"Growth Driven Design & IMPACT’s Website Update:" The IMPACT Show Ep. 26 [Show Notes]

In this week's episode of The IMPACT Show, Bob and Nick talked about copyrights and sharing, whether or not Facebook CTRs are dipping, is quality or quantity of content more important, how to make growth driven design more effective, and IMPACT's new website.

Just in case you missed us live (or if you want to relive the magic), you’ll find the episode’s show notes below as well as the recording.

Enjoy and make sure to share with your peers! 

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Have feedback or questions? We’d love to hear it. Comment on this blog or email us at show@impactplus.com

IMPACT Updates

1. Launched our new website this week (we'll get to that towards the end of the show)
2. Launched a new show, Behind The Screens
   • It's on YouTube, be sure to check it out below and subscribe
3. Webinar with Marcus Sheridan
   • Two weeks from now.. November 16th at noon EST
   • The topic is "Improve your Keyword Revelance and Attract Real Buyers With Your Content."
   • Here's the link if you'd like to register
   • Also, the IMPACT Show will start a little later that week, and Marcus will be on the show as a special guest.
4. Speaking at Digital Agency Growth Summit
   • From our friends at DigitalMarketer
   • We're honored that they selected Bob as the opening keynote
   • Date: December 4 - 5th in Austin, TX
   • If you're an agency and interested in attending, check it out here
5. Costume Contest with Weirdert Group
   • Our friends challenged us to a custome contest this Halloween. 
   • We accepted the challenge and Dan Tyre was selected as the judge.
   • There clearly was a winner and a loser. And, we won. 
   • Check out their response:

What Marketer's Be Talkin' Bout

Where we go over what you're saying in IMPACT Elite.

IMPACT Elite is a community of passionate marketers looking to help other marketers succeed. We’d love for you to join us! Go to impactplus.com/elite or just search the IMPACT Elite Group on Facebook and request to join. 

1. Cady Lu asked: Does anyone have good guides on etiquette and rules/laws regarding sharing content created by someone outside the business? For instance, what are the best practices when it comes to sharing videos from YouTube, photos from Facebook, etc, on your business' page(s). Most of the information I'm finding is for personal use or very specific copyrite legalize. Thanks!
   • Bob's response:
     • There's no real guide
     • Recommend talking to legal/intellectual property attorney
     • Some people will say open domain... not true. As content marketers you need to be very careful.
     • Photos --> Getty Images
       • Not sure how this applies to social posts
     • People do it all the time... so?
     • Risk, speed, and legal costs
     • Errors and omissions
2. Annette Suden asked: What's more important, high quality content that takes longer to create, or content that's quick & "good enough" or "at least better than what it was?"
   • The goal would be to provide the best answer to a user that you can.
   • What's your policy on giving answers to top prospects and custoemrs via email? Is it, "as short and as little effort as possible" or is it, "solve their problem, show them we care and that we're smart and that we've done this before?"
   • Be sure to answer the question. That doesn't always mean it should take longer. If it's taking too long to produce quality content, focus on improving that. Best would be to try both and get raw feedback (explicit and implicit) from a "focus group" of your top stakeholders (staff, customers, leads) who will be trying to derive value from what you put out.

Digital Marketing News

Where each week, Nick and I share one thing from the world of digital marketing that caught our eye and we found interesting to share.

Are Facebook CTRs Dipping?

• Comes from Marketing Land, "E-Commerce Brands Boost Facebook Ad Spend as CPMs, CPCs Rise But CTRs Dip"
  • The subheader to the article was a great quote:
    • In Q3 2017, online retailers increased the amount of money they poured into Facebook's mobile video ads and shopper-retargeting dynamic ads.
  • Spending
    • There was a 20% increase in ad spend, compared to Q3 of 2016.
    • This is a good sign for Facebook when it comes to the busy holiday season
    • Advertisers are particularly purchasing more mobile video ads and retargeted ads from Facebook.
    • Marketers spent 40% more money on Facebook's
  • Performance
    • CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) increased 57% year over year among all advertisers to $9.31
    • The average Facebook advertiser paid $0.55 per click in Q3 2017, a 54% increase year over year
    • At the same time, Facebook's ad rates have risen, it's ads' performance has dipped.
  • In Q3, Facebook's worldwide click-through rate averaged 1.69%, up 2% compared to a year ago but down 4% compared to the previous quarter. That marked the first time Facebook's average global click-through rate declined from Q2 to Q3, according to Nanigans, though the company's spokesperson said that shift "is unlikely to be indicative of a larger directional change in the market."
  • What does this mean?
    • Benchmarks for you
    • Getting more competitive
    • Obviously still a viable channel, but it's important that you know what you're doing as it's maturing.

Why Old Ad Fraud Tactis Won't Die

Earlier this month, BuzzFeed published an expose that outed an ad fraud operation. As the story circulated on social media, journalists at various publications covering the ad industry noted the most striking thing about the story is how old schemes still dupe big brands. Here are some of the more persistent ad fraud tactics.

1. Domain spoofing
   • For example, yourwebsitesucks.com might label itself as ESPN.com on an exchange and because shady site sells its impressions for cheaper than the sports giant, the shady site will siphon money from ad buyers looking for cheap scale who fail to examine site-level reports.
2. Faux Video
   • Video ad fraud is about twice as common as display ad fraud, according to DoubleVerify, which makes sense when you consider that ad dollars are pouring into video.
   • Display CPMs tend to run from $2 to $6, while video CPMs range from $12 to $20, according to an ad buyer requesting anonymity. Since video CPMs are higher than display, fraudsters disguise display inventory as video inventory so they can pocket the difference between the two.
3. The deman for brand safety has surged. 
   • Because porn, piracy and hate sites can no longer attract brand ads directly to their webpages, they've increasingly turned to middlement to distract brands from where their ad dollars wind up, Tiffany said. These middlemen grab ad dollars using antiquated strategies.
4. Advertisers can reduce their exposure to fraud if they change some of their habits, including:
   • Targeting audiences regardless of which sites they appear on
   • Buying supect video inventory
   • They also can restrict the number of sites they let ads run on
     • Use tools like whitelists and blacklists to help keep their ads off fringe sites.
   • Be careful about heavily targeting niche demographics where quality supply is scarce.

Before we dig in.. start thinking about how the things we’re talking apply to your company. If you have any challenges or questions that you want us to address, leave a comment or send us an email to show@impactplus.com. We’ll get to as many as we can either at the end of the show or during next week’s episode.

Topic 1: Growth Driven Design

• What is growth driven design?
  • the mindset is that in the simplest form, don't think of your website as something you create once (static and update blog articles), but rather something you continuously update all the time, so it never gets stale and it's always performing for you.
• Why should marketers be using it?
  • The idea is that these website redesign projects are long and laborious, and you can avoid these monsterous website projects. 
  • The idea is to use website date to make improvements to your site. 
  • Tools you can use:
    • Hotjar
    • Usertesting
    • Optimizely
    • HubSpot
    • Google Analytics
• What are some common misconceptions?
  • That it's just CRO
    • It's similiar and some CROs will follow an agile process, but CRO fits into the GDD model. 
    • There's more that goes into GDD. It's your website updates - new product release, updating your brand, etc.
  • That all GDD projects must start with a launch pad website
    • There's times where this might make sense for you, but in most cases use your current website, even if you have to migrate it to a different content marketing platform.
• How can companies be doing it better?
  • Get it done. A lot of companies have really great ideas but never implement them.
    • Add items to your backlog and pull items in every month that you want to focus on.

Topic 2: IMPACT's New Website

• First and foremost, thanks for all the comments and feedback yesterday after the launch.
  • Most of it was positive
  • Some people had questions
  • If it was just like best practices, it wouldn't be innovative
  • We're taking a leap, and we're really excited
  • Yes, we're still crushing bugs.
    • The site was going like on 11/1 whether the site was finished or not. The marketing team stayed until 2AM Wednesday night to launch the website and in the morning they came back in to crush the bugs that were identified. 
• Why IMPACT made the change
  • Repositing IMPACT as an agency and media company
    • If we're going to be in the category of "inbound marketing", we can't own the term.
    • We need to be the most honest, transparent, and real.
      • That's how we're going to differentiate vs. other inbound resources, specifically HubSpot (which we love, but we needed our content tilt.)
  • New offerings / new navigation - The Journey
  • New lead magnet ... design of CTA, no pop-ups, better value and experience will maintain or increase our subscriber conversion rate
  • New things coming...

Next Steps:

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We're going to IMPACT Elite to ask what you want us to talk about, so jump in on the post there.

Join Us Next Week! 

We'll be back again next Thursday, Nov 9th at 1:00 PM ET.

Until next time... get out there and make it happen.