A common issue we see with brands and organisations that come to Arke in search of better results for their marketing campaigns is a disconnect among the touchpoints their audiences have with their brand.

But, what do we mean by that? Read on as Matt, Arke’s Head of Creative, explains how we must consider the entire brand ecosystem and its intention when developing a marketing strategy for each of our clients.

Let’s start with a simple but recurring scenario.

Do your ads match your landing page and overall website UX?

Are they speaking the same language visually? If they don’t, you could be facing some serious trust issues with your audiences. We’re not talking data, URLs, and databases; we’re talking about how things look.

The press is telling us that trust in advertising is high right now, with reports saying that the ‘enjoyment’ of ads is behind it. But, before we even get to the topic of enjoyment in marketing, there’s that key word: trust.

Have you ever clicked on an ad and been taken to somewhere completely different on the internet?

Looks different, feels different… making you wonder what you just clicked on. This is exactly what you want to avoid when promoting your brand.

If we’re putting together a path that you want a potential customer to take, we must consider the user journey. No sudden moves or pesky surprises, please!

Here at Arke, we run paid media ad campaigns on a variety of platforms, and, as with all branded items, consistency is key, and in a time when Gen-AI creatives are popping all over, and we’re all looking for effective ways to adopt it into our workflow, consistency becomes especially crucial.

Our thinking is that AI can help you diversify your creative offering, and it could even allow you to produce assets that otherwise would’ve been out of reach or budget, but having some metaphorical guardrails is of the utmost importance.

We cannot let images and videos get too astray from the look and feel of your landing page, as it’ll erode your hard-earned trust. You also can’t afford to have your brand turning up at different times wearing completely different clothes without an exceptional reason.

Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of your target customer

When people are being served up ads, and being urged to click on them to learn more, book something, or part with their hard-earned cash by purchasing your product, we want to make sure that the place they’re taken to is presentable, and ‘of a piece’ with the ad they’ve just seen.

What’s the worst that could happen if this is not the case?

Let me spell out the words that you hear in your nightmares:

Bounce rate: 100% 🙁
Conversion rate: big fat zero 😱

Now your ads might be great: they might be perfectly on brand, have a clear proposition, feature a compelling hook, be ideal for the platform they’re running on, and generate plenty of click-throughs, but still fail to deliver the conversions you want.

That could likely be down to where your ad is taking the user. We always look at your UX with fresh eyes when planning or optimising your marketing strategy by putting your ads and landing page side-by-side to analyse and enhance the user journey based on the available resources.

Considering the landing page you’re directing people to, we check that it complements the ads you’ve created. Your ads have to feel authoritative and confident, never misleading and deceptive. So thinking about what they’re leading to is the key here. Is there a disconnect? Do the visuals align by using similar colours, fonts and photos? And, is the content relevant? There’s nothing worse than being promised one thing and landing on something completely different.

Online marketing has historically been stained with dark patterns, deceptive UIs and brands making it difficult for customers to stop using their services. This is why it’s so essential to have a clear and transparent way for users to understand and feel identified with your brand or organisation.

When the goal is for browsers to become customers, users need to be given the breathing space to make their own decision without feeling pressured, without feeling misled, and the relationship between your ads and the landing page they’re taken to can really affect that.

There are even visual conventions about this requirement for brand coherence, which basically means that if the relationship between elements is closer visually, people will feel more confident dwelling there. A consistent look drives conversion.

Browsers and potential customers are making judgments about your brand subconsciously in seconds, in fact, as little as 50 milliseconds, and the visuals play a huge part in that.

How does Arke integrate the UX for your brand?

We’ve developed integrated marketing campaigns for multiple clients across several market sectors. Aligning creatives, ad targeting and landing pages to break records that have earned us multiple award wins over the years.

A great example of this is the work we have done with the British Film Institute Player, where we achieved a 729% increase in YoY trialists in their peak season and a 52% trial to subscription conversion rate. A key part of our work involved aligning the creatives we devised to better reflect the pages potential subscribers were being taken to by the advertising.

The Key Takeaway

Your brand can be felt on your website, your ads, your social media profiles, everywhere. None of these can be treated in isolation as they’re all part of the same user journey.

The most creative and imaginative ad will not convert if your landing page feels like a separate, non-aligned entity. That’s where the importance of having a team that understands how each touch point contributes to transforming a browser into a customer lies.

Being named the UK’s Most Effective Agency for three years in a row is the best recognition of how our integrated marketing strategies perform for our clients.

Interested in elevating your brand? Let’s have a chat and explore how we can help you achieve your goals.

Verified DAN and IPA Agency

Christmas trees are down, New Year’s resolutions and goals are set, and we’ve circled back to everything that was put on hold for the festive season. 2025 is fully underway, and we’re starting the year off with not one, but two exciting pieces of news! We’ve been verified by the Digital Agency Network (DAN) and are now an Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) Accelerator agency!

Having access to both of these networks provides us with even more resources to draw upon for our research and upskilling opportunities within the team, so we’re thrilled to be able to share this news. We’re passionate about ensuring we’re living up to our brand values, so having more resources to allow us to “be curious” is exciting to everyone in the team!

“Joining the IPA Accelerator Scheme and DAN is a really exciting step forward for Arke as we continue to expand our capabilities in the digital and advertising sectors. These memberships demonstrate our commitment to maintaining industry best practices, promoting innovation, and remaining competitive in the market. The extensive resources, training and collaborative opportunities available through these networks will ensure we continue to be equipped to achieve outstanding results for our clients.”
-Jon Llewelyn, Head of Paid Media at Arke 

We’re so excited to achieve more recognition and to be part of the incredible lineup of agencies featured across both the DAN and the IPA Accelerator Scheme; what a way to start the year! With so many exciting projects and announcements still to come, 2025 is looking bright. ✨

It’s been a busy few months here at Arke! Not only have we just been shortlisted for 2 more awards at the UK Search Awards (bringing us up to a grand total of 13 awards shortlists), but we’ve also taken home two awards at the UK Agency Awards last month. With these wins, we’re now officially an 8-time UK and European award-winning agency!

The team have worked incredibly hard alongside our amazing clients, the British Film Institute (BFI) and University of Brighton Health Counts to win Best Integrated Campaign and the Campaign Effectiveness Award at the UK Agency Awards in September this year at a swanky London ceremony. Now, it’s time to put on our glad rags once more for the UK Search Awards, as we’ve been shortlisted for both Best Integrated Campaign (Small) for our work with BFI Player on ‘Bringing Hand-Picked Cinema to Untapped Markets’ and for Best Use of Search – B2B (PPC) (Small) for our work with Asset Bank on ‘A DAM Good Campaign’.

The awards

Best Integrated Campaign – UK Agency Awards (winner) and UK Search Awards (shortlisted)

For our work with BFI Player on our campaign, Bringing Hand-Picked Cinema to Untapped Markets, we worked to expand audiences for BFI Player within an already saturated market for on-demand streaming. Our team successfully surpassed the outlined campaign goals by utilising an extensive media plan and brand-new creatives to deliver a multi-pronged approach.

Campaign Effectiveness Award – UK Agency Awards (winner)

Health Counts is a city-wide survey conducted once a decade across Brighton and Hove to learn more about community health and wellness. We had the opportunity to work with the University of Brighton on their most recent survey this year on our campaign Delivering a Decade of Data with Record-Breaking Results. Collaborating with several agencies and stakeholders, we created eye-catching creatives and a visual identity for the survey, before launching a media plan that utilised a targeting strategy for our key audiences. After launch, we kept on top of optimisations by tracking postcode areas with poor survey completion rates, allowing us to create local media plans too. By the end of the campaign, the survey saw a completion rate increase of 940%.

Best Use of Search – B2B (PPC) – UK Search Awards (shortlisted)

Asset Bank had been on a four-year marketing hiatus when we began working with them and wanted to get their Digital Asset Management (DAM) software in front of their audience, which is where our campaign A DAM Good Campaign started. Working within a competitive search space, we used strategic targeting to avoid keywords with high CPC. Our work led Asset Bank to have their highest performing month with a 260% increase in leads, smashing our targets along the way!

We look forward to finding out the results on 4th December at the UK Search Awards 2024 and congrats to all the other wonderful finalists! Keep your fingers crossed for the Arkenauts 🤞

With AI continuing to be an industry hot-topic, it’s no surprise that there were plenty of incredible talks at brightonSEO about the most effective ways to implement AI in your marketing workflows. Despite this, the topics that resonated most with us were resoundingly about staying human in this new landscape.

Our award-winning team are always keen to learn and develop, so here are our top findings across both days of brightonSEO, covering topics from industry news, CRO, Google Ads, and copywriting (including why watching the Princess Bride can make you a better copywriter!)

Thursday, 3rd October: brightonSEO Day 1

Kim, Brand and Content Marketing Executive

Top Talk: “Search Strategy: Diversifying beyond Google” by Nathan Height, Organic Strategy Director at Croud

I’ve been keeping an eye on the Google antitrust trials with a healthy mix of curiosity and concern, as a lot of us have! Nathan’s deep dive into the situation highlighted how if Google is made to diversify its search monopoly, users may increasingly begin switching to AI-based search engines. He also shared a simple yet effective strategy: building up your social media and online community presence to stay ahead of the game as these changes unfold.

Ross, Paid Media Lead

Top Talk: “When it’s right to send Google ads the WRONG data” by Inderpaul Rai, Group Account Director at WeDiscover

My favourite talk was probably by Inderpaul Rai from WeDiscover. He talked about a case where it was actually more beneficial to send Google the wrong data when it came to conversion value to trick Google into driving better results, despite this going against the normal best practices. My main takeaways were how important it is to optimise the data we plug into Google as the results we get are only as good as the data we provide it, and that sometimes it’s good to challenge “best practices”. The talk really emphasised how the PPC/paid media world is constantly moving and evolving, so what is considered best practice today might not be the best idea in the future.

Day 2, Last Day of brightonSEO:

James, Digital Strategy Lead

Top Talks: The afternoon CRO segment- too many excellent talks to choose from!

I had 3 main takeaways from the CRO segment, first was how website exit page data can often be misleading. Whilst that one page may have been the breaking point, usually an exit page is actually more likely to be an exit route, where a series of pages didn’t match what the user was looking for, and as a result have left your website.

Secondly, Femi Olajiga, Freelance Growth Marketing Consultant talked about reframing CRO from Conversion Rate Optimisation to Customer Retention Optimisation. Most CRO strategies focus on optimising a website for the best user experience and driving those users to convert. However, if this only works for one-time buyers then the lifetime value isn’t there. Businesses should also consider how valuable returning customers are, and factor this into their strategies.

My last key takeaway was from Tasmin Lofthouse, Conversion Copywriter at Fika Digital on creating data-based content to drive conversions. As someone who works in a more analytics-centric role, I’m guilty of thinking data has to be a big spreadsheet of numbers, but qualitative data gathered from interviews, reviews and third-party forums is just as valuable. Especially when it comes to copywriting, as one of the main influencing factors on a user converting or not is if you are able to engage them emotionally.

Jon, Head of Paid Media

Top Talks: “Hacking brand: What a 102% jump in clicks taught me about branded content” by Hassan “Brandkenstein” Ud-deen, Head of Content & SEO at Hack the Box and “Verbal Identity – hold onto your humanity to stand out in a sea of beige” by Mel Barfield, Freelance Copywriter.

My favourite talks were probably the ‘Hacking Brand’ talk with Hassan Ud-deen and the ‘Verbal Identity’ talk with Mel Barfield. Hassan focused on how to ensure your content works for the entire company, making sure your content isn’t just a sales or marketing piece, but that it benefits each department and area of your company – one piece of content doesn’t have to have just one benefit or goal!

On the other hand, Mel’s talk on keeping your writing human and some of the pitfalls of AI-generated copy really captured my attention. With every brand striving to be unique and stand out from the crowd, it’s becoming increasingly difficulty for brands to find their voice, and even more so finding one that differentiates them from the crowd. With decreasing attention spans (we’re all guilty!) it’s more important than ever to cut to the chase while retaining a sense of identity. People like people, so it’s important to ensure you adapt your tone-of-voice to meet the needs of your audience; from deciding which platforms/formats you’d use emojis for, to standing out in a beige landscape.

Kim, Brand and Content Marketing Executive

Top Talk: “Learn how to write better SEO copy from The Princess Bride” by Will Slater, Creative Content Specialist at 43 Clicks North

Right off the bat I have to admit: I’ve never watched The Princess Bride! However, Will Slater’s links between the screenplay and good copywriting has definitely convinced me to change this. From using writing elements such as loops to the importance of repetition, learning from fiction in order to write engaging and compelling copy not only makes us sound more human, but helps set us apart. My biggest takeaways were that simplicity is key and strong storytelling lends itself to strong copywriting.

We all had an absolute blast taking in the knowledge and insights at brightonSEO. If you want to find out more about how we can help you use this knowledge (and plenty more) in your marketing strategies, fill out the contact form below.

With the days getting shorter and autumnal decorations already gracing the high street, many brands are gearing up for the end-of-year sales period. Whilst you pre-register for our full 2024 State of UK Commerce report, here are our top tips for preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Top Tips for Black Friday

1. Start Early with Teaser Campaigns

Build anticipation with countdowns, sneak peeks, and limited-time offers before the big sales days. Also make sure you’re making the most of email, social media, and website banners to create early buzz.

2. Leverage Email Marketing

Segment your email list to send personalised offers to different customer groups and use cart abandonment reminders and exclusive early-access deals for VIP subscribers.

3. Create Urgency with Limited-Time Offers

Use flash sales, countdown timers, and “while supplies last” messaging to encourage immediate action.

4. Run Social Media Ad Campaigns

Retarget previous visitors and customers with ads highlighting Black Friday/Cyber Monday offers. Invest in paid social campaigns with highly targeted audience settings to maximise reach and conversions. Contact us to find out how our award-winning team can help you with this!

5. Utilise Influencers and Brand Ambassadors

Partner with influencers who can create excitement and endorse your brand’s deals on social media and who use unboxing videos, product reviews, or Instagram takeovers to engage their followers. This is particularly effective when targeting younger audiences.

6. Enhance Product Listings with SEO

Ensure your product titles, descriptions, and images are optimised for Black Friday-related search terms. Make sure to use seasonal keywords and phrases like “Black Friday deals,” “Cyber Monday discounts,” and “holiday shopping” in your website copy.

7. Provide Clear and Attractive Shipping & Return Policies

Highlight free shipping, fast delivery, or hassle-free returns to reduce barriers to purchase. Particularly for end-of-year deals, include clear deadlines for guaranteed delivery before the holidays. This was seen as one of the most important features to customers when shopping online, so ensure you’re not missing out on potential shoppers by excluding it.

8. Prepare Post-Sale Campaigns for Retention

Plan follow-up marketing efforts to turn Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers into repeat customers, offer future discounts, post-sale thank-you emails, or product recommendations based on their purchases.

With the increasingly competitive e-commerce landscape, ensuring your brand gets in front of the right audience is all too important. For even more insights and information on how to best optimise your marketing to reach your target customers this sales period, pre-register for our 2024 State of UK Commerce Report here!

From Brighton to internationally renowned…that’s right we’ve been selected as finalists in two prestigious industry awards! Following on from the exciting news of our being shortlisted in 10 awards, we’ve now reached 11 with two of these being in European Awards!

The nominations

We’re thrilled to have been announced as finalists in the Best Integrated Campaign category for our fantastic multichannel work with the British Film Institute (BFI) on our ‘Bringing Hand-Picked Cinema to Untapped Markets’ campaign. This campaign was all about expanding audiences and sharing the magic of cinema in places that hadn’t experienced it before – our mission was to expand BFI Players’ streaming service to new markets, competing with streaming giants. With bold creatives and a multichannel strategy that truly hit the mark, we brought these cinematic gems to new screens and new fans.

What makes this even more special is that it comes hot on the heels of another shortlist success—we were also named finalists in the same category at the UK Agency Awards 2024 earlier this month. Talk about back-to-back slam dunks! Being recognised on both a national and European level for our work with our wonderful client the BFI is a huge honour, and it’s a true testament to our team’s creativity, passion, and dedication.

Stephen Leach, Senior Marketing Manager at the BFI Player said, “Working with Arke on our latest campaign for BFI Player has been an incredible experience. Their dedication to understanding our needs and their innovative approach has truly set them apart. We’re thrilled with the results, as the campaign not only transformed our creatives and evolved our brand positioning but also successfully attracted new audiences and boosted trial subscriptions. It’s been a proud collaboration, and we look forward to continuing our partnership.”

Of the finalist news, Alex Watson, Managing Director of Arke said, “Working closely with the incredible and open-minded team at BFI has allowed us to experiment and innovate in many ways, making bold yet calculated decisions. This approach has rightly positioned BFI Player alongside major streaming giants. We are thrilled that this campaign has received recognition at both UK and European awards.”

This year has been record-breaking for us! In just two months, we’ve racked up finalist spots in 11 categories across four major national and European awards, including the UK Agency Award, UK Social Media Award, European Agency Awards, and European Paid Media Awards.

It’s been a whirlwind, and we wouldn’t have it any other way! We’re so grateful for the recognition and proud of the incredible work our team continues to deliver. A massive thank you to the British Film Institute for being such a dream client and partner!

And to all the other finalists—huge congrats! We’re thrilled to be in such fantastic company. We’re counting down the days to November 7th when the results are announced, so stay tuned!

Want to know why our campaigns are winning big? Check out our case studies to see the magic for yourself!

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or connect with us on LinkedIn to stay updated on all the exciting things happening at Arke!

Results Day 2024

Results Day 2024 is officially over!

We hope that it was a successful day for education institutions and students alike!

It has been a day full of insights and information and, boy, did we learn a lot. Arke was right there, providing real-time updates on Results Day and Clearing trends, developments, and news. The results may still be pouring in as the Clearing portal remains open until 21st October.

Missed any of the action on Results Day? Don’t worry—we’ve compiled all the essential information you need into our comprehensive Results Day Factsheet for 2024. This year, we’ve seen some significant shifts in student preferences and trends that could shape the future of education and youth marketing.

Our Factsheet

Our factsheet provides a detailed analysis of the latest student trends, including which courses are rising in popularity and which are seeing declines. You’ll discover important insights on how these changes are influencing student behaviour, the impact on different subject areas, and what this means for universities, educators, and marketers targeting young audiences.

We also dive deep into the implications of these trends for youth marketing strategies. Understanding where student interests are heading and how preferences are evolving is crucial for staying ahead in the dynamic world of youth engagement. These stats and insights from Results Day 2024 highlight the trajectory of trends for the rest of the year for younger audiences. Whether you’re an education institution looking to stay ahead of the trends, or a brand that markets to Gen Z audiences, these insights can help to boost your strategy.

As brand and performance marketing leaders, our full report will showcase the latest info and the best tactics to make campaigns in all sectors shine for the rest of 2024.

Fill out the form below to receive your Results Day Factsheet! 

Get in touch today to find out how our expertise can help by using data and insights from this year to fine-tune your 2025 Clearing strategy.

When the UK’s second largest airport, London Gatwick, seeing more than 40 million passengers a year pass through its terminals, needed a world-class media agency to support them in showcasing their superior travel experience to the world, we knew this was the right challenge for Arke!

“Sorry for the convenience”

So, we got to work creating the media strategy to achieve the strategic objectives in Gatwick’s growth plans.  After extensive research into brand consideration and how this fluctuates by location, carefully devised media plans were created to increase Gatwick’s consideration over competitors. That’s why, from this week, those of you in and around the London area should keep a lookout for London Gatwick’s new campaign ‘Sorry for the Convenience’ across D6’s within key transport links, on Sky AdSmart, across social media, programmatic, Search and even when you take a trip with Uber!

Arke worked hand-in-hand with London Gatwick’s creative agency to ensure that the ‘tongue in cheek’ messaging such as ‘from bed to boarding’, ‘from toothbrush to take off’ and ‘from car seat to 40 thousand feet’ was amplified. The campaign plays into London Gatwick’s easy accessibility by road and rail, its swift airport security and the range of world-class airlines and destinations passengers can fly from.

Speaking about the new campaign, Simon Brady, Head of Marketing at London Gatwick, said: “It is important to us that customers have the best experience when flying from our airport, and that journey starts right from their home. Our vision is to be the airport for everyone, whatever your journey. That’s why we’re proud to have partnered with two local agencies to bring this to life in our latest campaign.”

Steph Noble, Founder & Managing Director at Arke Agency added: “Working with London Gatwick and Oliver & Graimes on this campaign is energising. We knew that the tongue-in-cheek ‘Sorry for the Convenience’ messaging would engage consumers and got to work organising the most innovative and impactful ad placements to effectively increase consideration for the airport, whilst efficiently scaling the campaign. We can’t wait to see the reaction and to continue our partnerships in the future.”

Arke is proud to bring this vision to life with the new partnership and look forward to seeing this campaign take off!

The UK Agency Awards

No, you haven’t got deja vu, we’ve been announced as finalists for more awards!

It wasn’t long ago that we were celebrating after announcing the fantastic news that we were nominated for five awards at the UK Social Media Awards and European Paid Media Awards. Well, this is panning out to be the most successful and exciting award season for Arke, as we are thrilled to announce that we have also been nominated as finalists in 5 categories at the UK Agency Awards! That means we are now finalists for 10 categories at the European Paid Media Awards, UK Social Media Awards and now the UK Agency Awards 2024!

Best Marketing Campaign

• • Arke Agency & Joint Living – Pioneering Unmatched Success in Student Living

Best Integrated Campaign

• • Arke Agency & British Film Institute (BFI) – Bringing Hand-Picked Cinema to Untapped Markets

Campaign Effectiveness Award

• • Arke Agency & Joint Living — Pioneering Unmatched Success in Student Living

• • Arke Agency & The Health Counts Survey 2024 — Delivering a Decade of Data

Independent Agency of the Year

• • Arke Agency – The UK’s Most Effective Agency

After winning the UK Agency Awards in 2023, we are excited to be recognised once more for this prestigious honour, together with our valued clients. Last year we won with our wonderful client Joint Living after a massively successful campaign featuring a website rebuild and hyperfocused retargeting resulting in, among other things, a 3,875% ROAS. This year’s nomination showcases our continued partnership and ability to keep Joint’s brand agile and adapt to change. Our work with British Film Institute highlights our creative ingenuity coupled with meticulous, multi-pronged delivery, and for The Health Counts Survey 2024, we displayed the power of partnering with a strategic agency in the community.

We are especially thrilled to have been announced as finalists for Independent Agency of the Year, being recognised for everything we do as an agency and our growth. This year has been our most exciting and successful year since Arke’s creation 7 years ago. We have had our most prosperous Q1 to date, leadership changes within the company including former CFO Alex Watson stepping up to Managing Director, and the creation of our Culture Committee which heads the continuous and multifaceted efforts to positively impact our community.

Company Founder and CEO Steph Noble said: “This record-breaking number of award nominations is a testament to the close partnerships we build with our clients, allowing us to innovate, problem solve together and achieve record-breaking results. I’m so proud of our team for relentlessly striving to deliver campaigns that push the boundaries of phenomenal expectations and for our clients for their truly collaborative relationships and trusting us to lead them to success.

We have been on an upward trajectory and are currently in our most successful year to date! Arke’s new direction is proving effective, the pace at which our team has embraced these changes is remarkable, and we are seeing our clients thrive because of this.

Good luck to all the other shortlisted candidates and we look forward to the winner announcements on the 25th of September – send all your good vibes to Arke!

Want to find out why our campaigns are award-winning? Browse our case studies to find out more.

The rollout of SGE

We’ve all heard of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), but have you heard of SGE? Google is combining the power of AI with their vast data resources and advanced search algorithms to create a more intuitive and efficient search experience – it’s called Search Generative Experience. It looks like an AI-generated answer at the top of your Google search, fully equipped with its own suggested links and further questions.

 After testing it out in the US and several other countries in 2023, Google SGE is now being trialled in the UK to a select few users.

SGE could change the future of organic search and paid media. Read on to find out how and what this would mean for your business so you can be prepared.

What is SGE? (Search with Generative AI)

SGE, or Search with Generative AI, is Google’s latest advancement in leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance search results. SGE is different from traditional search algorithms, which rely on keyword matching, because SGE utilises the machine power of AI which can be more inquisitive to provide the user with better answers to user questions. This enables Google to generate more relevant and accurate search results tailored to user queries.

What are the benefits of Search Generative Experiences?

The introduction of SGE brings several benefits to both users and businesses. The AI responses will be able to provide well-rounded and complete answers to users, reducing the need to have to search again. This will also present opportunities for businesses to connect with their audience more effectively by offering deeper and more original content on their websites – a refreshing take on content that relies on simply matching keywords.

For organic search

What will SGE mean for organic search rankings?

The good news for those businesses who are struggling to get to the first page of Google’s search page is that 94% of Google’s SGE links will be different from organic search, a recent study found, as SGE prioritises content over exact keyword matches. This gives each business and its link a fair chance of coming up at the top of the SGE search and getting in front of the eyes of more users.

How could SGE impact your organic traffic?

Having complex and in-depth answers conveniently as the first thing users see sounds great, however, a different study suggested the SGE could lead up to a 64% decline in potential organic traffic, simply because it will reduce the need for users to further research their query by clicking into your website.

Google’s aim for its customers has always been to give users the most relevant information as quickly as possible. With the introduction of SGEs, the future could look a little scary for businesses, as it reduces the need for a user to click onto a website, keeping those customers on Google online real estate and giving them the answers before even needing to click.

For Paid Media

 How will Paid Media Strategies have to adapt to SGE?

SGE also introduces new considerations for paid media strategies. Where once bidding on keywords was a foolproof strategy, SGE may change that, forcing paid media to focus more on creating ads that authentically resonate with target audiences. It will be vital for paid media strategies to adapt to the impact of SGE in continuing to understand audience behaviours and evolve alongside the likes of Search Generative Experiences.

Adapting to the new search norm

From what we’ve seen regarding the implementation of SGE, this is still very much in BETA stages with results not always matching a users search query, so there’s no need to tear your hair out just yet!

 We will be keeping a close eye on when SGE is launched across all of the UK, but in the meantime, it is important to prepare by ensuring your website has well-rounded content, that is not simply based in SEO-matching keywords but also conveys a conversational tone that the AI will be looking for. Integrating original written and video content, social media posts, and images will please the SGE algorithm, and could give you the upper hand to be the first result users see.

Want to find out how Arke can help your future-proof your paid media strategy? Click here to read about our expertise and service areas!

It’s been a busy start to the year at Arke HQ, and we’re still reeling from some of the exciting news we’ve shared already this year. From our partnership with London Gatwick making headlines, to the appointment of our new MD, Alex Watson and not forgetting the reveal of our shiny new website! Phew, we were ready to roll into the second half of the year on a high!

However, the good news didn’t stop there. We are over the moon to have been announced as finalists in not one but two major industry awards, in five categories overall at the UK Social Media Awards 2024 and the European Paid Media Awards 2024!

The nominations

The UK Social Media Awards 2024

Best Use of Paid Social Media:

• Arke Agency & Brighton Festival – Artful Ad Strategies

European Paid Media Awards 2024

Paid Media Agency Led Campaign of the Year:

• Arke Agency & Asset Bank – A DAM Good Campaign
• Arke Agency & Brighton Festival – Artful Ad Strategies

Local Campaign of the Year

• Arke Agency & Brighton Festival – Artful Ad Strategies
• Arke Agency & The Health Counts Survey 2024 – Delivering a Decade of Data

Having previously been crowned winners at the UK Social Media Awards in 2022 and the European Paid Media Awards in 2023, we are thrilled to once again have been recognised for such prestigious awards alongside our valued clients. Our work with Brighton Festival highlights our agility and layered targeting abilities, our work with Asset Bank showcases our full funnel and bigger-thinking approach and for The Health Counts Survey 2024 we displayed the power of partnering with a strategic agency on the community.

Alex Watson, MD at Arke, said: “These five finalist announcements are a testament to not only the hard work and dedication by the Arke team that they put into every campaign, but also the strong relationships we have with our wonderful clients. We are so proud of the work that we produce, and could not be happier that we are being recognised at European level for our work.”

Good luck to all the other shortlisted candidates and we look forward to the winner announcements on the 25th September & 2nd October – keep your fingers crossed for Arke!

Want to find out why our campaigns are award-winning? Browse our case studies to find out more.

So, you’re running some great ads as part of your campaign – text-based search on Google and some visual HTML5 ads on Google Discovery, as well as a few videos on Meta. They might be officially the best ads ever made – but, you’re losing those all-important leads as soon as your audience clicks through to your landing page. So, what’s going on?

Here at Arke, we’re all about our clients getting the best possible bang for their buck when it comes to online advertising. And it doesn’t just stop with said online advertising. Thinking about your potential customers’ journeys leads us to the landing page that you’re directing them toward. How effective is it? Are people abandoning your proposition after excitedly clicking on your ads?

Here are 10 factors to consider when putting your landing page together for your next campaign.

Beginning Your Landing Page:

Ensure that all of the important visuals, copy, forms and buttons appear above the fold (the visible part of the webpage before the user scrolls down), so that people don’t have to scroll down to get to the action. A key part of landing page design is making everything as easy as possible for your potential customers – reducing friction by making it a smooth customer journey. So if you have time-poor customers, keep it short, and have everything important above the fold, reducing the need to scroll down a complex page is one way to make it easier for your potential customers.

Be clear with your message

Your offering should be part of a big headline ideally, so there is no ambiguity about what this page is all about. Whatever you’re hoping your potential customer to do, whether it be to:

• • download a resource,

• • enter a competition,

• • buy a product

• • sign up for a service

… you need to be clear about what your proposal is. As well as that headline, make sure that all the key information is also present, accompanying your form or call to action button.

Picture this

On the subject of being clear, make sure your landing page includes a visual to entice the audience – what will they get if they click on the button? What are they signing up for if they give their details? You might want to be more literal, rather than conceptual, depending on the nature of your business.

All one big happy family

Your landing page should look in line with your ads – working as part of the same campaign, so that users feel they are in the right, intended place, and importantly don’t feel they’ve been misled, which could cause users to ‘bounce’ straight off the page! The ad that has led the user here will need to match with the landing page – they should be ‘of a piece’. If it were solely text, then the copy should be in the same tone of voice. If it were a visual, then the same brand look-and-feel should be present, so the landing page is a continuation of the same campaign.

No distractions

Keep top navigation and distracting links to a minimum. You probably have a great website, with a huge range of information and offerings, but you want to keep your users captivated with the offering at hand, rather than tempting them to click away to read a funny blog post. You want to be showcasing this one particular aspect of your business – this landing page’s key offering – not leading the potential customer to get lost in other parts of your site.

Small is beautiful

Ensure it is mobile-friendly and will work as well on a mobile device – so that you’re not neglecting a proportion of your audience. Everything needs to work for the visitors using their phones, so test your landing page to check it behaves as expected when using a tablet or smartphone.

4 out of 5 dentists

Numbers are always good 🙂 – do you have a snappy stat that proves how great your service is? Get it up there on the landing page. Furthermore – do you use TrustPilot or something similar? Perhaps include some of the best reviews – make sure you adhere to policies regarding transparency, and linking to ALL reviews for parity!

Testing, testing 1 2 testing

Could you be testing several headlines, or several visuals to see which performs best? There are plenty of services that offer Dynamic optimisation – could you employ something similar, to make sure that the best-performing elements of your landing page are used more frequently?

The devil’s in the details

If you’ve got forms, keep them short, and perhaps user dropdowns rather than free text fields to speed up a potential customer submitting their information. Also, think about what these forms do – if they are to book a call, do users submit and then have to wait for you to get in touch? Why not make this even easier for the user by including a link directly to an online booking system to book the call in at a time and date to suit them best?

Please and thank-yous 🙂

Do you need a page saying thank you to someone having submitted their details, ensuring that the potential customer knows that you’ve got their vital statistics? The message could include the next steps you’ll take, keeping them in the loop. Importantly, this page might be a vital part of you recording your audience’s interactions with your site – affecting your all-important metrics! (Roll on bonus!)

To Summarise:

• • Make sure your key content is appearing above the fold

• • Be super clear with your messaging

• • Back up your messaging with clear imagery of your offering

• • Ensure your ads and landing page match visually

• • Keep menus, navigation and links to a minimum to avoid distractions

• • Keep different screen sizes (like mobiles) in mind when designing (heck – you might even want to design the page mobile first if your audience is likely to all be using smartphones!)

• • Back up your messaging with stats and reviews if possible

• • Meaningful testing is only going to help improve your landing page’s performance

• • Try to keep forms short (a tough balance when everyone wants EVERY crumb of information they can ever get, but use your judgement!)

• • Let your users know when they’ve completed the intended interaction successfully! And a thank-you doesn’t hurt!

Tudum! Netflix’s ad-based subscription tier is right around the corner. Are you planning on putting a marketing strategy in place for when it does? Hold on a mo…

Before you do – let’s dive into what Netflix Basic with Ads is, what it can offer your brand in terms of advertising and whether it’s an approach worth considering.

So, let’s Netflix, chill & fill out the details.

What Is Netflix Basic with Ads? 

As a whole, Netflix Basic isn’t a hard nut to crack. It’s Netflix. Cheaper. With ads. Shocking!

Arriving on 3rd November, Netflix Basic will cost UK customers £4.99 a month and allow you to watch content on one device in HD.

Wondering where your campaigns will crop up? For existing films and series across the platform, ads will play before and during the title, whilst new releases will only have pre-rolled adverts. Netflix Basic’s ad load will average 4 to 5 minutes per hour, ranging from 15 to 30 seconds.

With roughly 223 million users Netflixing in 2022, the chance for advertisers to get in front of their customers and engage with them on a new platform could lead to a massive ROI. So, stop binge-watching Breaking Bad a fifth time and start strategizing who your target audience could be.

Though there are no insights into how nitty gritty Netflix’s ad targetting will get, its partnership with Microsoft/Xandar promises to offer broad targeting capabilities by country and genre when the service launches.

However, users signing up for Netflix Basic will need to provide a date of birth and their gender, as the service plans to add these targeting features (alongside others) down the line.

This is vital info to jot down; the more audience info you gather beforehand, the better you’ll be at showing the right ads to the right people and not wasting ad spend.

Okay, that’s basically Netflix Basic. But there are a few more key pointers you’ll want to know; Netflix advertising isn’t going to be for everybody…

What are the worries for Netflix Advertising? 

The turn towards an ad-based tier isn’t exclusively a Netflix idea; many VOD services have announced and introduced similar systems. But with Netflix attaining a household name status for so many years, its venture into advertising could shape paid media’s importance within the streaming world.

Take its fees as an example. As Basic begins to roll out, Netflix will be charging companies $65 (roughly £55) CPM for every 1,000 people served ads – meaning this ad space, for now, will mainly be aimed at lucrative brands willing to spend big money.

Adding a slightly sour cherry on top, according to industry sources, Netflix is looking for a $10m minimum promise in annual ad spending from companies, too – a costly entrance fee for something you don’t know works yet.

Additionally, as mentioned earlier, Netflix Basic won’t be launching with a lot of targeting options for brands. You won’t be able to deliver ads to audiences based on factors such as specific location, age, gender, time of day or behaviour.

Netflix is aiming for the big fish in the streaming world rather than reeling in a range of businesses for an open market. So what do we recommend?

What do our experts think? 

Netflix has told ad buyers it expects 4.4 million customers to be using Netflix Basic by the end of 2022. But the big question is, how will it impact marketers and their future ad strategies? Will brands decide to ditch other platforms and instead nudge over to Netflix?

Our Paid Media Expert – and House MD enthusiast – Ben Halliday, had this to say:

“I think the impact is going to be seen from big brands and agencies shifting budgets from similar premium environments. TV and VOD ad spend among traditional media owners might feel the impact, more so than platforms like Youtube, which already have fairly low CPMs and cater to a wider set of businesses and budgets. Netflix’s new ad tier will mainly affect channels that the brands who have £20m budgets are using heavily.” 

So maybe you have the cash to splash on a big Netflix campaign. If not, you shouldn’t worry; the likeliness of it affecting social or video platforms like Youtube is unlikely.

We’ll make sure to keep you posted on all the Netflix and VOD updates when they arrive – so make sure to follow our socials to keep in the loop.

Until then, if you’re looking for advice or strategy plans for VOD campaigns or ads, we’ve recently been shortlisted for a lot of awards relating to Ads and Paid Media Campaigns. So contact our multi-award-winning team now, and let’s bring that winning campaign to life!