Russia’s actions in Ukraine have prompted ad suspensions from nearly every platform that search marketers rely on to reach Russian audiences. At first, companies such as Google, Microsoft and Facebook started by restricting ads from Russian state media, but as the conflict continued, many have expanded those suspensions to include all ads that would be served to users in Russia.
Below is a list of platforms and their current policies with regard to the conflict in Ukraine. We will update this resource as platforms update their policies.
Search engines. Google and Microsoft Bing, the two leading search engines globally, have both suspended all ad sales in Russia.
Google: On February 27, Google suspended ads from Russian state-owned media outlets. On March 3, the company expanded the suspension to include all ads serving to users in Russia.
Microsoft: On February 28, Microsoft banned ads from Russian state-owned media outlets. On March 4, the ban was expanded to include all new sales of Microsoft products and services (not just ads) in Russia.
Microsoft Advertising powers ads on Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo! and AOL, so brands currently cannot advertise to users in Russia on those platforms either. While Apple doesn’t operate a search engine, it has suspended Search Ads on the App Store in Russia.
An email sent by Apple to app developers notifying them that Search Ads in the Russian App Store have been paused.
Social media platforms. Most social media platforms have also rolled out ad suspensions similar to the ones mentioned above.
Meta: Facebook’s parent company paused ads targeting users in Russia on March 4. Several days prior, the Russian government announced that it would block its citizens from accessing Facebook, so ads may not have reached users anyhow. The company has not announced whether these changes will also apply to Instagram, but Meta has banned Russian state media from running ads or monetizing on any of its platforms.
LinkedIn: LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft and is therefore included in the company’s ban on sales of its products and services in Russia.
Twitter: On February 25, Twitter paused ads serving to users in Ukraine and Russia, citing the need to “ensure critical public safety information is elevated and ads don’t detract from it.”
Reddit: On March 2, Reddit announced that it is not accepting advertisements “that target Russia or originate from any Russia-based entity, government or private.” The platform has also blocked links from all domains ending in “.ru,” Russia’s country code top-level domain.
Snap Inc.: Snapchat’s parent company has stopped all advertising running in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, the company announced on March 1.
TikTok: TikTok has restricted access to Russian state-controlled media accounts, but it appears it has not stopped serving ads to users in Russia.
Why we care. Platforms are responding to the conflict in Ukraine by halting ads as a means to cut down on noise and misinformation, promote the right sources of information and avoid potential brand safety issues. Unfortunately for brands and their audiences in Russia, this also means that there are fewer channels they can use to reach those customers. Knowing which channels are still available to you can help mitigate the impact of these ad suspensions.
We have learned the tragic news that a member of the SEO community has died. Tatiana Perebeinis was the chief accountant for SE Ranking, an SEO platform.
Tatiana, 43, her two children (Alise, 9, and Nikita, 18) and another man were trying to evacuate from Irpin, Ukraine, when Russian forces fired on them, according to reports.
Tatiana Perebeinis, chief accountant for SE Ranking
What happened
On Sunday, the New York Times documented the final moments of their lives. (Warning: the article contains a graphic image and video of the mortar attack and the aftermath):
“As the mortars got closer to the stream of civilians, people ran, pulling children, trying to find a safe spot. But there was nothing to hide behind. A shell landed in the street, sending up a cloud of concrete dust and leaving one family — a woman, her teenage son and a her daughter, who appeared to be about 8 years old; and a family friend — sprawled on the ground.
Soldiers rushed to help, but the woman and children were dead. A man traveling with them still had a pulse but was unconscious and severely wounded. He later died.
Their luggage, a blue roller suitcase and some backpacks, was scattered about, along with a green carrying case for a small dog that was barking.
Ukrainian forces were engaged in clashes nearby, but not at the site where civilians were moving along the street. Outgoing mortar rounds could be heard from a Ukrainian position about 200 yards away.
The shelling suggested either targeting of the evacuation routes from Irpin, something of which the Ukrainian authorities have accused the Russian army after a railroad track used for evacuations was hit on Saturday, or disregard for the risk of civilian casualties.“
– Lynsey Addario, New York Times
Tatiana had not tried to leave sooner because she was caring for her ailing mother, according to New York Post.
Message from SE Ranking
Here is the complete post that SE Ranking shared via LinkedIn and Facebook, after learning about the death of Tatiana:
“We are devastated to say that yesterday our dear colleague and friend Tatiana Perebeinis, the chief accountant of SE Ranking, was killed together with her two kids by russian mortar artillery.
The family was trying to evacuate from Irpin – a small city right near Kyiv that has been left without water supply, electricity, and heating.
There are no words to describe our grief or to mend our pain. But for us, it is crucial to not let Tania and her kids Alise and Nikita remain just statistics. Her family became the victim of the unprovoked fire on civilians, which under any law is a crime against humanity.
The russian army are criminals, and they should be stopped.
Our hearts are broken. Our prayers are for all Ukrainians, who are fighting for their right to exist.”
Community Reaction
The search community is heartbroken by this news. Here is just a small sampling of the comments from SE Ranking’s Facebook post.
I’m also talking to the SE Ranking team to get additional details and comments on Tatiana, to help tell her story. I will update this article as soon as I hear back.
Microsoft announced that IndexNow is now also supported by another WordPress plugin named SEOPress. This gives another 200,000 sites that are using this plugin easy access to enable IndexNow on their WordPress sites.
“By integrating the possibilities offered by the API, SEOPress allows more than 200,000 sites to be indexed more quickly and efficiently, all without any technical knowledge necessary and automatically,” Microsoft said.
IndexNow growth. Just last week, IndexNow has grown to support millions of sites by adding integration with Duda, All in One WordPress SEO plugin and Rank Math SEO plugin. Last November, Cloudflare announced it added integration with IndexNow and 60,000 websites turned on that feature. Microsoft released a simple to use WordPress plugin for IndexNow and Google announced it would be testing this protocol. Then last month, Microsoft said 80,000 websites are now using IndexNow for URL submission. With these providers integrating IndexNow, we are now up to millions of sites adopting IndexNow, just several months after IndexNow was initially rolled out.
What is IndexNow. IndexNow provides a method for websites owners to instantly inform search engines about latest content changes on their website. IndexNow is a simple ping protocol so that search engines know that a URL and its content has been added, updated, or deleted, allowing search engines to quickly reflect this change in their search results. The co-sharing of IndexNow went fully live last month in January 2022.
How to activate IndexNow in SEOPress. First, you need version 5.4 of SEOPress, then to enable IndexNow, check off the “automatically notify search engines” option is checked from the settings tab of the plugin.
How it works. If you using a provide or Plugin that has this built in, just follow the steps they provide. If you need to code this manually into your CMS, then the protocol is very simple — all you need to do is create a key on your server, and then post a URL to the search engine to notify IndexNow-participating search engines of the change. The steps include:
Host the key in text file named with the value of the key at the root of your web site.
Start submitting URLs when your URLs are added, updated, or deleted. You can submit one URL or a set of URLs per API call.
Why we care. Like we said before, instant indexing is an SEO’s dream when it comes to giving search engines the most updated content on a site. The protocol is very simple and it requires very little developer effort to add this to your site, so it makes sense to implement this if you care about speedy indexing.
Microsoft continues to work with providers to adopt IndexNow and grow its reach to millions of sites.
If you’ve worked in any organization, large or small, regardless of whether it is a B2B or B2C, sales, marketing, and your customer experience team should always have an open-door policy when communicating with one another. If you don’t, you could be at risk of missing huge nuggets of valuable information that could enhance the buyer journey or help deliver better conversions.
Who is the customer experience team?
Typically, customer experience is how individuals perceive and interact with your brand. Customer experience interactions can include speaking to support or sales or consuming your content, such as ads or social media posts.
The customer experience team consists of individuals interacting with customers and analyzing customer feedback and data to enhance your company’s product or solution.
While more companies have specific roles for CX, your whole organization should be empowered to enhance the customer experience, regardless of their job title.
Where to find the right content
Look at your competitors or various tools to help you find suitable topics to develop. Perhaps looking within your organization could be another great asset for creating the right content that leads to conversion.
Your customer experience team is an area that has big benefits as they tend to be far more involved and intimate when it comes to your customers. The CX team has analyzed every touchpoint that a customer has at every interaction they have or could have and further improved the customer’s interactions.
More content, less ad spend?
Based on the Salesforce “State of Marketing” report, during the pandemic, it was cited that while advertising spending was decreased, developing helpful and insightful content was significantly increased. The business places more emphasis on creating this library of content to provide education and trust to help convince the customer of the value its solutions bring.
If this is the case of things to come, then it is imperative to determine what type of content to write about and whether it considers YMYL (Your Money or Your Life). Your CX team has a role to play in each of these efforts.
1. The testimonial
Social proof – in your emails, blogs, ads, and even direct mail pieces – can help customers trust your brand. Over 75% of consumers trust reviews even more than if a friend or family member recommends a product.
Testimonials have the power to increase sales leads by as much as 34%, so it is no wonder that if it isn’t a part of your content marketing initiatives to gain positive testimonials, then it definitely should be.
Some companies even incentivize their customer success/support managers to acquire testimonials. This type of content is a great way to prove your product or solution and share how it enhances peoples’ lives. Just make sure that acquiring reviews is done ethically. A fake review can hurt your brand more than having no reviews at all.
Also, your customer success managers and content marketing team should speak to each other regularly. Why? Testimonials can lead to longer content types. Think of success stories in the fitness industry. If someone came to your CX team and said they became healthier or were able to overcome a health challenge, wouldn’t you want to interview those individuals and gain additional insight? The testimonial can evolve into a success story which we all know is a gold mine.
Start by regularly reaching out to your CX team and finding out what testimonials have come about. When using a tool like Basecamp or Slack, create a group or channel all about this type of content. Not only will it educate others within your organization, but it also can inspire and motivate your team.
2. Improving your FAQ section
FAQ sections are places within your app or website that should provide value to your customer or prospect for them to have a better experience with your product or solution.
Often, FAQ sections are overlooked during a redesign or app refresh, leading to frustration. But your CX team can help quickly improve this section of your website.
Whether your product or solution has been around for some time or recently had some enhancements or updates, make sure your CX team is aware and keep in touch with them. They may have additional customer questions that will further improve the FAQ section.
Note: FAQ sections should not be taken lightly when developing content. Far too often, FAQ sections are set up poorly and with little thought about how they can convert. Please don’t make it just an SEO play when implementing your FAQ section. Look into the intent of each question and then pair it up with the right solution or product you’re selling. In addition, make sure top questions are higher up on the page and your FAQ section has a search bar.
3. AI customer experience
Whether your business is SaaS or e-commerce, having instant gratification during the customer support experience will only help your sales. If you use tools like Intercom or Zendesk, you know the real value of having that ammunition when your office is closed. Chatbots can save up to 30% in customer support costs and up response time.
In addition to sharing commonly asked questions, these tools can learn new questions over time. You can send these questions to your marketing team to turn those into helpful content for your customers.
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Did you know that 74% of readers’ data-focused content is more trustworthy than content not containing data? Surveys are a great place to obtain data that can then be used to market to your prospects and find out what products resonate with the consumers. Some types of survey questions include:
Closed questions: Provide respondents with a selection of predefined answers.
Rating scale questions: Rate service or product 1 to 10, 10 being most likely to recommend.
Open-ended: Lets respondents reply with their own answer.
Yes/no, multiple-choice, checkbox questions.
Your customer success team should work with your marketing team to determine what questions and what type of surveys will highlight areas of improvement. Once you have the list, you can create a Google Survey that doesn’t require much behind-the-scenes work.
Your customer success team may have the “in” on who to send the surveys to, as they more often than not will have a list of evangelists or brand ambassadors they’re aware of.
Incentivizing discounts on your products or services could be a great incentive to get those responses back. Another incentive you may want to offer is having your customer provide a quote. If they do, they may be more inclined to:
Do the survey.
Read the blog, white paper or case study from the survey.
Share the blog, white paper or case study with their circles.
5. Improve or create rewarding content and products
As said above, yes, your customer experience team is can typically be within one area of your company, but what if you empowered your employees to go above and beyond? Think of all the great content that could come about.
Here’s one example:
An individual left their glasses on a train. A senior executive of the eyewear company was on the train and noticed it was a client. Not only did the executive recover the glasses, but the company also sent two replacement glasses. The individual who left their glasses wrote a post on Facebook that led to an article written on Forbes.
Another strategy is including customer success or support team when it comes to brainstorming content. Typically, they have a mental library of questions they receive via email, phone, or social media, which can later become engaging content that increases acquisition or retention.
Develop a repository of these questions, comments, or feedback, so marketing can easily access this content that can turn into more converting content.
Your customer success managers have insight into discussions about your brand. They are on the frontline, listening and responding to what is being said on social media. Tap into that area and find out how it can be turned into useful content.
TOMS shoes used social listening in their research and found out that a high level of conversations was happening around the topic of My Little Pony. They quickly took that information and developed a TOMS My Little Pony product. That shoe sold out within 48 hours.
Summary: A smarter way to enhance your content
Creating content related to your customers is the most crucial point of making your customer’s experience more enjoyable. Utilizing all aspects of your customer experience team will give you valuable insight into creating content and improving your library of existing content.
The more work you put into creating useful and fun content, the happier customers and prospects will be with your brand’s overall effort, as your customers will know that you hear them.
We’re told hindsight is 20/20. But hindsight doesn’t always tell you where you need to go. In fact, when it comes to research, it only tells you where you’ve been. On the other hand, Foresight research tells you where you need to go, sets you on the right path, and lets you continually check-in to make sure you are always headed in the right direction.
“Foresight research allows you to get quick feedback about what your customers want right now,” Feedback Loop CEO Rob Holland said. “It gives you the ability to rapidly innovate, test a hypothesis, get feedback, make another decision, test that decision, get more feedback, and do that all very, very quickly, so you can stay on track.”
Marketers looking to plan their next ad, message or campaign traditionally have relied on hindsight, or legacy, research. They look at how things have performed in the past to inform what they do in the future. But traditional legacy research is expensive and time-consuming, and it gives you a snapshot of just one moment in time, which by the way, is already behind you. It may have little to do with what’s in front of you.
We know of what we speak. Feedback Loop’s crackerjack marketers recently undertook a revamp of our digital presence. As the effectiveness of agile, iterative, foresight research for marketing became crystal clear, so did the tangible results of our campaigns.
“We would’ve been completely wrong.”
Jolene Pierangeli was surprised. A seasoned marketing consultant, she was charged with overseeing Feedback Loop’s marketing changes. As was her usual practice, she looked at previous ad campaign history and website traffic to gather data to use in planning the company’s website redux.
“Typically, in marketing, you look at how banner ads or display ads perform in other locations,” Pierangeli said. “You take into account personas and the demographics for your audience. Then you use that data to make assumptions and decisions based on what you know — but that legacy data isn’t necessarily right.”
Feedback Loop exists to provide rapid consumer feedback, so Pierangeli didn’t have to rely solely on that legacy data. She did what Feedback Loop tells its clients to do: She tested.
Marketing designer Michelle Baker created mock-ups of two new website designs. Option A had a clean white background, using graphics to add some color. Option B had blue elements and a darker blue background. Based on the legacy data they had, as well as the popularity of white-background websites, Pierangeli and Baker were certain their audience would prefer Option A. They did an A/B test using the Feedback Loop platform.
To their surprise, respondents favored Option B.
In addition to testing the color, layout, and user experience for the website, they tested whether to use clickable dropdowns, so all text information would be accessed by clicking buttons.
“Personally, I like to interact with websites that way, and I thought other people would, too,” Baker said. They used the Feedback Loop platform to test their hypothesis that users would prefer a cleaner experience that would encourage them to click through to get the specific information they wanted.
Again, Pierangeli and Baker were surprised. The overwhelming response to the test was that users wanted everything to show at once — no clicks needed — because they didn’t want to have to do any extra work to get information.
“That was not a behavior or a response we thought we were going to have,” Pierangeli said. “I realized you can use as much data as you want from previous campaigns, but you’re going to be missing out on what consumers actually want. In our case, we want product professionals, marketing professionals, research professionals, UX, and innovation teams to find the website useful and easy to navigate.
“All the data we had from other channels and the historical information — from a few months ago to a few years ago — did not tell us this. We didn’t learn this until we tested the different layouts, the different colors, the different ways text was presented. I was surprised. I’ve been doing this for a long time — a really long time — so you’d think I’d have a fairly decent understanding of what consumers would want. I have an understanding of target personas and what’s important to them. That’s why we do persona exercises. But without using Feedback Loop, we would’ve been completely wrong.”
The new blue website launched on February 14, 2022. Since then, Feedback Loop has seen traffic increase — and that doesn’t even include repeat users. The number of new website visitors doubled.
“In a week, we got a month’s worth of lead guarantee.”
On the heels of the website’s success, Feedback Loop launched a content syndication program. The company handling the promotion said it should take a month to reach Feedback Loop’s guaranteed lead goal.
Before launching the promotional ad, Pierangeli and Baker tested the advertising and messaging for their promotion using the Feedback Loop platform. For the ad, targeted at both marketers and product teams, Baker created one version using a cartoon treatment and one using screenshots. The majority of the audience-tested chose the screenshot version. That’s the one they launched.
Feedback Loop got their entire lead guarantee in one week.
“In a week, we got a month’s worth of lead guarantee, which is great because that gave us the entire month to nurture them. We were able to use the time we saved by testing to nurture those leads and then start converting them,” Pierangeli said. They’ve converted 30% of those leads to MQL — so far.
For the next iteration of the ad, targeted at marketers, Baker tested three concepts with the Feedback Loop platform: one with cartoons, one with screenshots, and one with a combination of both. The third option — a combination of styles — was chosen by 46% of respondents, so that’s the ad they’ll be launching.
“As a designer, before I started testing concepts, I never really knew how an audience would react to what I was creating,” Baker said. “Using the Feedback Loop platform lets us target exactly who we want to target, and the more data we have, the better the end results will be. Now, when I create something, going in blind is pointless since I have the ability to know what the audience prefers before we ever launch.”
“You already know going into it what your consumers want.”
The lessons she learned by using Feedback Loop for Feedback Loop changed how Pierangeli looks at marketing campaigns.
“When marketers build out a campaign plan, they typically build out a first draft, revision time, second draft, final draft, then launch date,” she said. “Unfortunately, a lot of times after a launch, the campaign does not perform and deliver the number of leads or MQLs or conversions to opportunities that marketing needs to build the lead funnel and help sales convert. That means marketing will have to go back and add new content to their campaign or do other types of activities. Basically, they’ll have to do more work in order to get to their goal.”
By building rapid consumer research into marketing processes early on, marketers can save themselves and their teams hours of work down the road and, potentially, prevent failure of a launch. Testing in the Feedback Loop platform only takes a couple of hours, and it can de-risk decisions, whether it’s what color to put on your website or what messaging to use for a promotion. You don’t have to wait weeks or months for traditional research methods to produce insights that are already in hindsight when you finally get them. A little foresight goes a long way toward ensuring you launch successfully.
“You need to bring in the voice of your consumers to have true data to make your marketing campaign successful,” Pierangeli said. “Then you can launch with confidence and know you’re going to get what you’re trying to get, whether it’s a number of leads or delighting your customers or a higher conversion rate. For all the things you are being held accountable for, you improve your chances of success by testing in advance.
“It’s OK to be wrong. But you need to understand that, even though you may have been doing this for years, even though you may have the most well-written persona until you actually ask your potential customers what it is they want, you really don’t know.”
Microsoft Advertising has announced Professional service ads, a new ad format designed for service providers such as insurance agents, realtors and so on. Professional service ads are currently available as a pilot in the U.S. and Canada.
Examples of Professional service ads. Image: Microsoft Advertising.
Professional service ads can also be used to promote regional offices, branches or even national brands that provide relevant services. The format is available to comparison sites as well.
Why we care. This ad type may offer greater efficiency for service providers. In the early stages of this pilot, advertisers using Professional service ads were able to increase conversion rates by about 60% when compared to regular text ads, according to Microsoft. The average CPA decrease was 67% compared to overall performance in advertiser campaigns, the company said. But performance can vary, so it’s important to test the waters for yourself to see whether this is the right vehicle for your campaigns.
Some may see this as a competitor to Google’s Local Service Ads (LSAs) — while Product service ads may show for similar queries, there are some major differences to be aware of. For example, advertisers must be certified as “Google Guaranteed or “Google Screened” to participate in LSAs, which involves licensing, insurance and background checks. There is no such requirement for Microsoft’s Product service ads.
The format is new, but not really. Microsoft Advertising has been on a streak, releasing automated, vertical-specific ad types that leverage feed data to match offers to searches. The company now has ad formats for cruises, cars, tours and activities, credit cards and health insurance.
Like those other ad types, Professional service ads will appear in the right-hand rail of Bing search results, alongside mainline text ads.
Microsoft plans to expand on Professional service ads. “We’re expanding to tax services and new markets, but expect to see more professional services, both in and outside of the financial service industry, coming to Microsoft Advertising in the future,” the company wrote in the announcement.
Want to understand your paid search results? Geography is one of the most significant factors to analyze.
DIfferent words and brands mean other things based on location. For example, are you “soda” or “pop”? The same is true for brand names.
Read on to learn about geolocation results in paid search, how they vary and what to do with the variances.
Data: How PPC results vary across regions
For years I’ve had discussions with various brands about their performance by region. Should they be geotargeting? How does it impact bidding? Does it matter at all?
I pulled a data set to see how performance varied by geographies over the past year. Let’s start by looking at how results vary across regions. To understand the variances, I indexed each metric against the campaign totals or averages.
How much do the metrics vary? The first thing that jumps out is how wide the variance is, especially for CTR. We saw variance for all metrics of at least 2x and in the case of CTR as high as 15x. The minimums also vary much more than the maximums, except for CTR.
There was a significant difference by geographic region (in this case, “geographic region” means “states”). Why the big swings? Among the reasons;
Brand awareness: Brands signify different things to different people based on locations. For example, a brand may be available nationally, but they were founded on the East or West Coast.
Market competition: Regional players might only advertise in a given region that will influence the metrics.
Keyword/bid strategy: The paid search managers of these accounts on a daily basis have something to say about the performance. They shift bids and keyword lists based on performance as a regular part of maintenance. This can have a natural influence on the metrics.
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These categories all impacted the results pretty differently. Removing the lowest conversion kept the most revenue but didn’t improve the ROI.
Removing the highest cost per conversion improved the ROI the most but removed more than 30% of the total revenue. The impact on the ROI was pretty small, and the volume of results was reduced by up to 35%, based on this data.
So what if you took the lowest-performing states and poured that spend back into the top 20 performing states? The hypothesis showed improvement with all four scenarios increasing revenue vs. the baseline results.
The best scenario was removing the 20 states with the lowest costs-per-conversion and investing more in the states with the lowest cost-per-conversion. However, even in that scenario, the ROI and revenue didn’t increase more than 4% versus the baseline index.
Many companies would be ecstatic about the opportunity to increase revenue by 4% without any incremental costs. But for others, the juice wouldn’t be worth the squeeze.
What could alter this analysis?
Assumptions on assumptions: A big assumption is that spending at higher levels and assuming the same throughput rates. The CPCs, conversion rates, or any of the metrics would be altered, impacting the results.
Keywords within states: Viewing any of this data through the lens of only the geography doesn’t take into account all the other factors that weigh into performance. For example, even in a great performing state, there are specific keywords that are not performing well just as there are keywords in poor-performing states that are crushing it.
Landing page and ad copy experiences.
Brand type: Our data set has a mix of DTC online pure-plays and online/offline. I think local store mix and conversion types can all alter this analysis.
PPC actions to take?
Ultimately, the beauty of paid search is nothing operates in a vacuum. You have to consider the implications between the keyword, ad copy, bid, and landing page.
The correct answer isn’t just altering geotargeting. It takes the combination of these with audiences, time of day, device type and so many factors to truly drive results.
What I’m suggesting is that geotargeting can be yet another knob that can be dialed up and down and should be considered a critical optimization tactic. For example, if you want the ad copy and landing page to match the geography, geotargeting becomes more important from a user experience standpoint.
In some cases, it will complicate things to a level that doesn’t make the difference for your organization, and maybe a simple bid-modifier will do. In other cases, it could be the key to unlocking your results.
You can start simply with bid multipliers. My recommendation: dig into the data at this level, create a few tests and see if you can impact results in a meaningful way. Then you can determine if the test should be scaled up or back.
Stand out from the competition. Get noticed with disruption. If you want to reach a millennial borrower, you got to shake things up. When it comes to tactics for driving mortgage website traffic and having a lead pipeline that’s constantly filled, doing something that get you immediately noticed seems to be the way to do it.
And there’s some truth to it. That’s why companies spend millions of dollars on 15-30 second Super Bowl commercials. But simply doing something “outside the box” is hardly a growth strategy – and indeed not a wise financial investment in an uncertain mortgage market.
However, implementing innovative marketing, business, and technology tactics have proven to be critical for success, for businesses large and small. The key to doing this right is to discover a consumer need or target market that is currently ignored.
We call this “White Space.”
White Space is where consumers’ unspoken, unmet needs are discovered. White Space is used to spark innovation, and uncover new revenue opportunities by reaching a new consumer or making improvements to the current process.
Whitespace exists in all industries. It’s contained in the unoccupied territory where rules are unclear, authority is fuzzy, and strategy is vague. And it’s here where enterprising originators find the most success for driving innovation, finding new lead sources, and discovering untapped revenue outside of market fluctuations.
Moving From Black Space into White Space
Black space encompasses all the business and marketing tactics you have already tried or incorporated into the business. Therefore, the White Space would be all the opportunities outside that scope. Remember, White Space encompasses the unmet need of consumers, and discovering those needs won’t occur by happenstance.
When Tesla emerged as a frontrunner in car manufacturing, it wasn’t luck. There was an opportunity Elon Musk saw in the White Space by developing electric sports cars.
When Carl’s Jr launched their $6 burger (more than double the price of most fast food burgers at the time), it was a strategic move discovered in the White Space where they found an untapped market in-between “fast food burger” and “restaurant burger.”
Your local fusion restaurant is another example of opportunity born in the White Space. The wine and paint night business is yet another –providing a space to drink and socialize that’s not a bar. Revolutionary!
How can you move into the White Space to reveal new opportunities for your mortgage business? Read below for strategies to get started:
Discovering The “White Space” in Your Mortgage Business
Innovate Upon What You Already Have
The perfect place to uncover areas where your prospects’ and borrowers’ needs are unmet is to examine your current offering. For example, are you still using the same Wix site from when you started your business? Then it’s time to ditch it and launch a professional mortgage website.
Are you still using your personal social media profiles to market your business? Then it’s time to not only create new consumer-facing profiles, but it’s also time you create a strategy and budget for digital marketing for mortgage leads.
Target A Separate Consumer Segment
If you’ve been struggling to reach enough prospective borrowers for your main loan product, it would be worth exploring a segment of that consumer market. For example, if your main product is FHA loans for first-time buyers, consider whether there is a separate pool of loan prospects within that target market (this is similar to the Carl’s Jr example mentioned above).
By moving into the White Space, you may discover that there is a growing Hispanic population in Denver and surrounding areas. Or the White Space may reveal that there is an influx of tech professionals relocating to your state. These subgroups would benefit from an FHA loan. However, reaching them requires a refined tactic.
Analyze What Makes Your Mortgage Services Different
Many mortgage companies make the mistake of trying to be everything to everybody. While there’s value and truth that you can do every type of loan, consumers tend to trust professionals that are specialists. The specialization could come from a particular loan product, expertise in financial challenges, locale, or even association with a distinctive group such as law enforcement or being bilingual.
Your specialization could also come from other sources, such as exemplifying your modern lending capabilities or demonstrating care by humanizing the borrower experience.
So if you haven’t already pinned down what makes your mortgage business different from your local competition, move into the White Space to reveal it. If you already know your winning difference, use the White Space to lean into it harder. Doing so can help you find ways to strengthen your branding and uncover new tactics in lead generation.
White Space is a much-respected and innovative practice that can help mortgage companies build their niche in a crowded market. Remember, it’s not just about standing out or thinking “outside the box” —White Space is a place to discover ways to reposition your business and maximize opportunities from the unmet needs of consumers.
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Google and Bing have expanded ad sales suspensions imposed on Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine. Google has temporarily halted ads from serving to Russia-based users, the company announced Thursday. Similarly, Microsoft announced that it will suspend all new sales of its products and services in Russia.
Why we care. The two leading search engines now prohibit ads targeting users located in Russia, cutting off the main channels western search marketers use to reach audiences there. This will affect brands advertising to Russian users, but Yandex (Russia’s second-biggest search engine by market share) remains an option.
These ad suspensions serve to protest Russia’s actions in Ukraine, but they also help search engines avoid brand safety debacles like misinformation campaigns making it through their automated systems and showing to users.
Escalating restrictions on Russian state-funded media. Last week, both search engines stopped running ads from Russian state-funded media outlets. In addition, Microsoft is “further de-ranking these sites’ search results on Bing so that it will only return RT and Sputnik links when a user clearly intends to navigate to those pages,” Brad Smith, president and vice chair of Microsoft, said in an announcement on February 28.
Perhaps this is what Russia wanted. Roskomnadzor, Russia’s communications regulator, has accused YouTube of running “advertising campaigns to misinform the Russian audience,” according to the Wall Street Journal. The Russian agency demanded that Google change its ad moderation policies and discontinue such ads.
The new ad suspensions are likely to primarily affect Russia-based businesses, but they may also put a temporary end to the ads Russia is complaining about.
Social media platforms halted ad sales in Russia, too. Snap Inc. and Twitter have both paused ads in Ukraine and Russia, with the former halting them in Belarus as well. Facebook has stopped serving ads from Russian state media, but (at the time of publication) is still showing ads to Russian users.
