We have decided to help some of you out in explaining what an Integrated Digital Marketing Agency actually is and what are the main benefits of working with a reputable one.

Firstly we define an integrated digital marketing company as one that can expertly join all the dots in digital marketing and advertising for a specific business case or requirement.

Now this could mean that a client just wants a website, email marketing, design, video, SEO or paid advertising etc, but an integrated agency needs to be able to offer allied services that will maximise the benefits returned for their initial investment.

We do not mean a hard sell, the client may just need a website full stop, but an integrated agency needs to have the ability to link other areas to one main service provision if needed or required now or at a later stage.

So we would except an integrated digital marketing and advertising agency to be able to advise on strategy, web technology, paid advertising options (including SEO), sophisticated email marketing and also analytics, reporting and the integration of other cool technology such as marketing automation, CRM systems and call tracking.

There maybe areas that specialist providers will be needed for a roll out phase but a quality integrated agency will not be phased by being able to integrate all these areas into a coherent ongoing strategy and help with the build.

Positives of using an integrated digital marketing agency:

Getting a team of experts on an as-needed basis, no hiring, firing, sick leave etc.

Ensuring that all projects are in harmony and that the team can deliver a certain quality level, that you can see exists prior to working.

Experience with projects that require serious management and integrations.

Huge communication benefits and vision.

With the right team you get forward thinking and growing expertise that you can tap into and will likely come forward to suggest areas that other fragmented agencies may feel reluctant to do, therefore pushing yoru forward with digital marketing and not simply delivering base level services.

With many suppliers involved the likelihood of them wanting to ‘pop their head above the parapet’ to help you with new ideas is hugely reduced as it means so much hassle with meetings, clashes of personality and business aims and generally one huge headache, you get under served by using many suppliers pretty much always and will likely tear your hair out learning this.

Negatives to using an integrated digital marketing agency:

We hear and can think of only a few potential negatives to having a close partner relationship with an outsourced provider of professional services, but looked at closely they are outweighed in droves by the benefits of integration.

1) If the agency keeps things hidden and you are unaware of what is being done and spent. (i.e not professional)

If this occurs then you have unfortunately worked with an untrustworthy company which there are many circulating in all walks of life, diligence prior to starting a working relationship should help mitigate this massively if not totally.

Only the kind of agency that usually does not last long is up to these tricks, any agency worth their salt will be managed by reputable people (so check Anthony Munns them out etc) and be upfront and clear with all the best intentions and a clear roadmap and set of deliverables that you know what you are paying for.

It is your choice to agree or not on any project and work and this leaves very little room for explanation or corruption if all has been set out and agreed.

There could be a level of being complacent with an agency, and that is an issue that you as the employer could and should raise regularly if you are seeking to push things forward.

Summary of benefits of an integrated approach to your digital marketing needs:

You will get more positive energy and willingness from an integrated agency than a number of disparate providers who will have to work with each other and you, and therefore likely factor and price a huge factor of hassle into any quotes in order to ensure that the unknown relationship will be beneficial for all.

All in all we feel that most business serious about digital marketing need to work with an expert integrated digital marketing agency.

It just makes so much more sense.

The post Why is an Integrated Digital Marketing Agency usually better than using individual suppliers? first appeared on CY Digital Marketing Agency | Cyprus Web Design | SEO and PPC Agency.

Here at CY digital we have been delivering and enthusing about content marketing before the term even became part of the digital marketing vocabulary.

In our early days as a leading digital agency back in the UK we were one of the first to be brought into huge PLC’s to consult on huge investments in email marketing which is also known as marketing automation.

A more sophisticated way of staying in contact with new leads and engaging with them in order to educate and hopefully sell your services.

In essence all business need content in order to communicate clearly to people online why they should choose your service or product over another.

Let us take an example of two types of businesses.

One B2B – selling water saving technology to the oil sector.

One B2C – selling building services to trade and private clients.

So what is content marketing? and why is an SEO agency and promotion so vital.

Well firstly let us dissect how people use the internet when thinking of buying or investing in a service or product.

In early stages of buying someone will be pretty top level and start searching for a term and location or a term and another signifies.

e.g: An engineer for oil and gas installations needing to find ways to save money on his plant equipment may type ‘water saving mechanical seals’ in order to find mechanical seals that will fit his budget and specification.

A home-owner who has had water damage may type external rendering company in Yorkshire in order to find a supplier to fix a wall that is leaking.

Now one of the first things any website owner will need is to know what terms people are typing for services or product you need.

This keyword research will inform you on what SEO techniques to use to gain the right traffic, but firstly if you are not found you lose out on these early stage searches.

Another way to gain this traffic would have been paid advertising for Google or Bing or other search engines where your advert will appear when people search for certain terms.

Trust and expertise:

So now we have been found (assuming we have implemented SEO or paid advertising methods), we need to start to educate the client on why they should choose you (or make them laugh for valuable shares).

This is where content marketing cyprus is useful and will help people digest information in a preferred manner.

Examples of content marketing include:

• Whitepapers
• Case studies
• Podcasts
• E-books
• Video
• Infographics

The key is to work out your audience, what they need (a laugh or info about your company or product) and what you are then prepared to provide, your budget and then prepare to promote.

Promotion:

So once you have defined an audience, created some quality content, you then need to think about promotion.

This can be with paid ads (adwords, twitter, linkedin, youtube etc), SEO (ideal if you are already getting results) social media, or email marketing.

Either way you will be seeking to gain trust, followers, shares and a general positive sentiment about you and yoru brand with the content you crate.

This is a nutshell is the pay back for giving something useful or funny.

The question really is what do you want to do to give back in return for a little love and attention?

The post What Is Content Marketing? The Huge Benefits Of Content Marketing first appeared on CY Digital Marketing Agency | Cyprus Web Design | SEO and PPC Agency.

When it comes to video advertising, we at CY Digital have been involved in this sector way before others.

CY digital were pioneers back in the UK as one of the first agencies that truly saw and appreciated the upcoming (back in 2007) convergence of digital advertising, website design, mobile uptake and the exciting new advertising territory that this media mix would create.

That said, it has taken YouTube (the worlds second biggest search engine) a long time in our opinion to really start to deliver the kind of advertising options that the platform always held latently.

This is not to say that video advertising has just arrived, far from it, but it now feels way more mature and we feel now necessary to explain options to our existing clients both large and small and your good-selves.

The difference between TrueView in-display ads and true view in-stream ads:

In a nut shell in-display is best run using a CTA type overlay within a video you are promoting (a full video often).

In-stream is a small advert type of video that you can ‘force’ people to watch or at least watch some of within existing content, the metrics and data on who has watched etc are explained below.

So let’s dissect this a little further:

*Information currently true as of early 2016

How TrueView in-display ads work

In-display ads can run across YouTube and Google Display Network. On YouTube they can run on the search and watch pages for both desktop and m.youtube.com, as well as the home pages for desktop and YouTube mobile apps. The ad unit consists of an image thumbnail and up to three lines of text. Clicking the ad will deliver a user to the YouTube watch or channel page to view the video rather than playing the video within the ad unit itself. It’s recommended to use CTA overlays on the videos to drive the users to the advertiser site.

YouTube video watch page

In-display ad can appear on watch pages in these different positions:

As an overlay on the video. Overlays look the same on the YT watch page and on embedded players.
As an overlay on the video with an additional 300×250 companion
In the related video section as a unit that contains a thumbnail, headline, channel name and video view count
In the related video section as a 300×250 unit that contains a large thumbnail, channel avatar name, headline, description and video length

YouTube search results

TrueView in-display ads appear on YouTube search results in the related video section. The ad contains a thumbnail, headline, channel name and video view count.

YouTube Mobile Web search and watch pages

In-display ads can appear on the YouTube mobile search and watch pages as a promoted video in the top related video slot for high end devices.

YouTube mobile apps home page

In-display ads can appear in the home page of the Android and iOS YT App on days when the mobile video masthead is not sold.

YouTube home page

In-display ads can appear on the YouTube home page when there is no Masthead running.

TrueView in-display: Assets overview

Asset name: Description
Video URL: Video must be uploaded to YouTube
Image: Choose from 4 auto-generated thumbnails

*To implement custom thumbnails, contact your Google representative

Headline text: 25 characters max
Description: Two lines 35 characters max each

Description is not shown in suggestions.

In order to create an in-display ad, videos must be public or unlisted.

*All ads must must comply with the YouTube Advertising Policies.

Reporting metrics:

Impressions and Clicks

In summary you can gain a lot of clicks on your video asset by using this form of video advertising.

How TrueView in-stream ads work

TrueView in-stream ads run on videos served on YouTube or on a collection of sites and apps in the Google Display Network (GDN).

These ads may also run on YouTube videos that are embedded on other sites or apps. They can also appear on Android and iOS YouTube apps, m.youtube.com (on iPad and Android), and on connected TVs.

Viewers can choose to skip the video ad after 5 seconds. If they choose not to skip the video ad, the YouTube video view count will be incremented when the viewer watches 30 seconds of the video ad (or the duration if it’s shorter than 30 seconds) or engages with your video, whichever comes first. Video interactions include clicks to visit your website, call-to-action overlays (CTAs), cards, and companion banners. If view counts on YouTube are a concern, it’s a good idea to make videos at least 12 seconds long. YouTube analytics doesn’t track views less than 10 seconds.

How CTA overlays work

The CTA overlay appears as soon as the video starts playing, and then collapses to show just the thumbnail image after 15 seconds. On desktop browsers, viewers can hover to expand the CTA. On mobile browsers, viewers can click the thumbnail image or arrow to expand it.

The post Video Advertising Ultimate Guide: TrueView In-Display v’s True View In-Stream Adverts first appeared on CY Digital Marketing Agency | Cyprus Web Design | SEO and PPC Agency.

What is the difference between marketing and advertising and why does it matter?

There are many articles and opinions on this matter and I for one am open to the viewpoints presented but I have simplified both areas in my own headspace so I can put them in a fairly unique category while still affording them the relationship status of brother and sister that they deserve.

In this explanation I am going to take my opinion and wrap it in a solid example of how marketing and advertising all fit together and in some areas may overlap.

So here is my take on marketing

Marketing in my opinion is the understanding of your product or service, your target audience and the approach to communicating the value and unique benefits of a service or product that your business sells or needs to explain.

I therefore see marketing as the creation of specific assets that aid the communication and explanation of your product or service to a particular audience.

So for me Marketing = Relevant and high quality Asset (marketing collateral) creation and defining your target audience.

Examples of marketing may include:

Demographic and campaign limits and targets

E.G: Deciding that a campaign will focus on over 65’s in an area with a demographic that can afford a high quality, expensive mobility scooter.

To get to a campaign level situation to target you will need to have done research on the location and areas, the amount of people in this target age group and area, and the type of lifestyle and interests they have.

You may be inclined to look at the published statistics or pay for more up to date and granular information to use for the campign.

Either way you are seeking to define a market to advertise to.

Demographic and campaign limits and targets

Once you have decided your campaign and its boundaries you will need assets (let’s keep it digital) to send people to to see and learn about your product or service.

This may take the form of a website landing page with well developed copy text that informs and sells at the same time, it may also take the form of an explanation video that shows safety areas and why the product cost more.

We are also going to create a radio and TV advert that will all lead back to the landing page (or phone calls).

All in all you will decide the look, feel, branding, tone of voice, speed of narration dependant on your target audience and the campaign specifics, you may choose to use larger fonts for those with visionary issues and maybe a very simple language for the voice over with no music track for the hard to hear. You may also choose multiple calls to action for phone, email and a call back as you know your audience prefers phone communication.

So all in all this gives us plenty of choices to create campaign specifics to pass onto……advertising.

So here is my take on advertising

In our example with the above marketing agenda and assets worked out and created, we can now look at advertising.

Now that marketing have defined our campaign and provided us with valuable assets based on the campaign goals and boundaries we can now get some ‘eyeballs’ and traffic (visitors) to these assets so we can try to communicate the benefit and ultimately sell our high quality and slightly more expensive mobility scooters.

The purpose of advertising in my opinion is to bring people to see marketing assets, these marketing assets need to be optimised and highly relevant to be as effective as possible with clear calls to action from the advertiser and the marketing side of the equation, and this is where an alignment is needed in what you say and how you say it.

So for me advertising = getting people to see your marketing assets and having systems in place to work out the ROI.

Types of advertising

For this campaign we are going to look at a traditional radio advert on a local station, some midday niche TV advertising and an SEO and PPC campign.

The search based PPC (pay per click) has been worded by the marketing team for the advert text content and is aimed at getting instant traffic and will help inform our SEO campaign in various useful areas related to keywords and conversions.

To help marketing and also the advertising team, we have also integrated call tracking which in many ways straddles both areas as it is used to help work out how effective campaigns are in entirety and provides data for the marketing and advertising team to work out ROI.

What we will gain from call tracking is to know how effective our PPC, radio, TV and SEO actually is based on the technology that call tracking allows.

We can then either alter and amend the marketing messages for each advert area or minimise or cancel low performing advert options.

Summary

Either way the successful delivery of a marketing campaign is the culmination of combined marketing and advertising efforts on behalf of the company and in my opinion is how it all fits together so nicely, but have distinctly different skill sets and requirements.

The post Why You Need Integrated Digital Marketing and Advertising To Succeed Online first appeared on CY Digital Marketing Agency | Cyprus Web Design | SEO and PPC Agency.

What exactly does PPC, CPA, CPC, CPM, CTR, PPI, VTR, eCPM and CPI mean?

In the world of online digital advertising, there are a wide variety of key terms that you need to fully understand in order to feel comfortable with your options and what a digital advertising and marketing agency like CY Digital actually does to help you gain more traffic and convert this traffic to sales/customers/leads.

Your ad network options

For the most part clients of CY Digital are faced with a number of options for advertising networks, and between them they cover pretty much all the options available for advertising online.

1) The Google ad network via the AdWords interface is a huge area offering many options to clients who want to reach visitors by region, advert style, publication, demographic, time of day, the list goes on. The available space that Google offers is second to none and is the largest network we work with and available to companies to advertise on.

2) The Bing and Yahoo network which is not the most stable or easy to understand of relationships but suffice to say that they are partners in offering advertising space and ad availability on their networks via the Bing ad network which replaced the Microsoft adCenter and the Yahoo ad marketplace.

3) Social advertising space on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks and websites.

These networks are huge and offer many different types of advertising options from text and images to video and sponsored elements.

Notably Facebook’s own advertising eco-system has grown to offer similar reach to Google Adwords and has really pushed the space in mobile advertising where you can deliver a great range of sophisticated technical options for mobile devices to your targeted demographics on a variety of mobile devices and via a huge array of publishers who are part of the Facebook ad network.

YouTube and Twitter are also offering valuable space with innovative options for their own networks and mediums.

A good PPC agency will be able to really give you sound advice, save you money and make you more sales.

So what are all the internet advertising terms?

We wanted to give you the ultimate low down on the most common terms used in online advertising and explain to you what they mean so you can share the knowledge and keep it safe for future reference.

CPM (Cost Per Mile/Thousand)

A confusing one this as many assume it means cost per million, when in actual fact it means cost per thousand or mile (another term), the amount is based on impressions and the base unit is one thousand.

The impression can be page views or page loads, so if your advert is at the bottom you may not actually have been seen, so is not a 100% sure way of gaining real eyeball impressions, but generally speaking this is not a concern.

How CPM is charged and calculated

Let us say that you are a publisher with a successful blog and you get a lot of traffic in the holiday sector, reviewing cottages to stay in Britain, and you get approached by a business with three cottages in Yorkshire. They want to pay for an advert to be seen by readers of the blog as they know that there is strong chance some will be interested by their cottages in Yorkshire, so they negotiate a deal costing €10 CPM, this means that if the cottage business pays them €50 they will get 50,000 page views shown with their advert (at an agreed areas on the site in this case).

Using CPM and a network like AdWords to manage your assets means you get more choice of publishers, more control over how and when the advert is seen and you choose your bid amount to be high in order to get the top spots available on websites that are related to your chosen demographic or niche, but you have no full control like approaching a publisher personally would offer.

Often AdWords (Google) and similar networks like Bing and Yahoo are the best route to deliver an effective, far reaching CPM campaign.

An example CPM calculation:

• CPM units = (Impressions/1000)
• Total price = CPM unit(s)* CPM rate (€)

For example, if an advertiser wants to display 200,000 impressions at €10 CPM (cost per thousand) rate, then the total price for the CPM advertising for the CPM advertiser will be:

• CPM units = 200,000/1,000 = 200 units
• Therefore, total price = 200*10 = €2,000

What is CPM useful for

CPM is a useful term to keep track of for costing and if you are looking to deliver effective and affordable brand awareness, the impressions made mean that you have potentially been seen by many visitors, though this is not always the case. It is definitely a useful metric to utilise for getting your name and brand in as many eyeballs as possible.

Though the effectiveness of this will depend on your copy text, designs, and what you are looking to pay (placing on pages).

If you are going for an approach to an individual publisher you may be able to choose your position and negotiate a deal.

PPC (Pay Per Click)

Pay Per Click (PPC) and Cost Per Click (CPC) are one and the same in all honesty, the point is you are paying for a click on an advert, and the publisher gets paid for the click, simple.

Often a publisher will utilise a CPC (cost per click) advertising revenue model and get paid for adverts that generate clicks on their website, only getting paid per click, this can be set up via any of the main networks and more.

An advertiser will use a PPC (pay per click) based advertising model and pay an agreed amount per click for adverts on the publisher sites or in adverts on search results for instance, in Google.

So they work as the same but are termed differently for publisher and advertiser to be more relevant to what the click actually means and who gets paid or pays.

Tip

Don’t forget that paying for clicks can also mean that you are getting impressions that cost you nothing especially with display (graphical) advertising.

CPC (Cost Per Click)

As a publisher the CPC (cost per click) is the amount of revenue that you earn each time a visitor clicks an ad displayed on your blog, website, or article. The advertiser determines how much the CPC for any ad will be.

CPC advertisements are not all the same in terms of cost and reach and some will cost more than others. Much of this will depend on the keywords you choose and and how much other advertisers are willing to bid on ads.

What is PPC and CPC for

Put simply PPC and CPC are great ways to get traffic to your website for an ad clicked on a publishers website or in search results and as an advertiser/company/brand you pay for a click to your website or link of your choice, this will ideally be an optimised landing page or have a clear call to action so you can get a quality conversion rate.

CTR (Click Through Rate)

This is a vital metric that will help you keep costs down and gain the best traffic to yoru website.

Your CTR will be altered depending on your choice of advert text, imagery and general appeal, it will also be affected by other details like who you target, when and where so is a very complex statistic when looked into deeply.

Your CTR (click through rate) will be a sign of the success of your online advertising program or campaign as it will show you how many clicks you are obtaining for impression served.

This means that you calculate your CTR by adding the number of clicks you have on an advert and dividing this by the page impressions, page views or queries that have been received/provided.

CTR (click through rate) Calculation

• CTR (%) from your page = Number of clicks/Number of impressions, page views or queries (%)

For example, if an image ad was served to a website 200 times and 10 people clicked on it, then the CTR would be 5 percent:

• CTR (%) = (10/200)*100 = 5%

Therefore, in essence, CTR is the average percentage of clicks you receive for each ad impression.

Why is CTR Important?

Knowing your CTR helps you adjust your campaign and work out solutions to gain more traffic, it can also mean that your ad is served more times and costs less depending on your niche and ad network used, so it is vital to understand the relationships between advert, clicks and conversion to work out if your CTR is gaining you the right traffic and if so how you can gain more and convert more of your impressions to clicks and ultimately conversions.

When looking at CTR it is key to know that various niches have varying average CTR’s and a CTR for an email campaign to a subscriber list that people have signed up to will generally be a lot higher than an advert placed on a search engine result page (SERP) and subjected to many other options for relevant content or a published website where people are browsing and reading related or non content.

eCPM (Effective Cost Per Thousand Impressions)

if you are an advertiser you can use eCPM to work out how much it will cost to have an ad placed on a particular website, this can be helpful if you have a limited budget but really like one publisher and want to be seen on their website with your advert.

Different pages/sites will have different eCPM figures also as some may be much more popular than others, so this will change how much a publisher charges (depending on perceived value and traffic to that page/website).

• eCPM = (Total earnings (€)/Impressions)*1000

For example, if your website received 500 page impressions and you earned $4 from these page impressions, then eCPM would be the following:

• eCPM = (€4/500)*1000 = €8
• This equals your RPM (Revenue Per Thousand)
• RPM is used to calculate revenue earned per thousand impressions from a website, blog or any written work published online.
• RPM = (Estimated earnings/Number of page views)*100

Impression

An impression is referred to the per page view or per page load obtained from a web page.

CPI (Cost Per Impression)

A CPI or cost per impression is a price paid for an impression paid to a website owner (publisher) or a network offering placement in search results or on websites.

For example, to work out the CPI of a website page that gets 1000 impressions 500 impressions (page views) at an agreed purchase price of €10 CPM rate, then the CPI from the article will be the following:

• Cost Per Impression Rate (€) = CPM rate (€)/1000
• If an advertiser offers €10 CPM rate then your earnings from per impression will be = €10
• CPM/1000 impressions = €0.01
• Now, 500 impressions will earn you 500*0.01 (€) = €5

The CPI will vary hugely from industry to industry and using a network to buy space from will mean that you can learn more about your CPI form inside the dashboard, perhaps setting up limits to what you pay per 1000 impressions (CPM).

PPI (Pay Per Impression)

Similar to CPC and PPC, Pay Per Impression (PPI) and Cost Per Impression (CPI) are used to mean the same thing by different people.

But like CPC and PPC it usually is refereed to in terms of the publisher who sell a cost per impression (CPI) and advertisers who pay per impression (PPI).

CPA/CPL/CPS (Cost Per Action/Acquisition/Lead/Sale)

CPA/CPL is also referred to as CPL (Cost Per Lead) and CPS (Cost Per Sale).

Using a CPA model is a very specific online advertising option that will help you work out what it is costing you to gain a metric you decide is worthwhile to be benchmarked, and from this point you can try to optimise, reduce the cost and/or gain more of the particular desired action(s) with the knowledge of what it is currently costing.

People use many choices for metrics in this area such as a sign up to a newsletter (CPA), an actual sale (CPS) or similar and the terms used will primarily depend on what the action is primarily.

VTR (View Through Rate)

VTR or (view through rate) is a way of measuring the actual number of post-impression views or responses or ‘view-throughs’ from and sort of display media impressions viewed during and following an online advertising campaign.

Instead of simple CTR the VTR is a useful tool as post-exposure behaviour can be expressed in site visits, on-site events, conversions occurring at one or more websites or potentially off-line.

This data is often missed form simple CTR’s but with unscrupulous ad networks the cookie method of data collection can be manipulated so is not always a good way to measure the success of an advert.

Conclusion

All in all there are many more terms that we use in online digital advertising, and it takes many years to make sense of what you need for report generation and strategy formulation. Learning the basics and speaking with a reputable provider will help you gain most from online digital advertising.

Digital Marketing Newsletter

The post What does PPC, CPA, CPC, CPM, CTR, PPI, VTR, eCPM and CPI actually mean? first appeared on CY Digital Marketing Agency | Cyprus Web Design | SEO and PPC Agency.