How Are You Overcoming Digital Objections?

Being in sales can really make you relate to the life of a toddler in the sense that they are constantly told “no”. For example, when my three-year-old wants to wear shorts but it’s snowing outside, he hears “no”. When he refuses to eat his dinner but asks for ice cream before bed, he again hears “no”. When he wants to ride his bike without a helmet, there it is again; “no”.

Five of the most well-known people today failed before they had success. Oprah Winfrey worked on a failed news show and was demoted from her primetime co-anchor role. J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, had her novel rejected by 12 different publishing houses before it was eventually accepted by Bloomsbury. George Lucas, the writer of Star Wars, had the film rejected twice by studios before 20th Century Fox agreed to take a risk. Michael Jordan didn’t make the high school basketball team. Thomas Edison tried inventing the light bulb 1,000 times before prevailing.

What they all have in common, is that they overcame objections. Everything we do in life is going to come with objections, but the way you answer them is what is going to separate you from your competition and get you one step closer to that magic three letter word of “yes”, and selling digital isn’t any different.

Some of the most common objections that you might hear are “Why can’t I do this for $500 a month?” and “I just want to try this for a month and see if it works.” Digital is a frequency medium, so the more that someone sees the ad, the more likely they are to take that next step. With a smaller budget, it isn’t going to have enough frequency to make an impact so it will turn out to be a waste of money. Explain that we don’t want to take a pebble and throw it into an ocean because that just isn’t going to have an impact. We are reaching a very targeted audience, so those people need to see the ads as many times as possible. In 2021, it was estimated that the average person encountered between 6,000 to 10,000 ads every single day, so we want to give them the best chance of success and we’ve found that campaigns that have lower investments have a lesser chance of getting the results that they are looking for. Also, as a campaign progresses, the exchanges’ algorithms learn more and can predict better who will respond to ads, based on prior performance.

Unlike traditional types of advertising like radio, TV, direct mail, or even outdoor where the business can physically see or hear their ad in action, digital is the complete opposite. Most likely, that business is NOT going to see their own ad, and that can be another objection you come up against. If that’s the case, explain to them that digital ads are all bought in real time. For example, ff I wanted to buy stock in Proctor and Gamble, I wouldn’t go right to Proctor and Gamble; I would go to a stock exchange. Buying digital ads works the same way.

Since the buying of digital ads is done in real time, we can’t tell the business to go to usatoday.com at 3:00 this afternoon and they can see their ad. There are also millions of ad impressions available to bid on, we don’t win every impression that we bid on, and we don’t bid on every available impression. When purchasing ads, we are only buying brand safe premium inventory and we integrate with the top Brand Safety partners like Grapeshot, Integral Ad Science, and DoubleVerify. DoubleVerify authenticates the quality of digital ad impressions for the world’s largest brands ensuring viewable, fraud-free, brand-safe ad environments, so we will only bid on inventory that matches the client’s targeting strategies AND is on websites/apps that are authenticated by DoubleVerify. This is something we do for all Display, Native Display, Native Video, Video Pre-Roll, Household IP, OTT, Online Audio, and Social Mirror campaigns.

Another common objection is “I tried digital before, and it didn’t work”. When I’ve gotten this objection in the past, I equate this one to a diet. I’ve been to the gym before and I’ve done diets, but it didn’t work. Well, that’s probably because I wasn’t doing the right type of exercises or eating the right type of foods or didn’t stick with it long enough. The same thing is going to apply to digital advertising. First, ask the business what kind of advertising they did previously. When it comes to the term “digital advertising”, there are a lot of variations of what that might mean. Sometimes the same word can mean the same thing, and sometimes it’s the opposite. For example, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) can get used interchangeably, when they are actually two different digital tactics. You can also dig a little deeper and find out how the campaign was targeted. Was it using broad demographics and/or age like women 35-54, or was it really getting to that core target audience and targeting by behaviors or keywords. If the business wanted to reach women 35-54, we can bring that a step further and target by:

Women’s Clothes
Corporate Women
Affluent Women’s Shoppers
Mom’s in the Kitchen
Career Women
Athletic Women
Moms
Single Moms
Soccer Moms

Going back to the diet analogy, ask them how long they did the campaign and how much they spent on it. You also want to determine what that call to action was that they were using. If the call-to-action button didn’t match the landing page, they probably didn’t get a lot of conversions because as consumers, we don’t want to have to search for that offer that we were interested in. For example, if I see an ad that is promoting a $1,000 discount, I expect to land on a page talking about that particular offer.

The bottom line with this objection is that digital does work when it is used the right way. If it didn’t work, local businesses wouldn’t continue to buy it and use it as a marketing strategy.

Another difference with digital campaigns compared to traditional advertising is that certain digital products are purchased on a cost per thousand basis, or simply the price a marketer would pay to receive 1,000 campaign impressions. That can be difficult for businesses to understand when they are used to buying TV or radio ads at $XX per spot, or billboards for $X,XXX per month. Because of the confusion, advertisers might say they can’t justify spending a certain amount of money in exchange for a certain amount of clicks. With this objection, you want to remind the business that clicks doesn’t necessarily equate to sales. If someone clicks on an ad but then doesn’t do anything else, what good is that click? This is an opportunity to talk about tracking conversions. When tracking conversions, we can show what someone did AFTER they clicked on the ad. Maybe they made a purchase, or filled out a form, or made a phone call. Those metrics are going to carry more weight than just seeing clicks. The national average click through rate is just .07% proving that most people don’t click on ads, so by tracking conversions, we can show that return on investment (ROI). Mobile Conquesting and OTT with On-Site Visit Tracking are additional metrics where we can show the ROI since we can show how many people saw an ad, and then went to that location within 14 days. By using Facebook Lead Ads or Live Chat, or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) with the lead extension, we can show how many people saw an ad and then took the next step by becoming a lead.

Certain digital product also have the capability for a Match Back report which will demonstrate a business’ ROI. With this, the business would keep track of their “sold list”, and then we match that against the original list of people that were targeted, and now the business can see how many customers were from those targeted ads. This report is available for Native Email Matching, Facebook and Instagram Custom Audience, Mobile Conquesting Address Targeting, Amazon Custom Audience Matching, Household IP Targeting, and LinkedIn Custom Audience Matching.

Those objections are just a few of the more broad ones that you might come up against when pitching digital to businesses, but if you have confidence in what you are presenting and believe in the product, you will find yourself knocking down the “no’s” and turning them into “yes’s”.

The post How Are You Overcoming Digital Objections? appeared first on Vici Media.

Why is Live Chat an Important Part of a Digital Campaign?

There are very few cities in the world that never sleep.  New York City and Las Vegas are the two here in the United States that come to mind.   And while I’m based out of Las Vegas, I do have a bedtime and don’t operate 24 hours.   What about you and your business, do you operate 24 hours a day?  Can your customers reach you and your business 24-7?

Trick question, right?  Customers of yours always have access to your website, which is a good start.  At lease they can see what you’re all about.  But can those customers reach your business at all hours?  In most cases, I’m going to guess the answer is no.

This is where a lot of businesses can take advantage of the opportunity to communicate with those customers that have questions after hours.  With the average business being open only 9a-5p, that leaves 16 hours a day where potential customers could be craving information about your business.  Do we just let them visit our website and hope there’s enough information on there to get them to come back during business hours?  Or is there another way?

That’s where Live Chat comes into play.  I’m not talking about a message option that is run by bots or automated responses.  I’m talking about an actual chat option that is managed by LIVE Chat Agents that have information about your business.  Real people talking to real people matters.

How does Live Chat work?

Live Chat gives you an opportunity to engage potential customers and get more leads through a chat box and a text-to-chat on your website.  No matter what form of advertising you have in your media mix, driving traffic to your site is one of your ultimate goals.   Why not have a way to talk to them when they get there?

On a smartphone, the visitor has the option to chat live on the website or chat by texting.  If the mobile user selects the TEXT US option, the button will go to a text number provided by our Live Chat team that will match the area code of the business’ phone number.  Then once the text conversion is complete the client will receive the transcript and will always receive the visitor’s phone number because that is automatically captured on a text chat.

 

The Live Chat function gets provided to you inside of a container tag (pixel) that sits on the back end of the website.  It generates the live chat box, along with the text to chat for smart phones.   As someone visits your site and scrolls, the Live Chat bounces and settles in the bottom right of the website (on a desktop/laptop).   The Live Chat box is designed to match the colors of your website as well.

The chat agents that manage your website will have information on your business.  This information is gathered prior to launching, and we have specific questions that we’ll ask you to make sure we have the proper information.   While these Live Chat agents are conversing with your potential customers, their goal is to get the phone number or email of the visitor, so that you and your team can follow up with that lead.  When providing the information about your business, you don’t have to provide a script. Our team will create one based on the information that is provided.   You can provide special offers that the Live Chat agent can mention as well.

Another feature that our Live Chat tool has is what we call “Call Connect.”  There’s no additional fee to add in this option.  If you want this option, during business hours, once the agents gather the lead information, visitors will be asked if they want to be connected immediately to talk on the phone with your business.  The Live Chat agent then rings your business and connects you and the customer.

Here’s a few recent enhancements to Live Chat:

For the Call Connect option, you can have different locations’ lead transcripts sent to different email addresses. (up to 10 locations). This means that for those businesses with multiple locations, you can have the leads/transcripts emailed to the store that the customer wants to connect to via phone.
Live Chat now integrates with Google Business Profile, formally Google My Business. The Chat Option can appear in Google Maps on mobile…AND in Google Search on mobile.  So even if the potential customer doesn’t visit your website, they can still interact with your company.

You might be asking; well why do I want this to be on my Google My Business profile if I am trying to drive traffic to my site?

It turns out that 65% of Google searches do NOT result in a click to your website. The reason for this is because the user gets all of the information they need straight from the Google Business Listing.  They call this a “Zero Click Search.”  Having a chat option here enables you to interact with the user if they don’t come to your website.

Here are a few more questions you’re probably thinking about right now:

Q: Is it possible to tell if a lead came from the Google Business Profile vs the chat on my website?

A: Yes, we can pull that information for you.

Q: If we can’t place a Container Tag on our site, will the Google Business Profile integration still work?

A: Without a Container Tag, we can’t place the Live Chat function on your website, but it CAN appear in the Google Business Profile as long as you can access the account and accept our integration request.

Q: How many Google Business Profiles can I set up on 1 Live Chat account because we have multiple locations?

A: Up to 5 locations can be included at no additional setup fee.  If you have more than 5 locations, we can discuss what that looks like for you.

Q: What languages can you have Live Chat set up in?

A: English and Spanish

Q: Why do I need Live Chat or Why does it work?

A: There are several answers to this question:

53% of consumers are more likely to do business with a company they can contact through a chat app (link to source in webinar)
73% of customers find live chatting to be the most satisfying way of communicating with a business.
89% of consumers would like to connect with businesses through mobile messaging.
42% of consumers say live chatting is their preferred way of giving contact info – higher than ANY other lead method.
42% of chat leads come outside of normal business hours
51% of consumers say a business needs to be available 24/7.

Remember, Live Chat is not Artificial Intelligence (AI) and it is NOT a message bot.  It’s staffed by live humans who are trained chat agents, giving your potential customers the ability to interact with someone 24/7/365.

 

How are you communicating with the potential customers that visit your site?  Are you letting them leave without getting a chance to interact with them?

Here’s your chance to change the way you communicate with them.

The post Why is Live Chat an Important Part of a Digital Campaign? appeared first on Vici Media.

What are Google Image Extensions?

Move over Google Text Ads, PPC just got a lot more visual! Now introducing Google Image Extensions!

Tada!

 

 

 

 

 

 

What used to be a somewhat boring text ad on the Google Search Engine Results page, now when a user searches keywords related to a business, it can feature engaging images to really draw attention. Image extensions can help drive performance for advertisers, with compelling visuals of products or services that enhance the message of their text ads, and help businesses get noticed.

Google reports that on average, there is a 10-15% CTR (click-thru-rate) uplift that comes from incorporating ad extensions in advertising accounts. Including image extensions in your search ads could likely make an impact on your overall ad performance statistics.

A few things to note about these extensions:

Add up to 3 unique images in two sizes each (1200×1200 pixels and 1200×628 pixels)
Clicking on image or anywhere on ad takes you to advertiser’s website.
You pay when the user clicks any where in the ad.
Note: Google only allows the Image Extensions after campaign has been active 90 days.

 

Also when providing images, Google is VERY particular about what images can be used.

No text should be in the image – incidental text is ok.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Google also recommends that the important content should be in the center of your image and that it makes up 80% of it.

Does adding these image extensions work and increase ROI? Here are a few success stories with image extensions.

 

Window Treatment Company

Background:

A window treatment company with multiple locations wanted to reach middle to upper-class homeowners that were looking to spruce up their windows with new window treatments for their existing home, those that were remodeling, and those that were in the process of building a brand-new home.

Strategy:

This campaign was a combination of using Native Ads and Google Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads. With Native Ads we used Behavioral Targeting, Artificial Intelligence, and Keyword Targeting to reach consumers while they were in the consideration and evaluation phase of a typical sales funnel. For example, when consumers were on home improvement type websites or apps, or reading articles on the benefits of window treatments, they had the potential to see the ad. By also using Retargeting and PPC, we were reaching them further into the sales funnel in the consideration phase. Since the business has a very visual product, we also incorporated Google Image Extensions on the PPC ad. This allowed the company to drive more engagement, with compelling visuals of products or services that enhanced the message of their text ads.

Result:

In less than three months, the campaign received a click-through rate 3.85% and had over 200 click conversions. Over 130 of those click conversions were to the specific product page that the business was specifically looking to drive traffic to. The Google Image Extensions addition resulted in 27 additional conversions in the very first month of their premier.  Having a digital campaign that carried a 1:2 punch with Native and PPC, the business was “very happy with the progress they are seeing”.

Residential and Commercial Home Contractors

Background:

A  family-owned, top roofing business in our area was looking to drive even more chat leads, increased call volume, form fills and conversions by testing a new solution called “Google Image Extensions” to  their existing campaign.

Strategy:

Targeting our city plus a 50-mile radius of our client’s location, we ran a Google Pay-Per-Click campaign to reach those interested in both residential roofing projects as well as those seeking commercial roofing projects, like administrators, property managers, and maintenance directors.  After longstanding success driving conversions with SEO, Native, Live Chat, and Pay-Per-Click we beta tested adding Google Image Extensions on top of their existing campaign.  These new extensions provided compelling visuals of products and services that enhance the message of traditional Pay-Per-Click text ads to take up more real estate in the search. We rotated 3 unique images as the extension.

Results:

Adding the Google Image Extensions set our client’s ads apart from the traditional text search.  The visuals drove a 3.90% CTR and 148 clicks to their website in the very first month.   Additionally, 19 of those clicks resulted in Live Chat or “Request An Estimate” conversion.  This click to conversion rate is more than double the industry average conversion rate of 5%, netting 12.8% of clicks.  Because Google Image Extensions are only available for clients in good standing with Google for 90 days or more and they are so new as an ad targeting option, getting to market first with our enhanced ads took our client’s campaign to the next level.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image extensions are a great way to enhance your PPC ads. They are like the supermodel version of PPC ads.  Higher CTR, great results and plus they are much more appealing to the eye. The total package.

 

The post What are Google Image Extensions? appeared first on Vici Media.

Are You Using “Free Money” to Help Pay for Your Advertising?

Love makes the world go around, right? Sure it does, but so does money, and Jerry Maguire said it best; “Show me the money!” What could possibly be better than money? How about free money! In the advertising world, that is a real thing for certain businesses, and it is called Cooperative Advertising, or Co-Op. This is when advertisements by retailers include the specific mention of manufacturers or brands who in turn repay the retailers for all, or part of the cost of the advertisement. There are different variations of how a manufacturer will pay for a campaign. For example, they may just pay for their product to be featured in an ad, or the retailer may receive a credit for future purchases with that manufacturer. Co-Op is a phenomenal advertising opportunity because it is a win-win for both the retailer and the brand, but believe it or not, it doesn’t always get used.

The Co-Op market is one that tends to get overlooked and also goes untapped because some businesses don’t even know they have funds to use. Others simply just don’t know how to redeem those funds. One of the main drawbacks for businesses and Co-Op is that the process to get it can be a bit clunky. To start, businesses have to work with a manufacturer that offers Co-Op, but what kind of businesses even offer it? Here is a list of verticals that tend to work with Co-Op manufacturers:

Heating and Air
Dermatologists
Flooring Companies
Farm Stores
Home Improvement
Small Engine Repair
Auto Dealers
Online Retailers
Furnishings and Appliances
Farming Equipment and Supplies
Motorcycles, Snowmobiles, Boating, and ATVs
Building and Construction
Lawn and Garden

Some other obstacles that get in the way of businesses using their Co-Op funds are they believe there are too many restrictions and rules, and there’s too much paperwork that goes along with getting that credit.

Let’s look at a real example of how Co-Op can work with the well-known online pet retailer, Chewy.com. If we go to the Chewy.com website, we can see a list of brands and manufacturers that they work with.

Taking a look at all the different brands, the next step is we have to find out if any of those brands offer Co-Op advertising. This is where you can come in and save the day and become a resource with the process for those businesses because we have made it very easy to help you get all the information you need. With access to a database of over 2,000 different Co-Op programs, we can do the homework for you and determine if there is any Co-Op available for a particular brand, and if so, how much is available. For this, we will want to know the name of the business, and the manufacturers or brands that they purchase from. Once we have that information, we will let you the details about the Co-Op that is offered with a “Co-Op plan sheet”. Here is a Co-Op plan sheet for Blue Seal, which is a brand that Chewy.com works with, so let’s take a look at how to read it and understand what it all means.

In this example we are looking at Blue Seal as the manufacturer and we can see they do offer Co-Op since it says “Active Plan” in the Co-Op Plan Title:

Not all manufacturers are going to have the same type of plan available; it varies. An “Active Plan” means that manufacturer has Co-Op guidelines available. If the Co-Op plan sheet says “Partial Information Available”, that means that is a plan where some plan details have been provided by the manufacturer, but not the complete set of guidelines. “Specially Arranged Co-Op” are plan types arranged on a case-by-case basis with their manufacturer rep or regional rep. “Undisclosed by Manufacturer” are plan types where Co-Op programs are available, but the manufacturer will only share guidelines with dealers or retailers, and “No Co-Op Available” are plans where the manufacturer does not currently offer a Co-Op program.

The next thing we want to look at is the contact information:

Here it’s going to tell us who must give ad approval, and it has their name, phone number, and e-mail address. It also lists where claims get submitted and when they have to be submitted by. It will also explain how they are going to reimburse that business. With Blue Seal, Chewy.com is getting their reimbursement in the form of a credit. That means, however much Blue Seal is going to give Chewy.com in Co-Op, they get that reimbursement through a credit memo the next time they purchase product from Blue Seal. It is also list the Accrual Period, which is the time frame Blue Seal has set during which Chewy.com can earn Co-Op advertising funds. In this case, it is showing us they offer Co-Op funds based on the purchases that Chewy.com made from October 1st through September 30th, so the amount of Co-Op that is available is based on what they currently spend. Sometimes it’s based on the previous year, meaning what is available is based on what Chewy.com spent with Blue Seal last year. Another piece of information we are going to note on this page is the Performance Info. The performance info is when the Co-Op is available to be used. In this example, Chewy.com can use that anytime within the current year. The last thing we are going to need on this page is the Co-Op Claim Address, and that’s where the claim to get reimbursed must be sent and that’s an important piece of the Co-Op puzzle because if it isn’t submitted properly or on time, Chewy.com could risk getting reimbursed from Blue Seal.

In the middle of the page it is going to list the details on what they are offering for their Co-Op. Under qualifying products, this is showing that they offer Co-Op for campaigns that are talking about the Blue Seal animal and pet feeds. Under participation, you’ll see how much Blue Seal is going to give Chewy.com. The participation percentage can be anywhere from 80% of the cost of the campaign, up to 100% and it will be different for each manufacturer or brand. Some have participation rates as low as 2%, and some go all the way up to 125% where the manufacturer is actually giving a business more than what they are spending on a campaign (even more free money). Accrual percentage is percent of new purchases that the retailer has made in terms of what they purchase from the manufacturer. For Chewy.com, 2.5% of that is what can go into the Co-Op fund. Clear as mud, right? Let’s look at an example:

Chewy.com has $200,000 in purchases from Blue Seal:

Accrual is 2.5% = $200.000 x 2.5% – $5,000 in Co-Op funds earned
Participation % is 80% = Blue Seal will reimburse for 80% of the ad campaign
$6,000 ad campaign = $1,200 paid by Chewy.com (20%), $4,800 paid by Blue Seal’s reimbursement memo (80%)

 

In the example above, Chewy.com only has to pay $1,200 total of the ad campaign, and then they will receive a credit memo from Blue Seal for $4,800.

 

Moving further down our Co-Op plan sheet, we see plan comments. Here is where any additional information is going to be listed about the Co-Op. For example, here we will find out that unused funds do not carry over, ads requiring prior approval must be submitted a minimum of 30 days prior to the run date, and ads with just the dealer name and no logo or with the dealer name and services and no specific product featured will not qualify for Co-Op (for once, this is where I would encourage you to read the fine print).

Down at the bottom is the claim reimbursement information. This is what has to be submitted to Blue Seal in order for Chewy.com to get reimbursed.

Once everything has been approved from both the manufacturer and the business, it’s time to assemble the claim package so the business can get reimbursed. You’ll want to make sure that you have checked the deadline submission, you’ll obtain a marketing reimbursement form the manufacturer, and you’ll collect any necessary documents that are listed on that claim form. Typically that will consist of a copy of the invoice, a copy of a monthly report, some form of documentation on the approval to run the ad, a screenshot of the ad, and the signed form itself.

While the Co-Op process can be a little tricky, we try to take the guess work out of it to make it as seamless as possible. We have all been out to eat with someone who tends to get “t-rex arms” when it’s time to pick up the check, so by getting “free money” with Co-Op advertising, you no longer have to be “that guy”. Take a look and see what Co-Op dollars you can take advantage of.

 

 

The post Are You Using “Free Money” to Help Pay for Your Advertising? appeared first on Vici Media.