Introducing, Taboola.

Don’t tell anyone but Taboola is one of our dirty secrets.

We generate customers for our clients using it’s incredible power the world-0ver and we literally can’t get enough of it.

There’s billions of impressions available each day, imagine how many of those are your potential clients and what it would be worth to your business to get in front of them.

Millions? Hundreds of thousands?

Well it doesn’t. A few pence in most cases.

Thing is, Taboola is simple to set up but incredibly difficult to master, luckily for you we’d like to think of ourselves as pretty good at it.

Each day we create thousands of customers, hundreds of thousands of clicks and millions of impressions for our clients.

Most of those are the cheapest and highest converting customers our clients generate online.

For more info, and to find out exactly how Taboola can help you, give us a shout.

Give Leon a call on 0800 63 43 007, he’s our Direct Marketing expert and will be more than happy to take you through it (that’s him on the right).

The rest of the content on this page is worth reading but, if we’re honest, it’s only really for the purposes of getting you here in the first place so don’t worry too much.

So How Does Taboola Work?

The internet is the most extensively used platform ever made.

Appealing to everyone with access, and internet marketing is becoming one of the most popular and valuable ways of making a success from your business.

However, making the most of this massive opportunity for success is easier said than done by anyone’s standards.

Having a website is the first step in making internet success, but with thousands of companies also competing to be seen in the sea of content which is available, you need to find a way to stand out in the crowd and be seen, and Taboola could be the key to your success in online visibility.

What is Taboola?

Taboola create a solution to your online marketing, aiming to identify people who would be potential clients for particular online companies, and then connecting them to the websites they may be interested in via targeted advertisements.

Taboola highly emphasise their strapline “content you may like” to convey their business aims, and their method of advertising is based largely on the theory that the majority of people simply browse the internet in an opportunistic way at least some of the time they are using it.

This means that they may land on a page which they did not originally search for because they have stumbled upon an item of interest.

A person may have opened their browser, seen a topic of interest and their online journey continues from there onwards.

Whereas search engines such as Google provide users with exactly what they are looking for, Taboola works on the concept that people sometimes do not know exactly what they are looking for when browsing the internet.

They proactively present results to potential clients who may be interested in what they are offering.

Luckily, Taboola don’t just aim randomly out into the depths of the online world, a method which most people agree would potentially be annoying for many people who would prefer not to be bombarded with advertisements of no interest.

Instead, they use complex algorithms to pinpoint peoples’ preferences and identify those who may genuinely want to see the advertisements they are being presented with.

How to get more from Taboola

Taboola are an innovative business who have already made their worldwide success, with offices based in New York, London and Bangkok to name a few.

Taboola offers a service which connects companies who would like to advertise their company, with companies who are willing to advertise for a fee.

Taboola create web based widgets which entice people with content which they may be interested judging by their preferences, by use of phrases such as “You may also like” and “Recommended for you”.

These widgets also include pictures and links which are related to the content they are advertising, and are placed on websites by content publishers.

Current publishers who charge a fee for links to be placed and promoted via their website include The Huffington Post, The Weather Channel and LifeBuzz.

On the other side of the coin are companies who wish to place advertisements on these popular sites.

These content creators use Taboola to place advertisements on sites and pay for the advertising facilities they receive.

These are the links which appear in the web widgets which are placed on the publisher’s site.

Taboola claims to be an extensive platform for reaching out to your specific target audience effectively, claiming to reach over 1 billion unique users every month, and also reaching even more desktop users than the internet giant Facebook every month.

Taboola make money by charging a promotion fee from the companies who they advertise for, and then by offering only a percentage of that charge to the publishers.

Taboola works on a campaign basis, where you have the opportunity to adjust your campaign according to your requirements and budget.

In fact, you have the ability to take control and adjust nearly every aspect of your campaign, and in order to make a real success of your efforts, as well as get the most for your money, you will need to optimise every element of your campaign possible.

Using the settings on your Taboola account, you will be able to take control of the amount you are spending on your campaigns, the content which is being used in your campaigns, the countries you are targeting and your cost per click.

What can Taboola do for me?

As suggested, Taboola are currently an extensive marketing platform and by the looks of things, marketing strategies involving targeted internet advertisements are not about to go away any time soon.

The main aim for companies who use Taboola as an advertising platform is to drive traffic towards their website.

This could be to generate leads, sign ups, free trials etc.

Taboola claim to generate traffic which is really likely to convert, by using algorithms to specifically target people who are genuinely likely to be interested in the link.

This type of marketing is generally much more beneficial than a non targeted marketing method, such as the use of television adverts, which will be directed at everyone for a large amount of money in the hope that some of those will be interested.

Taboola also target an audience which is highly likely to be engaged, as they are already browsing the internet, and therefore are more likely to convert when they click, meaning that your cost per click is more likely to be worth the money.

Your website can also be targeted towards new audiences who may not have thought to search for your products under their own initiative, or may even not have been able to find you via a Google search.

Where do I start?

So, you’ve decided that Taboola is the right way to go with marketing your business and you want to know where to start with your campaign.

The first step you will need to take is to set up your new campaign.

You can do this via the website which will allow you to create a campaign name, submit the product or site name you are promoting, and the time frame in which you would like your campaign to start and stop.

You will also be able to choose your own cost per click.

The amount you pay for each click will determine how accurately your campaigns are targeted, with a higher cost per click usually yields a more efficient campaign.

It is recommended that you set your cost per click at the highest rate you are comfortable with at the start of the campaign.

This is because this will encourage a time phase in which the algorithms can learn where users are more likely to engage with the campaign.

After the initial stage of the campaign, if you are obtaining the amount of clicks you desire and your campaign has been optimised correctly, you will then be able to gradually decrease your cost per click to a more ideal level, or even up your cost per click for a more efficient sale depending on your return on investment.

You will also be able to select your spending limit, according to how much you would like to spend on a monthly basis, or on the overall campaign.

A monthly spending limit will mean that the campaign is stopped when the budget is reached each month, and will reset again every month that the campaign is live.

The option to set an entire spending limit means that you will be able to set an overall spending limit for the entire campaign, and after that the campaign will stop and will not be renewed unless you decide to do so.

You can set entire budget campaign over a week, month or year according to your requirements, an if you change your mind on your campaign or time limit, you can adjust your settings accordingly.

You can also choose the pacing of budget spend, by considering three different options.

The first option, balanced pacing, is the most widely used option, and will ensure that your budget is spread equally over the amount of time you have specified.

The next option for pacing your spending is the accelerated pacing option.

This option is for companies who are looking to promote their company within a time limit by spending the entire set budget as quickly as possible, based on the available space and opportunity for promotion.

Strict pacing is the final option available, and is for people who are looking to spend only up a particular daily limit on the campaign without exceeding that amount.

How to get the most out of your campaign

When setting up your Taboola campaign, it is important to ensure that you are making the most of your budget by optimising your campaign properly.

Taboola allows you to organise your campaign via a multitude of different variables, all of which can help you to target your audience so that your money is being spent as wisely as possible.

The first and most major way of organising your campaign is by location.

If your budget is limited or if your website will simply only appeal to the country you are based in anyway, you can stick to targeting just one country and then go from there.

It is also possible to organise your campaign based on the device they are visiting on.

You can target your campaigns based on which promotions work well on which devices.

For example, some links may be appealing to people who are browsing on a desktop device but not for those who are browsing on a mobile.

If your budget is limited, start with one platform and go from there.

Another way to organise your campaign is into the type of content which is on your links.

For example, you could organise you links into those which include a gallery or an article.

This method is also efficient when A/B testing the efficiency of your campaigns in terms of the link titles and thumbnails which are appealing to your audience.

You can also group your campaign content according to several different aspects.

For example, you can group your content based on the ‘safety’ for particular target audiences.

Your content could be classed as ‘family friendly’ or on the other hand could be classed as ‘gossip/not safe for all’.

It is also possible to turn your campaign off and target time frames, to limit how much you are spending and target particular time in which you are more likely to appeal to your target audience.

For example, you might choose to open a campaign near Christmas when people are more likely to be looking to buy gifts for others, or if you are offering a particular promotion.

Once you have already created a campaign, you can then edit and manage your campaign as you wish to make sure that it is constantly being optimised for the best results.

You always maintain full control over your spending limit and how your campaign is targeted, and any changes you make will be implicated immediately.

What content can I use as part of my marketing strategy?

When you are creating a marketing campaign for Taboola, you will need to pick content from your website to link to in your campaign.

You will need to choose carefully, because once a person clicks on the page, you only have that one chance to entice them and get them to convert.

Taboola does not allow you to use your home page as your marketing link, but other than that the opportunities really are endless as to what type of content you can use as part of your campaign.

Blog posts and articles

Blog posts and articles are one of the most popular pieces of website content which companies often use as part of their Taboola marketing strategy.

The inclusion of blogs within a website is becoming more and more popular for companies who are looking to up their online marketing strategy, because they are becoming more and more appealing as pieces of content.

Blogs are also a great way of bringing your target audience towards your website, because if they are interested in an industry related blog, it is highly likely that they will also be interested in the products and services you supply.

If you manage to bring people into your website, you could potentially gain a following and get more people interested in your site, ultimately upping your brand visibility.

One of the most important elements of creating a great blog is to think of a title which will be appealing and enticing to your target audience, as this is one of the first things your potential visitors will see when they see your Taboola advertisement.

When picking a title, it is important to ensure that you pick something which is related to your industry to ensure that you are marketing towards your target audience, and also make your title sound highly current and relevant, by writing about a current topic or using the season or year within the title.

For example, a company who are selling furniture online might entitle a blog ‘7 shabby chic bedroom ideas which are hot this Summer’.

Once you have thought of a suitable title, the next step is to write content which will be appealing and engaging to your visitors, as they could be your next potential clients.

In order to really connect with your clients and get them to like you not only as a business person but also as a personality, you should write in a conversational style.

In order to get your readers to go further into your website and onto pages on which they are more likely to convert, it is also important to link to other parts of the site within your content, but only when it is natural to do so, such as when a keyword or product name is naturally mentioned within your text.

Videos

Every hour, hundreds of videos are uploaded to publishing sites, and are successful just from sheer popularity.

On YouTube alone, over 6 billion hours of videos are watched every month, proving the following videos achieve.

Videos are a great way to entice readers, and are particularly appealing to those who have a short attention span.

A video has the potential to entice your target audience and get them to notice what you are offering.

Videos are also a great marketing opportunity to show people what you and your business are really all about.

Videos which have a real impact on the audience also have the potential to be shared and linked to many times on social media, with the potential of going viral.

Remember, it only takes one fantastically composed video to make an impact on society and go viral, potentially building up your brand name for life.

Last year, Taboola bought ConvertMedia, a recommendation engine much like Taboola, specialising in advertising online videos, in order to compete with other companies who have also started to specialise in video sharing such as Facebook.

As online videos are becoming more and more popular and available, consumers are starting to rely on videos as part of their purchasing process, for research and reviews.

Videos are seen by publishers as a great way of keeping visitors on a website for longer, and keeping them engaged with what you have to offer, and with more and more opportunities arising for companies to reach out to potential clients, it is highly advisable to get involved with as much as possible.

Infographics

Infographics are another opportunity for creating a great Taboola campaign when they are utilised well. In order to create a great infographic, it is important to make sure that the topic and data represented by the infographic is likely to be of interest to your target audience.

In order to think of a good topic for your infographic, you need to already have some data which is worth presenting to your potential clients. Try to make sure that the topic is relevant, original and presents some information which your clients are likely to never have really seen before. It is also important to present data which is accurate and well conducted.

As well as presenting information which is interesting for your readers, you also need to present it in a an interesting format.

This means taking the ten pages of excel spreadsheets you created from your market research and turning them into a visualisation which is more accessible and readable for your clients, who should also be able to skim read the facts in front of them.

Try to tell a story with the infographic you are creating; you may have a lot of information available but try to make it easy to digest for your readers.

The quality of the design is also very important to ensure that your clients are impressed by what they see. A well designed infographic may cost you more, but will get you better results in the long run, because they could draw clients into your site.

Case studies and success stories

Everyone loves a good personal story shared, be it on the television in the form of a reality TV show, in a magazine or now in a Taboola campaign.

Case studies are a great way to entice people into the website and get them involved in your business, showing them exactly what you have to offer without sounding too salesy.

Case studies are a strong transaction method between storytelling and conversion, gradually enticing your target audience and leading them on to believe in what you could also offer them with your products and services.

When you are writing your case study, write it in a format where at first you present the challenge, and then the method of how your company can help, and finally with the results.

For example if you are selling a cream which helps to reduce stretch marks and scars, you could at first present the story of a woman who has been through child birth and now suffers from stretch marks.

You will then present the cream which is cold by your company, the use of natural ingredients and how they will help.

Finally, you will present the results the woman has seen after having used the cream for a substantial amount of time.

A case study showing the success story of previous clients will need to be genuine, interesting, and relatable for your target audience.

Think about what services your company can provide, and the problems which your products and services can solve.

Ask for testimonials from previous clients and see if any of them want to get involved sharing their story for a reward, such as a free product or service provided by you.

White papers and eBooks

White papers and eBooks are rapidly coming into popularity, providing extensive information and guidance on a range of topics, and more and more people are choosing to invest in them. In fact, 32% of book sales are from eBook sales.

As part of a marketing strategy, eBooks give you the opportunity to deeply connect with your target audience, with so much content available on the site.

eBooks are a very subtle way of marketing, providing a wealth of information to your target audience whilst subliminally giving them a reason to invest further into your products and services.

Of course, an eBook will be worthless if it not appealing to you target audience. In order for them to invest their time in reading such an extensive piece of content, it will need to have an enticing title which offers them something very worthwhile, and relates to your business.

Think about the ultimate goal of people who invest in your company, and play to that advantage.

For example, if your business offers a digital marketing company, expand that massively into a title such as ‘How to grow your business’.

‘How to’ guides

A great way of enticing your target audience towards your website is to produce ‘how to’ guides on topics which are relevant to your business.

These will need to be succinct and easy to use, and produce an end result which your clients desire.

For example, you could entice your clients towards the ‘how to’ guide by providing them with an image of the end product to impress them with what they could achieve.

An example is for a company who sell equipment for baking. Your ‘how to’ guide could entice clients with a picture of an appealing and impressive looking cake, before going through the instructions on how to make it.

You can also incorporate links to the products which you sell and will be needed for making the cake.

The picture of the end product will entice people to read the ‘how to’ article, and the article will make feel that they need your products in order to create these fantastic cakes, encouraging them to buy your products.

Earned media

Earned media refers to any type of media which has been naturally earned from publicity efforts rather from paid advertisements. Earned media is not paid for but is organically obtained by other people and companies who refer to your website, and are often obtained by social media or word of mouth.

Earned media could include press releases, letters to the editor, and polls on the internet or television.

Research has shown that earned media is one of the most trusted forms of advertising, because these types of resources come from real people and companies who are genuinely impressed by your company.

For this reason, earned media is one of your website’s most valuable forms of advertising, and when they form naturally, it is important to use these opportunities to your maximum advantage by advertising them wherever possible so that as many people as possible see these tributes to your business.

Thought leadership

Thought leadership is an innovative way of marketing your business, and involves an article in which you will answer the biggest questions which are often posed by your target audience, about a particular topic which will be industry related.

Thought leadership is a great way to establish an authority regarding a particular industry related topic, as you will produce deep research for your readers, proving your expertise in the area and inspiring people to trust you.

You also have the opportunity to define all the problems your target audience may encounter, and provide a solution to these issues.

You will need to pick a topic on which you or someone in your team has authority, and answers a question for which you cannot simply do a Google search and get an answer.

It is also a good idea to prioritise questions which are usually asked by your clients and potential clients.

Many companies make the mistake of using a thought leadership article to promote themselves in an obvious way, however it is much more lucrative to simply prove your expertise in these articles, and then your clients will be naturally encouraged to click on to your site and trust in your business anyway.

As soon as readers realise that you are actively attempting to promote yourself instead of helping them, your readers will lose trust in you and will start to tune out, so it is important to keep some of your Taboola advertising content natural looking.

Your thought leadership article can be produced by any member of a team, from the director, designer, product manager or executive of any business; everyone could offer some advice to people who are interested in your industry and it is therefore possible to create numerous thought leadership articles.

Landing pages

Landing pages can be great for when you are promoting a particular offer and would like to use it as part of your Taboola advertising campaign.

In the same way, product pages are also for specific products and services you need.

Your advertisement can specifically relate to the page you are linking to, and there is no better to target customers and clicks to tell them exactly what they are going to be looking at, along with an image showing the products or offers you are promoting.

Using landing pages and product pages as your Taboola advertisement method is one of the most effective ways of ensuring that you get the most out of your cost per click, as people who click on your advertisement are more likely to convert if they can see exactly what products you are offering and advertising for.

However, these types of content links are not simply limited to advertising only for those particular landing pages and products.

Even if the particular products you are searching for are not directly appealing to the target audience, they may still be interested in your company and other products which you may offer.

For example, if your company specialise in women’s clothing, you could choose to promote a product page which is specifically for dresses, but someone may see the advertisement and assume that you also supply other products such as skirts, and this means they still may click on your Taboola advertisement and go to other pages of the website.

Tips for optimising your headlines on Taboola

Once you have decided on what type of content you are going to create, the first step in actually creating it is to think of a title for your advertisement to do your content justice.

The headline of your Taboola advertisement is one of the most important components of the link to get your audience to click.

With so many impressions to be made, and many competitors to be seen all around the web, as well as the potential that your audience may already be engaged in a piece of internet content, it is highly important that you stand out from the crowd and get your target audience to engage with your website.

Research suggests that text which is read on a screen takes up to 25% longer than reading on paper.

It has also been found that people read more inaccurately from a screen and reading from a screen drains peoples’ mental resources quicker than reading from paper.

For this reason, it is important to ensure that your title indicates to your audience that it will be easy to read, skim read, and will be worth their time if they click on the link.

Titles which suggest numbers, digits and lists adhere to this need of ease perfectly, and helps your headline to stand out from the sea of content which it competes with.

When surfing the internet and more specifically when looking at advertisements, people re very cynical when it comes to trusting the information they are presented with.

For this reason, it is important to ensure that your Taboola advertisement looks as trustworthy and reliable as possible.

The last thing you want to do is out people off by making your advertisement look like a spam attempt to get you on to their website.

The information you are advertising will be presented in the link will need to be optimised in your headline to ensure that your advertisement will make your target audience feel that they are going to be engaging with something which is going to be either informative, interesting or beneficial to them in some way.

When composing your headline, it is a good idea to get your clients to feel a sense of urgency in reading the article you are promoting.

If your headline offers information they simply cannot miss out on, they will feel the need to click on the article and you instantly have a hit for your website.

This means that the information you present will need to look extremely valuable and enticing, whilst appealing to your target audience of people who are likely to want to invest in your products and services.

When composing your headlines, it is also important to make sure that the headlines are specific to the page they are linking to.

This will ensure that the people who see the page know exactly where they will be redirected to, and it will also ensure that you get the most out of each cost per click.

This is because when people know what they are getting when they click, they are the people who are most likely to convert.

Tips for your Taboola marketing images

Images are one of the most important components in any advertisement, the vast majority of engaging posts including great images which to draw clients in.

The most important requirement for the images you include in your Taboola advertisements is that they are relevant to the post they are linking to, and also have a creative spin on the topic.

This will ensure that people know what they are getting when they click on the advertisement, but also implies that the article is modern, unique and interesting.

Research suggests that images of peoples’ faces achieve the most click through rate, and are therefore more likely to draw attention to the advertisement.

If facial expressions are used properly in advertisements, they can be used to evoke emotion in your audience.

You can even use a face turned towards a clicking point which will encourage your clients to click on the link.

If you are unsure as to which pictures will be the most lucrative for your campaign and will inspire the most clicks from your target audience, it can be a good idea to perform an A/B test using different images to see which one performs the best for your click through rate. You can work out which combination of advertisements, links, images and headlines work best for your campaign so that you can get the most out of your money from your Taboola campaign.