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Tag: content marketing

  • B2B Influencer Marketing Adds Up To Nurture and Ultimately Conversion

    B2B Influencer Marketing Adds Up To Nurture and Ultimately Conversion

    “We co-create content with (B2B Influencers) in concert with brand messaging,” says TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden. “So now instead of people just ignoring the press release we actually have storytelling happening with these different voices. You have this intersection of one or two or three or four influencers talking about this topic and those audiences intersect and cross. Your customer is hearing this credible message not only from the brand but also from people that they trust in different channels. That all adds up to yes. That all adds up to nurture and ultimately conversion.”

    Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing, discusses how B2B influencer marketing can be a highly effective force in driving leads and conversions for companies. Lee was interviewed by Tim Washer at the 2019 Content Marketing World Conference & Expo:

    Influencer Marketing Is Powerful Because Of Influence Itself

    Influencer marketing is powerful because of influence itself, not about the people. Influence has always been a factor in being persuasive and being effective as a communicator, as a marketer, and really being able to tap into the dynamics of that. The psychology and sociology of that is something that is everlasting, it’s evergreen. While there are trends in terms of tactics that come and go, there’s this consumerization of B2B. B2C influencers are misbehaving and have fake followers, etc. and some of that’s leaking over into B2B. But I think that’ll reconcile a little bit and kind of clean itself out. In the future brands are going to be looking at influence as a really key component of their holistic marketing strategy internally and externally.

    A lot of people when they think of influencer marketing they think of a Kardashian or some people think of something like Baddiewinkle, a 90-year-old woman who wears hip-hop clothes and now has her own makeup line on Sephora versus someone like Tamara McCleary interviewing an executive at Dell about the right IT infrastructure for doing edge computing. That’s really what it’s about in B2B.

    B2B Influencers Actually Have To Have The Main Expertise

    One of the big differences between B2B and B2C influencers is that in B2B you actually have to have the main expertise. You actually have to be knowledgeable and have a depth of that expertise in what it is that you’re influential about. It’s also important to have a network for distribution and a place to publish your content. It’s great to have a personality and that’s less common in B2B, where you have charisma. Well, lack of personality is a form of personality I suppose. 

    The good thing is that we’ve figured out ways to coach folks that have that domain expertise and an active following but they’re not necessarily used to being social. We are coaching them in how to activate themselves and to pull out the best of what they have to share in a way that’s very promotable. Many of them start to open up a little bit after we show them how to do it.

    B2B Influencer Marketing Adds Up To Nurture and Conversion

    In the planning stages (with a client looking to promote something) we’ll look at the topics that are important around the announcement and how it affects customers and how customers will think of that news and how it’ll affect or change their lives. Those topics are then what we want to be influential about. We’ll use those keywords or topics to search our network using influencer marketing software to find who is influential around those topics, who’s publishing content, who self-identifies around that topic, and whose audience is actually activated around that topic. We find those people who have trusted voices with an active community and we invite them to collaborate on content and give their opinion about the announcement. 

    We co-create content with them in concert with brand messaging. So now instead of people just ignoring the press release we actually have storytelling happening with these different voices. You have this intersection of one or two or three or four influencers talking about this topic and those audiences intersect and cross. They intersect across channels too. Your customer is hearing this credible message not only from the brand but also from people that they trust in different channels. That all adds up to yes. That all adds up to nurture and ultimately conversion.

    B2B Influencer Marketing Adds Up To Nurture and Conversion – TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden
  • Why Is Content Marketing So Powerful?

    Why Is Content Marketing So Powerful?

    Content marketing is a powerful digital marketing strategy that can provide many benefits for companies:

    1. Increases brand awareness: By consistently creating and distributing valuable content, companies can increase brand awareness and establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry.
    2. Builds trust and relationships: By providing valuable and informative content, companies can build trust with their audience and create a loyal customer base.
    3. Cost-effective: Content marketing is considered to be more cost-effective than traditional forms of advertising, as it doesn’t require large budgets for ad placements.
    4. Generates leads: By providing valuable and informative content, companies can attract and generate leads, by making it easy for potential customers to learn more about the company’s products and services.
    5. Long-term results: Content marketing can generate long-term results, as the content that is created can continue to be shared and consumed by the audience even after it’s initially published.
    6. Versatility: Content marketing can take many forms: Blog posts, infographics, videos, webinars, e-books, white papers, social media posts, and more. This allows for a variety of ways to reach and engage with the target audience.
    7. Inbound: Content marketing is an inbound marketing strategy, meaning that it helps to attract customers through valuable and informative content, rather than interrupting them with traditional forms of advertising.
    8. SEO: Content marketing can also improve search engine rankings by providing valuable and relevant information that search engines and users find useful.
    9. Measurable: Content marketing allows to track and measure the results through analytics, which helps to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy and optimize it accordingly.

    In summary, content marketing is great because it helps to increase brand awareness, build trust, generate leads, and provides long-term results in a cost-effective and versatile way, aligning with the way people consume and engage with information today. It also allows for measurable results and helps to improve SEO.

  • TrenDemon CEO: We Connect Content Marketing to Sales

    TrenDemon CEO: We Connect Content Marketing to Sales

    The CEO of TrenDemon, Avishai Sharon, says that they created their cloud-based software solution in order to help companies prove that the marketing content they produced also achieved business goals and sales. In order to show this correlation, the TrenDemon software analyzes all of the different touchpoints the customer has had over his lifecycle and then reverse engineers those successful journeys in order to find out what content is working.

    Avishai Sharon, Co-founder & CEO of TrenDemon, discussed their software on ILTV:

    How Do You Connect Content Marketing to Sales?

    My personal background was heading a marketing agency for many years and one of my biggest struggles was how do I prove our value and our effort to our customers and how do you connect the impact of what we call content marketing to business goals and to sales? When we couldn’t find an easy way to show that correlation three and a half years ago we went ahead and founded TrenDemon to help companies do just that.

    We connect their marketing efforts, which today rely mostly on content, you want your audience to consume valuable content, as opposed to just advertising. The big challenge is how do you attribute those efforts to sales? There’s actually a prior problem, how do you actually map the customer journey? How do you track those different touch points into one picture?

    Reverse Engineering Successful Customer Journeys

    The first thing we do is look at all the different touchpoints that a customer has had over his lifecycle. We ask the question, not just where do they come from, but how deep was their engagement? Did they actually watch the video? Did they actually read the article? Then you can start reverse engineering those successful journeys and say what’s common about all of these successful journeys.

    What we found, and this is the interesting thing, we’re working with over 90 companies today worldwide and the vast majority of content the companies produce, over 90 percent, is ineffective at driving business goals. As you guys know it’s very expensive to create quality content and it takes a lot of effort.

    If People Read the Right Content They Will Covert to a Sale

    The second interesting thing is that if you do manage to find those 10 percent and you find a way to get it in front of the right people you’re actually able to improve dramatically your results. So there’s not just a correlation between what buyers did beforehand, there’s also a causation, a causal relationship, that if people read the right content at the right time they’re more likely to follow a path. We’re not probably as sophisticated as we believe that we are.

    We’re a SaaS company, a cloud-based solution. We’re working a lot in the US and one of our biggest markets and growing markets is Japan. They’re investing a lot of content and a lot on technology. Essentially, because we look at the customer journey and not necessarily specific languages we can operate in any environment which allows us to grow pretty much anywhere. As long as they have content, which means that they’re producing something other than just advertising, they want people and audiences to actually engage with what they’re producing and they do have some business outcomes that they’re looking to measure.

    About TrenDemon:

    Founded in 2013, TrenDemon is the world’s leading content marketing attribution and optimization solution, helping marketers prove and improve their content’s impact.

    TrenDemon insights can help you uncover your content marketing ROI, impact on business goals, and engagement to help guide the content strategy. Our optimization units will help you increase conversions and shorten time to convert on your owned assets.

    TrenDemon proudly serves a wide range of customers, from Fortune 500s and brands to SaaS, B2B, and financial companies and is backed by leading VCs.

  • How Do You Measure the Success of a Content-Driven Marketing Strategy?

    How Do You Measure the Success of a Content-Driven Marketing Strategy?

    Content marketing is reshaping ecommerce for companies large and small. That’s because marketing is about trust first and foremost and marketers are realizing that quality content builds trust quicker than traditional advertising. Tim Turner Forman of a new startup called The Tot and Matt Osias of Hawke Media recently discussed how to start a content-driven marketing strategy.

    Why is it important to resist the urge to have your content do the selling?

    Tim: What we do at The Tot is provide trust and advice and mindfully curated products. For it to be considered trusted advice it needs to come from a credible real place. It needs to be authentic and it needs to come from experts, people who know what they are talking about. At The Tot we work with a network of experts around the globe to create parenting content. What first-time parents are looking for most is information and they are just as likely to turn to a website as they are to go to a doctor and they are even more likely to go to a website than to ask their own Mother. If we are able to develop and curate content of moms sharing to other moms, that develops a relationship and provides values for them.

    How do you measure the success and performance of a content-driven marketing strategy?

    Matt: When you consider measuring in general, there are so many different formats that are out there that people can leverage. Oftentimes, people are saying… well I want articles for my blog. What type of article are you looking for? What is the goal of that piece of content? Are you trying to drive organic search and bring in new audiences so they can learn who you are or are you trying to engage them a bit more with videos and infographics? Every single format has a very specific measurement.

    Beyond that, your measurements are somewhat different than your basic media buying for example, where you spend a dollar and hope to make back three, or some version of that. When we are looking at content marketing, especially when it is brand agnostic, the real important ideal there is to think about how can I actually give something to my audience that resonates with them, teaches them and solves a problem. Then ultimately, your brand is there waiting for them.

    Awareness, Engagement, Advocacy

    The three things that I look at are awareness, engagement, and advocacy. The first thing you would want to do in building a content marketing strategy is to consider the idea of awareness, giving awareness to the people you are working with. Then having intent-driven content. People are asking questions in Google all the time and they are getting answers. If your site has the answers in its content, especially if it’s early stages, then that’s going to do something that most (ecommerce) sites aren’t doing, which is to put eyes onto your site, without the brand and product coming into play at first.

    With this brand agnostic content, the bulk of your content is primarily text-based content. With measurement I look at eyes on site and what they are doing when they get there. Are they jumping around to different pages or are they bouncing right away? When you bring in somebody to your site where it is solving something you have to have something that is engaging to keep them there and keep them coming back.

    Tim: We definitely watch inside of Google Analytics to be able to see the pageviews, what people are doing, and how they move from the editorial side of the site to the product side of the site. We also use content as part of our marketing program. It’s definitely an upper funnel prospecting piece.

    Quality Content is Just as Important as Ad Spend

    Tim: As somebody who came from an ad agency working with clients who had large ad spends and then coming to a start-up to help them grow and find customers, we didn’t have a large ad budget. What we did have though is this wonderful bank of content. This quality content has become just as important as the ad spend. Every month we put together a new prospecting campaign with a variety of articles and then we keep some evergreen pieces of what performed and that gives us a really good indicator of the type of people we are able to draw and attract to the site. It’s very contextually targeted so somebody that is clicking and looking at an article titled, “9 Ways to Prepare for a New Baby,” is probably going to be our customer.

  • 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


  • How to Build a Content Marketing Strategy (And Stick to It)

    How to Build a Content Marketing Strategy (And Stick to It)

    In recent years, content marketing has become one of the most powerful techniques for growing your business. Because of its effectiveness, businesses are now allotting as much as 40 percent of their advertising budget on content marketing. The investment makes sense because well-executed content marketing can bring more traffic to a website, raise brand awareness among consumers, position your business as an expert, raise customer loyalty, and greatly improve sales.

    However, in order to get the most of your content marketing efforts, you’ll need to have a clear and defined strategy. And, you’ll need to stick to it! This will not only make it easier to create more content but also help you analyze, set goals, and measure your ROI.

    How to Build Content Marketing Strategy

    Determine Your Objectives

    The first step to developing a content marketing strategy is to determine your company’s objective. In other words, you’ll need to have an end goal. Are you trying to create more awareness about your brand? Or, are you trying to gain more subscriptions to a service you provide? Decide on one or two core goals that will affect your bottom line and two or three supporting objectives you want to meet.

    Content Marketing Trends Most Important Objectives

    Define Your Target Market

    You want to market to the right customer using the right content at the right time. To do so, you would need to define your target market. You can do this by creating buyer personas and using them as a model for your content marketing plan. Conduct qualitative research to build these personas. Make use of surveys, customer feedback, focus groups, social media activity, and customer interviews. Even user profiles and transaction histories will help you in understanding who your real customers are.

    Study What Your Customers Need

    Make use of social media, search browsers, surveys, customer conversations and insight from your sales and customer service personnel to understand what your customers need. You can then use the collected data to segment your customers and send them content that is specific to their needs.

    Decide on What Content to Prioritize

    Once you have determined your end goal and identified your buyers, you can start focusing on content. There are a lot of content types to choose from—blogs, ebooks, infographics, games, courses, mobile apps, webinars, podcasts, and newsletters to name a few. Choose two or three types that are most suited or relevant to your audience to ensure you can always provide high-quality content. Once you have decided on the content channels you want, you can start creating a content schedule.

    According to a 2018 B2C survey by Conductor, businesses use blogs and videos 3 times more than any other type of content marketing.

    b2c content marketing

    Develop a Plan for Executing Content

    Utilize your buyer personas and customer information to design a plan for executing your content. Start brainstorming for ideas, like what keywords to use or topics for your blog. Think about how and where your audience will receive their information. Consider that customers require different kinds of content per funnel stage.

    Design Ways to Measure Your Content Marketing

    Your objectives will help define your metrics. Develop a measurement framework to help you keep track of how your strategy is helping with your goals. There are different categories of content marketing metrics that you can find online.

    common-content-marketing-goalsAmplify Your Content 

    It’s not enough to just develop content. Even an in-depth blog post or expertly edited video will fall on deaf ears unless you amplify its reach. Consider that there are at least 4 million blog posts published every day, how will you get your post to rise above the noise? You can get the word out through social media channels or explore other avenues, like using influencers or creating events.

    3 Tips on How to Stick to Your Strategy

     Image result for stick to the plan

    Once you have established your content marketing strategy, you’ll have to stick to it to reap the benefits. Unfortunately, this is where a lot of companies falter. Here are three tips to help you stay on your path:

    1. Make sure everybody knows what to expect

    Every departments’ goals should align with each other. For instance, the goals of the marketing and sales department should be in tune with each other and should fall in line with that of the upper management. Every member should also know the metrics that will be used.

    2. Concentrate on initiatives that are already successful

    Check which previous marketing strategies gave you the best results and build from there. After all, why fix something that isn’t broken? For instance, if one PPC campaign resulted in a good ROI, update it by either boosting the ad spending or launching a similar campaign using a different product.

    3. Delegate or outsource

    Good marketers know they should play to their strengths and delegate or outsource the rest. For instance, if you have good graphic design skills, make your own business logo or visual banners. If you are terrible at getting your ideas across in words, hire a writer. There’s no reason to do it all yourself when you can tap the services of others who can do a better job.

    Conclusion

    A solid content marketing strategy is essential to a successful business. Brainstorm for ideas and do not be afraid to experiment with different approaches or try a variety of tools. Keep track of customer engagement to ensure that you will stick to the strategy you devised. These will help in the continued improvement of your content marketing strategy and the success of your business.

  • 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
  • Neil Patel’s 7 Trends to Embrace for Successful Digital Marketing in 2019

    Neil Patel’s 7 Trends to Embrace for Successful Digital Marketing in 2019

    Self-made marketing expert Neil Patel released a video titled, How Digital Marketing Will Change in 2019. Patel outlines 7 Trends that all businesses and content producers should embrace for successful digital marketing in 2019:

    “Digital marketing is going to change in 2019,” says NeilPatel. “What’s been working for the last few years is not anymore. Here’s how digital marketing is changing in 2019 and what you need to do to thrive and succeed.”

    Tip 1: Embrace Omnichannel Approach to Digital Marketing

    Digital marketing is moving to an omnichannel approach. You used to be able to build a business with just one channel. For example, Facebook grew by just telling everyone, hey invite your friends. They would take your address book and invite all your friends automatically even without your permission. That’s changed and those tactics don’t work as well as they used to. I’m not saying they don’t work at all, they just don’t work as well as they used to.

    Marketing has moved to an omnichannel approach where you now have to use tactics like growth hacking, pay-per-click, SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, and banner ads. The list is never-ending and the more channels you use the better off you’re going to be. Most of these channels are crowded because there are so many online businesses. If you don’t use all of them you just won’t do as well in 2019.

    Tip 2: Leverage Voice Search

    Most of you will not like this but search is moving to voice search. By 2020 Comscore estimates that half the searches on Google will be through voice search. Right now, two out of every five adults are using voice search. Yes, that means kids aren’t using it as much but still by 2020 they’re saying half of all searches, not just from adults, but half of all searches are going to be via voice search. So if you want to do well in 2019 you need to be leveraging voice search.

    The way you do this is one, make sure your site is HTTPS because most of the sites that are at the top are HTTPS these days. And two, your site needs to load fast. If it doesn’t load fast you’re not going to do as well with voice search. Three, when people are typing in questions, they’re typically typing in longer-term phrases. So your questions, and especially your answers need to be short and to the point. If your answers are a paragraph long you’re not going to do as well compared to if your answer was one sentence long.

    Tip 3: The Only Way to Compete is Through Conversion Optimization

    The third tip I have for you is conversion optimization. Advertising is getting more and more expensive over time and that’s not going to change. The only way you’re going to be able to compete and stay ahead is through conversion optimization. The more you optimize your landing page for conversions the better off you’re going to be. Make sure you’re using tools like Crazy Egg which allows you to do A/B testing so you can squeeze more conversions from the traffic you’re getting.

    Also, make sure you’re using tools like Hellow Bar which encourages email collection. Again, this will help you get more revenue from the users and visitors that you do have. If you don’t do this as the years go on you’re going to get drowned out by the competitors because they’re going to spend more money than you and they’re going to crush you. So focus on conversion optimization even though it’s not sexy and most people don’t like talking about it in marketing.

    Tip 4: Leverage Marketing Funnels

    The fourth tactic I have for you is leverage funnels. Marketing funnels are going to be more popular than ever in 2019. Before, people used to just optimize their campaigns to, hey I’m buying ads, how many sales am I getting? Now you need a look at up-sells, down-sells, cross-sells, lifetime value of a customer, and churn.

    Whether you have a physical product, digital product, or you’re doing lead generation, you need to track everything from a visitor all the way to a conversion point. That’s revenue for them to keep buying and that’s why funnels are really important. If you don’t know how to create a funnel go check out tools like ClickFunnels.

    Tip 5: Content Marketing Only Works if You Create Amazing Unique Content

    Content marketing just won’t work as well. Think about it, anytime you do a search most of the articles that are at the top are content marketing. Blogging is so popular and so played out that everyone is regurgitating the same information over and over again. Unless you’re creating amazing new information that people haven’t heard before, you’re not going to do well. Content marking just won’t work to get links or social shares unless you’re creating amazing content that’s new and that people haven’t seen before.

    Tip 6: You Need to be Leveraging Video

    My number six tip is creating video content. Video content is the future. You see me here in this video and you’re engaging with me. If you’re not, leave a comment and I’ll show you. I’ll respond back. Video content is the future. People want to engage through video. Facebook gives you more views if it’s video. YouTube gives you a ton of views and Linkedin does as well. You need to be leveraging video. You can’t take it for granted.

    Tip 7: You Need to Create a Podcast

    Podcasting is taking over. Did you know that 45 percent of the people who listen to podcasts have a household income above $75,000? That’s a ton, that’s a lot of money, and that means that the people that are listening to your podcast are going to be better buyers than most other marketing channels out there. You need to create a podcast.

    Everyone is using their phones these days and everyone is driving to work. Podcasting makes it easy where people can listen to your content on-the-go. It’s such a hectic world out there and you need to have a podcast so people can listen to you while they’re dealing with their hectic life.

  • 5 User-Generated Content Campaigns Your Brand Can Learn From

    5 User-Generated Content Campaigns Your Brand Can Learn From

    These days, shoppers are less impressed with celebrities and gurus telling them what to buy and prefer content that’s generated by their fellow consumers. A Nielsen report showed that 92 percent of consumers trust recommendations made by people they know while 70 percent believe the opinions consumers post online.

    Some brands have been savvy enough to take advantage of this changing mindset and have successfully leveraged user-generated content (UGC) into their marketing campaigns.

    User-generated content is essentially content that comes from customers. When customers have a positive experience with your brand, they are more inclined to tell others about it.

    A ringing endorsement from a happy client is one of the fastest and cheapest ways to boost your customer base. And since the content comes from real people who have actually used the company’s products or services, consumers know that the information provided is authentic and reliable, thus improving a brand’s credibility.

    There are several ways that smart brands can utilize UGC. Here’s a list of five companies highly-successful campaigns that show how to effectively leverage user-generated content in your marketing efforts.

    1. Starbucks’ White Cup Contest

    Starbucks hit a home run back in 2014 with its White Cup competition. The coffee giant asked their customers to doodle designs on their paper cups, take pictures, and post them on social media using the hashtag #WhiteCupContest. The best design would become the template for their limited-edition coffee cups. The contest generated around 4,000 entries in three weeks and created a lot of buzz even after it ended. When Starbucks finally unveiled the limited-edition cups, millions of customers took photos of the items and posting them on their social media accounts.

    Takeaway: A contest with an interesting gift or a freebie is an effective way to interact with your target market. You can also generate revenue by turning the UGC into something you can repurpose or sell.

    2. Apple #ShotOniPhone

    User-generated content can solidify and expand a loyal fan base effortlessly. When Apple released the iPhone 8 and X, the company decided to take advantage of the fact that people were already using their product to take great pictures. The company’s #ShotOniPhone campaign saw Apple fans sharing the photos they took on their iPhones. Apple then showcased their favorite photos on its official Instagram account. While the campaign placed the focus on the photographers and their skill, it also emphasized their product’s features and capabilities.

    Takeaway: Celebrate your loyal customers by showcasing their work in your website and social media accounts. The UGC will also drive more visitors to spend more time on your site.

    3. Cast Me Marc by Marc Jacobs

    Image result for cast me marc

    Marc Jacobs reminded people why he’s such a trailblazer with the Cast Me Marc campaign. In 2014, the designer decided to cast models in a distinct way – by using Instagram and Twitter. People who were interested in modeling for the brand were asked to submit their photos with the #CastMeMarc hashtag. The company received 15,000 submissions within a day and 70,000 photos by the time the contest ended. The brand was also credited for starting a new movement as other fashion brands followed in its footsteps.

    Takeaway: Pay attention to current trends. At the time, selfies were rapidly growing in popularity and Jacobs tapped into that phenomenon. You also shouldn’t be afraid to add your own twist to a new trend.

    4. L’Oreal DermaBlend Transformations

    The make-up brand placed their storyline in the hands of their loyal clients with its #DermaBlendPro campaign. L’Oreal encouraged users to share photos or videos of their makeup transformations. The company received thousands of submissions which were used in their brand story.

    Takeaway: Trust your customers and include them in your campaigns. Happy customers make the best brand ambassadors.

    5. Pura Vida Bracelets

    UGC a good way to showcase products in real-world scenarios. Pura Vida’s colorful and unique bracelets already stand out on Facebook’s newsfeed, but when the company added photos of their customers wearing their products on their carousel ad, it provided better insight into the brand and led to a surge in conversions. It also helped that customers were taking photos of their bracelets while on the beach or traveling around the world, thereby encouraging everyone’s dream of a carefree lifestyle. The company was also started working with more artisans and small businesses around the world.

    Takeaway: When your content is relatable, more shoppers will identify with your brand and hold it valuable. Transparency also attracts consumers who want to know where and how the product is made.

    UGC is undoubtedly one of the best ways to show a brand’s authenticity and secure customer loyalty. So put the spotlight on your customer, and reward them to increase engagement. Shoppers are always happy to come back and talk about a brand when they feel like they’re part of the brand’s community. They’re also more willing to contribute to it and refer it to other people. 

    [Featured image via Pexels.com]

  • How Answering Questions on Quora Can Drive Massive Traffic to Your Website

    How Answering Questions on Quora Can Drive Massive Traffic to Your Website

    Most people think Quora is a simple Question and Answer forum. However, the website is so much more than that. While it’s true that people can ask about anything under the sun, a lot of the answers are enlightening and useful. What’s more, if used correctly, Quora can be a veritable goldmine of website traffic.

    Quora: Not Your Average Q&A Site

    Quora is not your typical Q&A platform. Aside from asking questions or providing answers, users can also vote which answers are helpful.

    Image result for quora upvotes

    [Image via SEOClerk]

    Quora also boasts an insanely popular and large community. The site receives more than 100 million visitors a month. According to Alexa, it’s the 50th most popular site in the US and ranks in the top 100 globally. But what sets Quora apart is the kind of people who use the site. Most of its users are from India and the United States. While the age range is varied, the most active Quora users are in the 18-34 demographic and have a post-graduate education. 

    Why Use Quora

    Quora is a great platform for marketers and business owners like you. For one, you can use the site to build your personal brand. However, there are other reasons why you should take advantage of this platform.

    It’s a Surprising Source of Long-Term Website Traffic

    One of the benefits of using Quora is how you can drive traffic to your website through the answers you post. More importantly, posts that were written months or years ago can still generate traffic. After all, people are always looking for information. Plus, if they like your answer and “upvotes” it, your post will appear in that user’s feed for all their friends and followers to see, resulting in more traffic to your site and sign-ups to your email list.

    You Can Show Your Expertise

    The more relevant and well-received your posts are on Quora, the more people will see you as an authority on the subject. The site ranks writers based on the number of views their answers receive. You can also be awarded topic badges that members can see. Appearing on the best writers list and earning badges will have people respecting your expertise. Once you’re considered an authority on the topic, more people would be interested in what you have to say, whether it’s on the site or on your blog.

    Big Publications Might Notice You

    A lot of major publications are turning to Quora for content and are publishing choice answers on their websites. Some of the platform’s top writers have already been quoted or featured in sites like Business Insider, Forbes, and The Huffington Post.

    Image result for quora on business insider

    [Image via YoutTube]

    Tips on Using Quora Effectively

    Write a good profile.

    You want your profile description to establish credibility and trust since this is the first thing users will see. Make sure they’ll like what they read. Be sincere, friendly and polite. Proofread your profile before posting it. It’s hard to trust someone’s professionalism if they make mistakes with their spelling and grammar.

    Look for relevant questions and answer them.

    Select questions that are relevant to your niche and will provide you with the right exposure. Once you have picked a question to answer, check how popular or high it is on the feed and how many followers it has. More followers mean a larger audience will read your post.

    Image result for answers on quora

    [Image via Neil Patel]

    Give useful answers.

    Think of your posts as content, so make sure they are useful, relevant, and unique. Don’t get too technical, unless the subject calls for it. Make sure you attribute your quotes correct and try to include images.

    Don’t go overboard with blog promotion.

    Quora likes writers who provide value. This means that useful posts are the right way to go. You can include a link to your blog post if you want but it has to feel natural. Answering a question with just a link to your blog is a sure-fire way of getting yourself banned from the site.

    Engage the Quora community.

    Your content becomes more visible the more you ask questions or post an answer. A consistent presence on Quora will make members curious about you, maybe enough that they would check out your blog or site.

    Quora is a great place to hang out, learn new things, and even meet new people. More importantly, the platform can be another source of traffic to your site. However, simple answers won’t cut it here. You have to put effort into your replies, build your reputation and engage other users. But the results will definitely be worth it.

  • Google Buys FameBit, Sees Branded Content as Essential to YouTube

    Google Buys FameBit, Sees Branded Content as Essential to YouTube

    Google has purchased FameBit, a technology and marketing platform that helps brands link up with social media stars on YouTube and Twitter. This is part of a growing trend where Google and others realize that preroll video ads are not the future and that marketing integration into content is the smart way to reach millennial’s and even younger audiences.

    Ironically, that’s how television started in the 1950’s, where every show was brought to you by a product and often that product was integrated into the content.

    “We believe that Google’s relationship with brands and YouTube’s partnerships with creators, combined with FameBit’s technology and expertise, will help increase the number of branded content opportunities available, bringing even more revenue into the online video community,” noted Ariel Bardin, Vice President, Product Management at Google.

    FameBit provides a modern version of this, telling marketers that it will grow your customer base via tutorials, comedic skits, mentions, routines, DIY videos, game plays, lookbooks, vlogs and hauls. What this means is that FameBit, and now YouTube, will connect your brand with YouTube stars and help popular YouTuber’s make additional revenue in the process.

    “Every year, more and more brands are making YouTube essential to their marketing strategy,” said Bardin. “In fact, in the last year alone, the top 100 advertisers have increased their spend on YouTube video ads by 50 percent.”

    Google knows that even though brands have increased their marketing on YouTube, what they really want are deeper connections with YouTube stars and through extension their fans.

    “As brands continue to embrace the value of YouTube, they’re also taking their investments one step further, partnering with creators on branded content opportunities such as product placements, promotions and sponsorships,” he said. “As we look to the future, we want even more creators and brands to come together and realize the benefits of these creative collaborations.”

    Unlike Google search, YouTube video is not inherently a lead generation opportunity, but rather is more like TV, promoting brand recognition and brand favorability. Fortunately for Google, that’s what Madison Avenue sells and Google wants to tap into more of their dollars.

    According to eMarketer TV ad spending will be $72.01 billion in 2016 with digital ad spending just slightly under that. But with advertising in video formats from YouTube, Facebook, SnapChat, Twitter, etc…, digital ad spend will increase as a percentage. By 2020, it’s predicted that digital ad revenue will be 37% higher than TV.

    screen-shot-2016-10-12-at-4-02-25-pm

    Of course, digital delivery of TV is also on the rise, replacing the cable middlemen and ultimately making digital the primary way to consume video content.

  • All Hail the Rise of Native Advertising

    All Hail the Rise of Native Advertising

    Native advertising, sponsored content or branded news (all the same) is booming and with some online publishers it’s now their main source of revenue.

    It’s important to note that native advertising is not content marketing. Content marketing is a content strategy by brands where typically, they own the content, such as their blogs or content on a product website. Native advertising is sponsored content, more typically created by the publisher to be in alignment with an audience that the advertiser wants to reach. I think where the confusion happens is when an advertiser creates biased and conversion oriented content that is placed on websites for a fee. To me, that’s content marketing more than native advertising because content marketing has evolved to be measured by conversions, while native advertising looks at other metrics.

    Fractl and Moz conducted a survey of more than 30 content marketing agencies and obtained cost data from more than 600 digital publishers and determined that “content marketing has a better overall return on investment.”

    Screen Shot 2016-07-25 at 4.03.57 PM

    “Readers are necessarily less engaged with advertising vs. editorial content, and metrics show lower share rates, lower engagement rates, lower view counts, etc. in most cases,” said Kelsey Libert, partner and vp of marketing at Fractl. “You can’t simply push through a mediocre, thinly veiled advertorial. Content marketing puts the brand and the consumer on equal footing, and in the process necessitates the brand elevate the content they are creating. When done correctly, the result is a true match between brand and content consumer, where the content created has true value, and spreads based on the merit of the content. Through this, content can enjoy true virality in a way that is nearly impossible with Native ads.”

    “The fact that people find it necessary to pit one form against the other is a little bemusing,” said Cas McCullough, Founder at Writally PTY LTD, in a comment on Adweek. “When used together, good content and native ads are very powerful. On their own they don’t get the same ROI. Our case studies prove this consistently, so we’ll stick with an integrated approach.”

    Sites such a Buzzfeed and Vice have built their entire business model around native advertising. Slate says that it now relies on native advertising for nearly 50% of its revenue. According to Digiday Slate trained its 10-person sales team on a its new native ad product called Slate Custom, and also hired Jim Lehnhoff, the former head of Gawker Media’s native advertising strategy. The goal with Slate Custom is to make native ads that are aligned to Slate’s “edtorial DNA.”

    “The differences between five years ago and now, in client expectations, are enormous,” said Keith Hernandez, the president of Slate, in a New York Times article on native. “Creating something that’s delightful and that’ll make someone stop and click and share…that’s really hard. But doing the easy thing is not fun.”

    The Atlantic’s Hayley Romer, their Publisher, expects “native campaigns to drive 70 percent of its ad revenue this year, up from 60 percent in 2015.”

    “We know that our audience is engaging really deeply with our native content on our site,” she was quoted as saying in a NiemanLab article.

    The 2016 Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report, the largest study of its kind, based on more than 50,000 people in 26 countries, was released recently (PDF) and shows the rise of sponsored content. Here’s a chart from the Report:

    Screen Shot 2016-07-25 at 2.42.20 PM

    The report noted that with existing models of online advertising increasingly broken, publishers have been trying alternatives such as “branded and sponsored content.” Sponsored content still has numerous legal and political obstacles, with labeling “sponsored” still an area of confusion. Geographically, the US and Canada are most accepting, while Germany and Korea branded content faces tremendous consumer confusion and resistance.

    Screen Shot 2016-07-25 at 3.00.08 PM

    The New York Times has created a 100-person native ad unit, T Brand Studio, in a huge push for native advertising revenue. The Times is openly declaring “sponsored content to be an important part of their strategy.”.

    The motivation for publishers in looking for a new monetization model for their digital properties is the continued weakness of online display advertising.

    “Display still has a place, but we believe that the digital advertising of the future will be dominated by stories conceived by advertisers, clearly labelled so they can be distinguished from newsroom journalism, but consumed alongside that journalism on their own merits,” said New York Times CEO Mark Thompson in a commentary in the above report. “This is a more compelling and creative vision of digital advertising than conventional digital display, and it requires new skills, talents, and technologies, and substantial fresh investment. Audience scale and global reach will still count, but the audience which publishers will need to find will not be super-light users, the one-and-dones who spend a few seconds on many different sites, but truly engaged readers and viewers who are prepared to devote real time to content of real quality and relevance.”

    Thompson is adamant that the editorial and commercial sides must work as one. “Editorial and commercial leaders need to work together on integrated strategies which combine editorial mission and standards, user experience, innovations in data, technology and creative design, and radically new approaches to monetization,” he said. “Not five different strategies, not even ‘aligned’ editorial and commercial strategies, but a single shared way forward.”

    Sponsored content does not have to be biased content, but instead can be content that is paid for by an advertiser, because that advertiser wants to reach the type of people that read a particular content subject area.

    Interestingly, a study (PDF) by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Edelman in June 2015 uncovered that consumer perceptions of sponsored content isn’t all negative.

    Roughly 45% of those seeing sponsored content related to business or entertainment recognized the value-add.

    Screen Shot 2016-07-25 at 3.30.48 PM

    The IAB study says that brand relevance, authority, and trust are the most important factors to driving consumer interest in sponsored content across all media. “Make the ads and product more on target… also give info [on] how to enhance the experience with the latest and best products,” commented one consumer interviewed in the study.

    The value (or lack of value) for the advertiser is that the credibility of the site hosting the sponsored content is largely transferred to the advertiser.

    Screen Shot 2016-07-25 at 3.37.08 PM

    Sherrill Mane, formerly of the IAB and currently Head of MAdTech Strategy, and Steve Rubel, Chief Content Strategist for Edelman recommend these steps for publishers that intend to incorporated sponsored content:

    • Control the experience and be prepared to walk away from advertisers who aren’t relevant/trusted
    • Encourage aligned brand marketers to work together in a more authoritative manner
    • Go the distance when it comes to transparency/disclosures
  • 9 Ways to Get Your Content Published On Authority Websites (Outreach Marketing)

    9 Ways to Get Your Content Published On Authority Websites (Outreach Marketing)

    Introduction to Outreach Marketing

    Outreach marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on human-to-human connection and consumer psychology to position ideas, brand, and products to the right audience at the right time.

    The simple act of connecting with prospects (your audience) not only helps them learn more and understand what you are about, but can also help them.

    Having other people tell your story or market your product (after they have used it or seen it) leads to more traffic, more sales and a better return on investment.

    Most consumers value another consumer’s recommendation as compared to the seller pitching for his/her products.

    The Blogger Difference

    Bloggers, on the other hand, use their platforms to provide useful, unique content and in return acquire high-quality links and exposure into their target audience.

    However, I have seen many bloggers posting quality and high-value information on their blogs but get very little exposure or traffic.

    Traffic (that converts) is everything in online marketing, and if you cannot get enough traffic or exposure, you are doomed to fail.

    While search engine optimization and smart marketing will help your site/blog gain more traffic, outreach marketing exposes your blog to your target audience easily and you can do so via a more personal interaction (as you’ll see).

    Authority sites get more traffic and are much more respected, hence a great place to market your brand and products.

    TIP: A good rule to follow: to drive more traffic, build authority and get REAL visibility, spend 80% on promoting yourself and 20% on your quality long form content (1500-2000+ word articles are recommended).

    Here are 9 Clever Ways for Outreach Marketing you can use:

    1. Identify your target audience

    The first step to getting your content published on authority sites is by identifying your target audience and what they enjoy.

    With the target audience already identified, it will be much easier for you to present and publish content that may interest them.

    You can learn key insights by browsing through rival websites to see how they do it. Twitter search can provide a treasure trove of information.

    It would also be advisable to go through the authority sites in your market to see how they like content created for them to publish your content.

    Reading through their guidelines and terms of service may also help you know how to approach them, and learn more about the target audience.

    2. Knowing who your target audience influencers are

    A little digging is required to get this valuable information. Put yourself in the consumer’s shoes to find out what they might expect from you.

    Social media has made it pretty easy for marketers. Many people turn to their favorite social media platforms for info and recommendations on particular products and services.

    With billions of people using social media networks these days, you can use this to your advantage to learn about them, and then start working towards filling in the ‘void’ they may be having.

    Buzzsumo.com provides great details about top posts, # of shares and their sharers.

    Followerwonk is another great tool to help you find your top influencers, or you can use AuthoritySpy to get a lot more data.

    3. Publish informative and high-quality articles on your blog

    Armed with information from points 1 and 2, you must first focus on creating high quality and informative content for the target audience to consume. If you have few references, no materials or low quality to share, it will be slow-going.

    As long as you can provide your readers and contacts with quality information on topics they are looking for, it will be much easier for them to share the content with their friends and networks.

    Before you can publish any post, make sure it is free from errors and that your research and data is easy to back up. Your readers do not want to follow your ideas based on an assumption.

    Do proper research on the topic and construct everything carefully based on facts, and in an easy to understand language.

    Share your new findings and complimentary research to work they are already interested in.

    4. Work on content marketing

    Publishing quality content on your blog alone isn’t enough. Especially in a growing, crowded online marketplace.

    You need to create and promote.

    Use your blog and showcase content, tools, infographics via outreach (email, phone, social) and seek to publish content in strategic locations from your research.

    It is only by offering to share highly informative and valuable content that search engines and authority sites will take note and interact with you.

    Ensuring only quality posts are published on your blog and other key locations is your best chance of attracting attention from your target audience.

    5. Use strategic email marketing campaigns

    Email marketing is one of the best outreach marketing campaigns one can adopt.

    Creating an avenue for your audience, webmasters and editors to communicate back, by either allowing them to publish comments on your blog or sharing their personal email addresses for further communication is invaluable.

    Note: Never embark on buying leads or email lists with the hope of getting more traffic and exposure, unless you can get validated traffic and conversion numbers.

    As long as the audience are willing to provide their contact information, and allow you to send them more information, there is a higher chance that they will consume and even share your information.

    TIP: The best way to reap big rewards through targeted email marketing is by keeping it simple and making the messages short and to the point. Use references and always include a “helpful” angle to all your emails. Don’t come off as a “sales person” and plan ahead on what they should do next. Make it easy for them.

    6. Make use of video posts and video marketing

    This is one of the best ways of reaching out to a target audience and receiving improved online exposure.

    Many people today prefer watching a short video clip other than reading a long post of written text. (Note: you should test this for your market).

    Technology plays a big part in this since consumers have Internet-enabled handheld devices (such as smartphones, iPads, or tablets) and can search & view your materials from anywhere. That includes accessing apps in app store directories.

    With these devices capable of playing video clips online, uploading high-quality video clips (how-to or explainer videos) to your blog and network can help drive more traffic to your blog. You can send them the information directly via email too.

    TIP: Make use of free video hosting sites (such as YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) to upload videos for increased ranking, exposure and ease of sharing.

    7. Social media marketing

    Social media is one of the leading sources of traffic for most sites and blogs, and is very helpful during a startup phase.

    Millions of people log on to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn to communicate, to make new friends and connections every day.

    This creates opportunities to tap into traffic, deeper research and ease of outreach to your target audience.

    Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn already allow bloggers and marketers to share information through different techniques (posts, paid advertising, #hashtags and @mentions).

    Using these features not only increases exposure but also helps drive essential traffic to your blog or website.

    While posting informative, creative, or funny content helps gain following on these social networking platforms, it would be advisable to allow users to be able to share content from your blog to their social feeds.

    This makes it easier for other audiences to read through the shares hence improving your reputation online.

    TIP: When posting to Twitter, include images as they have shown to improve sharing opportunities, but also creates attention and further branding opportunities. Let your targeted audience know about these quality shares.

    8. Host on-site blogger events

    This is more advanced, but easily one of the best ways of bringing bloggers together, where you act as the leader of the event.

    Hosting a blogger event not only improves brand visibility but also creates a stronger ongoing relationship with influential bloggers and editors.

    This alone can help you win the hearts of influential site managers hence allow you to publish your content on their sites and vice versa.

    TIP: Consider using a series of webinars for these events, and invite other bloggers to speak and present. Using blogger outreach programs to strengthen bonds and brainstorm on new ideas can also market your brand beyond borders, which in turn will improve your authority, trust and online visibility.

    9. Work with brand ambassadors

    Using or working with a brand ambassador on your blog can also help increase visibility and authority online.

    This not only approves the authenticity of your blog posts but also shows that you are an easy to reach person.

    Most bloggers hide behind their computer screens and rarely go out to public functions and events.

    Attending events also expose you to target audience in person, thus creating a much stronger relationship with them.

    It will not be long before you start trending on social media and other influential channels on the Internet.

    CONCLUSION:

    Outreach marketing not only makes your blog/brand known to target audience but also exposes you to a larger market on the globe.

    TIP: Use tools like Pitchbox, HARO and Buzzstream to find quality webmasters, websites and to completely automate the outreach process.

  • Businesses In Need of Engagement Overlooking Obvious Tool

    Businesses In Need of Engagement Overlooking Obvious Tool

    For a lot of businesses, getting, maintaining, and especially growing engagement on social media is an ongoing struggle. Throughout this struggle, however, many seem to have forgotten about how big of a part their blogs can play.

    Is your blog still a significant part of your marketing strategy? Let us know in the comments.

    TrackMaven released some interesting findings in its Content Marketing Paradox Revisited report, which analyzed 12 months worth of marketing activity from nearly 23,000 brands and 50 million pieces of content across all major industries on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and blogs.

    This amounted to a combined total of 75.7 billion interactions. In other words, it covers a pretty broad scope.

    Overall, it found that marketers are producing more content with less return. While output of content rends upward, engagement trends downward.

    “From the highest to lowest points, the output of content per brand increased 35 percent per channel across 2015, but content engagement decreased by 17 percent,” writes TrackMaven’s Kara Burney. “And most interestingly, when output per brand peaked in October 2015, engagement levels look the sharpest downturn.”

    “In short: This is content overload, quantified,” she adds. “As more content floods social networks, the slice of engagement for the average brand shrinks. With a limit to how much content can be consumed, liked, or shared, brands must create their own competitive advantages with distinguishing content.”

    The study found that content output per brand increased most on Twitter and Facebook (60% and 31% year-over-year, respectively). Engagement fell across most major social networks, and fell most drastically on Pinterest. Twitter was the exception with a slight increase in engagement over the past year.

    For those paying, the average engagement ratio for brand on Facebook is three times higher than on Twitter, the report says.

    Overall, Instagram has the highest average engagement ratio for brands, and it’s a great deal higher than all of the other networks. Still, engagement levels there are quickly sinking:

    Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 9.59.36 AM

    Here’s a look at how much content brands are creating for each network:

    Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 10.00.36 AM

    Perhaps the most important takeaway from the study is that brands are perhaps too caught up in social channels with diminishing returns while neglecting an important and effective platform – the trusty old blog.

    “In contrast to the results on social, the average number of blogs per brand per month actually decreased by 16 percent across the year to a low of 58. Engagement with brand blogs, however, held steady, even climbing slightly to a peak of 190.7 average social shares per post in July 2015,” the report says. “For marketers, this finding serves as a reminder not to neglect the basics in pursuit of that shiny social network. New digital platforms will come and go, but for now, the blog remains a reliable content hub from which to build your brand.”

    You can find the full report here. It gets into how a couple of brands are utilizing their blogs for maximum effectiveness, and taking a channel-specific approach to their social strategies.

    myFitnessPal, for example, posts recipes on Pinterest, fitness challenges on its blog, and motivational updates on Facebook.

    Dylan Kissane at Doz recently took a stab at the 5 most important trends in blogging in 2016, and he writes that for blogging, it’s the era of engagement. He says:

    The most important metric for bloggers in the year ahead will not be their traffic or their page views. It will be their engagement rates. Can the blogger attract readers – no matter the size of the audience – and keep them on the site? Can the blogger create a community, giving readers something to come back for other than just fresh writing and attractive images? Can a blogger press publish and be rewarded with Twitter shares, Facebook posts lauding the content, and the launch of dozens of discussions on social media? And can the blogger remain at the center of all of this?

    Whether a small but dedicated niche audience or a community of hundreds of thousands of committed devotees, what will matter for bloggers in 2016 is the engagement rate of that audience – the higher, the better.

    Creating blog content alone will not get engagement. You need the traffic to come from somewhere, and the social platforms are certainly a big part of that. As are search and email newsletters.

    But the study shows that blog content seems to have taken a backseat to social platforms, when that really shouldn’t be the case.

    Is your blogging strategy as much of a priority as it once was? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Images via TrackMaven

  • New Vine Feature Presents Marketers With Good Way To Reuse Old Video Content

    New Vine Feature Presents Marketers With Good Way To Reuse Old Video Content

    The latest feature added to Twitter’s Vine service should give marketers a new opportunity to repurpose existing video content in a fresh way.

    Before, Vine just let you record videos from the app, but now it lets you import videos that you already have. Content marketers are often looking for ways to get more out old content, and this seems like a perfect way.

    The new Vine Camera from Vine on Vimeo.

    Obviously due to the nature of Vine, this will mean editing any video down to the six second limit, but depending on the video, that could be just what you need to actually get attention. Vines are good at getting views for the fact that they’re so short, so why not do some trimming and see what happens?

    If you want to see some good examples of how marketers are already utilizing Vine, this article has thirty-seven of them.

    Vine also added some new editing tools, so you’ll now even more options for creating a compelling, short-form version of a longer video.

    Image via Vine

  • Brian Carr on Bringing New Marketing Trends to Life for Brands

    Brian Carr on Bringing New Marketing Trends to Life for Brands

    Since the dawn of marketing, all businesses have been trying to do the same thing, get a potential customer’s eyes on their brand, and keep their brand in front of them. Modern marketing may have started with a booth at fairs, print ads in newspapers, and 30-second TV spots, but today’s advertising is very different. The Internet requires a vastly different approach to traditional marketing. 



    Recently we caught up with Brian Carr, who is a Business Brand and Development specialist for several industries and the sports world, on this very topic. Here is what Carr had to say: “Today, sales and marketing have integrated into business development. The relationship is the performance of creative engagement of the physical with digital experience.

    “

With the advent of the Internet came the beginning of big data, and marketers have learned to use all of that performance data to influence clients’ decisions. “Much like sports, where we keep a ‘score’, marketers now have a similar score board,” said Carr.



    So, how has the rise of big data helped marketers substantiate their marketing efforts?



    “What’s great about harnessing data is that it is a visualization for how a strategy within a format is performing and being used. For example, every major professional and collegiate organization as well as apparel manufacturer utilizes this to enhance the fan experience. Bringing that data to your client demonstrates just how effective their investment is,” says digital marketing professional Brian Carr. “Data dashboards were not available just a handful of years ago. This data approach has also made it possible for individual marketing firms to be compensated based on their performance. Much like the game of football, we always know down, distance, time, and score as well as the personnel and units performing. This opens a lot of doors; it is making it possible for a lot more opportunities.”

    

Is all of this data a good thing? Isn’t it overwhelming, or too much noise?



    “Yes, absolutely it’s a good thing- as long as you know what to do with that data and navigate it once you’ve collected it, it is absolutely a good thing. Years ago, it was less of a good thing, because marketers didn’t know what to do with it,” Carr explains. 



    How a marketing campaign is performing is the benchmark metric in today’s modern online advertising world. Performance-based marketing, or advertising in which the client pays when campaigns achieve measurable results – instead of simply buying ad space and calling it a day – has been on the rise over the last few years. This was the birth of affiliate marketing. When it’s easy to measure user actions resulting from advertisements, a performance-based structure simply makes more sense.



    Brian Carr and other industry insiders know that affiliate marketing is one of the most effective performance-based marketing styles around.

    

Affiliate marketing essentially involves websites advertising a business for a commission; the affiliates are then paid based on the performance of the marketing efforts. This usually amounts to visitors (potential customers) brought in by the affiliate. Most affiliate marketing setups involve an affiliate network that manages offers for the affiliate to choose from.



    Another type of performance-based marketing that is gaining traction is content marketing, or “a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience, with the objective of driving profitable customer action. The key here is the execution of distribution strategy.



    With traditional, in-your-face hard sell advertising becoming less and less effective in the fast-paced and instant attention getting world of the Internet, content marketing has emerged as an innovative way for brands to reach their target audiences.

    

And it’s not just about reach, but also about influencing and gathering information on customer behavior.

    That’s where the actual content comes in. A banner ad that tells people to shop at a hardware store is obtrusive and oft-ignored. But if that same brand were to publish a piece of content in an article, white paper, infographic, or video (such as creating a tutorial on a branded YouTube Channel) that discussed summer home improvement strategies and tips, then you would have content marketing. “This is what I call relationship engagement, whereby the advertiser becomes a resource to the customer and creates a client who returns for more information/education and follows with more product and/or service purchases.”

    

The most important thing about content marketing is making sure that the content is both high quality, relevant, timely and informative. The best content marketing transcends advertising, and can simply be seen as good content. That’s the end goal.

    

In the past, one of the drawbacks of performance-based marketing was confusion between brands and publishers regarding the performance metric itself; in other words, disagreement over the analytics.

    But now that those systems have improved and marketers know what to do with all that data, experts like Brian Carr assert that performance-based marketing is fast becoming a preferred method and will accelerate in the future.

  • Newscred, Percolate, Brand.com Scheme To Alter Digital Content Creation

    Newscred, Percolate, Brand.com Scheme To Alter Digital Content Creation

    A group of companies is seeking to change the face of content creation and alter how brands are able to connect with target audiences online. They’re attempting to make an impact on the online news industry in a way that’s meaningful to businesses looking to promote their products and services, without compromising the integrity of interested publications.

    Companies like Newscred, Percolate, and Brand.com are giving content creators tools to not only create original, interesting content, but get it distributed in helpful ways.

    Investors see a lot of potential in these kinds of services. Earlier this year, Newscred raised a new $25 million round of funding (less than a year after it raised $15 million). A couple months ago it launched new partnerships with Getty Images, Visual.ly, and others. Percolate also recently raised $24 million.

    We had a conversation with Brand.com president Mike Zammuto about how his company in particular views the new landscape. He believes that these types of platform companies are changing online news media.

    Brand.com matches newsmakers (the aforementioned businesses who need to get word out) with journalists and publications looking for interesting stories. It enables news outlets to get info straight from the source while maintaining the editorial control that’s important for maintaining credibility. Brand.com’s platform enables brands to explain how they want to look online, and commission writers and reporters to tell their story as an alternative to “old-fashioned” press releases. It has distribution partnerships with media outlets like CNN, Forbes, Reuters, The Huffington Post, MSNBC, Fox News, etc.

    
To maintain credibility, they filter out self-promotional and advertorial copy, ensuring that story ideas really are newsworthy, and provide content that is actually valuable (otherwise this wouldn’t work).

    “Content creation, whether it’s marketing content or news content, should have benefited immensely from the rise of Internet tech, but it hasn’t,” Zammuto tells us. “Platform companies provide an opportunity for reporters to actually utilize the parts of the Internet that are the most beneficial for creating the news. Brand.com creates an ecosystem that connects publishers and reporters with newsmakers with a genuine story to tell – reporters don’t have to dig around for scoops anymore. They can go straight to the source, easily and efficiently.”

    “In the past, news creation relied largely on one-on-one communications,” he adds. “Platforms can improve scalability and efficiency. More broadly, news publishers have seen revenue for advertising and subscriptions fall off with no adequate replacement, and the industry is becoming desperate for a new business model that supports editorial independence and a free and open press, but also the prospering and growth of these publications so that they can continue to support their editorial goals. A platform is a scalable and flexible model. Just as social media streamlined online social interaction, our news platform streamlines the process of identifying and creating great news stories.”

    In case you haven’t heard, native advertising is trending in a big way. This may leave some businesses wondering if they should skip this type of content production, and simply go the native ad route.

    Here’s what Zammuto has to say about it: “PR and native advertising are both ineffective. Native advertising is simply a way to sneak PR into a news content platform. That strategy doesn’t benefit the editors and reporters or the readers. We want the control to ultimately remain in hands of the editors and reporters, not PR middlemen peddling promotional stories. Newsmakers have always wanted to contact reporters and vise versa, and a platform can link these bodies without relying on any intermediate point of contact that might dilute true news.”

    “Travel agencies were a pre-Internet necessity,” he continues. “Now, they just stand in the way between travelers and travel providers. Eliminating a middleman benefits every party involved, in news media and, historically, in all other industries.”

    Still, new native advertising options are launched all the time. Media companies are investing more and more in offering this to advertisers. A recent report from eMarketer found that for media publishers, native advertising represents an opportunity to “reverse the tide of flat or declining revenues”. So far, brands seem to be biting.

    As far as reporters go, it’s church and state, ads and editorial. Zammuto’s company claims to provide reporters with a way to find interesting and original content.

    “When reporters know and trust the platform as a location for exclusive scoops and sources, I’ll know that we’ve succeeded,” he tells us. “And when I see high quality but financially ill news organizations newly able to reinvest in original, high-quality news content, I’ll know that we’ve succeeded.”

    “We see signs of success every day,” he says. “It’s a success whenever a publisher tells us that we are giving their reporters access to great stories and newsworthy exclusive topics. Our platform’s analytics can currently indicate to us who is reading the content, which is a major success for any brand working with us that is used to inefficient and unpredictable PR industry outcomes. Soon the SaaS model will provide us with a holistic end-to-end view of the news, from creation to publishing to analysis of associated demographics. Here’s how a successful article looks to us: publishers are confident that great content is reaching the right audiences, audiences have access to the information they want to read, and brands are able to track who reads published content and what other content those readers might find compelling.”

    
From a brand’s perspective, an offering like this can go a long way in spreading the word for a newsworthy brand in an era where everybody has a voice (and an opinion). Brand.com, Newscred, and Percolate are attempting to offer new and more dynamic options for brands for determining how to create and circulate content online.

    Image via LinkedIn

  • Here’s A Look At Demand Media’s Latest Google-Proofing Efforts [Updated]

    Here’s A Look At Demand Media’s Latest Google-Proofing Efforts [Updated]

    Article Updated: See the end.

    As reported last month, Demand Media is now extending its content creation services to brands, publishers and agencies, essentially selling the content it has been using to get search traffic, monetizing it thorough brand partnership-based content marketing since taking a beating from Google’s algorithm.

    If you’re not familiar with Demand Media’s history with Google, the tl;dr version is: DM created tons of content based on things people search for in order to get traffic on those searches. Often, this content was of questionable quality. Google eventually changed its algorithm (the Panda update) in a way that made it so this type of content didn’t rank so well, and ultimately impacted DM’s revenue. DM has made numerous changes to its content, design and strategy since, and has at times appeared to have recovered, but in recent months, the company’s Google fortune has not been great, and as others have tried to do, they are seeking business that is not so reliant on the search behemoth.

    So as part of its business, it now sells content for others to host on their sites. DigiDay is pointing to some specific examples of what exactly they’re offering. Here’s an article on Samsung.com about “Organizing Ideas for Small Homes”.

    For Michelob Ultra:

    Pretty standard DM-style content.

    It just so happens that Google is now going after guest blogging (controversially I might add). We have to wonder if Google will target stuff like this. I’m not sure this stuff is doing all that well in search anyway (I don’t see Michelob Ultra ranking anywhere for “anti-aging foods,” for example)., but it would be surprising if Google didn’t at least have its eye on it.

    Google is also working on algorithm changes that reward authorities on topics, so Michelob Ultra probably doesn’t stand to gain a lot on authority on health foods.

    It doesn’t look like the Demand Media stories are including any links in the author bios. Google’s attack on guest blogging has some reputable sites afraid to keep such links natural (meaning without nofollow added) or at all.

    These types of articles could potentially do well in social media, though Facebook has not been kind to brands with its own algorithm changes, and is steadily decreasing the organic reach of Page posts, so it’s hard to say how much value brands are really getting out of this content. Of course there are other ways to generate traffic besides Google and Facebook.

    Either way, Demand Media seems to be helping overcome its reputation for low-quality content. DigiDay spoke with VP of Marketing Kristen Moore, who basically said brands have been skeptical about the content, but the company has been showing them the newer content compared to the old, and convincing them. They “get past it,” she says.

    It sounds like Demand Media is also managing to get some mileage out of its existing content, rather than having to have it all created from scratch for these brands. According to the report, Moore cited Demand’s “loads of evergeen content and SEO expertise” as an advantage it has over other content providers.

    Hmm. SEO expertise. Perhaps Google is still being targeted after all. Or maybe it’s a Bing strategy.

    Update: We reached out to Moore for further comment. “We aren’t in a position to comment on Google’s or any other company’s business practices. We focus on creating the best experience for consumers on our sites and providing the best content for brands to meet their content marketing needs,” she tells us.

    “Each of those brands come to us with very different goals and with different marketing plans on how they use their content,” she adds. “In the DigiDay article I was cited as saying SEO expertise was an advantage – what I really said was that we help brands by offering consultation on their distribution and discovery strategies.”

    Currently, she says, they only have a “handful of brands” they’re working with, as it’s a pretty new offering.

    Images via Samsung, Michelob

  • Matt Cutts Has Declared Guest Blogging For SEO ‘Done’

    Matt Cutts Has Declared Guest Blogging For SEO ‘Done’

    Google has been warning webmasters about guest blogging abuse for years now. This week, head of webspam Matt Cutts basically declared guest blogging dead.

    “Stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done,” says Google’s Matt Cutts.

    In light of Cutts’ comments will you be wary of contributing guest content on other sites? Of publishing guest content on your site? Share your thoughts on the subject.

    Cutts took to his personal blog on Monday to share an email he received from a “content marketer” offering a guest blog post in trade for “a dofollow link or two in the article body,” which Cutts calls a “clear violation of Google’s quality guidelines.”

    Obviously they didn’t realize who they were emailing unless it was a joke.

    Cutts says Google has been seeing more and more reports of this type of thing.

    “Ultimately, this is why we can’t have nice things in the SEO space: a trend starts out as authentic. Then more and more people pile on until only the barest trace of legitimate behavior remains,” he writes. “We’ve reached the point in the downward spiral where people are hawking “guest post outsourcing” and writing articles about “how to automate guest blogging.”

    “So stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy,” he adds. “In general I wouldn’t recommend accepting a guest blog post unless you are willing to vouch for someone personally or know them well. Likewise, I wouldn’t recommend relying on guest posting, guest blogging sites, or guest blogging SEO as a linkbuilding strategy.”

    Early comments were a little critical of this stance. One equated it to “throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” in the sense that this takes too broad a view, and would be detrimental to guest bloggers who actually offer legitimate, quality content on legitimate, quality sites.

    “Maybe Google needs to up their game and ability to decipher what is quality or not,” suggests Matt Sells, who made the baby/bathwater analogy. “Everyone should not be punished for the wrongdoings of some.”

    A bit later, Cutts ended up updating his post, toning down the message significantly.

    He said, “I’m not trying to throw the baby out with the bath water. There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.). Those reasons existed way before Google and they’ll continue into the future. And there are absolutely some fantastic, high-quality guest bloggers out there. I changed the title of this post to make it more clear that I’m talking about guest blogging for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.”

    The title now stands as “The Decay and fall of guest blogging FOR SEO”.

    “I’m also not talking about multi-author blogs,” he added. “High-quality multi-author blogs like Boing Boing have been around since the beginning of the web, and they can be compelling, wonderful, and useful. I just want to highlight that a bunch of low-quality or spam sites have latched on to ‘guest blogging’ as their link-building strategy, and we see a lot more spammy attempts to do guest blogging. Because of that, I’d recommend skepticism (or at least caution) when someone reaches out and offers you a guest blog article.”

    The message may have been toned down, but will webmaster reaction? There’s already talk of disavowing links from old guest blog posts. How many will go overboard? How many will seek to have Google ignore perfectly legitimate links they’ve earned by writing high quality content for fear that it will ultimately hurt them in Google, and end up shooting themselves in the foot? You know, like when they were/are getting rid of other legitimate links in hopes that it will somehow make Google think higher of their sites.

    No related Google update was announced or anything, but if such an update were to launch, it would be interesting to follow how well Google could determine what is good vs. what is bad.

    Will you accept any guest posts after this? Let us know in the comments.

    Image via YouTube

  • Kevin Spacey Will School The Content Marketing Industry This Year

    Kevin Spacey Will School The Content Marketing Industry This Year

    Well, you if you weren’t already planning on attending Content Marketing World this year, you have a big reason to do so now. It was announced on Friday that Kevin Spacey will be headlining the event, providing the closing keynote.

    And if you’ve seen this speech he gave last year at the Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, you’ll probably be even more compelled to attend:

    In fact, that speech prompted the Content Marketing Institute, which hosts Content Marketing World, to put out a blog post in August about “corporate storytelling lessons from Kevin Spacey”. Now, content marketers will get to hear some advice from Spacey directly.

    “We are beyond thrilled to have Kevin Spacey joins us for this year’s event,” said Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute. “Mr. Spacey is a dynamic actor, writer, producer and director. His critically-acclaimed Netflix original series, House of Cards, has broken content distribution barriers in television. We believe he has great insight that applies to content marketing and corporate storytelling that will resonate with our audience.”

    The Cleveland event drew 1,700 marketing and PR professionals from 46 countries last year. With this announcement, we expect interest to be even higher this year.

    Other confirmed speakers for 2014 include representatives from brands like Kraft Foods, Microsoft, Facebook, SAP, Cisco, Coca-Cola Brazil, as well as various other industry professionals.

    Content Marketing World – Cleveland 2014 from Content Marketing Institute on Vimeo.

    The event will take place from September 8th to September 11th at the Cleveland Convention Center. Registration is open with early bird rates being offered until the end of February.

    Spacey will return to Netflix in the second season of House of Cards on February 14th. Check out the new cinemagraph Netflix just put out to promote it.

    Image: Netflix (YouTube)

  • 3 Analytics Tips To Give Your Lead Generation Program A Facelift

    3 Analytics Tips To Give Your Lead Generation Program A Facelift

    Marketers and business owners continue to spend a lot of money driving traffic to their websites and yet many struggle with lead generation and optimizing the traffic and conversion from the campaigns that they are running. Read these three tips and take your lead generation program to the next level.

    1. Focus on Key Metrics

    What Key Performances Indicators (KPIs) lead generation marketers and business owners should pay attention to.

    2. Content Consumption and Optimization

    We spend a lot of money developing content, such as webinars, whitepapers and content for website(s). What content do our visitors consume and lead to more engagement? Is this content helping convert traffic to leads?

    3. Segment Your Campaigns

    Segmentation is a powerful concept in analytics. Learn how to segment your campaign and how to have full visibility for what’s driving leads your business.

    4. (Bonus) Advanced Optimization Techniques

    1. Focus on Key Metrics

    Metrics are abundant and everyone can have easy access to enterprise-level analytics solutions. As a matter of fact, millions of sites run Google Analytics and marketers leverage its user-friendly interface and robust reporting capabilities.

    In Google Analytics, you have the ability to see what channels and marketing initiatives bring you leads, see what pages are being viewed, and what interactions users are taking, and also measure task completions such as downloading whitepapers, registering for a webinar or lead capture.

    This is a blessing for us data geeks and could be a curse for those who just don’t have the time to dive in the ocean of data and metrics. But as the saying goes “No pain, No gain.” You must allocate some time to track your lead generation programs. The key is to focus on a few metrics that impact the bottom line. Here are some examples for specific engaging actions:

    • Form completion (Lead)
    • Downloads
    • Watch a video
    • Subscribe to newsletter
    • Become a member

    In addition, you should closely monitor your traffic sources, your paid search, your SEO and your email traffic. All of that is available to you. Any report that you want in Google Analytics, you can export into a pdf or have it emailed to you. You don’t have to log-in and find that report saving time to nurture your leads.

    Look at the visits: Am I getting new visitors? Or is it the old returning visitors? Am I nurturing my existing visitors to come back? Am I retaining enough? Segment your traffic by new vs. returning and see where things are heading.

    We also want to look at the engagements. It’s one thing to draw traffic to a site, but if visitors are leaving right away or they can’t find what they are looking for, there’s something wrong.

    Time on site: Are people spending more time on my site and doing something useful, like downloading, or viewing a video, or subscribing to an email newsletter? So look for those types of engagements. Examine the number of pages per visit, look at video views, and look at downloads. All these are very good indicators that your visitors are engaged with your website.

    And last but not least, look at your conversion rates. Basically, of all the traffic that I’m getting how much of that is converting into leads. For instance, if I have a hundred visits today and I capture 10 leads, then that’s 10% conversion rate. Track your conversion rate and keep an eye on it. This is where you can find issues or find underperforming campaigns.

    In addition to that and to make your job easier, you have the capabilities of building very nice dashboards in Google Analytics. Here is an example:

    You can easily add widgets to look at your traffic by source, monthly visits or visits by day. Since you can customize this very easily, you don’t have to be a JavaScript specialist or a rocket scientist to do this. There are a lot of help topics available on how to create your dashboard, if you need more help. The dashboard is set-up to be drag-and-drop, and you pick the metrics that are important to your business and the widgets show up. Every time you log-in to Google Analytics, you have all the metrics readily available for you! It’s very accessible; also you can have the dashboards emailed to your inbox and then share it with your boss. And at the beginning of the week, you can look at how your site and marketing initiatives have done the previous week.

    2. Content Consumption and Optimization

    Content is and has always been king, for as far as I remember. Having a plan to measure what your site users consume is essential in this content marketing age, where every business is a publisher.

    In Google Analytics, you can leverage a mechanism called Event tracking. You basically track user interactions with Events: If I click on a button, if I click on an expand icon, if I download an image or if I download a whitepaper, all that is trackable including Videos, Downloads, Outbound links, Outcomes. Let’s take a look at an example:

    We had a total of 7,095 Events: One Event category for Video and another Event category of Downloads. As you can see we have 6,361 interactions with the video, and 734 downloads.

    We can now assess the performance of this content, for example: are the download buttons/links prominent? For video analytics, we can dig deeper and see what percentage of viewers completed the entire video. And we can see in the above snapshot that out of the 6,361 video events, only 585 completed the video all the way to the end.

    We can even drill down and view which specific video people interacted with and which they didn’t and then produce more engaging videos for the types that your clients liked.

    3. Segment Your Campaigns

    One can’t emphasize segmentation enough, it is key to analytics and to marketing in general. With segmentation you’ll be able to separate the type of traffic that you’re getting. For example:

    a. segmenting paid-search traffic versus SEO traffic

    b. new vs. returning visitors

    c. fall campaign vs. fall campaign from last year

    d. traffic from Canada vs. traffic from US

    All of these are examples of the way data can be segmented so that it’s a bit more actionable and a bit easier to analyze.

    Take a look at this case study where the client had a high cost per conversion, but where do we start, how do we go about improving (lowering) the cost per conversion? Trend and segment!

    In the illustration below, we see, in August the cost per conversion was a bit over $80 and for October, it was about $100. But then if you look at the data further, you see that we significantly improved, down to $30 per conversion!

    The optimization did not happen overnight. It took a bit of time but we have 5-times the improvement in terms of cost savings. The way the client approached this optimization initiative is: they segmented their campaigns and asked where they were spending a lot of money with minimal or low return? So instead of showing all their August data aggregated, they reported on data by campaign, by channel. They saw that a whole lot of traffic and conversion from Google Display is coming at a very expensive rate, almost $260.

    The client immediately started to look at the landing pages for this channel, and also examined the campaign, ad-targeting, call-to-action and the offer to draw people to the landing pages. And it took them a bit of time, some ups-and-downs but eventually they were able to bring down the costs across all their channels to below $50 per conversion.

    The important part in this concept is to look at every channel that you have and not just at an aggregate and say I have this many visits. I have a link here to help you track those different channels or different campaigns so that you can report on them accordingly:

    Tracking Online and Offline Marketing Campaigns with Google Analytics

    As marketers, one of the challenges that we face is that we sometimes just look at one-data source. I look at Google Analytics and think that’s sufficient. Now, Google Analytics is amazing and I encourage you to use it. But I also want to highlight some of the missing data that you want to get from other systems, namely marketing automation platform (Marketo, Act-on, etc.) to attain meaningful reports after a lead is captured. Let’s take a look at this example from another organization that is capturing leads on this form:

    When you look at the data in the backend, CRM or the marketing automation system, 86% of those leads were unqualified, pure junk or spam leads or contacts that are not fit for what the company offers. On this form, I’m just reporting on my conversion rate, it’s not really meaningful. This single source reporting is actually misleading. The key here is to join the data from the two systems (Google Analytics and your CRM or Marketing Automation System) to make sure you are reporting on the qualified leads. That’s what really matters at the end of the day.

    Any time you start bringing data from multiple sources, it’ll take a bit more process and time. You might have couple of Excel spreadsheets, or join the data in Tableau or whatever system you are using. You have to pull that data from two different systems to start painting a better picture, a bit closer to the 360˚ view of your prospects!

    This type of tracking and type of investment, time and effort will give us a significant increase in the number of leads and a significant decrease in the cost of those leads.

    4. Bonus – Advanced Optimization Tips

    I want to conclude with a couple of advanced tips.

    It takes more than one visit to convert

    One is the Multi-channel Funnel (MCF) reports in GA, where you can see previous interactions that the visitors took on your site before they converted. So you see here, for example, on line 4, somebody came to the website through a paid-search campaign e.g. Google AdWords, and then they left. Then maybe a week later they visited the site again from an organic search and then they converted.

    So understanding that people, come to the website multiple times before they convert is important. This is the behavior that most of exhibit when we buy nowadays. Understanding this cycle and all these touch points is essential. You can leverage the Multi-channel Funnel reports in Google Analytics to get this kind of visibility.

    The Multi-Screen world

    The other significant aspect is understanding the Multi-Screen world that we live in. People come to our websites from mobiles devices, from desktops, from tablets, so recognizing that, for example, of the times that people are watching TV, 77% of them are watching TV while they actually have another device next to them, a laptop or maybe an iPhone.


    (source http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/insights)

    Thus, factor in that people come to your website from different channels. Using the Multi-channel Funnel, in this case, to report on that kind of activity holds relevance. And to help you with that and if you are thinking about your plans for next year, you can leverage what Google has announced and labeled as Universal Analytics. It’s a new generation of Google Analytics that is very user-centric. It allows you to track user behavior across several devices and also across different touch-points described earlier.