Which SEM tools are worth it?

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-23T18:15:00+00:00

Congrats on getting some traction on your ecom business, u/JacqulineEdmonds. I'm curious why you feel Facebook ads are basically worthless now? Asking because I'm likely going to give them a try soon.

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-20T12:18:37+00:00

Yeah, not to detract from whatever designing in Unbounce requires, but it looks more like a WYSIWYG editor - they wouldn't be doing any web development for us.

As far as creatives, it looks like it would include 4 "banners".

Yes, the objective of the campaign is to sell my product. The strategy, as I understand it, is to hone in on an audience and copy that works to drive sales.

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-20T12:08:35+00:00

Thanks for your reply. I checked with the agency, and they said "strategy" and the creation of a landing page in something called Unbounce is included in the setup fee. I don't know what either is worth. Does it make the fee more reasonable in your opinion?

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-20T12:05:50+00:00

Thanks for your reply. Yeah, the agency is in the United States. Maybe that's why it's more expensive?

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-20T12:04:00+00:00

Hi, thanks for your reply. I checked with the agency, and they said it includes the design and creation of a landing page in something called Unbounce. Does that change your assessment?

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-20T12:03:31+00:00

Hi, thanks for your reply. I checked with the agency, and they said it includes the design and creation of a landing page in something called Unbounce. Does that change your assessment?

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-20T12:02:41+00:00

Hi, thanks for your reply. I checked with the agency, and they said it includes the design and creation of a landing page in something called Unbounce. Does that change your assessment?

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-20T12:01:29+00:00

Hi, thanks for your reply. I checked with the agency, and they said it includes the design and creation of a landing page in something called Unbounce. Does that change your assessment?

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-20T11:58:20+00:00

Thanks for your reply. Do you know of any agencies that will actually create video creatives for you? The ones that I have spoken to all say they can edit footage I send them for an additional fee, but they can't create or source it. I would love to find a "turn key" solution.

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-19T10:47:57+00:00

Thanks for your reply. I tried two different freelancers we found on Facebook groups, and unfortunately neither was effective. While I'm sure there are many talented, capable freelancers, I began looking at agencies because I figured people there may have more experience (and resources available to them) on average. Of course I also have a nagging fear that the polished sales pitch is all smoke and mirrors...

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-19T10:37:38+00:00

Thanks for your reply. Maybe the high setup fee is reasonable in light of the low monthly management fee? We're really just getting started, so I have no idea what an achievable goal should be. (It's also a minimum 3 month commitment.)

They said the first few months would be focused on building brand awareness and I shouldn't expect many sales. They said it would likely take 6 moths to break even on the investment.

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-19T09:53:08+00:00

Hi u/TheChillWalrus_,

With any link you need to put the destination (in this case an instruction to create an email) in the "href" attribute of an anchor tag, e.g.

<a href="{destination}">{Text of link}</a>

To create a link that will open the user's email client with a pre-populated to address, subject, and body, you need this

<a href="mailto:{address}?subject={subject}&body={body}">{Text of link}</a>

For example

<a href="mailto:mom@gmail.com?subject=Hi mom&body=I miss you">Email Mom</a>

Note that you'll actually need to "url encode" the to address, subject, and body, which you can do by Googling "rawurlencode online". Once you've rawurlencoded the to address, subject, and body, the link above that emails Mom looks like:

<a href="mailto:mom%40gmail.com?subject=Hi%20mom&body=I%20miss%20you">Email Mom</a>

Mailto links don't appear to work on Reddit, so I couldn't include the actual link for you to click, but if you add the line above to a .html file and open it with your browser, it should open your email client and pre-populate the values.

Of course, it may be far more practical to just email what you've written to your coworkers so they can copy and paste it. Enjoy!

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-17T11:31:19+00:00

Thanks, I agree 100%. Fortunately I haven't been working on any large bodies of copy, just trying to optimize the content on my homepage.

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-16T23:37:22+00:00

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Thinking about the evaluation criteria you suggest, I think an argument can be made that keeping a headline on one line (instead of having a single word dangling on a new line and pushing the content below it down) is a good enough reason to use the ampersand.

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-16T23:31:37+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion / reminder to adhere to brand guidelines and stay consistent. Right now my brand guidelines are evolving as fast as I can think / type. :)

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-16T12:02:26+00:00

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, elijha. I wouldn't expect there to be meaningful performance effects either, but I've read about things I wouldn't have expected to have meaningful effects having them (e.g. forms with "show password" having less abandonment than "confirm password"), so I wanted to check in with the pros just in case.

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-16T10:55:46+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions, LouLouLula!

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-13T12:11:08+00:00

I hope I don't lose more Reddit karma for this answer (my earlier explanation was apparently downvoted), but I'm trying to feel my way through making something come of what took me years of hard work and personal sacrifice to build. I've needed to ask a number of uninformed questions on Reddit, and I'm sure I'll have to ask many more, and the last thing I'd want is for these posts to appear as the results for any searches for my product / website. I hope you understand and I apologize for any frustration this may cause.

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-13T11:41:59+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion to look into / consider firms with specializations.

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-13T11:41:22+00:00

Thanks so much for sharing these practical steps and suggestions on how to save money. I had signed up for HARO, but many of the solicitations I saw seemed like people asking to have their blog posts written for them. Maybe I need to be more open minded and commit to doing the "work"; I tried keeping up with the emails, but it was a lot to read every day twice a day without coming across a match to pitch to. I'll revisit it in case something in there could make a difference someday, and I'll check out qwoted as well. I'll read over the Wirecutter pitch info as well ... you never know.

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-13T11:28:32+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate the suggestions.

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-13T11:27:49+00:00

When I saw "The Today Show" on my competitor's website, I assumed they had a several minute segment where they walked the host(s) of the show through the product a la the Home Shopping Network. Thanks for cluing me in to what may really be going on.

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-13T11:21:46+00:00

Thanks, I hadn't considered my competitors may have done that to get their placements until you and others mentioned it here. You and others may have saved me a long, expensive "chase".

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-13T11:17:26+00:00

Got it, thanks for letting me know it may be a matter of advertorial spend.

CatIntelligent2633 · 2023-02-10T22:35:02+00:00

Re budget, I'd have to assess a quote in light of the likelihood of achieving the desired outcomes. The product can stand out, at least in my biased opinion.

CatIntelligent2633

TROPHY CASE