OUR THINKING

Ever thought about running ads to promote your best performing content to engage with your target audience?

Start by looking at your existing organic traffic to find out which content on your site and social channels is getting the most visits, likes, comments and clicks. These are called your rockstar articles or posts. The ones that people just love love love.

And this is where you focus your paid budget.

Then you can begin to promote these with paid campaigns on social using your customer demographics and interests to target specific audiences.

Make sure the content has a call to action for the reader so that you can measure this as a conversion goal. This doesn’t have to be an immediate sale. It could be:

• sign up to email
• follow on social
• like, comment or share

This technique should see your reach grow and customers visit your site and get to know your brand!

If working with content creators is in your strategy then you need to know about this.
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Shopify Collabs

This new product release brings Creators and Merchants together to build partnerships and reach new audiences. It’s available to all merchants in the US and Canada. So it’s only a matter of time before it rolls out globally.

How to prepare

1. If you’ve already got a Shopify store then you’re half way there because it’s all managed within Shopify Admin.
2. Install Collabs (when it rolls out globally…we’ll let you know)
3. Make your store and products discoverable
4. Then sit back with a cup of coffee whilst creators apply to join your community
   

The entire process is managed within Collabs right from supplying unique links or discount codes, to inventory, order and customer info. We’ll be sure to let you know when it launches here.

Another Google update? Yes really.

On October 19, 2022 Google made an update to its algorithm—one that specifically affected organic search results.

Here’s what you need to know…
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What is it?

Officially called the “October 2022 spam update”, Google has said: “SpamBrain is our AI-based spam-prevention system. From time-to-time, we improve that system to make it better at spotting spam and to help ensure it catches new types of spam”

It’s global and affects websites in all languages—no one is safe ;)
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What is spam?

There are many things considered spam by Google’s algorithm. Here are the top offenders:

• Text and links on web content that are not visible to humans
• Unnecessary and excessive keywords within the content
• Links for the sake of links that don’t provide any value to your visitors
• Content copied from other websites
• Content created by AI in order to increase content volume when it has no value
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Why do you need to know?

This update affects organic results—they are the ones you don’t pay for, i.e. not the ad campaigns you run in Google.

What it means is that if your content is spammy, you’ve got a poor backlink strategy or have other content that is considered ‘poor’—you may be impacted by this latest update.

On the plus side, this should benefit brands who are doing the right thing by getting rid of the spammy results that are interfering with customers seeing your brand.
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What to do if you’ve been affected

Google hasn’t specified whether the update focused on links, content or other forms of spam—but it’s probably safe to assume it’s everything. If you’ve noticed a drop in your website’s organic search rankings, here are some things to do:

• Contact your SEO and/or content agencies
• Check whether the content on your website is in line with Google’s spam policies
• Remove any spammy content from your site right away
• Follow Google Search Essentials (formerly known as the Google Webmaster Guidelines)

If you could only use one ad creative for your Facebook ads…‍

Make it a UGC problem + solution ad!‍

As a growing eComm brand you will be only too familiar with the problem that you’ve solved for your target audience.

Now you want to speak to those potential customers and show them how you’ve done it.

Hint: your product IS the solution 😉

UGC is effective because what others say about you is often seen as more credible than what you say about yourself. And if that person happens to be an influencer with an established and loyal following who’s audience matches your target shoppers…then that credibility is supercharged!

The 6 best UCG content types to try on Facebook

#1 The Testimonial‍

Usually a single person, taking selfies and giving a review of your product. It can include an unboxing so that your potential customers can see what the entire experience is like.

This format is also great for retargeting people who’ve visited your website but not yet bought anything. Showing them this type of ad once they’ve left your site can drive them back to complete the purchase.‍

#2 The Compilation‍

Think of this like those mix tapes you used to make for your friends! All your best songs on a double sided cassette!

A UGC compilation is where you take several of the single testimonials and make them into a story. You end up with multiple reviews and testimonials in a single piece of content—usually a video which keeps viewers’ attention for longer.

Choose the best parts of each review, add in headlines, text and statistics to give potential customers lots of evidence that yours is the right product for them.

Test this format against the single testimonial to see which works best for your brand.‍

#3 Instagram Stories‍

If you don’t have lots of UGC, then use the Instagram stories that people have posted about your products in your Facebook ads. You can use either a single image or the video itself.

This is a great format because it does not feel like an ad at all because the content wasn’t designed to be!

Remember you’re testing these formats against each other for your brand. So let them run until you have enough data so you can compare each ad type.‍

#4 TikToks‍

Using TikToks created by your customers or followers in your Facebook ads is really effective. The cross-platform experience will grab people’s attention and is particularly helpful if your product is targeted at a younger audience who use TikTok.‍

#5 Single Images‍

Use images from UGC where people have tagged your brand.

As well as testing against the other content types, you can play around with this format too! Try using a slide slow to cycle through lots of images from multiple customers, a carousel or just single images and add your own headline.‍

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#6 Borders‍

Add a border to the UGC that use use in the ad to make it feel more like your brand.

Then add headlines or subtitles for those who scroll social media with sound off to make sure the content is understandable.

So, how do you get UGC in the first place?

You can wait for happy customers to post their own content. If you want to speed up getting more UGC then add a request to your post purchase email comms. Incentivise customers with a discount or free product as a thank you for creating a review or video about their experience with your products.

Alternatively, identify and reach out to some influencers you’d love to work with. Once they’ve said yes (woohoo!) follow these steps to get the best out of the partnership:‍

Prepare

• Set your budget
• Brief the creator with as much info as possible
• Examples go a long way in helping in this process
• Provide them with details on how the products work and what you want to see them doing with the products
  

Help them get to know you

• Be clear on your objectives for the content
• Tell them your brand and story
• Highlight any brand dos and don’ts
• Educate theme about your target audience
• You can also suggest a brainstorm session to get their ideas too!
  

Give them specifics

• Shoot in good lighting
• Film all content vertically
• Add an extra 1-3 seconds to the beginning and end of all clips
• Turn off anything that will add background noise
• Wear plan clothing without brands/logos visible
• Tell them what setting or background you expect
  

Storyboards can help clarify expectations

• Provide a sample script
• Define the type of content (testimonial, review, product trial)
• Describe what you want them to be doing in the clip
• Encourage them to make it authentic!

What is it?

Google announced they’ve launched 5 types of Music Mood Lineups: Romantic, Happy & Uplifting, Chill, Downbeat, and Funky Moods in Google Ads for 20 countries.

That means when someone is listening to or watching a music playlist on YouTube, you can target them based on the general mood of that playlist.

What would you use it for?

To connect your product with where your audience is at emotionally.

For instance you might choose Romantic for Valentines Day, Happy and Uplifting for Mothers Day.

Vevo launched the same feature previously. We wonder if they’ve partnered to bring that AI to Google, or if it’s a straight feature rip off.

How do you access it?

It’s available in topic targeting when you create a new YouTube video campaign.

Not yet available in PerformanceMax from what we can see, but we’re hoping the targeting is expanded there soon, especially given PerformanceMax already includes automatic YouTube ad placement

What is a backlink?

A link to your website from another website
Yes it’s that simple!
So why are good backlinks so important?

#1 They help your site rank well
‍The bedrock of Google’s algorithm is links. Good links signal to search engines that your site has valuable content.‍

#2 They help your site get found
‍The search engine bots that crawl sites, visit popular pages more often than unpopular ones. So…they might find your site faster if it has a link from one of these popular sites.‍

#3 They help you get relevant traffic to your site
‍Links from one site to another points visitors in the direction of relevant or related content which helps in their online journey and help Google connect the dots.

How to know what a good link looks like

They have to be from a site that:

✔️  has relevant content - i.e. something that’s related to your product

✔️  is considered to have ‘authority’ - i.e. it has good quality content

✔️  has a high volume of traffic - i.e. lots of people are interested in the content

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How to check your backlinks

Go to ‘Links’ in Google’s Search Console and look for ‘External links’.

From here, look at the Top linking sites. This will tell you the sites with the most backlinks to your website.

Remember though, it’s about quality as well as quantity. So to check the quality of those links go to moz.com and use the Link Explorer. Follow the steps there. What you want to see are backlinks where the domain authority is the same or higher than your own website.

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Best backlink strategy for eComm brands

So we now know that backlinking is when other site owners, editors, or webmasters link to your website. For this to work, you need to have great content, a clear value proposition and know where your customers are hanging out online. Here’s a guide to one of the top link building tactics for eCommerce businesses…

1. Find relevant sites
   ‍Seek out blogs that are on topic for what you sell or targeted at the same audience as your buyers. This can be as simple as Googling “top blogs for…” and then using variations of your target audience such as “new mums”.
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2. Check their domain authority is 20 or more on moz.com
   ‍This is important as the aim is to drive quality traffic to your business. It’s about quality here not quantity
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3. Find their contact details.
   ‍Do some online stalking and contact the site owner. Their contact details are usually on the site or their social profiles like LinkedIn or Twitter
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4. Reach out and offer to send your product for them to try out and review
   ‍Make their job as easy as possible by providing content and even suggest a specific webpage it could be added to on their site
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5. In return they write nice things about your product, maybe adding a few product images or videos (hint: you should provide them!) and post it on their website, at the same time, linking to your site so the readers can find out more.
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And Voila! A backlink is born!