Social media marketing is a great way for mortgage brokers to connect with prospective clients and generate quality leads. Paid social media advertising is particularly useful.

However, launching a paid social campaign without a good strategy can produce underwhelming results. To make matters worse, a misguided advertising plan can waste hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Fortunately, you can avoid these pitfalls by using a few simple best practices for paid social media advertising. If you are a loan officer who wants to capitalize on the benefits of paid ads on top social media platforms, this guide is for you!

Don’t Overstretch Yourself

Perhaps the biggest mistake that mortgage brokers make when creating a paid social media ad campaign is overstretching themselves. Many loan officers believe that “more is better” when it comes to marketing on social media. Because of this, they often attempt to run campaigns across multiple platforms.

While you can certainly diversify your marketing, we recommend starting small, especially if you are new to the world of paid advertising. Select one or two social media platforms that you want to advertise on and create a custom campaign. Facebook and Instagram are great options.

Identify the Ideal Audience

After you have selected the platforms that you want to advertise on, it is time to identify your ideal audience. As you’re creating your paid advertising campaign, you will have the opportunity to set custom targeting parameters. You can direct your ads at prospective clients based on factors such as:

• Age
• Location
• Occupation
• Gender
• Income

Be specific when you’re designing your campaign. This will help you to connect with the right consumers and acquire more high-quality leads.

Set Specific Goals

Speaking of being specific, it is essential to set a precise goal for each campaign. Setting goals ensures that your content delivers a clear message.  Every piece of advertising content should be designed for a unique purpose.

For instance, if your goal is to expand your mailing list, then you should launch a campaign that encourages users to provide you with a name and email address.

Find Your Voice

Do you want your brand to be casual and friendly? Would you prefer for ads to appear serious and professional? Do you want to strike a perfect balance between the two?

Once you settle on a tone and voice for your brand, be consistent. Whether you are launching a paid marketing campaign or you’re posting organic content, the tone of the materials you use should be very similar.

Use Visuals

Social media users love visual content, especially when it comes to paid ads. A powerful image or intriguing video can set your ad apart from the otherwise boring content on a user’s news feed. 

If you can catch attention with a strong visual, potential customers will likely stick around long enough to hear the rest of your message.

On the other hand, if you fail to capture their interest quickly, people will quickly brush past your ad and keep scrolling.

Innovative Tools from BNTouch

These best practices are a great place to start when designing your paid social media advertising campaign. But setting up your ads can still be a bit challenging.

Fortunately, BNTouch can help. Our cutting-edge CRM software was designed with mortgage brokers in mind. It includes a variety of resources that you can incorporate into your social media marketing campaigns. 

With customized video content, curated social media ad materials, and pre-built marketing campaigns, you can make the most of your advertising budget..

Schedule your free demo today to learn more.

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Messy SEO is a column covering the nitty-gritty, unpolished tasks involved in the auditing, planning, and optimization of websites, using MarTech’s new domain as a case study.

This installment of “Messy SEO” details my process of working with our marketing, content and development teams to further clean up the search engine results pages for MarTech. In Part 4, we discussed the issues arising from Google’s title changes and the tactics taken to address them.

RELATED: Non-stop updates: SEOs share the impact on their day-to-day, work-life balance and career outlook

SERP title change fallout and improvements

Google’s SERP title changes from August did a number on our MarTech mission page, pulling in irrelevant alt text from our site header logo, making the title link read “Martech is Marketing Logo.”

We tried many tactics to combat this change: resubmitting the page via Google Search Console, adding contextual internal links and updating the title tag every few days to see if anything changed. And, after months of edits and monitoring the SERPs, Google finally updated the MarTech title tag to reflect our chosen version (shown below).

Our original chosen page title tag read “What is MarTech? …This is MarTech.” We believed Google’s algorithm felt this tag wasn’t clear enough for searchers, so we tweaked it a bit to better highlight the main topic of the page. In a sense, we answered the question we posed in the same tag, inviting searchers to view the page to learn more.

We were thrilled to see Google update this important page’s title in the SERPs. But, after digging into the original change’s effects on MarTech search performance, we saw the true impact of Google’s SERP title alteration.

After Google’s edit to our title in early November, we saw a major drop in organic clicks to the page (shown above). We compared the period when we first noticed the change to when we saw it reflect our updated title tag (all rough estimates). We found that total clicks to the page decreased by 41% and the CTR dropped from 3.1% to 1.7% when compared to the previous period (shown below).

Fortunately, the search numbers appear to look much better following Google’s decision to display our new title. But with so little data to go on right now, we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

Issues of site structure

The change to major page titles wasn’t the only issue we noticed affecting MarTech’s SERP display. Yet another consequence of our consolidation of Marketing Land and MarTech Today came in the form of Google’s chosen sitelinks for the MarTech domain (shown below).

While our mission page is certainly important (as evidenced by our work on its title tag), each of the other displayed links plays secondary roles for the site — with those toward the bottom being even more irrelevant. It looks like Google considers these pages more important than our designated top-level topic pages, which serve as relevant silos for all our content.

This shows that building your site using a horizontal structure isn’t always enough to help Google recognize your chosen hierarchy of pages. A site like MarTech contains many mixed signals from the years of publishing on Marketing Land and MarTech Today. Clearly, Google still thinks pages relating to them are important due to the signals built up over the years.

Sending site structure signals to Google

The only way to address these old site indicators is the ensure our new signals are conveying the correct information about our site layout. Here are some of the tactics we’re using to give Google a clearer view:

• Adding breadcrumbs to articles. While our MarTech pages already feature the top-level category, we decided more information was needed for crawlers. We’re rolling out breadcrumb links to each article to help Google and users gain a better understanding of our site structure.
• Fleshing out content on top-level pages. Our topic and category pages originally only featured the header text and the associated posts. Now, we’re adding relevant content blurbs to the tops of these pages to highlight their importance — and hopefully improve their rankings as well.
• Internal linking. We may sound like a broken record at this point, but internal linking is a critical factor for improving page rankings. Our breadcrumbs and menu links already point to many of these, but we want to link from the body text in article content as well to give more context.

Have you had continued title tag issues or site structure problems affecting the SERPs? How are you addressing them? Email me at cpatterson@thirddoormedia.com with the subject line “Messy SEO Part 5” to let me know.

More Messy SEO

Read more about our new MarTech domain’s SEO case study.

• Part 1: Navigating a site consolidation migration
• Part 2: The importance of canonicalization
• Part 3: How to find cached images and improve user experience
• Part 4: When Google’s title change goes wrong

The post Messy SEO: Fixing site structure while a Google title change sinks clickthroughs appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Knowing your audience and what they want has always been a cornerstone of marketing, but the standard for modern, successful campaigns has grown to include what your audience cares about as well.

Customers are no longer just voting for brands or products via their purchases. Now, they’re also voting for the future they would like to see the world move towards — a future in which climate change is being addressed, centuries of socioeconomic and racial injustices are being corrected and equality and inclusivity are available to all.

This means that brand values are now part of your unique selling point — and if you’re not promoting values that align with your audience, it’s likely that one of your competitors will. However, inclusive marketing isn’t just a tactic to pander to audiences. It’s here to underscore humanity and the common struggles we face while recognizing and celebrating our differences. 

It can also help propel your brand towards its business goals: More than two-thirds (67%) of respondents to an Edelman study said they bought from a brand for the first time because they agreed with its position on a controversial topic, while 65% said they wouldn’t buy from a brand when it remains silent on issues they care about. And, inclusive ads drove a 23-point lift in purchase intent among consumers belonging to Gen Z, whether the person experiencing the ad was represented or not, according to Microsoft, meaning that inclusive marketing can help drive your sales funnel as well.

To help further your understanding and strengthen your messaging, we’ve compiled a list of resources that can serve as the foundations for your brand’s inclusive marketing efforts.

Evaluate your own biases

Relying on your own judgment when auditing your implicit biases means that you’re the judge and jury, which can lead to a self-defeating exercise. Instead, try resources like Harvard’s Implicit Association Test (IAT).

The IAT can help you identify your implicit biases across many categories, like gender and career, skin tone, religion, disability, sexuality, weight, age and more. Once you’ve taken the IAT, share it with your team so that everyone can keep a watchful eye over how their own biases may make their way into your marketing campaigns.

Inclusive marketing resources from Search Engine Land

As the need for inclusive marketing has grown, we, the editors at Search Engine Land and the programming team behind SMX, have created a number of resources for brands to consider as they build inclusivity and diversity into their organizations and campaigns.

• 5 ways to promote inclusion in your marketing organization: A recap of Dr. Lauren Tucker’s 2021 SMX Next session, in which she shares her inclusion-first approach for promoting diversity within organizations.
• The cost of ignoring website accessibility: Non-compliant sites are vulnerable to lawsuits, but SEOs can help protect them by advocating for accessibility, which can serve both differently-abled audiences as well as your business goals.
• (Video) Addressing diversity, recruitment and retainment in agencies and marketing teams: A panel discussion featuring CJ Bland, Zenia Johnson and Jackie Leuing about why diversity is good for business, what intentional commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) initiatives looks like and how employees can initiate change in their companies.
• (Video) Microsoft’s “The Download” Episode 8: Search Engine Land Editor George Nguyen sits down with Microsoft’s Nora Xu for a conversation about the importance of inclusion in marketing after a surge in hate crimes against Asian Americans.

Search Engine Land also presents an annual award for Advancing Diversity and Inclusion in Search Marketing to recognize the individuals and organizations that are driving positive change in the search community. The 2021 winners are Rejoice Ojaiku, for her work in founding B-Digital, “a digital marketing platform aimed at showcasing and inspiring Black talent,” and hasOptimization, a New Hampshire-based agency whose marketing efforts are complemented by their work for both inclusion and diversity across many areas of focus.

We’ll place a link here when we begin taking nominations for the next Advancing Diversity and Inclusion in Search Marketing award — it is free to nominate both individuals and organizations.

Inclusive marketing guides

Google and Bing, the search platforms that are at the center of many of our campaigns, have recognized the value and need for inclusive marketing by publishing their own resources on the subject.

• Microsoft’s Marketing with Purpose Playbook: Available as a free download, the Marketing with Purpose Playbook is one of the most comprehensive resources for inclusive marketing statistics (which can help you secure executive buy-in) and tips. The 101-page PDF is divided into three important areas for marketing (responsibility, values and inclusion) and covers a wide range of audiences.
• Google’s All In Inclusive Marketing Insights: Created from the lessons Google learned as it began its own inclusive marketing practices, this resource center has strategies for building teams, making inclusive creative choices, embedding inclusion into your strategy as well as audience insights to help eliminate stereotypes in your creative.

Inclusive language guides

Creating a welcoming environment for diverse audiences starts with the language in our messaging. Below is a list of language guides from various organizations that can help you ensure inclusivity in your creative assets and content.

• LinkedIn’s Inclusive Language for Marketers: This pocket guide provides a concise summary of inclusivity considerations for your messaging and brand identity.
• Google’s developer documentation word list: This style guide for developer documentation contains safe alternatives for biased wording, like the use of “slave,” “tribal wisdom” and more.
• Northwestern University’s Inclusive Language Guide: This general-purpose guide features explanations for why certain language is considered exclusionary or biased, as well as alternative phrases to use instead.
• GLAAD Media Reference Guide: Intended for use by journalists, GLAAD’s guide focuses on language as it pertains to the LGBTQ community.

Accessibility

Accessibility for differently-abled individuals or those that rely on assistive technologies is often considered by marketers to be “someone else’s job,” but inclusive organizations recognize that the responsibility is shared by all. Here are some resources that can help you evaluate and improve your site’s accessibility, while potentially opening up new audiences for your brand and protecting you from ADA-related lawsuits.

• The cost of ignoring website accessibility: An analysis of the potential consequences of overlooking website accessibility.
• 10 principles of digital accessibility for modern marketers: A list of key accessibility principles that should be relatively straightforward to implement.
• W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG): Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium with the goal of providing a single standard for web content accessibility, the WCAG explains how to make content easier to access for people with disabilities.

Inclusive marketing for your campaigns

Numerous platforms have added ways for businesses to showcase their diversity. Below are some articles covering features that you can use to immediately add an element of inclusivity to your advertising or online presence.

• Microsoft Advertising launches Marketing with Purpose Business attributes. The company later added Asian-, Latin-, Women-owned and Diabetic-friendly business attributes as well.
• Yelp introduces a searchable Asian-owned business profile attribute. The company also added an LGBTQ-owned attribute; both attributes join the pre-existing Women-owned, Black-owned and Latinx-owned profiles attributes.
• Google Business Profile adds “Women-led” icon and attribute to listings. The “veteran-led” and “Black-owned” attributes are also available for local listings.

This resource will be updated on an ongoing basis. If you have feedback, suggestions or resources to submit, please send an email to gnguyen@thirddoormedia.com.

The post Inclusive marketing resources to strengthen your brand’s messaging appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google, over the past few months, has been rolling out new icons within the Google Ads console. Those who spend their days inside the ad console are taking notice of the new icons.

Screenshot. Here is a screenshot of the new Google Ads navigational icons from Brett Bodofsky on Twitter:

Some saw these earlier. Some have said they saw these icons begin to show up months ago, so we assume Google is now more widely rolling the new icons out now.

Reaction. The reaction to the change of icons is not all positive but you’d expect that when Google makes any sort of change to any of its interfaces. ere are some of the responses to the new icons:

Why we care. This is not a huge change from the Google Ads team but it is a change that some PPC experts are taking notice of. Don’t be distracted by the change, the core functionality has not changed in Google Ads, this is just a user interface change that you might take some time to get use to.

The post Google Ads rolling out new icons more widely appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google announced last week that it rolled out an update to the local search and map pack results. It began on November 30 and finished on December 8.

We noticed really dramatic differences in ranking on December 6, 2021. My agency named the update “The Vicinity Update” because the most significant impact we saw was that Google made it so that smaller, less established businesses that are closer to the user are now ranking better than overpowered businesses further away. Google said that it “rebalanced” the factors that make up the algorithm and we have observed that proximity got a big boost while some relevance factors declined. 

What industries did it impact?

This update was dramatic, and in my findings, is the biggest update we have seen in local search since the Hawk update in 2017. Some industries are seeing the impact more than others. We are seeing huge differences for lawyers, home services, insurance, dentists, and many others. It’s important to note that you won’t likely see the impact of this update unless you are doing grid tracking that shows you how far away from your office you rank.

The winners

The winners in this update are:

• Businesses that don’t have keywords in their business name but have strong competitors that do.
• Secondary locations for prominent businesses. For example, I’ve seen almost uniformly, across every example I’ve looked at, that the primary location for a business took a hit but their newer offices increased. Here is an example in the insurance vertical:

The losers

The losers from this update are:

• Businesses that ranked really far from their office.
• Businesses with keywords in the business name.

For example, below are screenshots from a business that meets both criteria. One of the keywords that describes their service is a part of their actual LLC name. They used to rank really far from where they are located and no longer do.

The pins indicate the location the user is searching from. Green pins indicate the business ranks in the top three results, yellow pins indicate the business ranks near the top three results and red pins mean the business does not rank near the top three results.

Why we care

Google has weighted keywords in the business name too heavily for as long as I can remember. This often leads to businesses adding them, regardless of the fact that it breaks Google’s guidelines, because it has such a significant impact on ranking It has also led to Google showing fake listings in the search results instead of real businesses. With this update, businesses that are newer and trying to follow Google’s guidelines should have a much greater shot of ranking. 

If you have questions about how the algorithm update impacted you, feel free to chime in over at the thread at the Local Search Forum.

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