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  • Shopify Evolving Into World’s First Retail Operating System

    Shopify Evolving Into World’s First Retail Operating System

    “Shopify is evolving into the world’s first retail operating system,” says Shopify COO Harley Finkelstein. “We think the future of retail is retail everywhere. A brand that’s going to be successful in 5, 10 or 15 years from now needs to sell across any platform and across any channel where they have customers. The idea is that it all feeds back in one centralized back-office, the retail operating system, which is Shopify.”

    Harley Finkelstein, COO of Shopify, discusses how COVID has dramatically sped up the timeline for commerce moving online and has also moved Shopify closer to its goal of becoming the world’s first retail operating system:

    Shopify Evolving Into World’s First Retail Operating System

    Most people assume that Shopify is an ecommerce provider. We have more than a million stores on Shopify. If you were to aggregate our stores in the US we’d be the second-largest online retailer in America. Of course, we’re not a retailer but we’re a platform. But we now have these great economies of scale that we’re using to level the playing field for entrepreneurs and small businesses. That being said, what really Shopify is evolving into is the world’s first retail operating system. 

    What we’re trying to figure out is what do brands and entrepreneurs and retailers need, not just now but in the future? We think the future of retail is retail everywhere. A brand that’s going to be successful in 5, 10 or 15 years from now needs to sell across any platform and across any channel where they have customers. This idea of enabling Shopify merchants to very easily push their products to the Amazon Marketplace or the eBay marketplace or now the Walmart marketplace, that gives them access to a new set of consumers. The idea is that it all feeds back in one centralized back-office, the retail operating system, which is Shopify. 

    Then we’ve gone ahead and asked what else can we do for these merchants? Can we do capital? We’ve now given out about a billion dollars worth of cash advances and loans to small businesses. We’re doing fulfillment and we’re doing shipping. We’re increasing the scope and the relationship that we have with the million stores on Shopify. This is allowing them to become category leaders.

    COVID Speeds Up The Ecommerce Revolution

    From our view, it seems like the commerce world that would have existed in the year 2030 has really been pulled into the year 2020 (as a result of the COVID crisis). We’ve seen ecommerce as a percent of total retail go from 15 percent to 25 percent in the last three months. That’s the same growth rate that we’ve seen over the last 10 years. What really has emerged here is sort of this tale of two retail worlds. On one side you have these resilient retailers that are doing great, they’re pivoting, and they’re expanding their businesses. On the other side, you have these resistant retailers who have not made it. In many ways, it’s probably the most exciting time for retail in a very long time. 

    We talk a lot about these direct to consumer brands that are becoming category leaders. The Allbirds and the Gymsharks who started on Shopify when they were very small and have grown to become the incumbents in their industry. Every 25 seconds a brand new entrepreneur makes his or her (products) for sale on Shopify. We talk a lot about those new startups, those new DTC brands. But actually, what we’re also seeing on Shopify are companies like Lindt Chocolate or Heinz ketchup or Chipotle. They are signing up for Shopify and basically from like five days from contract to launch they are completely changing their businesses. 

    This resiliency isn’t simply in the hands of just the smallest of brands. Big companies are also beginning to think a lot more about how to stay resilient in this time. They’re moving well beyond ecommerce or thinking about offline commerce now. They’re thinking about how do they sell across social media? How do they sell across different marketplaces? So no, I don’t think it’s too late (to enter ecommerce) but I do think they have to rethink their strategies.

    Shopify Evolving Into World’s First Retail Operating System Says Shopify COO Harley Finkelstein
  • Conversational Marketing Closes the Gap Between B2C and B2B, Says Drift Marketing VP

    Conversational Marketing Closes the Gap Between B2C and B2B, Says Drift Marketing VP

    Conversational marketing is a whole new way of thinking about marketing and sales, says Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing at Drift. “We go to our jobs in B2B and none of the tools that we use match how we actually buy as real people,” he says. “That’s the most exciting thing to me about conversational marketing. It’s really closing the gap between B2C and B2B. We just call it B2P, marketing to people.”

    Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing at Drift, was recently interviewed on the B2B Growth podcast by John Rougeux who is VP of Marketing at Skyfii. Gerhardt discusses conversational marketing as a new B2B product category and how it is changing marketing from reaching out to you later to a conversation that is happening now:

    Conversational Marketing is About Connecting You Now

    Conversational marketing is a whole new way of thinking about marketing and sales. The traditional way of doing marketing and sales is all about later. Come to my website and fill out this form and somebody is going to reach out to you later, when it’s convenient for them. The big shift that is happening in marketing and business over the last five to ten years is customers have all the power today. You can’t make people wait. Information is free now.

    I can find anything I want to know about a company without ever having to go to your website. It’s crazy to think that you are going to force people to go to your website, fill out a form, wait three days to hear back from your sales team, and then get a demo. Conversational is all about connecting you now with the people who are ready to buy now while they are live on your website.

    B2P – Marketing to People

    It’s not about buyers. It’s not about sellers. It’s not about sales. It’s not about marketing. It’s about people. That’s how people all communicate online today. I pressed one button in my car and I got a list. I ordered something from Amazon while I was here this morning to send back to my house and it’s going to be there tomorrow when I get home. There are countless examples of that. That is how we all behave online in our real lives today.

    But then something happens weird happens. We go to our jobs in B2B and none of the tools that we use match how we actually buy as real people. That’s the most exciting thing to me about conversational marketing. It’s really closing the gap between B2C and B2B. We just call it B2P, marketing to people.

    What Ties Our Products Together is Conversation

    We have an email product and we have a landing page product. Black and white versions of those people would say everybody has email, everybody has landing pages. The thing that ties those together is conversation. That forces us to think about what is conversational email? What is conversational landing pages? What is conversational whatever? That one word forces our product team to think about how can we change this? If our fundamental stance as a company is that the internet should be one conversation, then how does that weave into everything that we build?

    Ultimately what we care about is that email becomes a conversation. Meaning, the way that marketers have had to use email the last decade is a one-way channel. Email is meant to be a two-way channel. Marketers have been using it as, “John come to my webinar.” What happens if you actually respond to that email? Most of the time you can’t because it’s donotreply@ or it just goes to some inbox where nobody is answering it. That is a terrible experience. Our belief is that if you reply, “Hey actually I can’t make it. Can you reregister my colleague?” That should get handled. We are thinking of that from an evolution standpoint.

    The same thing with landing pages. Most landing pages today are static. You go to the landing page, put a bunch of info in and you are gone. What if that was a real-time conversation on the page? That one topic has to weave itself into everything we do from a product perspective.

    >> Listen to the complete interview with Drift Marketing VP Dave Gerhardt on the B2B Growth podcast.

  • Adobe CEO: Pandemic Was Inflection Point For Everything Being Digital

    Adobe CEO: Pandemic Was Inflection Point For Everything Being Digital

    “What the pandemic and the current health situation has done is that it has created yet another inflection point for everything being digital,” says Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. “The importance of digital in the marketplace is going to be sustainable for decades. You’re not going to put the genie back in the bottle as it relates to engaging digitally and creating content digitally.”

    Shantanu Narayen, Chairman and CEO of Adobe, discusses how the pandemic has created another “inflection point” in the move toward digital transformation:

    Digital Transformation Is A $120 Billion Opportunity

    It was a good quarter all around. All of our businesses performed exceedingly well. On the Creative Cloud and the Document Cloud, not only did we have a great acquisition. in other words, new customers adopting the platform, but we really focused on engagement and demonstrating the value of our products to our customers. Even our retention levels came back to pre-COVID levels which we believe is a really good sign.

    What’s happening in the world is the businesses that we’re in, namely creativity and enabling people to tell their story, what’s happening with documents and accelerating document productivity, and what’s happening associated with every single enterprise needing to engage with their customers digitally, when you add all of this up we think it’s over a $120 billion of an addressable market opportunity for Adobe.

    Pandemic Was Inflection Point For Everything Being Digital

    What the pandemic and the current health situation has done is that it has created yet another inflection point for everything being digital. What we will have to continue to monitor is what happens in the spending environment. But as it relates to the overall need for the kinds of solutions that Adobe provides as well as the importance of digital in the marketplace I think that’s going to be sustainable for decades. You’re not going to put the genie back in the bottle as it relates to engaging digitally and creating content digitally.

    We believe that we’re in this third phase of what is happening in the enterprise. Traditionally, businesses first focused on automating the back office, and then they focused on automating the front office for knowledge workers. It’s absolutely clear that the biggest imperative that exists in the enterprise today is how do you engage with customers? This is a category that we call Customer Experience Management.

    Customer Insight Is Key To Your Digital Transformation

    If you’re an enterprise today and you’re thinking about digital transformation, what’s top of that stack in terms of where you have to invest is to make sure that you have insight into what your customers are doing. How are they engaging with you? What’s the profile? How do you deliver the personalized experience?

    We really believe that what you’re seeing in the enterprise spend environment is that the companies that are focused on this next generation of delivering customer engagement, the customer experiences, and the insight associated with how to take the most advantage of that data, they’re going to be the secular winners moving forward.

    Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen: Pandemic Was Inflection Point For Everything Being Digital
  • How HubSpot is Using Surround Sound Marketing Strategy to Drive Sales

    How HubSpot is Using Surround Sound Marketing Strategy to Drive Sales

    “There is a very smart individual at HubSpot named Alex Birkett based out of Austin, Texas,” says Scott Tousley of HubSpot. “He is working on this concept that is really starting to take off called Surround Sound Strategy. Essentially what that means is that it runs with the notion that marketers are selfish. All we care about is how do we drive more traffic to our website.”

    Scott Tousley, Senior Team Lead of User Acquisition for all products at HubSpot, was recently interviewed on the B2B Growth Podcast by David Kelly, General Manager at Sumo Dojo. Tousley discusses how HubSpot is using Surround Sound Marketing Strategy to drive leads and sales:

    Surround Sound Marketing Strategy Starting to Take Off

    There is a very smart individual at HubSpot named Alex Birkett based out of Austin, Texas. He is working on this concept that is really starting to take off called Surround Sound Strategy. Essentially what that means is that it runs with the notion that marketers are selfish. All we care about is how do we drive more traffic to our website. I don’t care where it comes from. Whether it comes from search or social or referral traffic or email, it doesn’t matter. You’re always looking at how do I get more traffic to my website? The reality is that when we are trying to buy something you don’t go to one website. You go to multiple different websites when you are trying to make a purchasing decision.

    For example, I’m in South Lake Tahoe right now. One search I just did recently was “best bars in South Lake Tahoe.” I wanted to see a list and I wanted to see some reviews from a couple of different websites. I also like to surf, so let’s say I’m in the market for a new shortboard. So I search for “best shortboards 2019.” First, I’ll read a listicle, then I will go back to Google and I will click on the next list. Then I will go back again and click on the next list. Then I will start to narrow my decision based on seeing the same thing over and over. Once I narrow it down I will do a versus search such as “lost puddle jumper” vs. “channel islands average joe.” I’ve narrowed my decision at that point.

    We Want To Be At All Stages of the Purchasing Decision

    What we are trying to do at HubSpot right now is figure out how to be everywhere. We want to be at all stages of that purchasing decision when people are searching for “what is the best blank that exists today.” Well, there are a ton of lists that are out there and a ton of review sites and HubSpot’s B2B software (has to be there). There are a lot of review sites just dominating search engines right now like Capterra, G2 Crowd, and Software Advice. A lot of those are pay to play. You have got to pay to get listed on what appears when you land via search. Most of them are.

    But listicles are free. Not only are they free to get added to, but they are free to create. That’s one of the biggest things we are working on right now. How do we change our mindset from being so obsessed at driving traffic to our website? How do we make sure that HubSpot’s brand is everywhere when you are doing your product research and you are on many different websites? We actually sometimes prefer that we drive traffic to multiple different websites where we are listed versus just to our own. It’s good for social grouping.

    Listen to the full interview with HubSpot’s Scott Tousley.

  • Intel Wants the EU to Pay It $624 Million in Interest Over Overturned Fine

    Intel Wants the EU to Pay It $624 Million in Interest Over Overturned Fine

    Intel may have won its case to overturn a €1 billion fine antitrust fine in the EU, but the chipmaker is now pressing for interest to be paid.

    In January 2022, the EU’s second-highest court overturned a €1 billion fine imposed on Intel in 2009. The EU Commission accused Intel of trying to use rebates and other incentives to block manufacturers from using chips from rival AMD. Intel was ordered to pay the fine before it was reversed 12 years later.

    Intel now wants the Commission to pay it $624 million in interest, according to Reuters. The EU Court did address interest last year, saying the Commission would need to pay default interest for fines that have been overturned and reimbursed. What’s more, the court said late payments on interest would incur further interest.

    It’s been a rough few days or the EU’s antitrust regulators. Last week the same court overturned a $1 billion fine against Qualcomm, criticizing regulators’ handling of the case.

    As we wrote in our coverage of that story, Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager will likely need to be more careful in how she and her regulators go after tech companies and build cases against them.

  • How Website Development Services Fuel Growth

    How Website Development Services Fuel Growth

    As technology continues to evolve, businesses are investing in website development. The ability to start selling online or connecting with customers on a global level is virtually unlimited with today’s technology. Today, businesses of all sizes are enjoying the benefits of locating their web servers wherever they want at a low cost. 

    Website development can be a difficult step for many businesses and individuals. With so much varying software out there promising to “help your website succeed”, it is difficult to find the right one. Not all websites are created equal and the process of developing a website will vary based on your needs, so the best way to find the perfect platform for your business is by speaking with a professional. If you are looking for abroad services, try offshore web development services as many companies these days are moving towards outsourcing. Offshore web development takes a lot less time in almost every aspect as it’s done on the other side of the globe and also can bring cheaper prices to budget-conscious directors. Other than cost benefits, offshore web development companies also tend to be able to deliver projects in an earlier time period, which makes it easier for many businesses such as freelancers and independent contractors to meet deadlines. 

    Five Ways Web Development Contributes to Your Success

    Strong Online Presence

    Internet platforms have shifted the way in which companies market themselves by creating digital storefronts for all of your company’s products and services. With a robust website development approach, your company will gain more customer interest and sales. This means that whether you’re trying to increase sales or “go viral,” you will need a robust presence in order to start attracting potential customers, more material to better serve your customer’s needs, and additional opportunities to build on relationships with your customers.

    Builds Your Brand

    The truth is website development services are essential for enterprise growth and success. Without a website, there is no brand personification – thus, all you have is a business that feels really, really bland. Instead of getting off your feet and connecting with the consumer, you have to rely on other channels to market your products or services. That’s where website development agencies come in. They offer an array of digital marketing techniques to help build your brand identity so that you can get noticed online.

    Boost Customer Reach

    Websites have become a huge part of the business world. Once your business has an online presence, you’ll have the ability to reach more people and expand your brand. Web development is a leading method of boosting and establishing the presence of a business. With the abundance of websites available, it is important to take care of things like local business directories so you are easily found by your customers and competition. With a good website, potential customers will be able to view your offerings and even contact you.

    Sell More

    Websites have always been the most powerful marketing tool for any business, yet has not reaped the benefits from it. Marketing experts suggest that if you need to boost your sales, then you just need a simple website. However, designing and creating an effective website is not easy – which is why many companies prefer looking to get more website development services. With a website, you can address more of your customers than ever before. And your website will sell more than you spend on it. 

    Get More Search Traffic

    Website development requires a balanced blend of creativity and technical understanding as well as an in-depth understanding of the website customer-visitor relationship. When it comes to search engines, optimizing a website for errors and troubleshooting any possible issues is not only the best way to achieve great results but also the most cost-effective option. Apart from that, structural changes and upgrades in web development play a vital role in boosting your business’s search engine presence.

    In Conclusion

    Website design and development is becoming much more sought after. When making an investment into your web presence, make sure it’s worth the cost by considering what you want to gain from your site before investing in it. 

  • Stop Making These 7 Online Marketing Mistakes and You Will Crush It, Says Neil Patel

    Stop Making These 7 Online Marketing Mistakes and You Will Crush It, Says Neil Patel

    If you avoid these seven online marketing mistakes and you follow these tips you’re going to generate more sales, says popular digital marketing expert Neil Patel. A common theme of Neil’s tips is creating a brand. “Google doesn’t want to rank sites that aren’t brands,” he says. “There’s an issue out there called fake news and that’s why they’re pushing brands over anything else.” Patel says that if you follow these tips you’re going to crush it!”

    Neil Patel, digital marketing expert and founder of Neil Patel Digital, discusses the seven online marketing mistakes in his latest video release:

    Stop Making These 7 Online Marketing Mistakes

    I’m going to break down seven online marketing mistakes that you need to stop. You’re probably wondering you’re doing all these things but why aren’t you seeing results? Even if you’re doing the right things, if you’re also doing the wrong things at the same time it’s going to hurt you and it’s going avoid you from getting the results that you deserve.

    Mistake 1: Not Collecting Emails

    The first mistake you are making is not collecting emails. It doesn’t matter how good you are with SEO or marketing only a very small percentage of your visitors are ever going to convert into customers. By collecting emails not only can you get people to come back to your site but you can convince them to convert over emails.

    The moment someone gives you their email address think of that as a micro-commitment. They’re much more likely to convert into a customer because they committed, they already gave you something. That’s why you want to collect emails. You can do this through sliders or exit pop-ups. You can do this for free using tools like Hello Bar.

    Mistake 2: Not Collecting Subscribers Through Push Notifications

    The second mistake you’re making is you’re not collecting subscribers through push notifications. There are free tools like Subscribers.com that’ll make it easy. Just add in a JavaScript or a WordPress plug-in and then when people come to your website they will automatically subscribe through the browser. Then anytime you have new content or products or services that you want to sell then you can notify them through Subscribers.

    Mistake 3: Not Building a Brand

    The reason tip number one on collecting emails and tip number two on getting more push notifications subscribers are really important is because you need to build a brand. This gets you into the third mistake. Google doesn’t want to rank sites that aren’t brands. Why is this? There’s an issue out there called fake news and that’s why they’re pushing brands over anything else. It’s not just going to be Facebook and in Google. Eventually, it’s going to be Twitter and LinkedIn and all the sites out there.

    When you get people back to your site seven times you’re much more likely to build a brand. It’s called the Rule of Seven in marketing. So with your site, you want to provide an amazing user experience. When you provide an amazing user experience, create a great product, create a great service, it’ll help you build a great brand over time.

    Mistake 4: Not Interlinking

    The fourth mistake you’re making is not interlinking. You may notice on Google I’m ranking for terms like online marketing on page one. You’re probably wondering how do I do this? A lot of it comes out to interlinking. In my sidebar, I link to my most popular pages of content. When I write blog posts related to online marketing I link back to the online marketing guide that talks about what online marketing is. By having all these links it helps me rank higher.

    Mistake 5: Just Focusing On Text-Based Content

    The fifth mistake I have for you is just focusing on text-based content. The future of digital marketing is moving to video. It doesn’t mean you should stop doing text but it means you should also be doing video. When you do video you’re going to get more traffic because everyone’s lacking it. LinkedIn wants it right now. YouTube wants more of it. Facebook wants it. Instagram even wants it.

    Why is this? They want to crush the television networks. You look at things like the Oscars or traditional movie theaters and they’re not doing as well. You look at traditional TV and they’re going to get crushed. Why? It’s because of Facebook. It’s because of Google. It’s because of Netflix. If you’re there creating that video content you can be part of it and you’re going to get extra traffic. They want as much help as possible to crush these big old-school companies.

    Mistake 6: Sticking To Just a Few Marketing Channels

    The sixth mistake that you’re making is you’re really sticking to just a few marketing channels. Marketing is competitive. People raise venture capital hundreds of millions of dollars just so they can compete in marketing and sales. You need to do more than one or two or three marketing channels. The more you do the better off you’re going to be.

    Mistake 7: Not Asking For the Sale

    The seventh mistake I have for you is not asking for the sale. Whether it’s a lead or whether it’s getting people to buy your product, there’s nothing wrong with asking people to buy from you. If you don’t you’re not going to generate any sales. Everyone’s like I get all this traffic through my online marketing but no one’s converting. Why? Because you’re not asking for a sale.

    Stop Making These 7 Online Marketing Mistakes and You Will Crush It, Says Neil Patel


  • Verizon, AT&T Limiting 5G to Accommodate Air Traffic Safety Concerns

    Verizon, AT&T Limiting 5G to Accommodate Air Traffic Safety Concerns

    Verizon and AT&T have volunteered to limit their 5G networks in an effort to address concerns over air traffic safety.

    Verizon and AT&T spent a small fortune — to the tune of nearly $69 billion — to purchase C-Band spectrum for their 5G networks. C-Band, falling in the mid-range of available spectrum, is considered the sweet spot for 5G, offering a solid blend of speed, range and penetration.

    Unfortunately, the spectrum Verizon and AT&T purchased is in the 3.7 to 3.98 GHz range, relatively close to the 4.2-4.4 GHz range that airline altimeters run on. As a result, there have been concerns that Verizon and AT&T’s 5G could negatively impact airline safety, leading both companies to delay their C-Band rollout.

    Verizon and AT&T are now voluntarily offering to limit their rollout of the C-Band 5G spectrum in an effort to mitigate potential issues.

    “We have voluntarily agreed to certain precautionary protection measures for 5G networks in the C-band while additional evidence from radio altimeter manufacturers is evaluated,” AT&T said in a statement, according to The Hill. “Though there is no credible evidence that a legitimate interference problem exists, we agreed to take these additional steps to alleviate any safety concerns from the FAA.”

    Despite their willingness to cripple their 5G, as Telecoms.com points out, it’s obvious by the wording of their statement that Verizon and AT&T are not happy with the current state of affairs. Their statement is a not-so-subtle way of pointing out that, after spending tens of billions, they shouldn’t have to take the steps they’re taking.

    “Wireless carriers, including AT&T and Verizon, paid over $80 billion for C-band spectrum—and have committed to pay another $15 billion to satellite users for early access to those licenses—and made those investments in reliance on a set of technical ground rules that were expressly found by the FCC to protect other spectrum users.”

    Verizon and AT&T’s issues are yet another win for T-Mobile, which has already established itself as the 5G leader in the US market. T-Mobile’s mid-band spectrum falls in the 2.5 GHz range, which is still in the sweet spot for 5G but far enough away from the spectrum airline altimeters use to not be a concern. As a result, T-Mobile has been unaffected by the issues Verizon and AT&T are facing.

  • Stop Making These 5 Deadly SEO Mistakes, Says Neil Patel

    Stop Making These 5 Deadly SEO Mistakes, Says Neil Patel

    After you stop making these 5 deadly SEO mistakes your google traffic is going to increase, says digital marketing expert Neil Patel. Sometimes just making a simple change can dramatically increase your traffic. For instance, Patel says that the moment he took out the dates from his URL his search traffic shot up 58 percent in just 30 days.

    Neil Patel, digital marketing expert and founder of Neil Patel Digital, discusses the five beginner SEO mistakes in his latest video release:

    Mistake 1: Putting Dates in URLs

    The first mistake is putting dates in your URL. I used to do this with NeilPatel.com. What a huge mistake. My URL structure used to be NeilPatel.com/year/month/TitleofmyBlogPost. The moment I took out the dates from my URL guess what happened to my search traffic? Within 30 days it went up by 58 percent. I’m not talking about taking my search traffic from a 1,000 visitors to you 1,580 visitors. I had hundreds and thousands of visitors from Google already each month with dates in my URL. The moment I removed them I saw an additional 58 percent increase in my search traffic.

    So whatever URL structure you have just make sure it does not have dates. Reason being is when you have a date in your URL, Google thinks of your site as being relevant to that date. You write a blog post and they’re like oh, this blog post must be related to January 12, 2025, or whatever the date is today. If you want your content to continually rank as evergreen content you can’t put dates in your URL.

    Mistake 2: Thinking of Your Site as a Silo

    The second mistake that you’re making is you’re thinking of your site as a silo. It doesn’t matter how many different sections you have or categories, it’s still one site. It’s on one domain name. For example, my blog is about marketing, so when I create content I link to all the other marketing posts (on my site) that are relevant to the posts that I just released.

    You should consider thinking of your website as one big site versus different silos so when you write content you should link to other pieces of content that are relevant. That way all of your pages are going to be interconnected and they’re going to rank higher.

    Mistake 3: Thinking of SEO as Just SEO

    The third mistake that you’re making is you’re thinking of SEO as just SEO. It’s not just about on page code. It’s not just about building links. It’s not even just about getting social shares. It’s about building a brand. Eric Schmidt, the ex-CEO of Google, once said that brands are the solution. What he’s talking about is that when Google was trying to figure out what sites to rank higher than others he decided as well as ton of other people in Google that if you have a brand you should rank higher.

    Why is that? You’ve heard of this thing called fake news. It’s a great way to combat that. It’s not just Facebook who’s concerned about fake news. It’s also Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, and all of the major platforms out there. Building a brand does wonders for you especially when it comes to SEO. You can do things like collecting emails to get people to keep coming back to your site. You can use tools like HelloBar to do that for free. You can use tools like Subscribers to do push notifications so that when people come to your website within one click they can subscribe. Getting all of those people to keep coming back will help reinforce your brand to them. That’ll help you climb in the rankings in the long run.

    Mistake 4: Just Writing Content

    The fourth mistake is just writing content. I know you’re that content is king, how is that a mistake? Writing content isn’t a mistake. It’s writing content and then not updating it, and that’s what most people do. They just write content and they write more new content then after that they write more content and guess what they do after that they write more new content. If you update your content Google’s going to see it as fresh, hip, new, and still relevant, and rank it higher.

    With over a billion blogs out there Google likes picking brand new updated content versus old outdated content. This doesn’t mean you have to rewrite the whole article. It could just be paragraph or two or a few lines. It could just be reviewing an article and making sure it’s still up to date where you make no modifications because it’s still good to go.

    Mistake 5: Not Thinking About the User

    The last mistake you’re making is not thinking about the user. Google looks at something called user metrics. Whether it’s the browser or the toolbar Google wants to make sure people have an amazing experience. They’re using all those platforms to track how and when people come to your website and how they perceive it.

    They can’t talk to them by serving them or anything like that. What they can see is when someone performs a Google search, clicks on the listing landing on your site and within a second they are they clicking the back button. If they are it tells Google your website or that web page isn’t relevant. By putting the user first instead of putting SEO first it’ll help you climb to the top.


  • The Future of Google and SEO is AI

    The Future of Google and SEO is AI

    The future of Google and of SEO is AI says world-renowned SEO expert Stephan Spencer. “If you’re relying just on backlinks, then you aren’t recognizing that the future of Google and of SEO is AI, it’s artificial intelligence,” noted Spencer in another informative interview by James Schramko of SuperFastBusiness.

    Stephan Spencer, SEO expert, speaker, and author recently discussed the impact of AI on Google Search and SEO with James Schramko of SuperFastBusiness: (Listen to the full podcast below)

    The Future of Google and SEO is AI

    If you’re relying just on backlinks, then you aren’t recognizing that the future of Google and of SEO is AI, it’s artificial intelligence. What’s the best way, or the really the only way, to outsmart an AI? I would challenge that the only way to outsmart an AI is with another AI. So really, AI is the future.

    AI and nanotechnology and all the cool technologies that are advancing, like VR, AR, etc., they’re happening faster and faster. And we need to be more nimble than we’ve ever been in order to keep up. So that’s kind of the game that we have to play.

    SEO is Not Just About Machine Learning and AI

    But right now, SEO is not just about having machine learning on your side to try and outsmart Google. It’s about having a search-engine-friendly website. It’s about identifying keywords that are relevant and popular and that are attainable for you in the Google search results. And it’s about achieving buzz and link equity by having people mention you and link to you. So those things still work, they’re still important to the Google algorithm. But on top of that, you’ve got to be willing to explore machine learning and be nimble about the future.

    I’m personally excited about the future. I think it’s an amazing time to be alive. The kinds of advances that we’re about to experience in our lifetimes are going to be mind-blowing.

  • Next iPhone SE Will Have 5G

    Next iPhone SE Will Have 5G

    The next generation iPhone SE will receive a major upgrade, becoming the latest iPhone to get the 5G treatment.

    Carriers and phone makers around the world are racing to adopt 5G, as the next-gen wireless technology delivers revolutionary performance, compared to previous generations. Starting with the iPhone 12, Apple has begun including 5G on iPhone and iPad models.

    The iPhone SE is Apple’s budget iPhone, but it’s due for a high-end upgrade. According to Japanese Apple blog Macotakara, via Gizmodo, the next iPhone SE will receive 5G, along with a spec boost.

    Customers looking for a redesign, including a larger screen, may be in for a disappointment, as Macotakara says the SE’s form factor will remain the same for the time being.

  • ‌macOS Big Sur Release Times

    ‌macOS Big Sur Release Times

    Apple announced the release of macOS Big Sur for Thursday, November 12 during its ‘One More Thing‘ event. It’s a huge upgrade that millions of Mac users will want to download ASAP. You will know when it is available in your time zone by clicking the Apple logo in the upper left of your Mac, then clicking ‘About This Mac’ and then clicking ‘Software Update.’ If it still says your Mac is up to date… then macOS Big Sur has not yet been released in your time zone.

    So just when will it be available? Mac Rumors provided their best time estimates based on past releases, which is typically 10 AM Pacific Time. We’ve added additional cities:

    • Honolulu, Hawaii — 8:00 a.m. HST
    • Anchorage, Alaska — 9:00 a.m. AKST
    • Cupertino, California — 10:00 a.m. PST
    • Los Angeles, California — 10:00 a.m. PST
    • San Diego, California — 10:00 a.m. PST
    • Seattle, Washington — 10:00 a.m. PST
    • Tijuana, Mexico — 10:00 a.m. PST
    • Vancouver, Canada — 10:00 a.m. PST
    • Phoenix, Arizona — 11:00 a.m. MST
    • Denver, Colorado — 11:00 a.m. MST
    • Chicago, Illinois — 12:00 noon. CST
    • Boston, Massachusetts — 1:00 p.m. EST
    • Lexington, Kentucky — 1:00 p.m. EST
    • Miami, Florida — 1:00 p.m. EST
    • New York, New York — 1:00 p.m. EST
    • Washington, D.C. — 1:00 p.m. EST
    • Toronto, Canada — 1:00 p.m. EST
    • Halifax, Canada — 2:00 p.m. AST
    • Rio de Janeiro, Brazil — 3:00 p.m. BRT
    • London, United Kingdom — 6:00 p.m. GMT
    • Berlin, Germany — 7:00 p.m. CET
    • Paris, France — 7:00 p.m. CET
    • Cape Town, South Africa — 8:00 p.m. SAST
    • Helsinki, Finland — 8:00 p.m. EET
    • Moscow, Russia — 9:00 p.m. MSK
    • Istanbul, Turkey — 9:00 p.m. TRT
    • Dubai, United Arab Emirates — 10:00 p.m. GST
    • Delhi, India — 11:30 p.m. IST
    • Jakarta, Indonesia — 1:00 a.m. WIB next day
    • Shanghai, China — 2:00 a.m. CST next day
    • Singapore — 2:00 a.m. SGT next day
    • Perth, Australia — 2:00 a.m. AWST next day
    • Hong Kong — 2:00 a.m. HKT next day
    • Seoul, South Korea — 3:00 a.m. KST next day
    • Tokyo, Japan — 3:00 a.m. JST next day
    • Brisbane, Australia – 4:00 a.m. AEST next day
    • Adelaide, Australia — 4:30 a.m. ACDT next day
    • Sydney, Australia — 5:00 a.m. AEDT next day
    • Auckland, New Zealand — 7:00 a.m. NZDT next day
  • Optimizing Your Website

    Optimizing Your Website

    The pandemic has changed the way we do business because customers are more cautious than ever about going out into public when they don’t absolutely have to. Increasingly customers are looking to a business’ social media pages and websites for information about new hours, new procedures, special times for the elderly, and more before going to a business. This has increased the amount of time businesses need to spend on updating their digital storefronts, but it is effort well spent since customers are sitting at home wanting the best information before they venture out of place an order.

    How fast your website loads will impact your business, especially right now. Slow loading speeds may signal to customers that your business is struggling and unable to tend to its website.

    On social media, updates should be made frequently so that customers aren’t confused about the period of time that has passed since the last update. If a post says the hours have changed but that post is from four weeks ago, customers are likely to question the accuracy. During these trying times it is perfectly admissible to share the same information on a weekly or even a daily basis, if for no other reason than to offer reassurance to customers that you are on top of things.

    Web pages require a little less maintenance for things like hours and new policies and procedures since entries aren’t generally date stamped for those things, but there are lots of other things that businesses need to do to keep their websites up to date. 

    More customers than usual are visiting your business’ website, and now is the perfect time to ensure that it is optimized for those experiences. The biggest thing here is the load time – it should be three seconds or less, and websites that take just nine seconds longer to load experience a 123% bounce rate. Once those customers bounce to seek other options, you’ve lost the sale and probably their business for the foreseeable future.

    There’s a lot of uncertainty, and the more information and updates you can give customers the better. They want to know every change and policy you make in real time, updated frequently. And it has to be able to load quickly, especially on mobile devices while your customers are sitting at red lights looking for other options when they are looking for something.

    Hosting also makes a difference, especially if your website is where most of your commerce is taking place these days. Businesses can’t afford website outages, so ensuring your hosting is up to the task can prevent business losses during these difficult economic times. Every sale matters and every customer visiting your website should be getting the best possible experience out of it.

    Your website is your business’ digital storefront – take care of it as though your business depends on it. It’s time to do a checkup on your website hosting provider and loading speed to ensure your website is performing optimally. Learn more about website best practices from the infographic below.

  • Google Has Fixed 99.9% of Canonical Indexing Issues

    Google Has Fixed 99.9% of Canonical Indexing Issues

    Google has announced it has fixed 99.9% of the canonical issues impacting how websites were indexed.

    Google confirmed three weeks ago that it was dealing with indexing issues that were affecting mobile pages and canonicalization. The issues could result in pages not being indexed, or the wrong URL being associated with a given page.

    According to Google, the issues are 99.9% fixed, with outlier cases expected to be fixed in the next week or two.

  • Taboola – Outbrain Merger Falls Apart

    Taboola – Outbrain Merger Falls Apart

    It was a merger that started out nearly a year ago as a perfect idea and was even approved by the U.S. government. In the end, it turned into a perfect storm because of the ad industry upheaval caused by the coronavirus and subsequent business closures followed by massive unemployment and fewer clicks on ads. Ad prices then dropped dramatically which changed the value proposition for both Outbrain and Taboola.

    The world’s two leading companies in the discovery & native advertising industry will remain fierce competitors in what still is a chaotic and unpredictable ad market.

    “As part of the process we exchanged financial information with each other,” says Taboola Founder & CEO Adam Singolda in a blog post. “Based on the relative performance of the two companies, we decided the original deal does not make sense anymore. We could choose to pay the same price of 30% in equity + $250M, but our shareholders thought it’s too much for what we would get based on the relative contribution of the two companies. Nothing emotional, not about culture fit, just data.”

    “Out of deep respect, we tried to do a deal that was equity only (but less equity), or equity and cash (but less cash) that matched Outbrain’s financial contribution to Taboola. We failed, and we called it off.”

    Outbrain Co-Founder and CEO Yaron Galai expressed his own thoughts on the collapse of the merger:

    “It is now public news that Outbrain’s planned merger with Taboola is heading to termination in the near future. This isn’t the outcome any of us anticipated for this process. We believed when entering this deal that there is great potential value to be had for our employees, our marketers and publisher partners, and our shareholders. However, this combination apparently was simply not meant to be. We worked hard to mix water and oil, but ultimately the companies proved to be too different to be mixed.” 

    “During a very stormy year for the Outbrain team, due to both the pandemic and the cloud of the merger, Outbrain’s character as the #1 most trusted partner for the world’s best publishers has shone through very brightly. We’re excited to continue innovating and building the best native advertising products for publishers and marketers as an independent company for many years to come.”

     

  • DTC Brands Doing Incredible Numbers on Shopify, Says COO

    DTC Brands Doing Incredible Numbers on Shopify, Says COO

    Direct to consumer brands are doing incredible numbers on Shopify, says Shopify COO Harley Finkelstein. He says that Kylie Jenner has generated almost a billion dollars in sales on the platform and many other influencers such as Kanye West, Drake, and most recently Tom Brady are also doing very well.

    “Even if you go beyond just Kylie, you look at companies like Bombas and Allbirds and Tommy John and Fashion Nova, these are brands that didn’t exist five or ten years ago and they’re absolutely doing incredible numbers on Shopify with no slowing down in mind,” says Finklestein. “Shopify was built to help anyone that has an idea start a great business and sell to a global audience.”

    Harley Finkelstein, COO of Shopify, talks about the incredible numbers DTC brands are doing on Shopify, the huge success of Shopify Capital, and their quick acceptance of cannabis stores in Canada and potentially the rest of the world, in an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC:

    DTC Brands Doing Incredible Numbers on Shopify

    We’re really happy with how we ended the year and certainly, the quarter was great and we’re really excited about our future. We’ve been at this now for almost 14 years. We’ve grown to 820,000 merchants up from 600,000 merchants a year ago. We have a big top of funnel with brand new entrepreneurs getting started on Shopify for the very first time. We also have some very large brands like the big CPGs and some big direct to consumer (DTC) companies all using Shopify to scale their businesses. We’ve got a really great business model and we’re having a lot of fun.

    It’s amazing. I think the Kylie story ($1 billion in sales) was surprising to a lot of people, not for us because we see so many stories like that all the time. Whether it’s Kanye West launching his Yeezy store on Shopify or Drake’s store or Tom Brady’s new store, we see all of these major brands and huge influencers using Shopify to create authentic products and sell it to the audience. I always sort of think back to if DTC and direct-to-consumer were around when Michael Jordan was creating the Jordan brand with Nike I think Nike would be a supplier and Michael Jordan would be the brand. He would own the entirety of his business as opposed to getting a licensing fee.

    We’re really excited about this. But even if you go beyond just Kylie, you look at companies like Bombas and Allbirds and Tommy John and Fashion Nova, these are brands that didn’t exist five or ten years ago and they’re absolutely doing incredible numbers on Shopify with no slowing down in mind. Shopify was built to help anyone that has an idea start a great business and sell to a global audience. We really do bend the learning curve to make it really easy to get started.

    Shopify Helping Democratize the Entire Business Process

    The ones that succeed, not all of them do, but the ones that do succeed they grow really large with us and over time we want to provide them with more services and more solutions. For example, we launched Shopify Payments a couple of years ago. We went to the payments companies and negotiated rates on their behalf. We launched Shopify Shipping and went to the shipping company and negotiated shipping costs on their behalf. We always are trying to find economies of scale to help democratize the entire business process for these small businesses.

    More recently we realized that a lot of these small businesses also need capital. Because we have so much information on them we’re able to make really quick and very effective underwriting decisions so we were able to go and offer them capital cash advances. We’ve given out hundreds of millions of dollars of cash advances to a lot of these small businesses who if it wasn’t for Shopify would not be able to get this money on their own.

    Entrepreneurs Want to Own Their Audience

    Etsy fundamentally is a marketplace. Etsy is a place where someone who makes a product can go to find an audience. But our feeling is that you know for an entrepreneur they don’t always want to rent the audience. They want to own the audience. They want to have a direct relationship with their customers. They want to own the entire to profit margin. They want to be able to sell and have long-term relations with the people that are buying their products.

    So companies like Etsy do a really good job of curating a bunch of products and renting those customers to those makers. We think the marketplaces are really great but we think ultimately makers and entrepreneurs and merchants want to have a direct relationship with the people buying their products. One of the things that is not well known about Shopify but one way to think about what we do is really this retail operating system. Merchants can start a store with us very easily and they can build a beautiful online store but they can also cross-sell to different marketplaces like eBay or Amazon.

    The idea is that it feeds all feeds back in one centralized back office which is Shopify. That’s where they can run the entirety of their business. Really the idea is let’s become the most important piece of software they use on a daily basis. The first thing they open every morning, the last thing they close every night. So obviously marketplace will play a role there but ultimately merchants want to find customers wherever those customers exist and more and more they want to sell direct to those customers.

    Shopify Facilitating Cannabis Sales in Canada

    The reason we started with Canada was there was clarity in Canada. The Canadian government, the legislature, they were very clear with how they were going to roll out the commercialization and the legalization of cannabis sales on the consumer side. We felt it was really important for us to act quickly and effectively to not only win as much of the Canadian market as we possibly could but also to show the rest of the world as they begin to think about cannabis sales that we are the first phone call that they should be making.

    Whether it’s the province of Ontario or British Columbia or most of the largest licensed producers like Canopy in Canada, Shopify is what’s powering those retail sales. We think that we can do a great job helping other countries and other regions do the same thing.

  • SurveyMonkey CEO: Selling To the Enterprise Has Been Wildly Successful

    SurveyMonkey CEO: Selling To the Enterprise Has Been Wildly Successful

    “We really took a strategic imperative about two and a half to three years ago to step up our enterprise game,” says SurveyMonkey CEO Zander Lurie. “This has been a company that has thrived in going direct to end-users. We’ve built up a user base, a paid customer base, today of almost 700,000 people. But over the last three years, we’ve elevated our game. Today, enterprise represents 20 percent of our business. It helped us deliver our best quarter in history. We’re now growing 20 percent year-over-year.”

    Zander Lurie, CEO of SurveyMonkey, discusses how the company is driving its massive growth by focusing on enterprise solutions that are sold by the seat, in an interview on CNBC:

    The Category For Experience Management Is Massive

    The category for experience management is massive. Companies today are differentiating their products and services by their ability to be customer-centric. Everybody has access to off-the-shelf software and you can buy keywords on Google and you can target folks on Facebook but the ability to really be sensitive to what your customers care about and want is critical. Usabilla is the solution that we acquired earlier this year. They have a customer in KLM Dutch Airlines who was able to improve their app experience by a 2.8 to a 4.2 rating using our product. It really is about, can your managers and can your marketers listen to that feedback, understand the bugs, and then deliver and take action. That’s what survey software can do.

    We don’t compete with Adobe and Salesforce at all. Frankly, there are hundreds of thousands of Salesforce customers who need to be buying enterprise survey software. We exist in the Salesforce ecosystem and really try and help Salesforce customers get better data and get sentiment data from what their customers really care about. Salesforce, Microsoft, Adobe, those are big systems of record. They provide you a lot of operational data. Where SurveyMonkey competes and thrives is delivering for customers that sentiment data. How am I really doing? What can we improve upon? That’s where we’re selling a solution into the Salesforce ecosystem and we partner with Salesforce in a really productive way. It’s part of the reason they bought into our IPO last year. 

    Selling To the Enterprise Has Been Wildly Successful

    We really took a strategic imperative about two and a half to three years ago to step up our enterprise game. This has been a company that has thrived in going direct to end-users. We’ve built up a user base, a paid customer base, today of almost 700,000 people. But over the last three years, we’ve elevated our game. Today, enterprise represents 20 percent of our business. It helped us deliver our best quarter in history. We’re now growing 20 percent year-over-year. 

    We set about on our IPO last year and told investors our plan to make this business a lot more valuable. The two key driving factors first is to elevate our sales motion to sell directly to the enterprise. That has been wildly successful. We doubled year-over-year a hundred percent growth in revenue in the sales channel. We now have almost 5,000 customers, up 60 percent year over year. We now compete in that ecosystem and we have a really disruptive product. Consumers love our product. We’re now selling into the organization with a really talented sales team. 

    There’s Been So Much Account Sharing On SurveyMonkey

    Our team’s product is the collaborative self-serve product. We have a unique opportunity here. There’s been so much account sharing on SurveyMonkey over the years and in the current security environment, we’re asking people to pay for their own seat. That has driven a really healthy paid user growth. We see continued growth in those two areas. As I said, growth for us we’ve accelerated growth now twenty percent year-over-year, but we do it a disciplined way. We’re still able to deliver over $13 million dollars of unleveraged free cash flow in the quarter. We’re just not a company that’s going to grow at all cost. We want to have both healthy growth and disciplined cash flow.

    We use politics in a fun way to help get a beat on what’s going on out in the world. Just like we ask questions about if you are potentially interested in buying an electric car or what do you think of Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat, we also ask questions of the two and a half to three million people on our platform every day of who might you vote for and what issues are important to you. That really does give us a particular read on what American consumers are thinking.

    Selling To the Enterprise Has Been Wildly Successful, Says SurveyMonkey CEO Zander Lurie
  • Neil Patel’s Content Marketing Strategies for 2019

    Neil Patel’s Content Marketing Strategies for 2019

    In 2019, you need to think differently about your content marketing strategies. Google has so much content on the same topics that it’s difficult for average content to rank. You need to constantly create new fresh content that is unique. More importantly, according to Neil Patel, you need to aggressively promote your content. He says you should use the 80/20 rule, 20 percent of the time writing, 80 percent promoting.

    Neil Patel, one of the original internet marketing influencers, released a new video (below) that offers tips on how to successfully do content marketing in 2019:

    Content Marketing Strategies for 2019

    In 2019 content won’t rank as well as it used to. Yes, they say content is king, but we already know there are over a billion blogs. Google isn’t just picking from, hey what content do we want to rank because we lack content. They’re like, we have content on everything under the sun and the same thing a hundred other times. So now they’re just not picking what content do we want to rank. They’re looking at authority and user metrics and their even looking at when the content was created.

    Tip 1 – Create New Fresh Content

    Why would they want to rank content that’s two years old when they can rank something that’s less than one week old? When it comes to content marketing in 2019 you need to make sure that your content is also being up-to-date. If you don’t update your old content you’re not going to get as much love as people who are continuing to put out new fresh content.

    Tip 2 – Don’t Regurgitate the Same Information

    The second tip I have for you is don’t regurgitate the same information over and over again. People are tired of reading 12 SEO Tips That Will Double Your Traffic. You can Google it. There are probably different variations of that number but there are probably hundreds of articles on that subject. Write something new and fresh that hasn’t been seen before and you’re more likely to get traffic rankings and even social shares.

    Tip 3 – Create Video and Audio Content

    I know you’re not gonna like this third tip, but the third tip is to create video and audio based content. Text is overrated. It doesn’t help you connect with people as much as video. I still love text and I still crank out text, but the future is video. It’s much more personal and people get to know your personality and your company better. Create video-based content, upload it to YouTube, LinkedIn, and you can even do Twitter and Instagram if it’s short enough, and of course Facebook.

    Don’t share the same video over and over again like sharing your YouTube video on Facebook. You’ve got to take that video all over again and re-upload it into Facebook. With LinkedIn, for example, you have got to re-upload the video all over again versus sharing the link to that Facebook video or that YouTube video.

    With audio, you want to create a podcast. It’s easy. You can just bust out your phone, create an audio file, upload it to iTunes or Libsyn, and you’re off into the races. Same with video. You don’t actually have to go into a studio like I am and shoot all these fancy videos and pay money. You can just bust out your phone. I would even say most of the times from all the tests we’ve run that the videos that you end up running on your iPhone convert better if you’re selling a product or service. There’s nothing wrong with doing that. Just look at Tai Lopez. He’s known for just busting out his phone and recording videos and it does very well for him.

    Tip 4 – Spend More Time Promoting than Creating

    The fourth tip I have for you is promoting your content. In 2019, you’ve got to spend more time promoting than writing. Again, I can’t emphasize this enough. There’s too much content on the web. It doesn’t matter how good of a content piece you write it’s not going to be seen unless you promote it. so spend more time promoting than writing. Use the 80/20 rule, 20 percent of the time writing, 80 percent promoting.

    One way to promote content is to email all the people who link to your competitors content and ask them for a link. You can use tools like BuzzSumo. Just type in a keyword related to your space and see all the other popular articles within your space. You then take that and put that URL into Ahrefs. It shows you all the people who link to that URL. Then you hit up all those people who link to it contact them asking for a link also.

    Tip 5 – Get Social Shares

    You also need to get social shares. Getting backlinks isn’t enough. Facebook, Twitter, all these social sites drive a lot of traffic. You then want to go to BuzzSumo and click on the view shares button and it will show you every single person who shared those articles. That simple thing will help you get more social traffic.

    You Can’t Just Do the Old Stuff That Worked Before

    In 2019, if you don’t leverage these tactics you’re not going to do well. A lot of people have the old mentality of, hey, I’m just going to keep creating new content and just crank out ten posts a day. If you do that you’re probably going to regurgitate content and you’re not going to get rankings. Google already has more authoritative sites to choose from. You can’t just do the old stuff that worked in 2018 and 2017. You have to leverage these tactics.

    Even the video stuff I described, I know a lot of you’re like, I don’t want to create video it’s too much work. But you know what, with YouTube SEO I get over a hundred thousand visitors a month just from YouTube SEO. It’s amazing. It’s a channel you have to leverage. Best of all, unlike Google SEO, with YouTube SEO you can get results in less than a week. I kid you not. I created a video on SEO and I started ranking for the term SEO on YouTube in less than one week.

    Neil Patel’s Content Marketing Strategies for 2019


  • Facebook Trying To Habituate Consumers Around Driving Transactions, Says Button CEO

    Facebook Trying To Habituate Consumers Around Driving Transactions, Says Button CEO

    “The Instagram effort is one that we predicted for a long time,” says Button CEO Michael Jaconi. “I wasn’t the most popular guy in the venture capital pitch room saying hey, the world is moving to commerce. They said advertising makes so much money. In reality, what I think Facebook is doing is very smart. They’re trying to habituate consumers around driving transactions from their platform. For the future of advertising, especially in mobile, the way that you’re going to be able to make money and build durability into your business model is to give consumers what they want.”

    Michael Jaconi, CEO of Button, discusses how mobile commerce is rapidly replacing ads as the primary revenue source for publishers and social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram in an interview on Bloomberg Technology.

    We’re Trying To Build an Internet Built on Actions, Not Ads

    The Button platform really sits above the stack. Where we sit is really in this place where publishers integrate with Button to connect their consumers to their next step. What we’re trying to build is an internet that we think is going to be better, and an internet built on actions, not ads. What the publisher technology that we built does is it sits inside of an application, renders an actual button, and then connects them to the place of intent that their users ultimately may want to go. Whether that’s a mapping app going to Uber or an app like rewardStyle that is powering an influencer network to drive sales at ASOS.

    There’s a lot of change happening and Button is trying to invest in that ourselves. You’re seeing the platform’s, Apple and Google, do a lot to make this easier with Facebook’s recent launch of Instagram Checkout. You’re obviously seeing that they’re investing a ton in making the checkout process more seamless. What we fundamentally believe when we started the company was that if we could build a method that would make consumers have a delightful experience, giving from that moment of intent to the moment of fulfillment, saying hey, I want a ride or I want to book a reservation, and having that be as few taps as possible, we would win and the companies that we’re building on top of our platform would win. 

    You’re seeing innovation happen with sign-on and the actual account credentials being passed more easily between experiences. Apple Pay, of course, the Google Checkout experiences and  PayPal is making this easier. You’re seeing strides being made but there’s still a long way to go. It’s still a lot easier to purchase on your PC unfortunately. 

    Facebook Trying To Habituate Consumers Around Driving Transactions

    In our judgment, we think that the Instagram effort is one that we predicted for a long time. I wasn’t the most popular guy in the venture capital pitch room saying hey, the world is moving to commerce. They said advertising makes so much money. In reality, what I think Facebook is doing is very smart. They’re trying to habituate consumers around driving transactions from their platform. Everyone is looking at Amazon with a little bit of fear and a little bit of jealousy. What you’re seeing is that they’re looking at Amazon’s power as being the habituated source of transactions. They are saying look at how Amazon is growing its ad business.

    If you look at Amazon’s business, the fastest growing channel it’s had in terms of revenue growth has been its advertising business for the past eight quarters in a row. What’s fascinating about that is that every company wants to grow and be a part of that puzzle or that story. That’s the thing that we’re seeing grow most quickly. For the future of advertising, especially in mobile, when display and all types of advertising are under fire, the way that you’re going to be able to make money and build durability into your business model is to give consumers what they want. For us, we’re trying to give that power to every publisher that exists and to every company that has intent.

    Facebook Trying To Habituate Consumers Around Driving Transactions, Says Button CEO Michael Jaconi
  • How To Promote Your Content When You Don’t Have Money – Neil Patel

    How To Promote Your Content When You Don’t Have Money – Neil Patel

    “You know you need more traffic to your blog posts but you don’t have the money to spend to get those eyeballs,” says online marketing strategist Neil Patel. “What should you do? Today I’m going to teach you five ways to promote your content when you don’t have any money. Have you tried all the basic stuff that most of these marketers, including me, are talking about, and find that you’re not getting any results?”

    Neil Patel, online marketing strategist and founder of Neil Patel Digital, discusses how to promote your content when you don’t have money in his latest YouTube video:

    Tip 1 – Answer Quora Questions

    The first tip I have for you is to answer Quora questions. Quora is such a popular site, one of the most popular sites in the world. There are questions around everything; What is it like to be an Olympic gold medalist? How do you get traffic to a blog? Who is Neil Patel? There are questions on every topic under the sun.

    If you go on Quora, and you start answering all these questions, and you even link out to your blog whenever it’s relevant, you’ll find that you’re going to start getting more and more traffic. Why is this? Well, these Quora posts rank for everything in Google. It’s one of the simplest and easiest ways to get more traffic to your site.

    Who is Neil Patel? - Quora Result on Google Search
    Quora posts rank for everything in Google, Says Neil Patel

    Tip 2 – Go Live On Social Media

    The second tip I have for you is to go live on social media. Even if you don’t have the biggest social following, live videos are super engaging and all these socialites show it to almost all of your subscribers because they want to compete with all the television networks. If you look at people like Tai Lopez, some people may hate on him, but he’s a really smart marketer. When he goes live, he can generate hundreds and hundreds and thousands of dollars in sales, just from his live videos. It’s a smart tactic. Not only is he getting people to go wherever he wants but he’s also generating real revenue from it because a live audience is very captive.

    Tip 3 – Do Video Teasers

    The third tip I have for you is video teasers. If you just bust out your phone and you do a video teaser, talking about what you’re going to release, or this content, or what is new, and why they should check it out, or why they should be patient and wait for the next week, they’re more likely to come the next week and actually read that blog post. You know, Apple, whenever they launch new products, they do this whole event. They create all this mystery. They’re doing videos and conferences, breaking down what they’re going to release in the future. These teasers are a great way to build up the pent up demand for the product right when they launch it, and you can do the same with your content. You just have to create videos that tease people to let them know what’s coming out in the future.

    Tip 4 – Answer Questions On Social Media

    The fourth tip I have for you is to answer questions on social media. Whether it’s Facebook, whether it’s Twitter, people are tweeting, asking questions. Whether it’s groups, it doesn’t matter where it is. If you go there and you respond and help people out, they’re more likely to follow you. Not just on the social web, but they’re also going to follow you on your website. And the beautiful part about this, especially when you do it on sites that are your competitors, you’re going to get more link clicks because when you leave a comment, you can typically link back to your site. When you do this on the social web, you’ll find that you’re getting more followers and that way when you release more content, you’ll get more views. But it’s a very effective strategy, especially when you do it to competitors because they have your ideal audience.

    Tip 5 – Do Direct Outreach

    And last but not least, direct outreach. When you link out to people, let them know that you linked out to them. Just email asking to share your content. You know how many emails I get of people saying, hey Neil, I linked out to you. I love your content. If you like the post, feel free and share it. I don’t share all the time but I do it some of the time. It works, it even works with me. That’s just showing you that outreach, if you take the time, you can get extra shares. Sure, not 100% of the people are going to share your content or link back out to you, but if you do it in quantity, you will get extra traffic from it.

    How To Promote Your Content When You Don’t Have Money – Neil Patel
  • How to Offer Free Tools to Drive Email Collection and Leads

    How to Offer Free Tools to Drive Email Collection and Leads

    You can try a lot of stuff, but what used to work to collect emails doesn’t work as well now, says internet marketing experts Neil Patel & Eric Siu on their Marketing School podcast. What does work effectively they say are free tools. Entrepreneurs can even buy cheap scripts or full websites with these tools and rebrand them to drive email collection and leads.

    Neil Patel & Eric Siu, discussed the tactics they use to drive email collection on their Marketing School podcast (listen below):

    High-End Popup Software

    Let’s start with popup software. There are a lot of different email popup software tools out there. There is Bounce Exchange which charges thousands of dollars, and possibly as much as $10,000 a month. It’s a done-for-you service. The benefit is that they do all of the optimization and conversion stuff for you. (Neil Patel at one time used them successfully.)

    There is something else similar to Balance Exchange. It’s also a very done-for-you service, which means they will find out what your offers are and they will design the popups for you and they will manage it based on your desired conversion rate. This business is called Exit Intelligence. It’s somewhat more cost-effective at around $1,500 – $3,000 a month. It’s something that we are experimenting with right now.

    Email Collection Tools Don’t Work Like They Used To

    You can try a lot of stuff, but what used to work to collect emails doesn’t work as well now. You will find that exit popups don’t work as well as they used to. They still work, but just not as well. Content upgrades don’t work as well as they used to. Blocking out content and requiring a name and email to read it works well. I used to even block it out and make you share the content which worked well too.

    I found quizzes to work really well because you can collect leads at the same time. LeadQuizzes is another solution that you can use. In general, if you want to collect emails you have to figure out a better mousetrap. I don’t know what the better mousetrap is because it is going to vary by business. What I mean by that is that exit popups, content upgrades, quizzes, none of them work as well as they used to. You have to truly find something that is unique.

    Offer Free Tools to Effectively Collect Emails

    My version of it now is going to be to create a free tool and give it to people who have to register with their email address. That’s how you are going to effectively collect emails in 2019. It’s going to have to be something like a calculator or tool, something that is added value to people that are used to paying for it and who will gladly give you their email address.

    You don’t necessarily need to build a tool either. There is a site called 1Kprojects where you can actually buy tools. Developers make a lot of tools and end up throwing them away. Instead, they post them on this site to sell cheaply. You can also just buy scripts even cheaper, sometimes as low as $10 – $20. For whatever industry you are in you can literally buy a script or pre-made tool that you can leverage for email collection. It’s not hard to build a WordPress plugin either. It can be a basic tool.

    How Frank Kern is Driving Revenue From YouTube

    You know Frank Kern, the marketer. He’s all about the email before (content access). I’m actually observing what he is doing on YouTube where he’s going live every single day and he drives people to KernClass.com and people opt-in there. What happens is he not only collects the email addresses but he is actually driving revenue from those live videos too. He’s going live everyday and in a 30 day period he did over $350K.