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Link building is hard. Anyone who says otherwise has either not done much of it, or they’re trying to sell you a course.

To make it even harder, there are a million supposed link building hacks and tactics on the web – and most of them are pretty bad. A quick Google search will net you a treasure trove of stale email templates and tactics like link reclamation that either trick you into believing them because they rank well in search, or make you wonder why articles like that don’t have an expiration date.

When it comes down to brass tacks, there are really only two broad strategies for increasing your link building effectiveness, both of which come from a framework using BJ Fogg’s behavior model:

• Increase motivation (make them want to link to you more) or
• Decrease friction (make it easier for them to link to you)

Link building is a critical part of SEO, whether your website is small or large.

Here’s how you can use BJ Fogg’s framework to really improve your link building strategies – despite what your Google searches are telling you.

What is BJ Fogg’s behavior model?

BJ Fogg’s behavior model illustrates that three elements must converge at the exact same moment for a behavior to occur: “Motivation”, “Ability”, and a “Prompt”. When the desired behavior is not performed, one or more of these elements is missing.

Source: Behaviormodel.org

Each of these elements is comprised of subcomponents. For example, “Core Motivators” will shape the “Motivation” element, “Simplicity Factors” define the “Ability” element, and each of these will work together in the context of the “Prompt”.

“Motivation” and “Ability” share a compensatory relationship in that when one is high, the other can be low and still achieve the desired results. For example, if something is hard to do, success can still be achieved if the motivation is high enough.

When this model is applied to link building, your best chance at securing a quality link is to either increase someone’s motivation to link to you or decrease friction to make it easier to link to you.

Let’s dive in.

Method one: Increase motivation

If you’re trying to increase motivation, you need to figure out how to influence how much the blogger or publisher wants to give you a link. The main way to do that is to produce really amazing content. That’s really a pre-requisite, for any long term content program, you can’t cut corners on content quality.

Outside of that, though, there are several ways to increase the blogger’s motivation to give you a link to that amazing content:

1. Build reciprocity and play the long game

Creating strong relationships is a clear path to increasing motivation. Your strategic partners can be an “in” to new markets or audiences, and ideally, you’ll be able to offer the same benefit to them.

As marketing strategist Mark Lindquist of Mailshake notes, when forming strategic partnerships, it’s not just about building high-profile relationships – it’s about working with the right people.

“I’m not at all concerned about the social following of someone as an indication of whether or not they’re worth connecting with,” he says. “Figure out what your goals are, find the people who can help you accomplish those goals, and build relationships with them.”

Guest posting is a great way to start building these relationships, but it’s also important to go to meetups, get on calls, and generally build your network and help others out. A good rule is to offer something of value first before asking for something in return. It’s a long game, but it will ultimately result in a win-win for everyone involved.

2. Offer clear incentives

‘What’s in it for me?”

This is the ultimate question at the center of almost any transaction or conversation in marketing and business, and for good reason. Mercy and gratitude won’t get the job done. You need to push the self-interest button to spur action.

If someone is devoting time and resources to help you, they’ll want to know that it’s worth their efforts. What incentives can you offer?

If you have a large social following, use it as leverage in the deal. They can tap into your audience and essentially get free exposure if they’re willing to do the same for you.

3. Give them something truly helpful

If your content genuinely helps someone improve their own content, it’s a much easier sell than a stale pitch of “My content is slightly better than what you already link to”. Here’s what better content could look like:

New original research

At Hubspot, we did some original research with the goal of getting some links back to our forms product. We published a blog post with the findings, and it was pretty easy to pick up some links because the data was new and interesting to bloggers.

Source: ahrefs

Exclusive quotes and interviews

Working with influencers is a strategy that works for tons of companies like DataBox, BigCommerce, and Mailshake.

For example, Smart Blogger uses round-up pieces to boost social shares and connect with influencers. They reached out to bloggers asking for their best tips on how to promote a blog, and the final article became one of their most successful posts at that time with more than 4,000 shares.

New images and graphs

Infographics and images can become outdated just as easily as blog text. As new research and information become available, images and infographics should be adjusted to reflect it.

I think the infographic link building tactic is sometimes overdone, but it can still work if you do it right. It’s best when you’re summarizing new data or complex information in a simple and interesting way. A great example is Pique Tea’s guide to intermittent fasting (a complex subject):

Source: blog.piquetea.com

SEO Smarty’s case study shows how they shared an infographic at scale using MyBlogGuest to get it in front of potential publishers (they earned 10 links from this method, by the way).

Or, you could do this the old-fashioned way by posting your infographic to your own blog, sharing seed content on social media, and reaching out to potential publications that could use it.

Anything that genuinely improves their content, ask yourself – “How can I improve tons of people’s content by creating something new?”

What questions do you have while reading content that goes unanswered? Could something you’ve written help to clarify?

LawnStarter does this well with their original research and data analysis pieces. For example, their blog post on the beneficial insects for your lawn includes backlinks to reputable sources for more information without distracting from the overall content.

Method two: Decrease friction

The other link building method is to lower the friction or the inherent effort it takes someone to give you a link. Your goal should be to make things as easy as possible for the person on the other side.

1. Make your outreach emails as clear as possible

Good email outreach means that the person on the other end of your email shouldn’t have to figure out what you’re trying to say. If they don’t understand your request, they probably won’t respond to it.

Keep it simple and professional, but don’t be afraid to infuse a little personality, either:

Image Source

There’s no need for mystery or ulterior motives. Ask for what you want, and tell them why you’re asking for it.

2. Deliver your quote or link fully formatted and ready to go

Give publishers as little work to do as possible. This not only makes it easy for them to do what you want, but it also ensures the quality of the final results. Your link or quote looks just as you want it to, the anchor text is spot-on, and you can reach back out with a genuine “Thank you”.

Other sources you can tap into are HARO or even Slack groups where people are actively looking for quotes. This is a super low-friction way to get links – for you and the publisher – because the barrier to entry is low.

3. Provide free content by guest posting

Guest posting remains one of the most effective, low-friction ways to earn backlinks. If your post is good, the publisher has zero work to do other than hit “Publish”.

If you can write a good guest post, you’re giving someone content for free, which is a win-win. Many publishers have a dedicated contributor program, but even if you don’t see one on their website, they still may accept guest posts with a good pitch.

Also, don’t forget to reduce friction in your own process. Use a cold email tool like Mailshake and a good CRM like HubSpot to automate and track all of your efforts, and remove much of the guesswork on outreach and follow-up.

BJ Fogg’s behavior model has been applied to a myriad of practical use cases, but its potency for effective link building is hard to ignore. Increasing someone else’s motivation and decreasing friction might not help you earn every link you pursue, but it can help you win bigger and lose smaller the more you do it.

Alex Birkett is a Senior Growth Marketing Manager at HubSpot, where he focuses on freemium user growth. He can be found on Twitter @iamalexbirkett.

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Twitter generated $727 million in ad revenue during the second quarter of 2019, a 21% increase year-over-year. The company reports total ad engagements were up 20% year-over-year. The platform’s ad engagement growth rate has been in decline since this time last year when it saw an 81% lift in ad engagement growth.

Twitter’s U.S. ad revenue up 24%. Twitter CFO Ned Segal said the lift in Twitter’s advertising revenue was driven by strength in U.S. revenues, which rose 24% year-over-year to $455 million.

“Focusing on our most important ad products and delivering high performing ads will help advertisers launch something new and connect with what’s happening on Twitter,” said Segal. Twitter didn’t specify which products it was referring to, but in April 2018, Twitter reported video ads accounted for more than half of its quarterly revenue.

Ad engagement growth versus cost per engagement. Twitter’s total ad engagements for the quarter were up 20% year-over-year, but cost per engagement (CPE) remained flat.

Tracking the two data points over the past ten quarters shows that ad engagement growth rates have declined, while the “drops” in CPE are shrinking. Last quarter, Twitter reported CPEs fell 4% year-over-year and were flat this quarter compared to the previous year. This time last year, Twitter reported a 32% drop in CPE.

Twitter’s “monetized” DAU count. Twitter’s mDAUs reached 139 million during the second quarter of 2019 — an increase of five million from the first quarter of this year, and 17 million more than the second quarter of 2018.

In the U.S., mDAUs reached 29 million during the second quarter, which means U.S. users make up just over a fifth of Twitter’s total user base. This number grew by only a million since the first quarter of the year — and 3 million year over year.

Last quarter, Twitter announced it would no longer report monthly active users (MAUs) stats, sharing only on the new monetized daily active user (mDAU) metric it introduced in February. The move was in part to compensate for the slide in MAU numbers, which Twitter said resulted from its efforts to improve the health of the platform. Twitter defines its mDAUs as authenticated users it is able to show ads to who have accessed Twitter via the app or desktop application.

Why we should care. Twitter has put much of its focus during the past year cleaning up the platform and ridding timelines of malicious activity and spam in an effort to provide a safer environment for brands and advertisers. Many argue those efforts have gone far enough, but it appears to be making an impact on the adveritsing front.

CEO Jack Dorsey said the health of the platform remains the top priority for the company. “Our focus was on ensuring that our rules, and how we enforce them, are easy to understand. We also continued our work to proactively identify and address malicious behavior, resulting in an 18% drop in reports of spammy or suspicious behavior,” said Dorsey.

Amazon’s advertising business had it’s second $3 billion quarter in the second quarter of 2019. (Or close to it — Amazon advertising revenues make up the majority of an “Other” revenue category in its earnings reports.) The first was the holiday fourth quarter last year.

While $3 billion in an off-holiday, non-Prime Day quarter is a milestone, growth is coming back down to earth. Second-quarter ad revenue increased 37% from the previous year, the second-straight quarter of relatively mild growth compared to the triple-digits Amazon recorded in much of 2018.

Not surprisingly, Amazon’s biggest advertising market continues to be North America, the only market where several of the latest advertising tools are available. But, the company is eyeing international advertising growth with product expansions and measuring “around improving relevancy on each of those geographic websites,” said Dave Fildes, Amazon director of investor relations, on the earnings call.

On the Sizmek acquisition. Amazon acquired Sizmek’s ad server and dynamic creative optimization in June. The acquisition will enable advertisers to use Amazon’s data from searches and purchases to target audiences beyond its own properties. Sizmek continues to operate independently, but executives said they’re looking long-term at the investment.

“We’re invested in the long-term success of Sizmek. And again, Amazon advertising and Sizmek has many mutual customers, so we know how valued these prudent solutions are to the customer base,” said Fildes. “So we’re looking forward to working with that team and we’ll share more updates as we invent and create new opportunities to serve advertisers in the future.”

On video advertising. Amazon continues to focus on video content. In fact, Amazon’s marketing expenses rose 48% year-over-year in the second quarter, which was in part due to “more and more advertising as we roll out devices and Prime Video — new Prime Video content, in particular internationally,” said Brian Olsavsky.

That should mean more brand opportunities as Amazon makes more video supply available across its properties, including OTT video supply, the company said. That includes adding supply via Fire TV apps, IMDb TV, Amazon Publisher service integrations and simplifying inventory access for third-party apps, said Fildes.

Amazon’s video and display offerings across its owned properties and networks, can be targeted using Amazon data, and open up advertiser demand beyond Amazon vendors and sellers.

Invoca, an AI-powered call tracking platform, published their Call Tracking Study Guide in March of this year. The in-depth guide demystifies call tracking technology and reviews how call tracking tools help marketers connect digital campaign data to inbound customer phone calls.

Call tracking is a powerful way for marketers to understand exactly where phone calls are coming from with granularity that, for the most robust tools, can extend down to the keyword level. This data helps reveal what platforms, publishers, keywords, and channels drive high-intent customers to call and can help marketers create a more informed media allocation strategy. 

Content produced in collaboration with Invoca.

Call tracking 101: A brief introduction

Invoca uses a snippet of JavaScript code placed on your website to track calls. After the code snippet is placed on the landing page, it swaps out your standard business phone number with a trackable, dynamic phone number which is unique to each website visitor. 

The tag also captures various referrer elements such as utm source, medium, paid search keyword and Google click ID—this is what enables Invoca to connect user data to phone calls.

Example of dynamic tracking phone numbers on a landing page—source: Invoca

When the tracking number is called, the platform can also route the caller to the appropriate person or call center depending on what marketing content they are viewing, reducing time on hold and call transfers. Data is collected based on the specific call number which can include caller information, keyword, referrer type (e.g., banner ad, search ad, or social media ad) and referral source (e.g., Google, Facebook, etc.) which can also be used to inform the call center and create a highly personalized experience for the caller.

Example of referral data info in Invoca

Not all call tracking tools are created equal

There is a large selection of call tracking tools on the market that range from basic to advanced in terms of features and functionality. 

Basic tools provide limited data to marketers, but they ignore the larger customer journey and tend to focus on last-touch attribution (e.g., making it difficult or impossible to determine where the call came from).

Some metrics a basic tool might track include:

• Call volume
• Call time and duration
• Caller information
• Basic campaign attribution

These tools provide some sense of campaign performance, but fail to tell the full story that can be gleaned when connecting analytics platforms (e.g. Google Analytics) to call information. 

More advanced AI-powered call tracking tools like Invoca aim to bridge that gap, while also automating some marketing actions after the call takes place. 

Advanced capabilities that AI-powered call tracking tools provide include:

• Touchpoint attribution—Tie a call back to its source such e.g. paid search or social
• Data unification—Integrate with multiple online (and offline) sources such as CRM tools
• Data analysis—Use AI to analyze phone conversations and provide insight on call drivers, behaviors and outcomes
• Marketing integration—Push data to the marketing stack for automation, optimization, analysis and more

The end result—and key benefit—of implementing an advanced call tracking tool is to gain valuable insight about campaign performance and attribution. 

Call tracking 201: AI and machine learning 

Martech companies are increasingly powering their technology with AI-driven platforms. AI enables marketers to gain intelligence quickly and make better-informed decisions. This trend bridges multiple industries, as shown in the graphic below. 

Companies that utilize or provide AI technology—source: TOPBOTS

Invoca uses Signal AI to help measure and attribute online conversions by mining data from the phone conversations themselves, freeing up valuable time for marketers who no longer have to listen to every call.

Signal AI uses AI to detect intent and patterns in language to provide actionable insights and conversion data (sale made, appointment set, etc.) for marketers. This is accomplished through a series of steps that start with the recorded conversation, transcribing the call into text which can then be analyzed by an algorithm, identifying key patterns, phrases, and actions, and pushing these insights to your marketing stack. Here’s a visual of what that looks like. Note that Invoca does not save call transcripts and is HIPAA and PCI compliant, an important distinction for marketers concerned with data privacy.

Image source: Invoca

Signal AI uses machine learning, an application of AI, which gives machines access to the data so that they can learn from it. AI works in conjunction with machine learning to provide actionable and accessible data to marketers—but marketers still need to review this data and make decisions based on their own observations and conclusions.

Invoca offers two versions of Signal AI to their call tracking clients. Pre-trained AI uses industry-based predictive models that have been “pre-trained” using thousands of hours of call data.

Custom AI is more appropriate for certain businesses, such as those with high volumes of calls or sophisticated data needs. This more complex option takes longer to create and implement, however, it can help certain businesses predict call outcomes with a higher degree of accuracy.

Debunking some common assumptions 

Skeptics may think that humans can classify calls more efficiently and accurately than AI, but the truth is the opposite. AI learns over time and it never gets tired, so it’s an effective and accurate way to classify calls without bias. Here are some other call tracking myths, debunked:

• It’s hard to set up AI-based call tracking—Pre-trained AI models take the guesswork out of setup for certain industries such as insurance and can identify the most common outcomes (e.g., product purchased).
• All AI-based call tracking is the same—False! Invoca’s Signal AI uses predictive analytics (rather than just transcription) and continues to learn. It also provides performance scoring for easy reference.
• Only big companies can afford AI-based call tracking—Wrong again. Invoca is tag-based and easy to implement. You don’t need a dedicated IT team or programmer to get up and running.

Clear strategy and clean data

The true power of AI-based call tracking is, in a word, attribution. It’s the ability to unify call data across multiple sources and attribute it to all consumer touchpoints.

Invoca does this by collecting data from multiple sources: campaign and website data, first-party data (e.g., pulled from your CRM), third-party demographic data, call data such as length, time and location of call, and conversational data (derived from speech analysis).

Once all the available data is unified, Invoca’s technology determines the value of the call by analyzing the spoken conversations within the calls. Invoca’s AI synthesizes various word patterns (e.g., “I’m almost ready to buy, but I’m waiting for XYZ to happen”) and then classifies them into useful datasets.

Signal AI helps predict the type of call (e.g., sales, service, complaint) which allows marketers to optimize media placements, ad content, and more. This level of analysis can also help inform the call experience itself by identifying issues that may frustrate callers.

Connecting call data to campaign data can help in other ways too. For example, marketers can use call information for ad suppression, making sure customers don’t see offers for something they’ve already purchased or retargeting ads to people who called but didn’t make a purchase.

Tying it all together

One of the most powerful features of the more robust, high-end call-tracking tools like Invoca is the ability for them to integrate with existing marketing platforms like Google Analytics, Adobe Experience Cloud, and Salesforce. 

This gives marketers a clear picture of where their customers are at every step of the journey. It closes the attribution loop, allowing you to demonstrate what’s working from an ROI standpoint, a metric that’s key when it comes time for approval and budget allocation.

When considering implementing a tool like Invoca, the bottom line is always the top priority—will we make money with this martech investment?

Invoca customers have seen up to 60% increase in conversions when implementing the tool (without any additional media spend), an important consideration when factoring in ROI.

The Invoca Call Tracking Guide covers all this including what questions to ask vendors when considering a new tool and what to consider when shopping for a call tracking solution.

To learn more about call tracking technology from functionality to  implementation and how call tracking can help with campaign optimization and attribution, download Invoca’s whitepaper, “The Call Tracking Study Guide for Marketers.”

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Third party data is increasingly under threat. As one case-in-point, a bill introduced this week would amend the New York City administrative code to prohibit the transfer or sharing of consumer location data with third parties within city limits.

In other words, the party that collects or captures the data could not share it with another entity. It appears to be a very bright line.

Won’t affect first parties. The proposed law would not eliminate use of location for ad targeting and offline attribution; first party platforms and publishers could still do these things. But it would impact data brokers, MarTech platforms, agencies and the programmatic ecosystem, which relies on the free flow of third party data.

The bill is explicitly directed at telecom companies and mobile apps that capture or have access to user location. It’s designed to protect consumers who may not be aware their location data is being shared. But the law would appear to not make an exception for opt-in consent to sharing.

Each violation worth $1,000. Violations would bring $1,000 in penalties per incident, up to a maximum of $10,000 per day. New York City’s Department of Information Technology would enforce the law but individuals would also have a right to sue and collect damages.

The bill provides for a number of exceptions, including for selected law enforcement use cases and for other first responders. It would take effect 120 days after being signed into law.

Passage not guaranteed. The bill still faces a number of hurdles and its passage is not a forgone conclusion. Technology and advertising interests will probably seek to block or dilute the bill before passage. And even if passed, it would almost certainly face legal challenges. But the genie is out of the bottle. We may see similar rules proposed in cities across the country in the coming months.

Google and Facebook won’t be impacted. Google and Facebook would not be affected because they can collect and use location data for targeting and attribution within the closed environments of their platforms. They are first parties. But programmatic ad networks would probably be prevented from targeting ads any more precisely than “New York City.” And it’s unclear if even that level of user location targeting would be allowed.

Why we should care. Assuming the law passes, there are some unanswered questions. Among them, will advertisers or agencies (or tools used by agencies) be blocked from accessing location data regardless of the ad platform? In other words, Google and Facebook could use location but would reporting to customers violate the law?

The more local and state rules there are that seek to govern privacy and data security the more these jurisdictions make the case for a uniform federal law and preemption. Paradoxically, these local laws are appearing precisely because there are no new privacy rules at the national level. And it’s unlikely we’ll see any before the 2020 elections.

While there are many extensions that can supplement your online presence and improve your on-page SEO performance, some happen to be very underrated but offer a lot more than others.

On-page SEO is an integral part of online marketing. Over time, on-page SEO has been hammered and defined into several key instruments of the digital marketing toolbox that helps brands achieve their business goals on search engines. Without practicing on-page SEO, your brand may not rank on search engines effectively and fail to achieve the competitive edge it needs to get online exposure, generate leads, and earn revenue.

In this article, we will share five extensions to boost on-page SEO. These would directly complement your on-page SEO strategy, help you rack-up rankings, track your website’s performance and measure the core metrics of your online progress.

By using these five extensions you can build a stronger digital footprint on Google and significantly increase the efficiency in your marketing operations.

1. Canonical URLs

Canonical URLs is a great on-site SEO tool for your website that helps remove duplicate content and improves the crawl-ability of your web pages through canonical meta tags. It comes with a bunch of useful features that allow you to add tags to products, categories, and other pages of your website, improving relevancy with other pages and eventually helps boost on-page SEO. After installing them to your store you can set the authoritative version of your website by adding canonical tags to your store view, storefront, or a custom URL. Moreover, this extension organizes and defines your website content for search engines and users by adding canonical to layered navigation pages.

2. Hreflang tag implementer

Hreflang was Introduced by Google in 2011 to improve the relevance of searches by geographic location and distinguish the relationship between alternate languages and web-pages. Hreflang helps organize your website’s traffic inflows by specifying its geographic and language restrictions. These tags are understood by search engines which rank the website based on its geographical targets. But since the hreflang attribute has to be placed separately in the HTTP header, on-page markup, or the sitemap, many website owners face difficulty in determining the ideal location to use. With hreflang tag implementer, you can automatically generate alternate hreflang tags for any specific location. This allows website owners to prevent plagiarism issues when they add duplicate content on their website and is particularly advantageous for on-page SEO of bi-lingual websites that have language-specific audiences.

3. Image Alt tags extension

Alt tags are an important part of on-page SEO. These attributes help in creating a more accurate image context/descriptions for crawlers and search bots to index your image properly on search engines. Moreover, they serve a crucial purpose for visually impaired users in finding your website images through screen readers. But since they require dedicated effort, they often end up last in the list of tasks. Image Alt tags extension makes this simple and efficient for website owners by automatically generating alt tags that are SEO optimized for product images. It allows you to create unique and image friendly alt tags by using either custom text option or default product attributes.

4. SEO meta tags and templates

Being one of the fundamental elements of SEO, meta tags also serve a key factor in Google’s ranking process. But since meta tags have to be added individually, many website owners often neglect their implementation because of the time they consume. To make this process simpler, extensions such as SEO meta tags offer automation features that cut the process into a fraction of the time it takes to update meta tags. The extension helps optimize your on-page performance by automatically updating meta-tags on your products, generating meta titles, descriptions, keywords based on products, categories, and different CMS pages.

5. HTML and XML sitemap generator

A sitemap is an HTML or XML document that declares the list of pages your website contains by communicating it to search engines such as Google for indexing. These files are used by search engines to make your web pages more discover-able especially when you have a big website that contains loads of content. However, creating sitemaps involve certain technicalities and may not be everyone’s cup of tea. To overcome this, you can use an HTML and XML sitemap extension that helps auto-generate SEO optimized XML and HTML sitemaps so your web pages get indexed faster. Furthermore, it helps strengthen your internal linking, improve user navigation and boosts your on-page SEO.

Zeeshan Khalid is a web entrepreneur and an eCommerce specialist, and the CEO of FME extensions.

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A panoramic Casper ad draws curious eyes in the subway car. Free product samples and a sponsored insert find their way into a glossy bag at checkout. And there’s a 3D Heineken wallscape stretched across a block of bars around the corner.

It’s a delicate balancing act for brands teetering between the worlds of traditional and digital advertising – one which leaves much to be desired when it comes to quantifying impact. Why invest in expensive out-of-home inventory when you could launch a display campaign for much less? Why mail a product catalog when you can send a targeted email? Why are so many digitally-native brands moving offline with their marketing?

For those digital brands with direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales models, online marketing is the lifeblood of growth. From targeted social to paid search, digital campaigns have proven an efficient and measurable way to build direct relationships with customers. But at what cost? 

Digital saturation is driving up customer acquisition costs

While traditional marketing is often curbed by finite ad inventory and budget constraints, digital advertising exists as an open marketplace in which any digitally-fluent player can launch a far-reaching campaign – and do so relatively cheaply. Digitally-native vertical brands (DNVBs), in particular, revel in the instant gratification of marketing direct-to-consumer through online channels – and for good reason. These brands can own the entire funnel (and a goldmine of data!) to track every consumer detail – down to the exact cost it took to capture the customer. But as more D2C companies flood the scene, digital acquisition costs are skyrocketing.

Basic economics would dictate that a low barrier to entry paired with a high return on investment makes a slow-burning recipe for market saturation. The rising cost of acquiring customers (CAC) is a signal that we’re nearing saturation, and many brands will be faced with the reality that digital strategies alone no longer pay off.

“When demand rises but the supply is steady, cost goes up. Brands should be concerned because the cost of acquisition is becoming higher than the average order value (AOV),” said Pini Yakuel, CEO and founder of customer data platform Optimove on the long-term implications of rising customer acquisition costs. “This means that if a customer comes to your site or storefront once, makes a purchase, and never returns, your brand is losing money.”

CAC is outpacing customer lifetime value

With the influx of D2C brands (and their inevitable competitors) playing fast and loose in the digital ad space, more dollars are needed to compete for the same impressions. As a result, CAC has reached a point where it’s outpacing customer lifetime value (LTV). This means the total amount a customer spends with a brand is less than the cost it took to acquire them, when calculating the marketing resource costs (effort and ad spend).

Mary Meeker, the famed internet trends analyst, touched on this issue in her 2019 Internet Trends report, deeming the rise in customer acquisition costs “unsustainable.” Depending on the industry, acquiring a new customer can cost anywhere from 5 to 25 times more than retaining current ones – and the cost will continue to rise as marketers attempt to stay afloat in a noisy digital marketplace.   

“We all know that it’s much more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain and grow the one you have,” said Jake Sorofman, CMO of Pendo. “This continued obsession on acquisition — at the expense of retention is what’s inflated today’s customer acquisition costs.”

A fiercely competitive digital ad environment and a more saturated market will force D2C brands to seek more diverse, and potentially less-targeted forms of marketing. Likewise, they’ll need to stay hyper-focused on customer experience to retain a customer base for the long-term. For the digitally-native brands that grew up in the golden days of social advertising, sustaining growth in today’s environment means a return to brand-building basics.

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Loyal consumers are the most effective brand advocates. They translate brand value to the masses in the form of reviews and engagement – which helps bring in new customers at little to no acquisition cost. But for that to happen, brands need to nail experience and deliver value. 

How to reduce customer acquisition costs and grow lifetime value

If loyal customers are the benchmark of value for a brand, then brands must be willing to give value back to those customers — particularly when it comes to data.  

Deliver personalized value. “Digital and mobile experiences are a rapidly growing part of this equation,” said Mike Stone, SVP of marketing at Airship. “But these experiences can’t just be a novelty, there must be a true value exchange. The most impactful experiences are often highly personalized, and personalization requires some exchange of customer data… that means we need to give consumers something that clearly and proactively makes their lives easier.”

Examples of successful value exchanges include Wayfair’s augmented reality app that shows how furniture might look in a customer’s home, or Sephora including free cosmetic samples with loyalty program purchases. Apps such as Accuweather sends a push notification before a thunderstorm strikes, and airline apps send texts to notify users about flight updates such as upgrades and gate changes.

When customers are able to benefit from meaningful connections with brands at a time of need, brands can build a lasting foundation that enables LTV by default.

Optimize your sales and marketing tech stack. Allowing automation and machine learning to power your marketing technology can free up sales and marketing teams to focus more on building memorable brand experiences for customers.

“Brands can use marketing tech to mitigate the rising customer acquisition costs. They’re using technology to unify customer data, create contextual single customer views, strategically segment customers, and treat campaigns as experiments to optimize as they go,” Yakuel explained. “In order to treat your customers the way they want to be treated, you need to look at all your marketing as relationship building, and find the right tools to get you there.”

Yukel pointed to its customer, activewear brand Sweaty Betty, as an example. By optimizing for customer lifetime value with automated personalized messaging campaigns, Sweaty Betty reduced CAC and increased LTV, while still acquiring 42% more customers compared to the prior year. Customer churn dropped by 32%.

Lean into the customer experience. Customer experience impacts how an audience will value a brand, and can also indicate how long a customer will stick around. The D2C brands that are making the most of customer experience have invested in building niche communities, strengthening one-to-one personalization, and diversifying their marketing channels to connect with consumers both online and off.

Julia Stead, VP of marketing at Invoca, explained that contextual, personalized customer experiences are essential to building lasting customer relationships.

“While there are many avenues like retargeting and freemium to get there, success depends largely on delivering on this personalized promise. Personalized, relevant and timely engagement is how you convert non-paying to paying customers, no matter the model. Brands need to ensure every touchpoint not only feels personalized but is also done cost-effectively,” said Stead.

But building a strong customer experience often requires a foundational shift in strategy, where digital advertising isn’t always the silver bullet. Achieving a reliable customer experience at every touchpoint involves marketers reaching beyond digital to be present in the offline journey as well.

Take for instance Narvar, a company that seeks to help brands elevate the post-purchase e-commerce experience for customers. “Direct-to-consumer players and bigger brands are doing a better job of bridging offline to online and vice versa,” said Elain Szu, VP of marketing at Narvar.

Szu explained how Rent the Runway, one of Navar’s clients, is making moves to ease the process of e-commerce transactions for customers. Rent The Runway teamed up with WeWork and Nordstrom to allow drop-off service at the brands’ physical locations – much like Amazon’s Locker or Counter service.

“While these offline locations help Rent The Runway retain customers because it’s making their lives easier, it also elevates the post-purchase experience by alerting them about the status of their orders and returns in a timely and relevant fashion,” said Szu.

An omnichannel brand experience – like that Heineken wallscape or Casper ad in the subway – requires marketers to set expectations with stakeholders. Top-of-funnel, branding initiatives aren’t designed to produce the instant satisfaction of programmatic metrics, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t contributing to long-term profitability. It takes the right mix of online and offline strategies to narrow the experience gap for customers.

If brands make the effort to deliver value and understand a customer’s journey at every touchpoint, the effectiveness of those offline activations will be reflected in digital lift. Like any marketing strategy, finding that mix will vary depending on the type of market and target consumer.

Planning for sustainable customer acquisitions in our hyper-connected world means returning to the basics and restructuring the digitally-native foundation on which many modern brands are built.

When you have a smaller digital marketing budget, you might think that testing should take a backseat to efficiency and driving conversions – but that would be short-sighted.

In order to stay competitive, continue to take up more market share, and keep up with the changing digital space it’s important to always be testing.

That said, you can test almost anything, but don’t get bogged down with your options. With a small budget, it’s important to focus on one or two tests at a time to make sure that you can reach statistical significance relatively quickly.

In this post, we’ll focus on some of the most important tests you can run:

1. Ad copy testing

2. Landing page testing

3. Testing new engines and ad formats

Ad copy testing 

Ad copy testing can do more than lead to more efficient ads. It can be a very effective tool for testing messaging that you can apply to other marketing efforts like your website, emails, and other digital marketing collaterals. Testing different messages can also help to understand your customer base and the ways they engage with your ads. Is there something that is getting a strong CTR but not converting down-funnel? Maybe you aren’t qualifying the user. My recommendation is to run at least two versions of your ads at all times, with particular attention paid to calls-to-action, pre-qualifiers, and value propositions.

In the image below, a bunch of hotel aggregators shows different value propositions – discounts, price comparisons, and selection:

If you’re a hotel aggregator trying to draw eyes and clicks, consider those main value props and how to stand out from the crowd. If you have a unique selling proposition, for example, exclusive access to boutique hotels, use it and see how users react.

Landing page testing

For lead gen and B2B businesses, tuning up your landing page can be hugely impactful in improving lead quality. You can test a ton of areas, but one of my favorites – simple and high-impact – is your download form. For example, it could be a “request a demo”, “download a whitepaper” type of landing page. Test the layout, the number of fields, the fields specified, error messages, and consider adding testimonials and value propositions to the lead form’s landing page to encourage users to convert. The surest rule of thumb with a landing page is to do everything you can to not confuse the user. The landing page from Blurb is a great example of a clean page with a simple value prop and CTA:

Source: Blurb

The number of fields is one of the simplest factors to address, too many fields can dissuade the user from filling out the form, but your internal team needs a certain amount of information to qualify the leads. Our recommendation is to winnow down the number of fields to only what your internal team can’t dig up on their own. If the lead volume gets to be too overwhelming for your team to do the research, consider adding fields to capture the hardest-to-find information.

Testing new engines and ad formats

If you stand still in this industry, you’ll fall behind, so make sure you’re testing emerging channels and ad formats. Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other platforms are constantly introducing new ad formats, for example – lead gen forms, responsive search ads, and dynamic creative, all introduced in the last 12 months. Channels like Quora, Reddit, and SnapChat are clamoring for marketing attention and offer new ways to engage users.

For established platforms, test just about any beta you can get your hands on. They often provide performance gains because the competition is greatly reduced. Early adoption has its risks, but we’ve found those to be generally outweighed by the rewards of low initial costs and the chance to get a jump on creating best practices.

To expand your reach, it’s important to test into new engines. Putting a percentage of your budget (we’d recommend 15-20% as a rule of thumb for SMBs) into a new channel can help you find more efficient and qualified leads and potentially open up a budget.

Let’s start testing

You might be asking yourself, “How long do I run these tests?”, “What tests do I start out with?”, and “How do I measure the impact of these tests?”. And those are critical questions.

There is no set length for how long to run a test. It varies for every business. I recommend using a statistical significance calculator (a quick Google search for the term brings up dozens of options, we recommend Neil Patel’s or Optimizely’s) to see if you have reached statistical significance. Those tools are great free resources to let you know how much faith to put in your test results – or whether you need more volume to feel confident in your findings.

You might be tempted to make a decision before you have enough data, but I would recommend against that, especially if one or two conversions might sway the different outcome. In terms of what tests to prioritize, I would recommend you think about your business goals and objectives for the year. Maybe refining your messaging isn’t as important as driving more leads or testing new channels.

If you are into lead gen or B2B business running a landing page test or testing new engines or ad formats, it’s important to understand lead performance at all points of the funnel – are they marketing qualified leads? Are they turning into paying customers? Are they junk leads? Whatever your metrics, make sure to establish concrete before-and-after testing windows to compare apples to apples, and make sure no other hugely significant updates, for instance,  a rebrand or price increase are muddying the data.

Good luck, and happy testing.

Lauren Crain is a Client Services Lead in 3Q Digital’s SMB division, 3Q Incubate.

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