As a loan officer or mortgage broker, you know how important it is to comply with laws and regulations. Several necessary regulations affect mortgage marketing. Ensuring that your brochures, advertisements, and emails follow regulations is paramount.
Here are five regulations and restrictions to consider when designing your mortgage marketing strategy:
1. Mortgage Acts and Practices — Advertising
Otherwise known as Regulation N, this act governs advertising within the mortgage industry. It prohibits deceptive claims in mortgage advertising and other commercial communications. Examples of misleading claims include:
Advertising a low fixed rate that is only applicable for a short period
Failing to include significant loan terms, such as the length of the loan or type of loan
Implying that the mortgage lender is part of a government agency when they are not
Mortgage lenders and brokers must be cautious not to use misleading advertising. Any brochures should be reviewed before sending them to potential customers.
2. Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Act
The Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Act prohibit discriminatory advertising practices. Mortgage ads may not result in bias according to age, nationality, or race.
Ads should be straightforward and present lending opportunities to anyone. There should be no preference given to certain classes of people. For example, an advertisement for an apartment cannot include the phrase “no children.” It also may not say “no wheelchairs” or anything else discriminatory.
3. Equal Credit Opportunity Act
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act requires loan approvals made based on creditworthiness. Thus, a lender cannot prevent someone from applying for a mortgage based on a factor such as age or race.
The act aims to ensure all people have access to mortgage loans based on their credit histories. If a mortgage lender advertises a specific loan, they can’t include language such as “no foreign applicants.”
4. Truth in Lending Act
The Truth in Lending Act applies to any advertisement designed to promote consumer credit. It contains two main points that apply to real estate credit.
First, an advertisement cannot promote lending terms that are not customary. If a down payment of 20% is required to buy a home, an ad cannot promote $1,000 down payments.
Second, financing rates must be visible. If a promotional interest rate applies for a few months, the annual rate must be in the same point size and typeface as the promotional rate.
5. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Rules
The CFPB oversees the regulation of marketing materials for real estate lending. It often sends warnings and notifications when companies are breaching advertisement requirements. A recent sweep found lenders were sending ads with government stamps on them. The lenders have no affiliation with any government agency.
How a Mortgage CRM Can Help You
BNTouch offers a Mortgage CRM for those seeking to manage their advertising efforts. The CRM can help you remain compliant.
Privacy-focused search engine Brave Search is adding conversations from forums to its results with a new feature called Discussions. It is now available for desktop and mobile.
Why Brave Search created Discussions. Brave said the goal is to provide more conversations around topics. Whereas websites have one point of view, a site like Reddit offers multiple points of view. Reddit also has a built-in way to measure the quality of an answer (upvotes or likes).
“Discussions are the first step to making search more diverse in content, increasing points of view in results, and ultimately helping people find the most useful, relevant info,” Brave said in a statement to Search Engine Land. “People want easy access to a variety of authentic search results. With Discussions, Brave Search is meeting that demand.”
What Discussions look like. Here’s a screenshot of a Discussion on a search for [lcd vs oled monitor]:
How Discussions work. Discussions can be triggered in search by questions about products, current events, travel, computer programming and coding, as well as “highly unique or specific questions.”
Brave Search said its ranking algorithm can detect queries where a discussion forum might give an alternative or complementary viewpoint to the search results. Brave creates a “discussion worthiness” score based on a variety of signals, including:
Freshness (or recency) of the topic.
The popularity of the topic on a given forum.
The quality of the conversation (as measured by user engagement, such as upvotes or responses).
The search quality score (which measures how relevant the discussion is to a query).
Where Discussions come from. Brave Search now includes conversations from Reddit and StackExchange. However, Brave said it plans to add more sources soon.
New milestone. Brave Search is not a major player in search and probably isn’t even given any thought as part of your search strategy. However, Brave Search does continue to grow. It has passed 12 million queries per day, or roughly 4.2 billion per year. (For comparison, DuckDuckGo serves 97 million searches per day, while estimates put Google at more than 5 billion per day).
Why we care. This is a particularly interesting feature in light of recent criticisms of Google around a lack of diversity in search results. There was just a long thread going on Reddit yesterday filled with complaints about Google’s search quality. What Brave Search is doing could be a model that will end up helping Google solve some of these problems. Interestingly, Google seems to be testing a similar feature called What people are saying that highlights discussions from Reddit and other communities.
Ultimately, a discussion or conversation feature could be coming to Google, which means even more competition in the SERPs. So it may be worth looking at a platform like Reddit to see if there is an opportunity to get your brand or business mentioned in relevant discussions for queries that include this SERP feature.
Google is testing some significant changes to featured snippets. Both will give searchers a more diverse set of sources in the coveted featured snippet position.
From the web. A typical featured snippet features text from, and a link to, one website. In this From the web test, Google shows brief excerpts from two or three different websites, linking to each source separately. Google also includes the site’s favicon.
Here’s an example screenshot (shared via Twitter by @vladrpt):
Other sites say. There’s also another variation of this featured snippet test where Google groups three sites beneath the typical paragraph-style featured snippet, under a heading of Other sites say.
Why we care. If you own featured snippets for important keywords, you potentially could see your traffic reduced, as clicks could go to competing pages. Rather than owning the valuable SERP real estate outright, your site might end up sharing a featured snippet with at least one or two other sites (the number of sources could even be higher in the future, depending on whether this change rolls out permanently and how Google judges the success of the feature). On the flip side, if you don’t currently own a featured snippet, this gives you two additional chances to get there and potentially drive some more traffic.
Their design is archetypal. Their position on the page is seemingly obvious. For years they have proven their value for SEO. And yet, as we have moved to mobile-first indexing, many sites get breadcrumb navigation wrong or have no breadcrumb trail at all.
That is a mistake.
Breadcrumbs are beneficial for SEO and usability when optimally implemented for mobile devices. Here’s everything you need to know to get them right.
What is breadcrumb navigation?
Typically, breadcrumbs navigation is a line of contextual links that indicate where the user is on a website. They are a form of secondary navigation, allowing users to trace their path in the site hierarchy.
When should you use breadcrumbs?
Not all websites benefit from breadcrumbs. They aren’t necessary for sites that:
Do not contain many nested navigation levels.
Have no logical hierarchy or grouping.
Are designed as linear experiences.
For such websites with flat structures where much of the content comfortably sits on the same level, breadcrumbs would offer little value as they wouldn’t contain more than two levels.
This can be true even for large websites. For example, a business news site may offer many topics and thousands of articles, but wouldn’t need multiple levels of navigation.
On the other hand, for sites based on complex hierarchical structures breadcrumbs are essential. The classic example is ecommerce, but their application is much wider.
The question is how to make breadcrumbs helpful to both users and Google. This is an art of its own.
For SEO, there should be only one: hierarchical breadcrumbs. This is why.
Path-based breadcrumb trails display a user’s unique steps leading to their current page.
Showing a user’s previous click path is not best practice for SEO or usability.
It replicates functionality offered by the browser back button.
It is useless for users who land on a page deep within the site.
It is often long, repetitive and ultimately confusing for the user.
Since breadcrumbs are dynamic and unique to each session, search engines won’t process the internal links.
Breadcrumbs should show hierarchy, not history.
Attribute-based breadcrumbs are encouraged when the content on a particular page belongs to multiple categories and attributes. For example, a shoe may be a black, ankle-length boot with a heel.
There is no logical hierarchy for these characteristics. So there is a question of in what order to display the breadcrumbs. Should the breadcrumbs trail look like:
Home > Boots > Heels > Black > Ankle Length
Or
Home > Heels > Boots > Ankle Length > Black
Or some other combination.
I’ve seen recommendations to designate a primary path based on attribute usage or query volume. Or personalize the breadcrumb trail so that it will reflect each user’s individual path within the site hierarchy. Both are the wrong approach.
Rather than trying to force the linear structure of breadcrumbs on something innately polyhierarchical. Ditch the requirement for them to be within a breadcrumb trail. Rather display the attributes in a format suited to their nature as filters options.
That leaves us with hierarchy-based breadcrumb navigation. These visualize the depth of the site architecture, starting with the broadest top-level category and progressing down through more specific, nested subcategories before arriving at the current page.
Hierarchy breadcrumbs are the most commonly used, most intuitively understood and the most powerful for SEO. As such, will be the only type considered for the remainder of this article.
SEO benefits of breadcrumb navigation and structured data
Breadcrumbs are an essential element to support wayfinding – orientating the user and offering one-click access to relevant, higher-level pages. This is especially important when a visitor lands on a page deep within the website hierarchy. For example, on a product page after clicking on a long-tail query Google search result.
But it’s more than website usability. Breadcrumbs support every step of the SEO process.
1. More crawling
The internal links generated by the breadcrumbs help to expose all levels of the hierarchy to search engine crawlers. This is especially important for lower levels, which may not be reached or when reached may not achieve a high enough priority in Google’s crawl queue without such signals.
The benefits can be measured by a reduction in “discovered – currently not indexed” exclusions in Google Search Console and increased crawl frequency.
2. Better indexing
Hierarchical links help Google to contextualise content and correctly associate pages in the site structure. If Google only sees URLs through a sitemap file, they don’t understand how the URLs are related to each other.
This causes difficulties when Google tries to understand how relevant a page is in the context of the site. Breadcrumb links support the formation of topic silos, which are becoming increasingly important with entity-focused indexing.
The benefits can be measured by an increase in valid URLs in Google Search Console and a faster indexing speed.
3. Higher ranking, SERP clicks and organic sessions
Breadcrumbs support ranking in two ways:
Strengthens the internal link architecture: Allowing link equity to flow between thematically related pages.
A natural way to include keywords above the fold: This is unlikely to show impact on highly competitive queries, but can make a difference in the long tail.
The benefits can be measured in decrease in average position as well as increase in impressions in Google Search Console. Increased rank will increase clicks and thus organic sessions as a matter of course.
On-site breadcrumbs vs. schema markup breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs displayed on page and breadcrumb schema markup are separate things. Just because there are breadcrumbs on site, doesn’t mean there is breadcrumb structured data.
The fastest way to understand if your site has valid breadcrumb schema markup is to check the breadcrumbs report in Google Search Console. If you see errors, review the BreadcrumbList structured data.
For optimal impact, it’s best that both not only exist but corroborate one another’s message about site structure. This will further support Google to contextualise content, again leading to better indexing.
Also, breadcrumb structured data may assist organic performance by changing the URL path to a breadcrumb path in the SERP snippet. Although Google can display a breadcrumb path even without the breadcrumb markup.
Conversely, as with most markup, the mere presence of schema markup doesn’t guarantee the change and it can at times result in suboptimal breadcrumb path outcomes, often depending on length. So track the impact carefully. But for most sites, breadcrumb structured data is a best practice.
Best practice breadcrumb navigation
Breadcrumb navigation has previously been a staunchly consistent interface component. Likely because of their relative simplicity.
There are hierarchical links, and they are separated by some sort of a delimiter. But then mobile-first arrived and things got complicated. The historical best practices needed to be modified for the smaller screen.
So, what are breadcrumbs best practices for UX for mobile?
The key user experience best practices are:
Consistently available: Breadcrumbs should be present on every relevant page. Relevant meaning they add significant wayfinding value that is worth the prime placement.
Logical location: Position breadcrumbs directly underneath the primary navigation menu and above the H1. This is where users expect it. Put anywhere else, you will not reap the full usability benefits and if low on the page will reduce their internal linking power.
Clear start and end: Breadcrumbs should show the journey from the homepage to the current page. The homepage acts as an anchor giving a strong sense of orientation to the users. Showing the last item as a non-clickable and as such visually distinct element confirms to the user what page they are currently on.
Symbolic separator: The optimal delimiter for separating hyperlinks in breadcrumb trails remains the ‘greater than’ symbol (>) as it is concise while indicating the relationship between pages. Other options such as slashes (/) or pipes (|) do not denote hierarchy. While options such as » and -> take up unnecessary space.
Sized just right: Keep breadcrumb design simple and unobtrusive using a small font, although large enough and padded enough to be a tap target, in a style consistent with text links on the rest of their website. Don’t clutter the line with unnecessary text such as “You are here” or “Navigation”.
And, what are breadcrumb SEO best practices for mobile-first indexing?
It’s a no-brainer, but so many sites get this wrong. Have breadcrumbs visible on mobile in the same design as desktop.
Like any critical SEO element, these must be rendered on the server side and crawlable without JavaScript enabled.
Include the full navigational path down the hierarchy to the current page. Link all these pages, except the last item to avoid the confusion of a self referencing link reloading the page. Don’t shorten breadcrumbs by omitting steps or truncating intermediate steps with “…” or including only the last levels. These all negate the breadcrumbs SEO power.
The question then becomes, how to include all links without breadcrumbs wrapping onto multiple lines on mobile. Not only because a multi-line breadcrumb trail does not illustrate the structure of the chain well. But more importantly, because it eats up precious space on the small screen.
To achieve single line breadcrumbs without sacrificing design or usability, leverage overflow. This allows users to swipe to see the entire trail, which can be encouraged with the inclusion of a swiper assistant or horizontal scroll bar. However, it is imperative that the overflow is implemented with CSS to remain SEO friendly.
Just because breadcrumbs are now sitting pretty on a single line, doesn’t give a licence to make the user work at scrolling. Keep anchor text succinct and keyword relevant.
Don’t feel you must mirror the page heading in breadcrumbs. It’s nice to have, but not at the expense of them becoming long or repetitive. And don’t ever cut page titles off using ellipses. Rather decide on a clear short name to use.
For example, on a property portal, if you base it on title, you may end up with the breadcrumbs:
Home > Property for sale > Houses for sale > Houses for sale in London > Houses for sale in Islington > 3 Bedroom houses for sale in Islington
Rather than the concise:
Home > Sale > Houses > London > Islington > 3 Bed
Breadcrumbs are essential
Breadcrumbs are an essential form of secondary navigation for hierarchically complex sites. They support wayfinding, improving usability and decreasing pogo-sticking from Google SERPs.
Additionally, it boosts SEO due to facilitating crawling, contextualizing content for indexing and providing internal link equity. Archetypal styling with a mobile-first twist of the entire breadcrumb trail fitting on a single line thanks to CSS overflow will show the full power of breadcrumbs.
Positive client relationships can make or break a real estate deal. Use these 15 tips to strengthen your client relationships, generate referrals, and more.
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Google seems to be sending out notices through Google Search Console for sites that have intrusive interstitials. The notice tells the site owner to remove those intrusive interstitials in order to “improve page experience” for your site.
What the email says. We spotted a copy of the subject line of the email in the Google Webmaster Help forums and it reads “Improve your page experience by removing intrusive interstitials from domain.com.” We have been unable to find the full email or a screenshot of this notice yet.
What are intrusive interstitials. Google says “intrusive interstitials and dialogs are page elements that obstruct users’ view of the content, usually for promotional purposes. Interstitials are overlays on the whole page and dialogs are overlays only on a part of the page, sometimes also obfuscating the underlying content. Websites often need to show dialogs for various reasons; however, interrupting users with intrusive interstitials may frustrate them and erode their trust in your website. Intrusive dialogs and interstitials make it hard for Google and other search engines to understand your content, which may lead to poor search performance. Equally, if users find your site hard to use, they are unlikely to want to visit those websites again, including through search engines.”
What is page experience? Google has a detailed developer document on page experience criteria. In short, these metrics aim to understand how a user will perceive the experience of a specific web page: considerations such as whether the page loads quickly, if it’s mobile-friendly, runs on HTTPS, the presence of intrusive ads and if content jumps around as the page loads.
Desktop also. This can be an issue for desktop as well since the page experience update is now live for desktop pages.
Why we care. While this does not appear to be a manual action, intrusive interstitials do impact your overall page experience signals and can impact your rankings in a super lightweight manner. So if you get this notice, try to remove the intrusive interstitials from your website.
I am what might be called a veteran search engine optimizer. I have many years of experience speaking at multiple SEO events (conferences, webinars, training and so forth). I often get involved in controversial SEO debates on various social media outlets.
I have also had my share of bullying.
However, I have also learned much from other SEO veterans. They have been outstanding role models for people in our industry.
In this article, I want to share what I’ve learned from participating in so many SEO events and my experience on social media platforms. Here is what I have learned about handling unprofessional treatment.
1. Listen to multiple perspectives on any SEO or SEM topic
I know this might seem counterintuitive. If you are in a real-time situation, it is perfectly normal to have an initial defensive reaction.
Go past this reaction. If you listen, you will likely learn things you might never have thought about or encountered. Listening to and reading about different approaches to SEO can make you a more effective SEO.
I learned this from Danny Sullivan, now Public Liaison for Search at Google. Whenever he put together a session for one of his conferences, he always included a panel of experts with diverse opinions.
At first, I thought Sullivan was nutso. However, once I realized he was showing his journalist side by doing thorough research, my viewpoint also changed.
I wasn’t initially the greatest at keeping my opinions to myself. In fact, Sullivan pointed out to me, privately, that I was shaking my head when I sometimes disagreed with a fellow panelist. I was not consciously aware that I was doing it. Yet it allowed me to stop myself in order to pay attention to what other speakers were communicating.
I did not necessarily have to agree with others’ perspectives. Nor do you. However, listen to others’ perspectives. Try to understand each point of view. It will help you become better at SEO.
2. Be courteous when taking notes
If you are at a real-time or recorded event, learn how to mute your keyboard, even if you have a quiet keyboard. The sound will distract attendees from speaker content, especially if multiple attendees are typing at the same time. Mouse clicks can also be a distraction.
This tip might seem obvious given high school, college and university settings. With professional events, however, the point is to listen to the speaker, not to distract him or her.
My note-taking would become quite vehement whenever I heard the word “facet.” Faceted navigation leads to duplicate content delivery. The same content is organized in many different ways. The more facets you place on your website, the more costly it is to manage duplicate content delivery to both web and site search engines.
I learned this tip from Michelle Robbins, former Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief. I once took notes on my tablet when I was on panels. It looked unprofessional even though I was only taking notes. Using my tablet gave the impression that I was ignoring the other panelist, not paying attention even though the opposite was true.
As of this writing, the COVID-19 epidemic has limited in-person events. Nevertheless, do your best to be civil and courteous when taking notes once we return to in-person events.
3. Show common courtesy when asking for clarification and challenging an opinion
Nobody has the exact same frame of reference as another person. For example, my frame of reference for SEO is viewing it as a form of communication among content providers, searchers, and search engines. I believe that SEO is optimizing for people who use search engines. People first, technology second.
In my previous definitions of SEO in my books, I used different definitions. These definitions emphasized the marketing aspect of SEO more than the communication aspect. So my frame of reference has evolved. In fact, I once was miffed at the U.S. Congress for not having basic knowledge about web search.
That doesn’t mean that others have the same SEO definition that I have. It also doesn’t mean that my approach to SEO is the same as others. For example, I have never spammed search engines. I never will, either. I feel it is biting the proverbial hand that feeds you.
It’s okay to challenge an SEO opinion. Our world would be quite boring if we all agreed with each other. I learn more from challenging opinions than blindly accepting everything I read and hear.
What do I mean, really? Do not label people unfairly. Do not be rude or condescending. Avoid stereotypes. Whenever I hear name-calling or personal attacks, it means that my point of view is likely correct because an antagonizer does not challenge my research. He or she resorts to personal attacks.
Stick to your facts, data, and research. Don’t take the “unfairness” bait.
4. Follow people you disagree with on social media
This piece of advice also might seem counterintuitive. Again, my point is to learn from other people. That means learning from people who have different perspectives than you have.
It has helped to follow SEOs who disagree with me. I want to know reasons why we disagree. It might be something as simple as our perspectives on search engine spam. I do not do it. Other SEOs believe it is up to a company or organization to take the risk. Different approaches, different business models.
I’ve learned that many SEOs consider taxonomy to only be hierarchical. When in reality, a hierarchical-only taxonomy can lead to orphans and silos, two things that negatively impact search engine visibility. Link building guru Eric Ward taught me so much about silos. So did information-architecture guru Peter Morville.
SEOs who don’t understand IA often misunderstand IA as a part of SEO. The information architecture (IA) process should begin before actual SEO on a website. In fact, a search-engine friendly and accessible labeling system should be a part of a website’s style guide.
Following them on social media, reading their books, and implementing their suggestions have proved invaluable to me both as an SEO professional and as an information architect.
I should note the contrary situation. One colleague who disagreed with me on just about every SEO topic would constantly challenge my points of view. She did not hesitate to stereotype me to colleagues and her friends. Nevertheless, I still followed her on social media. I wanted to learn why she treated me so poorly.
I learned the reason. Somehow, she “looked down” on my education and training. Granted, I do not expect my colleagues to go to the extent that I do for formal education. Ph.D. programs are not for everyone.
My education is my choice. My selection of training and certification programs is also my choice. My choices do not have to be others’ choices.
Whenever I am challenged at a search event, I often provide resources: books, articles, training classes, certification programs, and so forth. I provide sources of my information and data.
Lesson learned? I unfollowed this particular colleague. Her posts and articles did not add to my search knowledge. I gave her a fair chance.
Don’t be afraid to give colleagues who disagree with you a fair chance. You will often learn things that never occurred to you.
5. Give SEO colleagues each a fair chance
I am grateful to two specific people for this tip, Barry Schwartz and Bill Slawski. I used to disagree with both of these gentlemen for years.
Now? I have a deep respect for what they have done for the SEO industry. They have become SEO archivists. (I once wrote about SEO and archiving here.)
If you need information about SEO and patents, Slawski is the best go-to person. If you need information about algorithm updates, Schwartz’s articles are an outstanding resource.
I admit I wasn’t always supportive because I initially did not understand that both Slawski and Schwartz were becoming two of the best SEO archivists in the industry. However, I kept giving them fair, objective observations over the years. Once I realized that it was my perspective that needed adjusting? I did it.
Now I do not hesitate to refer to both of my colleagues for support and even jobs – ones where I believe they are more qualified than I am.
Ignore your initial defense mechanism when being challenged
Here is a quick summary of how to handle unprofessional SEO treatment:
Genuinely listen to multiple perspectives on any SEO or SEM topic.
Be courteous when taking notes.
Show common courtesy when asking for clarification and challenging an opinion.
Follow people you disagree with on social media.
Give SEO colleagues each a fair chance.
You can professionally disagree with other SEO colleagues. While doing so, you might learn things that are crucial to your SEO career. You never know. You might just learn information from them that never otherwise would have occurred to you.
Conversions are the key KPI when defining the success of direct response campaigns for both B2B and B2C.
These days, conversions are so top priority that many companies don’t even spend money on brand awareness campaigns in their paid social strategies.
When marketers get way into the weeds with conversions, they often forget about the benefits, and long-term impact, of micro-conversions.
What are micro-conversions?
Micro-conversions signal high intent and a strong likelihood that someone will convert on our primary conversion goal, resulting in a significant improvement in conversion metrics when put to use.
Think of a micro-conversion as one small task completion, or a secondary action a website visitor takes, that indicates they will convert.
For paid social, we consider any incremental step a user takes when showing initial interest in a brand as a micro-conversion. That could be:
Engagement with ads.
Opening lead gen forms.
Watching videos XX% of the time.
Liking/following your brand pages.
A significant benefit of micro-conversions on social platforms: many are automatically tracked within platforms. All marketers have to do is leverage them.
What can you do with micro-conversions?
I’ve observed the following results using several micro-conversion strategies across social platforms:
60% decrease in cost-per-landing page view
71% decrease in cost-per-lead
65% increase in conversion rate
If you have the potential to significantly decrease costs and improve conversion rates with these micro-conversion strategies, why wouldn’t you test them?
Ready to learn how quick and easy micro-conversion strategies can drive results?
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Here are three micro-conversion strategies to consider to drive impact on your next campaign:
1. Optimize top-of-funnel campaigns for website engagements rather than clicks
Decrease your cost-per-landing page view by optimizing for website engagements. Website engagements signal higher intent compared to link clicks. Optimizing toward users who are likely to take action on your website ultimately brings in better quality users with a higher chance of converting than those who just click. To illustrate this strategy, let’s focus on Facebook.
Here’s how to do it:
Identify landing page actions you want to track
A few actions to consider are social icon button clicks, CTA button clicks and clicks to watch videos on your website. You can also consider visits to resource pages, blog posts and case studies.
Use Facebook’s Event Setup Tool for the easiest and quickest way to set up engagement events
If you’re interested in tracking these events for other social platforms, such as LinkedIn or Twitter, place tracking tags on each action within your tag manager or directly within your website’s developer code.
You can find Facebook’s Event Setup Tool under the Events Manager in the All Tools menu. From here, you will select Add Events and then click From the Pixel.
Note: To use Facebook’s Event Setup Tool, you must have the pixel already placed across your website.
Click Open Event Setup Tool, type your website address in and click Open Website. Once you’ve done this, your landing page will open, and there will be a box to the left of your page that shows the options for using the tool.
Select Track New Button, which will allow you to start tracking those specific actions. In this example, we have selected the Contact Us button and instructed Facebook to track that under an event called “Contact.” You can continue with these steps to track and sort conversions you want to track and optimize.
Once you’ve finished tracking all the actions, just wait for the data to populate within Facebook’s Event Manager, and you’re all set to start optimizing for these events!
2. Build High-Intent Retargeting Audiences
Decrease your cost-per-lead by building high-intent retargeting audiences. You can create audiences based on specific micro-conversion actions to improve bottom-funnel conversion metrics. Instead of retargeting based on just website traffic, try retargeting based on a user’s time on specific landing pages.
Here’s how to do it:
Select Audiences under All Tools in Facebook’s Ad Manager
Create a website audience based on Time Spent
Select Custom Audience under the Create Audience drop-down menu. Next, you will select Website as your source.
Note: Take time exploring the other Customer Audience Sources. This section has tons of hidden gems useful for building high-intent audience segments based on micro-conversion actions. For example, you can implement retargeting based on users who have viewed or added specific products from your product catalog.
Under the Events drop-down menu, select Visitors by Time Spent
This option will give you a secondary choice to pick a select group of users based on the percentile of the average time spent on site. I recommend starting with 25% since that will give you the most sizable audience. If 25% works well, you may consider testing the other options.
Test and optimize your audience
Once your audience has populated, add it to an Ad Set to begin testing against conversion tactics. Test against a lookalike or an interest-based prospecting segment to compare performance.
3. Capture missed leads
Increase conversion rates by capturing missed leads. Using micro-conversions, you can track users who opened a lead gen form ad or began to fill out a form on your website. We can then take them back a step and offer more resources and brand education to help them convert at the bottom of the funnel.
To illustrate this strategy, we’ll focus on LinkedIn and Facebook.
Here’s how to do it:
Find your lead gen micro-conversions within the ad account.
LinkedIn and Facebook both have Lead Gen ad formats that automatically track users who open or submit forms, making it easier to track and retarget them. Navigate to the Audience section within the Ad Manager accounts on both platforms.
On Facebook, you will select Custom Audience and use the Meta Source Lead Form. You will choose Lead Gen Form on LinkedIn under the Create Audience dropdown menu.
Note: You can also use the same method in strategy #2 above to track form actions on your website via Facebook’s Event Setup Tool or by placing tags directly on your website’s forms.
Build your micro-conversion audience segments.
You can choose to create your audience based on users who opened or users who submitted the form. We want to focus on users who opened a form but didn’t submit for this micro-conversion.
On Facebook, we can only target form opens; however, on LinkedIn, you will have to create an audience specific to people who submitted the form and exclude that from your audience of form opens.
Test and learn from your segments
Once you’ve created your form open segments, just wait for them to populate in each platform, and then you can begin testing.
Try serving these segments with educational content, such as case studies, blog posts and other resources from your website that will push them closer to converting.
While they seem like minuscule actions, micro-conversions give us meaningful data to drive better results. Implementing these long-term enables micro-conversions to become more powerful and valuable in your optimization efforts.
Test micro-conversions for yourself
With social advertising becoming increasingly competitive, it’s so important to take advantage of available capabilities and data to maximize performance. Micro-conversions are a small but powerful piece of solving those efficiency gaps.
But don’t take my word for it. Test. Big wins await!
How do you know when your marketing is excellent, important or had the impact you expected? Ultimately, it comes down to being able to measure marketing performance. Marketing performance is the key to knowing where to spend the next marketing dollar.
If marketers can’t quantify the outcomes of their initiatives, it will prevent them from continuing to receive funding for their marketing budgets. And those outcomes have to be told in a way that the business will understand, care about and believe.
In order to do so, marketers must first align their marketing goals and their marketing outcomes. The focus must not only be on successful execution, but also on accurate measurement. Once you have the data, you have to act on the results so that you drive better audience management, better activation, better modeling and an overall better customer experience.
How do you go about improving marketing performance and reducing cost per conversion as the ecosystem shifts and the effectiveness of third-party cookies continues to decline?
Join Acxiom’s Dana Goff, head of financial services strategy practice, and Gloria Ward, director of Identity Strategy, as they share real-world experiences on how to quickly access and leverage usable insights, create a long-term replacement campaign measurement and improve multi-touch attribution (MTA) results – with more visibility, more matches and better underlying data.
Watch the informative MarTech sessionand learn how you can connect individual-level data across website visitors, conversions, paid media, direct mail and other channels. You’ll also learn the three main components for measuring marketing performance and how you can cut through the noise in a very technology-dense industry. Watch the session here and be inspired to deliver more value to your consumers.
