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Why Social Sharing is a Poor Measure of B2B Content Performance


About a year ago, I published a post arguing that B2B marketers need to set realistic expectations for their content marketing efforts. This turned out to be our most widely-read post in 2017. The main theme of my post was that content marketing performance depends on several factors and that some of those factors are beyond marketers' control.

The annual content marketing surveys by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs have consistently shown that doing the right things in the right ways will have a major impact on content marketing success. But it's equally true that content marketing performance is affected by competitive forces that are beyond any company's control. For example, the amount of content available to potential buyers has increased dramatically, and this makes it harder for any company to consistently produce content that will capture buyer attention and win mindshare.

For the past couple of years, some marketing pundits have been using content sharing data to argue that content marketing has lost some of its punch and may not continue to be a viable strategy for some companies. For example, a 2016 study by Beckon found that the amount of content published by brands had tripled in the previous year, but that customer engagement had remained flat. Beckon also found that just 5% of the total content garnered 90% of the total customer engagements, meaning that 19 out of 20 content pieces generated little engagement.

Last November, Steve Rayson, the director of content research company BuzzSumo, wrote a guest post for Mark Schaefer's blog that analyzed recent trends in content publication and content sharing on social networks. His analysis found that as the volume of content published about a topic increases, there is a decline in the average engagement in terms of social shares. Rayson wrote, "Declining content engagement as publication volumes increase over time appears to be a common pattern."

While it's worthwhile for marketers to understand current trends in social content sharing, this type of data provides only limited insight regarding the effectiveness of content marketing, particularly in a B2B context. Here's why.

Most content sharing metrics only capture the number of times a piece of content is shared on public social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Therefore, these metrics will often understate the level of actual content sharing. In 2014, research by RadiumOne found that 69% of all content sharing globally takes place via private digital communication tools such as e-mail and instant messaging - what is typically called "dark social" sharing.

The RadiumOne research focused on consumers, but other research has found that private content sharing is even more prevalent among business buyers. As the following table shows, respondents in Demand Gen Report's annual content preferences surveys have consistently identified e-mail as the top channel for sharing business-related content with colleagues and business connections.













Not only do social sharing metrics often understate the actual amount of content sharing, they also don't provide a reliable indication of content engagement. Recent research by Chartbeat found that the correlation between social shares and content engagement is very weak. Also consider this. When a businessperson privately shares business-related content with his or her work colleagues, the engagement with that content is likely to be quite high. So typical social sharing metrics are even less effective at capturing content engagement in a B2B setting.

The bottom line is that social sharing metrics provide an incomplete picture of content marketing effectiveness. As a B2B marketer, one of your primary objectives is to entice your target audience to consume your content. If your content is widely shared across social networks, that may (or may not) boost the consumption of your content. However, the absence of social sharing doesn't necessarily mean that your content isn't being consumed by - and having an impact on - your target audience.

Top image courtesy of Nan Palmero via Flickr CC.
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Google dropping Merchant Center feed integrations with BigCommerce, Magento, PrestaShop


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How to Add, edit or remove keywords on the go using the AdWords app

Keywords are words or phrases you choose to describe your product or service. They’re used to help you reach only the most interested people, who are more likely to become your customers. Using keywords can increase your sales and lower your costs.

With the AdWords app, you can select high-quality, relevant keywords for your ad campaigns even when you’re away from your computer. Advertisers can now add, edit and remove keywords from their campaigns using the AdWords app.


  • To add a keyword, click the new round blue “plus” button that appears in the bottom right corner of the various Keyword views in the app.
  • To delete existing keywords, click on the keyword you want to delete and then on the trash can icon in the upper right corner of the screen.
  • From that same specific keyword screen, advertisers can edit the word itself or change the match type. That’s also where advertisers can pause or enable a keyword and change manually set bids.

The AdWords app can be downloaded from the iOs and Google Play app stores.

Manage your keywords (AdWords app), to get full instructions see this page

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New Research Tracks Progress on B2B Customer Experience


In 2013, Walker Information published the results of a study regarding the emerging importance of customer experience for B2B companies. Customers 2020:  The Future of B-to-B Customer Experience focused on how B2B companies should be preparing to meet changing customer expectations. In this research, study participants said they expected customer experience to surpass product and pricing as the key business differentiator by 2020.

Last fall, Walker published the results of a new study that was designed to take a fresh look at some of the issues addressed in the 2013 research and examine how much progress B2B companies have made on the customer experience journey. Customers 2020:  A Progress Report was based on a survey of more than 400 customer experience leaders and influencers, and on in-depth interviews with 22 senior business executives. Survey respondents represented a range of industries, company sizes, and job titles.

The 2017 research identified three core dimensions of B2B customer experience:

  • Personalization - "Customers want to do business with companies that know their individual and company needs and are willing to tailor the experience to meet those needs."
  • Ease - "Customers don't have time on their side and place a real premium on simplicity."
  • Speed - "Customers can't afford to wait around while their business issues are being considered. They value companies that provide real-time response and proactively anticipate their future needs."
Walker's research found that B2B customer experience professionals believe that customer expectations have risen across all three of these dimensions and will continue to rise for the foreseeable future. In the 2017 study, Walker asked survey participants to rate the level of customer expectations for personalization, ease, and speed at three points in time - in 2013, today (2017), and in 2020. The following table shows the percentage of survey respondents who said customer expectations were/are/will be high.










Walker's research also revealed that most B2B customer experience professionals don't believe their company is fully prepared to meet customer expectations for personalization, ease, and speed. As the following table shows, less than 10% of survey respondents said their company is very effective at delivering on the three critical components of B2B customer experience.










The findings of the Walker study aren't particularly surprising. Walker's research suggests that while the expectations of B2B customers are high and rising, those expectations are also primarily utilitarian. What B2B customers really want is to do business with companies that are fast, responsive, and easy to work with. 

Even personalization has a practical dimension. When a company understands my interests and needs, and has a complete picture of our existing relationship and previous interactions, I don't need to "reintroduce" myself at every new encounter.

Top image courtesy of Zach via Flickr CC.
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What is Portfolio bid strategies/ flexible bid strategies?

An automated, goal-driven bid strategy that groups together multiple campaigns, ad groups, and keywords.

Portfolio bid strategies automatically set bids to help you reach your performance goals. Portfolio bid strategies let you automatically set bids for multiple campaigns.
  • Once you create a portfolio strategy, it will be stored in your Shared library. This is the central location for managing your portfolio bid strategies and tracking their performance.
  • Use the Campaigns, Ad groups, and Keywords pages to add items to a portfolio bid strategy.
  • Portfolio bid strategies were previously referred to as “flexible bid strategies.”

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What is automated bid strategies?

Each type of automated bid strategy is designed to help you achieve a specific goal for your business.


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How Marketers Can Nurture Buyer Trust, and Why That Matters


B2B buyers are conditioned to view vendor-provided information with a healthy dose of skepticism, and this makes lack of trust an elephant-in-the-room issue for B2B marketers. Lack of trust produces a major drag on marketing performance. If buyers don't trust what you say, they won't give you credit for understanding their needs or providing relevant, personalized, and engaging content and experiences. Trust can't be manufactured, but the right approach to marketing can make trust more likely to develop.

According to the 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in government, business, non-governmental organizations, and media fell significantly in 2017. Just over half (52%) of Edelman's survey respondents said they trust business organizations, but even this modest level of trust is tenuous. In 13 of the 28 countries represented in the Edelman study, less than 50% of the survey respondents said they trust business.

Recent research regarding trust in advertising and marketing has produced mixed results, but many studies show that trust is a major issue for marketers. For example, in a 2017 survey by TrustRadius, technology buyers ranked vendor or product websites and vendor collateral (ebooks, case studies, webinars, etc.) as the least helpful and trustworthy sources of information used to support buying decisions.

Lack of trust weakens the impact of all marketing efforts. In recent years, many marketers have been using insights from data to better understand the interests and needs of their buyers. And many have implemented personalization technologies in order to provide content and messaging that are more relevant and engaging for potential buyers. But without buyer trust, these efforts won't produce the improved performance that marketers are hoping to see.

Trust lies at the heart of every business relationship. Trust can't be manufactured; it must be earned from potential buyers. But while marketers (or sales professionals for that matter) cannot unilaterally create buyer trust, they can take steps to create an environment that makes potential buyers more likely to extend their trust. The starting point is to understand the factors that lead to trust, and the process by which trust develops.

The Foundation of Trust
In a business context, the decision to trust a prospective vendor depends on the buyer's perceptions about three factors:

  • Ability - Does the company possess the requisite knowledge, skill, and competence to perform in a way that will meet my expectations?
  • Integrity - Will the company fulfill its promises? Will the company's actions match its words and claims? Does the company adhere to principles that I find acceptable?
  • Benevolence - Will the company be sufficiently concerned about my (and my organization's) welfare to put our interests above (or at least on par with) its own?
Perceptions regarding ability and integrity have the greatest influence on the willingness to trust in the early stages of a relationship, simply because it takes a potential buyer longer to assess the benevolence of a prospective vendor.
How Trust Develops
Most leading authorities contend that trust develops in stages. In a 2003 essay, Professors Roy J. Lewicki and Edward C. Tomlinson identified two distinct stages of trust development.
Calculus-Based Trust - In the early stages of a relationship, trust is primarily a cognitively-driven phenomenon. We carefully calculate how another person (or a company) is likely to behave in a given situation, and we extend our trust only to the extent necessary to achieve a desired outcome. Calculus-Based Trust is tentative and fragile, and it is usually based on our assessment of a person's (or a company's) predictability and reliability.
Identification-Based Trust - As a relationship evolves through repeated interactions, the parties may learn that they share certain values and goals. When that happens, trust can grow to a higher and qualitatively different level - what Lewicki and Tomlinson call Identification-Based Trust. Unlike Calculus-Based Trust, Identification-Based Trust is primarily an emotion-driven phenomenon, which makes it more durable and less susceptible to disruption than Calculus-Based Trust.
How Marketers Can Nurture Trust
So given what we know about the factors that lead to trust, and the process of trust development, the next questions is:  What can marketers do to earn the trust of potential buyers? There are, in fact, several steps that marketers can take to nurture trust, but here are two of the most important.
Make Content and Messaging Authoritative - Buyers are more likely to see marketing content and messaging as trustworthy if it is authoritative. Therefore, marketers should avoid making unsubstantiated claims and assertions. As I've written before, marketing content resources and messages don't need to read or sound like an academic journal, but the main points should be supported by sound evidence, preferably from sources that are recognized as reputable and credible.
Avoid "Marketing Speak" - Buyers are also more likely to view marketing content and messaging as trustworthy if it doesn't contain a lot of marketing speak. It's difficult to define marketing speak in a precise and comprehensive way, but as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once said about hard-core pornography, "I know it when I see it." And so will most B2B buyers. 
Marketing speak can involve the use of buzzwords and over-the-top or overly-simplistic claims, but it also exists when the overall tone of marketing content or messaging is too promotional. I use a simple test to avoid this particular strain of marketing speak. When I finish a content resource, I ask myself this question:  If an independent and respected journalist were writing an article about this topic, would the tone of the article be similar to my resource?

Image courtesy of Terry Johnston via Flickr CC.

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How to Use the Facebook’s New Offline Activity Custom Audience Feature for Retargeting

With offline conversion measurement capabilities on Facebook, you can track when transactions occur in your physical business location and other offline channels after people see or engage with your Facebook ads.

According to Facebook – “Create a list of the people who interacted with your business in-store, by phone, or through other offline channels.”

How to use Offline Activity  feature?

Go to ‘Asset Library’ tab in Facebook Business Manager.

Now just click on ‘Custom Audience’ tab.




You’ll get the list of custom audiences. Click on ‘Offline Activity’ option.



Add multiple filters to refine the audience as per the requirement.








Enter the name of the audience related to your objective and click on create anaudience. Your audience is ready.
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How to Perform A/B Testing in Google Adwords?



A split test (or an A/B test) is just a comparison between two different variants of a website, advertisement, email, or online form. To this end, an original version (Split A) is compared against a modified version (Split B). Here’s a basic example: You want to optimize an ad’s performance, but you aren’t sure which changes will deliver results. So you create a version of the original ad (B) and display it to a predefined target group. Next, you split the traffic into two equal halves and assign an ad variant to each. Now you are in a position to compare the results of each variant and use the insights to optimize your ad. 

Google itself offers the possibility of split testing for AdWords Search network campaigns, naming this feature “Campaign Drafts and Experiments”. There you can test various changes within your campaign, for example ad variants to be tested against the current settings. That said, this option is only available for text ads and for the Display network. Unfortunately, the feature is not available for Google Shopping.
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Split testing Google Shopping campaigns



There are retailers and marketers who want to review the performance of their Google Shopping campaigns with split testing, whether it’s to establish if a tool offers more efficiency than manual implementation or to compare two tools against each other.
But, unfortunately, the Google Shopping channel lends itself to accurate split testing only under certain conditions.  The risk is quite high that the results will be misleading or false.  Even then, there are a few split-testing methods that can help give insights into your Google Shopping efforts.
This white paper from Smarter Ecommerce will help you answer questions like these:
  • Which types of split testing are there for Google Shopping?
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of each test?
  • How can I be sure that my split test will give valid, meaningful results?
  • Which tests provide reliable, objective conclusions?
Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download “Split Testing with Google Shopping.”
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Google is sunsetting AdWords Review extensions 2018


Google has announced that Review extensions will stop showing this month and will be deleted entirely in AdWords accounts in February.



Advertisers that ran Review extensions and want to keep their historical data will need to export it in AdWords this month. You can find the data in both the old and new AdWords interfaces.

Old interface:




In the new interface (select the relevant date range):




Reviews extensions only appear on desktop devices and on the Google Search Network. Review extensions aren’t available on mobile and tablet devices or on the Display Network.

Review extensions are available in English, German, French, Spanish (including Latin American Spanish), Portuguese (including Brazilian Portuguese), Japanese, Dutch, and Italian.

Review extensions are not available for Shopping ads.

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How to Set up Google Shopping Ad Extensions

Google Merchant Promotions give e-commerce advertisers the opportunity to include special offers along with their Shopping Ads.

Google Merchant Promotions



Promotional text


When your product appears in a Google search as an ad, potential customers can hover over it to see a small snippet of promotional text. That text offers customers a special deal, like a 20 percent-off coupon code or free shipping.





Promotional feeds

Marketers can also take advantage of a feature known as Promotional Feeds. When a customer sees your ad, a small price tag icon will appear with the phrase “Special Offer” next to it. When customers click on the text, a small box appears that explains what the special offer is.
To get this kind of promotion set up, you have to reach out to an AdWords representative first. (You can do so by filling out this form).


Product reviews

To get product reviews on your next ad, you’ll need to contact a representative from AdWords. There is an approval process, and the reviews that you’ve collected must be from specific, Google-approved sites. This extension aggregates your products’ reviews from across the web and presents their “star ratings” (based on a 5-star scale) below your ads.



Local Inventory Ads

Local inventory ads showcase your products and store information to nearby shoppers searching with Google. When shoppers click your ad, they arrive on a Google-hosted page for your store, called the local storefront. Shoppers use the local storefront to view in-store inventory, get store hours, find directions, and more. Before enabling local inventory ads, make sure you've submitted the required product data in the selected Merchant Center account.






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2x Daily Budget: Charges and your daily budget October 4, 2017


Charges and your daily budget

Starting October 4, 2017, campaigns will be able to spend up to twice the average daily budget to help you reach your advertising goals, like clicks and conversions.
On days with lots of high quality traffic, your costs could be up to 2 times your daily budget. This spending is balanced by days when your spend is below your daily budget.
Keep in mind, you won’t be charged more than your monthly charging limit: the average number of days in a month (30.4) multiplied by your average daily budget.
Internet traffic is like an ocean. Some days, there will be small waves. Other days, there will be great big ones. So, if your ads don't show up much because of low traffic, then we'll make up for that by showing them more when traffic's higher.
That's why we allow up to 2 times the clicks in a day than your daily budget allows. This is called overdelivery.  And it's a good thing: if we end up showing your ad too much -- to the point where you accrue more costs than your daily budget allows for over a billing cycle -- then we'll give you a credit for those extra costs.

Overdelivery and your daily budget

As we mentioned, you might see that your advertising costs each day are a little higher or lower than what you set for your daily budget. If you do, don't worry -- over a month-long billing cycle, you won't be charged more than your daily budget would've allowed for over 30.4 days.
Let's explain that number.
Basically, 30.4 is the average number of days in a month (365 days in a year / 12 months = 30.417). Google multiplies your daily budget by this number so we know what your budget should be over the course of a month.

Example

Let's say you set your budget at $5 a day and your billing cycle is 30 days. Over the course of the month, you notice that your charges vary. Some days you're charged $2, on others you're charged $10. But at the end of the month, your charges won't exceed $152 (that's 30.4 multiplied by your $5 budget). So even though your campaign costs tipped above and fell below your $5 budget from day to day, at the end of the month, you're still charged no more than what you budgeted.
The waves of Internet traffic might make your daily costs go up and down. But at the end of the month, despite those unpredictable waves, you'll find your costs at right where you expected them to be.

Check for overdelivery

Sometimes we deliver over your monthly budget. In those cases, we'll credit the overdelivery cost back. If you'd like to see whether we've given you overdelivery credits, follow these steps:

1.        Sign in to your AdWords account.
2.        Click the reporting icon in the upper right corner of your account.
3.        Select Predefined, then Basic from the drop-down menu.
4.        Click Overdelivery.
To calculate overdelivery, subtract “Billed cost” from “Served cost.” To perform these calculations in bulk, click the download icon in the top right of the report and save as a .csv file.
By default, the data is displayed daily and sorted by served cost. If you wish to see for a certain date range, remove the “Day” filter and and set date range in the upper left of the table.
Starting on September 30, 2017, the campaign activity link found on your Transactions pages will be disabled. On that day you’ll be able to find served and billed costs in the reports section of your account, which will allow you to check for overdelivery.
IMPORTANT: Once the new reporting feature is available, reports will only show data as far back as September 2015. If you would like to retain access to older campaign activity, please use the print function to save this information now. 


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Top Free Article Submission Sites 2018 with high DA

Article Submission is very powerful Technique of Off-page SEO . Article Submission sites are high DA article site which allow users submit unique content. Article Submission Sites with high DA plays a very important role in off page SEO. The main aim of Article Submission is to improve search engine ranking of your blog and increase website traffic .




Top Free Article  Sites 2018 with high DA

Articlecontentking.com/
Articlekarma.com/
Dime-co.com/
Smallbizarticles.com/
livejournal.com
evernote.com
wattpad.com
seekingalpha.com
zimbio.com
dzone.com
ehow.com
hubpages.com
storify.com
biggerpockets.com/articles
ezinearticles.com
free-ebooks.net
github.com
Tumblr.com/
Newsvine.com/
Ezinearticles.com/
Articlecity.com/
Articlesbase.com/
Readezarchive.com/ 
Soup.io/
Isnare.com/
Amazines.com/
Articlecube.com/
123articleonline.com 
uberarticles.com 
Otherarticles.com/
Articleinsider.com
Articlesfactory.com/
A1articles.com/
Articlealley.com/
Ezinemark.com/
Galoor.com/
Goodposts.com/
Ezinepost.com 
Sooperarticles.com/
Occultlibrary.info/
Articledude.com/articlefr/
Articlesphere.com/
Articletrader.com/
Articleyard.com/
Artipot.com/
Easyarticles.com/
Edarticle.com/
Howtoadvice.com/
Pubarticles.com/
Top7business.com/
Articles2know.com/
Articleset.com/
Articlewarehouse.com/
Article-buzz.com/
Ultimatearticledirectory.com/
Jurisonline.in/
Knowhow-now.com/
Look-4it.com/
Join Techniblogic (Guest Posting)
hubpages.com
articlesbase.com
artipot.com
Uberarticles.com/
Webarticles.com/
123articleonline.com/
Articledashboard.com/
Articles.org/
easy-articles.com
sooperarticles.com
goarticles.com
idleexperts.com
openarticles.com
articlesbd.com
articleswrap.com
selfgrowth.com
articlecity.com
articlecatalog.com
articledunia.com
articlepdq.com
articles.gappoo.com
articles.pubarticles.com
pr4-articles.com
apsense.com
pusha.se
infobarrel.com
articlesxpert.com
trionds.com
articlesphere.com
ezinemark.com
amazines.com
brighthub.com
isnare.com
blogsome.com
magportal.com
top-affiliate.com
jumpingrankdomains.com
threadwatch.org
articleside.com
articlebiz.com
Inspire.com
articlesfactory.com
newsvine.com
articleseen.com
articlesnatch.com
dzone.com
thewhir.com
free-ebooks.net
bubblews.com/
dailytwocents.com
writedge.com/
articlecube.com
allthewebsites.org
ezinearticles.com
123articleonline.com
thenewcomers.co
cgidir.com
articles.studio9xb.com






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Best Free hIgh Domain Authority Blogging Sites 2018

Are you looking for the highest Domain Authority blog submission sites to get some quality backlinks. Top blog submission sites that help you build both quality links and increase your blog’s exposure in 2018.


High Free Domain Authority Blog Submission Sites 2018

wordpress.com
blogger.com
xing.com
tumblr.com
weebly.com
webnode.com
livejournal.com
jimdo.com
merchantcircle.com
sfgate.com
wix.com
quora.com
reddit.com
wikispaces.com
webs.com
bravenet.com
zoho.com
diigo.com
intuit.com
newsvine.com
rediff.com
entireweb.com
9sites.net
1abc.org/
aaf14.org
addbusiness.net
a1webdirectory.org
addfreewebdirectory.com
addurlguide.com
alistsites.com
somuch.com
Sonic Run
topsiteswebdirectory.com
zoho.com
intuit.com
yola.com
wikidot.com
wordpress.com
tumblr.com/
weebly.com/in
blogspot.in/
www.wix.com/
soup.io/
blogs.rediff.com/
pages.rediff.com/
medium.com/
penzu.com
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High DA Social Bookmarking Submission Sites List-2018

High DA-PA social bookmarking sites play an important role in SEO today. The beginning should be with submitting blog posts or web pages to social bookmarking websites as it has so many benefits. Bookmarking is the fastest way to index your website or blog post in search engines.



Top High DA social bookmarking sites 2018

www.pinterest.com
www.reddit.com
www.stumbleupon.com
www.storify.com
www.citeulike.org
www.myspace.com
www.Fark.com
www.Plurk.com
www.bibsonomy.org
www.diigo.com
www.webseoexpertservices.com
www.scoop.it
www.blinklist.com
www.actweb-sport.com
www.dzone.com
www.twicsy.com
www.kirtsy.com
www.Dotnetkicks.com
www.folkd.com
www.tumblr.com
www.inbound.org
www.lockerdome.com
www.youmob.com
www.bookmark4you.com
www.aixindashi.org
www.registertovotetoday.com
www.usefulenglish.net
www.airpim.biz
www.factson37.com
www.blogengage.com
www.slashdot.org
www.digg.com
www.list.ly
https://del.icio.us
www.sociopost.com
www.linkarena.com
www.boingboing.net
www.techdirt.com
www.disqus.com
www.instapaper.com
www.bizsugar.com
https://www.scoop.it
http://www.akonter.com/
https://delicious.com
http://www.plurk.com
http://slashdot.org
http://digg.com
http://stumbleupon.com
http://citeulike.org
http://mixx.com
http://technorati.com
http://www.explorebim.com
http://bibsonomy.org
http://squidoo.com
http://designfloat.com
http://fark.com
http://connotea.com
http://diigo.com
http://metafilter.com
http://www.readwriteweb.com
http://www.lifehacker.com
http://www.techdirt.com
http://www.nowpublic.com
http://www.blinklist.com
http://www.blinklist.com
http://wikio.com
http://wikio.com
http://hotklix.com
http://www.bizsugar.com
http://surfingbird.ru
http://svejo.net
http://nimtools.com
http://dudu.com
http://www.balltribe.com
http://actweb-sport.com
http://blogmarks.net
http://techmanik.com
http://themecolony.com
http://dotnetkicks.com
http://marketingland.com
http://sitebar.org
http://www.meneame.net
http://www.linkagogo.com
http://www.buddymarks.com
http://youmob.com
http://packg.com
http://www.extraplay.com
http://iorbix.com
http://www.yemle.com
http://www.43things.com
http://online-gv.com
http://exploremnstateparks.com
http://www.blogengage.com 
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About the "Landing pages" page

Effective landing pages are key to getting conversions from your AdWords traffic. The landing page is the page on your website where customers land after clicking one of your ads. You can see how your Search, Display, and Video landing pages are performing on the “Landing pages” page. You’ll also be able to see if your landing pages are optimized for mobile devices.

The "Landing pages" page gives you a performance breakdown for the pages you’re sending traffic to from your ads. Your landing page data is available as early as August 1, 2017.

You’ll get a snapshot of the following data for your landing pages:


  • Mobile-friendly click rate
  • Valid AMP click rate
  • Performance metrics such as clicks, cost, conversion rate, etc.
The Landing pages report shows performance data for each landing page URL, including both the Final URL and the Mobile Final URL. You’ll also find the expansions of those landing page URLs in the report. An expanded landing page URL is the URL that people reach after contextual substitutions (such as a keyword) have been made and after custom parameters have been added to the landing page URL. Expanded landing page URLs let you know how people are getting to the pages on your website. Your expanded landing page data is available as early as November 9, 2017.


Your “Mobile-friendly click rate” is the percentage of mobile clicks that go to a page that's deemed mobile friendly by Google's Mobile-Friendly test. This metric, currently available for Search, can give you a better sense of how your landing pages are showing up on mobile devices.

You can see which pages may not be optimized for mobile devices by clicking on the percentage in your "Mobile-friendly click rate" column. You can also run the Mobile-Friendly test for each of these pages.

“Valid AMP click rate” is the percentage of ad clicks to AMP landing pages that reach a valid AMP page, as determined by the AMP Validator. Landing pages might not load as AMP pages if they’re coded incorrectly, so the “Valid AMP click rate” column provides a quick way to identify which pages you need to fix. Currently, this metric only measures clicks from Search ads.

Like most other tables, you can also add additional columns to your table by clicking the columns icon Columns, and selecting Modify columns.


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Confront the "Elephants in the Room" to Maximize Marketing Performance in 2018


Early in my consulting career, I worked with a small company that was owned and managed by a husband-wife team. The business had been fairly successful for most of its ten-year history, but when I began working with the company, it had been losing money for more than a year, and was on the verge of going broke.

In the course of interviewing the owners and many of the company's employees, the core problem became apparent. The husband-owner was having an affair with one of the employees. At that time, the affair had been going on for about two years. The wife-owner and many of the employees knew about the affair, but no one openly acknowledged it, and no one talked about it, except through veiled innuendos. Though it was never mentioned, the affair was undermining the success of the company.

I've shared this experience because it's a classic example of an elephant in the room, and I've encountered elephants in the room several times in my work with clients. The defining characteristic of an elephant in the room is a conspiracy of silence, in which a group of people are all personally aware of an issue or problem, but tacitly agree to outwardly ignore it.

Elephants in the room frequently exist in a business setting when:

  • Company leaders and managers perceive that an issue or problem is unsolvable or beyond their control.
  • The only effective solution for an issue or problem would be painful or highly disruptive to implement.
  • The issue or problem creates doubt about the effectiveness or value of a fundamental aspect of the company's strategy or operations.
When faced with these kinds of issues or problems, we humans tend to put on a brave face, keep doing what we've been doing, and hope for the best. Another appropriate idiom might be "whistling past the graveyard." The only way to deal with an elephant in the room is to get past the conspiracy of silence, discuss the issue or problem openly, and make an informed decision regarding what to do about it, all of which is easier said than done.

Elephants in the room can affect any part of a business, and marketing is no exception. If we look carefully, we can easily identify several elephant-in-the-room issues that are negatively affecting the performance of B2B marketing. We marketers tend to down play, gloss over, or ignore these issues because they are difficult to address, often require "radical" solutions, and in some cases, aren't completely within our control.

There's no doubt that the practice of B2B marketing has changed dramatically. We now have marketing capabilities that were unheard of only a few years ago. But there are also some elephant-in-the-room issues that we must address if we want to maximize the productivity of our marketing efforts. In short, we need to make 2018 the year that we name and tame the elephants in the room.

In several future posts, I'll be discussing some of these elephant-in-the-room issues, and I would love to hear your thoughts on these important issues.

Illustration courtesy of Bit Boy via Flickr CC.
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