Blogging is hard work, so you must make your efforts count.
If you want to use your blog to connect with prospects and customers, I wrote this post with you in mind.
Do you want to know how to plan and publish strategic content on a consistent schedule to grow traffic?
It takes time and effort to complete an editorial calendar. But with a well-planned blog schedule, you can not only make it easy but also maintain it in the long run.
Traffic
This article will show you how to organize your blog’s editorial calendar to grow traffic in 6 months. We’ll also cover the best practices and “strategy” to help you build a blog that will grow your sales and revenue.
Take these steps to plan your blog schedule in 6 months if you want traffic:
1. Set Clear Goals
Before you open a spreadsheet and save ideas for your calendar, you need to consider your goals.
First, consider your overall business goals. Think about what you want to achieve this year to strengthen your brand.
More brand awareness? More commitment from fans? Build trust and loyalty? Generate more customers, conversions, and customers?
Your blogging goals will help you achieve this business goal. Use the S.M.A.R.T. Goal Setting Template to set realistic and achievable blogging goals.
Smart
Here are examples:
Increase your list size by 20% in 60 days by publishing helpful and evergreen content on your blog.
Increase your blog traffic by 10% in 45 days.
After setting goals, you can focus on creating and publishing the right content to achieve them. You also need to reach out to other blogs to speed up traffic generation.
2. Know Your Targeted Audience
To improve your blog content, you need to know your audience and what their interests and needs are.
Use this information to create more targeted content that leads to results (clicks and clicks, downloads, conversions, shares, etc.).
Think about the different people you’re targeting and create a persona for each audience. Although everyone is different, there are similarities between groups of readers.
Customer Personas
When gathering information from an audience, imagine a clear picture of the person who will read your content. In this way, you can create content based on their needs and interests.
3. Create a Calendar
You have goals and know who you’re targeting. You can now create your schedule.
First, open a blank spreadsheet template in Google Sheets or Excel. Use the first worksheet (or first part) to plan your editorial calendar as a whole. Start with content or author if you plan on having multiple contributors.
Here’s an example from the Content Marketing Institute:
Calendar
To keep content interesting for your audience, it’s an excellent strategy to mix the types of content you create, not only thematically, but also in terms of content. After all, creating a variety of content is a great way to add ‘interaction’ to your blogging career.
Here are the main types of content you can create for your blog:
Listicles (e.g., 10 factors to consider when buying a House)
Opinion article (e.g., What I Learned While Hiking in Australia)
Product review (e.g., MailChimp Reviews and Comparison)
Case study (e.g., How We Generated 110% More Organic Traffic in 3 Days)
Infographic
Video
Podcast
Interview
Interactive content: quizzes, surveys, interactive maps, personality tests, etc.
Depending on your niche, you might want to add other types of content, such as Slide presentations, memes, social media posts, and so on.
4. Generate Ideas for Blog Posts
After creating a framework for your calendar, you need to think of blog post ideas. Along with dozens of interesting topics and other content takes time and effort, but it will save a lot of time in the long-run.
Remember to always keep an eye on your personal goals and audience. This is crucial if you want your content to be strategic and goal-driven.
How to Find Blog Post Topics and Ideas
The first step is to look for popular content that’s been shared by your target audience.
Look at your niche more closely to find out what type of content is shared and which content will produce the best results.
Start with tools like Feedly and Flipboard to track the latest content in your industry. You can subscribe to the best posts in your niche and relevant topics in your industry.
Feedly
Also, use a tool like BuzzSumo to find the most searched content based on your keywords. With BuzzSumo, you can filter results by date, content type, number of words, and more. You can also order it with the number of social media shares or share it on your favorite social networks.
HubSpot
This information will help you understand what type of content leads to social media sharing (which usually leads to more readers and more traffic to your blog).
When you see the most compelling content in your niche, consider the following:
What topics does your niche cover (what needs are met, and what value do they offer readers)?
What type of title do you use?
How long were the posts and how were they formatted?
Once you’ve found the right ideas and topics, it’s time to add them to your editorial content calendar.
5. Add Content Ideas to Your Calendar
With previous tips and methods, you should be able to generate dozens of blog post ideas, maybe throughout the year. It’s time to add the ideas to your calendar.
Create your calendar of blog content by topic and at this point, set a deadline for the project and determine who should write it so that the author knows in advance and plan accordingly.
Be strategic when you include these titles in your calendar:
Create a mix of different types of content to serve readers based on the best way they like to consume content online.
If you have a food blog, for example, you can make a mixture of recipes weekly on Mondays and Wednesdays, restaurant reviews on Tuesday, instructions on Thursday posts, and more.
Here’s an editorial content calendar that HubSpot uses:
Publish your best blog posts on optimal days. For example, usage costs usually generate more traffic and engagement in some industries.
CoSchedule conducted research to determine the days to publish blog posts and get maximum page views.
The best day turns out to be Tuesday and Thursdays based on how many shares the post garnered on social media platforms.
Maximum Pageviews
Case studies and pillar content tend to generate more reads and engagement in the small business space.
So post on the days where your audience is most active (or encourage them). Do the same with all other content that adds value to your audience.
6. Write Effective Blog Headlines
Have you seen news headlines before? They’re bold, big, and irresistible!
When users find your content in search results or RSS feeds, the title of your article appears first.
The memorable blog post title stands out and gets more clicks, while dull and boring titles are ignored, and users may skip them.
You must learn how to write better titles for blog posts that grab the user’s attention and get more clicks. According to Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger Media, “8 in 10 people will read your title.”
Fortunately, some successful bloggers and research labs have been studying headlines for a long time, and you can benefit from the results.
Several studies have shown that the essential building block of compelling titles/headline is emotional triggers such as excitement, surprise, surprise, curiosity, fear, confusion, greed, and so on.
Blogging Strategy and Best Practices
When planning a blog schedule, you also need to have a solid strategy in place. Your blogging strategy will be driven by best practices that successful businesses and industry bloggers have used to grow their blogs and revenue in record time.
It’s time to discover some amazing things you can do to improve your chances of succeeding with a blog.
1). Build a Landing Page to Serve Your Audience
Once you’ve defined your blogging goal for the next 6 months, you have to get started with list building. Yes, you need a contact list of your target audience so that you can keep in touch with them.
That’s why a landing page, which is separate from your main blog is necessary. This landing page will be the gateway to your marketing funnel.
It should appeal to your audience and have an opt-in form so that potential customers can fill out the form to start getting follow up emails from you.
Here’s an example of a landing page that’s attached to the Bloggingwizard blog. Here, the author gives away “The Serious Blogger’s Toolkit” for free.
Blogging Wizard
So how does it work?
Well, if you plan on creating an eBook on “How to Lose 20 Pounds in 30 Days,” the first step in the process isn’t to sell the product but to set up a mailing list to caters to people who want to lose weight.
To attract the right people to your email list, you can offer a 3-part free email series, you can call it “3 Secrets to Shedding Excess Fats.”
This will be the first product funnel for building your email list. Use one of the popular email service providers to set up an automatic email — such that when people fill out the form on your landing page, they’ll automatically receive the first email.
This is a free gift that acts as ‘thank you’ for subscribing.
Your landing page will highlight the benefits of the 3-part email course.
Your landing page shouldn’t try to sell the main product but to get the word out about your free course. The visitors who subscribe have indicated an interest in the product.
For your landing page to be effective, keep these tips in mind:
i). Highlight the benefits, not features: There’s no need to explain what the email course entails, just tell users what they will get out of it.
Velaro highlights the key benefits of its offer but gives away a free guide to show the user how the software works.
Velaro
ii). Show the process: How does your email list work. Let subscribers know they’ll get emails from you. You don’t want to surprise them.
iii). Show social proof: If you have endorsements, testimonials, and success stories from your customers, make sure to use them on your landing page. Your potential subscribers will be confident in the fact that you’re legitimate.
As an example, Nutrisystem shows a success story on how Melissa lost 51 lbs with its diet plan.
NutriSystem
Even if you have comments or tweets from people, those can be used as a form of social proof on your landing page.
iv). Be easily accessible: The best thing you can do to 10X your blogging success is to make your landing pages, products, and important pages discoverable on your blog.
When it comes to your opt-in form, you can use an exit-intent popup to capture users who’re about leaving your page.
The objective of this is to capture as many leads as possible. These potential customers will be on the waiting list to buy your online course, eBook, or software once it’s finally launched.
With that out of the way, it’s time to get traffic to your blog.
2). Drive Hyper-targeted Traffic To Your Blog
So your landing page is helping you capture the email addresses of potential customers already, that’s awesome. It’s time to get some traffic to your blog.
But this time, we’re focused on the right traffic that will make a difference.
This is where most bloggers struggle. Generating the right traffic is hard. You could pay $10 to get 10,000 clicks to your blog, but are these clicks relevant?
Not all traffic sources are created equal. Go after blog visitors that will help improve your bottom line.
Content Traffic
If you have a software that will help doctors and nurses, then you don’t have to attract real estate brokers to your landing page. This should be obvious — unfortunately, most bloggers are making this mistake.
I once came across a blogger who offers consulting services to business. During our discussion, he complained that he’s struggling to attract clients. I was concerned because some consultants I know are very successful.
Interestingly, when I checked his blog I noticed that 87% of his content was aimed at consultants and what they can do to get clients. Isn’t it funny that someone who’s in the same boat is advising others on the same issue?
Irrelevant
He should have focused his content to attract business owners and marketers who need a consultant. Period!
If you’re going to use paid advertising, for example, think of users who will be coming from paid sources. Google Ads can be good, but you need to narrow down your audience.
If it’s referral traffic you’re most concerned about, then make sure it’s from people who truly are interested in your offer.
3). Contribute to Industry Blog to Drive Traffic
With your landing page offer in mind, you need to start pitching content to other bloggers in your industry.
There are top and high-traffic blogs in every industry. You need to find and get published there with links back to your landing page. You can listen to Sergey Grybniak to learn more.
Link Building
To find these blogs that need guest posts, just enter these search operators in Google:
Keyword + submit a guest post
Keyword + contribute
Keyword + write for us
Note: Replace the ‘keyword’ with your main topic.
For example, parenting + write for us
You’ll find a list of blogs to pitch relevant and useful topics to. Once approved, you can write the article and it’ll be published.
Remember that all success comes from other people. Effective guest blogging strategy boils down to building strategic connections and relationships with people. You need the right people to mention, support, and link to your website.
Remember that it’s harder to get the attention of successful bloggers. They’re already killing it, so they don’t need you.
However, you can get their attention by mentioning them in your guest posts. You can give them a shout out on someone else’s blog. This will get them excited because every mention online is vital to their long-term success.
When using guest blogging as a traffic strategy, make sure you point people to your landing page where they can opt-in to your email course or download your free eBook.
Don’t send people to your blog post — it’s a waste of effort because even if they read it, they’ll leave and never return.
Conclusion
An important aspect of your blogging schedule is outreach. Getting the word out is more important than publishing new posts on your blog — especially at the early stages of your blog.
If you must create content on your blog, it must be resourceful so that influencers and industry leaders will be excited to share on Facebook, tweet it, recommend it to your audience, and link it to their posts.
Growing a blog in 6 months is going to involve a lot of creating content. I’d recommend the 80/20 rule.
That is, 20% of the time should be spent creating content for your blog while 80% of your efforts should be spent promoting your blog and content on other sites, social media, paid advertising channels, etc.
Above all, stick to one main topic in the first 6 months. If your blog is about gardening, you can focus on indoor gardening and establish your Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E.A.T) in that space.
People will trust you because you’re sharing so much knowledge on one topic — indoor gardening.
Most businesses have a hard time deciding where they want to run their ads. Google may work, but can get pretty costly. Facebook is the cheapest; but may not get you actual customers, YouTube takes a lot of work plus a video, and Linkedin still can’t figure out their ad platform.
Where are going to run you ads?
In this video we will go over the pros and cons of each platform and which one will work for you.
In this video we are going to be going over what is better and what you should be running as far as ads goes and we’re going to compare Google AdWords, Facebook ads, YouTube ads, and LinkedIn ads.
Those are the four we’re going to discuss. First off, let’s go over each one of them.
1. Google Adwords
Basically, Google AdWords it controls mainly search campaigns, display campaigns, YouTube campaigns so all within Google AdWords you can find those types of things.
Here’s my experience with Google AdWords, I love Google AdWords but some businesses can lose a lot of money quickly and I’m going to discuss those.
Any business that people have an urgent need for works well. If you’re a dental practice or orthodontics practice where somebody needs a quick tooth fix. These work excellent for AdWords. If you’re in any type of niche market, excellent for AdWords.
When you start getting into personal injury or hotels or those types of things, you start competing with the big boys which can get very expensive and you can blow your budget quickly. I’m going to show you how our AdWords works for one of my companies, I’ll show you how our Facebook works, how YouTube works and then you can get a good feel for our ROI on both those. Let’s jump over first off into AdWords and discuss this.
This is for Ydraw, we do whiteboard animation. We have a bunch of different campaigns running so we have search campaigns which are over here on the left. We’re going after the words whiteboard, explainer video, whiteboard animation and you can look, let’s look at this one. This is one of our main keywords.
If you look at whiteboard animation, here is our campaign. We got 320 clicks. My average cost per click is $8 and I had 65 conversions. My average cost per conversion is $40. Okay, my conversion rate is 20%, that means they are opting in, they are filling out information to get pricing. Now, good things about this is I do work a lot on my AdWords campaign and AdWords campaign cannot just be set it and forget it. You have to actually put in the time necessary to get your quality scores up, make sure you’re going after the right keywords, make sure you have landing pages set up with those. Now, if you click on one of these search campaigns I also have a whiteboard remarketing campaign.
Anyone who hits that page then goes into my remarketing and you can see that this month, last 14 days, this is the last 14, let’s go last 30 to give you a good sense. Last 30 days I’ve had 94 clicks and this is remarketing only. My cost per converted click is $20. My conversion rate 10%. Now, this is when somebody already clicks on one of my ads then they turn around and they see one of my banner ads then they come back to the website and request pricing. Got it? That works really well. Now, a lot of you might look at my cost per lead is $20 here, on remarketing it’s $40 on AdWords. It can go as high as 70. The price of the product makes all the difference. Okay, if you are trying to sell a $19 product or a $25 product, you’re going to start to struggle.
The numbers are going to be real tight. When you start getting into the thousands then it’s very profitable. I can spend two, $300 per lead and be okay as long as I am closing one in ten deals. Got it? That is a good look at the Google AdWords campaign. It works, you should be running ads. You need to at least test it but don’t do it on your own. Make sure you get a professional or learn the way you should be running AdWords or go take classes, whatever you need to do. Don’t just jump in and start throwing money at it because you’re most likely going to lose. There’s a lot more that goes into it. I’ll just give you a little hint, on your keywords make sure you use phrase match, broad modifier and exact. Do not mess with the normal just broad keywords, you will get beat. Got it?
AdWords, I love AdWords. It works great for emergency medical, works great for niche products, as long as your price is high enough.
2. Facebook Ads
Now, let’s jump over to Facebook. Facebook works really well for most businesses. If you go into this, here’s the Facebook campaign that I’m running for the same company. I am requesting the exact same thing. I wanted to request pricing. You’ll see my cost per lead right here on this campaigns is $8 per lead, $8 per lead. I don’t like that, that seems high to me. I’ll probably jump in and start adjusting them. I’d rather be down in the three range. Now, a lot of you might be wondering, “Hey, he’s getting $8 leads here but he’s getting $20 leads over on Google AdWords,” or $40 leads, or $50 leads.
There’s a whole different return on investment and you need to treat each channel differently. You don’t want to go on to your AdWords campaign and think, “Oh, well I’m only getting 20, I’m getting a $20 lead over here but Facebook is $2. I’m going to put all my money into Facebook.” No, because your ROI could be a lot higher on Google because they are actually searching for your product or service. Facebook, they see it, it might pique interest, they might be like, “Oh, I just want to test out and see what pricing is,” and then they’ll fill out a form. Okay? I treat every channel as its separate channel as long as I’m getting a return on investment on that channel I will expand it. We have $8 leads, $3 leads, $5 leads. These are remarketing, some of these are remarketing campaigns. Got it?
Then I have a little engagement running. If you’re coaches, network marketing, fitness, all of those types of products worked really well on Facebook ads. A lot of people say B2B does not work on Facebook ads, I beg to differ, I’ve seen it work all the time. You just had to be very targeted. The best thing about Facebook is you can really nail down your audience. We do a lot with Boys Home Treatment Centers and Facebook has been a huge avenue for them. Got it? Because they are able to interact right there on the channel, on the Facebook page.
3. YouTube Ads
Back to our YouTube ads, okay, YouTube ads and I’ll lump in Gmail ads with this. YouTube ads are great way for remarketing.
I love them for remarketing and they are great way to get in front of your target audience. The only problem is you are so limited. If you go out there and create a video, then what you want to do is find the exact videos you want to play on. You can do things like take your competitor’s clients if you want because you can run in front of your competitors.
You can pick the exact videos you want to run in front, you can cater the message, there’s a lot you can do with YouTube ads but what a lot of people do is go out there and they just set their YouTube ads to run in front of all types of videos like Taylor Swift videos, Wheels On The Bus, and they will lose a lot of money and it’s not really a good way to go about it.
If you look at this one, I’ll just show you real quick. Let’s go to video campaigns. If we nail down and say okay, let’s take a look at specific placements. Okay, my cost per conversion this is just placement where I’ve picked where I want them to play, now I’m going pretty broad here. Look at my cost per conversion, $185. Now, does that work? Yes. It still works really well. Now, I’ve seen them as low as 13 cents. If we nail down this campaign and go into the placements I could turn off a lot of placements and get a very, very good return like take a look let’s go all time. Okay, if you go all time, the numbers look a little better and this is a YouTube campaign, I’m getting conversions, 313 conversions, $35 per conversion and these are all on YouTube ads.
You can see, YouTube ads work once again for this product and you just have to be very strategic about it, don’t go out there and spend a huge amount of money until you get the numbers figured out. Got it? I like YouTube ads, they work.
4. Linkedin Ads
Now, finally, let’s discuss LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn ads I have tried and they are so expensive and I need to try them again. It was a year ago when I started to run LinkedIn ads. Why it was so expensive? They were charging almost $25 a click is what it came out to be to get somebody to my website. I hope they fixed it since then but the rule on LinkedIn ads, you have to have a very high ticket item. You need to be in the 7, 10,000, $15,000 range and you can make LinkedIn ads work for you.
I’m not going to show you LinkedIn ads. I think this video is going to be long enough but take a look at them, make sure you test every single one of these things so Google AdWords, Facebook, YouTube ads and LinkedIn. A key to all of these is an email campaign behind it. Don’t be running ads unless you have a good follow up email campaign.
If you go look at a lot of my leads on my analytics come in from my email so I capture their attention by running ads in these places. Once I get them into my drip system then they go into an email sequence. Don’t forget direct mail, don’t forget cold emails, cold-calling, all those other things work but if you’re in certain types of businesses, you have to be running Google AdWords.
I really tell urgent care centers, hospitals, stuff like that, they should be running AdWords, dentists, doctors, those guys, niche products, plumbers, all those guys should be running ads. Facebook, you should be doing Facebook ads whether it’s just for remarketing, YouTube ads, spend $2 a day on YouTube ads and then LinkedIn ads, that’s the only one that I wouldn’t recommend for most people. Got it? If you have questions, you can always visit our website, go to marketinghy.com or if you do need a video we have ydraw.com, we can do whiteboard animation, whatever you need. Let us know and hope you enjoyed the video. See you.
Google vs Facebook vs YouTube vs Linkedin. Where should you be running ads?
Are you a small business owner looking to grow your business? Here are 8 websites I like to sue to grow my businesses.
Hey everyone
Thanks for visiting our site. Below we are going to go over the different website that I use on a daily basis to grow my businesses. Some of them you will be able to use, others you will not. Whenever I give my opinion or advice I would recommend you take what is useful and discard the rest.
Hope this helps.
Hey, good morning. This is Jace over at Marketing High, and today we are going to be discussing eight websites I use to help grow my businesses. A little history, I’ve grown multiple businesses past in the millions, so I thought I would share with you guys eight websites I use, or things I use to help grow my businesses, and this is mainly for … Well, it can be for big corporations, or it could be for small businesses, but mainly it’s for people who are bootstrapping, trying to get their message out there, trying to sell their product. This is the easy way to do it. I’m going to go through the list, and then we can turn around, I’ll show you what I like about each feature, and hopefully you can take some of this and apply it to your business. Let’s get started.
1. Adwords
2. Facebook
3. Upwork
4. YouTube
5. Infusionsoft
6. WPEngine
7. Google Domains and Apps
8. Elegant Themes
First, AdWords. For many of you know, I’m a big fan of AdWords. I’ll show you some examples here in a second. Number two, Facebook. You need to learn Facebook. Now, that could change in the future, but for right now, Facebook is a good way to produce leads. Use Upwork. Upwork is a place you can go get cheap work. It’s really nice, because you can hire people that know what they’re doing, and you can fire them with a click of the button. You don’t have to worry if you’re in the US about all the crazy worker’s comp, all the rules and regulations, so it’s really good for small businesses.
YouTube, get your message out there. Infusionsoft, that’s our email service that does all of our email campaigns. They do a lot more, but I mainly use it for emails, and followup sequences, which I’ll show you. WPEngine, I love that for hosting. They are more expensive, way more than GoDaddy or those types of companies, but they’re very good, very customer-friendly. Plan on spending over $1,000 a year if you want to go that route. Then you have Google Domains and Apps for emails and for domains, I’ll show you, and then the last one is Elegant Themes.
First off, let’s jump over here to an AdWords campaign. I do a lot of marketing for other companies, so here is an example of one. It’s an urgent med health center, urgent care center, and they’re located in a certain city. What we did, we turned around and said, “Okay, we’re going to set up an easy AdWords campaign. Nothing exciting, nothing crazy.” You can learn how to do this on your own. You just have to make sure you don’t make dumb mistakes, like be really strict on the words. Don’t allow Google to just go out there and put the words they want to put in there. You need to be very strict.
In the last 14 days, this little campaign has drove them nine conversions. That’s nine phone calls. That doesn’t include your 61 website clicks of people going to the website. Conversion rate, about 14%. Now, that’s really, really good. Whenever anyone’s in that city, if you own an urgent care, you want to show up. You need to be there on search engines. If you’re a small business owner, you have to get used to using AdWords. Now, it might not be the most cost-effective thing for you, but you can always get a good return. You just need to limit your keywords down to exactly what you want, and then let it run. Let it run for the rest of your company’s history. I have one company, Ydraw. We’ve been running an AdWords campaign for well … Going on five years now. It still produces. We have like a 15% conversion rate on it, and there are certain keywords that we get leads day in and day out, and it works. Get used to AdWords. You’ll want to use it if you are a small business owner.
Next, you need to get good with Facebook. Facebook is an easy way to get your message out there. You can see I’m running campaigns right now, and I have 45 conversions for $122. That is really cheap. I mean, that’s less than $3 per conversion, so I am getting people who are interested. I am collecting emails with just Facebook ads. Once again, there are so many videos. We’ve even shot our own videos on how to run Facebook ads. That’s a simple way to get your message out there.
Next is Upwork. I love Upwork. Upwork is a place you can go hire, you can go fire. You can see I’m running cold emails, data mining, take forms. You can see what we do, and hire, and all you do is post a job, and you can pay people $10. You can actually find some really good people that do huge amounts, so that’s another thing you can do. Upwork, easy, cheap labor. YouTube, obviously I like YouTube to deliver my message. Some people might not want to use YouTube. It’s fine, but you can jump over to my channel right here on YouTube and see that we love YouTube. We record videos often. It’s just a good way to get our message out there. We run YouTube ads, so it’s a good thing for small businesses.
Next, Infusionsoft. Infusionsoft might be a little complicated. They are for small businesses, but then again, they’re not in some ways. I think they are being passed up. I just do. I’ve thought many times, “I’m going to jump over to like an AWeber or a MailChimp,” but I’ve just kept it here for now. They’re good. They’ve been around a long time. They have this campaign builder, which used to be kind of the big thing. Let me show it to you. Whenever you’re out there marketing as a small business, you have to make sure that you collect email addresses, that you get information. You have to make an offer. Whenever you’re running AdWords campaigns, whenever you’re doing Facebook campaigns, you have to have some type of offer for them to opt-in. Then you collect their email address, and then you can go here and look at our sequence.
Here’s all these forms that are collecting, and this is what’s nice about Infusionsoft. They have forms, and then you can just build out these campaigns so you know what’s happening. They get tagged, and then they go through this email sequence where I educate them, where I help them out, answer any of their questions, and you can see they get a day one, day two, day four, and that’s how you move them through the funnel from top of funnel to bottom. Email marketing is big. A lot of times you can take all of those emails and then run remarketing ads to them, upload them back into Facebook, those types of things.
Now, number six is WPEngine. Like I said, great if you’re a WordPress, if you’re hosting for WordPress. I like WPEngine. They work well. GoDaddy and those places were just too slow. For cheap, if you don’t have enough money, if you’re looking only to spend $5, GoDaddy works great. That’s kind of who I started out with when I first started building websites. Seven, Google Domains and Apps. Pretty self-explanatory. I like Google Domains. They are in beta right now, but the user experience is really good. It’s easy to buy domain. It’s easy to set up email. It’s easy to do forwarding emails. It’s just a simple, simple platform. Like them.
Lastly, Elegant Themes. That, I use what’s called the Divi theme to build out our websites. If you look at our website, this is the Divi theme. It’s really easy to use. They put a lot of work into it. You can check out like our blog, but this is all built in the Divi theme, which I like.
There you have it. Eight websites I use to grow my businesses. Feel free to use some of them, forget some of them. I would say like number five, AWeber’s a great choice. MailChimp is a great choice when you’re first getting started. They run about $19 a month. I have a lot of accounts with them too, where some of our businesses we market for are on Aweber. GoDaddy is a good substitution here. There are some other freelance websites out there, but Upwork is the one I use, and then obviously AdWords, Facebook. You can go get all the tutorials you want on how to create AdWords campaigns.
I hope that helps. Go out there, get to work, start testing it. Don’t give up too soon on all of this. It takes work. It takes learning it. Practice. A lot of people quit too soon, especially like on AdWords. They just don’t put in enough effort, and then next thing you know, they lose money, and then they quit, and they’re down. Get out there, get to work, learn, provide value, and you’ll be able to grow your business. Hope that helps. See ya.
If there is one thing we can learn from this year’s elections it’s the fact that we’re being lied to and manipulated by the media, campaign managers, candidates, and polls.
It’s like sheep being led to the slaughter. We tend follow the crowds. (more…)
Best Practices for RLSA Ads and How To Create RLSA In Adwords
I wasn’t really planning on creating a best practices guide for RLSA ads. It just kind of happened because I saw a huge need for it. There were a couple of nice articles out there, but nothing explaining the basics.
I wanted to educate myself and learn a little more about how RLSA ads work and why I should be using them for my business. I thought I was running them, but it turned out I was not. That hurts, because they provide a huge benefit.
The more I searched the more confused I became. Google’s own guide and YouTube tutorial videos were terrible and have zero value. Even after I created a couple of RLSA ads I blew $150 dollars in a matter of minutes. I set them up wrong and I assume it has happened to thousands of other people. I want to prevent you from making that same mistake and make you a genius in the process.
So let’s get started.
What are RLSA Ads and How Do They Work?
First let’s define what RLSA stands for and how the ads work.
I thought RLSA ads were just another term for remarketing on the Display network, but that’s not the case. RLSA stand for Remarketing Lists For Search Ads. There’s a big difference.
A Remarketing Display ad can show up all over the internet as an image, gif, or html graphic; an RLSA ad shows up as a text ad in Search.
RLSA Ad
They are just a normal search ad that is created for your remarketing lists.
Watch the simple tutorial video where I explain the big difference between Search and Display remarketing ads.
Create Remarketing List
Step one of RLSA is to create remarketing lists. You can do this through Adwords or use your analytics account. These list are the foundation to your RLSA campaign.
If you do not know how to create a remarketing list you might want to jump over to YouTube and learn. It’s easy. Here is a link to learn how to build Adwords Remarketing lists.
Build all types of lists because it’s free.
Once you have your remarketing lists set up, it’s time to watch our 2nd RLSA video. We will actually show you how to set up a campaign.
Bid Only vs. Target & Bid. What RLSA settings should you use?
As you can see by the screen shots below you have 2 different bidding options. The Target & Bid option are more restrictive while the Bid Only option is loose and can cost you a lot of money quickly. I made this mistake and within 20 minutes I blew $150.
That is the price of a massage. ☹
Basically, when you choose Target and Bid the ad will only show if the person types in your keyword and can be found on your remarketing list
Bid only will show your ads if the keyword or the remarketing list are used. It’s an “Either” option. A lot less restrictive and can cost you a lot.
Not that you understand how RLSA works and what to watch out for, it’s time that you test the waters.
RLSA Strategies
Pay per click ads can get extremely expensive, especially if you find yourself in a competitive industry.
Here are a couple of strategies you can use with RSLA ads. The idea is to cut down on your cost per lead by only running ads to people who have visited your website. Especially if you are in and industry where your cost per click is +$50. Wordstream analyzed the most expensive keyword categories for online advertising and found that keywords related to Insurance, Loans, Mortgage, Attorneys, and Credit were the most expensive with advertising costs ranging between $45-$55 per click.
That hurts! They could be spending $10,000 dollars to capture one customer. A way to lower the cost per customer is to drive huge amounts of traffic with social media and then run PPC ads with RLSA. I will test this in the coming weeks.
Drive traffic to your site with social media
Create a RLSA campaign to all visitors
The second strategy I like to use is the one I spoke about in the RLSA video tutorial. Why not run funny and engaging ads on your competitor’s keywords. That way if one of your website visitors decides to go elsewhere they will see a funny ad calling them out. This goes along with our brand, so it works great.
Examples:
“We caught you cheating” “What are you thinking” “Come On Back”
Now it is your turn.
If you have comments or questions about RLSA best practices, please let us know. We like to hear from our visitors.
Here are the video transcripts
[Start of video RLSA Ad words. Remarketing Lists For Search Ads Explained. Part 1]
[Beginning of recorded material]
Jace Vernon: Okay, so real quickly I’m going to show you guys the difference between a standard display remarketing campaign and in RLSA remarketing, which RLSA stands for remarketing list for search ads. Okay, so as I kind of explained above is I got really confused with this, which I shouldn’t. I do a ton of Ad Words. Well, the other day I started to run these new RLSA ads. They are not that new, but to me they were kind of new, because I’ve been doing all normal display ads. Okay, so I’m going to show you the main difference between a standard RLSA ad and normal display ad. So first off, whenever you’re go into the search engines, let’s say you search for something- I put video marketing company right here. So, let’s assume that somebody comes to my website, down here where you type in video marketing company and they visit my website.
Now I’m at the website. Now, let’s say that this same person turns around and says, okay video marketing production. Got it? Now, we know that they’ve already been to my website. Now they type in video marketing production. Well, if I’m doing an RLSA ad I can run an ad right here to those who’ve already visited my site. So, this is a typical search ad. These guys are all doing search ads, but if I wanted to I can come back in here and say okay Google, I know that I already visited this site, or somebody already visited my site, I want you to bid higher on that keyword if they visited my site. That’s an RLSA ad. Okay. So, that’s not your typical search. Most of the time when somebody comes to your site you will cookie him, then you will run him a standard display ad. Let’s say you’re over on, this is a good one- KSL.com. So right here, this is a display ad right here up at the top. Okay, now that’s normal remarketing. The biggest difference between RLSA ads and standard display remarketing ad campaign is you are able to run these search ads that are up at the top. So, I hope that makes sense. Just remember, you can run them search ads and you can bid higher, because they already came and visited your site before. So, I hope you can see the power in that compared to your normal just standard display ads. You know they’re already searching for a second time or third time for that keyword, so they’re in the shopping cycle.
Okay, I hope that makes sense. If you have any other questions keep reading. Down below we’re going to actually do a video on how to set up RLSA campaign. So, stay tuned, or jump over to the other video and we’ll get started.
End RLSA ads video 1
[Start of video RLSA ads Part 2 Tutorial Video for RLSA ads]
[Beginning of recorded material]
Jace Vernon: Hey guys, it’s Jace over here at Yinc marketing and we are going to go into part two of the RLSA ads series. So, if you haven’t seen Part 1 yet, you might want to jump over there and take a look at the Part 1 video, where we discuss what is an RLSA ad and what is the difference between an RLSA ad and a standard remarketing display ad. Real quickly; if you’re not going to go watch that an RLSA ad is remarketing list for search ads. Okay. It’s a little different.
So, I’m going to show you how to actually set one up. So, jump over here to my dummy campaign and right now I am going after certain keywords. So, this is in your Ad Words account. If you don’t have an Ad Words account, you need to have one. If you don’t really know what a search campaign is, you better learn what one is so you can set this up. So, right now I’m going after YouTube agencies, YouTube for business YouTube business, so you can see my keywords. Well, if anyone goes to my website for these keywords, well I’m going to cookie them. Okay. Now, when I cookie them what happens is I can start running them display ads. But this is a little bit different. I’m not going to run them display ads. What I want to do is make sure that if they Google any of my other keywords that I’m going to bid higher; that I’m going to increase my bid on those keywords, because I want to be at the top. I know they’re interested, I know they’re shopping I know they’ve seen my website and they’ve been there and so if they search any of my keywords, I want to make sure I’m popping up on number one spot in the search campaign. Got it?
So, click over here on audiences. Okay, you’ll see I don’t have any. I’m just going after search. You can add your audience here. Let’s pick the YouTube marketing company. We’re going to go to Add Interest and Remarketing- Remarketing lists. There is a bunch of remarketing lists. We’re going to go Home Page Visitors. So, once I have those added in I’m just going to click save. Then, here is the thing; you want to increase your bid by 10-40%. Okay. If you’re just starting out, don’t get too crazy. Just say, “Hey, I’m going to increase my bid by 20%, 10%. I’m going to increase my bid here by 10%.” Now, that’s pretty simple to do. All you did was jump on one of your search campaigns. Then you went ahead and added these audiences up top. So, you click on audiences and you start adding your remarketing audiences. And there are so many different remarketing audiences that you can create. You should be collecting everything you can about your visitors.
Okay. Now, if you’re not getting any impressions then you can go back here and increase this up to 20%. So, you’re just saying Google if they come back and search any of these keywords; so if they’ve already visited my site and they search any of these keywords, I want to make sure I’m biding up to the top page or number one spot, because I want to be seen. Now, something else that you can do with this, which I screwed up the first time I did it is you can create a whole other campaign. With a whole other campaign you’re able to target like your competitors. You can target people; you can really get a dedicated message and let me show you what I mean. So let’s assume; let’s go back here into Add groups. I’m going to create a whole other campaign and I’m going to show you a big difference on this. So, let’s go Search Network. There’s a key, that’s going to save you a lot of money, because the first time I set up this RLSA ads I blew $100 in almost 5 minutes on nothing. They were actually junk sites and it was kind of a screw up, but at the same time Google does not explain nor they got out there and really said hey, you guys- like they’ve done no really good tutorials, I guess it’s what I’m trying to say. I could not find anything, hence the reason I’m doing this tutorial.
So, I’m going to call these RLSA video ads. I’m going to do all features. I don’t like to do anything off of the search network. United States is good. I’m actually just going to go United States. And just teasing, I like Canada. Okay, the manual CPC is fine. We’re going to change this in a second. I’m going to go my default bid $3, budget go $100 per day. Now you can do all your site link extensions, which you should do. Add in all your… So, add these in. Now, I’m going to come back and do all this so I don’t have; I do it here, so I don’t waste your guys’ time.
Okay, so basically what I’ve done is you have to go in here and create an ad. Now remember I am going after my competitors, so this is just a remarketing campaign that’s going to focus- a remarketing search campaign that’s going to focus on my competitor’s keywords. Okay. You can see, kind of the ad that I created here said “Shame On You. Wrong Company”, because I know that they just search for somebody else’s business, and they’ve been to my site. Okay. So, if I know they visited my site, well I’m willing to kind of go out on a limb and do a call out on the actual ad. So, it’s just a little different. It’s not just going to say Video marketing company. I’m talking to them directly like “hey, what are you doing searching for another company?” Got it?
So, you go down here, and now in this one you can be broader. Okay, once again we’re targeting people who have already been to our site. So, normally I would put quotes, I’d put brackets, just because I want nothing but phrase match or exact match. But I don’t have to do that here. I’m just going to put video marketing company; video marketing agency- now obviously I’m going to go all the way down through here. Normally, I never do this. I don’t just let them pick my keywords for me. I’m pretty strict with what I allow Google to do, but for the sake of time we’re just going to throw those in. Okay. Now, obviously after I increase my bid if I want to go after these, here is the key. This will cost you a lot of money, if you don’t do it, if you don’t do it quickly. Like right now, Google can turn around and just start throwing these ads up, because I haven’t added my audience. If you go in here to your audience and say, okay, I’m going to add now my RLSA ads. So, I’m going to go down here and say okay, I want all website visitors- you have to have 1000 or more. Like I said, this is kind of your dummy account be the way. I’m going to leave that red like that.
Now, here is- I jumped over. I’m going to go back so I can show you how to get there. Down here there’s something that says Bid only, or Target and Bid. If you create your campaign on its own, you have to select Target and Bid. If you hit Bid only, your budget is going to be blown on a bunch of junk keywords, because you know how we went broader on our keywords, we’re a lot more broader than we normally should. Well, if you don’t click Bid Only, Target and Bid Only, you’re going to show up for everything. So, you’re basically, when you click this you’re telling Google, hey Google, they have to search my keywords, but on top of that they have to be on my list. Okay. If they’re not on my list, you don’t show them the ad. So, it’s just a really good way to know that you’re target now.
Now, obviously my keyword that I chose was video marketing, bit on top of that this is for my competitors’ keywords. So, I’m going to go back in here and put all my competitors: pixability… Let me think. Well, first off what I’m going to do is grab all these guys’ video explainer. Copper fish media, Brand the global. So, I just go over here in- going everywhere. Copper fish media video explainers, Epipheo studios, Pixability… I just know some of these. I’ll go down and put a list of probably 50 of my competitors. Got it? And I save that. You need to go back and you see I underbid all of these keywords. I need to go back and actually adjust all the bids.
Okay. So, I hope that helps. That is a simple tutorial on RLSA ads. Remember you will waste a lot of money especially if you’re over here on your search. If you do not click, like on your standard search one, your audience right here you can adjust your bid to increase it. Now, you can see my targeting settings are Bid Only. That’s okay, because the keywords that I’m using are extremely restrictive. I’m not just going after YouTube. Like if I just put the word YouTube there, I would show up, I mean my budget would be blown in a matter of minutes. Okay.
So when you create your own search ad, you’re not going off of one you’ve already built. When you’re developing your own like this one over here on the left hand side, remember your target settings need to be Target and Bid. That means it has to match both your keywords and be in your audience. I hope that helps. Like I said, I wasted money on when I first did this.
So, if you have any questions, always reach out to us marketinghy.com. Send us an email jace@marketinghy.com. We’ll be happy to help me. In the meantime you can check out our other videos. We do a lot with video ads, and we especially focus on video marketing. So Gmail video ads in the in stream in display and display, all those things that can just help you get a higher ROI on your investment when it comes to video ads. Okay. Thanks for listening. Talk to you later.
[End of recorded material]
Guide To Remarketing Lists For Search Ads and RLSA Best Practices
I Love Podcasts and I have been listening to some of the top Marketing Podcasts over the past 12 months. It’s kind of crazy that we can learn from the best minds in our industry all for free.
I am always preaching that people should skip college, listen to Podcast and watch YouTube Videos. You will learn more. It’s a great habit to get into especially if you are running a business. Podcasts can keep you focused and inspire you to keep moving. Plus it’s fun listening and learning about the struggles, challenges, triumphs, and successes that others are going through.
So here are…
The Top 10 Marketing Podcasts that are worth your time.
This podcast is awesome because Nathan doesn’t mess around. In business, there can be lot of fluff. People tend to beat around the bush but Nathan keeps them in line.
If you want to listen to all different types of Entrepreneurs in all different stages of their businesses, then The Top Podcast is for you.
Kudos to Nathan Latka for being consistent and providing us with great information.
Perpetual Traffic is a weekly podcast produced by Digital Marketer and hosted by Keith Krance, Ralph Burns (Dominate Web Media), & Molly Pittman (Digital Marketer).
Obviously Digital Marketer has spent Millions on Facebook advertising so they know their stuff. They provide some great value and are well worth your time.
Growth Everywhere is a lot like The Top. Eric interviews all types of Entrepreneurs. They give you a lot of little tips you can apply to your business. I also like the fact that Eric interviews people who are just starting out.
I am just getting into this Podcast. Basically, Conversion Cast is the only podcast that gets to the heart of the metrics. At least that’s what the description says.
I will be the judge once I listen to a few more episodes, but so far so good. They are short and sweet.
The Social Media Marketing podcast is hit-or-miss for me. They have some good content, but I have to pick and choose what I want to listen to. They hit almost every social media avenue, so it’s a great start if you are looking to get an overall view of all things Social Media.
If you are running a SaaS business you have to listen to this Podcast. Jason Lemkin is all about getting you from $0 to 100m Annual Recurring Revenue. (ARR) It is jammed packed with ideas and great interviews.
If you have no idea what SaaS stands for, get in line. I probably heard this term for 2 years before I even knew what the word meant. SaaS stands for Software as a Service. Now doesn’t that feel better?
I actually ran into this Podcast while listening to music. Their commercials kept interrupting me so, I decided I would check it out.
Startup is the real story behind creating a business. Their format is amazing and very entertaining. The Gimlet staffs are storytellers and the production of each episode takes a lot of work.
You will know what I mean when you listen to an episode or two.
I live and breath Video Marketing so of course I am going to listen to a Podcast that is all about Video Marketing. I am a going to on an episode or two in the coming weeks.
Those are my top 10 marketing podcasts but I also listen to a couple of others that I am going to mention. You might like the honorable mentions better then my top 10.
The way to get the most out of Podcasts is to actually apply what they’re saying to your business. You’re better served by doing what they say, not just listening.
I like to listen to an episode, take action notes, and then apply those notes.
Good luck I hope you enjoy my Top 10 Marketing Podcasts now go listen and apply.
