What Was Hot in 2016? Disruptive’s Top 10 Most-Read Posts
by Jenny Hatch • January 3, 2017
As 2017 kicks into high gear, let’s take a quick look back at the hot topics of 2016. Here are Disruptive Advertising‘s top 10 most-read posts of 2016:
1. Facebook vs AdWords: What’s Right for Your Business?
Why do certain businesses flourish or fail on AdWords and Facebook? This post gives you the information you need to better decide where to put your time and money.
In a nutshell, B2B businesses should probably start on AdWords and retarget on Facebook and the AdWords Display Network. Consider testing Facebook ads with 10-20% of your monthly ad budget.
B2C Businesses should probably start with Facebook. Consider using 10-20% of your ad budget to test on your AdWords.
2. Does Your PPC Contribution Margin Justify Your Ad Spend?
The success or failure of your PPC advertising depends on whether or not your marketing efforts have a viable contribution margin.
We’ll help you with the calculations in this post, but to put simply, if your advertising is producing at least $3 in revenue per $1 of ad spend, you are probably making a profit. If you are driving less than $3 of revenue per $1 of ad spend, your campaigns need some serious work.
Similarly, if you are considering PPC advertising (or any other new marketing channel), this exercise can help you decide what your odds of success are. If the numbers don’t add up, it’s not worth the investment. If they do, PPC can make your business incredibly profitable.
3. 5 Easy Unbounce Codes to Upgrade Your Landing Page
Back in 2015, we put together a list of our 5 favorite easy Unbounce landing page codes that are great for improving your page’s conversion rate and user experience. It’s been one of our most-read posts ever since.
In this post, you’ll find codes for:
- Custom favicons
- Smooth scrolling
- Scrolling headers
- Hint text
- Lightboxes
If you love Unbounce, you’ll love these landing page codes!
4. Facebook’s New Targeting Expansion Option—Should You Try It?
Facebook launched a new targeting feature called Targeting Expansion in 2016. It allows advertisers to “add or remove interests to reach more people who may convert, but who wouldn’t otherwise have been in your target audience.”
We show you how to use it and try it out for you so you can know if its worth trying it out for your business.
5. An AdWords Expert’s Guide to Eel Fishing
Sit back, relax, and read this article to learn more about eel fishing and digital marketing all at the same time.
You’ll learn where to go on the river, when build your dam, how to make it water tight and what to do to direct the river to your sound weir and you too will be catching eels everyday.
6. 9 PPC Advertising Tactics to Try in 2016
PPC marketing allows you to precisely target your ideal audience. The better you can target your audience, the better you can match your ad and landing page to their needs, which increases their odds of converting.
Done right, PPC puts the right traffic with the right landing page and produces fantastic results. In this article, we discuss 9 PPC tricks for getting more high-quality page traffic out of your advertising budget:
- Remarketing
- Maximizing mobile
- Bidding on the competition
- Using in-market audiences
- Writing standout ad copy
- Taking advantage of ad extensions
- Using Gmail Sponsored Promotions
- Setting with social, finishing with search
- Paying for what works
From what we can tell, these tactics will still be important in 2017, so give the article a read!
7. How to Make Advertising Work for B2B Marketing
When done right, AdWords can be one of the most effective ways to market your B2B business. It’s an awesome way to get in front of your audience when they are looking for your solution.
That being said, if you do it wrong, AdWords is also a great way to lose a lot of money.
Fortunately, in this article, you’ll learn about the differences between B2B and B2C advertising and how to leverage the strengths of B2B to create a killer marketing-sales cycle.
8. How I Grew a Company From 25 to 250 Employees With PPC Advertising
Many companies have spent thousands of dollars on PPC with little-to-no apparent success. It’s a frustrating waste of time and money that leaves them with a bad taste in their mouth.
PPC marketing can be challenging. Over the years, PPC has become increasingly expensive and competitive, making it difficult to run a profitable account without significant effort.
But when done right, PPC can help a business grow exponentially. Read this article to find out some of our secrets to success.
9. How a Great Testing Strategy Increased ROI by 88%
Most successful landing page A/B tests are not the product of a lucky break—they are the result of a great, methodical testing strategy.
You might not improve your conversion rate by 37% right off the bat, but with the right testing strategy in place, you’ll get there eventually.
We’ll show you how a great testing strategy works and how to set one up in this article.
10. Google Expanded Text Ads: Is Bigger Really Better?
Google announced Expanded Text Ads during 2016, calling it the “biggest change in 15 years.”
However, were a bit skeptical. An extra 45 characters alone won’t positively impact your AdWords account—it’s what you do with those characters that matters.
In this article, Aden Andrus made some surprisingly accurate predictions about the effects of this character increase and offers some helpful suggestions about what you can do with those characters to increase the clickthrough rate in your account.
Conclusion
2016 was a great year for advancements in the digital marketing space. We were excited to be a part of it and are excited to be on the front lines reporting about 2017 as it happens.
Stay tuned for updates on our most popular articles as well as new articles as we uncover more secrets, report on updates, and help our clients increase business using paid advertising.
