Digital Marketing Home Runs 2017

As marketers, we hit a lot of singles.

Singles are where our bread and butter come from — consistent success with tried and true strategies.

But, every once and a while, we hit a home run…

They come in all shapes and sizes, on all platforms and mediums.

Today we’re sharing the best home runs of 2017 from X digital marketing experts.

(RELATED: The Beginner’s Guide to Digital Marketing)

Let’s get to it.

Russ Henneberry, Director of Editorial, DigitalMarketer

DigitalMarketer has set out on a mission to own the term “digital marketing.”

To do that, we launched a project to create the most complete introductory guide to digital marketing available anywhere.

The result is The Beginner’s Guide to Digital Marketing, a nine-chapter, 40,000-word resource freely available to anyone who wants a complete picture of the digital marketing landscape in 2018.

It looks like this…

The “home page” of this resource is search engine optimized for the term digital marketing while the other nine chapters are optimized to rank for terms relevant to the core disciplines of digital marketing including:

…etc, etc.

Each chapter is designed to support the pillar “home page” of this resource through its linking structure. Key blog posts were 301 redirected to chapters in this resource and other blog posts were cross-linked to the resource to further establish importance in the eyes of the search engines.

A “Start Here” link was added sitewide to the DigitalMarketer website to maximize exposure to the resource.

The quality and completeness of this resource should compel other websites to link to these pages which will raise its search rankings further.

And, in the end, even if it is slow to get steady traffic from search engines — it will serve as a tremendous resource to our current customers and prospects.

That said, early indications are that this resource will be successful at attracting organic (free) traffic from search and social.

While this resource has only been live for a few weeks, it has already garnered significant traffic from search engines.

The following is the traffic to this resource over the first three weeks of its life. As of the time of this screenshot in Google Analytics, this resource has yet to be promoted with paid traffic or through our email list…

And that’s why The Beginner’s Guide to Digital Marketing is a home run for us!

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At OMG Commerce, we eat, breath, and sleep Google traffic (as well as Amazon and a few other channels).

We’ve always been big believers in YouTube, but in 2017, we used a largely unknown YouTube campaign type for remarketing that completely crushed it…

(RELATED: Aducational Video + Remarketing: A Winning Video Ad Formula)

This campaign type combines two of our favorite channels into one — Google Shopping + YouTube — and it’s called Shoppable TrueView.

Utilizing Shoppable TrueView campaigns, we were able to drive conversions at 50% below our client’s CPA (cost per acquisition) goal. Another way of putting it is that for the same budget we doubled the target number of leads.  And the campaigns keep converting month in and month out.

Here’s the skinny.

YouTube Pre-Roll Ads + Google Shopping (Product Listing Ads) = Remarketing Gold

Here’s the scenario. Someone shopped your site but didn’t purchase.

Maybe they decided to shop around a bit more. Maybe the baby started crying in the next room and they abandoned checkout.  Now they are cruising YouTube watching how-to videos for dealing with fussy babies.

Before they can consume their video, your skippable, pre-roll video ad auto plays retelling the story of why your products are so darn great. And next to your video (or below if someone is watching on a mobile device), your Google Shopping ads are right there begging to be clicked.

The beautiful part about Shoppable TrueView ads – is that you as an advertiser don’t pay unless someone watches :30 (or the whole video if it’s less than :30) or clicks through to your site.

If the viewer skips the ad, you pay nothing. Hence the name TrueView.

All You Need is a Great Video, a Product Feed, and a Remarketing List

OK, so saying “all you need” might make it sound a little easier than it is, but it’s not brain surgery.

If you have a video that…

• Tells your story
• Demos your product
• And makes people want to buy

…then you’re well on your way.

We recommend testing :30, :60, and :90 versions of your ad. We’ve seen videos as long as seven minutes convert, too, but a lot of products don’t require a seven-minute pitch.

Along with your video, you’ll need a product feed set up in Google Merchant Center. This feed is what powers your Google Shopping ads. This feed can be your entire product catalog or just your top products.

Finally, you’ll need a remarketing list.

Here are our recommendations for best remarketing lists.

Top Remarketing Lists You HAVE to Target

You are free to target any old remarketing list you want to. Even the humble “All Visitors” list can convert well with this remarketing ad format.

But, if you really want to get fancy — and if you want to sell a lot — you have to target the following lists.

1. Product Page Viewer: People who get to a product page are much more likely to convert than someone who just views your home page.
2. Long Session Duration: We like to set these up either for someone who visits more than the average number of pages (often three or more) OR someone who spends more than the average time on our site (often three to four minutes plus).  The thought here is that someone who actively engages with the site is much more likely to convert than someone who just visits a single page.
3. Cart Viewers: If someone got to the checkout and did not purchase, they are very likely to convert on a subsequent visit.  We like breaking this down into at least two lists: a 15-day and a 30-day list.
4. Purchasers: This is a great list to use to target people to try and get them to buy something else.

CPAs Less Than Half Our Goal

In the first month of running these campaigns, we drove 199 conversions for $6.09 per conversion. The client’s goal was a $15 CPA.

Because we keep growing our remarketing lists, and because we continue to refine our Shoppable TrueView campaigns, the campaigns continue to grow. In the last 30 days, we’ve driven 263 direct conversions at a $7.50 CPA.

Because of the nature of YouTube, we also recommend you track View Through Conversions, which occur when someone sees your ad but doesn’t immediately click. But they do visit your site in a given window (often one day) and purchase.

If we combine View Through and Direct Conversions (which is how Facebook tracks conversions) we’re hitting a CPA of $5.06.

How We’re Using It in 2018

For 2018, we are recommending this for every client or merchant we meet.

If a client has a good video and a product feed in Google Merchant Center, then we’re running Shoppable TrueView remarketing.  Plain and simple.

You should consider it, too, unless you just hate money. 😉

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There were a TON of Adwords changes in 2017, many revolving around AI & Machine Learning. But since we’ve all read enough about AI for one year I’ve picked something that’s been around for a while, but almost nobody uses.

Which is a shame, it’s easy to implement & very likely to get a win –  especially if the location of your products or services are important to your customers.

I’m talking about  ‘geo ad customizers’

What are they?

Geo Ad Customizers are essentially a way of writing ONE ad that changes automatically to show the most relevant local location to the person searching.

For example, if you wanted your ad to say ‘Based in xxx’ & for that ad to change the xxx bit based on where the person is searching from, you’d create an ad like this:

(note there are ways to use ad customisers based on inventory levels or the price of items in your store, but I’ll just focus on the GEO part for now).

Why does that matter?

It means your ads are automatically personalized to match the location of every search without needing separate campaigns for each city or state?

In other words, awesome results with 1 campaign instead of 50 (or 200) campaigns!

OK, show me!

Ad Customizers are pretty easy to use.

First add a ‘feed’ of locations using Google’s template here: https://goo.gl/h7ZhdB

Add that to the Business Data section of your account:

(the list of all the 98,000 locations possible is here: https://goo.gl/NEKVx5 )

Then add a new ad to each relevant Ad Group as follows. Be sure to keep at least 1 ‘regular’ ad in each group & make sure your auto-replaced text won’t break any character limits.

So why would I bother?

Time is limited. Is it worth investing in yet another new feature?

Here are the recent results using customizers for one of our (very happy) UK clients:

• Increased overall CTR by 62% (Was 1.92% Now 3.11%)
• Decreased CPA by 36% (Was £24.80 Now £15.82)
• Increased Overall Conversion rate by 40% (Was 12.92% Now 18.10%)

(Results from a 90 Day Period: July 25th – October 22nd 2017, across London based locations)

Give them a try – it’s almost certain your competitors aren’t & it’ll probably improve your results.

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Suzi Nelson, Lead Community Strategist, DigitalMarketer

After three years of throwing allegorical spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks, DigitalMarketer is finally able to teach a systematic approach to community management!

I spent the better part of 2017 putting everything I’ve learned about building and sustaining strong online communities into our newest certification.

I am SO excited to teach marketers, businesses owners, and fellow community managers to BUILD and GROW sustainable communities from scratch.

But more than that, how to apply online communities to the Customer Value Journey so that community-building efforts can be tied to increasing revenue or decreasing cost. And that’s why this is a huge home run for every business!

Of course, information wants to be free and I couldn’t keep all our new processes locked up in a certification — so I wrote a recent blog post to help businesses better understand where community can fit in the marketing mix.

I break down how to apply the Customer Value Journey…

To…

• Facebook Groups
• Forums
• White Label Community Platforms

…and more!

It also includes how to decide which business goals your community will meet…
 …and which metrics your community will affect!

Pretty cool stuff, right?

And don’t worry, there are PLENTY of real-world examples so you can get a good grasp on how businesses are leveraging online communities today.

It took literally three years of testing and implementation, but this year all that hard work has come to fruition! And I’m so excited to share everything we’ve learned about creating and sustaining communities that affect the bottom line.

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How many Lead Magnets do you download?

Now, how many do actually you consume? How many linger in your “Inbox” under hundreds of other unread emails?

These days, we are bombarded with marketing messages across all platforms.

Let’s face it, it’s never been easier to get in front of your ideal customer, but let’s not forget… the lifeblood of every business online today is simple:

You need to create a predictable system for consistently converting visitors into leads, and leads into customers.

In theory, it’s not rocket science. But inherently, things start to get a little tricky (and have become increasingly more difficult) for businesses that have an offline element to their sales process.

Fundamentally our home run this year has been based around this simple premise: How do we open up channels of communication in our marketing funnel that we are going to need in the sales process? 

When I say channels of communication, I specifically mean capturing phone numbers so we can follow up using an alternative modality other than just email.

You might be thinking, “Well surely that’s the basics right?”

WRONG.

Most people figure out how they will generate new leads, INSTEAD of worrying about how they are actually going to SELL to them.

That’s why the funnel I’m going to show you knocked it out of the park this year.

Built from the ground up, it has a single objective, to drive qualified leads to scheduled sales appointments from cold Facebook traffic.

This baby isn’t a one hit wonder either.

What’s cool is that it has worked across multiple businesses of all shapes and sizes.

So, if you want to break through the frustration of getting more customers with less stress and headache, here’s how…

Introducing The Phone Funnel Framework:

There are SIX key elements to the Funnel:

1. Using Facebook’s Lead Ad Advertising Objective

Simply put, when it comes to a user experience, you can’t beat Lead Ads (especially on mobile).

Contact details are captured inside Facebook, there’s very little friction for the lead to opt-in and everything is pre-populated with the information already held by Facebook.

This includes their mobile phone number. How handy. 🙂

It’s important to note we are ONLY targeting people on their mobile device.

Why, you ask?

Well, the response mechanism dovetails perfectly with the delivery mechanism, as you’ll see in a minute.

The ad itself promises a FREE Online Training Video in exchange for their contact information.

2. Capturing Your Lead’s Details

This is achieved using the Lead Ad form itself generated inside of Facebook.

This is what people see when they click your ad to respond to watch the video.

You’ll notice, we’re asking for First Name and Email. Nothing new there, but you’ll also see something else is going on.

First, we’re taking their mobile phone number.

Usually, this decreases conversion on a landing page, but here in most cases, it’s prepopulated.

We need that to “open up” the ability to deliver via text message and later down the line, generate conversation starters in our follow-up.

You’ll notice, there’s a drop-down box asking, “Would you like the video instantly texted to you?”. It’s either Yes or No.

We use this to immediately segment those who we can follow up with via text and email or just email.

Upon submission, all the contact information on the form is immediately synced with our CRM that then triggers the entry point automated follow up.

Following me so far? Wish you had a process map? I got you.

3. Multi-Step Multimedia Follow-Up Using Text Messages

You’d be interested to know that over 80% of leads elect for us to deliver the video via text message.

The reason why this works so well is that they are already on a mobile device.

Think about it.

Now we don’t run the risk of our valuable content getting caught up in their Inbox. Instead, it’s delivered directly to the mobile phone that they’re already on so they can watch the video instantly.

4.) Getting Engagement and Consumption of Your Video

We’ve tested a few variations of this, but what we found works best is sending your leads to a primer video before they watch the main video.

Why do we do this? We use it to pre-frame what they are about to watch. It also serves as a micro-commitment in getting them to the next step.

Naturally, if they don’t click through to the main video there are contingencies built in via text messages to drive them back to watch the content.  

5. Scheduling “Qualified” Phone Appointments

This is where the magic happens.

During the training video (which, in this example, was a shortened 25-minute version of a webinar recording) we ask them to text the word “SUCCESS.”

The keyword triggers a text message to drive them to a web page to schedule a call with the sales team.

Pretty cool, huh?

6. Multi-Step Multimedia Follow-Up

The truth is, just like any funnel, your leads are going to drop out at different milestones in the process.

That’s why it’s important to set up the right contingencies to follow up effectively.

The additional contact information allows us to now start conversations via text message, do outbound lead development calls, and lest we forget, use good old emails.

Now, let’s check out the results!

These are based on 2017 YTD figures.

Let’s break that down some more…

The Hidden Benefits (Plus More Compelling Reasons Why This Was Our Home Run)

I think that you’ll agree that this is crazy good ROI.

However, the implementation of this funnel over the past 12 months also came with some rather nice side benefits.

• The business reduced the number of sales staff from six to just ONE
• Decreased advertising cost from previous years
• The number of outbound sales calls halved
• Lead to buyer time was reduced by 21 days

Critical Success Factors 

In summary, there are a number of reasons why The Phone Funnel works so well.

Here are our field notes:

• The NEW Opportunity is to
 connect with the device in your prospects’ pockets
 through text messages
• Congruence between the response mechanism and the delivery mechanism increases momentum of communication and sales
• Collecting additional contact information allows you to open up channels of communication you’re going to need in the sales process
• By increasing the consumption of your content in the most convenient way, you are more likely to generate the engagement need for people to take the next step in the sales process
• Multi-step multimedia follow-up always wins
• Texting is the gateway to the telephone
• We use reliable technology and automation to do the heavy lifting for you. FixYourFunnel provides the ideal platform to sync lead ads and deliver text messages. They also provide a single portal for the sales team to interact with leads directly
• ALWAYS know how you are going to SELL before you go to lead generate

Ready to put this to work in your business for 2018?

Click below to download your Phone Funnel Blueprint:

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One of my pinnacle beliefs is, “In God we trust. Everyone else brings data.” Thinking a campaign did well is one thing. Knowing it crushed it is another entirely.

So, here’s the facts for our #1 Facebook ad campaign, The Three-Day Date, started this summer:

From July 1, 2017 to December 13, 2017

• New Leads: 29,407
• Cost Per Lead: $3.37
• The Value of Each Lead to Date: $16.94
• Joined our paid membership of Powerful Professionals: 782
• ROI 504%

You can’t get those numbers in Vegas, baby.

Even better, in one of our Facebook ad sets, for every dollar we put down, we get between $7 and $8 back. Every. Single. Day.

And the $16.94 doesn’t even include future member revenue and more than a half-million dollars in private client revenue generated.

Here’s How It Works

Step One:

The Facebook Ad targets cold traffic and offers one major outcome for the prospect:

Step Two:

They are taken to a landing page:

The page is simple and has a 44.52% success rate to cold leads:

Step Three:

Once they register, they are offered the chance to purchase recordings of the training for $7.

About 22% of those that hit this page take the $7 recordings.

Step Four:

Next, the webinar registrant receives three days of live trainings.

While there are many software programs you can use, we use GoToWebinar for because once people are registered for the first day, they get all three days.

We also like how GoToWebinar tracks those who show up and who don’t.

We use a PlusThis Plug-in to send webinar reminders and follow up with attendees.

Step Five:

If they have started the program, the attendees have experienced a major win by growing their fan page and are ready for the next step — monetization.

On this day, we sell our signature program, The 12-Minute Social Media Cash Machine.

For those who enroll in the program, they receive an opportunity to take a free trial of Powerful Professionals membership as well.

In about five months, this has brought in 782 members who subscribed to the Powerful Professionals program. These members pay $100/month each.

It’s still early, but so far, we’re seeing a 73% retention rate for the program.

Getting Clients Through the Three-Day Date

The Three-Day Date Campaign is profitable, producing a positive ROI for each dollar we spend on ads.

This has allowed us to scale and bring in over 29,407 new leads in about six months and grow our client base as well.

In addition to new students and members, we’re getting prospective client requests every day. They come to us already seeing my firm as the experts and are ready to buy. No more client chasing.

Overall, the results of the campaign have resulted in an increase in sales of 200%.

Here’s a further breakdown of the results per 1,000 leads into the 10,000 Fans Webinar Funnel:

• 1,000 Leads Into 10,000 Fans Webinar Funnel
• Total Cost of Facebook Ads = $3,370
• 120 Buyers of Recordings = $840
• 9 Buyers of 12-Min Social Media Cash Machine = $8,973
• Profit = $6,443
• PLUS 44 New Trial Members @ $100/mo
• PLUS New private clients for the agency
• And future sales at the Game Changer Marketing Summit (two free tickets included with the 12-Minute Social Media Cash Machine.)

Testing in 2018

This upcoming year, we have a lot of plans for iterations and testing. Here are just a few:

• Add just-in-time delivery
• Test different immediate upsells
• Add backend up-sell for Social Media Cash Machine buyers
• Add down-sell for non-buyers
• Test new media channels for lead traffic such as YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest

With over a 500% ROI, we will continue to scale the campaign with a focus on ROI and more importantly, getting results for those who trust us with their treasures, talent, and time.

To check out the full campaign in action, visit 3daysto10k.com.

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Justin Rondeau, Director of Marketing, DigitalMarketer

Conventional wisdom states that “The more form fields you add on a page, the lower the conversion rate.”

Well, I’ve always felt that was a pretty stupid way to look at something as complicated as lead forms! There are a ton of factors that impact conversion rate, e.g., the offer, the design, the copy, page usability, etc.

Yes, the form length can impact conversions, but it’s not the thing that’s going to make or break your page. In fact, when done properly, longer forms can actually convert better AND provide you with better lead quality.

When you add form fields you want to make sure:

1. You reduce friction
2. Your offer dictates you can ask this many questions
3. You’ll actually use the data

Enter BINARY SEGMENTATION QUESTIONS.

These are self-identifying “yes or no” questions that get your customers to put themselves into a marketable bucket for future highly targeted communication.

In regards to the three requirements for adding form fields, binary segmentation questions check the first two requirements by their very nature and the third is really up to you (keep reading, I’ll tell you how to craft these questions).

We always knew that Lead Magnets attracted multiple customer avatars. Some visitors would really benefit from Lab, others from HQ, and a good majority needed to learn more about the Certified Partner program to grow their business.

We put this to the test before but swung the pendulum too far. We asked way too many questions and most of them didn’t meet all three requirements for adding form fields!

When we did this we saw a 17.86% decline in front-end conversion rates and there wasn’t an uptick in qualified leads for other profit centers.

This didn’t prove the theory that our traffic brought in multiple types of key customer avatars; it just proved that our execution sucked.

When we dialed it back a little and tried using binary segmentation questions, we had three HUGE wins:

1. We were able to maintain (or in some cases improve conversion rates)
2. Identify our best customer avatars and hyper-target further communication
3. A true front-end profit maximizer (we haven’t had a true profit maximizer on our funnels for almost two years at this point)

I have the proof coming next, but if you made it this far, here’s how to make sure you add a binary question that will actually improve leads.

When crafting these questions, you need to ask yourself, “What’s a common identifying trait of my desired/target/most valuable customer avatar?”

From there, you need to craft a “yes or no” question that will identify this trait!

We went with “Most Valuable” when we tested these types of questions… and, well… wait until you see the results!

First things first, let’s show you what a binary segmentation question looks like:

See those two “yes or no questions”? That’s all there is to it!

And here they are again on a page:

Now, let’s look at…

The Results

When we initially tested the concept of binary questions, we started with a single additional question:

“Are you an Agency or Marketing Consultant?”

We tested this on two of our funnels getting the most traffic at that point in time to see if…

1. Front line conversions were impacted
2. How many people from our heaviest traffic source, Facebook, are agencies

At this point in time, our Lead Magnets were averaging a 35-37% conversion rate.

By adding the single question, we saw that this did not hurt front-end conversions one bit!

Below is the traffic and conversion rate data (for those without a calculator that’s a 37.8% conversion rate)!

During the test phase, we accumulated 11,261 total leads and identified 2,620 total agencies (23.3% of all leads)*.

We’ve invested a lot of time and resources building out a partner program, partner assets, and hiring and training personnel to help grow our agency partners.

Asking this question on the front end helped us identify the people we want to help most and started conversations with our highest value customers.

Cool, right?

Well, that’s not the end of it!

When leads identify as an agency, we added them to a campaign in HubSpot where we’d send out emails from our Partner Success team with a “Reply to this Email” call-to-action (CTA).

These targeted messages received…

• A 45% open rate
• A 38% reply rate
• An 18% ascension rate
• And a 10% close rate

Normally, it takes a standard DM customer a while to hear about the partner program because they need to go through Lab, stick around for a while, and eventually inquire on our partner page.

By expediting the process, we get our highest value customer to raise their hand and start the conversation for us.

Front-ending these offers changes the economics of our company. This gives us an opportunity to have truly sales enabled marketing and gives us that much desired profit maximizer to recoup our ad spend!

With the success of this campaign, we wanted to push the envelope and ask another question that identified another product line in order to expedite conversations and target our customers better. We wanted to identify prospects for DigitalMarketer HQ and asked:

“Do you manage a marketing and/or sales team?”

When we added this question not only did it NOT hurt conversions it actually improved them!

This is one of our Lead Magnets.

The blue line is the total traffic and the orange line represents the number of conversions. We added another binary segmentation question to our lead generation form and saw that conversions were maintained and in some cases, the conversion rate actually improved.

When we added the second question we noticed the campaign had a 44% average conversion rate. This is a 10% higher conversion rate than our goal and a 16% higher conversion rate than the single question form.

Take that conventional wisdom!

Analysis: What Does this All Mean?

It’s easy to start telling different stories about WHY this worked. However, I think it comes down to two simple things:

1. These questions are easy to answer.
   We aren’t asking thought-provoking questions. It’s a simple “yes or no.” We also used radio buttons for improving usability on both desktop and mobile (drop downs are the devil).
2. These are noticeable questions.
   As you scan pages, you’re looking for things that stand out, both consciously and unconsciously. When you use self-identifying questions or words of interest to your avatar, they will be drawn to that section, which leads to more people seeing and spending more time in the form area and completing the form.

The rest of this just comes down to the numbers.

Adding fields didn’t hurt conversions and with a group effort between marketing and sales, we were able to increase the value of all of our traffic and set a solid tone for 2018.

Next Year Goals

We’ve already applied this to all of our funnels and are able to identify higher value leads using the same amount of traffic.

This is a HUGE win because we can begin to create more relevant follow-up offers, start better sales conversations, and get more value out of our paid media spend!

Currently, we’re only identifying the number of DigitalMarketer HQ prospects and segmenting follow-up emails manually.

In the new year, we need to launch an automation sequence to further monetize these opportunities.

*Note: at the time of writing we’ve identified ~5000 agencies using this method.

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The thing that absolutely crushed it for us this year at Loud Rumor was content.

Our ability to create a wide diversity of content not only drove in a lot of leads but provided a ton of value to our already existing clients to improve retention.

One of our largest pieces of content was our video podcast, The GSD Show.

This was designed as a free educational tool for fitpreneurs that we made available on TheGSDShow.com, YouTube, Facebook Live, Stitcher, iTunes, and Google Play.

We created this as a way for fitness and wellness professionals to learn from experts in the industry who have overcome common challenges including sales, marketing, franchising, etc.

People loved it and referred to episodes on a weekly basis for business growth. Here’s the trailer:

Then, because of our success and experience with The GSD Show, we used our skills and processes to start a new show with MINDBODY called The BOLD Show.

The GSD Show went on hiatus as The BOLD Show had the same audience (fitpreneurs and wellness pros).

Because of MINDBODY’s audience and reach, we were able to educate and help more people with every episode.

We focused so much on content to get our message out there and provide a ton of value to our target audience.

That being said, we created a lot of other content aside from video. This included free digital guides, blog articles, PR features, and more.

Here’s a breakdown of all the content we created in 2017:

• 42 episodes of The GSD Show
• 20 episodes of The BOLD Show
• 12 episodes of another show we’re launching in 2018 called The G.O.A.T. Show (Greatest Of All Time)
• 41 blog articles on our agency site
• 2 online guides/E-books
• 27 video testimonials that were pushed out as educational case studies
• I was a guest on 17 other podcasts/shows including Business Rockstars and Entrepreneur On Fire
• We wrote 14 guest features for other sites and magazines including Forbes, Business2Community, and DigitalMarketer

I was told content is king by a lot of people, and this proved to be true for us.

All the video, guides, and blogs led to other awesome opportunities in 2017 that helped us…

• Sign over 375 customers
• Connect with bigger partners and influencers
• Get incredible speaking opportunities
• And help more people grow their business

In 2018, we plan to teach other advertising agencies how to press the fast-forward button on their business through our program, Agency GSD.

Content is crucial for not only your brand, but growing your business, earning the trust of your audience, and setting yourself as an authority.

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Marcus Murphy, Director of Monetization, DigitalMarketer

Today, I’m sharing why changing one word was a home run for our Customer Care team.

This year, the team shifted from Customer Care to Customer Success.

So why the name change and why is that a big deal for the team?

Because it’s a change in mindset. By changing their name to Customer Success, they fundamentally changed identity.

They went from a team primarily characterized by reactive support to one who proactively crafts a tailored experience to ensure positive experiences.

By changing their name to Customer Success, the team’s focus shifted to ensuring that our customers are not only supported, but are set up for success when interacting with DigitalMarketer.

Next, our sales team at DigitalMarketer has fully embraced the concept of conversational selling.

And in doing so, we added Drift to our sales process, which allowed us to move our sales conversations to the Top of the Funnel. A place that has traditionally been occupied completely by marketing.

By implementing this tactic, we’ve seen a 30% increase in the number of sales conversations we have been able to start.

Not only is that exciting, but we have used conversational selling to grow and develop our salespeople.

One of the ways we did this was by creating the “Cost Per Conversation” metric, which has allowed us to…

• See how our sales reps are performing
• A determine which products we should being paying the most attention to

This has provided a much needed KPI (key performance indicator) that holds our salespeople to conversational performance standards and creates new opportunities for coaching.

And those are our home runs for the Sales and Customer Success teams!

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Sue Zimmerman, SueBZimmerman.com (The Instagram Expert)

This year, as a team, we focused on using Instagram Stories to take advantage of the trend towards more real and raw content.

We used this relatively new feature to drive traffic to all of our core promotions. And it became our home run of the year!

It’s typical for engagement on promotional posts to be lower than traditional content.

But using Instagram Stories significantly extended the reach of the same content on the same platform.

Below you’ll see an example from our recent promotion of a free PDF, the 2018 Instagram Strategy Guide.

The traditional newsfeed post reached 2,172 unique viewers after 48 hours.

Marketing the same free PDF through Instagram Stories added a minimum additional reach of 554 after only 24 hours (the maximum lifetime of the post).

The biggest benefit to using Instagram Stories when you set your account up as a business profile and have at least 10k followers is the ability to directly link to the free guide right inside the story.

But driving traffic from a traditional newsfeed post requires directing followers to first visit your profile to get to the link.

During this test, there were a total of 300 web sessions on the landing page from Stories compared to 68 from the link in the profile. This further proves the effectiveness of using this feature.

In 2018, we’re continuing to brainstorm how we can creatively use Instagram Stories to drive traffic to our core offers.

It’s likely that we’ll continue to design specific graphics to fit Instagram Stories and share dynamic and interactive content. And because Instagram continues to focus on updating the feature, it’s continuously providing more and more unique ways to engage with followers.

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At Design Pickle, we experienced a massive win implementing our Semi-Annual, Annual Sale.

The strategy was pretty simple (and inspired by the Victoria’s Secret Annual Sale) but effective.

We offered an entire year of service to our existing clients at a significant reduction in pricing.

We created scarcity by limiting the time the pricing was available as well as limiting the quantity of discounts available. This sense of urgency encouraged our buyers to make a quick decision to act.

The fact that we were marketing to people who had already experienced the value of our product also helped them to purchase quickly and made it an easy “YES!” for them.

These sales are game changers for us because in addition to the big bursts of revenue, they also increase the lifetime value of each client.

We told our community about the sale via…

• Email
• Facebook messages (one of our messages to existing clients had a 90% open rate — we were stoked!)
• And text messages

Here’s our three email campaign we used to promote this sale:

Pre-Sale:

Sale Day:

Post Offer Email:

Alright, now let’s get to the fun part. The results!

Our first sale in 2017 was in January, and in just two days time we made almost as much as our monthly revenue at the time: $140,010!

We wanted to beat our January record when we had our second sale and that we did it! In July we made $144,699 during our sale.

Next, the green line in the graph below indicates the total revenue as a result of each semi-annual annual sale we have had, while the yellow indicates the monthly recurring revenue we had at the time of each sale.

These sales…

• Offer incredible value to our clients
• Create long-term customers for us
• And generate tremendous bursts of revenue for the business

We have our next sale happening in January of 2018 and we anticipate to beat our record yet again!

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Let’s talk 71% engagement rates and how Facebook is an Outrage Amplifier!

My co-founder, Logan Young, and I were attacked by a pit bull inside his living room. After an ER visit and stitches, we were frustrated to find that dog laws in Utah have no leash or first bite laws. The owner got away without even a citation and the police didn’t care.

But we caught on our doorbell video cam.  So naturally, I posted it on his public figure page and boosted it for a dollar a day.

The result was a 71% engagement rate, meaning that almost 3/4 of people who saw this in their newsfeed had to stop to watch, comment, like, or share.  In the ten years that I’ve been running ads, I’ve never seen an engagement rate that high, not even the Warriors winning the NBA championship or Michael Jackson dying.

The “secret” to getting this sky high engagement rate was targeting the OPPOSITE audience you’d expect. Instead of folks who’d empathize with our plight, we targeted fans of “I love my pit bull”, “Pit bull fans of Los Angeles”, and folks who believe their dogs would never hurt a soul.

Because Facebook doesn’t have a dislike button or measure sentiment in the newsfeed, the algorithm took this and any other engagement as a signal to spread the message like wildfire.  The paid component of a few dollars was fuel on the fire to drive 250,000 additional video views.

Naturally, we boosted that post, too, getting further traction, this time from fans of KSL, the TV station.

And thus, loyal viewers of KSL became familiar with Logan Young as a person.

Though it has nothing to do with digital marketing, being “famous” or known translates into authority in other areas.

Conversion psychology shows us that people will choose those they know over complete strangers.

Last month, the Washington Post quoted us on how Russian hackers used Facebook ads to potentially manipulate the US General Election.

We used the dollar a day tactic to target the media, generating a dozen more media inquiries.

One of these was from USA Today:

But because we’d be retargeting Logan’s news coverage, pictures with Mark Zuckerberg, speaking at Social Media Marketing World, and other bits (which you’ve probably seen by now), the reporter opted to go with him instead of me:

He got quoted twice in USA Today last month.

And then the Today Show called, so Logan was on TV with Jolene Kent, explaining how to use Facebook targeting to influence the media.

The very tactics that we were demonstrating on camera were the ones that got us this media exposure in the first place.

And we’ve since been experimenting the last few months to see the impact of building a personal brand on sales– to measure social ROI.

Logan used to charge $250/hour for Facebook ads optimization.

But since we’ve promoted these high authority mentions, interview with Zuckerberg, keynotes at various conferences, and international travel, we’ve been able to raise his rate to $375/hour while also tripling his closed deals at the same time.

That’s a 450% increase in revenue just from high authority exposure– piggybacking on outrage and remarketing those views into one minute video sequences.

Given the increasing sensitivity and appetite of the American public to outrage, you might consider whether taking a stand on a particular issue would work for your business.  There are brand risks, especially when you align with a political or religious viewpoint.

But you might also choose a positive spin, like we did for Isaac Irvine, to boost his video interviewing his son getting bullied for having long hair.

In 2018, I believe that the combination of high emotion one minute videos and the dollar a day technique will be critical to building top and middle of funnel custom audiences.  And this will not only drive more traffic, but higher conversions for you, provided you can link these stages of your funnel together.

Counterintuitive, but I’ve seen in dozens of experiments this year that if you can get one touch in with your audience, even if something as unrelated as a dog bite, that merely having some familiarity will cause your customers to convert more.  Increasingly, consumers wants “stories” and education before they will open their wallets.

We’ve used this approach to sell mattresses, consulting services, insurance, and all manner of goods and services.

We’re getting cost per views under a penny at the top of the funnel, about 30-40 cents for a website visit, and an overall lower blended CPA via remarketing.

Ordinary people like Logan and Isaac, who are not famous, don’t have TV experience, don’t have a big budget, and are not an NBA championship team, can do this. They aren’t going viral all the time, but perhaps 1 in 50 of their videos will be a “home run”– enough to boost because it takes off or gets media attention.

Knowing these odds, Logan Young and I have personally made over 1,000 one minute videos in the last two years to promote stories and products, yielding a couple dozen winners.

The net cost of all stages of the funnel (adding the multiple touches of the awareness, engagement, and conversion) is still a cheaper CPA than running conversion-only campaigns on Facebook. I hope you can learn from this and also share what you’ve seen.