Author: Franz Malten Buemann

A great B2B marketer understands the utility of an informative and original piece of content. And while blog posts, press releases, and eBooks are all super effective mediums of content marketing, there are even more content formats worth exploring for your business — including reports. Marketing reports provide a comprehensive snapshot of your brand, your…
The post How to Create Your Own Report: A Step-By-Step Guide appeared first on Benchmark Email.

Adding popups to your website and landing pages is the best way to grow your email list. Learn the best practices and tips on how, when, where, and why to use popups and forms.

Hello everyone! Need some fair community feedback for the Ukrainian SaaS startup that I and my team are currently working on. It’s called AdBraze and it’s been made to save maximum time and effort for user acquisition teams. Would appreciate your opinion If you could choose a new feature for an ad automation platform, what would it be? Advanced automated rules Cross-platform analytics Creative generation AI Production management tool In case you can share some other unresolved pain for your performance marketing team – I’d be grateful. submitted by /u/Darling_Curse [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/linked_camp [link] [comments]

YouTube thumbnails, the small, clickable snapshots that viewers see when they search for videos, can be just as important as a video’s title because they provide a preview of your video and entice viewers to click through. 

If your video has an ordinary or sub-par thumbnail, it won’t persuade anyone to watch your content. YouTube could deem the video irrelevant and won’t rank it in the search results or distribute it through the “Recommended Videos” feed. Since your video’s click-through rate is one of the most important ranking factors in YouTube’s search algorithm, especially during its first hour on the platform, an eye-catching thumbnail can make a huge difference in ranking number one for a query and not ranking at all.

Creating vibrant YouTube thumbnails can also instantly grab people’s attention and this can help you differentiate yourself on a platform full of standard thumbnails all screaming for attention. Below, we’ll guide you through an easy four-step process for creating visually appealing YouTube thumbnails that will cut through the noise, boost your video’s click-through rate, and lift your rankings.
Table of Contents:

How to Make a YouTube Thumbnail
8 YouTube Thumbnail Makers

 

1. Visit a free online YouTube thumbnail maker.
There are eight free online YouTube thumbnail makers listed below, but we featured FotoJet in this guide because it’s one of the only YouTube thumbnail makers that doesn’t make you sign up for a free account before you can create a thumbnail. Their robust thumbnail maker lets you customize and download your thumbnails completely for free — no email address necessary.
The free version of this online app lets you download small and medium-sized image files, but large and extra-large are premium features. This means you’ll get to be creative with your designs to ensure they appear as crisp as possible on YouTube.

2. Upload a photo or choose one of the thumbnail makers’ templates.
YouTube will let you upload any picture from your computer as your video’s thumbnail. But if you don’t have a vivid visual on your computer or you need some inspiration, Fotojet’s got you covered. It has over 23 free templates that can serve as your thumbnail’s foundation.
To create striking a thumbnail in Fotojet, consider including a talking head. People are naturally drawn to human faces because it’s an ingrained survival mechanism to help us quickly gauge someone’s emotions and determine if they’re a threat or friend. Research Gate also discovered that Instagram photos with faces are 38% more likely to receive likes and 32% more likely to receive comments.

3. Add text, clip art, or a background to your thumbnail.
Once you’ve picked your picture or template, you can make your thumbnail stand out even more by adding text, clip art, or a background to it.

To further clarify your video’s subject matter, consider adding your video’s title to the thumbnail. If your photo, graphic, or text is bright, consider placing it on top of a dark background. The color contrast will make your thumbnail pop. The same logic applies to dark objects and bright backdrops.

4. Download the finished product to your computer.
After you finish polishing your thumbnail, press the Save button at the top of the page to export your thumbnail.

Last, title your thumbnail. When you’re naming the thumbnail, include either the title of the video, or the primary keyword related to the video. Save the final file as a PNG or JPG. Its resolution will already match YouTube’s recommended resolution — 1280 x 720 pixels — so you don’t have to worry about resizing it later.

 
8 YouTube Thumbnail Makers
Along with Fotojet’s free online YouTube thumbnail maker, there are seven other thumbnail makers that can help you customize your own YouTube thumbnails. Before you create a thumbnail with these tools, though, you need to sign up for a free account on their websites.
1. FotoJet

FotoJet is a leading YouTube thumbnail maker that comes with templates to help you summarize your video into a click-worthy image. You can get started with FotoJet as soon as you land on the homepage — no email or account setup required. Choose from a variety of stock images, font styles, and clip art elements to customize your design, then export it in either a JPG or PNG format. 
2. Canva

With more than 2 million images in their library, hundreds of fonts, and customizable backgrounds and colors, Canva gives you more than enough resources to unleash your creativity.

You can sign up for the free or paid version of the online design tool, but be prepared to take your own images as Canva’s image gallery can cost up to $1 per photo. Don’t let that deter you. This robust tool is jam-packed with free design elements that can help you create click-worthy YouTube thumbnails.
3. Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark lets you select from thousands of photos on the web and a variety of built-out themes with their own unique layouts, colors, and fonts to craft eye-catching YouTube thumbnails. Although the free version comes with a watermark on all content you download from the system, you can always upgrade to the paid version to have unique thumbnails that are truly your own.
4. Crello

With Crello, you can create engaging thumbnails by blending a multitude of designs, photos, backgrounds, text, and objects together. When compared to other popular design tools, Crello emerges as a less expensive option, but remember resizing your thumbnails could be a pain because of some improvements that need to be made within the app.
5. Visme

Choose from a wide selection of templates, photos, graphics, colors, and fonts to create a thumbnail in Visme. This app was made with video thumbnails in mind, so you won’t have to worry about sizing and finding the perfect layouts. Visme offers creators various templates to choose from so you can spend more time adding your finishing touches.
6. Fotor

Fotor provides templates under certain themes to help you create captivating thumbnails. It includes all the trending YouTube thumbnail features like photo frames, the lomo effect, and background remover. The options are virtually limitless with Fotor as the canvas for your YouTube thumbnail.
If your workflow can’t be completed all in one session, Fotor’s premium plan allows you to save the version history of your thumbnails so you can pick up right where you left off.
7. Picmaker

With over 100,000 graphics, 1,000 stock photos, stickers, borders, backgrounds, text, icons, and filters, and an automatic background remover, you can create a gripping thumbnail on Picmaker. If you have set brand colors, the free options won’t be the easiest to work with since you can’t save colors, logos, or fonts. But upgrading to just the starter tier opens up a variety of benefits including a brand kit, premium photos, and multi-sized designs.
8. Snappa

Snappa has over 500,000 stock photos, an assortment of professionally designed templates, and customizable graphics, shapes, and text to help you create a YouTube thumbnail. If you’re making over three thumbnails per month, Snappa might affect your workflow as the free version only allows three downloads per month. If three is enough for you, you’ll be glad to know there’s a drag-and-drop functionality to help you create your own custom thumbnail template.
Create Scroll-Stopping YouTube Thumbnails
Just like a peephole, the subject line of an email, and even caller-ID, a YouTube thumbnail gives the viewer a peek behind the curtain to see what’s on the other side. It’s a major component in a search result that will determine whether someone clicks and watches your video. Taking the tips and examples in this article, you’ll have to know how to make scroll-stopping YouTube thumbnails that will draw in new subscribers.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Let’s face it – there are many marketing tactics that boost conversions. However, to make your marketing effective, leveraging the customer’s buying cycle is the key to a successful online business.
Understanding a customer’s buying cycle is how you can have the right marketing for a successful commerce site.

Online Buying Cycle
The online buying cycle is very similar to the original buying cycle; however the key difference is the online buying cycle occurs online. Because it is online; many ecommerce sites and brands will utilize social media platforms and email marketing as marketing tools to help market and sell to consumers and generate leads back to their ecommerce site. The buying cycle and online buying cycle will go through the five stages of closing a sale.
5 Stages of the Customer Buying Cycle
You can look at a customer buying cycle as a customer’s purchasing cycle. ;Many customers go through stages during their purchasing process to educate themselves before they either make a purchase. There are five stages that you have to consider:
1. Awareness
Awareness is the first stage in a customer’s buying cycle when customers realize that they have a problem that needs a solution. ;
A company will be able to reach the target customers given the right marketing strategies and campaigns.
For example, a customer is trying to lower plastic waste from water bottle usage. A customer then sees an ad for a water filter. The problem the customer is facing is met with a solution and now the next stage of the customer buying cycle begins.
2. Consideration
This stage is where the prospect is considering their options and ;your company can provide multiple solutions for a customer. As an ecommerce site, this is where your marketing, sales team, and products come in.
In this stage, you can provide detailed information to explain how your product will help solve their problem. To go back to our example, once the customer clicks the ad and lands on your site, you can list the benefits of the water filter, such as cleaner water, more cost effective than buying bottled water, and gives you a good boost in health. ;Once the customer understands that this product is what they need to solve their problem, ;they will move onto the next stage.
3. Intent
In this stage, a salesperson aims to earn the trust of potential customers. Whether you tap them emotionally or logically, this is the time where a salesperson convinces the potential buyer that their product is the best solution for their needs. You can accomplish this through reviews from existing customers, highlighting the benefits of the product, or through a social media campaign that creates a feeling within the customer. Once the customer is convinced and has seen proof that the product works, we move on to the next stage.
4. Purchase
At this point, your customer is ready to purchase the solution for their needs. While your customer is in this stage, you need to ensure that your pricing is reasonable and you make the buying process as simple as possible.
When the customer purchases, that is not the last step in the customer buying cycle. You don’t want the customer to be a one-time buyer. You will need to manage the customer’s relationship with your site to make them a returning customer. ;Maintain contact with the customer on their problem solving journey to make sure ;that the product works properly and that they are satisfiedThe purchase is just the start of a relationship with a customer; building a relationship ;keeps them in the buying cycle.
5. Re-purchase (Renewal)
The final stage of the buying cycle is repurchase of your product or service. This is where you manage your relationship with the customers. In the previous stage, we touched on the importance of making sure that the customer and seller have established a good rapport ;since this will encourage the customer to repeat business . To get to repurchase, it’s imperative that the customer is happy and satisfied. In addition, in this stage, you can ask ;a customer for a review or a testimonial on how this product or service helped them with their needs.
Create Targeted Content for Each Stage
Now that you know the breakdown of the five stages of a customer’s buying cycle, it’s time to start making the most of it. To get started, you need to answer the questions which are related ;to each stage. But how do you know what your customers are searching ;for to gather information? The answer lies in search queries.
;Look at this example:

“flat screen tv” – This is a generic term that customers in the Awareness or Consideration stage use. “compare flat screen tvs” – The desire to compare products indicates this customer is further along in the cycle, such as the Consideration or Preference stage.
“sony 42” lcd” – This a very specific product query indicates that a shopper is much further into the buying cycle, now likely evaluating prices (right before the Purchase stage).

The next step is to create content that moves customers closer to purchase. For example, look for keywords that are related to the Awareness and Consideration stages. Using the previous example, you can provide a guide to selecting the perfect flat screen TV.
For the Preference/Intent stage, leveraging customer testimonials, providing specification sheets and telling your brand story will help push prospects closer to the Purchase stage, which is the perfect time to utilize a PPC ;ad with text that entices them to buy. To LeadL them towards Repurchase, you can send monthly newsletters with helpful tips and tricks . That way it will keep your brand on the top of their minds.
Make Content Available Through the Right Channels
Of course, the content you share is fully dependent on the product you offer and the profile of your customers, but there are basic commonalities on how to market in each stage of the buying cycle:

Awareness: For the majority of ecommerce sites, this is all about being found via search engine marketing, particularly PPC and SEO.
Consideration: Once customers find you in search engines, keyword-tailored landing pages are essential. . You can also use comparison charts that highlight the key selling points to help you stand out from the competition.
Preference/Intent: Your website should do the talking here, especially your product descriptions and overall branding. This is a critical stage to capture contact information.
Purchase: Get your coupons and discounts out there, whether it’s through your PPC ad text, a pre-sales email, or social media .
Repurchase: Keep in contact with your customers via scheduled emails, social media, and personal outreach. Your customers are your best growth opportunity.

Create a Meaningful Customer Buying Cycle
While it’s common for online business owners to always focus on the sale, it’s important to remember that your flock of customers are scattered across the field. By herding them through the right gates using your marketing, you’ll be able to enjoy a much more dependable customer pipeline.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2011 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

As an online store, you drive traffic online. This means that, when people search for products or services related to what you sell, you want your business to appear in their search results. Enter ecommerce SEO.
Read on to learn more about ecommerce SEO, why it’s important, how to create an ecommerce SEO strategy, and discover tools that will help you with your process.

What is ecommerce SEO?
Ecommerce seo is the process of making your online store visible in search results so that people doing searches related to what you offer are likely to come across your website. An optimized ecommerce site is more likely to rank highly in SERPs and drive organic traffic.
Ecommerce SEO is important because 60% of people research a brand online before making a purchase. When your site is optimized, they’ll be able to find your product pages in search results and learn about what you offer. When people can find your site and learn about what you offer, they’re also more likely to make a purchase.
This type of SEO is not that different from general SEO. Still, you will focus your efforts on optimizing your site to benefit your products, like writing high-quality and keyword-rich product descriptions.
Ecommerce SEO Strategy
1. Keyword Research
Your ecommerce SEO process should begin with keyword research for your site, especially for your product pages.
This research will help you learn the words most commonly used when people search for products related to your business. You’ll then want to use these keywords in the content on your site, so Google learns when to surface your website in SERPs and so searchers know what they’ll find on your page when they click.
The image below is a product page from Supergoop for one of its sunscreen products, Unseen Sunscreen. The brief product description uses keywords that people often search for when researching sunscreens: invisible sunscreen, scentless sunscreen, SPF 40.

Image Source
You can also conduct keyword research based on your competitors to see what they’re ranking for that you aren’t. Ahrefs Content Gap Tool is a high-quality option for doing this, and you can enter the URLs for your competitors and get a full report.
2.On-page SEO
On-page SEO elements help search engines understand what’s on your site pages, like your content and HTML elements. These elements often include your keywords, so keyword research is always the first step.
1. Meta Titles
Meta titles are the headings you use to describe what’s on your page content. When you write them, you’d want to summarize the main topic of your page with a related keyword. The image below is an example from Shopify, an ecommerce platform for businesses, where the meta title describes exactly what the business is for: selling online.

Image Source
2. Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are snippets of text in SERPs that describe what’s on specific pages. It helps searchers assess if the page is relevant to what they are looking for. This summary is only visible in search results, and when writing them, you should include your target keywords.
The image below is an example of a meta description from Dollar Shave Club that reads, “Everything you need in the bathroom – from razor blades to grooming products – automatically delivered to your door. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.”

Image Source
Within your meta descriptions, your ecommerce store can also greatly benefit from including reviews and star ratings for your products as it helps you build trust. You can do this by using review snippet schema markup.
3. URL Structure
Your URL structure refers to your subdirectories and slugs that categorize your website. Best practices are to keep your URLs simple, use relevant keywords, and always hyphenate your slugs.
The hierarchy of your URLs should be clear, so browsers and search engines know when your pages are getting more specific.  
Let’s take HubSpot URLs as an example. The HubSpot domain is hubspot.com.
If you’re researching HubSpot’s marketing software and its specific tools, the URL becomes hubspot.com/products/marketing, where

/products is a subdirectory
/marketing is a slug

Telling Google that /marketing is a product page that gets more specific. Then, if you’re interested in the social media management software, the URL becomes hubspot.com/products/marketing/social-inbox, where

/social-inbox is an additional slug for a specific tool within a specific product

4. Product Descriptions
Product and category descriptions clearly explain what your product is. When writing them, you want to include the keywords you’ve gathered in your research.
On the Social Media Management product page from HubSpot, the product is described using relevant long-tail keywords that people will often search, like publishing content, social media ROI, and monitoring social mentions.
5. Structured Data
Structured data is the code on your website that explains the content on your page to help with indexing. You want to add structured data markups to your product pages to ensure optimization.
Google has an entire database of product-related structured data for shipping information, offers, pricing, and product availability — really anything you need to sell your products. You can simply copy and paste it into your site’s schema markup, add your unique elements, and check if it’s valid using the Rich Results Test.
6. Images and Image Alt Text
All ecommerce websites should use high-quality images to display their products. While they help drive a sale, images with the right keywords and descriptive alt text can help you show up in search results and image packs.
For example, here’s an image from the WordPress website with the alt text “Devices showing the WordPress mobile app.” The alt text describes what’s in the picture, and the description allows it to show up in image search results for WordPress Mobile.

Image Source
3.Technical SEO
Technical SEO is what makes your site run and easy to navigate. For ecommerce sites, focus on optimizing your website speed.
As you likely include a lot of text to describe your products, images to show off your products, and maybe videos for product demonstrations, your site can take a long time to load. Aim to compress all files on your site to ensure they can load fast enough that browsers aren’t frustrated and waiting for results. Conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time, so this is critical.
You also want to make sure that your code is clean because it can impact load times. All SEO practices work in tandem, so using the correct structured data can help you ensure your code is clean and easy for bots to read.
4. Backlinks
Backlinks, also known as off-page SEO, are important for ecommerce sites as they drive traffic. Seek out backlinks from sources with positive reputations, are authoritative, and relate to what you offer.
Some popular strategies for getting backlinks are reclaiming unlinked mentions of your business, getting mentioned in listicles, and using high-quality images that sites can use to link back to your content.
A creative way to get backlinks for an ecommerce site is through collaborations with influencers or affiliates. They can promote your products and share links to your site with their audience.
5. Optimize For Mobile
Optimizing your ecommerce site for mobile is a must for your SEO strategy, as mobile devices generate about half of all global website traffic and 41% of web traffic.
Responsive mobile design is how you ensure your ecommerce site can adapt to whatever device a visitor uses. This means mobile buttons that resize, images and graphics that scale, typography, and text size — really anything that can change based on the size of someone’s screen.
Ecommerce SEO Audit
Your ecommerce SEO audit will monitor the same elements that make up your strategy. Running one is beneficial because you’ll get a checklist of improvements to make that will benefit your rankings once you finish.
Here are some questions you can use to guide yourself during your audit.
Keyword Research

Which keywords do you currently rank for? 
What keyword opportunities can you pursue?

On-Page SEO

Do you have descriptive meta descriptions? 
Are your meta titles related to your page content? 
Do your product descriptions use target keywords? 
Do your product descriptions clearly explain what you’re selling? 
Do your images have descriptive, keyword-rich alt text? 
Do you use product-specific structured data? 
Is your structured data valid by Google’s standards?

Technical SEO

What is your current page speed?
Are your images compressed?
Are your videos compressed?
Is your schema markup clean?
Has your site been indexed by Google?

Backlinks

What current backlinks do you have?
Are your current backlinks from authoritative sources?
What websites can you get backlinks from?
Do you have any unlinked mentions to claim? 

Mobile Optimization

Are your images scalable?
Are your graphics and vectors scalable?
Is your text scalable?
Does your website automatically respond to different device sizes?
Does your website pass the mobile optimization test?

Ecommerce SEO Tools

Keyword Planner is a free tool that helps you conduct keyword research for writing rich product descriptions. 
Google’s Mobile Optimization Test helps you ensure your site is responsive to screens of all sizes. 
PageSpeed Insights will tell you your site’s current speed and give suggestions on how to improve your score. 
Rich Result Test analyzes the structured data on your desktop and mobile site to ensure it’s valid for rich results. It tests specifically for Google SERP features. 
Squoosh to compress the image files on your website.
Ahrefs to conduct keyword research and analyze your competition. It’s a paid tool that also offers other high-quality SEO features for auditing your entire site, monitoring your rankings, and identifying opportunities to improve your rankings. 
SEMrush helps you find opportunities to strengthen your backlink profile and optimize your site for local SEO.
SEO Site Checkup is a full-service paid tool to help you test your meta titles, preview your site in Google SERPs, run responsive image tests, and create SEO-friendly URLs.

Over To You
Quality is the only SEO method that will get you anywhere, so make sure the information you put out there—whether on your own page or on directories and other publications—is the best possible quality you can provide. With the  methods outlined above, your ecommerce site will benefit from better SEO results.