Month: December 2024

Uncover the benefits of featured snippets in your web strategy (Updated for 2025!)

Post author By Laura Isaacs
Post date December 20, 2024
2 Comments on Uncover the benefits of featured snippets in your web strategy (Updated for 2025!)

This blog, originally published in January 2023, has been refreshed to reflect the latest insights into how winning featured snippets can enhance your visibility in Google’s evolving search results, particularly in the context of AI-generated overviews.

Google’s organic search experience is designed to put users first. New search features and refined results connect users with what they need to make educated decisions about everything from what products to purchase to what site presents the most authoritative information needed to solve a problem. Google rolled out featured snippets to the search engine results pages (SERPs) in 2018 and has since transformed the way information is accessed and user questions are answered.

Even several years after launch, featured snippets and the strategy behind them come with many benefits. From increased click-through rates to enhanced user trust, winning a snippet puts you at a major advantage over competitors vying for the same keyword. And as we welcome 2025 and the AI-powered changes Google brings with its Search Generative Experience, featured snippets are even more essential to your SEO and web strategy.

As of today, nearly 20% of all searches deliver results that include a featured snippet. This makes featured snippet strategy essential to organic search rankings, customer experience, and even conversion rates. Focusing on an organic web strategy and winning featured snippets is more important to SEO now than ever, as this can help combat the increasing costs and stagnating results many businesses are seeing with paid search placements.

What are featured snippets?

Featured snippets are highly visible placements in Google’s search results that showcase concise, relevant answers directly on the search page. With Google now incorporating AI-generated overviews into its results, rich snippets have taken on even greater significance, often serving as key inputs for these summaries.

The definition of featured snippets is fairly simple. Featured snippets are extended blocks of information intended to give users a quick answer to their questions or search queries. Users might see a list, chart, or fact at the top of the page that provides instant access to the information they seek. Paragraph snippets are the most common type of featured snippet, accounting for 82% of all snippets and providing rich information to answer search queries.

You might consider featured snippet location on the SERP as “position 0,” the coveted spot between paid results and the rest of the organic results. This position is quite desirable—you can’t pay for this placement and landing here proves that Google has determined your content to be of exceptional value to the reader.

Featured snippets can mean different things to users and to content marketers.

To users, a featured snippet means their question is immediately answered and they can instantly access a web page with helpful content and authoritative information about their query.

To content marketers and SEO and UX/CX experts, featured snippets are SERP spotlights that give their quality content and web strategy an edge over the competition and should be an essential part of their digital marketing strategies.

Why are featured snippets important in SEO?

Featured snippets are more than just an important part of organic web strategy, they’re essential. There are at least four ways SEO and featured snippets can benefit your business:

Increase web traffic and improve CTR: Our numbers show that owning a featured snippet can increase CTR by more than 850%, driving even more traffic to your website and consumers into your sales funnel.
Boost brand awareness: Landing at the top of the SERP with extra real estate increases visibility for your brand or business. It demands consumer attention.
Grow website authority: Featured snippets are a serious factor in building domain and page authority as they lead to better and more qualified traffic to your website.
Optimize conversion rates: Featured snippets can usher in users who are likely to become customers by answering their questions and providing need-to-know-now information.
Influence AI overviews: According to a report from September 2024, approximately 12% of Google searches trigger AI overviews in the search results, up significantly from just 5% in July 2024. In many of these cases, the content and link featured in the snippet also appear prominently within the AI overview box.

Another unique benefit of including featured snippets in your web strategy is related to the increasing prevalence of voice search. Voice assistants and tools like Amazon’s Echo, Apple’s Siri, and Google Home are increasingly common in many homes and vehicles. According to December 2022 reports from Statista, 35% of all households in the United States own smart speakers. Voice search queries are among the most common way users interact with these devices. And in many cases, voice search devices answer questions by citing a featured snippet.

Learn more about voice search optimization in our blog.

What do featured snippets have to do with AI overviews?

Featured snippets play a pivotal role in AI overviews on Google’s search results. Often, the same content highlighted in a featured snippet is directly referenced in the AI-enabled Search Generative Experience (SGE) summary, with the link prominently displayed. This connection makes winning a featured snippet not only a path to prime SERP placement but also a critical step toward appearing in AI-driven summaries, amplifying your content’s reach and authority.

There’s still much more to the snippet equation and Tallwave’s proprietary research proves it. Let’s look at some of Tallwave’s unique specifics and statistics about the benefits of featured snippets for your business and web strategy.

How Tallwave clients win with snippet strategy

In-depth analysis and data-fueled strategy are essential parts of Tallwave’s approach.

We put that approach to work within the organic search strategy for a large regional healthcare client to help them win featured snippets with SEO, gaining prime visibility ahead of other organic search results and enhancing the authority of their brand.

Here’s how we did it and what we learned along the way.

How can featured snippets drive growth?

Tallwave wanted to better understand what kind of content Google found “snippet-worthy” and how to apply these features to drive growth. To do this, we looked for trends and commonalities among snippet-winning content to determine what Google evaluates as high-value and the impact snippets have on website engagement.

As such, Tallwave analyzed more than 1,000 featured snippets owned by a client’s (a major healthcare provider) website in 2022. Of these 1,000 featured snippets, 98% belonged to approximately 50 posts on the website’s blog.

Tallwave started by comparing the click-through rate (CTR) for keywords that owned featured snippets to all other ranking keywords on the site. When it comes to organic searches, CTR refers to the number of impressions seen in the SERPs divided by the number of users who clicked through to the site.

For this client, the average click-through rate for a snippet-owning keyword in position one on the site was 25.9%. The average CTR across the entire website was 2.7%. Owning a featured snippet for a search term helped us boost the client’s site clicks by an impressive 859%.

Not only does a high CTR drive traffic to the site, but Google has consistently hinted its algorithm considers CTR as a ranking factor.

Snippets Have Serious Imapct on CTR

The kind of keyword that won a featured snippet was also an important consideration in Tallwave’s analysis. Out of the client’s 1,000 snippet-owning keywords, 91% represented searches with “informational” intent, implying the searcher was looking for information needed to solve a problem. Presenting the information the searcher needs when they need it establishes your business as an expert or solution, sending the searcher down the sales funnel toward converting.

While a featured snippet from Google for an informational term might not win an immediate conversion, it certainly adds to visibility and helps establish your website’s authority and business credibility. Data from HubSpot suggests it takes around eight touches to lead a customer toward conversion. A featured snippet with rich, relevant results that directly answer a consumer’s need is a high-value touchpoint and will likely help keep your brand top of mind when they are ready to take action.

What SEO factors help content win featured snippets?

In addition to analyzing the CTR and type of keywords winning snippets, Tallwave also examined factors that make a blog post or web page “snippet-worthy” in Google’s eyes. This gives us unique, specific, and proprietary information that can be applied across clients to help create content that drives awareness and promotes high-value engagement.

Here are some of the key factors we’ve uncovered in working with our clients that you should consider in your organic search strategy to help win featured snippets:

Make keywords clear: Many blog posts with featured snippets include a primary keyword in the form of a question in the headers and body copy.
Longtail keywords set off snippets: Longtail keywords are highly-specific search queries, often 3 to 5 words in length. These kinds of searches are more likely to trigger snippets for users seeking immediate answers.
Prudent header placement wins: Strategically placing H2s and H3s within website content increases the likelihood of that page or post winning a snippet.
Outperform competitors with word count: Blog posts and website pages with a competitive word count consistent with (or slightly higher than) the competition’s copy and with a specific number of words between headers (H2s, H3s) help content win snippets.
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) works: Latent semantic indexing occurs when SERP results are populated based on similar and conceptual keywords. For example, a blog post about anxiety might include supporting related terms like “depression,” “mental health,” “phobias,” or “panic.” The use of these related keywords might also increase the likelihood of content owning a featured snippet.

Reap the benefits of featured snippets in your SEO strategy

The benefits of featured snippets abound. Winning featured snippets and “position 0” SERP placement directly translates into contextualized search visibility for your brand or business, increased and better-qualified website traffic, proven website authority, and, ultimately, more customer conversions.

As Google continues to refine its AI search capabilities, featured snippets remain at the forefront of SEO strategies you need in your toolbox. Their influence now extends beyond traditional search results to AI-generated overviews, making them more impactful than ever.

Providing SEO solutions and website and content strategy is just part of how Tallwave wants to drive your success. As a leader in providing integrated digital marketing solutions and more to both established and up-and-coming brands, Tallwave is ready to deploy our customer-centric and cohesive approach in a way that is unique to your vision and creates exceptional experiences for consumers of all kinds. From customer journey mapping to paid media services to product design and beyond, we’re ready to talk about how we can help your business win.

Tags Client Results, Featured Snippets, SEO, Web Strategy

Highlights Paid Media Reaching New Customers Strategy

Real-time relevance: A playbook for dynamic marketing strategies

Post author By Stevie LoBosco
Post date December 16, 2024

Just like a rainy day might force a football team to prioritize running plays over a passing game, or a dominant center on the opposing team might cause a basketball team to shift from man-to-man to zone defense, we adjust our attitudes and actions based on what’s happening around us. Why should marketing be any different?

Dynamic marketing is the ultimate playmaker in today’s fast-paced, consumer-driven landscape. It’s all about relevance—using customer information to run flexible and responsive marketing campaigns in real time based on customer behavior and needs. Instead of relying on static strategies that treat all customers the same, dynamic marketing embraces flexibility, using data to understand what your audience wants and when they want it. Just like a coach calling audibles during a game, dynamic marketing allows businesses to respond to shifting conditions and keep their strategies relevant and effective. In this blog, we’ll explore how dynamic marketing helps you stay on offense, adjust your playbook, and score big with your audience.

Straight from the playbook: Examples of dynamic marketing

Dynamic marketing takes many forms, each designed to be responsive to changing conditions, customer behaviors, or external factors. These strategies leverage data and automation to create highly relevant experiences. Here are some common types of dynamic marketing:

Time-sensitive campaigns: Marketing efforts that change based on time, such as countdowns to sales, events, or product launches, creating urgency and driving engagement.
Weather-triggered ads: Campaigns that adjust based on local weather conditions, like promoting cozy blankets during a cold spell or outdoor gear on sunny days.
Location-based marketing: Dynamic content tailored to where the customer is, such as promoting nearby stores or events based on their current location.
Behavior-driven messaging: Ads or emails that respond to customer actions, like retargeting someone who viewed a product with an offer or reminding them to complete a purchase.
Dynamic pricing: Pricing that adjusts based on external factors, like ride-sharing prices that adjust during peak hours or in high-demand areas or hotel room rates that adjust based on occupancy and demand.

These types of dynamic marketing strategies ensure that businesses deliver the right message at the right time, increasing engagement and improving outcomes.

Scoring big: The benefits of a dynamic marketing strategy

A dynamic marketing strategy offers businesses the flexibility to stay relevant and competitive in a constantly evolving marketplace. By leveraging real-time customer data and insights, companies can tailor their messaging, content, and offers to meet the immediate needs and preferences of their audience, resulting in:

Higher conversion rates: Targeted marketing efforts that adapt to customer behavior are more likely to resonate with the audience, resulting in increased conversions and sales.
Stronger customer loyalty: Dynamic strategies demonstrate an understanding of customer needs, fostering trust and long-term loyalty by delivering timely and relevant experiences.
Competitive advantage: By staying relevant and responsive to customer behavior, businesses can outpace competitors who rely on static, outdated strategies, positioning themselves as industry leaders.

Keeping your eye on the ball: The need for dynamic marketing

In today’s crowded and fast-paced marketplace, static marketing strategies often fail to resonate with audiences who expect timely, relevant experiences. Customers are inundated with messages across channels, making it essential for businesses to rise above the noise. Dynamic marketing meets this challenge by responding to real-time conditions and behaviors, ensuring messages are not only seen but are also meaningful in the moment. For instance, campaigns that adjust creative elements based on current trends, time-sensitive events, or shifting customer priorities can capture attention and drive action. By staying agile and contextually aware, dynamic marketing breaks through the clutter and delivers messaging that truly connects with audiences, fostering engagement and results.

Focusing on the fundamentals: Core elements of a dynamic marketing strategy

To execute a successful dynamic marketing strategy, you need a strong foundation built on key elements. These components ensure your strategy is agile, effective, and always ready to adapt to the changing game:

Real-time data collection: Dynamic marketing relies on up-to-the-minute data to understand customer behavior, trends, and external factors like weather or location. This data enables responsive campaigns.
Automation tools: Automation ensures swift responses to customer actions, triggering ads, updating creative, or sending communications based on predefined conditions for greater efficiency and relevance.
Creative resources: Effective dynamic marketing requires a variety of thoughtful creative assets. Develop multiple versions of your content to suit different scenarios, customer segments, or triggers.
Testing and optimization: Ongoing testing and optimization ensure your strategy remains effective. Regular A/B testing, creative updates, and performance reviews help refine and improve your campaigns.
Cross-channel integration: Dynamic marketing works best when it’s integrated across multiple channels, such as email, social media, and paid ads, to deliver a consistent, unified experience.
Clear metrics and KPIs: Define metrics and key performance indicators to evaluate your campaigns’ success, such as clicks, conversions, or engagement, and use these insights to continually improve your strategy.

By building your strategy around these core elements, you’ll have a gameplan designed to adapt, engage, and win.

Don’t get blindsided: Common challenges

Implementing a dynamic marketing strategy comes with several challenges that businesses must anticipate and address in order to succeed:

High-quality, real-time data: Robust tools and systems are required to collect, analyze, and act on insights quickly. Without this, marketing efforts may fall short of their potential.
Significant creative resources: Dynamic marketing strategies require multiple versions of content tailored to various scenarios or triggers, placing increased demand on creative teams.
Seamless integration across multiple channels: Inconsistent messaging can confuse customers and dilute the impact of campaigns. A full-funnel, integrated approach is essential for dynamic marketing campaign development, execution, measurement, and continuous improvement. This can be difficult for brands whose marketing teams and partners consist of mostly channel-specific specialists and point solution providers.

Game day ready: Tips for implementing dynamic marketing

Implementing a dynamic marketing strategy can be complex, but these tips can help ensure success:

Invest in the right tools and partners: Use automation platforms, real-time analytics, and customer data management systems to enable efficient and responsive marketing efforts, or find a good partner who specializes in dynamic marketing so manage your campaigns for you.
Prioritize data quality: Ensure your data is accurate, up-to-date, and actionable by implementing robust collection and validation processes.
Plan for creative flexibility: Develop a range of content variations tailored to different scenarios, customer segments, or external triggers to keep campaigns relevant and engaging.
Start small and scale: Begin with a single dynamic element, such as weather-triggered ads or behavior-based emails, then expand as you refine your approach and build confidence.
Optimize and refine continuously: Use A/B testing and performance metrics to assess what works, and refine your strategies to improve outcomes over time.
Align teams and channels: Foster collaboration between teams and integrate messaging across channels to deliver a seamless and cohesive customer experience.

Step up to the plate

Dynamic marketing enables you to deliver impactful, timely messages that truly resonate with your audience. Ready to elevate your marketing game and get a W? At Tallwave, we specialize in crafting innovative, dynamic strategies tailored to your goals. Let’s work together to make your marketing more agile, engaging, and effective. Contact us today to get started!

CRO Customer Engagement Highlights Paid Media SEO Strategy

The quick and dirty guide to ad copy that converts

Post author By Laura Isaacs
Post date December 2, 2024

Was your last ad campaign a dud? It’s time to light up your marketing efforts with ad copy that converts. In today’s competitive landscape, bland, boring copy just won’t cut it.

Let’s dive into the world of ad copywriting and learn how to craft ads that spark interest, ignite desire, and explode with results.

Understand your audience (Because you wouldn’t talk to your boss the same way you yap to your BFF)

Have you ever tried chatting with your boss about the latest Taylor Swift fan theory? Unless he is a fellow Swiftie clowning over the release of Reputation (Taylor’s Version), it probably wouldn’t go over well. He’s just not the right audience for your deep thoughts on the leaked breakup documents or the latest wardrobe Easter Egg. But your bestie Laura who knows that the devil works hard but Tree Paine works harder? Absolutely. She’d love to hear how you’re connecting the dots.

And just like that, you’ve discovered the first key to crafting ad copy that converts. You need to understand your audience. Like really, really get them. You need to empathize with your audience and feel their pain.

Here are a few ways you can dig deep and unearth what’s lurking within your audience:

Surveys: Gather information about your audience with surveys. Ask questions about what motivates, inspires, and frustrates them to better understand their preferences and behavior.
Competitor analysis: Stalker-ish? Maybe. Helpful? Absolutely! Check out what your competitors are doing and see if you can one-up their ad copy game. Look at what’s working for them in terms of social media likes and shares and what is landing flat.
Social media listening: Become a social media ninja and eavesdrop on the online conversations your target audience is having with each other about important things in their lives.

Once you’ve got a solid understanding of your audience, you can identify their pain points and deepest desires. And by understanding your audience on a deeper level, you can create ad copy that speaks directly to their wants and needs, making it more likely to convert.

Make sense of value propositions (Because the ‘why-you-should-care’ factor matters)

Imagine a hot dog stand with a giant sign that just says “Hot Dogs.” Sounds underwhelming, right?

Well, that’s what your ad copy becomes without a strong value proposition. A value proposition is like the neon sign outside your hot dog stand: it tells people why they should stop by and grab a delicious hot dog. Here’s how to craft a value proposition that sizzles:

Keep it clear and concise: Our attention spans are shrinking, rapidly. Get straight to the point and tell your audience what makes your product or service the perfect condiment to their life.
Focus on benefits: Don’t just list features, tell them how those features will benefit them. For example, instead of saying “Our software is cloud-based,” you might say “Work from anywhere with our cloud-based software and enjoy the freedom of a digital nomad.”
Spark desire: Make them crave what you’re offering. Use strong verbs and evocative language to paint a picture of how your product or service will improve their lives.

Put it together: 5 examples of stellar value propositions

What does a value proposition look like when you get it right? Consider the following examples:

Example 1: CRM SaaS

Boring: This CRM software is user-friendly.
Better: Streamline your sales process, boost customer satisfaction, and drive revenue growth with our intuitive CRM software.

Example 2: Healthcare device

Boring: Our new medical device is FDA-approved.
Better: Improve patient outcomes and reduce costs with our innovative, FDA-approved device.

Example 3: Personal training certification

Boring: Become a certified personal trainer.
Better: Launch a fulfilling career as a personal trainer and help clients achieve their fitness goals and live healthier lives.

Example 4: Ecommerce woodworking tool vendor

Boring: Buy woodworking tools at our website.
Better: Craft your masterpiece with precision: Discover the finest woodworking tools and expert advice online.

Example 5: Environmental non-profit

Boring: Donate to our non-profit.
Better: Join us in safeguarding the future of endangered baby orangutans and protecting their rainforest habitat.

Example 6: Hot dog extraordinaire

Boring: Our hot dogs are yummy.
Better: Hot dogs are so good, they’ll make you question your life choices (but in a good way).

Use words to drive action (Because words have power, people!)

Alright, you understand your audience, you’ve crafted a killer value proposition highlighting unique benefits, and now it’s time to unleash the wordsmith within!

Here’s how to write ad copy that pushes people to take action:

Harness the power of CTAs

A call to action (CTA) is your ad copy’s flashing “buy now” button. Make it clear, strong, and impossible to ignore. Think “Get a quote in one minute” or “No credit card needed; start your free trial now.”

Write clearly and use their words

Avoid jargon and complicated sentences. Speak directly to your audience and use language they understand. Linguistic profiling and search journey analysis can help you identify the language your audience is using at different stages of the sales funnel; let these integrated aspects influence your message.

Use emotional triggers

Tap into your audience’s emotions. You can use humor, instill a fear of missing out (FOMO), or embrace your audience’s desire to belong to a community to grab their attention. We’ve seen government agencies excel with humor and the community aspect is particularly important when marketing to Gen Z.

Make it feel real with a great story

People love stories. Weave a narrative around your product or service, making your audience feel like they’re part of the story. Our CRO and paid media love story blog is a fun example of creative storytelling.

Create scarcity and urgency

Create a sense of urgency by using limited-time offers or highlighting scarcity. For example, “Only a few spots left!” might push a potential client toward signing up for your online course, or “Limited-time discount expires soon” might get an item in a customer’s cart with haste.

Keep testing and optimizing (Because the journey never ends)

Think your ad copy is the bee’s knees? It might be good, great even, but that doesn’t mean you can rest on your laurels. Even the best-laid plans can go awry and there’s always room to iterate and improve. Testing and optimization are crucial for ad copy success and might just be the secret sauce to unlocking the full potential of your brilliant copy.

Here are a few things you can do to ensure you’re creating ad copy that converts:

A/B testing: Pit your ad copy against a challenger in a head-to-head battle. Create multiple versions and see which one reigns supreme.
Review key metrics: Track metrics like click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and average session duration to measure your ad copy’s effectiveness. These metrics are your compass, guiding you toward success.
Continuous improvement: Consumers are constantly evolving, so don’t get complacent. Keep testing and optimizing your ad copy to stay ahead of the curve. It’s like leveling up in a video game; the higher you go, the more challenging the competition gets. But with the right strategies and tools, you’ll be an ad copy conversion queen (or king) in no time.

Take the path to high-performing ad copy

Crafting high-performing ad copy is both an art and a science. By understanding your audience, creating compelling value propositions, writing persuasively, and continuously testing and optimizing, you can create ad copy that resonates with your audience and drives action.

Ready to take your ad campaign to the next level? Reach out to Tallwave today and let our team of marketing experts help you craft ad copy that converts, place your ads for maximum conversions, and design an experience your customers love. Let’s chat.