According to PageFair, worldwide usage of ad-blocking software has increased by 41 percent in the last 12 months. This, in addition to the fact that 54 percent of users don’t trust display ads enough to click on them. Moreover, a 2013 study by Pew Research Center reported that 28 percent of survey takers hid their online activities from advertisers and not just hackers.

In other words, web users are very aware of their privacy and they are scared of personal data collection.

To that, add that only 2.8 percent of website users find ads on website relevant, according to a study by Infolinks and bannerblindness.org.

It’s crystal clear that making the ad a mere link to the website homepage or another page containing no CTA is a wasted opportunity. You want a CTA on the ad and one on the landing page.

In fact, display advertising converts better when you use calls-to-action in a similar fashion to the way bloggers do. They add banner offers at the end of blog posts that lead to landing pages where the offer is described in detail, all the better if it’s a freebie or given as a free trial. In other words, they present something that users can grab for free to ‘taste’ the product or service before they decide to purchase it.

End-of-post CTAs at Make A Living Writing are a good example in this sense:

Photobucket‘s very alluring banner is also effective:

And take a look at their landing pages. They flow directly from the banner ad as if you were turning a page of the same book.

“The process needs to be seamless”, explains David Leonhardt from Ghostwriters for Hire. “Whatever the ad says needs to be continued, if not expanded upon, in the landing page. The landing page must build on the expectations raised in the ad. The two are one, symbiotic.”

So, how exactly can you use CTA banners and landing pages to get users to click and convert? More specifically, how can you encourage users not to stop engaging after the first click (on the banner) and to proceed to the second click (on the landing page) that gets them to grab your offer?

Here is the opinion and advice of people who have a good deal of experience with display advertising, CTAs and landing pages.

Banner & Landing Page Buttons: Use Colors & Words Wisely

“The first thing I would do is to make sure that the CTA stands out,” says Vince Comfort. “The easiest way to do that is by giving the CTA text or button a bright color that stands out from the rest of the page.

“If you can provide instant access to whatever you are promoting, it is a good idea to include the phrase “instant access” in your CTA. I was offering a free ebook and the first CTA read, ‘Get your Free Download.’ Then I changed it to ‘Get Instant Access Now!’ and clicks instantly doubled.”

After the Click, Landing Pages are What Converts

Raymond Duke, digital marketer and author of “How To Write, Design, And Create Landing Pages That Convert In 2015,” explains, “The single most important thing that will determine whether or not your landing page is mediocre or a smash hit is having a BIG idea. A big idea is something unique, different or new about your offer—something that is so compelling for your target market that they cannot resist taking action on your landing page.”

Joe Preston also shares tips on product placement in landing pages and advises to “put multiple product offers for distinct products that are targeted to the audience.”

He goes on to explain having had great success with landing pages that:

1. Offer multiple “listings for services” (great if you have advertisers in the vertical)
2. Present informative clickbank products that are on target
3. Offer a newsletter signup
4. Provide a search box for access to additional targeted listings (and ads)

Irina Weber from SE Ranking sheds light on the importance of how people come to your banner ad and click:

“I think the make-up of landing pages can also be designed based on how someone gets to a webpage. For instance, getting there in response to a direct mail campaign may imply a different mindset than someone who comes to a website via a social media link.

“My tip for eCommerce sites is to look at the abandon rates from your checkout funnel, by source of the visitor.” Weber adds, “In particular, the abandon rate between the cart and the first stage of the main checkout process. Sources of visitors who get so close to buying are much more promising than sources which don’t even get that far. Those sources deserve some investigation.

“GA Custom reports and custom dashboards are great for this since the goal abandon rate doesn’t show up in standard reports. A ‘micro funnel’ with just the cart to checkout stage works well. A dashboard widget showing that rate by source/medium can be really useful if you include ‘funnel starts’ as the first metric so you only see high-volume sources.”

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Let’s Talk Freebies

Louie Luc from Buzz Nitrous tackles the freebie problem and how to offer it on your landing page.

“Personally, I would set up a landing page with an opt-in form to collect visitors’ email addresses, offering a freebie in return,” he explains. “Or, at the very least, I would get them to follow me on my social network profiles. It should be a very targeted freebie concerning their interests. It should also be easy to read and have a compelling title to entice people’s attention (e.g., 17 High-Converting Landing Page Ideas Top Marketers Are Using Today To Make Millions.)

“Why collect people’s email addresses? Because you would then have the golden opportunity to keep them coming again and again—for free—to your content where you’d gain their trust, continue to promote your products and have better chances of converting. Needless to say, my ad would mention the exact same thing I would promote on my landing page and be precisely targeted to an audience interested in that topic.”

From Planning to Campaign

It’s all too easy to create a banner ad without a CTA that redirects clickers to a standard homepage. It’s also easy to add a generic CTA to the ad without satisfying the user when they reach the landing page.

It’s not nearly as easy to create a banner with a CTA that flows seamlessly to the landing page, where the user finds the real CTA that leads them to get what they’re looking for… but that’s when your ad really converts and you get a high ROI for every cent you spent.

The choice is yours, but I do hope you’ll take the challenge, spend the resources and commit to better, more effective display advertising.

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The post Getting More Clicks and Conversions with Display Advertising appeared first on Relevance.

If the author of sponsored content only focuses on the product or service, features, and benefits without “wrapping it up” in a story, the campaign may fail from the very start, because it will not connect with the readers on an emotional level.

The truth is that bloggers, authors, and copywriters love to tell stories (and readers love to read them) but they are often afraid to use them because they are not sure this is what their advertiser wants, or whether they will appreciate a bit of personality in the content.

It’s important that you make it clear, before hand, that copywriters can use storytelling when writing sponsored content and are actually encouraged to do so. This also means using personal photos and anecdotes that will suck the reader in. The more personable and relatable the story for the reader, the better chances for your campaign to succeed.

Consider these five reasons to use storytelling in sponsored content:

1. Storytelling Can Bring Realism to Your Campaign

Donald Whitehead points to reality TV as an example, where realism adds credibility to the overall consumer experience.

“The reader can view the events with a level of realism that they can associate with personally,” Whitehead explains, “It’s first hand! No third parties. It happened to you, so it validates real life, personal events, good or bad. It says that you’re not alone and that there is an answer. There is a certain comfort in that.”

He also adds that he prefers “real life stories over fiction any day for reassurance and getting to the root of answers to real-life problems.”

2. Storytelling Engages the Audience

Deborah Anderson from Social Web Cafe makes the following points on engagement through storytelling:

It really doesn’t matter what topic the story is related to, as long as it grabs the reader in the first sentence or two and continues to be interesting throughout. Personally, I think that it is relevant no matter what type of writing, including sponsored writing.

I believe the issue is that sometimes it is not considered ‘professional enough’ for some contexts. For example, for my doctoral dissertation, everything has to be from a third party and it needs to come from research or peer-reviewed journal articles. Stories are told, sort of, through the relaying of case studies from research, but it doesn’t have that true warmth that a well-written first-person story provides. There’s nothing like it.

3. Storytelling Makes Business Content Less Boring

David Leonhardt from THGM Ghostwriter Services says storytelling removes the “boring” part of business communications. Storytelling, he points out, is the oldest form of communication. Stories existed before writing as a way to pass down the wisdom of the ages. It’s only natural, then, that stories make business content more engaging.

“Once people start,” Leonhardt says, “they have to keep on reading; everybody wants to know how the story ends.” This is because “people relate more to stories because they are more human, more emotional.” In fact, they can “resist a sales pitch, but they can’t resist product placement.”

4. Storytelling Builds Trust & Authority

Content writer Christopher Jan Benitez says that “[Storytelling] builds trust and authority, which is in line with becoming authentic, [as it] allows for real connections to be formed. The more authentic your sponsored content is, the more effective it will be. [Storytelling] creates a flow in your narrative, making it easier for readers to follow [and] allows you to craft your copywriting skills to write more effective sentences.” Also, “[it is] much easier to write something that comes from experience.”

5. Storytelling Doesn’t Have to Be Factual

When I read Danielle Hollis’ post at Writtent.com, what captured me was not the fact that the post opened with a story, but that the story itself was fiction.

If the author of your sponsored content is well-versed in fiction writing or they run a character blog, encourage them to use the storytelling approach. It’s going to work charms for both of you because there are always people with feelings and a daily life behind that screen—people who want information, but perhaps even a reason to laugh and entertain themselves.

I have used this kind of fictional storytelling myself in a sponsored article for a character blog I run. My character (a robot) blogged about remaking his city archives with the help of some Walmart tape.

How to Coach Copywriters Into Storytelling

The downside of giving instructions to copywriters to incorporate storytelling is that they may feel compelled to use tired formulas that will render the final article too stiff, with no natural flow. Here are a few tips for a better end result:

Encourage Gently

Use phrases like “We would be thrilled to read your personal story about our product!” It’s much different than instructing them to “Use a story format for your post, complete with photos of the product”. In other words, treat your copywriter or blogger as a collaborator, not as a student who just received an assignment.

Mention Storytelling In The Instructions

When you share the sponsored content guidelines, mention storytelling among the first and most important features of the content. Again, be gentle and word it in a way that is respectful of your author’s creative freedom.

When reviewing the submission, ask them to add personal anecdotes and photos if they haven’t already. The review phase is also the best moment to let the blogger know that you appreciate them sharing their personal experience much more than the promotion of features and benefits.

Storytelling is about connecting your product or service to the publication’s readership, but it’s also a kind, humanized way to connect with bloggers, influencers and media outlets. You’ll form long-lasting relationships that will bring benefits to the table for all parties involved. Whenever storytelling seems like the least viable option for sponsored content or when your targeted publication doesn’t want to collaborate, come back to these five reasons for the inspiration you need to convince them otherwise.

The post 5 Reasons to Use Storytelling in Sponsored Content appeared first on Relevance.

But you are stuck there. Content promotion outside of Google+, Twitter and Facebook (maybe LinkedIn) means starting again from scratch, with no proven practices and strategies to make it efficient for your brand or your client to generate traffic and leads through social media marketing.

The good news is that you don’t need to approach untapped promotion channels on your own. Consider these nine additional channels you can add to your marketing toolbox to drive in more followers and customers.

1. Medium.com

If you are into Twitter or Facebook marketing, Medium is a nice, complementary content promotion channel. Medium is a portal for user-generated content that requires posters to signup via Twitter or Facebook, tieing in your social account with the Medium platform.

“I use Medium.com as one of my ‘hidden gems’ for content promotion,” says Brandon Schaefer of 90DayEntrepreneur. “Medium.com is great because it ties into your Twitter account and notifies your Twitter followers that are also registered as users on Medium.com that you just published new content. It’s a unique way of getting your blog content in front of your followers.”

As Medium explains in their FAQ, “We’ll show you Medium stories that your Twitter and/or Facebook friends (who have Medium accounts that are connected to Twitter and/or Facebook) publish and recommend.” That means that your content will get recommended (promoted) to your followers automatically for increased visibility.

2. IRC Chats

First created in 1988, IRC never died. It still relies on a wide user base and every day new channels are created on the more varied topics.

Can you use IRC to promote your content? Of course you can. Self-promotion is not an issue until you make it the main focus of your participation in chats or start to sound blatantly spammy. Always read the server and channel rules before promoting content. Spam gets banned and your username will, too.

There are several SEO and marketing channels available on best-known servers like EFnet and Freenode. Join a channel and start chatting; then, as it feels appropriate to the discussion at hand, introduce your content and explain how it can help the chat user(s) involved in the discussion.

However, the best long-term approach you can use is to create your own channel for your brand and add an interesting description that will act as a “joinbait” for users looking for topics you cover.

3. Private Communities

“These are a great opporunity for marketers to engage, network and share content,” says Deepanshu Gahlaut. “[Communities] are a great place to share your content and promote your business. [They] are always hungry for fresh and unique content.”

The only problem with private communities is that you have to earn their trust. These communities generally run on stricter rules than public groups, so you have to make sure you understand their rules before you can use them to build relationships and turn them into a natural (that means, fan-driven) promotion channel.

Finally, Deepanshu shares a few words of marketing wisdom: “It is good to engage i.e. like, share, comment etc. with others before promoting your content.”

4. MyBlogU

Ann Smarty’s creation, MyBlogU has revealed a consistently effective content promotion channel through blogger collaborations.

Perhaps less ‘untapped’ of a content promotion channel among the nine listed in this article, MyBlogU helps with content promotion because you can add links to your posts when you contribute to others’ projects and you will get expert contributions and shares for your own projects, too.

I have personally used MyBlogU over the last six months to interview fellow marketers, bloggers and experts and I found it a valid alternative to Haro or PRNewswire. Every time I publish an article someone has contributed to, that article will be shared and reshared on their social communities and their followers’. Contributing to existing projects also helped me increase pageviews and followers.

5. Snapzu

“Snapzu isn’t well known,” says David Leonhardt of THGM Writing Services, “but it is a great channel if you have real content about real things and are willing and able to participate in a meaningful way.”

“By real,” David explains, “I mean things that people in the real world talk about and are interested in, not business and marketing stuff.  For instance, if you have a news website or an entertainment or science or sports website, this is a great channel.”

Like with Reddit, self-promotion is only okay to an extent on Snapzu. “Keep in mind that you need to participate in a meaningful way.  If the main thing you do is promote your content, you’ll be shunned just as quickly as if you walk into a real gathering (like coffee in the church basement or a reception for parents at their kids’ school) and talk only about your accomplishments.”

6. Kingged.com

Kingged is a new community created in 2014 that has grown to thousands of members already. As a content promotion channel, this social website allows you to syndicate your content, directly promote your articles to the community and write and submit new posts.

My personal experience with Kingged has been positive so far. One of my Marketing posts earned new comments and shares from a simple discussion posted by a person who contributed an expert quote for the article.

Kingged has a Rewards program for its members who can earn from their activities and are thus incentivized to post and participate.

7. Aha-Now.com

Founded by Harleena Singh, Aha!NOW is a blog-based community built around the need for life and lifestyle advice many Web users have these days.

You can join the community upon registration to the website and it’s newsletter and you will be a full member after you started to participate in the community. Being a member of Aha!NOW means you can guest post, create groups based on your expertise, get known and make a name for yourself.

Content promotion works through the forum profile, guest posting, comments, and interaction. Keep your promotional content as kind and helpful as possible.

8. DeviantART.com

DeviantART isn’t just an art community, but a full-blown social network. Because you can submit nonfiction ‘deviations’ (submissions) and journal entries on your profile, you can ‘syndicate’ your content by publishing an excerpt of your posts and a ‘Read More’ link where visitors can read your full post. However, you get the benefit of DeviantART-driven traffic and user comments on the platform itself.

I have been a DeviantART user for ten years and it has worked wonders as an audience builder and a traffic generation tool for my content. One of my fictional projects earned its audience through the DeviantART community only. You can read the survey reports from 2013 here.

9. TWChat.com

TWChat is a social media tool that allows you to create hashtag-based chatrooms that use Twitter as a platform. Chats are updated in real time so the flow of the conversation isn’t lost.

You can promote your content by joining Twitter chats in your niche or by creating a hashtag for your brand and inviting users to join the discussion.

Bonus: Leverage Pulse, the LinkedIn Publishing Platform

“LinkedIn is heavily overlooked as a channel for content marketing since it was designed for networking with other professionals,” explains MyBlogU user sbizideasblog, “But since they opened up their publishing platform to everyone last year, it has been a great opportunity to reach the millions of active members on LinkedIn.”

How should you leverage this free tool from LinkedIn?

“A couple of keys to getting the most from writing on LinkedIn include creating an awesome title that will get people to click on your article and targeting your content towards one of their Pulse channels so that it has a chance of getting featured on that channel. Short form content can work really well on LinkedIn and some of my featured posts have sent me as many, if not more, subscribers than guest posting.”

Content promotion is all about getting your work in front of new audiences while consistently tending to your existing fanbase. These nine channels present ripe opportunities to connect with new communities of people, but you have to be willing to actually join the community and build their trust before you earn the right to help them. Keep the goal of “helping through content” central to your activities on these channels and start enjoying the benefits of untapped, less-crowded content promotion channels.

The post 9 Untapped Online Content Promotion Channels appeared first on Relevance.

If you are dealing with a Google penalty, you’re probably struggling to sustain your company’s website traffic. Some marketers and managers choose to jump ship or start fresh. But that means losing years of efforts, partnerships and sacrifices.

You don’t need to do this. It’s enough to embrace the fighter’s philosophy and seek alternative ways to drive traffic and customers while your team works to lift the penalty.

The benefit? When Google restores your website health in their index, these alternative ways of maintaining page rank are there to stay and will continue to complement your organic efforts.

Lean On Your Existing Customers

“I guess the penalty may be a good signal that it’s time to rethink your site, its visitors and your loyalty tactics,” says Ann Smarty of MyBlogU and MyBlogGuest, who wrote an insightful Google penalty case study on ThreadWatch.org.

Ann and her team felt that the Google penalty was actually positive to their business and it was an eye-opener, for it forced them to rethink their business approach; more specifically, to focus on “reaching higher conversion rates and diversifying our marketing”.

“One of the first things to do under a penalty is to audit your existing marketing efforts,” adds Google penalty expert Casey Markee. “Go back to your current customers and make sure you are getting the most value possible out of that relationship.”

Customer relationship is key:

• Can your current customers help spread the word about your business?
• Would they be available to leave customer reviews, interviews, and testimonials?
• Would they be happy to try new products and services and give you valuable feedback?

When your business and your customers form a community, you don’t have to worry about Google’s changes anymore, because your boat won’t sink.

Social Media Marketing

I’m sure you were already engaged in social media marketing, but now that you’re facing a Google penalty, you will have to spend more time and resources to leverage this asset.

Casey Markee says that “most businesses still don’t embrace social ads even though Facebook Mobile ads are killing it with CTR conversions as high as 13 percent for quality content.” He also adds that he has “penalty clients immediately move money to mobile ads as a way to generate lift to their website during turbulent times.”

“The trick to diversifying traffic away from Google is finding ways to lure in niche communities and visitors”, says Gary Dek at Gajizmo.com. “For example, creating beautiful and inspirational pinnable images that summarize your articles can be a great way to get Pinterest traffic. For Twitter, you really need to focus on outreach with influencers to get your content exposed to the masses. Finally, guest contributions to high-traffic sites such as Forbes, HuffPost, or US News can lead to consistent referral traffic.”

Sustainable traffic and sales sources

It’s not just Google out there. And there’s more than just search engines to make a website into a remunerative business.

Your best marketing assets are a nose away from you, and under your control: your business message and the community you create around it.

One of my current clients, Jerry Low from WebHostingSecretRevealed.net, wrote an eye-opening article at TwelveSkip about how he found alternative traffic sources while he worked to rebuild his website after a Google penalty killed his previous efforts. In short, he focused on community-generated traffic. When Google killed a few of my websites, I followed in his footsteps and traffic kept coming in.

Below are 11 ways to keep your website traffic sustainable and your sales funnel always full.

PPC traffic

From Google AdSense to services like Chikita or SpeedyAds, PPC is a kind of advertising that will always get you some traffic, even if only just a little. Ads are in front of web users all day long and they’re bound to get some clicks sooner or later. Some of those clicks will convert, because, among the curious who comes to learn more about you, someone will turn into a buyer.

Casey Markee says that “you want to replace the lost traffic and referrals and you need to do it quickly. There is no faster way to do that than starting or increasing your pay-per-click spends.”

The most effective way to do that? Have your team write and design landing pages your users will love. Above all, make sure those landing pages answer every important question and help the visitor get rid of any doubts. A visitor who feels understood, protected and taken care of is a visitor who easily turns into a buyer.

List building (newsletters, direct mail, mailing lists)

Nurture your existing customers and attract new leads to your business by way of a helpful and attractive newsletter, direct mail special offers for your most affectionate fans, or some other kind of beneficial, personalized messaging.

Keep these four simple rules in mind:

• Be helpful
• Provide quality content that’s professionally written
• Design your messaging to be visually attractive
• Make a print-friendly version if the assets you are offering are digital

Ideally, your subscribers will be so happy and grateful for the information they will print the asset out, use it as a reference and keep coming back for more.

Brand Mentions

Brand mentions (especially link-free brand mentions) are underrated. Even without a link to your site, search engines can detect and recognize brand mentions.

“Use tools like the Moz Fresh Web Explorer or Mention.net to find and convert existing brand mentions to spur future links and traffic while combatting a penalty,” Markee advises, “Then keep doing this as a long-term strategy.”

Relevant comments on blogs in the same industry/niche

Jeevan Jacob John from Daring Blogger agrees that blog commenting can be “time-consuming, but very effective, especially at building relationships. Of course, you won’t be getting the big numbers right away. Traffic is long term here.”

Out of all the marketing activities, commenting is the most rewarding at a human level (not just at the backlink level), so don’t treat it like a chore, but do it with an open mind and an open heart.

Email outreach

When you run into a business that’s similar to yours, or a group of bloggers who could be interested in helping you spread the word, don’t just smile and leave – get in touch with them.

Building and cultivating relationships with like-minded companies and influencers are one of the first steps to an evergreen business. Algorithms are subject to change and are out of your control, but real relationships with real people are there to stay (as long as you are nice, helpful and non-opportunist, of course).

What should you outreach for?

• To offer free assets or trials
• To network and get to know each other because you’re in the same niche or vertical
• To send invitations for a free event or a webinar
• To let them know about a great resource you found online

Email outreach is a form of warm prospecting that won’t scare your interlocutor and will lower their shield of diffidence. In three words: You build trust.

Webinars and informative videos

For many people, information relayed in a video is easier to digest than reading it. It’s why services like YouTube and Vimeo see such high traffic numbers every month.

That means that your business can benefit from a series of video tutorials, lectures or webinar recordings, according to what best suits your niche. This is especially true if you use YouTube as a platform.

“YouTube is the second largest search engine next to Google,” says Greg DiVilbiss from High Performance Living, and “of course it is owned by Google as well. By ranking videos you can get quite a bit of traffic.”

However, I would recommend to also self-host some of your most important videos because you own your own platform and are not subject to YouTube’s terms of service.

Live events

Can the offline world save your penalty-plagued business? It can. Casey Markee suggests you “evaluate your offline marketing focus. If Google went out of business tomorrow, would your business survive?”

He adds, “I’ve had clients (while fighting a Google penalty) move funds into local sponsorships, radio ads, and print media. All can result in noticeable returns.”

There are lots of ways to grow your online business in the offline world: Be a speaker at conferences, meet with clubs and associations, sponsor and attend a charity or industry event. As long as you can provide real value, the possibilities are endless.

Guest blogging with readership-specific freebies

Jeevan from Daring Blogger says that guest posting is “perhaps the best method, because it also includes commenting (replying to the comments you receive). Write for another website, give them your best piece. Impress the audience enough, and they will come back to your blog to check out more!”

And as Jeffrey Romano from WP Lighthouse remarks, “guest blogging (…) is a good way to develop relationships with other bloggers; definitely a long-term benefit. All these benefits will help you drive traffic to your website both in the short-term and in the long-term.”

“Ask the expert” panels

You can build an “Ask the expert” panel at live events, host one digitally on your website or have your own ‘expert column’ in an industry magazine or blog.

Either way, your brand has an opportunity to stand out and put its most important spokespeople on stage with a panel (online or offline) or a column. It’s branding at its best.

Press releases

Same ole same ole, right? Press releases are an old old way to get the word out about your business, but old doesn’t equal obsolete.

Press releases are still going strong and they could safely be considered a type of evergreen marketing.

Syndication

“Push clients to sign-up and use syndicated content platforms like Outbrain and Taboola,” says Casey Markee, “This allows penalty-afflicted clients a relatively quick avenue to replace lost organic traffic by driving targeted traffic to their best content.”

Many webmasters fear syndication because they mistake it for duplicate content, but it’s not. Proper syndication uses the rel=”canonical” attribute – a quick technical gimmick that will ensure search engines won’t mistake your syndicated content for duplicate content. Here’s what Google has to say about the practice.

Don’t end up like the forlorn Webmaster World users who jumped ship or started fresh after receiving a penalty from Google. Keep yourself out of a compromised situation in the first place by not putting all your eggs in one basket and diversifying owned and earned media strategies from the onset. Build a robust community of users and customers, engage them on a variety of channels and keep them informed with remarkable content and you’ll (hopefully) remain penalty-free.

The post How to Sustain Traffic and Sales While Dealing With a Google Penalty appeared first on Relevance.