrade your shop or click +Create a shop.
Click Get Started for either creating a shop with Commerce Manager or with an e-commerce platform. If you want to choose an e-commerce platform, choose the one from the list. To use Commerce Manager, select Facebook or Instagram.
Review the things required to complete a Commerce Manager account and click Next.
Provide business information; add products and settings; set up Payouts; Submit Instagram account for review (if you use Instagram). Check all the information and make changes. Click Finish setup.
When you are done with the process, visit Commerce Manager to handle your catalog, get educated on the selling tolls and other policies.
It takes up to two weeks for the Shops tab to occur in Commerce Manager while Facebook assesses your account.
Once it occurs, you can add a collection that can include two or more products, personalize your store, and publish your shop. The customers will see your shop once Facebook reviews and approve your collection, which is done within 24 hours.
Some Other Important Features by Facebook for Ecommerce Businesses
Facebook Shops is an exciting feature launched by Facebook to help online businesses. As an added bonus, there are some features provided by Facebook to maximize your sales potential. They can play an important role in your eCommerce campaign management over Facebook.
Lookalike Audiences:
Facebook tells that its “A Lookalike Audience” facility can help “reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they’re similar to your best existing customers.”
It is a useful feature for advertisers to maximize their reach by targeting customers with similar interests as their exiting buyers on Facebook and Instagram.
Instagram Ads with Product Tags:
Instagram has been involved in the testing of product tags for organic Shopping posts. Marketers can then use these posts for promotion as ads. Now, they will be able to directly make ads with product tags in Ads Manager without requiring to visit the organic post way first. White dots will be used to show product tags. Product information, including the name and price display, when these dots are clicked. Product tags can also be incorporated to photo, video, and carousel ad formats.
Insights:
Insights feature in Commerce Manager is useful to see how your sales, products, and other things are performing on Facebook and Instagram. Besides, it helps determine how people interact with your products. Make sure to check your insights regularly to see the trends and performance of your shop and offerings.
EXPERT OPINIONS
“We’ve seen live shopping take off in other parts of the world. The pandemic has really changed behavior from a consumer perspective, so we’re moving as fast as we can to bring out these tools to help [businesses respond].”
Vishal Shah, VP of Product at Instagram
“We really hope that our commerce solutions help businesses not only survive but thrive during coming months, and adapt to new consumer behavior,”
Layla Amjadi, Product Lead at Instagram Shopping
“So it makes sense for Facebook to make the purchase process as easy as possible from those profiles. From a business perspective, the obvious goal is to drive more advertising. But it’s also worth remembering that the pandemic’s economic fallout will likely kill off many small business – including the ones that post and advertise on Facebook. So the company has a stake in helping those businesses survive in any way it can.”
Anthony Ha, a senior writer at TechCrunch
“The one thing that we haven’t always done particularly well in the past is provide data that’s actionable for merchants. It’s one thing to share a bunch of data, and it’s another thing to show data that actually could result in product changes — like changes to your Shops, in terms of how it looks or how it’s organized. Most of the [new insights] will be centered around the performance of the Shops. “
George Lee, Director of Product Management George Lee at Facebook
Case Study: Using Facebook Shop to Increase Case Study
Can Facebook Shops really help you boost your sales?
Well, it all takes the right strategy. This case study of a Thai beauty product will tell you all.
(Note: Brand name hasn’t been given for privacy issues)
About the Business:
This Thai fashion brand has been selling women outfits. They decided to take their products to more customers with Facebook Shop. This is more important as they don’t have an eCommerce website.
Objectives:
Showcasing more products to Facebook followers
Selling directly without having them to click to other eCommerce platforms where their products were listed.
Strategy:
Setting up Facebook Store
Targeting the female audience
Running 5 Facebook ad campaigns a month.
Using high-quality product photography
Using social media influencer (within their budget)
Making quick videos on styling and sizing guide
Using snappier captions
Running Facebook Live Videos and Stories
Letting the customers tag their photos in their community tab.
Tagging other businesses in their shoots such as photographer so that they can get a mention by other businesses
Encouraging customers to drop reviews
Providing customer support and responding quickly to the customers’ comments.
The Results
With over 2500 product views and 400 clicks, 80 purchases were made directly through the Facebook page within a month.
50 % of new followers increased.
8X return on ad spend
A QUICK RECAP…
Facebook Shops is a wonderful opportunity you should leverage to boost your sales. Creating Facebook Shops is easy and straightforward. If you have a previous business account as Facebook Page Shop, you can easily add this section. New sellers can create a store using Commerce Manage for letting the customers shop directly through their Facebook page or take them to their website to complete the purchase. To make the most of selling with Facebook Shops, it is recommended to use essential features such as Lookalike audiences, Instagram ads, and insights.
Once you set up your Facebook Shops, make sure to use the right strategies like adding high-quality images of your products and other things to see success.
Hope this information will help you create a successful Facebook Shops account. What do you think? Don’t hesitate to drop your opinion on the comment box given below!
“When people tell me they have learned from experience, I tell the trick is to learn from other people’s experience.”
The same thing can be said about case studies.
Case studies, as I personally think, are the best ways to learn from other’s experiences. Experience is the best teacher (even when it’s not our own.)
Case studies are as old as human civilization, although they were not documented as we see them today.
For example, a hunter somewhere in 500 B.C. might be telling others how he hunted down the lion using specific tools and techniques. The other hunters then adapted the same tools in their campaign.
Case studies are a way to share expertise and solution. On the other hand, they are a great way to learn more practically. They include actual examples and results.
A medical case study shows how the researchers identified the problem and created solutions accordingly. It would help the physicians in the future while tackling the same problem. Similarly, a hotel case study would help a new restaurant looking for a business in that area.
But case studies are not something you saw on teleshopping ads where (fake) audience claims to reduce 10 kg weight by taking a magic pill.
Instead, they include the hard and cold data being used in problem-solving and decision making to achieve the goals. The studies logically show “they-did-this-and-got-this.”
Case studies have been used for years by various organizations, medical and law schools, and artists.
And our SEO industry is not an exception.
In fact, case studies are as important as our analytic tools as online marketing is a trial and error process.
The SEO case studies of others can help you identify the best practices for the same concern, especially in the same industry.
SEO case studies can also be useful if you do not get results instead of doing the right things. Many brands have shared their case studies on how they boost their traffic using specific SEO techniques.
Here I have outlined some top SEO case studies you can learn from.
(Note: Names of the organizations hasn’t been given due to privacy issues)
SEO Case Study # 1: Improving Organic Traffic and Visibility
This is a case study of a website selling food products. They wanted to leverage digital marketing to promote their brand but didn’t know where to get started. Top of that, it was quite challenging in a competitive environment. They adapted specific SEO strategies to see success.
Objectives:
Creating a User-Friendly Website
Improving Visibility
Improving User Experience
Increasing Visitors
SEO Strategies Used by Them
Making the right keyword strategy
Identifying user intent
Organizing the website’s content
Creating a URL strategy
Posting fresh content
The Results:
22% Increased Website Traffic
40% Increased Recipe Sharing
Top Ranking for 10 Keywords
Key Lessons to Learn From This Case Study:
Creating a user-friendly website ensures easy navigation and encourages users to explore more.
A URL strategy can improve user experience and improve current marketing strategies.
Understanding the user intent is equally essential as it helps determine whether visitors will explore a website or leave it for a better answer.
Identifying the right keywords can put in front of the right audience and help your rank as well.
Fresh content not only educates your audience but also helps improve ranking.
SEO CASE STUDY # 2: Increasing Organic Traffic through Blogs
Blogs are also an important SEO strategy. See how this laboratory gets more traffic to its website through blogs by addressing customer’s key concerns.
Objective:
Creating blogs to help customers and to drive traffic as well.
SEO Strategies Used by Them:
Researching the topics using specific tools and Q/A platforms like Quora and Reddit.
Including the keywords used by the target audience in the search box
Using CTAs (Call to Action) in each blog
Promoting blogs through social media
Using real images, videos, and infographics
The Results:
33% Increase in Traffic to Product Pages
50% Increase in Organic Traffic
20% Increase in Page View
Key Lessons to Learn from this Case Study:
Audience-centric blogs are liked and shared by users.
Keywords make the content more discoverable.
Creating visual appeal through video or infographics can add to the success of your blogging.
CTA can prompt users to take the required action, thereby improving the chances of sales.
Social media is a basic yet essential channel to market your content.
SEO Case Study# 3: Boosting Local Inquiries
This case study belongs to a waste management business looking for getting leads through local inquiries.
Objectives:
To appear at the time when users are looking for their services.
Building awareness
Focus on the local searches
Improving on-page local optimization
SEO Strategies Used by Them:
Working on-page local optimization
Optimizing “Google My Business”
Creating high-quality mentions and links
The Results:
30% more booking
Improved visibility in targeted areas
Improved traffic and leads
Key Lessons to Learn from this Case Study:
Google My Business account is important to improve your local visibility.
On-page SEO helps you get better visibility and support your marketing campaigns.
Creating mentions and links on other sites and directories help get traffic back to your website.
SEO Case Study# 4: Ranking for Competitive Keywords
A local travel blogger was looking to compete for the top keywords used by his audiences, such as travel advice or outdoor travel tips.
Objectives:
To get on top with specific competitive keywords.
SEO Strategies Used by Them:
Guest Posting
Choosing the keywords with good volume
Performing competitor analysis
Linkbuilding
Promoting the content
Using other content types such as infographics and videos
Key Lessons to Learn from this Case Study:
Guest post not only exposes your content to more audience but also helps you earn a link.
Link outreach helps increase awareness and visibility.
There is no use in going after highly competitive keywords.
SEO Case Study# 5: Building the Traffic from 0 to 100 k
It is challenging to build traffic for a startup as everything has to be started from scratch. However, getting good traffic is still achievable if SEO is done right. Here is a case study of a software company that increased its traffic from 0 to 100,000 in less than two years.
Objectives:
Building brand awareness
Improving organic traffic
Promoting Sales
SEO Strategies Used by Them:
Keyword research and competitive keyword analysis
Content Creation
Implying link building techniques
Improving blog visuals and readability
Promotion over Social Media
The Results:
Having 100k visitors in less than two years
Top ranking for 30 keywords
Many of their posts still rank on top Google spot for specific keywords
Key Lessons to Learn from this Case Study:
Keyword research is important to find the relevant keywords that can boost traffic.
Link building adds to your credibility and leads to higher site metrics and SEO scores.
Using videos and infographics make content appealing as well as sharable.
Content should be more on the latest issues faced by the audience.
Want to Achieve Success Like These Case Studies? We Can Help
These case studies must have made you familiar with essential SEO ingredients like keyword research, blogging, local SEO, content creation, promotion, and many more. It is well and good if you have SEO expertise to imply these SEO essentials. Otherwise, make sure to choose a professional SEO expert or agency to get the job done. If you are looking for the same, look no further than our digital marketing services.
We can help you conquer the ranking and boost traffic with the right SEO practices backed by our experience. Get in touch now!
Amazon – it is the world’s largest e-commerce marketplace. And it has reached its current stature after decades of updates and enhancements, which provide immense value to both buyers and sellers on the platform. Most online vendors have a product page on Amazon as well. It becomes important for customers to be able to search these product pages, similar to how users search for websites on search engines.
Amazon, like other search engines, has its own search algorithm – A9. Thus, it is vital for you to know how A9 works so that they can get their product pages ranked higher to increase discovery and sales. The difference in how Amazon A9 works as compared to the search algorithms of Google and Bing lies in the fact that Amazon is first and foremost a buying platform, which means that the website-SEO concepts alone won’t be of much use.
Again, similar to other search engines, Amazon also offers sellers to use the Sponsored Ads feature, which helps attract more customers, improve sales figures, and allows the sellers to meet their goals.
WHAT IS A9?
While Google and Bing searches are related to almost every possible topic that humans can think of, every Amazon search query has a sole transactional purpose. For this reason, the A9 algorithm focuses on two primary aspects only – Relevance and Performance. Optimizing these two factors can yield wonderful results for your Amazon seller account, and you will see your conversions increase steadfastly.
Relevance and Performance can further be broken down into multiple sub-categories, as discussed below.
A9 RELEVANCE RELATED FACTORS
Product Title – This is the most important Amazon SEO element for any seller. You should use the most relevant product keywords in the product title, but keep in mind that keyword stuffing will depreciate your Amazon search rankings. Some of the points to consider while optimizing your Amazon product name are:
Inclusion of brand name
A concise and clear product description outlining the use(s) of the product
Include the name of at least one essential material or special ingredient
Include product size and color
If applicable, you should mention the product quantity as well
Seller Name – If the main keyword(s) for your product is included in your seller name, your products get ranked higher in Amazon search results.
Backend Keywords – Backend keywords can be thought of as similar to the meta tags of a website that tell the search engine what the webpage is about. Backend keywords are used to guide the A9 algorithm in figuring out which particular product listing is targeting which specific keyword on Amazon. For backend keywords, sellers get five fields with a 50 character limit for each field. Sellers should make optimal use of these limits by not repeating any keywords and keeping the use of quotation marks to a minimum. Using synonyms will also help.
Brand Field – Your brand name spelling should be exactly right, as many searches on Amazon are based on a product’s brand name.
Product Description & Bullet Points – These are again very vital for your search rankings as they give detailed information about the product to your customers, and hence, the description and bullet points need to be as descriptive as possible and need to include your product’s most relevant keywords.
A9 PERFORMANCE RELATED FACTORS
Product Price – Having a competitive price for your products on Amazon as compared to other sites is a big bonus as it increases the likelihood of positively growing your conversion rate. If a particular category has many similar products that are selling for less than you are, then your sales will take a hit. Pricing for products on Amazon should be done only after thorough research and comparison with your competitors.
Product Images – Amazon recommends its sellers to use high-resolution images with guidelines to be 1000 pixels or larger in either of height or width, while also mentioning that the smallest image should be 500 pixels on its longest side.
Amazon Reviews – 85% of the customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Also, generally, the products ranking at the top of an Amazon product search have more and better reviews as compared to the ones down below on the same list. This concludes that more and better reviews have a positive impact on conversion rates and sales. To ensure that your customers do leave your reviews after purchasing products from you, simply send them follow-up emails requesting them to leave a review. If you have negative reviews, understand what the customers’ complaints are and resolve them.
WHAT ARE AMAZON SPONSORED ADS?
Sponsored Ads work by targeting shopping queries or products and occupy high-visibility sections on Amazon’s website. These work similar to Google Ads or Facebook Ads in the sense that different ads are shown to customers based on their search and behavior patterns.
TYPES OF SPONSORED ADS
Sponsored Products – Available to all Amazon professional sellers, these ads are visible on the Amazon website and are useful in promoting specific products. These are visible in the ad placement sections on product search results and product pages. The primary objective of using these ads is to increase traffic to product pages to boost sales.
Sponsored Brands – This is available only to the vendors registered in the Amazon Brand Registry. These ads include multiple products along with the logo of your brand and a customized headline. Once a visitor clicks on the ad, they will be redirected to a grouping of products or your brand store. This ad type is primarily used to increase brand awareness and boost sales across the entire catalog of your products.
Sponsored Display – These ads are used to build customer engagement by targeting those buyers who either viewed the product detail page of your products or showed interest in categories similar to or related to your promoted products. Specific products or categories that are complementary or similar to your product can also be targeted. The sponsored display can help you reach a wider audience both on and off Amazon. This is available to vendors registered in the Amazon Brand Registry only.
Stores – A store is more like a brand campaign where you can showcase your seasonal collections and bestsellers, share your brand’s story, and even publish videos. Automatic widgets can be used to customize the user experience. It helps maximized user engagement with your brand using a custom-made brand experience, which improves user loyalty and retention. Again, available only to the sellers and vendors registered on the Amazon Brand Registry.
BUDGETING
Each advertiser, before launching a campaign, would want to have a heads up about how much the ad campaign is going to cost. To help sellers understand the advertising costs, Amazon has some points for you to consider.
There is no upfront on a monthly advertising fee. While setting up a sponsored ads campaign, sellers can determine their ad budget along with the bid amount for each click. Sellers only pay when their ads get clicked by customers, and the cost charged for each click is the exact same amount set as the bid price by the seller.
Sellers have complete control over their ad budget as they can set daily budgets or a campaign-level budget. Not a single penny extra outside of the budget specified by the sellers will be charged to them.
A budget, once set, can always be revised. If you are working on a daily budget, you can either increase or decrease it each day. But a campaign-level budget can only be increased from its current value.
A Sponsored Products ad campaign generally takes about 5 minutes on an average to be setup up, and the ads start showing to targeted users almost instantly. In the campaign manager, you can find real-time information, which is also where you create the ads. These ads are designed, keeping in mind the diverse seller backgrounds, which makes it very easy to implement, without having any prior advertising experience. There are even multiple report types to help you understand your ad campaigns better and optimize them.
CONCLUSION
Amazon is a platform in itself, and it is important to know all it has to offer before you become a seller. This will help you optimize your sales and increase your revenue, which is, after all, the primary motivation of becoming an Amazon seller.
A good percentage of Google search queries are in the form of a question.
Whether it’s dating advice, learning magic, making girlfriend happy, or finding the best shoes in the town, everyone prefers to type it in a question form over Google Search.
And Google doesn’t disappoint as it tries to provide the best answer that can go with search intent.
But Google doesn’t answer on its own. Instead, it collects the data from websites, reviews, and trusted entities to match the answer.
It means that if you have the close answer to the user queries, you can show up in its People Also Ask box.
What is People Also Ask box?
It is a Direct Answer facility by Google. It is the set of questions answered that closely matched to the searcher’s intent. It appears in the set of four questions that can be expanded to see the answer.
For example, I want to know how French toasts are made. I use Google search to find the answer and this is what Google shows along with the key answers in the People Also Ask box.
Here is another one (obviously, searched by a curious or jealous female fan of Brad Pitt).
Like featured snippets, the PAA box shows answers in different formats ranging from text, tables to videos (sometimes).
What are Expert opinions on People Also Ask or PAA Box?
Okay. Now you must have understood what the People Also Ask box is. It is a direct answer facility by Google to show you the related questions to your search queries. It helps people find the best answers.
As a business, should you care about People Also Ask Box?
Yeah, you should.
This is because Google pulls out data from several sites, reviews, and trusted entities to provide the best answers.
Showing up in the PAA answers can benefit your website as you get in the front of million eyes looking for the answer. This way, it is a great opportunity to improve your organic search.
EXPERT OPINION
Given their typically high position in search results, the PAA box provides brands and SEOs with an opportunity for visibility in a crucial section of the results page.
– George Nguyen, Editor at Search Engine Land
According to a study by Ahrefs, PAA box appears roughly four times in search results than featured snippets. SEMrush has found that the PAA box appears 75% of the time.
Source: Moz.com
The percent of search results with PAA is higher on mobile devices. In Singapore, they pop up 3 times more often in mobile results. In the USA, they occur four times as often on mobile devices.
Source: advancedwebranking.com
While featured snippets usually appear either first or second in the SERPs, PAA boxes can appear in almost any position. For example, it can be on number two position for the query “how to do SEO” and number five for “how to do digital marketing”.
Source: Semrush.com
How to Optimize for PAA Box?
PAA shouldn’t be ignored if you are looking to improve your ranking.
Make it the part of your SEO or online marketing campaign. Here is how to optimize your online website or other entity to appear in the PAA box.
Choose the Right Keywords:
Find out which keyword set is ideal for the People Also Ask box. You can use a rank tracking tool to find the frequency of PAA results for your target phrases. Also, use the Google Universal search engine ranking data, and look at the SERP feature report.
Brainstorm for the Questions:
Slip into your customer’s shoes and think about what they are likely to ask. Besides, you can use several online tools to explore questions such as Yahoo Answers, AlsoAsked.com, Answer the Public.com, and Usetopic.com. Quora is also an effective way to get insight into people’s queries. Once you generate the list of questions, see if you can answer them all as well as incorporate somewhere in your content.
(Snapshot of Usetopics.com tool for finding the answer)
Optimize Your Content:
Google fetches the data or answers from several online entities such as websites and reviews. But it only considers the content written in the right format. Here are some suggestions to make your content fit for the PAA box:
Write in a plain and natural language
Avoid making it look like a sales copy
Target on the questions you have researched (like on Quora)
Keep your content updated
Use the tools like “Answer the Public” to Understand Your Audience Queries Better.
EXPERT OPINION
When writing about a topic, research it thoroughly and ensure you’re answering all the key questions people have. Thorough keyword research and tools like AlsoAsked will help here.
– Sam Underwood, Digital Search Marketer
Strategically Optimize Your Key Pages:
You can try everything you think that people can search for. For example, many people search for “what is the cost of online marketing”.
You can optimize your pricing page for that. But the answer shouldn’t be built around “Call us for Quote Now”.
Instead, you can mention about the general pricing plans (avoiding sales viewpoint as possible).
Careful planning in advance and active listening in the moment to what consumers want means you’ll learn how to develop your answers. It is an ongoing process of active listening.
– Jeannie Hill
How to See Reporting on Your PAA Listings?
Google Search Console helps you track the data on your PAA listings. However, it only happens when your listed answer on the PAA box is expanded. One more thing—if your PAA box occurs in position five, your listing within the PAA box will be reported in Google Search console as position five, no matter if your answer pops up as one of the original three or the tenth of the listing.
Getting Success with PAA—A Case Study
In the summers of 2018, I have been approached by a US real estate firm looking to increase their sales through an online listing. I thoroughly optimized their site for flaws and found that they lack efficient keywords. However, I also wanted to know how PAA can work for them along with other marketing strategies. Here I will only include PAA strategies and results as the topic is all about PAA. Right?
Our PAA Strategies:
Generating Right Keywords People Used for Buying, Selling, and Listing Homes
Incorporating Semantic Keywords
Adding FAQs Box and Including Some General Real Estate Questions as Well
Optimizing the Content for Voice Search
Using the Q and A Mark Up and Other Schemas
The Results:
Optimizing the real estate website for PAA as well as other SEO strategies improved their traffic and exposure as well. They also saw a 200% increase in People Also Ask results.
OVER TO YOU
People Also Ask or PAA is on the way to becoming a key online marketing strategy over time. Thanks to the ever-increasing question-based search queries and Google’s mission to provide quality search results. If you haven’t optimized your website for the PAA box, do it now or else your competitor will do it.
What do you think? Let me know by commenting below!
How and Why to Understand Your Client or Customer’s Mindset
Creating products and services for your target audience is just the tip of the iceberg.
For example, your workout protein supplement is bought by the gym freaks or athletes. The supplement has everything they need to build muscles. Right? This way, you are meeting their needs with your supplement.
But have you tried to read their mindsets?
For example, some of them might question if the supplement is approved. Some want to know if the supplement is suitable for the elderly. Some want to know if women can use it. For some, the prices can be too higher. Some might not be assured about the quality of the supplement. Some married people want to know if this can affect their reproductive health.
If these questions are not answered, your potential buyers might be doubtful over your protein supplement.
A customer is likely to consider many points before buying your products and services. Therefore, selling a product to their need is just half done. Getting inside your client’s mindset can help you retain them forever.
Why Should You Care About Your Customer’s Mindset?
Not all customers or clients are made equal. Within the same store or website, one might be looking for a particular product to meet an immediate requirement, while others might simply be exploring or browsing. Just as they can have various goals when they visit a website or store, the individual buyer might be driven by the decision made by a different mindset. In other words, the mood or psychology of a customer often impacts his or her purchase decision.
Getting to know your clients or customers helps you build a better product or services and user experience. It also helps you stay competitive as well as earn the trust of clients. After all, you are familiar with the ins and outs of their concerns.
Coming out with the products that match their psyche or mindset means you have hit the bull’s eye.
HOW TO READ THE MIND OF YOUR CUSTOMERS AND CLIENTS
Work Over Your Buyer Personas:
Go beyond the usual demographics factors like age, location, and profession. These factors might not provide sufficient information to create messaging that connects with your audience.
Go extra miles by using the Acquisitions tab to check out which social media platform, blogs, and forums you are getting your traffic from. Integrate this data with your personas to figure out where and when to approach them more strategically.
Keyword data can also help to find the terms and descriptions speaking about the concerns of your customers. Use Google Webmaster Tools to create a list of keywords that can drive visitors to your site. These keywords can then be used in the content of your website, social media, and other digital interactions. This will make your business more familiar with your customers and clients.
Consider Their Lifestyle:
Not all of your customers have the same lifestyle. Some might have kids, and their lives might be revolving around pick up times and after-school activities. If they might not have kids, they might have a good time in sports activities, holidaying, and clubs. If they work part-time or just start their jobs, they must be budget-conscious. Everyone is different, so should be your services.
For example, a family person might be worried about his furniture’s safety when mischievous kids are around them. You can offer them a sofa that is durable enough to withstand all wear and tear caused by the kids. A person who is working part-time with a study can be lured by offering an affordable sofa.
Tap into Behavioral Data:
Behavioral data is also a valuable point to understand your customer’s mindset. After all, the behavior is the reflection of their mindset. You can obtain it using tools like Google Analytics to understand how customers engage with your business. This will help you understand what they find easy or don’t prefer. Besides, you can see where they encounter difficulties while exploring your site. Reviews on social media, eCommerce, and other platforms can be the goldmine to find your offerings’ customer experience.
Develop the Art of Listening:
This is one of the skills you need to develop if you often interact with your clients over the phone or in-person. Actively listening to them can hint about their issues and the solution they are looking for.
Active social listening is also essential if you interact with your customers over social media platforms. Explore your review section to understand their pain points. Make sure to activate the alerts when people discuss your brand online.
Figure Out their Whys:
The mindset of clients or customers can be read if you find out some “whys.”
Why are they using your product and services? What brings them to you? Can your product solve their problems?
Last but Not Least—Put Yourself in Customer Shoes:
Thinking like a customer or client is one of the effective ways to understand their mindset.
It is all about feeling what your customers go through.
For example, a wheelchair company owner can take a tour in the wheelchair of his brand throughout any building to understand their customers’ concerns. Do they feel comfortable in a wheelchair? Does the wheelchair come with better control for their safety?
Here is another example—let’s say your app goes down. Think like your customers, and you will find that it is quite frustrating. You would like to get it fixed as soon as possible.
Bottom Line:
These are some essential tips to read the mind of your customers or clients.
I have told you that getting into their minds will surely give you a competitive edge.
You can map out customers’ minds by conducting surveys, polls, and asking for/exploring reviews.
What do you think? Let us know by commenting below!
Social networking has rapidly become one of the most critical facets of digital marketing, offering unparalleled rewards that can attract potential customers globally. And if you don’t use this lucrative tool, you’re losing a fantastic publicity tool, since it makes it easier to spread awareness about your brand and purpose. Other than brand awareness your goals could be-
Boosting Brand Engagement
Social Customer Service
Generate New Leads
Laying the foundation for the business community
Increase or Drive traffic to your website
Credit: hootsuite.com
Customize Your Content accordingly
It is crucial to keep in mind that not every social media is the same. Preferably, you would need to personalize the content for each platform.
Credit: Marketer.com
Instagram
With over 500 million daily active users and 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram has an incredible marketing power. Instagram is an entirely image-based social network platform, so you’ll need to share intriguing, appropriate photos, and short video clips. You could even incorporate these to create a story, which would have the edge of staying at the top of your audiences’ feeds, instead of being forgotten in repeated posts. The best time to post on Instagram would be around Wednesday noon hour and Friday 10 am -11 am
Twitter
With over 1.3 Billion accounts, Twitter is a social media giant. Twitter seems to have a self-imposed constraint – you cannot type more than 280 characters in a single tweet. That’s why the information needs to be brief, crisp, and to the point. You could include links in twitter posts and hashtags. Make sure you do not exceed more than two. Tweets with pictures have a far better response than the ones without. The best time to post on Twitter would be on Fridays and Wednesdays at 9 am.
LinkedIn
With 44% year over year growth, marketing solutions continue to be LinkedIn’s most rapidly growing segment. LinkedIn is a strictly professional social media network, so you’ll need to make sure that all the articles, posts, and information you share are appropriate for the audience. LinkedIn Users often read opinions and articles on LinkedIn expecting to enlighten themselves, mostly everything that can improve matters surrounding their professional lives. The best time to post on LinkedIn would be Wednesdays from 8 am to 12 pm, Thursdays and Fridays at 9 am.
Facebook
holding almost 93% of entirety, Facebook is Social Media Advertisers’ favorite platform. Social media posts on Facebook may be lengthier than tweets, but don’t ever overdo them. People are so quickly put off by a long essay-like text.
It’s always a fantastic strategy to add a few personal comments, even if you’re posting unique content. Short clips do well on Facebook. Attach a picture or video to each Facebook post, and then link it to your article. Reference posts are often doing great on Facebook. Contrary to popular belief, weekends have the least traffic. The best time to post on Facebook would be on Wednesdays between 10’o’clock in the morning to 3 in the afternoon.
Pinterest
Pinterest is also quite photo-focused. Even so, customers Pin pictures on themed boards. So you would need to start concentrating on your Pinterest content around with a “pinnable” image. Pinterest can be fantastic for inventively spotlighting products, especially if you have a female-dominated intended audience.
Realistic Goals
Among the most severe obstacles posed by many companies engaging in social networking is that they have rarely invested time establishing specific and practical social media marketing targets. They acknowledge they ought to be on social networking sites, but they don’t realize why they’re there. Goal-setting marketers are far more likely (376%) to succeed
Your social networking content strategies ought to integrate with your business plans as a whole. Preferably, you might want to have realistic targets on how you expect your company to grow. Your social network advertisement strategies will support the overall company objectives. Make sure your targets are –
Attainable
Relevant
Specific
Time-bound
Measurable
Organize and Plan your content
Organized marketers are 397% more likely to garner success. Regardless to say, if you want to be influential across social media, you’ll need the best quality content there is to post. One of several most significant errors that companies commit is the distribution of unnecessary advertising content. Note, social networking sites are supposed to be sociable – they’ve never been designed to be a platform for you to advertise your products and services.
You ought to harmonize the content you post publicly to blend insightful and fun products, with a minimal percentage of advertising material included.
You would always need to post the content that is of relevance and importance to other users.
This is perhaps the most crucial factor why most of the influencers have achieved this title. They fully understand their target well and build strong content to be of value to their fans. You ought to do the same thing as a company. It would be best if you also consider any constraints that you may encounter while creating content. For instance, you wish to run a YouTube for your company. It is an excellent idea if you have the relevant content, but it would backfire if you do not have the right staff, resources, skills, and, most importantly, all the time in the world to invest for a successful YouTube channel.
Carefully pick and understand your target audience
One of the really frequent pitfalls created by companies on social networking platforms is to believe that all users and followers should be perfect for them. There is a valid explanation for why analysts favor numerical follower numbers and label them vanity metrics. There’s no sense in getting anyone as a follower when he’s not going to be curious about the content you post.
Not all social networking members are the same. Various forms of users use social media in a variety of ways. If you’re trying to achieve your targets, you ought to utilize the same social networking platforms as the intended audience.
Correspondingly, if you plan to partake in influencer marketing, you ought to determine that you approach influencers whose followers suit your targeted market.
You could be a mid-thirty professional who’s using Twitter. That being said, if you do not directly suit the target audience of your company, you cannot simply presume that your clients would always invest their time on Twitter.
Choose suitable Social Media Networks for Your intended audience
Some people are concerned about how they’re going to aim to sustain energy and time to manage accounts on any social media platform. In certain situations, you should not have to do so. You have to pick the suitable social media platforms for your company. You ought to get to know the social networking sites where the target audience invests their valuable time.
You will have to do some homework first to figure out where the target audience is hanging out. This isn’t expected to be too complicated, especially if you understand your audience. If you still don’t get that, you may get a survey done about their favorite social media networks.
You could perhaps begin with the most popular network among your audiences and then extend to involve those where a relatively significant number of active social media accounts run. Even so, you wouldn’t have to move past three or five social media platforms.
Analyze Your Competitors social media approach
Many businesses do not operate independently. You’re typically going to have competitors that are often managing a networking campaign. You’re certainly going to have to learn what they’re planning (and executing). What’s the primary objective? Who is their target audience? What are all the keywords through which they intend to influence?
You must immediately do a competitive review to help you fully grasp their attributes and shortcomings. This would give you a clearer idea of what future clients expect from your company.
All in all, it’s beneficial and useful to develop a social media strategy such that you don’t merely share content solely for the sake of publishing content. It’s going to help you reach your social network and market targets.
Implementing a marketing strategy through social networking is undoubtedly one of the greatest challenges because it needs you to step away and review at the larger picture. It would be best to move your attention away from your everyday activities, such as managing and reacting to feedback to the higher-level thought process. However, with the tips mentioned above and tactics, you would be able to bring forth your A-game.
I searched Google for the causes and treatment of rash.
And the site that topped my search results was none other than WebMD.
We all know that WebMD is an authentic medical domain educating on various health conditions.
But why Google trust it? Why it places WebMD on the top of SERPs related to health and medical advice?
As a webmaster, I can give you several reasons why Google shows WebMD on top.
But one driving factor behind all those reasons is its E.A.T.
E.A.T stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trust.
It means that WebMD has got the expertise, authority, and trust. The content is created and verified by medical experts, making it authentic for users.
The users come here, trust it, and share it, making it reliable for Google.
This is just a rough overview of E.A.T to show its role in the search engine results.
LET’S UNDERSTAND E.A.T IN DETAILS
What is E.A.T?
E.A.T stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trust. Launched in 2014, E.A.T has become a key metric of ranking.
It is a framework mentioned in Google’s Search Quality Guidelines that helps people determine how helpful or useful a page is to solve their queries. Google wants to provide users the quality results for any queries, and websites with sound E.A.T are likely to get higher rankings.
Here is a brief explanation of each E.A.T component.
Expertise:
A content creator should be an expert in his field. Although it might not be that critical for gossip or entertainment sites, it really matters for financial, legal, and medical websites. For example, providing an author bio in any piece of writing can help people know about the content’s expertise.
Authoritativeness:
Authoritativeness is referred to as the quality of being accurate and reliable. Google measures that by backlinks, reviews, and mentions associated with your website.
Trust:
Trustworthiness comes into play when a website asks users to provide sensitive information such as credit card information. Therefore, a user should feel safe while exploring your site. The primary way to build trust is by implementing an SSL on your website.
“Proven trustworthiness is really important. While expertise and authority are factors that boost your rankings, trustworthiness, or rather a lack thereof is what can easily tank your rankings on Google.”
Keep in mind that these three components work together to help your website be in Google’s good books.
It might not work if you are an expert and produce low quality or irrelevant content. If you have expertise and authority in your content, then the last thing to worry about is your website’s security.
Therefore, you have to be eligible for all components of E.A.T.
However, EAT is not a ranking factor as confirmed by Google’s Danny Sullivan—
“Is E-A-T a ranking factor? Not if you mean there’s some technical thing like with speed that we can measure directly. We do use a variety of signals as a proxy to tell if the content seems to match E-A-T as humans would assess it. In that regard, yeah, it’s a ranking factor.”
But it can’t be denied that it plays a vital role in getting your website recognized by Google.
WHAT IS GOOGLE’S QUALITY RATERS GUIDELINESOR QRG?
E.A.T is essential for the success of your website in search results. It helps build your website’s credibility among the users.
Well, Google QRG is a 166-page long document that contains essential guidelines to rate a website.
This document has been provided to 16,000 human raters employed by Google just to check every website manually. After all, humans can assess the value of the content better than any machine.
But these raters don’t have the power to rank the website based on their ratings.
Instead, they report to Google’s engineers, who then assess their algorithms based on the information provided.
Simply put, the raters’ feedback is used by Google to adjust its algorithm.
“ Quality Raters are spread out all over the world and are highly trained using our extensive guidelines. Their feedback helps us understand which changes make Search more useful.
Raters also help us categorize information to improve our systems. For example, we might ask what language a page is written in or what’s important on a page.
We use responses from Raters to evaluate changes, but they don’t directly impact how our search results are ranked.”
You can download the complete Google Quality Raters Guidelines from HERE.
Broadly speaking, Google Quality Raters’ Guidelines works on four things to rate the website:
A.T
Needs Met (does your page satisfy the users?”
Your Money or Your Life (Important content related to life, money, and health. It calls for utmost expertise.)
Page Quality (Misleading titles, ad-blocked content, and obtrusive ads might harm your ranking.)
“They don’t tell you how the algorithm is ranking, but they fundamentally show what the algorithm should do.”
– Ben Gomes, Google’s VP of Search, in an interview with CNBC over Google’s QRG
The Relationship Between E.A.T AND GOOGLE’S QRG
Again, quality raters cannot influence the rankings of your website.
But Google surely leverages their reported information to show the high-quality website first in the search results.
“These ratings do not directly impact ranking, but they do help us benchmark the quality of our results and make sure these meet a high bar all around the world.”
Many of these websites lack E.A.T; traffic went below when the core update is released, and Google’s ability to detect E.A.T enhanced.
How to Create E.A.T Friendly Content
So far, you must have read that GOOGLE’S QUALITY RATERS GUIDELINES is more or less based on E.A.T principles.
Google is likely to tweak its algorithm based on the report of these guidelines.
Therefore, the message is clear—only an E.A.T friendly website has good chances to rank, no matter what algorithm comes.
There is no right time to update your website according to the E.A.T norms. Do it now.
Here’s how…
Create Quality Content That Stands for Expertise:
Whether you write medical content or run a recipe blog, make sure it has the reflection of your expertise. Otherwise, it is better to get it done by an expert of that field, especially if it is related to medical, finance and health, or any other area of Your Money, Your Life (YMYL)
However, formal expertise is not required in the content related to life experience or everyday expertise. For example, someone mentioning his experience with depression in any form won’t be penalized. Because Google thinks that the person is sharing his knowledge, not expertise.
Here’s what Google guideline says about it.
“Consider this example. Here, forum participants are telling how long their loved ones lived with liver cancer. This is an example of sharing personal experiences (in which they are experts), not medical advice. Specific medical information and advice (rather than descriptions of life experiences) should come from doctors or other health professionals.”
Use Authentic Sources:
Make sure to link your facts and statistics to a credible and accurate source. This makes your content looks authentic.
Google pinpoints this thing in its guideline—
“High E-A-T news articles should be produced with journalistic professionalism—they should contain factually accurate content presented in a way that helps users achieve a better understanding of events.”
Look for Positive Reviews:
One of the E.A.T rules is to gain positive reviews on your content. It will improve your page quality as well as build a reputation. Positive reviews are triggered by high-quality content that helps your audience.
Besides, you should take care of negative reviews by trying to know their problems and providing solutions accordingly.
Make a Wikipedia Page:
For Google, Wikipedia is a reliable source.
Joshua Hardwick, the head of content at AHREFS and the founder at the SEO Project, opines—
“News articles and Wikipedia articles can help you learn about a company and may include information specific to reputation, such as awards and other forms of recognition, or controversies and issues.”
In fact, having a Wikipedia page for your business can help you gain authority and trust to some extent. It is also worth mentioning that Google extracts information from Wikipedia for Google Knowledge Graphs, which is a critical point in improving your online reputation as well.
OVER TO YOU:
Google Search Quality Raters’ Guidelines impact algorithms. And E.A.T is going to be a crucial factor in that. Therefore, optimize your content according to E.A.T so that your website can easily pass an algorithm test on any given day.
What do you think? Let us know by commenting below!
There may be a name in notoriety too. Still, today more and more consumers are making brands and companies accountable for their marketing tactics and policies, especially in the digital marketing world. The exposure of the marketing choice on digital media is many folds more than in offline marketing. This makes controversial tactics exposed and means that sooner rather than later, they will be called out for it.
Let us look at five of the most prominent recent examples of controversial marketing tactics in the digital marketing world.
BIC pens Digital Marketing Controversy
One of the biggest names when it comes to pens and stationery products that are reliable and sturdy. This has been true for decades. With everyone moving to digital marketing, Bic has been behind in this in any aspect. Their brand name has only benefited from these for sure, like most brands worldwide across industries.
However, a recent campaign, which was likely made with great intention, backfired royally. The digital marketing campaign led to a lot of controversies as soon as it hit the social media channels.
Credit: https://www.theguardian.com/
The campaign read:
“Look like a girl
Act like a lady
Think like a man
Work like a boss.”
This was launched on Women’s Day to honor working women. The internet was full of memes and commentaries on this. This led to the company withdrawing the campaign hours into releasing it.
McDonald’s Digital Marketing Controversy
Credit: Cnet.con
The controversy isn’t always caused in a negative sense as hard as it may be to be believed. If precedence is to be seen through, a controversy even if it begins well for the company doesn’t necessarily end well. Positive publicity can lead to disappointment and broken promises for the company later.
A recent example of this is McDonald’s when they wanted to publicize their one day return of their 1990s fame Szechuan Sauce in limited outlets. To publicize this, they worked with the peak popular Rick and Morty show to advertise this online.
It became clear soon that the company underestimated the response they would get to this ad and the sauce return. It isn’t that their ad was not clear enough on the details of the return of the sauce or its availability. What just happened is that they did not see the return being this successful.
What followed the ad was unending lines on all McDonald outlets for the sauce. This threw the outlets that did not have it completely off. Even the ones where it did make a return ran out of it within the first hour or so of the day opening. This meant that almost all customers who visited the outlet left disappointed.
This backfired as many were very upset with the company for such a short return or limited outlet return compared to the scale and popularity of the ad partners.
Star Sports Digital Marketing Controversy
Controversy, at times, strikes even when you may not be at fault. An ad for the Cricket World Cup 2019 by ICC stirred up a lot of controversy in the Indian subcontinent for Star Sports.
This controversy is a reminder to brands that not all trending topics are up for grabs when it comes to the sentiments of people.
To be fair, the company did not directly cause the controversy, but seeing the timing and what had recently happened, this could have been avoided.
They came out with an ad for CWC2019, including Father’s Day, in the narrative for a jibe at the neighboring country for India with respect to cricket. A company there hit back with an ad on the issue with an ad-based around Wing Commander Abhinandan. This was not well, obviously. While most of the hate targeted the Pakistani channel, Star Sports was also dragged into the same due to their connection.
Bud light Digital Marketing Controversy
Credit: entrepreneur.com
Often controversy is not what a company or brand sets out for, but their obvious oversight on one aspect or another leads to disastrous results.
The beer in question recently came out with a series of ads in the digital and traditional marketing formats that completely missed the point and were swamped with negative responses.
The ad portrayed the idea of “up for whatever” in terms of willingness and spirit by ads showcasing a man taking on daring tasks. Their tagline of “the perfect beer for removing no from your vocabulary for the night,” however, sent the worst possible message across.
People saw this as a link to how often alcohol is used or abused for rape, and the campaign faced the social media heat at a peak. The company apologized and pulled their campaign based on the reaction.
Dove Digital Marketing Controversy
Many a time the controversy of an ad isn’t misperception or a second meaning seem into the ad. While there is no denying that such things should be overlooked or avoided by the brands, there is a much bigger category they need to care for.
The last example, for now, is one where the brand marketing team put across a blatantly disturbing thought process, and this was approved or overlooked by the giant that is the company until it blew up.
The case in point being discussed is a digital platform released ad by Dove (a brand by Unilever) in which the advertisement shows a black woman remove her dark top and turn into a white woman by using Dove. This was a clearly racist ad but was somehow approved and launched.
The backlash was immediate and unrelenting until the company apologized and pulled the campaign, but not before they had received a lot of hate over this.
Bottom Line:
From the above examples, you can see that in these times of the great digital footprint everything leaves and where it is impossible in one way to take away once something is put out there, while also being unable to know the extent to which it would become viral; it is crucial for brands to be more than careful of their campaigns. What a brand puts out there on the digital forums goes beyond geographical boundaries and can have a previously unseen level of response to it.
