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Good morning, Marketers, I’m not a big sports fan, but when there’s a domain dispute, count me in.

Those of you who have gone through a rebrand know how much effort goes into it. Unfortunately for Cleveland’s MLB team (which will soon be going by its new name, the Cleveland Guardians), the rebranding effort may have overlooked an important detail: the preferred domain. ClevelandGuardians.com is the official site for the men’s roller derby team of the same name.

The roller derbying Cleveland Guardians have been around since 2011, and on top of possessing the domain, the team also has the Facebook and Instagram accounts. Now, both entities seem to be positioning themselves for a trademark battle.

It wasn’t until four days after the Cleveland MLB team made its name change announcement that it filed for a federal trademark to begin selling merchandise, according to Cleveland 19 News. A couple days later, the roller derby team filed for their own trademark and launched their own online store.

It’s still unclear how this is going to end, but what is clear is that, if an MLB franchise with all the resources at its disposal can commit such an oversight, it could happen to any of us. 

George Nguyen,
Editor

‘Make Every feature Binary’: Bing’s sparse neural network for improved search relevance

Bing has introduced “Make Every feature Binary” (MEB), a large-scale sparse model that complements its production Transformer models to improve search relevance. This new technology, which is now running on 100% of Bing searches in all regions and languages, has resulted in a nearly 2% increase in clickthrough rate for the top search results, a reduction in manual query reformulation by more than 1% and a 1.5% reduction of clicks on pagination.

“When looking into the top features learned by MEB, we found it can learn hidden intents between query and document,” Bing said. As shown in the image above, MEB was able to learn that “Hotmail” is strongly correlated to “Microsoft Outlook,” even though the two aren’t close in terms of semantic meaning. It can also identify negative relationships, like how users searching for “baseball” don’t typically click on pages about “hockey.”

MEB’s more nuanced understanding of content may also help to drive more traffic to brands, businesses and publishers, since the search results may be more relevant. And, its understanding of correlated phrases and negative relationships may enable marketers to spend more time focusing on what customers are really searching for instead of fixating on the right keywords to rank higher — this is especially applicable for rebranding scenarios (are you listening, Cleveland Guardians?). And, for the search industry overall, it may help Bing maintain its position as Google continues to innovate with new technologies like MUM. 

Read more here.

How to limit waste and accelerate ROI in paid search marketing

Having spent the last 11 years surrounded by sales leaders, Amanda Farley, Partner and Director of Accounts and Digital Strategy at SSDM, picked up on some of their biggest successes and opportunities. But recently, she had the idea to apply them outside of the sales box and into her digital marketing campaigns. “This is really what sales and marketing integration is all about,” said Farley recently at SMX Advanced. “It’s about building the relationships, the trust and guiding [buyers] to impactful solutions that ultimately lead into more sales or leads.”

These buyer personas are based on a book called The New Strategic Selling by Robert B. Miller and Stephen E. Heiman. “Your strategy can only begin when you know who your players are,” added Farley. “The best way to think of it is like a football team: every player must be on the field to close the deal.”

• Economic buyer: Has the ability to commit funds to a purchase.
• User buyer: The end-user of your product or service.
• Technical buyer: Ensures all the technical specifications are met.
• Coach: Really wants your solution to win.

When we take this into our marketing efforts, we need to understand what each audience cares about most, what their content preferences are and what channels they’re most likely to engage with.

Read more here.

“We should allocate our budget first to digital because our brand is… um… digital-first.”

Before you switch agencies. “Too often, marketers put the media cart before the strategy horse,” said Marketoonist creator Tom Fishburne, “Media choices should be driven by the specific goals the marketers are trying to achieve. And the most value often comes from an integrated plan that combines multiple channels.”

No thanks. Jason Hennessey found a street pole flyer asking “Do you want to learn SEO?” Apparently, there’s only one correct answer, and it’s in all caps.

But, AdWords. Andrew Bethel spotted this text ad of, well, nothing. It just says “AdWords AdWords.” Interestingly enough, the URL it leads to belongs to a System1 company — System1 owns Info.com, which was the only search engine that seemed to have positive things to say about the Android search choice screen when I asked for comment earlier this year.

How to win against endless AI-generated content

We’re approaching what Ryan Law calls the “search singularity,” according to his blog post for Animalz. “AI writing tools mean that the marginal cost of a blog post is nosediving from multiple skilled person-hours to minutes spent in a freemium SaaS product,” Law said. “In the near future, any company with a modest budget and a functioning internet connection will be able to pump out truly mind-numbing volumes of content.”

The technology is getting better and more accessible. Like any tool, it’s really about the wielder rather than the tech itself. There will be those who use GPT-3-like models to assist in their writing and then there will be the ones who use it to churn out generic content. Since it’ll be so easy to do the latter, Law argues that the industry is headed to a point where the search results may be flooded with homogenous content — the “search singularity.”

Bad content impacts everyone: It makes users lose trust across the board and it makes it harder for us to cut through the noise. There are, however, things that human marketers are great at that can help us continue to achieve our objectives in the face of this deluge of samey content. Law recommends that marketers:

• Focus on information gain. AI can only work with what’s already available, but marketers can uncover new information and conduct interviews and surveys to bolster their content.
• Invest in thought leadership. If we humans are great at one thing, it’s giving you our opinions, which AI-generated content struggles to do. Bringing in elements of industry analysis, storytelling and even personal narrative can help you stand out in this regard.
• Create a new experience. Creativity will continue to be a valuable trait if we ever reach the search singularity. By putting our own spin on something, marketers can create content that resonates with their specific audiences — just look at what Lin-Manuel Miranda did with Hamilton.

The post MEB or meh? Make Every feature Binary is Bing’s new search tech; Thursday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.

For every dollar a local business owner spends on technology and digital solutions, $2.50 is spent on implementation and ongoing services from marketing agencies and other local experts. Digital technology is a $220 billion market that is rapidly expanding and comes with its own set of challenges. 

A 2020 survey of more than 600 respondents reveals local agencies and business experts saying their inability to scale operations is the number one challenge they face in providing digital solutions to local businesses.

Here are the most common challenges faced by local experts and tactics to help overcome them.

Challenge #1 to scale your agency: Attracting qualified leads

Three out of four B2B buyers want to self-educate and try before they buy. Most local business owners want to test-drive technology before ever spending a cent. To show up in places where small-and medium-sized business (SMB) owners search and have the best chance at capturing a lead, try these tips:

1. Optimize your website for search engines. Ensure you’re easy to find by positioning yourself as a technology company.
2. Make sure your product catalog is available online. Adopt a product-led (freemium) acquisition strategy so that your clients can try before they buy. Use this tactic to uncover insights about your prospects so you can meet their needs with the right paid solution at the right time.
3. Nurture your leads with email campaigns. Use marketing automation to trigger a campaign whenever you get a new lead, so your business always remains top of mind for them.

Challenge #2 to scale your agency: Knowing what to sell and when

The secret to sales success resides in your data.

During the sales process, ask yourself what are the pieces of data that you can bring to the table for your prospects. Do you have competitive intelligence and industry benchmarks? Do you understand how their online performance compares to the businesses that matter to them? These data points allow you to earn trust.

Lean on sales intelligence tools like the Vendasta Snapshot Report to surface data that helps you gain trust with your SMB clients, identify what solutions they need, and pinpoint exactly when they need them.

These tools allow agencies to generate personalized competitive intelligence and industry benchmarks on their prospect’s online performance, all with one click of a button. Vendasta partners who use more than 100% of their monthly allotment of snapshot reports each month have a revenue pipeline 18 times bigger. They close nearly three times more opportunities than partners who use less than 50% of their allotment.

Challenge #3 to scale your agency: Connecting with prospects

The pain of sending multiple back-and-forth emails, playing phone tag and texting a client several times just to find out when both you and your sales prospect are available for a meeting, can be a major cause of concern. Not only is there opportunity for a follow-up to fall off your radar, but the process can frustrate prospects, causing them to abandon their intentions to find out more about working with you.

Use a meeting scheduling software that’s integrated with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. Just by using a tool that lets you schedule meetings; experts can save an incredible 10 hours per week.

Challenge #4 to scale your agency: Predictable revenue

Without being able to predict how much revenue you’ll be generating next month, next quarter or next year, it’s impossible to grow your operations. It limits your ability to hire new staff, determine whether you can afford to spend more on marketing, and figure out if you should invest in expanding your product offerings.

All of these problems can be solved by effectively managing your sales pipeline. It’s a critical component to growing your business.    

Manage your sales pipeline in a CRM through four basic stages:

1. Prospect
2. Qualify
3. Connect
4. Close

Looking across our channel partner base, we found that one in 10 opportunities resulted in a sales order. Your mileage may vary, with a higher conversion rate or fewer opportunities, but it’s a nice ratio to keep in mind as you work your (sales) pipeline. It’s a starting point for understanding how much revenue you can forecast based on what’s in your pipeline.

In addition to creating opportunities, use a metric-driven approach to move prospects through a sales pipeline. Monitor activities that lead to winning new business, like the number of calls, prospecting emails sent, and booked meetings, and use a CRM that can track this activity.

Wrapping Up: 5 key takeaways for scaling your operations

1. Focus on attracting product-qualified leads. Optimize your website and nurture it with email campaigns.
2. Use data to help understand what to sell and when. Use a sales intelligence tool like the Vendasta Snapshot report and set time aside to use up your monthly allotment of reports you can generate to help you sell to new leads.
3. Engage using integrated meeting schedulers. Setup text replacement on your mobile device to quickly send a link to book a meeting into your calendar.
4. Build a sales pipeline and fill it with opportunities. Monitor top activities that lead to winning new business-like number of calls, prospecting emails sent, and meetings booked.
5. Adopt an end-to-end platform. Stop piecing together different technologies to solve your biggest challenges by using a single integrated platform for a seamless experience that removes complexity and reduces costs.

By using one unified place where you can log in, manage, view and assign, you’re removing obstacles that crop up when you’re ‘frankensteining’ together different digital solutions to build your business.

Adopting an end-to-end platform

Based on a typical local expert with five employees and 75 customers, agencies can save 520 hours and up to $70,000 per year by switching to the Vendasta platform. Using an end-to-end platform, local experts can:

• Build and configure: instantly go-to-market with a broad set of customizable and branded solutions
• Market and sell: predict needs and intent through an SMBs interaction with sales intelligence reports using an integrated CRM with built-in marketing automation
• Bill and fulfill: invoice and accept payment from clients for any of your tightly integrated products and services
• Deliver and grow: offer a seamless experience for your clients with a single sign-on dashboard of automated proof of performance reporting to help identify the ongoing needs of your SMB customers

To learn more, watch these videos:

Scale your business by bringing everything together.

With Vendasta, you can operate your business, find and sell more digital solutions and services, engage with your customers, and create a superior client experience, all under one roof.

GET STARTED WITH VENDASTA  for free today.

The post 5 tactics to scale your agency appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Yelp is introducing two new COVID-related profile attributes, the “Proof of vaccination required” and “Staff fully vaccinated” attributes, the company announced Thursday. Users will be able to filter searches using these attributes and the “Proof of vaccination required” attribute will be visible in search results.

“We’ve put additional safety measures in place to proactively monitor content for businesses that select one of these attributes, whether it’s the identity attributes or the vaccination attributes,” Noorie Malik, VP of user operations at Yelp, told Search Engine Land, “And so we’re proactively looking out for any hateful, harmful content on these businesses.”

Why we care

Given the rapid spread of COVID’s Delta variant, these attributes may help customers feel safer when visiting a local business, which can help businesses continue to operate as more safety-oriented consumers shy away from in-person activities, like going to a cafe or bar. Yelp’s “additional safety measures” may also help to curb any potential blowback from bad actors seeking to leave reviews based on their stance about COVID vaccines as opposed to their firsthand experiences with the business.

More on the news

• Reviews from customers that criticize a business’s vaccination requirements violate Yelp’s COVID Content Guidelines. So far this year, the company has removed nearly 8,000 reviews for violating these guidelines, according to the announcement.
• Since January 2021, Yelp has placed over 100 Unusual Activity Alerts on business profiles in response to businesses attracting public attention over their COVID health and safety practices. This has resulted in the removal of nearly 4,500 reviews for violating the platform’s content policies.
• Yelp has also introduced several diversity attributes for business profiles, including the Asian-owned, Black-owned, Latinx-owned, LGBTQ-owned and women-owned attributes.

The post Yelp introduces “Proof of vaccination required” and “Staff fully vaccinated” profile attributes appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Just a few short years ago, mortgage processing relied heavily on physical document collection and in-person interactions. This made closing on a home a time-consuming and inefficient experience. With no better options available, clients and loan officers just accepted this inefficiency as “part of the process.” 

However, consumer expectations have changed. The modern home buyer is much more open to a tech-centered mortgage processing experience. In fact, many of them actually prefer self-service and digital communication.

If you want to exceed customer expectations and stay relevant, then you must adopt these trends. But you might not be sure where to begin.

Below, we’ll take a look at what kicked off this shift in the mortgage industry. We’ll also outline the tech trends that are on the rise in 2021. 

By implementing these new tools into your business model, you can revolutionize the way you process mortgages.

What Happened?

Over the last decade or so, countless industries have shifted towards a digital buying experience. Many experts affectionately call this the “Amazon Effect.” The digital retail trailblazer disrupted traditional retail practices. It allows consumers to purchase products online and receive them just a few short days later.

The Amazon Effect has unavoidably impacted the mortgage industry, as well. Modern home buyers now expect:

Instant Gratification

Perhaps the biggest impact of the Amazon Effect is that buyers expect instant gratification. Unfortunately, even the best loan officers cannot close on a mortgage overnight. Gathering the necessary financial documents and processing the application takes time.

With that being said, consumers need some sort of rapid feedback. By incorporating modern tech tools into your business model, you can fill that need. Every time a client signs a document or submits requested information, you can send them a notification. This allows you to keep the customer happy and information while you’re processing their mortgage.

The Ability to Serve Themselves

Consumers also have an increased desire to engage in self-service. While they do not want to process the mortgage all on their own, they do want to feel involved. As you will see below, many modern tech trends are geared towards self-service.

Your software should allow clients to submit documents, check on their loan status, and message their loan officer. Prospective customers should also be able to readily access information regarding the loan process in general. This can include information about current loan rates and a breakdown of each mortgage type.

Trends on the Rise in 2021

Now that you know how the shift started, let’s take a look at trends on the rise in 2021. Many of these tech trends have already been adopted on a wide scale. However, they are poised to affect an even larger part of the market in the coming year. Companies that successfully leverage technology will set themselves up for sustainable growth.

If you have been searching for a way to take your brokerage to the next level, these tech trends might be just what you are looking for.

The Mortgage Processing is Going Digital

For the last few years, digital listing sites have been taking over the home buying market. Clients can easily search for properties and access resources to help them make a purchase. 

The rest of the mortgage ecosystem is finally catching up. With the right technology, almost everything can be handled digitally. Loan officers can process online 1003s, manage documents, and send updates to buyers via SMS. Many mortgage brokerages are even transitioning to digital or hybrid closings.  

If you are a loan officer, you can join the evolution, too. You can either build your own digital processes from the ground up or partner with a high-quality CRM provider.

Companies like BNTouch have already done the heavy lifting. Our CRM software gives you all the tools needed to process mortgages digitally. Our tech focuses on providing a great customer experience from start to finish.

An Increased Emphasis on Self-Service

Take a look at any of the nationwide lenders’ mortgage websites. You will notice a common theme:  The ability to engage in self-service. These companies understand that modern consumers need instant feedback and want to help themselves.

In 2021, even more, mortgage brokers will incorporate self-service into their existing sites. We recommend that you do the same.

Ask yourself:  Can customers readily access your portfolio or products? If not, then your self-service capabilities are due for an upgrade

A curious consumer should be able to navigate to your site and quickly interact with your products. This may include taking actions such as:

• Completing a contact form
• Filling out a loan application
• Checking on the status of a loan
• Logging into their account (existing clients)
• Viewing the most recent mortgage rates
• Finding information about various loan types
• Submitting requested documents

Self-service also frees up your staff to focus on other projects. It reduces costs and improves customer acquisition rates. 

A small note of caution:  While customers appreciate the ability to self-serve, make sure that they can reach someone when needed. Overly automated services can diminish the consumer experience.

Automated Data Collection

As any loan officer will tell you, collecting client data and backfilling a 1003 form is tedious. It can slow down the entire mortgage process and take your team away from other valuable tasks. This also creates plenty of room for error.

Thanks to single-source validation, this process can be streamlined. Single-source validation allows your mortgage brokers to import data from the IRS or other financial institutions with a few clicks. This data is automatically filled into a 1003 form, letting your team submit applications faster. The best part is that it drastically reduces the chances of a filing error.

If your team is still collecting client data manually, then it is time to up your game. Digitize your mortgage processing practices and gain access to valuable data import tools. Your loan officers and clients will thank you for it!

Streamlined Lead Distribution

Modern technology is not just about improving the user experience. It also allows mortgage brokers to track key performance metrics. The top brokerages analyze employee data to maximize performance and distribute leads. With the right technology, you can, too.

Top CRM software includes integrated lead distribution platforms. These platforms allow you to receive leads and distribute them automatically. You can even integrate it with your current lead provider. While you are at it, you can track team performance and optimize productivity. This can help to ensure that your employees are well equipped to meet the needs of the clients they serve.

A Focus on Mobile Compatibility

Another significant tech trend in the mortgage industry is a shift towards a mobile-first business model. Many mortgage brokerages initially focused on PC compatibility and added mobile tools as an afterthought. Some did not give mobile users any consideration at all. This approach is simply not sustainable.

When you’re transitioning to a digitized mortgage processing strategy, you must focus on mobile users. The majority of your clients will access your tools via their phones or tablets. Some may exclusively use mobile devices during the mortgage process.

What better way to focus on mobile compatibility than with an app? When you’re searching for a CRM software provider, make sure that tech tools include an integrated mobile app. This will let you know that they have a mobile-first attitude.

Once a client partners with you to handle their mortgage, simply ask them to download the app. You and your team will easily be able to send them alerts, request information, or take other steps to speed up the mortgage process.

More Efficient Team Collaboration

Maintaining open lines of communication as you’re processing a mortgage can be quite challenging. Buying a home involves a lot of moving parts and everyone has unique communication methods that they prefer to use.

In order to address this issue, many mortgage brokers are transitioning to team collaboration software. This technology allows lenders, borrowers, and realtors to communicate on a single platform. It eliminates the need to play endless games of “phone tag” or send countless emails.

With the right software, every member of your team will be able to stay connected. They can work on the same files, share notes, and more. Your clients can even open their mobile app and check on the current status of their files. This means that you will no longer have to field phone calls to answer questions about the status of a mortgage.

Modernizing Your Mortgage Processing Capabilities

As you can see, modern tech trends are changing the ways that brokers process mortgages. Every aspect of the home buying experience is going digital. If you want to get in on the action, then you will need the right CRM software. That’s where we come in!

BNTouch offers cutting-edge CRM software for loan officers and brokers. We have scalable solutions for businesses of all sizes. Whether you are working solo or are managing a large-scale operation, our tech tools can help your business to grow.

But don’t just take our word for it. See for yourself by scheduling a free demo. Once you try our innovative CRM software, you will never want to do business without it. Contact us today to learn more about this exciting opportunity to expand your business!

The post The Evolution of Tech Trends in the Mortgage Industry appeared first on .

Getting a website online for any business is relatively easy nowadays, there are several quick and cheap options. But a website that’s also a hub of your business –central to lead nurturing, acquisition, branding, marketing, and Borrower Experience requires another level of sophistication. 

In this week’s post, we’re going to show you exactly how to create a mortgage website that meets all of these criteria, plus how you launch an attractive, professional, high-functioning mortgage website in less than five minutes. 

Best Mortgage Website Building Practices

Website Creation: Pictures and Text Are Not Enough

A quick search on launching a website will bring you over 360 million results, with the top generic website builders being Wix and Squarespace. But that’s just it –they’re generic. While the general design and launching are fast, the appearance is still bland, and its functionality is miles away from where it should be for a professional mortgage website. 

Of course, there’s much more to it. There’s also the matter of search engine optimization, content for conversion, and Borrower Experience. By the end, you’ll have the ability to decipher a generic website from a high-level mortgage website and know how to go about creating a mortgage website that supports your business needs, meets online ending industry standards, and modern consumer buying habits.

Responsive 

Responsive design is often mistaken for simply adjusting to the screen. While this may have been innovative ten years ago, modern responsive websites must also adapt their functionality. That means that items like lead capture forms, menus, videos, and any integrated 3rd-party applications must work and view properly without any effort from the user. No matter the device or operating system, the best mortgage websites are built for this level of user experience from the ground up.

Modern and Branded Mortage Design

As mentioned above, although there are plenty of clean website designs possible with generic website builders, a mortgage website that reflects modern design principles and the flexibility to brand is key to making your online business front stand out and above the rest. 

When it comes to designing, mortgage website templates from LenderHomePage offer a powerful and fast jumping-off point. With 45 attractive prebuilt mortgage designs, mortgage professionals of all sizes –from individual to multi-branch –can easily find a site that reflects their business. 

With some simple adjustments to the color scheme and the addition of your logo, both of which can be done without coding and matched your POS platform, your mortgage website will have a dynamically branded look and feel across the entire Borrower Experience.

Interactive Mortgage Tools

Online mortgage consumers crave an immersive and personalized shopping experience and interactive mortgage tools on your website are how to deliver this experience. Accurate to their location and loan program, online mortgage tools such as our mortgage calculators estimate down to the penny and move curious borrowers deeper through your lead nurturing strategy.

SEO Mortgage Copy

Search engine optimized copy is a precise craft of persuasive writing combined with researched keywords. This particular combination is aimed at helping to position your website for both a high-ranking organic search position and high conversion rates. This means that the words and the formatting must meet specific standards for search engines and consumers.

If you’d like to attempt it yourself, reach this previous article where we give a brief overview on how to DIY your mortgage SEO copy. Otherwise, we recommend taking advantage of our mortgage marketing services with professional and custom mortgage SEO content.

High-Value Content

Along the same lines as SEO copywriting is high-value mortgage content. The mortgage content can come in articles, videos, graphics, e-books, or white papers and, as expected, doesn’t come as part of any generic website design. 

While custom high-value content comes with additional costs, our mortgage website templates come with hundreds of pages of mortgage articles that can be edited as you see fit –or launch as is! Need additional help and resources? We got you covered. Our team of marketers is available for custom mortgage content and strategy development to guide how to make the best use of it on your website. 

Seamless Integration with Digital 1003 and POS

Last but not least, a mortgage website needs a seamless integration with your digital 1003 and POS. In today’s touchless environment, your mortgage website is more than an online presence –it’s also the hub of the Borrower Experience, and that includes your digital 1003 and mortgage POS platform. More than placing a simple link, integrating all the three platforms in such a way that captured leads, is branded, and is intuitively functional is vital to your competitive advantage. 

Want to see all this in action for free? Sign up for a free trial. Click here to get started –no credit card required! In only 14 days, you’ll be convinced that our mortgage website templates and support team are immensely better than what any generic website can offer. 

Start A Trial

Google is removing the safe browsing signal from the Google page experience update, the company announced. Google said “we recognize that these issues aren’t always within the control of site owners, which is why we’re clarifying that Safe Browsing isn’t used as a ranking signal and won’t feature in the Page Experience report.”

As a reminder, the page experience update is rolling out, it has been since June 15th and will continue to roll out through the end of August.

New page experience diagram. Here is the new diagram that removes “safe browsing” from the list of page experience signals:

You can compare it to the original diagram:

Why is Google removing safe browsing. Google said it is removing this as a signal because these are issues that are not always in the control of site owners. Google said “sometimes sites fall victim to third-party hijacking.” Google will continue to flag these notifications in Search Console but outside of the page experience report.

Google is also removing the Ad Experience widget, Google said “to avoid surfacing the same information on two parts of Search Console.” But Ad experience was never used in the Google page experience update.

More changes to the page experience report. Google made additional changes to the page experience report including:

• Added a “No recent data” banner to the Core Web Vitals report and Page Experience report.
• Fixed a bug that caused the report to show “Failing HTTPS” when Core Web Vitals data was missing.
• Rephrased the empty state text in the Page Experience report and Core Web Vitals report.

Why we care. This is one less ranking signal and factor you need to worry about when it comes to your performance in Google Search. Of course, you don’t want to provide an unsafe browsing experience for your users, but you can still learn about those in Search Console, but it won’t count against you in your rankings.

The post Google drops safe browsing as a page experience ranking signal appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Bing has introduced “Make Every feature Binary” (MEB), a large-scale sparse model that complements its production Transformer models to improve search relevance, the company announced Wednesday. This new technology, which is now running on 100% of Bing searches in all regions and languages, has resulted in a nearly 2% increase in clickthrough rate for the top search results, a reduction in manual query reformulation by more than 1% and a 1.5% reduction of clicks on pagination.

What MEB does. MEB maps single facts to features, which helps it achieve a more nuanced understanding of individual facts. The goal behind MEB seems to be to better mimic how the human mind processes potential answers.

This stands in contrast to many deep neural network (DNN) language models that may overgeneralize when filling in the blank for “______ can fly,” Bing provided as an example. Most DNN language models might fill the blank with the word “birds”.

“MEB avoids this by assigning each fact to a feature, so it can assign weights that distinguish between the ability to fly in, say, a penguin and a puffin,” Bing said in the announcement, “It can do this for each of the characteristics that make a bird—or any entity or object for that matter—singular. Instead of saying ‘birds can fly,’ MEB paired with Transformer models can take this to another level of classification, saying ‘birds can fly, except ostriches, penguins, and these other birds.’”

Discerning hidden intent. “When looking into the top features learned by MEB, we found it can learn hidden intents between query and document,” Bing said.

MEB was able to learn that “Hotmail” is strongly correlated to “Microsoft Outlook,” even though the two aren’t close in terms of semantic meaning. Hotmail was rebranded as Microsoft Outlook and MEB was able to pick up on this relationship. Similarly, it learned the connection between “Fox31” and “KDVR” (despite there being no overt semantic connection between the two phrases), where KDVR is the call sign of the TV channel that operates under the brand Fox31.

MEB can also identify negative relationships between phrases, which helps it understand what users don’t want to see for a given query. In the examples Bing provided, users searching for “baseball” don’t typically click on pages talking about “hockey” even though the two are both popular sports, and the same applies to 瑜伽 (yoga) and documents containing 歌舞 (dancing and singing).

Training and scale. MEB is trained on three years of Bing search that contain more than 500 billion query/document pairs. For each search impression, Bing uses heuristics to gauge whether the user was satisfied with the result they clicked on. The “satisfactory” documents are labeled as positive samples and other documents in the same impression are labeled as negative samples. Binary features are then extracted from the query text, document URL, title and body text of each query/document pair and fed into a sparse neural network model. Bing provides more specific details on how MEB works in its official announcement.

Even after being implemented into Bing, MEB is refreshed daily by continuously training on the latest daily click data (as shown above). To help mitigate the impact of stale features, each feature’s timestamps are checked and the ones that have not shown up in the last 500 days are filtered out. The daily deployment of the updated model is also fully automated.

What it means for Bing Search. As mentioned above, introducing MEB on top of Bing’s production Transformer models has resulted in:

• An almost 2% increase in clickthrough rate on the top search results (above the fold) without the need to scroll down.
• A reduction in manual query reformulation by more than 1%.
• A reduction of clicks on pagination by over 1.5%.

Why we care. Improved search relevance means that users are more likely to find what they’re looking for faster, on the first page of results, without the need to reformulate their queries. For marketers, this also means that if you’re on page 2 of the search results, your content probably isn’t relevant to the search.

MEB’s more nuanced understanding of content may also help to drive more traffic to brands, businesses and publishers, since the search results may be more relevant. And, MEB’s understanding of correlated phrases (e.g., “Hotmail” and “Microsoft Outlook”) and negative relationships (e.g., “baseball” and “hockey”) may enable marketers to spend more time focusing on what customers are really searching for instead of fixating on the right keywords to rank higher.

For the search industry, this may help Bing maintain its position. Google has already laid out its vision for MUM (although we’re far from seeing its full potential in action), and MEB may bolster Bing’s traditional search capabilities, which will help it continue to compete against the industry leader and other search engines.

The post Meet Make Every feature Binary: Bing’s sparse neural network for improved search relevance appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Having spent the last 11 years surrounded by sales leaders, Amanda Farley Partner and Director of Accounts and Digital Strategy at SSDM, picked up on some of their biggest successes and opportunities. But recently, she had the idea to apply them outside of the sales box and into her digital marketing campaigns. “This is really what sales and marketing integration is all about,” said Farley. “It’s about building the relationships, the trust and guiding [buyers] to impactful solutions that ultimately lead into more sales or leads.

Learning from the sales process: An introduction to buyer influencers

These buyer personas are based on a book called, The New Strategic Selling by Robert B. Miller and Stephen E. Heiman. “Your strategy can only begin when you know who your players are,” added Farley. “The best way to think of it is like a football team: every player must be on the field to close the deal.”

• Economic buyer. Has the ability to commit funds to a purchase
• User buyer. The end-user of your product or service
• Technical buyer. Ensures all the technical specifications are met
• Coach. Really wants your solution to win

When we take this into our marketing efforts, we need to understand what each audience cares about most, what their content preferences are, and what channels they’re most likely to engage in.

Economic buyer

“This person prefers content with data visualizations, photography, and charts because they’re ROI-focused and need the social proof behind any decision that they’re going to make,” said Farley. They’re also high consumers of video content and love to see case studies and financial models.

User buyer

The user buyer is the one responsible for screening out potential solutions and understands all the key factors that go into various options they’re considering. This person is interested more in the details than the high-level overview that the economic buyer might find more interesting. The user buyer engages with charts, infographics, solution comparison guides, or category matrices.

“They’re whole ‘thing’ is being able to pitch [the product/service] to their economic and technical buyers,” added Farley. This user also cares deeply about how the solution will help them: will it make my job easier, better, faster, etc.?

Technical buyers

This buyer’s main role is to run interference for the economic buyer. “At the enterprise level, we see this with purchasing departments or procurement, but it can also be an operations manager. The question this buyer is always asking if the solution has what it takes to make the entire organization successful. The technical buyer is focused on data and leverages the user buyer for expertise.

Coach

This can be any of the other buyers or an outside influencer. They have potential personal gain from you winning. “This is someone who’s going to get something from your solution being the key decision,” said Farley. If you have a key influencer in your audience who is also a coach, that’s how to unlock success from marketing campaigns.

How to leverage these buyer personas in your PPC campaigns

Step 1. Define the buyer influencers. This is the part where you amass as much information as you can. Talk to customer service, sales teams, marketing teams, and more. Determine the person’s role in the buying process, their background and education, the company size, the buyer’s demographics or other defining traits, and their motivations, pain points and entry points.

“If they’re in growth mode, that’s a good foot in the door. But if they’re in trouble, it will always trump growth in sales,” said Farley. “So, from a marketing perspective, if we know trouble pain points, that’s also where we should focus because we know that it will ultimately make the difference.”

Step 2. Perform audience research. Now that you’ve found each buyer type and maybe new ways to think about your audience, you need to deep dive into the data. Figure out what your audience cares about most. What websites are they on? What YouTube channels do they watch the most? What social media preferences do they have? What types of content are they sharing?

From there, Farley recommends noting the differences in this information between influencers. You may find some overlap, but the differences can help inform your strategy even more. In an example with an aerospace client, she found that the economic buyer’s second most-used social media channel was LinkedIn while the user buyer went to Instagram. This can change how you focus your campaign strategies and messaging for each platform.

The last part of the research is keyword and topic analysis. Any of the main keyword tools work for this part. “We look at — what are the key focus points? Is there any overlap? But also can I actually spot the buyer influencer” in what and how they’re searching, Farley said. This can craft how you’re displaying content and creating search ads or messaging landing pages. The key, she says, it tweaking the messaging for each product or service campaign to target those buyer personas.

Step 3. Other ways to use data and audience research. You can look at top channels for sponsorship opportunities like in podcasts or influencer campaigns that each buyer might listen to. You can target your media buys to these channels and even build relationships with hosts and reporters in these areas.

Implementing the research in PPC campaigns

Firstly, Farley recommends paid search advertisers think big and imagine what they would do if budget wasn’t a limiting factor.

Google Ads. “Go into each channel and create, cast, and layer. With Google, I like to use the custom audience or sandbox building of display campaigns. You can upload things like all of the YouTube channels that you found along with those key topic or purchase intents that you found in the keyword research to really get those estimates of: How many people are looking for this? And what could potential costs look like?” she added.

Farley also recommends layering custom with affinity or intent (especially if you have good lookalike or first part data) to see what works. You’ll have to balance what’s too narrow with what’s big enough to be able to serve. The key is understanding what’s possible and testing from there.

Microsoft Advertising. Microsoft’s Audience Network gets kudos from Farley, too. “You can actually target using LinkedIn data into their display network, so things like job function, industry, company, in-market segments… you can build that all and get your estimates and figure out what could a potential budget or strategy look like,” she said.

Facebook and Instagram. While these options are constantly changing and evolving, Facebook and Instagram have allowed us to target by job type and interest, and use our first-party data.

Working within your budgets

Now that we’ve dreamed big and seen what’s possible, we have to work within the frameworks set by clients and stakeholders including budget and regulations, etc. Farley offers a planning framework where she starts off looking at who her primary audience should be. She determines if there are specific focus areas like industry or location. From there she finds the best channel based on the audience insights we gained earlier and keeps her KPIs in mind. Leverage the percent of potential investment based on those set KPIs.

It’s also critical to look at the content or pain point to determine what it means for your ad assets. “We can’t be everything to everyone all the time because we have to work in the budgets,” Farley reminds PPC marketers. She recommends looking at your media map as percent by channel by funnel: “If we can say, if search will need to be 50%, then display is 20% because we can’t be always on for everything.”

Seasonality. Don’t forget seasonal trends, reminds Farley. “It just gives us a high-level look at what the seasonality in each market tells us.” You can know the best times to leverage campaigns, know when competitors will be bumping up costs, and more.

Testing. Make sure your settings are limiting waste before you launch! “Once you launch, test, monitor, optimize, and test again,” she recommends. After that, you can remove low-performers and update creative, ads and messaging to better fit your target audience. And, of course, amplify your best strategies. The cycle is never-ending, though, as she recommends advertisers continue to test, log, optimize, and test again.

Top insights:

• Find your buyer influencers, then leverage into audience targeting for campaigns.
• Determine what’s possible and then laser-focus in, on what matters most with realistic investments.
• Test and optimize audience layering with creative performance. Report, optimize, evaluate for success and repeat.

Watch the full session at SMX Advanced >>

The post A new way to approach your PPC personas: Learning from the sales process to limit waste and accelerate ROI appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.

Good morning, Marketers, “are we there yet?”

That seems to be the question on everyone’s mind: are we really getting closer to the end of the pandemic or are we getting ready for another wave? How do we even know what to prepare for?

Amazon share prices took their biggest drop in a year on Friday, and Etsy, eBay and Wayfair also saw their prices drop, too. The return of pre-pandemic consumer behavior may help explain the slowdown for these companies. But, the seven-day average for new COVID cases is on the rise; it’s currently back to where it was at the end of October.

To the e-commerce marketers among us, I’d like to know what your strategy looks like over the next three to six months: Are you planning for a “normal” rest of the year? Has your supply chain been impacted? What are you doing to navigate that? How will your ad budget change? Did you pivot your content strategy? Please send me an email, I’m gnguyen@thirddoormedia.com (subject line: Sounds like a plan!).

George Nguyen,
Editor

Google math solver guidelines require accuracy

Google has added several new technical and content quality guidelines to its math solver structured data help documentation. The new guidelines list a number of requirements in order to be able to show math solver and practice problem rich results in Google Search.

The technical guidelines require that MathSolver structured data be added to the homepage of your site, your host load settings allow for frequent crawls, canonical URLs are used on each copy of a page (if you have several identical copies of the same math solver hosted under different URLs) and that your math solvers aren’t entirely hidden behind a login or paywall.

The new content guidelines state that “promotional content disguised as a math solver, such as those posted by a third party (for example, affiliate programs)” is not allowed and, if a certain amount of your data is found to be inaccurate, Google may remove your solver until you resolve the issue.

Read more here.

SEOs and e-commerce marketers weigh in on product ranking factors

Over 80% of respondents selected keywords in the name of the product as the most important ranking factor for products in Google Search, according to a study conducted by Joe Youngblood. There was a three-way tie for second place between keywords in the reviews, keywords in the title tag and the number of inbound links. And, internal links took fifth place, with 68.2% of the responses.

Youngblood’s study goes as far as to list the top 20 product ranking factors for Google Search, according to the 35 SEOs and e-commerce marketers that participated in the study. At the bottom of the list are recency of reviews, linking document quantity and number of photos or videos of the product.

Why we care. While reviews and media may not be the most important ranking factors, they’re still worth putting effort into as they may convince prospective buyers to make a purchase. The sample size here is quite small, but it may still be worth taking a glance at the responses to see if your experiences align with that of the participants.

Google Ads Editor v1.7 brings support for Hotel ads and lead form extensions

Google Ads Editor v1.7 will be available in just under a week, on August 9. With this update, advertisers can use the Google Ads Editor to manage their Hotel ads, YouTube audio ads and lead form extensions, and select specific parts of their campaigns to download for offline work.

Why we care. For advertisers that use lead forms or run Hotel and/or YouTube audio ads in the web interface, the Google Ads Editor now supports these features so they can be managed offline. The ability to download specific parts of a campaign may also make it easier for advertisers to work on their campaigns while offline.

Read more here.

Chatbots have been around for decades, but have they gotten any better?

Bing is testing a new chat feature. Sunny Ujjawal caught a glimpse of a chat box on Bing. “This is an experimental AI-powered Chat on Bing.com,” the disclaimer reads. Bing added a CDC coronavirus self-checker chatbot to the SERP last year, but this test doesn’t seem to have a specific application in mind.

Google removes rich result type from performance reports. Google has removed the generic rich result type from GSC performance reports and the API. The company gave us a heads up about this in May, and now it’s officially gone.

Interview with Veruska Anconitano. Women in Tech SEO has a weekly interview series, and this week, Veruska Anconitano, who focuses on helping startups enter non-English-speaking markets, shared her approach to SEO as well as advice for women who are starting out in the field.

Analyzing the performance of various GMB Post types

Sterling Sky’s Joy Hawkins recently shared a case study in which her team manually analyzed clicks (according to Google My Business [GMB]) and clicks and conversions (inside Google Analytics) for over 1,000 GMB Posts from a variety of small businesses. The findings cover the types of Posts that perform best, whether to use titles and emojis, what to include in Post images and what to post about.

• COVID Posts performed the best, followed by event Posts, offer Posts and update Posts. COVID Posts appear higher up in the local knowledge panel, but they’re text-only. Note that COVID Posts actually replace your Posts carousel, so your other Posts won’t be visible anywhere else.
• Posts with titles got almost twice as many clicks and conversions as ones without titles. Just make sure you’re not writing them in all caps — Posts with regularly capitalized titles received nearly twice as many clicks.
• Posts that contained emojis received double the clicks, according to GMB insights, and also got more conversions than ones without.
• Photos that contained text in them received nearly four times the clicks compared to photos without text. Logos don’t seem to count, though, as there was no measurable difference between Posts that contained logos and ones that didn’t.
• The GMB Post types that received the most activity were about specials or discounts. Second to that were ones that contained CTAs. And, the third-best-performing Post type contained a sense of urgency (e.g., same-day appointments).  

The post How do you plan for in-person consumer behavior and COVID at the same time?; Tuesday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.

“With this strategy, you set your budget, where you want your ads to appear, and your Target Impression Share, and Microsoft Advertising automatically sets your bids,” wrote Kevin Salat, Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft Advertising.

When to use this strategy. Microsoft Advertising’s announcement has recommendations for when to use target impression share bidding including finding more visibility and awareness, gaining a competitive advantage, and increasing the likelihood of more click and conversion volume.

Best practices. Salat also included some best practices for those just trying out the target impression share bidding strategy. “Start with low-risk campaigns setting an impression share to target based on historical performance at first,” he said. This gives the AI time to learn and determine performance over the learning period. Salat also recommends using experiments “in A/A mode for 1-2 weeks before testing the strategy.” Salat also does not recommend setting a max CPC cap because it can limit performance.

Why we care. This strategy could be helpful for those who trust AI to drive their bid strategy. Automation has been taking over a lot of paid advertising, so it makes sense if search marketers may be wary of this at first, but Microsoft’s best practices could help ensure that you’re using the right strategy for your campaign goals.

Other news from Microsoft Advertising:

Product conversion goals. In the same announcement blog, Microsoft launched product conversion goals for Shopping Campaigns or other feed-based campaigns. With these “you’ll now be able to get a better understanding of the products your customers are buying after clicking on your ads,” said Salat.

Automated extensions. Beginning in August there will be new automated extensions in Microsoft Advertising:

• Dynamic Location enhances ads with location information from your location extensions and Bing Maps
• Dynamic Multimedia enhances ads with multimedia assets, such as images and videos (begins flighting in early 2022)
• Syndication Decorations enhance ads with additional decorations added by search partners.

Account organization. Advertisers will also be able to organize their accounts with a new labeling system. This will be helpful for advertisers with multiple accounts. “Account-level labels will help you easily tag accounts, campaigns, ads, and keywords in your management scope with labels and also allow you [to] pivot your reports and insights with those labels,” wrote Salat.

Unified account changes. With the latest update, “users of unified campaigns are now able to manage multiple sub-accounts underneath a single parent account,” according to the announcement. Users will be able to do the following:

• Create multiple unified campaigns accounts underneath the same manager account.
• Create a mix of unified campaigns and expert mode accounts underneath the same manager account.
• Link to and from manager accounts that contain a combination of unified campaigns and expert mode accounts.

The post Target impression share bidding, other August changes now available in Microsoft Ads appeared first on Search Engine Land.