10 Surprisingly Simple Lessons That Will Make You A Better Digital Marketer

Years ago, I was working as an online marketing manager at a digital marketing agency in Salt Lake City.

One of my clients was a large university that offered online courses. The client had expressed concerns that while organic search traffic was up, our “request for more information” goal was down (one of the primary KPIs).

The client was questioning the value in our work and the partnership was in jeopardy.

From competitive analysis I knew we had multiple online competitors that offered similar programs, and also that signing up for college level online courses wasn’t an impulse buy – prospective students were doing their research.

Understanding the customer path to purchase

After the call I referenced the client’s Multi-Channel Funnels Report in Google Analytics. I confirmed that the top conversion path was visitors finding our online courses via Google Search, and then coming back directly at a later point to request more information. Once I shared this with the client, she immediately saw the value in the work we were doing.

From that day forward, I included data from this report to not only show the full value in our work, but also gain a deeper understanding of my client’s customer online journey to purchase.

This lesson is one of many that I’ve applied to assist me in running more effective campaigns, provide more actionable and insightful reporting, build stronger relationships with clients, and develop more efficient processes.

Here are the lessons I feel will provide real value and help you be a better digital marketer.

1. SEO is far from dead

It seems like every 6 months or so, a proclamation is made publicly decrying the benefits and the effectiveness of sustainable search engine optimization.

While Google is continuously refining and introducing new systems to help it better understand queries and return relevant results, both optimization and inbound links still work amazingly well to improve a page’s visibility in Google Search.

Caption: This screenshot is of YoY organic search traffic with a filter applied to remove spam/bot hits. The website is a local business that had existing authority and no previous on-page optimization.

While not a definitive rule, pages and posts with links from authoritative, trusted sources tend to perform better organically than those that don’t.

Ensure your website is sending clear, concise signals to search engines. Make on-page optimization and earning links a component of your digital marketing strategy by creating and promoting great content, getting the word out for company news and events and building online relationships with others in your industry.

Client education is key as it can often take months to see the benefits from optimization.

2. Community, Community, Community

Image Source: ALLBRiGHT 1-800-PAINTING

Getting involved in your local community can be an effective way to earn links, increase brand awareness and strengthen your UVP as a national or local business.

A community event can include charity work or sponsorships, meetups, presentations, etc.

If you need ideas on how to acquire links from your clients’ community efforts or events, I’d recommend checking out this post.

Do something newsworthy that includes your local community and then get the word out!

3. Social media attribution

Many social media managers will agree that it can be difficult to show an ROI from building an engaged social community.

For many of my clients, I’ve found that social activity typically “assists” as opposed to acting as a last touch channel that directly leads to conversions. While traffic back to your website from your social channels is great, showing how these efforts are bringing in new leads and sales is even better.

By default, Google Analytics credits all conversions to the last channel a customer interacts with before converting. To help me show clients how both paid and organic social media marketing campaigns are contributing to either leads or sales, I use Google Analytics Multi-Channels Funnel reports.

Google lumps all social traffic into one channel, so you’ll need to create custom channel grouping that defines all your social channels e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. You can also create a channel for specific campaigns that you’ve tagged.

Prove your worth by showing the assisted and direct conversion value from your social media marketing campaigns. Also, if you use GA, take the time to get your individual qualification – it’s free!

4. Start with a great visitor experience

Spending time and valuable marketing dollars on campaigns won’t be nearly as effective if your landing pages are providing a poor visitor experience. Don’t put the cart before the horse.

For any online marketing campaign, start with optimizing the visitor experience on your website, then move on to marketing.

If you have suspicions that a design element/feature isn’t enhancing the visitor experience on a site, request a few free 5-minute evaluations from Peek User Testing for unbiased feedback. In my experience, clients love it and it can be used in conjunction with analytics data to confirm a hunch.

To assess areas that could be limiting conversions, set up funnels for your goals in Google Analytics.

Are most visitors abandoning their cart? Are they making it to the contact page but not filling out the form? Funnels can help you assess where you may need to make changes.

The below screenshot shows a basic funnel that was set up using Google Analytics Goals.

You can also install and use heat map software to see exactly how your visitors are engaging with your landing pages. I like SumoMe’s Heat Maps.

5. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it

I’m a firm believer in letting the data drive the decisions, but in order for data to be actionable, it needs to be as accurate as possible. Internal sessions, junk and spam traffic, accounts that aren’t set-up properly, can all make your data less insightful and actionable. This is especially true for small businesses and websites that don’t receive thousands of visitors a month.

Providing your clients with a thorough analytics audit can be worth its weight in gold. Having accurate tracking in place will not only help you know what’s working, but also show how your work is impacting your client’s bottom line.

6. Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose

Time and budgets are limited so why not get the most exposure possible for your content and events?

Repurposing can be defined as taking new and existing content assets and sharing or recreating them across multiple channels and content formats.

For example, if your client is holding an informative event, you could repurpose this content in the following ways:

• Live stream the event on Periscope, Facebook Live or via a podcast
• Record the presentation on video then upload and share it to Facebook and YouTube
• Transcribe the video or podcast and publish it as a blog post
• Gather emails from event attendees and send them the video and a link to the transcription on your website
• Take any presentation slides and add them to SlideShare
• Syndicate the content across other websites with a link pointing to the original post on your website

Before starting a new campaign, do a thorough content audit, then ask the client for anything and everything that’s ever been used as marketing material. This can include PDFs, videos, PowerPoint slide decks, brochures, materials used for print advertising, etc.

7. Do a good job

Sounds pretty obvious right? Before starting my own digital marketing agency, I never considered word of mouth, reviews, and recommendations as marketing channels. The marketer in me would be amazed to learn that many successful SMB’s were able to grow solely off of client referrals.

Since starting my own business, I’ve also found this to be true. Doing a good job can mean a lot of things, but I’d sum it up as working hard, keeping communication frequent, and showing the value in your work.

Remember, it’s less expensive to retain a current client than it is to find a new one. Doing a good job means you’ll retain clients longer and increase the chances they’ll refer you to other businesses.

8. Be prepared to wear multiple hats

As a digital marketing consultant, it’s my job to be able to advise and drive successful marketing campaigns across all online channels. SEO, PPC, social media, email – it’s a lot to keep up with!

My advice: make a goal to read at least one blog post a day on a different marketing channel and keep good notes.  Take the best ideas and test them for inclusion in your internal processes.

9. Develop processes

Having processes in place ensures that your success is repeatable … and it also saves you time. While every business is unique and no digital marketing campaigns are identical, many strategies and tasks can be defined.

Having tools, templates, and repeatable tasks will provide consistency and help your business to grow sustainably.

10. Pay to promote

Growing an audience and building awareness for your business takes a lot of time and effort. While not all industries are social, for those that are, utilizing social advertising on the social channels used by your target audience can be an effective way to get the word out.

Make sure to retarget those who were interested enough to visit your website. This can include advertising on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and even StumbleUpon.

You can learn something from everyone

I’ve only scratched the surface, but these were a few of the most actionable lessons I could share.

Do you have something to add? If so, please drop it in the comments below!

Guest Author: Brian Jensen is the CEO at Congruent Digital, a full-service online marketing agency that provides clients with a data-driven approach to search engine optimization, social media, content marketing and pay-per-click advertising.  Connect with Brian on Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn.

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4 Content Marketing Fundamentals You Could Revisit With Nifty Hacks

To succeed at content marketing, there is a basic set of skills that you must possess.

This blog is a summary of the four most basic content marketing ideas with new-age hacks to help execute them.

While most senior marketers are aware of and experienced in these requirements, individuals who are new to the field are likely to struggle with the volumes of guides out there.

Newbies can use this write-up to avert the obstacles they are likely to face, and more seasoned content marketers can check off their agendas the fundamentals that they’re covering while discovering time-saver methods of implementing them.

Let’s begin.

1. Understand goals and create a focused mission statement

A content marketing plan begins with the goals you set. Without clarity of what you want to accomplish, you cannot create content with powerful underlying intent, which is the basis of effective content marketing.

Before you proceed to actual creation of content follow these 4 steps to define your goals.

Step 1: Survey your environment

Like battles involve surveillance of the terrain and the other army (and you would crash and burn if you didn’t do this), you need to do the same with content marketing. Identify your competitors, the channels at your disposal and your audience.

This involves some research – surveys of your own, and borrowed from data farming firms. Search tools help. The right Google searches, and setting keyword alerts on Google and social monitoring tools like Social Mention help to some extent. Try tools like SurveyMonkey, they save a lot of time.

Step 2: Develop a Buyer Persona (or multiple ones)

You require a description of the person who would be interested in and purchase your products or services (the more detailed the description, the better). Interests, concerns, behavior are key. Use specific questions to survey your audience and social media polling apps to save time.

Step 3: Monitor your competitors

Observe what they implement. Adapt the ones that make sense, figure out how to break areas that the big players are dominating. Try Google alerts, Spy Fu, Topsy, these tools can help.

Step 4: Research social platforms and technology

Where is your audience present? Where do they spend the most time? What are the latest features of social platforms and how can you use them? Which applications can help cut down time investments and make your job easier. Figure these out.

Next, outline clear and well-defined goals. It could be anything as specific as overcoming a certain perception attached to your type of services or creating stories with user-cases for your product. Keep them that specific and document them.

With goals done, write a mission statement. Ask yourself these questions before you do that.

What do we want to accomplish?

How do we do it?

Who are we targeting?

What value are we adding?

2. Create and share content in audience-friendly packages

Every step of content marketing requires planning. Cutting straight to the chase may make you feel like you are getting stuff done, but doing so can get you stuck.

Here are a few things you can do to create and share audience-friendly content.

Generate a content bucket and a content calendar

If you kick start each month with a bucket of 50 ideas, your month is more likely to go smoothly and leave you time to “React” which is extremely important on social media.

List down 10 reasons why your audience should choose your brand over others (specific user cases), 20 blog topics, 10 ideas for simple contests/discussions. The idea is to keep a running stock of ideas. Add to it as you come across them. Hubspot’s got a fun topics generator you could try for blog topics.

Make divisions based on themes of content and place your ideas across your content calendar. Ensure to take account of all important days (for your brand and otherwise).

DrumUp has an interesting feature that lets you view scheduled social media content in calendar form. So when you are curating content, you can still be sure that you are following your decided theme or pattern for content.

Use engaging formats

Content that is engaging for your audience. Remember who they are and decide your formats based on that information. For instance, foodies might want to see their content more than read about it.

But visuals are non-negotiable for social media. Use photographs, graphs, infographics, videos, whatever you can in context with the content you’re sharing.

Match the tone of your content to your audience and the platform your are sharing on.

Curate powerful content

Content curation is powerful. If you can make available useful information to your audience, there’s nothing like it. Curate content and tag or @mention the source, you’d be giving credit, building valuable relationships and generating more shares all in one go.

Use a good app to filter stuff for you. For fresh content DrumUp is great, you could also use Feedly or Storyful for some interesting stuff to share.

Finally, set up tests on your shares – share them at different time intervals and measure engagement. Identify your most successful blog posts (landing pages) and referral links from Google Analytics and re-structure your content to include more of what’s working.

3. Develop a relevant and powerful content hub

A content hub (pages attached to your website with content about set topics) is a must. That’s home to your original content and means to build authority, visibility and encourage revisits.

Set your topics: Explore your scope for what to include (technical how to’s for your niche) and document what you intend to talk about. Pick topics that can help improve your revenues over time (attract your target audience).

Build the hub: The technical aspects may not concern you, but it is important to have your tech team incorporate share plug ins and SEO elements (meta descriptions, page titles and keywords). Your Content Management System should also be easy to use to update content and add the basic types of media – images, videos and the lot. WordPress is easy to implement and use, and comes with SEO and other useful extensions.

Promote it: Promoting a hub is extra effective when you involve people.

• Reach out to established firms you could partner with for content.
• Do trade offs. Offer content in return for visibility on external websites.
• Create content with people so you can share the task of marketing (content also has added value when you have an added perspective.)
• Craft interesting and short descriptions and invite people to your hub from social media.
• Use multiple formats of content for promotions (visuals could go on Pinterest, Tumblr). Remember to craft your content to speak to your Audience Personas.

Consistently monitor Key Performance Indicators: Use tools like Brand24 to monitor social mentions, engagement and sentiments and Google Analytics to fill in the dots (track time spent on a page, visits to a page). Use the insights to add more content that is popular to your hub.

4. Increase exposure for content that you create

For maximum exposure your content has to be discoverable to your target group.

Ensure that you’re following the basic laws of SEO.

• Create content that genuinely helps your audience (and is directed at them with keywords they’re likely to look for)
• Write long posts at least 1000+ words and if possible 2000+ words
• Provide backlinks to your site everywhere you post content
• Use the right keyword tags for your posts for search engine indexing
• Never duplicate content (copyright and search engines penalize duplicated content)

Exposure also requires the participation of people (they’ve got to share your content).

Here are 5 ways to creatively get them to do so.

#1. Involve them in the content you create (expert interviews and audience generated content)

#2. Use interactive elements on your blogs

#3. Create contests that require sharing

#4. Share their content occasionally as well

#5. Ask them to. Simple requests for re-tweets and shares work

Participate in communities like Quora, Google Plus communities and groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. Create Twitter lists to better organize and reach out to the community that you build.

Wrap

Interacting with the community is absolutely necessary with social media. Don”t make a task out of interaction and push it down the priority list because there’s no substitute. Each of the steps discussed save more time when planned out than when not. So use this write-up as a plan to get yourself started, you should see positive results on implementation.

Guest Author: Jessica Davis is a Content Strategist at Godot Media, a leading content marketing firm. She works with businesses and individuals creating targeted content for various requirements. She also manages a team of article writers at Godot. Other areas of interest include technology, science and fashion.

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8 Big Changes To LinkedIn Groups That Will Enhance Your Social

It’s no secret that LinkedIn is the number one social networking site for B2B Marketers.

Given the network’s user base of over 380 million and the fact that it’s a source of 80% of B2B social media leads, LinkedIn’s prominence in the B2B industry will not change any time soon.

So if and when LinkedIn makes a necessary change it is important that organizations make a note.

LinkedIn has made more than 2 million discussion groups private, a major step in the social network’s efforts towards improving the quality and professional nature of membership groups.

The move here was based on feedback of LinkedIn groups who craved real connections with peers and industry leaders helping them learn and grow.

Along with making the groups private, LinkedIn has also introduced several other changes that warrant a closer look for any brand making strides and gaining social presence on the network.

Here are the eight changes to LinkedIn groups that B2B marketers need to be aware of.

1. Groups have been designed with new features and fresh looks

LinkedIn members now can add images to their posts and mention other users they have in the group. Organizations believe that these changes can easily cut down on clutter, spam and promotional content within groups.

The navigation panel is simple and LinkedIn has significantly increased the amount of open space on the pages. The changes shown are among the most notable tweaks of LinkedIn groups.

2. Privacy of groups mean they won’t be indexed by search engines

The information that is generally shared on LinkedIn groups won’t be sharable via Google or any other search engine.

This exclusivity will increase the value of conversations held in different groups, followed by the fact that new ideas and strategies shared among members will be known to the ones who are a part of the group.

This major change will help B2B marketers establish thought leadership, showcasing knowledge that can lead prospective clients and customers to come back and check their company page, employee profiles and marketing collateral.

3. Group members will now be vetted

In order to join any LinkedIn group you need to make sure that your credentials are updated.

Having a professional image is a must, as well as having a fully fleshed out profile so that group administrators can assess how well they fit into their community. This generally works out positive for marketers who have spent deliberate time in optimizing their company profiles.

4. Changes for open groups

As an admin of a formerly open group, remember that your discussions can be seen on the web and shared among other social networking sites.

You need to have a bit of control on whoever has joined the group and what posts have been published.

Here are the changes for open groups:

• If your group has a sub group, then they are no longer considered to be the subgroups but regular groups. You will likely have to rename your subgroups along with the links to the old subgroups in the about us section of your LinkedIn group.
• Conversations won’t be public and are now no longer searchable, which will again mean that more people will want to post and comment since they feel safer. On the other hand you will get far less eyes on the discussions compared to before since the comments and discussions were the only thing that were first visible to the group.

5. New app available for LinkedIn groups

LinkedIn has released a stand alone group app, just for iOS with the android version in the pipeline.

Searching for various groups will not be possible through the app, but you can participate in discussions through the app followed by a new algorithm suggesting new groups just for you based on your profile and past interactions.

The new app will appeal to users who constantly engage in discussions whether on the go or in office. Leveraging the convenience of this mobile app and staying ahead of your engagement opportunities as a part of your social monitoring approach.

6. You can now recruit talent without distracting a group

There is a new tab made available within LinkedIn groups for various discussions related to job opportunities. The job seekers can approach hiring managers and other relevant individuals about job opportunities they are having separately, without distracting the quality and focus of the other individuals in the groups.

Having the job conversations being moved away from pure discussions, your insightful and influential messages will continue to compete less with the personal interests of some other group members.

7. Spammers will be put into the naughty corner 

From now onwards anyone who is perceived to be spamming the group will be relegated to a penalty box, or indeed booted out of the group altogether.

This privilege of acting against spammers not only extends to the group manager but to all the other group members as well.

Yes that’s right, any group member will now have the power to report or remove conversations that they believe don’t meet the guidelines of LinkedIn, and can even block the person who makes these comments.

8. Discussions are now called conversations

Every conversation that you have on LinkedIn will now be published automatically without any approval from the manager of the group. However the manager of a LinkedIn group can still remove the post, marking specific people as required in moderation. 

Wrap

There have been issues with LinkedIn groups for quite a long time now. And these changes will be exciting only for those marketers who are already leveraging LinkedIn’s power in the social landscape.

Now is the time for you to revisit your LinkedIn strategy using these new features and enhance your brands social presence.

What are your experiences with these changes made to LinkedIn groups? Better, worse or the same?

Guest Author: Jenni is VP from Ampliz who focused on business solutions. She writes more about current Marketing trends also she helps entrepreneurs to manage their sales and marketing through Email verification services.

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