The Importance of Google Ads Quality Score

September 16, 2019/in Advertising, Articles, Digital, Directors /by Nicole Wagner

When running a PPC (pay per click) campaign, you’ll want to make sure your ad’s content is of high quality. You’re investing in these ads, after all. The last thing you want is to pay for clicks if those clicks aren’t converting because of poor ad copy, poor landing pages, or poor use of keywords. It’s one of the reasons why you should pay attention to the Google Ads quality score. However, Google Ads quality score doesn’t just give you an idea of the quality of your ad, it can also affect the performance of your ad, which is why you’ll want to track your quality score and improve it if possible.

What is Google Ads Quality Score?

The Google Ads quality score is a rating that’s given to PPC ads based on a number of different factors. These factors include how relevant your keywords are to their ad group, how relevant your landing pages are to the ads they’re linked from, the quality of those landing pages, the relevance of your ad’s copy, your click-through-rate, and the historical performance of your AdWords account. Google doesn’t divulge how much weight each factor holds in the calculation of its quality score; however, the click-through-rate is the most important factor. This is because a high click-through-rate indicates that your ad must be relevant to users.

Why You Should Improve Your Google Ads Quality Score

Besides rating the quality of your PPC ads (and therefore giving you an idea of whether you need to improve your ads or not), the quality score of your ads will actually play an important part in how they perform. Higher quality scores directly correlate with lower your cost per conversion and your cost per click. This is because not only does a high-quality ad perform better in general, but Google rewards ads with high quality scores with lower costs and higher ad rankings.

Similar Article: How Your Web Page Speed Effects Your SEO and Adwords Performance

3 Ways To Improve Your Quality Score

The following are three ways that you can improve your Google Ads quality score:

Do your keyword research – You not only need to make sure that the keywords you choose are relevant to your ads, but that they are competitive as well. Look for long-tail keywords in particular and make sure that you divide your keywords into organized groups that can be more successfully tied to your individual ad campaigns. In addition to looking for high-quality keywords, you should also keep a list of negative keywords to avoid.
Test your ad copy – In addition to writing quality copy that’s free of errors, you should test out copy that’s more targeted to individual ad groups. The more effective your ad copy is, the more click-throughs you’ll obtain, which contributes to a higher quality score.
Optimize your landing pages – Landing pages should connect directly with your ad groups, meaning that they need to be relevant to the copy of your ads. Generic landing pages can confuse visitors and hurt your conversion rate. Not only should the offer remain exactly the same as it was on the ad copy, but you should be using the same keywords as well.

PPC campaigns can be a very effective part of your online marketing strategy; however, their success depends on their quality, which is why you should pay attention to your Google Ads quality score and make every effort to improve it. Improving your Google Ads quality score not only improves the general quality of your ads, it will put you in a better position to succeed as a result of being rewarded with higher ad rankings.

Understanding the Difference Between Earned Media vs. Paid Media And Embracing The PESO Model

September 12, 2019/in Advertising, Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy, Media /by Nicole Wagner

When it comes to digital marketing, there are four main types of media. The first, owned media, is relatively obvious. Owned media refers to the media that you own, such as your website, your blog, or your social media pages. Then there’s paid media, which often comes to mind first. However, you could argue that earned media is just as important. The following is a breakdown of earned media vs paid media as well as the importance of following the PESO model, which implements all forms of media for a more balanced digital marketing strategy.

Earned Media vs Paid Media

Paid media consists of the marketing elements that you pay for. Traditionally, paid media consisted of things like TV commercials and magazine ads. However, these days, they also include PPC (per-per-click) ads, social media ads, and display ads. To get the most out of your paid media, you have to plan your marketing strategy carefully and make sure that you’re targeting the right audience. However, paid media can be quite effective at helping to increase brand exposure and web traffic.

Earned media is essentially a form of marketing that you do not pay for and do not own. Customers and brand advocates generate earned media. In a way, it’s like a digital form of “word-of-mouth.” Earned media can include having reviews written by customers as well as professional product review sites or having news stories published about your company. Any kind of publicity that you didn’t pay for is earned media. Earned media is an excellent way to increase brand recognition even though you don’t have direct control over it; however, earned media is also free.

What Is The PESO Model?

Earned media and paid media are not the only types of media you should be concerned with. Owned media, which includes marketing elements that you have direct ownership and full control over (such as your website and your business blog) as well as shared media, which is the media you earn through social media engagement (shares, likes, and comments), both play an important part in helping to grow your brand. The mistake many businesses make is to focus more on one type of media than the other.

Similar Article: Using The Right Media Mix During Each Stage Of The Buyer’s Journeys

Gini Dietrich stressed the importance of integrating all four forms of media with her PESO (paid, earned, shared, owned) model. By implementing the PESO model, you integrate all four forms of media to strengthen your ability to attract leads and convert customers. For example, the use of paid media and shared media can help draw the attention of prospects. Earned media helps to establish the credibility of your brand so that those prospects trust you. Owned media, such as eBooks or whitepapers, help showcase the value of your brand.

While knowing the difference between earned media vs. paid media is important, it’s also important that you don’t value paid media over earned media or vice versa. They, along with shared media and owned media, play an important part in helping to grow your brand. Finding the right balance can take some time, but as long as you keep the PESO model in mind as you create your marketing strategy, you’ll end up having a more balanced and effective marketing campaign.

The Difference Between Landing page vs. Homepage

September 10, 2019/in Articles, Directors, Web Design & Development /by Nicole Wagner

Once upon a time, when the web was still in its infancy, the homepage was considered the most important page on your website. While the homepage is an essential component of your website, it shouldn’t necessarily be the first page that visitors see. The webpage functions more as a way to draw visitors into the marketing funnel than anything else. Unfortunately, many businesses focus heavily on sending new leads to their homepage, which can actually be a mistake. Doing so can confuse new visitors because they won’t know where to go from there. Instead, you should be sending new visitors to a landing page. The following is a breakdown of the main differences between landing page vs. homepage.

What Is The Function Of A Homepage?

The homepage is the page that should occupy your root domain. For example, if someone types in www.yourwebsitename.com, it should take them to your homepage. When you add a link to your main social media profiles, you want it to direct users to your homepage. This is because the main function of your homepage is to provide an overview of your company. Visitors should get an idea of who your business is and what services you provide. It should also act as the main hub of your website from which visitors can explore at their own pace — meaning, you should have links to all other important pages on your homepage. Last, but not least, your homepage should inform visitors as to how they can get in touch with you.

What Is The Function Of A Landing Page?

Landing pages are pages that are specifically designed to receive traffic from specific sources. For example, if you run a PPC ad, users who click on that ad should be taken to a landing page. That landing page should be specifically designed for that particular ad. For example, if the ad is for a special discount on a specific product, your landing page should reflect that. If you send the user who clicked on that ad to your homepage instead, they would simply be confused. You’re basically forcing them to go on a search for the ad’s offer without any clear directions as to where to go.

Landing pages are created to stay focused on a single topic or offer and encourage visitors to take specific actions, such as filling out a form or downloading an offer, to name a couple of examples. A landing page shouldn’t have links to other pages unless they’re relevant to the action you want them to take. Adding irrelevant links to your landing page can distract visitors from what you want them to do.

Landing pages can be created for all kinds of marketing efforts, including not just PPC ads but also for different CTAs that you include in your blog posts. These landing pages may not be a permanent part of your website either.

Similar Article: 5 Types of Landing Pages To Increase Your Lead Conversion Rate

The Main Difference Between Landing Page Vs. Homepage

When it comes down to it, the homepage is an overview of your business that introduces visitors to your marketing funnel, whereas a landing page helps to convert visitors immediately by prompting specific actions. Although your homepage isn’t the end all be all of your website like it was during the early days of the Internet, it still plays an important part in your marketing efforts. However, it’s important to understand when it’s more appropriate to send visitors to a landing page instead of your homepage.

Inbound marketing will help you grow your business by attracting website visitors, converting them into leads and closing leads into customers

6 Mobile Marketing Tips

September 6, 2019/in Articles, Digital, Directors, Mobile Advertising /by Nicole Wagner

The mobile market has skyrocketed over the past decade. It’s estimated that around 96 percent of all American adults own a cellphone and that 81 percent of Americans own smartphones. That’s more than the number of Americans that own desktops or laptops. It’s also estimated that around 20 percent of American adults access the Internet solely through their smartphones. As such, it’s no surprise that businesses both big and small are focusing more and more on mobile marketing. At this point in time, the mobile market accounts for almost 75 percent of all digital advertising spending. Keeping all of this in mind, the following are six mobile market tips to help strengthen your mobile marketing strategy:

1. Make Sure Your Site Is Mobile-Friendly

Your mobile marketing strategy is going to fall flat on its face if your main site isn’t mobile-friendly. Few mobile users are going to be patient with your site if it has trouble loading on their phones. Not to mention that if your site doesn’t display properly or is difficult for mobile users to navigate, it will hurt your mobile SEO. The best way to ensure that your site is mobile-friendly is to use a responsive design and to design it with mobile use in mind.

2. Improve Your Local SEO

People often use their smartphones while on the go in order to look up products, services, or businesses within their vicinity. By strengthening your local SEO, you improve your chances of being found during these searches. You can improve your local SEO in a number of ways, including by using local keywords, creating local-based content, submitting your NAP to local directories, and by setting up a Google My Business page. mobile market

3. Advertise Promotions Through Text

Sending promotional content through email is often unsuccessful. This is because many people receive so many emails that they often miss your emails — not to mention that they may just choose to ignore it if they can tell it’s promotional. If you get leads to subscribe to SMS marketing, then you can text them promotions instead. Texts are much more likely to be seen and opened.

4. Invest In Video Content

Watching video content has never been easier with the use of smartphones. In fact, more than half of all mobile traffic is used for video. As a result, creating video content is an excellent way to engage your mobile audience.

Similar Article: The Importance of Implementing a Marketing Dashboard

5. Use QR Codes In Store

QR codes can be scanned to bring mobile users to a specific page. For example, putting QR codes in your store that take users to a discount page can help motivate them to make a purchase. It also encourages customers to continue engaging with your brand. One way you can do this is by having a QR code for your Facebook page at your checkout. You can also put QR codes on your website. This will allow mobile users to quickly scan the QR code on their computer to direct them to your site on their smartphone.

6. Optimize For Micro Moments

Micro-moments are those moments in which people use their phones to look something specific up. For example, quickly looking up the weather before heading out of the house is a micro-moment. These micro-moments happen all day long, which is why you should optimize your content to address potential micro-moments that are relevant to your business. You can do this by creating bite-sized content that’s both easy to consume and visually stimulating.

If you haven’t implemented a mobile marketing strategy yet, then you need to do so soon. Without an effective mobile marketing strategy, you’re limiting your audience reach greatly. Be sure to keep these six mobile marketing tips to keep in mind, whether developing or strengthening your mobile marketing strategy.

A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING TECHNIQUES

5 Simple Facebook Advertising Strategies

August 28, 2019/in Advertising, Articles, Digital, Directors /by Nicole Wagner

Facebook has an enormous user base that’s only continuing to grow every month. As of the first quarter of 2019, Facebook boasted 2.37 billion active monthly users — up 55 million from the previous quarter. Additionally, roughly 1.56 billion users are logging into Facebook on a daily basis. These are numbers that no marketer can ignore, which is why you should be using Facebook Ads. However, just because Facebook has a big audience doesn’t mean that you’ll reach your target audience. It’s why you need to put some time into crafting an effective Facebook advertising strategy. The following are five Facebook advertising strategies that will help you reach your target audience:

1. Target Life Events

Depending on what your business is, you can target users based on major life events. Users commonly share big life events, such as if they bought a new house, got engaged, had a new baby, moved to a new city, or got a new job. Facebook is well aware of this, which is why it offers advertisers a Life Events parameter. You can select what life event you’re targeting and the date range from that event that the event will remain relevant. For example, if you’re a moving company, you might want to target users who have just closed on a new home within a three-month range. If you’re a jeweler, you may want to target newly engaged users within a year of their engagement.

2. Target Custom Audiences

Another unique feature that you can use on Facebook is the ability to target Custom Audiences. The feature works by uploading who you want to target, such as a customer phone list, an email list, or even your Facebook followers list. You can then specifically target these audiences. Doing this can be an excellent way to increase your lifetime customer value and to boost brand loyalty. You can also choose to specifically exclude the list you upload if your goal is to target completely new leads. facebook advertising strategy

3. Use Geo-Targeting

As you can imagine, targeting all of Facebook’s 2.37 billion monthly users is a ridiculous idea. This is especially true if you’re running a local business that provides a local service. This means that targeting an audience in a different country or even a different state is going to be a waste of time. Geo-targeting allows you to target users who are located within the vicinity of your physical location or the locations that you serve.

4. Retarget Engaged Users

Retargeting users who have engaged with your brand via Facebook in some way can be effective for a number of reasons. First of all, they’re aware of your brand. Secondly, they’ve shown interest through interaction. For example, if you ran a Facebook video ad campaign, then you can retarget users that watched the video all the way through with an additional call-to-action.

Similar Article: How Much To Advertise on Instagram And Why It ‘s Worth The Cost

5. Take Advantage Of Look Alike-Audiences

Lookalike Audiences lets you mirror your Custom Audience list or Facebook following. By doing this, you’ll target a completely new audience that has a lot in common with your current leads and customers. You’ll be able to expand past your reach while still targeting users with specific profiles.

These are five ways you can implement a Facebook advertising strategy that will allow you to effectively target your audience. Just keep in mind that these strategies work best if you’ve already done the basics. This means developing your buyer personas, understanding who your target audience actually is, and establishing the main goals of your Facebook ad campaign.

Factors That Influence Consumer Purchasing Decisions: Rethinking the Marketing Funnel

August 26, 2019/in Articles, Behavioral Marketing, Directors, Lead Nuturing /by Dan Gartlan

It’s not difficult to argue that it was the Internet that changed the way that consumers purchased products and services. After all, the Internet allows consumers to do research, engage with businesses, and make purchasing decisions on their own time. In fact, this has become easier over time due to the rise in mobile use over the past few years. This has led to the traditional funnel being replaced by the consumer decision journey in that consumers have complete control over their buyer’s journey. As a result, it’s important to stay up to date with the factors that influence consumer purchasing decisions. Doing so will help ensure that you are able to market to consumers no matter what stage of their journey they’re in. The following are some of the important factors that influence consumer purchasing decisions that you’ll want to make sure you address:

Product/Service Reviews

Few consumers are going to make a purchasing decision without reading a handful of easily available reviews. These reviews can be found on comparison sites, third-party sites (such as Amazon), and even on the brand’s site. Reviews have taken on such importance in the purchasing process that having no reviews available for your products and services is almost as detrimental as having negative reviews.

Because of this, you should actively encourage customers to review your products and services following a purchase, make it possible for customers to leave reviews directly on your site, sponsor ads on comparison sites, and address any negative reviews. Don’t remove negative reviews as this will come back to haunt you. Instead, address the reviewer to see if there’s anything you can do to improve their experience. Your effort to make things right can actually help give your brand reputation a boost.

Peer Recommendations

There’s nobody that consumers trust more than their peers. They are more likely to listen to a friend’s recommendation than to reviews posted online by consumers they don’t know. Peer recommendations often occur through social media, which is why having a social media presence is so important. However, the key to peer recommendation is customer loyalty. Instead of assuming that once a consumer becomes a customer that they’ll just keep coming back to you, you should continue to nurture them in order to build brand loyalty. By actively trying to retain them as a customer, they will be more likely to stick to your brand. As a result, they will be more likely to recommend your products and services to their family and friends.

Similar Article: Developing the Perfect Omni-Channel Marketing Strategy

Social Media

Consumers spend massive amounts of time on social media to the point where they will often check out your social media page before they visit your website. This allows them to read about your brand, check out reviews, and see what people are saying about you. They’ll be more likely to trust your business if you are actively engaged with consumers on social media, meaning you regularly post high-quality content, answer questions, and participate in relevant social conversations.

These are some of the main factors that influence consumer purchasing decisions. You’ll want to make sure that you address these factors. Doing so will help put your brand in a strong position to meet the needs of the consumer no matter where they are in their consumer decision journey. If you lack any of these elements, you are likely to miss out on any number of potential customers.

Download Our White Paper Guide To Learn How To Perfect Buyer Personas For Your Business

The Differences Between MQL vs SQL

August 22, 2019/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Dan Gartlan

One of the biggest challenges businesses face is the lack of communication between their marketing teams and their sales teams. It’s not uncommon for a marketing team to use a variety of strategies to convert a lead and then move on to the next one, assuming sales will pick up where they left off. However, not all leads are the same. Some leads need to be nurtured further and aren’t ready to be engaged. Without any kind of communication with marketing, your sales team is more likely to engage leads that aren’t ready to make a purchase yet while missing out on leads that are. This is why identifying leads as MQL (marketing qualified leads) or SQL (sales qualified leads) is important. But how exactly do you determine whether a lead is an MQL vs SQL?

The Difference Between MQL vs SQL

Not all leads are of high quality. Just because someone is visiting your website doesn’t necessarily mean that they are a good prospect. You won’t want your sales team wasting time trying to engage with someone who might only have a passing curiosity in your products or services. That’s why you’ll want your marketing team to identify leads who are MQLs. An MQL is a lead that has been identified as someone who is likely going to become a customer, which means that they have value to your business.

Similar Article: Why ‘Star Wars’ Is Really About Sales & Marketing Qualified Leads

However, just because they are likely to become a customer does not mean your sales team should engage just yet. They are likely still in the beginning stages of their buyer’s journey and are still doing research on their own. Trying to close a sale at this point may push them away. It’s only once the lead has taken actions that indicate that they are likely going to make a purchase that they become an SQL. It’s once they are an SQL that your sales team can engage with them.

Determining MQL vs SQL

The most effective way to label leads as MQL or SQL is through the use of a lead scoring software. Lead scoring software allows you to designate points based on certain qualifications. For example, you can assign a point for downloading an eBook or watching a video on your site. It’s not just specific actions that you can assign points to either. You can assign qualifying points based on demographic information, company information, social engagement, and email engagement as well. You can even assign negative points. For example, if you’re a local business and the lead fills out a form that indicates they live outside of the country, then negative points can be assigned. This ensures they don’t get mislabeled as an MQL.

You will need to determine at what point total a lead becomes an MQL and an SQL. This will require input from both your marketing and sales teams. As to how to decide on how many points to assign to certain qualifications, you’ll need to make use of your analytics. For example, you might find that leads who download a specific whitepaper are more likely to go on and make a purchase. As a result, you’ll want to assign more points to this action.

Knowing where your leads are in their buyer’s journey is essential to knowing when to engage with them. As a result, using lead scoring to identify your leads as MQLs and SQLs will help to increase your sales team’s success rate. However, in order for your lead scoring system to be effective, your marketing team and sales team are going to have to work together.

Why You Should Invest In RTB Advertising As Part Of Your Paid Advertising Campaign

August 20, 2019/in Articles, Digital, Directors, Internet Marketing /by Dan Gartlan

In this day and age, there are countless ways that you can run ads. Even if you don’t take into account traditional advertising (such as running newspaper ads or magazine ads), there seem to be new online advertising opportunities popping up every day. For example, in addition to running banner and popup ads on certain websites, you can also target your audience more effectively using Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, or Twitter Ads. While you may have already invested in these types of advertising campaigns, there’s one other advertising opportunity that you should look in to — RTB advertising.

What Is RTB Advertising?

RTB (Real Time Bidding) advertising refers to a process in which online impressions are bought and sold during real-time auctions within the few seconds that it takes to load a webpage. These auctions are ran by supply-side platforms or ad exchanges. The way it works is relatively straight forward. During the few seconds that an ad impression loads, information about the webpage that’s loading and the person viewing the page is sent to the ad exchange. The ad exchange then auctions the impression off to whoever is willing to pay the most for it. The winning bid will get their ad onto the webpage almost instantly. This entire process takes milliseconds to execute.

Advertisers make a number of decisions prior to bidding based on what websites they will appear on and the previous history and behavior of the user viewing the page. Such decisions include what ad impressions they want to purchase and how much to bid on them. The cost of each impression will be determined in real time based on what bidders are willing to pay.

How To Transition From Traditional Advertising to Inbound Marketing

How Is RTB Advertising Different Than Programmatic Advertising?

Programmatic advertising is a process in which the buying and selling of online ads is automated. As such, it’s not difficult to see why you might think that RTB advertising is the same thing; however, it’s not. While RTB advertising is a type of programmatic advertising, not all programmatic advertising involves real-time bidding. For example, some programmatic ad platforms allow publishers to sell their inventory of ad space for a fixed price ahead of time instead of auctioning it off in real time.

Why Should You Invest In RTB Advertising?

You don’t have to work directly with publishers. There is no more wasting time negotiating ad prices with individual publishers. You can simply use ad exchanges to access a massive inventory of impressions across a huge number of sites.
RTB advertising is more cost-effective. Because you have access to a big inventory of impressions, you can choose what impressions are most valuable to you. This helps reduce the number of impressions that go to waste on the wrong users.
Reach niche audiences. Because of RTB advertising’s use of cookie matching to obtain user information, you can more effectively target niche audiences with your RTB ads.
RTB advertising fits any ad campaign and budget. RTB advertising can be an effective strategy no matter what size your ad campaign is or how big of a budget you have.
Obtain valuable data. Over the course of an RTB advertising campaign, you can collect valuable data on your marketing campaigns. This data can help you to determine what types of ads drive the most engagement, what websites perform better, and more.

RTB advertising is not only a cost-effective way to run an online advertising campaign, but it’s also incredibly effective when it comes to advertising to your target audience. As such, it’s well worth looking into RTB advertising if you haven’t done so already.

What is an Ad Exchange and How Does it Work?

August 14, 2019/in Advertising, Articles, Directors /by Nicole Wagner

Before ad exchanges began popping up, the only way for marketers to purchase ad space online was directly through publishers. This process was not very cost-effective. It was also time-consuming. As new ways to purchase advertising space online have popped up, including programmatic ads and RTB (real-time bidding) ads, so have ad exchanges. Ad exchanges have made it much easier to buy ad space that’s both more effective and more efficient. But what is an ad exchange, exactly?

What is an Ad Exchange?

An ad exchange is an online marketplace for ad space that functions as an auction. Publishers (such as website owners) make their digital advertising space available. Then, advertising agencies and marketers then purchase this ad space through the ad exchange. It’s worth noting that ad exchanges are autonomous, meaning that they aren’t on the side of either the buyers or the sellers.

While ad exchanges are simple for publishers and advertisers to use, the way they actually function can be a bit complex. When a publisher lists ad space on an ad exchange, they provide details that include the page location, audience, topics, and URL. When somebody visits the publisher’s website or mobile app, data about that user is collected. That user data is transferred to the ad exchange. The ad exchange then sends a bid request to DSPs and ad networks. Each DSP inspects the bid request and the parameters of the advertiser to decide of the impression will be relevant to the advertiser. If it is, the maximum bid amount will be sent back to the ad exchange along with the location of the advertising copy to be placed in the ad space.

The ad exchange will review all the bids, eliminating bids from advertisers that don’t meet the publisher’s requirements. The impression will then go to the highest bidder. Their copy will then be displayed on the publisher’s website in front of the user that’s visiting the website. As complicated as this process may appear to be, it takes milliseconds for it to occur.

What Are Marketing Qualified Leads And Why Do They Matter?

The Benefits of Using an Ad Exchange

The use of an ad exchange provides benefits to both publishers and advertisers. The following are a few of the advantages publishers have when using an ad exchange:

Establish the minimum CPMs (cost per mile, which refers to the cost per thousand impressions) for their inventory units.
Filter and block ads that have sensitive content or that are ads for competitors.
Choose the ad format and style, thereby defining what types of ads can appear on their webpage.
Choose where the ads will be displayed on their webpages.
Customize combinations of fonts, colors, and corner style. They can then apply these combinations to multiple display ads at a time.

Ad exchanges don’t just benefit the publishers. They also benefit advertisers who are buying ad space in the following ways:

Choose targeting options, behavioral profiling, price settings, and bidding capabilities.
Blacklist certain audiences.
Blacklist certain publishers.
Place limits on the number of times the same ad appears to the same user.
Retarget across multiple ad exchanges.

Ad exchanges are incredibly effective because they provide advertisers with a lot of control over where their ads will be seen, who will see them, and how much they are paying for those impressions. They also help you save a significant amount of time finding ad space in general. As such, ad exchanges are well worth looking into.

What We Can Learn from Viral Video Marketing & Examples of How It’s been Successful

August 12, 2019/in Articles, Blog, Directors /by Terry Becker

When it comes to creating content, going viral is the ultimate goal. Unfortunately, there’s no blueprint for viral video marketing. You could spend tens of thousands of dollars on a 30-second video jam-packed with visual effects, hilarious dialogue, and well-known actors, and it still might not go viral; yet, some random person might upload a ten-second video of their cat and somehow it gets seen by a billion people within a day.

Although there’s no perfect formula for viral video marketing, there are certain things that you learn from successful viral videos from the past. Copying these videos won’t help make you go viral, but learning what made them successful can help you improve your video marketing in general. The following are a few things worth learning from some of the most successful viral videos in the past:

1. Know Who Your Audience Is

One of the most popular ads in recent years is the Dollar Shave Club video in which the owner introduces the viewer to the concept of the Dollar Shave Club by walking through his factory. The video is filled with humor and is extremely direct, even going so far as to use swear words in the dialogue (even the title of the video has a censored swear word in it). They know exactly who their audience is or else they wouldn’t have been so bold. It might turn some people off — but those aren’t the people they were trying to reach.

2. Invest In The Production

It is possible to make video content on a small budget these days, especially when considering how affordable video equipment has gotten. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put money into the production of your content. High-quality production does not go unnoticed. Just look at the Old Spice Man video. On the surface, it’s relatively simple — a man talks to the audience in a humorous tone to sell Old Spice deodorant. However, the backgrounds are constantly changing all within one shot. He starts in a bathroom, transitions onto a boat, and ends up on a horse at the end. It’s the high-quality production of the video that sells it.

The Power of First-Person Experience Videos

3. Get Their Attention

If your video isn’t interesting off the bat, the viewer isn’t going to stick around to watch the rest of it. This means that you need to grab their attention within the first 10 to 15 seconds of your video. The Poo-Pourri video is a good example of this. For most, the idea of a Poo-Pourri ad sounds kind of boring, yet it starts off with a hilarious line of dialogue that captures your attention right away. It then transitions into a music video, at which point the viewer has likely committed to watching the video all the way through.

4. Evoke Emotions

You want your video content to stick with someone after they’ve seen it. To make sure it’s not instantly forgettable, you need to evoke emotions from your audience. This can be in the form of humor or even in the form of empathy. Take Budweiser’s ad Someone Waits For You At Home. Within one minute, it establishes a loving relationship with a dog and its owner that everyone can relate to. At the end, the dog is waiting for its owner, who may or may not return — a message against drinking and driving. It’s a heart-tugging cliffhanger that leaves an emotional impact on the viewer.

These are a few things that some of the most successful viral video marketing examples of the past have in common. While using these tips won’t ensure that your videos go viral, they will help to greatly improve their quality as well as their effectiveness. At the very least, they’ll put your video content in a much better position to go viral.