Welcome to the StumbleUpon Ads Blog! Visit us every week for the latest tips and product updates to optimize your StumbleUpon Ads campaigns.
The StumbleUpon Ads system is a unique way to get quality traffic to your site and your full page content directly in front of users. Because StumbleUpon Ads may be unlike any other online marketing platform you’ve used before, we wanted to tell you our Top 6 StumbleUpon Ads Tips for getting the best return on your StumbleUpon Ads campaigns. For more tips and feature descriptions, please visit our help center.
1. Be engaging. StumbleUpon advertisers have the advantage of promoting their full-page content directly to users – no text or display ads required. While StumbleUpon users are ready and eager to interact with your page, you’ll still need to capture their attention. Use high quality images and attention-grabbing headlines. Offer content that users will find unique, useful or compelling enough to bookmark or share with their friends. Here are some examples of highly successful sponsored pages that follow this to a T: The Grilled Cheese Academy from the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, the Serenading Unicorn micro-site from Juicy Fruit or Mint.com’s Wedding Budget Checklist.
GRILLED CHEESE CLOSEUPS - Wisconsin Milk Marketing board's micro-site GrilledCheeseAcademy.com, which features vibrant photos and recipes for 30 kinds of grilled cheese sandwiches, saw an average time on site of 3 minutes from paid StumbleUpon traffic - twice as much as was expected.
2. Target topics appropriately. StumbleUpon users choose specific interests when they sign up and expect to see content related to these topics within seconds of reaching your page. Pick your topics based on the content on the page you’re promoting, not necessarily the theme of the entire site. For example, if you host a parenting site but are promoting a page about the effects of cell phone usage on the brain, consider targeting “Cell Phones,” “Health,” or “Technology.” It wouldn’t hurt to test out all three!
3. Target niche as well as broad audiences. If you’ve had any experience with online marketing, you probably know the value of testing and iterating when it comes to getting a great ROI. It’s the same with StumbleUpon Ads. Test campaigns targeting broad audiences and topics as well as niche audiences and categories. For example, if you sell camping gear, you can target a broad topic, like “Outdoors,” as well as the more specific “Camping.” In this example, you could also try complementary topics, like “Backpacking” or “Canoeing/Kayaking.” Then you can see which targeting method gets you more organic traffic and positive ratings from the StumbleUpon user community. You may find that you get equally positive results in both “Camping” and “Backpacking” topics.
4. Test different types of content. StumbleUpon users come from many walks of life and they may be more or less receptive to different kinds of content depending on their moods, time of the day, or other factors. Test different types of compelling content against each other, like a page containing mostly images in addition to a page with short articles.
5. Stumble often. To get inside the minds of the users viewing your content, you need to become a user yourself. Stumble within your relevant topics and find out what content gets the most views and positive user reviews.
6. Monitor traffic results regularly. Keep a close eye on your StumbleUpon Ads reports. Increase traffic limits for campaigns performing well, pause campaigns getting low ratings, and keep adding fresh content into new campaigns. Read through user reviews on your content’s StumbleUpon information page and consider making changes to your content accordingly. Also, monitor your web analytics reports for more insights into your StumbleUpon Ads campaign performance. Evaluate StumbleUpon user engagement by comparing the average time on site of StumbleUpon traffic with your other online marketing efforts. See if StumbleUpon users revisit your site organically after viewing one of your StumbleUpon ads by implementing 30-day visitor cookies. Or find out whether StumbleUpon traffic is translating into conversions such as newsletter signups, Facebook “likes,” Twitter follows, or purchases.
If you’ve found that any of the above tips or another StumbleUpon Ads method has made a great impact on your online marketing ROI, we’d love to hear about it! Please email marketing@stumbleupon.com with your success story.
Posted by:
Katie Gray
Marketing Communications Manager