Atomic Media

How to turn polls and surveys into great content

Friday, May 5th, 2023

Want to know what your customers need and want from your content?

Ask them. Then use that information to get creating.

But don’t just ask one person. Ask many. Pull from the power of the crowd.

To do that, consider creating polls and surveys – and then use the information you glean from them to create great content.

Here’s why and how.

Why polls and surveys are valuable information sources for content marketing

First, why should you conduct polls and surveys? They take a bit of planning and work to set up – so why should you bother when you can just look at your analytics or gather statistics from other sources?

Because there are some things you can only learn with these types of research. 

Get deeper audience insights

At its core, your content marketing is only as good as your knowledge of your audience.

If you know them, understand them, and can root out their deep pains, challenges, and dreams, you can create content that speaks to them personally and hits them in the heart.

You’ll be able to give them unmatched value in content because your content will be tailor-made for them.

The question is, how do you unearth those kinds of insights about your audience? How do you get to understand them deeply?

There’s no better way than asking them directly. And polls and surveys let you do that on a scale magnified by 100, 1,000, or even 10,000, depending on your audience size and your brand reach.

Learn why instead of just what

You can get a lot of information on what your audience is doing by looking at your site analytics, conversion rates, and website traffic.

But often, what’s more important to understand is why they’re behaving a certain way. And statistics can’t tell you that. For instance:

• Why does our audience resonate with this topic but not that one?
• What pain points are we not solving for them?
• What types of information do they rely on us to provide – and what makes them look elsewhere?
• What’s their biggest challenge in our industry?
• What ultimate goals do our audience want to achieve?

Polls and surveys can enlighten you about all of these things in a scalable way.

Get insights unique to your business and audience

No two brand audiences are exactly alike.

Sure, they can be similar or overlapping. But ultimately, your audience is unique to your business because (hopefully) your business provides a unique solution in your market that attracts specific people.

That means if you rely on other sources to gather data and insights about your audience, those insights won’t be totally accurate or authentic.

If you want to truly understand your audience, you need to open up communication with them and learn from them directly about who they are and what they want.

Polls and surveys help you do that.

4 tips for creating polls and surveys that yield useful data

Not all polls and surveys are enlightening. To get good information, you need a well-crafted instrument.

1. Know the differences between polls and surveys – and the right time to use each

Polls and surveys are fundamentally different, and employing one over the other will give you vastly different insights.

Polls are quick, involve a single question, and include a select set of pre-written answers. All the poll-taker has to do is choose the answer they agree with most, that sounds most like them, or that fits their preferences.

As such, polls are great for feeling out the general sentiment of your audience. You’ll get a bird’s eye view of the majority opinion with a good poll.

Here’s an example of the simplest poll imaginable. It appears at the end of a blog post and asks the reader whether what they just read was helpful or not:

In contrast, surveys are more detailed and open-ended. They may include one or dozens of questions about one or many topics.

Surveys often include multiple question types: yes/no, short answer, multiple choice, ranking, etc.

This makes surveys great for getting opinions, collecting insights, measuring your audience’s preferences, and understanding their underlying motivations. 

Here’s another example from Nextdoor asking for feedback on their help center experience with a short, four-question survey:

Note that the first question looks a lot like a poll. However, because there are multiple questions and question types, including an open-ended one, this is definitely a survey.

To sum up:

• Use polls to get a quick understanding of your audience’s overall sentiment about a specific question or topic.
• Use surveys to dig deeper into their motivations, preferences, and opinions.

2. Use polls and surveys formally or informally

You don’t have to use a special tool to create a poll or survey. 

If you need in-depth insights on a deep topic, definitely use a tool and create a formal survey.

However, if you just want to get a general idea of how people feel about something, create an informal, spur-of-the-moment poll or survey. You don’t have to use a tool for this:

• Ask your followers an open-ended question on social media, or open up a topic for discussion in the comments. Analyze the responses.
• Create a quick social media poll on Facebook or Twitter.
• At the end of your email newsletter, ask for replies and feedback to a specific question.

Don’t forget, you can also create quick polls just to engage with your audience and for no other reason. This is an easy but fun way to add to your social media calendar.

3. Set a goal for your poll/survey

What are you ultimately hoping to learn from your poll/survey? What’s the bit of knowledge at the heart of it all that you’re trying to find out?

Similarly, what’s the main assumption you’re trying to prove correct – or disprove?

This is your goal. Especially for surveys, if you have a clear goal before creating one, you’re bound to get better results and stronger insights.

4. Ask the right questions

There’s an art to writing and formulating survey questions.

The way you phrase a question can completely change the type of answers you’ll get.

For example, take these two questions. They both ask for an opinion on essentially the same thing but will elicit completely different responses:

• Open-ended question (literally any answer is possible): What do you think of our content?
• Closed question (the possible responses are narrowed): Overall, how helpful do you find the content on our blog? Rate from 1-10.

Now, there’s a time and a place for open-ended questions. Various answers and opinions can be enlightening – as long as you have the time and resources to sift through them all.

Generally, if you want to keep things simple and easy to sort/analyze, ask closed questions with only a select number of possible answers.

Here is a great guide to writing useful survey questions that will give you clear, unbiased answers.

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How to use the information gleaned from polls and surveys to create great content

Now, how do you use polls and surveys to inform content creation?

In a nutshell: Use polls and surveys to directly ask a large chunk of your audience what they want from your content. Doing this in various ways will yield lots of topic ideas.

Finally, don’t forget that your survey itself could be the star of your next content piece.

Let’s break it all down.

Find out what topic is the most interesting

This is one of the quickest and easiest ways to use polls to create content.

Let’s say you’re stuck deciding between three different topics for your next blog post. You’re not sure which one your audience will be interested in most.

So, ask them! Set up a quick poll and let your audience vote on the topic they’d be most interested in. The winner is the one you’ll write about next.

Plus, you can use this knowledge to inform more content topics later. Are there any related topics to address? Your audience would probably find these interesting, too.

Discover your audience’s most pressing challenges and address them in your content

Deep audience insights about their toughest obstacles can be great fodder for content.

For example, a survey can help you pinpoint the biggest challenges they face that relate to your business or what you sell. These challenges can be broken down into smaller chunks and addressed with content.

Imagine you’re a business consultant and identify that your audience struggles with business planning. You could break that topic into smaller chunks, each a topic for a blog post (start-up costs, researching the market, figuring out licenses and registration, setting up bookkeeping, etc.).

You could also create an ultimate guide to business planning and go through all the details while linking to your sub-topic pieces.

Your audience’s pain points are a great starting place for brainstorming content topics. Surveys are the answer to find those pains and hear them described in your audience’s own words.

Gather keywords for content from their responses

This is one of the perks of including open-ended questions in your surveys (and generally asking for feedback):

You’ll get written responses in your audience’s own words, with terms and key phrases they regularly use in their vocabulary when discussing your industry.

These are gold mines for keywords. 

• Look for repeated phrases that have significance to the larger topic.
• Look for unique turns of phrases or alternate ways of phrasing common terms.
• Look for trends in how your audience phrases topical terms – are they all referring to something in the same way or using similar wording?

Record your analysis in a list for later research and insertion in your content.

Create an original research report

Depending on your survey’s depth, accuracy, and sample size, you could turn the results into a compelling research report on a specific topic.

If this is your goal from the outset (to use your survey results to create content), ensure you have a good grasp of survey planning, design, and analysis.

Remember that few brands do original research because it’s a time-intensive process requiring skills to execute well. But when it’s done right, you can expect incredible results (original research reports are link magnets!).

If you’re interested in this route, read this Orbit Media guide to using original research in your content.

Collect new content topic ideas

Sometimes, the simplest survey will generate the most useful results. Hence: Ask your audience what types of posts they’d like to see on your blog.

You can conduct this survey in a simple post on social media with one open-ended question (“What kind of content topics would you like to see on our blog?”). Ask for ideas and suggestions in the comments. 

You can also pose this question at the end of blog posts and emails. It’s simple and quick, and you’ll likely get varied responses that inspire many new ideas.

Polls and surveys: The unsung heroes of content creation

Now that you know how much potential exists inside a single poll or survey, ignoring them as tools in your content marketing would be silly.

A well-crafted poll or survey can bring surprising results, including a direct line to your ideal customer’s thoughts about your niche and brand.

One survey alone – or one well-timed, well-worded poll – can give you fodder for an enormous amount of content. So what are you waiting for?

The post How to turn polls and surveys into great content appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

AI in search: Insights from Bing’s Fabrice Canel

Friday, May 5th, 2023

I recently connected with Fabrice Canel, a 26-year search veteran at Microsoft and principal product manager leading the team crawling, processing and indexing at Bing.

Canel offers insights into the state of artificial intelligence in search and the integration of chat experiences in the new Bing. 

Can you discuss your most recent announcements with Bing Chat?

Fabrice Canel (FC): In February 2023, we introduced the world to the all-new AI-powered Bing and Microsoft Edge, your copilot for the web. Since then, more users have been using Bing than before, and we recently hit 100 million daily users and 100 million chats. 

We then enabled the new AI-powered Bing in Windows, Skype, Edge mobile and Bing mobile, including voice access.

In recent weeks, we’ve added various ways to interact with new AI-powered experiences that extend these capabilities to millions of additional people across devices and around the globe.

• Bing Image Creator offers the ability to create images with your own words, enabling new AI-powered visual Stories allowing to explore topics that interest Bing customers with facts, image-based timelines, polls, actions, and related topics, 
• AI-generated stories provide Bing customers with multiple ways to consume bite-sized information – through text, images, video, and audio,
• AI-generated Bing Knowledge Cards help Bing customers explore topics that interest Bing customers with facts, image-based timelines, polls, actions, and related topics.
• Another way to access and interact with the new Bing is by enabling it in the SwiftKey keyboard app, which puts the Bing AI experience one touch away from any iOS or Android mobile experience that supports a third-party keyboard. You can see the full announcement here. (Author’s note: Bing acquired SwiftKey in 2016.)

Can you discuss the thoughts behind integrating Chat experiences into Search (philosophy, expectations)?

FC: Let’s go behind the scenes. I want to share a little bit more about the new Bing and how it came to be. 

Next-generation model. The new Bing is running on a new, next-generation large language model customized specifically for search. It takes key learnings and advancements of past models and is even faster, more accurate and more capable. In short, it is much more capable of synthesizing, summarizing, chatting and creating.

Microsoft Prometheus model. We have developed a proprietary way of working with our next-generation model to best leverage its power.

We call this collection of capabilities and techniques the Prometheus model. This combination gives Bing customers more relevant, timely and targeted results, with improved safety.

When we had a breakthrough in large language models (LLMs), much like other LLMs, it was trained with data through a given point in time, so we thought that we could make the user experience richer, more relevant, and more accurate by combining it with the power of Bing’s back-end.

To be more concrete, we developed a proprietary technology called Prometheus, a first-of-its-kind AI model that combines the fresh and comprehensive Bing index, ranking, and answers results with the creative reasoning capabilities of most-advanced models. 

Prometheus leverages the power of Bing and language models to generate a set of internal queries iteratively through a component called Bing Orchestrator. It aims to provide an accurate and rich answer for the user query within the given conversation context. All within a matter of milliseconds. We refer to this Prometheus-generated answer as the Chat answer.

Selecting the relevant internal queries and leveraging the respective Bing search results is a critical component of Prometheus since it provides relevant and fresh information to the model, enabling it to answer recent questions and reduce inaccuracies – this method is called grounding.

Put another way, the model reasons over the data provided by Bing; hence, Bing data ground it via the Bing Orchestrator. 

The diagram below illustrates how Prometheus works at a high level.

The last step is when Prometheus attaches relevant Bing search answers, such as weather, stock, sports, news, and so on, to the Chat answer to provide a richer and more engaging user experience that further leverages the power of Bing. 

Thanks to the Bing grounding technique, Prometheus is also able to integrate citations into sentences in the Chat answer so that users can easily click to access those sources and verify the information. 

Sending traffic to these sources is important for a healthy web ecosystem and remains one of our top Bing goals. This matters to us because there won’t be a web ecosystem if we don’t send traffic to the people creating the content. People are investing in content for a reason, and if they don’t get rewarded, they’ll stop doing so.

Applying AI to the core search algorithm. We’ve also applied an AI model to our core Bing search ranking engine, leading to the largest relevance jump in two decades.

This AI model makes even basic search queries more accurate and relevant. The new models improved our understanding of documents on the internet and better understanding of how to match those documents up with user queries.

New user experience – Merging Search and Chat. We reimagined how Bing customers interact with search, browser and chat by pulling them into a unified experience. This will unlock a completely new way to interact with the web.

While Prometheus is a remarkable, pioneering AI-based innovation from a user experience perspective, it was unclear how we should integrate its capabilities into Bing. There were two main points of view:

• Some in our team felt that search is such an ingrained habit that we needed to keep the UX like today’s web search and add the Prometheus-powered Chat answer on the main UX. Just like any other answer, the Chat answer would earn its place based on its relevance to the query.
• Others in Bing felt that this was an opportunity to change the search paradigm from the classic web and answers results to a new interactive, chat-based way of searching.

Both schools of thought were partially correct, yet neither had the complete picture.

The team advocating for classic search generally used navigational queries to defend their point of view.

The team pushing for the conversational approach would present research-like search sessions such as shopping or travel. I plotted their queries in a graph below to illustrate this observation.

It then became clear that some queries would perform better in the classical or Search mode while others would do better in a conversational or Chat mode.

Also, some users may prefer one over the other, depending on the query. Therefore, the ideal Bing search product must smoothly transition between Search and Chat modes based on the user’s intent and preference. 

Our design team took on the challenge and, after multiple iterations, developed a new UX that unified Search and Chat in a single interface. Users could easily switch back and forth by clicking on UX elements on the page or simply scrolling or swiping up and down.

This product or UX innovation is arguably just as important as the Prometheus technology to ensure people can intuitively use the product to its full potential.

I feel that UX and SEO nearly always have the same goals these days. What are your thoughts on that?

FC: I agree. It’s important to understand what you want a user to do when they come to one of your webpages.

You should design your webpages to do that well. Destination UX also matters for search engines. Relevance is only a part of the equation.

If they come to your site and are really interested in converting, but they don’t because of a problem with your site, that’s a bad experience for the search engine, too. 

Google has its E-E-A-T standards, and the Bing equivalent of E-E-A-T is very similar. It’s not just about the content itself. Users want to get actions done, and we want to rank pages higher that help them do that.

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Given the potential for errors, how would Bing advise people to use the output from Bing Chat?

FC: It’s hard to believe It’s been just over two months since we released the new AI-powered Bing and Edge to the world. We have learned a lot and shipped several improvements in that time.

We are delighted by the virtuous feedback cycle and iteration driving strong Bing improvements of our models and the experience. 

For instance, we have introduced the ability to toggle the tone of chat between:

• Precise, which focuses on shorter, more search-focused answers.
• Creative, which gives responses that are longer and more descriptive.
• The middle setting, Balance, is somewhere in between. 

Bing customers will notice a color change in the UX between purple, blue and green, depending on which is selected. Our goal is to let Bing customers decide on the type of chat behavior that best meets their needs. We’ll continue to tune this experience based on feedback.

At Bing, we’re committed to delivering the best possible result. If you ask Bing Chat if the Earth is flat it will tell you that Earth is not flat, even if there is a lot of misleading content online on this topic. 

We have made huge investments in AI because we’re optimistic about what it can do to help people, industry and society.

We’re committed to bringing technology and people together to realize the promises of AI responsibly. Feedback and data will help to improve the quality of the answers. Keep your feedback coming.

Should people use Bing Chat to create and publish content without editing it?

FC: We do our best to find the best content. 

Are we there yet? No, we are not perfect yet. No one is. 

Will we be someday? Maybe. Remember that it’s a tool, and this problem is harder than you might think. 

For example, sometimes there are multiple conflicting answers from highly reputable websites. It can be hard to figure out which one is wrong.

I went through this exercise recently trying to answer a question on a complex math geometry problem for my daughter, and I found two different answers from respected experts. One was right, but it took me 1 to 2 hours to figure it out. Even experts make mistakes.

How does Bing Search’s usage compare with Bing Chat’s usage for those that have access to it?

FC: It’s still incredibly early, we released only two months ago, and most Bing customers are experiencing this ability to chat with a search engine for the first time in their life. They are discovering and learning. They are finding value in having search, chat, answers, and creation capabilities all in one experience. 

There are now more than 100 million daily active users of Bing. New scenarios like chat drive engagement, including over 100 million chats.

Of the millions of users in Preview, one-third are new to Bing, creating net-new opportunities for publishers and webmasters. This is still early data, but the signs are encouraging.

For SEO, as it is still early, my recommendation is to stick with the same SEO playbooks as before.

But please keep track of our communication and monitor data to make necessary adjustments as the usage of the new Bing continues to increase, transforming how people search.

In the coming weeks, we will start reporting Bing Chat clicks and impressions on the Bing Webmaster Tools website and Bing Webmaster Tools API. 

Can you discuss the importance of data freshness? 

FC: The recent breakthrough in LLMs is great, but these models are trained with data through a given point in time. What’s special at Bing is that you benefit from the LLMs and the power of Bing Search’s back end.

This means that Bing Chat contains content published seconds ago online. You can Bing Chat what’s happening today – that’s happening right now.

Freshness matters a lot these days, especially for the younger generation. I found it fascinating to see my kids using Bing Chat to learn more about recent events. Bing can handle these types of queries well, even in Bing Chat, because it’s built on top of the Bing index.

One area where people spend a lot of time is on news-type events, including things like celebrity news. People spend a lot of time on things that are happening right now.

Can you provide an overview of what IndexNow is?

FC: IndexNow is an easy way for website owners to instantly inform all search engines about the latest content changes on their websites.

In its simplest form, IndexNow is a simple ping so that search engines know that a URL and its content have been added, updated, or deleted, allowing search engines to reflect this change in their search results quickly.

I find it interesting that you ask this question and speak about IndexNow in the context of Bing Chat which leverages the best-in-class AI models. 

While AI is great in helping retrieve the best content online and to see what’s changed on a website, we simply don’t know with 100% precision if you have added, modified or deleted content on your site. But you know that with 100% precision, or at least your CMS knows that. 

Instead of repeatedly crawling to discover if your content has changed, we provide webmasters the ability to ask search engines crawler to visit to collect the latest content changes.

Since we enabled the IndexNow protocol in the Fall of 2021, the adoption of IndexNow has continued to grow.

Today, more than 20 million websites publish over 2.5 billion URLs to the IndexNow API daily. This month, IndexNow attributed to 10% of all new URLs clicked in web search results.

It’s also great to see more search engines, content management systems (i.e., Wix), and top websites adopting IndexNow. We target that more the 50% of the web will adopt IndexNow within two years. 

Why is crawling so complex? Just how large is the web?

The true size of the internet is infinite. Every day we discover more than 70 billion distinct URLs. There is so much spam and duplicate content.

Spammers grab domains and generate hundreds of subdomains. No search engine communicates on index size anymore because it’s not a good measure of quality. 

The big issue is how you navigate through all the low-quality content to index what matters. To make this easier, we need webmasters to help guide search engines to the real stuff. The best way to do this is with a combination of IndexNow plus XML sitemaps. This is a good setup for all search engines.

How much traffic does Bing anticipate will go to websites in the new Bing Chat model?

FC: In the next few weeks, we will start reporting Bing Chat clicks and impressions in Bing Webmaster Tools so that each website owner can compare them to Bing Search pages.

Search engines have played a role in helping people find the content they want. The new Bing is helping to better address people’s search needs with new capabilities like chat, answers, and content creation. 

Our goal is to satisfy our Bing users and drive more traffic to publishers in this new world of search. It is a top goal for us, and we measure success partly by how much traffic we send from the new Bing/Edge. 

The early progress is encouraging. Based on our data from the preview, we are driving more traffic from all types of users. We have brought more people to Bing/Edge for new scenarios like chat and are seeing increased usage.

Then, we have uniquely implemented ways to drive traffic to publishers, including citations within the body of the chat answers linked to sources and citations below the chat results to “learn more” with links to additional sources. 

We enable an expanded hover experience where hovering over a link from a publisher will display more links from that publisher, giving the user more ways to engage and driving more traffic to the publisher’s website.

We are also listening, and we’re hearing positive feedback as we look for opportunities to maximize these new experiences for the entire ecosystem. 

How does one create content likely to be cited by Bing Chat? 

FC: With the release of the all-new AI-powered Bing and Microsoft Edge, we have enhanced our Bing Webmaster Tools Guidelines to support the experience.

We listed that ranking within Bing Chat generally relies on the same parameters as the main web search results page.

So, since this is still early at this point, I recommend sticking with the same SEO playbooks as before, and most of the recommended playbooks are listed in our Bing Webmaster Tools Guidelines.

The post AI in search: Insights from Bing’s Fabrice Canel appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Google no longer requires video descriptions as part of structured data

Friday, May 5th, 2023

Google has removed the requirement to have the description property as part of your video structured data. Google says it is still recommended to provide a description to your videos in the structured data but it is not a requirement. With that, Google Search Console will not report errors for missing description property items.

Structured data change. Google moved the “description” property from “required” to “recommended” in the structured data documentation. You can see that over here.

The description of the video is used to help Google understand the video, but it is no longer a requirement for video structured data.

Search Console change. The description property is no longer required for Video structured data items, Google wrote here. Google added “it’s still strongly recommended to help Google better understand the content of your video.”

Missing description issues will no longer appear as “critical issues” in that rich results report. Now you may see an increase in the number of valid Video structured data items in your, that is if you did not use descriptions for your video structured data.

Why we care. This should make it easier for you to publish video structured data and have Google pick them up as rich results. Your video thumbnails may show up for more videos and you may see a higher click-through rate from those search result snippets in Google Search.

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How to use incentives in your PPC ads to drive more sales

Friday, May 5th, 2023

We’re still not yet in a recession, but everything in life costs more. 

When everything costs more, sales are harder to come by. Especially if you aren’t the cheapest option, or worse, your website is less than ideal to encourage a purchase.

If you’re selling an in-demand good or service, have an amazing website, and are at the lowest price point among your competitors, stop reading. This article will be of no value to you. 

For the rest of you who don’t have Amazon in your domain, this may actually be helpful.

Providing you aren’t selling a one-and-done good or service (and yes, those do exist), any marketer who is worth their weight will tell you that a repeat customer is better than a one-time customer. Think of it from a lifetime value (LTV) angle.

When selling any good or service, two of the most significant barriers to sealing the deal online are the cost to the consumer and the consumer’s experience on the website. 

If lowering the price is out of the question for the long term, and you don’t have the means to enhance your questionable UX, then we turn to incentivization in your PPC campaigns.

Getting started: Parse out your audiences and know their worth

Disclaimer: As of April 2023, this approach is valid for Search, Display, Discovery, YouTube, Performance Max (sort of), and Bing Shopping (I still refuse to call it Microsoft). It is not valid for Google Shopping. It also may be restricted to certain categories (i.e., financial services, healthcare, etc.).

The first thing to do is segregate your previous and current customers into active audience lists and identify their LTV. 

To segregate customers, set a parameter of duration (i.e., those who have purchased within the past 120 days), which can be done with a basic CRM upload to the Google/Bing UI (this works well for Meta, Trade Desk, and most any biddable media platform where the end experience is on your website). 

In addition, I am a fan of creating audience lists of people who have completed a purchase on the site (use the same duration as you do for the CRM upload), allowing this to essentially act like a recycling dynamic list. (Just like the New York Jets quarterback position, a constantly rotating and repopulating role with a two-season lifespan before the player is dropped from it and a new one is added on.)

While doing this, an assessment of how much discount you can allow for should be conducted. If you know the average consumer buys three times a year from you, you can gauge how much of a first-time discount you can provide to a first-time customer (e.g., “15% off your first purchase”). 

Determine how much you’re willing to eat on the final revenue (possibly even at a slight loss) if it ensures you’ll get one more purchase from that consumer. 

I don’t recommend going broke on the incentive, but if you aren’t winning because of your price and the user experience is garbage (ask a 13-year-old to do a checkout on the site, they will give you unnecessarily brutal honesty of how bad it is), make it truly worth it.

Good thing to remember: An incentive doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be a discount on a good. Other avenues are gifts, free/discounted shopping, and bundle deals. 

Or even the allure of the special incentive, where someone gets to join your exclusive club with their first purchase (this is a glorified way of saying they were added to your rewards program and/or email list).

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Account structure: Make sure your campaigns are designed to cater to different audiences

Here is where the tedious grunt work comes in.

I prefer to segment at the campaign level (required for Performance Max), but it could also be done at the ad group level. So for the sake of this explanation, we’ll do it at the campaign level.

When possible, determine if your search campaigns generate more repeat or first-time purchases. This will help you decide on audience exclusions and placements for the next part.

Duplicate your current campaigns. (Pro tip: Doing this in the editor tools will save you time.) 

If your current campaigns generate a lot of repeat shoppers, then note the original campaign will be dedicated to them. Just put it in the campaign name.

Then apply the repeat shopper audience lists and CRM lists to it as a target audience (There is a new-ish function in Google to only bid for new customers, but I don’t use that and prefer lists, except for on Performance Max). 

This will only allow the ads in that campaign to hit those on the target lists. If the campaign gets more new shoppers, then apply the CRM and shopper audience list as a negative audience/exclusion so that the campaign only serves ads to new shoppers.

On the new duplicated campaign, do the vice versa settings of the original campaign. 

Repeat this process for all applicable campaign types except for Performance Max. On Performance Max, this approach is directionally strong but far from 100%. 

Duplicate the campaigns (including audience segments). However, you will check the box for one campaign only to bid for new customers. It isn’t guaranteed the other campaign won’t serve first-time shoppers, but as of writing, it is as close as you can get.

The key thing to focus on is that while the two campaigns look identical, they actually show ads to different, non-overlapping audiences. This allows for unique creative to also be served to each audience. 

In addition, when first-time shoppers convert, they will be serviced by the repeat shopper campaign going forward.

Implementing the incentive

At this point, you’ve separated your campaigns into new/first-time customers and repeat customers.

Also, you’ve determined the LTV of a customer and figured out how much and what kind of incentive you can provide to “get them into your system.”

On the campaign designated for new shoppers, I recommend rotating three ads when possible (at least two). 

One is the control/evergreen ad (something you would also use for the repeat shopper campaign), and the remaining ad(s) with an incentive. 

The incentive ad should reflect a promotion, only shared with lapsed or first-time customers to entice them to buy from you once (before you hound them with emails). 

Promotion extensions, sitelinks, and other incentive deals can be applied at the specific campaign level to reinforce this. 

Lastly, unique landing pages that reflect the promotion in the ad (that cannot be navigated from within the site) are often the clincher.

The takeaway

Now you’ve successfully provided a promotion to a new customer, enticed them to give up their data and collected that info to market to them again. 

It is a clean method and gives you a better understanding of budget allocation needs, in addition to creative assets to use for both groups.

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How to connect with Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z by Cynthia Ramsaran

Thursday, May 4th, 2023

The art of attracting and selling to customers is undergoing rapid and unprecedented transformation. To stay relevant and competitive, brands must keep up with technological advances and ever-evolving consumer behavior.

However, adapting to these changes is not straightforward, as each generation has unique needs, values and expectations that brands need to consider when developing marketing strategies.

Join marketing experts from Zeta Global as they reveal extensive research and insights into the newest consumer trends.

Register and attend “The Changing Face of Marketing: Connecting with Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z,” presented by Zeta Global.

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Click here to view more Search Engine Land webinars.

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Bing Chat available to more users, gains more visual answers, chat history and third-party developer capabilities

Thursday, May 4th, 2023

Microsoft is now rolling out its new Bing Chat to all users who download Microsoft Edge, there is no more waitlist. Over half a billion chats were conducted on Bing Chat since it launched 3-months ago, Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President, said.

What is new

There are four main points of what is new with Bing Chat:

• Removal of the waitlist for Bing Chat by going from a “Limited Preview” to an “Open Preview”
• Gaining more visual answers for Bing Chat with rich images and videos
• Offering a multi-session experiences with new chat history and persistent chats within the Edge browser
• Exporting and sharing Bing Chats
• Developer access to build third party apps on top of Bing Chat

Let’s dig in a bit more into these changes.

Bing Chat waitlist is gone

Bing has moved from a “Limited Preview” to an “Open Preview,” removing the “waitlist” to access Bing Chat. You still need to use Microsoft’s browser, Edge, and/or the Bing mobile app to access Bing Chat.

You also need to be logged in to your Microsoft account while on Bing Chat within the Edge browser for it to work.

Bing Chat more visual

Bing has updated the answers within Bing Chat to be more visually appealing by improving the formatting and layout, adding more rich images and rich videos, and also by adding charts and graphs when relevant.

Here is a screenshot of the new more visual look for Bing Chat on mobile:

Also, Bing Image Creator is available in all languages, which means over 100 different languages, talk about getting more visual:

Microsoft also redesigned Edge to show chats in a better and more visual format. This includes streamlined look, rounded corners, organized containers and semi-transparent visual elements, the company said. Here is what that looks like:

You will also be able to ask Bing Chat for answers by uploading images as part of your chat. After you upload an image, Bing Chat can search the web for related content.

In addition, Bing Chat in Microsoft Edge has improved summarization capabilities for long documents, both in PDF and HTML formats.

Bing Chat multi-session experiences

Microsoft has been talking about adding chat history for some time now and now Microsoft is rolling it out for Bing Chat. You can use Bing Chat and be able to pick up where you left off, then you can return to previous chats in Bing’s chat history.

There is a “recents” tab on the right side to pickup where you left off. You can also see a “saved” tab for chats you saved for later.

You can even go from the Bing Chat interface into the Edge sidebar interface, so you can browse the web and continue your chat. The screenshot below shows that in action:

Export and share your chats

Microsoft is also adding the ability to export and share your chats from Bing Chat or Edge sidebar. You will be able to share your chats on social media or move them into tools like Microsoft Word, if you so desire.

In this screenshot, you can see the export and share icons at the top right of the chat window:

Third-party developer access

Microsoft said soon, developers will be able to build third-party plug-ins into the Bing chat experience. This is also something Bing hinted was coming weeks ago. In the screen shot below, you can see an example of OpenTable helping you find and book a reservation with a restaurant. This is something OpenAI’s ChatGPT already supports.

Why we care

Watching how Microsoft continues to evolve these AI chat features is exciting. Watching how it may shape the future of a new search experience is even more exciting.

We all know Google I/O is around the corner, and seeing Microsoft and Google go at it with these fast-paced emerging technologies is thrilling.

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YouTube has a new interface, and not everyone is excited about it

Thursday, May 4th, 2023

Following a significant overhaul last year, it appears that YouTube may be undertaking another visual transformation, this time targeting the video page, which has remained relatively unchanged in recent years.

The change was noticed and posted on Twitter by @XenoPanther.

The new design. At present, the web-based video page features a video window accompanied by the title and other details/descriptions displayed below it. However, with the redesign witnessed by a select few over recent weeks, this information is now situated to the right of the video and appears much narrower. Buttons for likes, dislikes, sharing, and more are located underneath, along with a selection of five or so recent comments.

This creates an interface that closely resembles a mobile layout. Consequently, the “Up Next” videos and additional recommendations no longer appear on the right edge of the screen. Instead, they are presented in a grid at the bottom, mirroring the appearance of the YouTube homepage. Users might even encounter a “Latest YouTube posts” section while scrolling.

While the experience of watching a video remains largely unaffected, the relocation of comments and other details to the periphery constitutes a significant change in the interface. It is evident that the redesign’s primary objective is to emphasize other videos for viewers to watch, using much larger thumbnails. This provides a more relaxed viewing experience, although it remains uncertain whether the redesign strikes the right balance between information, comments, and recommendations.

Not everyone is thrilled. The angriest comment comes from u/Psyren1317, who replied “Holy hell is this new layout disastrous,” before saying “Whoever designed this mess should be fired. Yikes.” 

Redditor u/DaGrumpyOne lived up to their username, replying “It’s unusable now.” While u/texaslegrefugee decried the change saying “The entire “library” experience is absolutely terrible. It’s as over-designed as it can get, and nothing but confusing chaos. It takes forever to find anything.”

“Yo @YouTube The new video UI layout is absolutely awful. The massive thumbnails from other videos on the bottom of my screen are so distracting. Literally, no one asked for this.”

Why we care. Naturally, any modifications to the interface can potentially influence watch time and user engagement, ideally in a positive manner. Advertisers should be concerned about these changes because an enhanced viewing experience, which encourages users to spend more time on the platform, could lead to increased ad impressions and higher chances of their advertisements being seen by their target audience. Consequently, a well-balanced and captivating interface that seamlessly integrates information, comments, and recommendations can prove advantageous for advertisers, as it can potentially amplify their reach and impact on viewers.

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TikTok’s new ad product gives publishers 50% stake

Thursday, May 4th, 2023

TikTok has just announced the launch of a new product, Pulse Premiere, aimed at enabling publishers to sell advertisements alongside their content.

How it works. Pulse Premiere is an extension of TikTok’s existing Pulse program, where a select group of top creators receive half the revenue from video advertisements shown immediately after their posts.

The new offering extends similar benefits to select publisher accounts, such as Condé Nast, BuzzFeed, and NBC. Unlike the original Pulse program, which only covers the top 4% of creators’ posts based on metrics like likes, watch time, and comments, Pulse Premiere will allow ad sales against all posts from participating publishers.

What TikTok says. The ability to sell advertisements on one of the most popular social media platforms comes as a relief for many publishers grappling with challenging economic conditions, leading to cost-cutting measures and layoffs throughout the industry. Ray Cao, Global Head of Monetization, Product Strategy, and Operation at TikTok, expressed the company’s desire to support publishers while also creating new business opportunities for the platform.

Cao emphasized TikTok’s aim to diversify its portfolio and help publishers expand their presence on the platform, as well as gain insights into what content resonates with users.

Dig deeper. Read the announcement from the Wall Street Journal.

Why we care. This new product offers an opportunity to reach new audiences on one of the fastest-growing social media platforms. By partnering with reputable publishers like Condé Nast, BuzzFeed, and NBC, TikTok’s Pulse Premiere allows advertisers to associate their brand with quality content, enhancing their credibility and visibility.

Furthermore, as the platform’s user base grows, advertisers can tap into its diverse and engaged audience, potentially resulting in higher engagement rates, increased brand awareness, and, ultimately, better ROI for their advertising efforts.

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Roku streaming collaboration and 5 other Microsoft Ads updates for May

Tuesday, May 2nd, 2023

Microsoft has just announced six new updates, focusing on tools and features that aim to assist advertisers in refining their campaigns and improving performance. Let’s dive in.

Roku. The collaboration between Roku TV streaming ads, Microsoft Audience Ads, and Bing’s paid and organic search is now underway. Advertisers interested in using the new cross-channel marketing approach, download the whitepaper for more info.

Simplifying video management for ad campaigns with the Asset Library. Considering using video ads? Now the Microsoft Ads Asset Library accommodates video assets, streamlining video uploading and management for campaigns. You can directly upload videos into the Asset Library from local files or URL links and apply filters such as asset type and video duration. It’s time to invigorate ad campaigns with captivating, dynamic video content.

Simple conversion setup for Smart Campaigns accounts using Multi-platform. In the upcoming weeks, Microsoft Advertising Smart Campaigns accounts utilizing Multi-platform will have access to code-free conversion goal setup. Rather than manually adding code snippets to websites, you can simply choose the relevant buttons and enable conversion tracking within minutes.

To activate this feature, tick the Enable Microsoft Clarity box during the goal setup process. This also grants access to free Microsoft Clarity insights, enabling users to comprehend post-click user behavior and engagement on landing pages through session recordings, instant heatmaps, and an analysis dashboard.

Change history for campaign-level conversions. Over the next few weeks, the change history report will be updated to include campaign-level conversions, raising awareness of any alterations and assisting users in troubleshooting. The addition and removal of campaign-level goals from campaigns will be visible.

English language support expanded for Shopping Campaigns in 52 new markets. The option to add the English language when creating a product feed within a Merchant Center has been extended to 52 new markets. Customers running Shopping Campaigns in these regions can now generate further shopper interest in their products.

Postponement of Enhanced CPC migration on the Microsoft Audience Network. The previously announced migration of all Audience Ads using Manual cost per click (CPC) to Enhanced CPC (eCPC) has been delayed, with a new migration date to be revealed later. Advertisers employing eCPC on the Microsoft Audience Network have experienced an 18% reduction in cost per acquisition (CPA) and a 7.5% reduction in CPC. Trying eCPC is recommended to improve performance on the Microsoft Audience Network.

Dig deeper. Review the announcements on the Microsoft Advertising Blog.

Why we care. The Microsoft and Roku collaboration, streamlined video management in the Asset Library, and code-free conversion goals in Smart Campaigns simplify the advertising process, leading to improved performance and efficiency.

Additionally, the expanded language support for Shopping Campaigns allows for increased shopper interest in new markets, while the success of Microsoft Store Ads showcases the potential for heightened brand awareness, preference, and engagement. By leveraging these advancements, advertisers can optimize their marketing strategies and elevate their overall campaign performance.

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3 new Facebook Reels features

Tuesday, May 2nd, 2023

Facebook is introducing three new ways for users to find short-form videos that are most relevant to them, as well as new controls to help customize their video experiences on the platform.

Discovering relevant Reels. Facebook is making it simpler for users to find Reels throughout the app, including some updates to their appearance in Facebook Watch.

Reels have also been added to the primary navigation at the top of Facebook Watch, providing quick access to short-form videos and making it easier for users to discover creators, trends, and content that aligns with their interests. Moreover, when watching videos on Facebook, users can now smoothly scroll between reels and long-form videos.

New ways to personalize Reels. Facebook is attempting to offer users more control over the reels they see across the app, similar to other personalization tools on the platform. There are two new ways to do this:

• Show more, Show less: Facebook wants reels to mirror users’ interests, enabling them to explore current passions while also helping them uncover interests, creators, and communities they may appreciate in the future. Users can now influence the types of reels they see more or less of by tapping the three-dot menu at the bottom of the video player and selecting either Show More or Show Less. This option will also start to appear below reels and videos in the Watch feed. Choosing Show More on a reel will temporarily increase its ranking score and that of similar reels. Opting for Show Less will temporarily decrease its ranking score. By collecting direct user feedback, Facebook can make reels ranking more intelligent and better aligned with user preferences.

• Contextual labels: Facebook is introducing new labels on the Reels video player to clarify why users are seeing particular reels — for instance, because a friend liked it.

Dig deeper. Review the announcements on the Meta blog.

Why we care. By leveraging the platform’s intelligent ranking system and contextual labels, advertisers can effectively target users with interests that align with their brand or product offerings, resulting in more meaningful interactions and potentially higher conversion rates. The integration of Reels within the Facebook app and its navigation system further ensures a steady stream of user attention, making it an ideal channel for advertisers to invest in and capitalize on for maximum visibility and impact.

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