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November’s Fresh Ideas Live was hosted in collaboration with our partners dotdigital and Trustpilot at The Shard, London. The event was an opportunity for digital marketers to network with peers from top brands in retail and travel.  Attendees were inspired by real-life personalization examples, and practical advice to get ahead this holiday season. Along the way, we learned about: How to fine-tune personalization with split testing Using data to create a marketing strategy fit for the future How to turn browsers into buyers with social proof Effective tactics for Black Friday and peak trading season If you didn't make it on the day, keep reading for a summary of the key takeaways. Fresh Relevance partnerships The afternoon kicked off with an introduction from Fresh Relevance co-founder and CRO, Eddy Swindell. Eddy emphasized the importance of building relationships with technology partners, including dotdigital and Trustpilot. For marketers using

Cart abandonment occurs when a customer adds items to their online shopping cart, but ends the session without completing their purchase. This a common issue – more than half of shopping carts are abandoned, according to our research. With stats like that, it’s easy to feel powerless. What can you do about it if a shopper decides to give up on their purchase? In reality, many customers simply get distracted, or use the cart as a reminder for later. That means it’s well within your power to recover revenue from these visitors. Here, we’ll cover seven methods to tackle cart abandonment. We’ll start with how to reduce shopping abandonment in the first place. Then, we’ll explore proven tactics to win back customers - including our favorite examples from across the web. 1. Incorporate trust signals and social proof To buy a product online requires a lot of trust. To make a transaction, a customer will likely have to share with you their email address, ban

Did you see changes in the search engine rankings for local websites last month? Many SEOs, content marketers, and local website owners experienced the shift in local search engine result pages in November, but the reason for that was not confirmed — until now. Google has officially confirmed the November 2019 local search update. Here is what Google announced: “In early November, we began making use of neural matching as part of the process of generating local search results. Neural matching allows us to better understand how words are related to concepts.” As far as neural matching goes, Google defines it as a “super-synonym system.”  Just like synonyms — which are words that are closely related to other words in terms of meaning and context — this particular system helps Google understand search engine user queries with potential local search intent. This super-synonymous method works even when the name or description of the business is missing. Accord

Google’s latest update, BERT, has made a big splash in the SEO world. Google BERT, combined with other machine learning and natural language processing techniques, helps Google better understand the context of a search query and the searcher’s intent. As per Google’s recent announcement, the search engine has also started using BERT to generate top stories carousels in the search engine results pages on mobile devices. With the help of Google BERT and other relevant machine learning techniques, Google will be able to organise the stories more effectively and present more relevant content to searchers in a better format. Here is an example of how the search result looked before the update: And here is how the results changed after Google started using BERT to generate top stories carousels in search: Here is what Duncan Osborn, Product Manager of Google Search, said during the announcement: “When you’re searching for information on a timely topic — a re

For all the (justified?) hype about voice, AI, New Retail, single view of the customer, take your pick – the most interesting developments in ecommerce are much broader. Yep, we want to trust retailers with our data, avoid being duped by dark patterns, find some meaning and purpose in all that lovely shopping, as well as convenience, of course. Oh and we don’t want ecommerce to endanger those enriching high-street retail experiences. So, what do our experts think? They’ve had a bash. Enjoy! Death of the clickbait decade Parry Malm, CEO, Phrasee: “Examples of dodgy marketing tactics used to sell more stuff have been around for decades. Think back to the 1980s when White Gold-esque double-glazing salesmen tried to schmooze their way to profit and success. “While the greasy double-glazing salesman profiteers may have died a death, their spawn survive online. Now it’s a tailspin of clickbait that permeates our daily lives. “There’s only 3 rooms left”, and “

You’re probably reading this article over the snare of an entire ambush protocol in digital advertising. The margin crawl of your monitor or the white space of your phone screen is under siege by aggro outreach tactics in hero banners, remarketing ads, hi-def video overlays firing off below the fold of your browser, gumming up your bandwidth in service of the 30-second product pitch. In recent years, the entire scheme of modern pop ad campaigns has run the internet over with a veritable battery of pay-per-click displays, trick banners, rich media, pop-ups, all manner of text ads, hyperlinks and browser cookies. I don’t know what you’re up to on the internet these days — surfing cat videos, online shopping or maybe looking to get to the bottom of a strange pain behind your ears and logging your symptoms into WebMD. It’s none of my business. Though I can tell you, just short of cruising the dark web or hacking time-bomb files in some unlit corner of a state department

What is the world's most valuable brand? Amazon, Apple or Google — the leaders — probably spring to mind. They are now so integral to everyday life that it may seem difficult to picture a time before them. Yet, the fact is that they have only emerged on the leaderboard in the recent decade. Amazon's brand value has grown nearly 50% year over year, accounting for a $150 billion in brand value. At the same time, consider the brands that were once the behemoths of their times, now overtaken and many fallen from grace. Some of them have disappeared completely. The reality is, brand equity is being created and destroyed at an unprecedented rate in today's digital-first world. And where your brand falls is now, more than ever, entirely up to you. The brands that continue to fall could be one of yours. They are the ones that have only focused on engagement — the buzzword of the last decade that refers to fleeting interactions. Whereas the ones that have rock

In its relatively brief life Twitter has already managed to build up a storied history and complicated reputation. Among the throngs of people worldwide who have flocked (pun intended) to Twitter to share their personal views, daily lives, innermost thoughts, rhetoric, and arguing points are the scientists. This isn't surprising at all. Or at least it shouldn't be. Scientists are people too after all, and wherever you see a bunch of people there's bound to be a bunch of scientists mixed in with them. Why, you may have even shared a bus ride today with a scientist without even knowing it. Contrary to popular belief, they look and act like just about anybody else. Some scientists get on Twitter to not share one bit of science at all. Instead they want to share their personal views or get into political debates. You know, just to act like a normal person. In this way Twitter provides almost a singular resource, where you get to see scientists as who they

Keywords are the life and soul of paid search marketing. Historically, we have always wondered about the right set of keywords in terms of volume, match type and content. With voice-based search growing in volumes, there has also been talk of intent-based and semantic keywords. Since keywords are the defining factor for any paid search account’s success, significant planning is called for. Here’s a list of parameters to consider when building your keyword inventory. Go for Relevance Don’t include everything suggested by your keyword planning tool. Go for relevance instead. For instance, keyword planners allow you to enter your site URL to suggest queries. However, your client’s priorities may not always match with what the planner suggests. An engagement ring website may only want to focus on rings and not diamonds, for example. The keyword planner, however, may list “diamonds” and “jewelry” as part of its list. So, scan the list and pick what is relevant. Understan

Members of the paid social team here at The Search Agency are experts at setting up social media ads, launching new campaigns every single day. Those outside our agency who’ve found putting together social ads a routine, though, may have lost some of the knowledge to deliver on the most simple — yet effective — strategies for building killer ads on social media. Take a look at some of the most-often forgotten easy wins when working with paid social. Visual Content Visuals have become a vital component in engaging audiences. Not only should social media “influencers” choose their visuals precisely, but marketers should, too. Using appealing, high-resolution images for your paid social ads can be beneficial; unfortunately, some people still underestimate the power of visuals in their social ads. Appealing visuals are more likely to be shared and remembered than written content. Visual content is also treated more favourably by the Facebook algorithm, which can have

Structured data markup, also known as “schema markup” (a reference to schema.org), is essentially code that tells search engines what the content on your web pages means . While search engines may attempt to infer meaning from the user-facing content on your pages, it isn’t always possible for them to grasp the actual intent. Structured data markup works in the background to help search engines get a better idea of what your content is actually saying. Why is Structured Data Markup so Important? Imagine your business has two different phone numbers – one for sales and one for customer service. Your website may list both numbers, indicating to users what each number is for. However, there are many different ways this content can be structured on the page, and many different ways it can be presented to users. For example, if you prefer to call your customer service team by a different name, you may want to use the words, “client relations,” or “Call This Number to Buy

Understanding how a website performs and is optimized for incoming traffic is imperative to achieve top engine rankings and offer a seamless brand experience for customers. However, with so many tools on the market, finding a solution for your distinct use case can be overwhelming. To help, our SEO team compiled a huge list of our favorite tools (29, to be exact!) that help marketers understand and optimize website and organic search presence. 1. Google Search Console Google Search Console is the best free SEO tool, simply because the data comes from Google. It has a wealth of insights related to your website’s search metrics including any issues relating to indexing, keyword performance, mobile usability and much more. GSC helps anyone with a website optimize their organic performance. Pricing:  Free 2. Google Trends Google Trends analyzes the popularity of a search term in Google. It’s most useful for helping marketers track seasonality or to understand how

User-generated content, often abbreviated to UGC, is, broadly speaking, any content users post online. In the context of digital marketing, user-generated content is a component of content marketing in which brands repurpose content created by their customers and audiences, incorporating it into their own marketing materials. User-generated content comes in a lot of different forms and can be deployed effectively in a variety of ways. Below we’re diving into the benefits UGC has for brands, as well as some specific ideas for rolling out a successful UGC program.   The power of user-generated content   User-generated content is a great way for brands to showcase authority in their field and build trust with their audience. As consumers are increasingly distrustful of brands and being “sold to”, UGC has a unique ability to take that conversation out of the mouth of the brand itself and let the consumers who are actually purchasing their products tell that story