Category: Digital Marketing

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Digital Marketing

9 Tips to Help Create a Killer Testimonial Video

Video is a powerful form of content – and it works for brands online. Nearly 52% of marketing professionals across the globe say video is the type of content with the best return on investment. And considering 65% of people are visual learners, what better way to connect with your potential customers than by featuring one of your most satisfied customers on video?

If you’re avoiding video for any reason and think a written customer testimonial will do the trick, you could be missing out. While a written testimonial will help with building trust and credibility, it won’t likely pack the same punch as a video. Your website visitors are 64% more likely to follow through with conversion after watching a video.

How can you make the most of testimonial videos from current customers, to win more customers in the future? Take a look at these tips.

Prepare and Send Questions Ahead of Time

To prepare the interviewee for the experience, prepare and send the questions you plan on asking ahead of time. This is especially important if they have never been on camera before, or if they are nervous about their appearance.

This allows the interviewee to prepare their answers ahead of time, and avoid any surprises during the recording session. They don’t have to stick to their written answers 100% of the time, but it lets them get an idea of what they want to say and how they want to say it before the big day. And, if you don’t want the final product to be presented in an interview format, you can edit the questions out when you reach the post-production stage. Which brings me to my next point…

Ditch the Script

I know it seems like you’d want a script to keep the star of the testimonial video on track. But the problem with scripts is, you can tell when someone has memorized their lines, or is reading from a piece of paper that’s off camera – or a teleprompter like setup.

You don’t want the video to sound forced, robotic, or insincere, and that’s the risk of using a script. Instead of having your marketing team write out something you want the person to say, talk to the customer ahead of time about the things you want them to talk about, and include any key points you want them to mention.

When it comes time to sit down for the interview, sit and have a conversation with the person. The more candid the video, the better. It may not feel like it’s the best approach, but it will allow authenticity to shine through – and that’s what you and your prospects want.

Present Context

Provide context to your viewers by showing something about where the video is taking place. This could be where you’re recording geographically, or other background information on where you are and why you’re there. This way the viewer has a bit of information about the client and the story you’re presenting with the video.

Keep it Short

Most marketing videos need to be kept short, but this is definitely the case for a testimonial. Your sweet spot is about 45 to 60 seconds – and you can say a lot in that time period – but you can easily go up to three minutes or so.

Does this mean your entire interview needs to take that long? No – you’ll want to spend more time with the interview than that, because what you want in the end is up to three minutes of usable material. The magic of the camera and editing – which we’ll get to in a bit – allows you to splice the video into something that works as a great testimonial even though you may have had a rather extensive conversation during the interview itself.

The final product will likely be a result of many snippets of the conversation, so there’s no need to worry about finding a continuous 45 second clip that’s perfect. You can create it in the editing stages.

Speak to Benefits – Not Features

Features of your product or service are great because they are usually what provide the benefits. But people don’t really care about the features – they want to know more about what the product or service will do for them and how it will make their lives better. Focus on the benefits – and show, rather than tell what those are, if and when possible.

Think about time saved, money saved, ease of access and so on. How did your product/service help your interviewee solve problems in their personal or professional lives? That’s what you want to talk about.

But, keep it simple. You don’t want to cram every single benefit in a video, because your video will likely run way longer than you need it to. Not only this, but people can only digest so many messages at a time – so if they watch the video and there’s too much going on, they may not really remember anything.

The thing is, you can have more than one testimonial video, from different customers. What helped Sally may not have been an issue for John, and what helped John may not have helped Teresa. When you have multiple testimonials, you can showcase a wider variety of case studies where your products or services have helped people – without trying to shove all the benefits into a single video.

Think About Locations for Recording the Video

To create an effective video, the background and context are only part of the equation. You also need to consider the overall composition of the video, which means taking time to consider various locations and venues for recording the video.

The right answer depends on several factors such as: your industry, the products or services you provide, the proximity of your customer to your space for meeting, and so on. If your office space is sufficient, that’s wonderful – but it will only work if you have customers who are local to the area, or are willing to travel.

Make it Visually Interesting

If you have a wonderful conversation with your interviewee, you’ve got one component of a stellar testimonial video – the audio. No matter how interesting the testimonial video is, it can get boring if it’s nothing more than three minutes of a talking head.

That’s where post-production comes in to add more flare to the final product. You can include product shots, multiple camera angles of the customers, add text on a plain background, or b-roll footage.

Share a Story

Stories sell. They allow prospects to relate with your interviewee and your business. Though it may feel awesome to convince a customer to record a testimonial for you, that’s not enough. You need more than an expressionless, robotic customer, to get the most from your efforts.

Ask them to tell a story when you put them in front of the camera. Maybe they can talk about what led them to your product – the pain points they were dealing with, and how your company solved it. Or, they could talk about their experience with your company compared to their previous provider, detailing why they’ve chosen to remain your customer. Just make sure they don’t mention the other business by name – you don’t want to make it seem like you’re attempting to make your company look better by trashing the competition.

Edit and Polish Before Using with Prospects

No matter how natural your interviewee is in front of the camera, you’ll have some editing work to do. The video needs to be edited so the message has a nice rhythm to it, and remains short and smooth. You’ll need to be sure the final video is a small enough file size to stream well on the web, but high enough quality that it looks professional.

If you recorded the video yourself, but aren’t confident in your editing skills, you may want to consider outsourcing the task to someone with more experience. Keep in mind that hiring a professional videographer often includes editing, but is typically too expensive for many startups and small businesses.

Video Doesn’t Have to Be Intimidating

If you’re not ready to create videos on your own, let us help you. We have video design and marketing expertise that can help you craft the perfect testimonial video for your audience. This way you can focus on what you know best, while avoiding the stress of creating the content yourself.

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Digital Marketing

Guide to HTTP Response Codes

HTTP status codes are a set of guidelines for how networking should work between systems sharing information. Most of us are familiar with 404 – because that’s what we see when we try to visit a page that’s no longer there. These codes are sent from the server where the website you’re visiting is hosted, to your computer. Many of them are created by errors accessing the website, rather than something that’s an issue with your computer or your web browser.

Web designers run into many of these status codes, as they should, since they were created for the benefit of designers and developers. Using the specific error codes, it’s much easier to debug to find the problem and fix it.

As a regular web user, most of these don’t matter to you – but educating yourself about them can help you know the difference between a problem with your web browsing, and a problem with a website your visiting. As a marketer, it helps to know some of these codes for SEO purposes – particularly those in the 300, 400, and 500 classes.

Without further ado – let’s take a look at all the codes and what they mean.

 

100 Class: Informational Status Codes

The 1xx codes are limited, because they represent operation at the connection phase. They’re sent during the connection, so they’re not the final status for the connection. These codes were not part of the first version of HTTP, and were added when 1.1 was adopted.

  • 100: Continue: This code signifies the initial response has been received and the full request will continue. You typically won’t see it when debugging, but will find it associated with most requests.
  • 101: Switching Protocols: This code comes into play when the server switches protocols to a different version of HTTP.

 

200 Class: Successful Request Status Codes

All of the 2xx codes mean the server requests are successful. The response varies based on the type of information sent, but regardless all codes represent a successful connection and receipt of information.

  • 200: OK: This just means the connection request was successful and the connection was made. Typically, it’s sent with a GET request to return some kind of information.
  • 201: Created: This code is a successful request after a new resource is created, like an HTML webpage.
  • 202: Accepted: The connection to the server was successful, but the response hasn’t been processed yet. It’s left open for other connections while an accepted response is processing.
  • 203: Non-Authoritative Information: This is similar to the 200 OK response, with the exception that the return information is coming from a different server. You may see this when you’re pulling from API data, or using a remote database or server farm.
  • 204: No Content: The connection to the server was successful and the information was accepted, but no information was returned from the server. There are several reasons this can happen, but all of the data transfer typically happens in the meta header.
  • 205: Reset Content: When someone submits content to the server, sometimes it will request a reset of the original document. You’ll see this status code from the server to the client when the document needs to be updated or reset.
  • 206: Partial Content: When you get this status, this is a partial response. It generally happens when there’s cached page content and the user only needs part of the page refreshed.

 

300 Class: Redirection Status Codes

The 3xx codes propose an update on the client’s side or a connection refresh. These codes relate to your web browser, but the refresh is usually automatic to adjust for new uniform resource identifier(URI) structures. When poorly implemented, the redirects can cause infinite loops, leading to constant refreshes until the server quits. If you’ve ever seen a “too many redirects” notice in your browser when a website refuses to load, these are the codes you’re dealing with.

  • 300: Multiple Choices: If the resource has moved to multiple locations, you’ll see the 300 status code with a list of options where you can obtain the requested webpage or resource.
  • 301: Moved Permanently: If you’re a web developer, you likely have some knowledge of this code. It is used to indicate a resource has permanently moved from one location to another, and is essential for changing a website from one domain to another, or making changes to a website’s URL structure. If you update a URL in WordPress, it creates a 301 redirect onto the old URL. If you’ve got a WordPress website, there are many plugins available to manage 301 redirects.
  • 302: Found: This is similar to a 301, but instead of being a permanent move, it’s a temporary move. So, when used, it tells servers the original URL is still active.
  • 303: See Other: When you see this code, the request successfully connected, but the response is found at a different URI. Each code should include the response URI in the header.
  • 304: Not Modified: If you’re loading a resource through cache, it will check to see if the document has been re-cached or updated since a certain period. If it hasn’t changed, the 304 means the content has stayed the same. This saves on bandwidth as cached resources don’t need to be sent over HTTP over and over again.
  • 305: Use Proxy: This represents a forced proxy connection. If there’s a webpage or other resource that can only be accessed through a proxy server, the 305code will return with a location header that contains the proxy URI.
  • 306: Unused: This code is not used in current HTTP versions, but was once used in older versions of the protocol.
  • 307: Temporary Redirect: This is similar to the 302 as they both represent temporary location changes. But, the 307 is more apt to handle continual updates to new URIs, on a more frequent basis, even though 302 could do it, too. At least where the general user is concerned, they are the same.

 

400 Class: Client-Side Error Status Codes

4xx codes represent client-side errors, which are generally the fault of designers and developers. However, not all of them are your fault, so there’s no need to panic or feel guilty. Instead, use them as an indication that something has gone wrong, and the fix is likely on your side, rather than the server side. The majority of these codes will also return information about the error so you can determine which page or resource is the cause of the error. Some messages will also indicate whether it is a temporary or permanent problem.

  • 400: Bad Request: This just means the server couldn’t understand the request, and its usually a result of a syntax error in the URI.
  • 401: Unauthorized: If you’re trying to access a file that is password protected with information stored on the server, and don’t have the right username/password, you’ll get this error.
  • 402: Payment Required: As of right now, this is not in use, and seems to be reserved for use in the future.
  • 403: Forbidden: This is much like the 401, except you cannot grant yourself access. This usually happens when a webmaster blocks certain folders or files from being visible over HTTP.
  • 404: Not Found: When you get this error, the page or resource can’t be found at the current location, and has no redirect or known location in place to direct you to where you can find the file. It’s a sign the file has been moved or deleted from the server.
  • 405: Method Not Allowed: This status code is associated with the backend development of a website. It means the request method cannot be accepted, with the most common ones being GET and POST.
  • 406: Not Acceptable: This relates to how information is returned. The server accepted the information, but the response cannot be sent. This typically happens when the client or browser doesn’t support the response.
  • 407: Proxy Authentication Required: This is similar to a 401, but it requires authentication though a proxy server.
  • 408: Request Timeout: Servers are programmed to wait a certain length of time for a response from the client server. If the connection takes too long, you’ll get this error. Sometimes, this can be fixed by waiting a minute or two and then refreshing the page.
  • 409: Conflict: You’ll get this error when the requested resource needs to be edited, but doesn’t have the permission to do so. If a file should be moved or deleted but the connection doesn’t have permission, this status will come up.
  • 410: Gone: This is more specific version of the 404 code. It means the resource has permanently moved and is not expected to return to the URI, but there is no indication of where it may be found in another location.
  • 411: Length Required: Though rare, this deals with the “content-length” header. Some return content may require a certain length before the request can complete. If you get this error, fix it by passing a content-length header into the request.
  • 412: Precondition Failed: If some information passed into the request-header is incorrect, you’ll see this code. The server evaluates the information and will often come back with a message that helps you see where the issue is.
  • 413: Request Entity Too Large: If the request is more than the server can handle, you’ll get this return code. Your server setup should dictate the largest possible file size, and you won’t see this if you don’t exceed that size.
  • 414: Request URI Too Long: The URI passed to the server is too long, you’ll see this error. Though not common, if there are too many parameters attached to the end of an URL, it may be too long. The only way to fix it is to address the website’s code.
  • 415: Unsupported Media Type: This is also a rare one, but it can appear if you’re passing data that can’t be supported by the server. You’ll see it if you’re using an unsupported audio or video file type, for example.
  • 416: Requested Range Not Satisifiable: This happens when the range request header doesn’t get a long enough response from the server. This happens when the server can’t access the full range of data.
  • 417: Expectation Failed: When you see this error, the expect request header cannot be handled by the server. The responses are vague, so it can be difficult to address this error code.

 

500 Class: Server-Side Error Status Codes

All 5xx codes represent errors on the server’s end of the connection. Some of them may provide additional information, but they’re not always understandable from the user’s end. Think of these errors as serious issues to address with the server administrator or your web hosting company.

  • 500: Internal Server Error: Chances are as an internet user, you’ve seen this at least once in your life. It means there’s an unknown error on the server and it cannot complete the request.
  • 501: Not Implemented: If the sent request to the server contains a functionality that’s not installed, you’ll get this error in turn. This can happen for several reasons, including a lack of software or backend languages.
  • 502: Bad Gateway: This error is more common in large networks. If a server can’t be connected or is invalid, then you’ll get a bad gateway error. It’s a complex networking issue and has nothing to do with the client.
  • 503: Service Unavailable: When this happens, the server is either down for maintenance or overloaded with traffic. The server can’t take on anymore connection requests.
  • 504: Gateway Timeout: In this case, your connection is successful, but the server is acting like a proxy and that response is taking too long. Sometimes you can fix this by waiting a minute or two and then refreshing.
  • 505: HTTP Version Not Supported: If you send a request with an unsupported version of HTTP, you’ll get this code. You should also see a message that tells you which versions are supported.

 

Status Codes are Essential, But Not for Everyone

You don’t have to memorize these codes, but as a designer or developer, it may be helpful to do so. Chances are unless you’re in the field and working with HTTP every day, you’ll never see any of these codes.

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Digital Marketing

Why Social Proof, Word of Mouth, and Influencers Are the Future of Digital Marketing Strategy

We get it: it’s hard to admit that your industry is changing.

Despite how cutting-edge we can feel as marketing experts and small business owners, the reality of existing in this space is that once you’ve found one way to make money and develop your business, it can be tough to move onto the next thing.

And yet, change is the order of the day. The digital marketing landscape is shifting under our feet every day, whether we like it or not. The more you’re willing to embrace that, the more effective your marketing efforts can be and the easier they’ll be to implement.

Fortunately for us, the future of digital media marketing strategy seems like it’ll reflect the core principles of effective marketing (but more on that later). What’s important to keep in mind now is that your digital marketing strategy needs to move forward, and there are some tangible steps you can take today to keep up with the times.

So, let’s start from the ground up. If you had no digital marketing strategy in place right now, how would you build one for the future?

Social Proof

The first (and arguably most important) pillar of any digital marketing strategy that intends to survive this new digital media landscape is going to be an emphasis on building social proof. To be fair, social proof itself is far from a new, revolutionary concept. Entire advertising campaigns revolved around building social proof and hoping that translated into sales.

But things have changed. It’s harder than ever to build that social proof, but accurately tracking it has never been easier. Once you break through the barrier to entry when it comes to social proof, you’re likely to enjoy higher consumer engagement and an uptick in sales because of it.

Social proof has a lot more to do with the effectiveness of a digital marketing strategy than people might care to admit, but it’s not difficult to see why. The modern consumer lives and dies by social proof A) because that’s the way the internet was set up and B) because of the chronic lack of trust modern consumers have for businesses that feel to ‘clinical’ and ‘corporate’.

Over the years, the internet has proven to be an interactive hub, which people use to both consume and provide others with information. The internet was made for social media sites, places where the average person could express their opinion and have it be respected solely on its merit as either valuable or worthless. The highly selective, well-educated modern consumer has come to expect more than a catchy jingle that says that your company is the best. Other people need to think it’s the best too, if you want that idea to gain any traction.

Which leads us to our second issue: the lack of humanity in social media and digital marketing strategies overall. If we’re being fair, it’s important to acknowledge that yes, marketing is an aspect of your business and because of that, it needs to be taken seriously.

But being serious about helping your consumers and taking yourself too seriously aren’t the same thing.

The easiest way of developing social proof is by connecting with people and hoping that your positive interaction and overall willingness to engage will convince them that your business is worth their time. All of this is very hard to do when you refuse to appear accessible or approachable on social media, like so many businesses still do today.

So, what exactly can you do to make sure you’re building social proof? Focus on creating positive interactions via engagement. If a customer loved your product/service enough to leave a comment or message, respond to them. It might seem meaningless and appear to have no traceable ROI, but it actually accomplishes a few things.

It ensures that your social media presence is something you’re in control of (something that many small business owners struggle with) when they first get started. Your social media presence should be proactive and constantly on the offensive.

Beyond that, it helps to improve the quality of the environment on your social media sites. Your community, the people who willingly choose to follow you, rely on a healthy environment. That’s what can turn an audience into a community in the first place.

Take the time to engage with your community. Whether it’s a positive comment or a negative one, what’s important is that you’re constantly engaged in some way and that you show a willingness to create a positive experience for them.

Word of Mouth

Some of you who aren’t familiar with these terms may respond to this sub-header by asking what on earth is the difference between social proof and word of mouth?

Well, while social proof is the overall presence of your business as it relates to social media, word of mouth is specifically about one method of sharing: person to person. With actual person to person marketing efforts being so effective, is it any wonder that digital word of mouth efforts have become such an important part of the digital media landscape?

Digital word of mouth is a lot easier to track, but much harder to get. The go-to method for this is the online review, which offers unbiased opinions to other fellow modern consumers. The online review may not be the sexiest aspect of social media marketing, but it’s certainly easy to see why this was the next step in the right direction.

Influencers

The general consensus on influencers is divided among both marketing experts and small business owners. On one hand, there are the marketers who believe that anything modern and underutilized should be considered as an acceptable part of the marketing strategy. On the other hand we have the traditionalists, who seem convinced that this fad will fade.

The reality, of course, lies somewhere in the middle. Businesses shouldn’t rely exclusively on micro-celebrities for buzz. But they also can’t afford to miss out on the benefits of having a reliable advocate, championing your brand. If you’ve never worked with any influencers, there are a variety of sites you can visit to start chatting with a microcelebrity quickly and easily.

What’s important to understand about all of this is that these three principles make up fundamentals of an effective digital marketing strategy today. Whether you agree with the direction the industry is headed in doesn’t matter at this point. The only question left is: how much money are you willing to lose due to stubbornness?

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Digital Marketing

What is Keyword Tiering and How Can It Increase Paid Search Profit?

Running PPC campaigns that meet your business needs without breaking the bank isn’t exactly an easy thing to do. It’s quite the balancing act for many, including those who consider themselves PPC professionals.

The entire goal is getting more clicks – and hoping those clicks not only translate to site traffic, but to leads that will eventually convert to sales. But when you’re on a budget, and even when you’re not really, you don’t want to pay for the wrong clicks. If you’re paying for a lot of clicks, but aren’t seeing a return on investment, those low quality leads are a waste of money. And even though sometimes the wrong clicks can still make you money, it doesn’t always translate to a profitable sale.

That’s where keyword tiering comes in to save the day.

What Is Keyword Tiering?

This is a method of prioritizing your paid search ad spend based on keywords you know are performing well. Some keywords are a waste of money and you need to stop bidding on them. When you stop bidding on the ones that yield you no profit, you leave more room in your budget for those that do.

It’s not possible to rely solely on branded terms because they are the ones that perform the best. You still need traffic and conversion volume, which translates to sometimes bidding on keywords that aren’t as optimal as you’d like. But the more of those kinds of keywords you have, the less profitable your account becomes.

If you’ve got a decent account manager, they’ll find a balance between the keywords so you’ll get profit and conversion volume at an affordable rate, but since your business needs change for a number of reasons. This means the number of conversions and sales your business can handle may also change.

Think about it. If the majority of your sales team is out on vacation, it doesn’t make sense to spend a bunch of money bringing in high quality leads while no one is around to close the sale.  Yeah, you could reduce your ad spend on all your keywords, but I’m here to tell you that you should just cut spending on the less profitable keywords. Tiering allows you to turn tiers on and off as your business needs change.

Setup Keyword Tiering

Step One: Check Your Tracking

Before you get started, it’s critical to have a quality conversion tracking system in place. If you don’t, your keyword tiering system may not be as effective as you’d like. It’s only as good as the data used to support it.

If you do not have several months worth of quality conversion data available, this must be setup before you can continue with the rest of the process.

It’s incredibly easy to track form completions in AdWords, but if you want to make keyword tiering work for you, it’s necessary to track all the conversion actions that matter to your business. Some examples include:

Less than 30% of AdWords advertisers are using high-quality conversion tracking methods. If you’re one of those accts that doesn’t have adequate tracking, you need to fix that first. If you’re using AdWords to generate leads, you must know which keywords produce sales. If you’re not aware of how profitable your keywords are, you won’t be able to develop effective tiers.

Step Two: Categorize Keywords

When you have one to two sales cycles worth of solid tracking data, it’s time to setup your tiers. Of course the right strategy will vary from one business to the next, and may even change over the course of business operations. In this example, I’m giving you four tiers, and that’s the starting recommend most people recommend. You may find you can get away with less, but you may also find that you need more.

Keyword Tiers

Tier 1: Proven Profitability

These are the best keywords you’ve got. They are the ones that are consistently producing profitable sales, and are generally driving most of your revenue. Unless your sales team is way too busy with the leads you already have, or you’re short staffed while your sales team is away, there’s no reason to ever turn this tier off. If you do, you’re missing out on new profitable business. And there’s no reason for these keywords to miss out on impressions because of your budget issues. Always remove the budget from a lower tier and allocate it here. Paying for impressions should always be on these keywords first.

Tier 2: Producing Sales

Keywords you place in this tier are generally a reliable source of qualified leads and sales, but for whatever reason, they’re not consistently as profitable as you’d like them to be. Your cost per click may be running a little high for these leads, or maybe the customer lifetime value associated with these keywords is low.

A lot of the time, it’s possible to optimize a bit and turn tier two keywords into tier one keyword. When this happens, promote it, but until then, leave it in the second tier.

If you’re looking to increase your lead volume, and you’ve reached the maximum share on the first tier, then you move down to this tier. The account will not be as profitable, but you’ll still get good leads and sales for a reasonable price.

Tier 3: No Sales – Yet

In this tier, place the keywords that are promising, but haven’t translated to sales yet. They may give you leads, but you’re not really able to predict whether or not those leads will convert into revenue.

If your sales team is really hungry and you’ve maximized your impression share on both tiers one and two, it’s time to turn on this tier. The right sales person can usually turn an unproven source of leads into a reliable stream of clients.

Tier 4: Producing Leads

At this tier, you’ve got your keywords that could go either way. They’re bringing you leads, but those leads aren’t the best match for your business. They are the ones who are unresponsive, or worse, trying to sell you something.

But, you stick with them because occasionally you’ll find the golden nugget that makes it worth it. It’s best to leave these keywords off until there’s major complaints about lead volume. Most often, the keywords you place here are expensive busy work for your sales team.

But, if team morale is down, turning on keywords in this tier will at least keep some leads in, which is better than nothing. Once the team gets busy working on tiers one to three again, you can turn the fourth tier off.

Back to Setup

Step 3: Labeling Your Tiers

At this point, you need to sort your keywords tiers within AdWords, so it’s time to label them. If you’ve never used labels in AdWords before, all you have to do is click on the Keywords tab. From there, click Columns, then select the double arrow next to Labels, and click Apply.

Next, check the boxes on all your tier one keywords. Click labels in the drop-down. Create new label, and name it “Tier 1”.

Repeat the steps with keywords in the other tiers you’ve setup for your business.

Step 4: Maximize Profitability

Once your tiers are setup, use them! To make it easier, setup custom filers for each tier. This way you can quickly see the keywords that are in that tier. Click on the Keywords tab, then choose Create filter from the drop down menu. Set the filter to “Labels contains any” and choose the tier you want. Save and apply the filter.

Over the course of the next quarter, you should notice your cost per conversion drop dramatically, as well as the cost per sale.

Smart Keyword Tiers Make the Most of Your Budget

Keyword tiering can help you make the most of your paid search budget, which is especially important if you’re working with a less than ideal amount of money. This strategy will of course take time to implement, but will increase the overall value of your AdWords account.

Do you use keyword tiering? If not, do you plan to now? Tell me what you think in the comments below.

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Digital Marketing

To Use a CDN or Not to Use a CDN

A content delivery network, or CDN, is a global network of servers. They are spread out across the world, and are responsible for a relatively large chunk of all traffic online. They server as the hosting space for static web elements, which ensures the dynamic elements of your website are served quickly, resulting in a better user experience. While using a CDN may be the answer for some websites, it’s not for others. Let’s take a closer look at why you may need one and when it’s a good idea to use one.

Benefits of a CDN

Since CDNs have servers all over the world, the idea behind it is that visitors in the USA would get their content delivered from the closest server, while a visitor in Canada would get their content delivered from a server in Canada instead of waiting for the one in the USA. That means websites load faster, since the data doesn’t have to travel as far. A copy of your website is stored on every single server in the CDN, and the server that delivers the content is always the one the visitor is closest to, so as to improve website speed.

Website speed is of course, one of the factors Google looks at when it considers where to rank your website in results. While there are many things you can do to improve your page load times, using a CDN is a quick and easy solution.

Using a CDN saves bandwidth on your host server, and keeps your website online in the event that a server goes down, or is taken down by a high volume of traffic. If one server in the network goes down, traffic is rerouted through another server, which keeps your website online. Though it may load slower because it’s not necessarily loading from the closest possible server anymore, it’s better than the website being completely down, which costs you business.

It’s hard to directly estimate the cost of downtime on a website, because not all websites are created equal. Maintenance and downtime is required occasionally, and there’s a reason many brands do it in the middle of the night.

Let’s say you have three hours of peak traffic per day where you earn $150,000 in total profit. Your traffic generates about $50,000 in profits per hour, or $833 a minute. That means if your have a 10 minute period of unexpected downtime just cost you $8,330.

Even if you’re a website that doesn’t generate revenue directly, you’re likely still relying on website traffic to get customers in the door. If your website’s down, they can’t find your address so they can come in, or they may just assume you’ve closed your doors.

Drawbacks to a CDN

CDNs can be harmful if you rely on any kind of automated testing on your website. If the network makes a change to the file, or ends up being unreliable, it can be harder to track down the problem.

If the CDN closes down, you will have to re-host your website yourself. If it doesn’t perform well, it will negatively affect your website performance.

CDNs don’t work without an an internet connection, so you cannot develop your website offline. You cannot edit the JavaScript or the CSS on the CDN, since this would change everyone else’s sites on the CDN, too. It’s a major security risk.

It’s easy to forget to update a code library if versions changes. You can use the JQuery CDN to avoid it, but it could also break tests if you have a feature in a new version that wasn’t backward compatible.

Are There Cases Where You Should Not Use a CDN?

If your website gets a lot of traffic and your assets are mission critical, using a CDN could go well, but it may not. If you’re considering it for reliability purposes, it may be worth investing in a dedicated web hosting plan. But, on the other hand, if your website is full of complicated code where there are many assets on a single page, it may be worth the performance benefit. The risk of the CDN going down isn’t as big of a deal as keeping the website moving as fast as you possibly can.

Popular CDNs

There are a number of CDNs to choose from, so I obviously cannot highlight all of them for you. Here’s a look at some of the most popular.

CloudFlare: There’s a free forever plan with limited features for people with small websites, or people who just want to try a CDN. Pricing starts at $20/month per domain. Security features are also included to protect against DDoS attacks. Plans include a shared SSL certificate, but it’s possible to upgrade to a dedicated one for just $5/month.

Amazon Cloudfront: This is the CDN from none other than Amazon. The Free Tier includes 50GB data transfer out, 2,000,000 HTTP and HTTPS Requests. From there, pricing is per GB, and based on the regional data location of the data transfer out, with pricing ranging from $0.085/GB to 0.170/GB for the first 10 TB a month. You are only required to pay for the bandwidth you use.

Stack Path – formerly MaxCDN: This service provides a robust control panel with a free shared SSL. It also comes with real-time statistics and reporting, 100% network uptime, and a 30-day money back guarantee. Pricing starts at $9/month for 100 GB of bandwidth per month. Opt for annual pricing, and you’ll get two months free.

CDN77: This CDN charges anywhere from $0.029 to $0.049 per GB, depending on your location and the amount of traffic you get. This is a pay as you go, only for what you use plan. There is no contract, and no minimum monthly usage requirement. There’s a 14 day free trial, too.

How to Choose the CDN for Your Website

If you’ve decided you want to give a CDN a shot, consider not only the price and the customer reviews, but also the analytics information they provide, as well as the performance, and APIs. With your analytics, you should be able to measure throughput and response time. Throughput is the the consistency of your connection during a user’s session, so you want it to be a good number, and response time, of course is the length of time it takes for the server to respond to the request from the browser. You need that number to be fast, too.

Analytics reports should ideally be customizable depending on the information you need for your business. It should include information about GB delivered, end-user transfer ratio, hits per second, completion ratio, delivery by data center, and other metrics to help you learn more about your visitors.

APIs allow you more flexibility with your CDN, since they can allow operations to be integrated into your automated processes, dashboards, and workflows. APIs are how CMS plugins are able to function.

Your pricing will vary based on the amount of data you’ll transfer, so obviously the more traffic you get, the more you’ll pay. Your CDN needs aren’t the same as mine, so when you talk with companies about your options, make sure you’re aware of all the different pricing structures that are available to you. Make sure you have the flexibility to change between pricing plans as needed, so your CDN can grow as you do. Can you pay as you go or will you be stuck in an annual contract? Are their any recurrent fees for additional services? What are the one-time fees?

How to Implement a CDN for Your Website

If your website uses a content management system (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal, then it is fairly easy to integrate on your website. Once you’re signed up with the provider you want to use, you’ll identify the static content on your site that your CDN should mirror. When using a CMS, it’s usually possible to integrate through adding a plugin to your website. There are certain CDN implementations that could require you to modify your name severs and DNS records on your domain.

If you’re running a custom website or web application, implementation can be a bit more complex, so I recommend you talk to your web developer before you do anything else.

After the necessary modifications are complete, you’ll want to test them. Check for mixed content and SSL related issues. You’ll also want to make sure your caching rules are setup, so you can make sure the cache frequency with the CDN is ideal.

When you need to modify your website or add new things to it, there are likely going to be changes in HTML, JavaScript and CSS files, which means there’s a risk the CDN will continue to serve the old content, rather than the new content. As such, you must make sure you have a purging mechanism you can rely on to grab the new versions from your server. You can do this one of two ways: either with the CDN’s user interface, or using an API call with a plugin from your CMS. Most of the plugins built for CDNs already have this function so it is taken care of for you.

Is a CDN the Answer?

A CDN is just one way you can boost your page load time. However, the best CDN for you will depend on exactly what you need. You need your CDN to have servers where your visitors are, to get the best possible performance, so if you notice a lot of your traffic comes from Israel, and there are no servers there – then you need to move to a different provider. But beyond that, you also need an affordable service that is easy to integrate and customize.

What’s your experience with CDNs? Share in the comments below.

Categories
Digital Marketing

Top Industry Conferences You Must Attend to Up Your Game

If you are involved in creating content or online marketing, it is essential to have the latest information to remain relevant and effective. The following conferences provide powerful information each year. Some are massive in size and attract industry leaders from around the world while others offer more intimate settings and give attendees the opportunity to make connections with presenters and other guests.

Each one offers something slightly different. For those who are able, attending more than one each year can be extremely beneficial.

 

MozCon Local

MozCon Local is a two-day annual event held in Seattle, Washington, in February. It is hosted by Moz, which sells inbound marketing and analytics software subscriptions. The company was founded in 2004 and began hosting events in 2006. What started as a summer training event has turned into an SEO extravaganza.

The conference has a large panel of regional and national brands, business owners, and agency marketers who are able to offer the latest cutting edge techniques and insights. Some of the topics covered include SEO to increase local rankings, content creation tips, obtaining reviews, and building citations. Those attending the conference are able to participate in a live question and answer session with panelists which allows many to have their exact concerns addressed in a way that simply isn’t possible at larger events.

 

MozCon

MozCon is also hosted by Moz in Seattle, Washington. It is another annual event that is typically held in the summer. This is a three-day event that focuses on giving actionable information related to brand development, CRO, SEO, the latest information on the mobile landscape, how to improve customer experiences, analytics, content marketing, social marketing, and more.

Nights are devoted to networking opportunities. This year, there will be a pub crawl, a meet and greet combined with short discussions on hobbies and passion projects, and a large party on the final day. This gives conference goers a chance to really get to know others in the industry on both a professional and personal level. The extended periods of socializing facilitate a greater sense of personal community that can be invaluable throughout the year.

 

Adobe Summit

The Adobe Summit is one of the most significant digital marketing conferences of the year. It is hosted each year in Las Vegas. The three-day event is preceded by an optional two-day preconference training experience which provides detailed courses led by Adobe Digital Learning Services.

The main event offers more than 150 labs and sessions in eight core fields of study; cross-channel marketing, data-driven marketing, customer experience, integrated marketing cloud, hands-on labs, mobile marketing, marketing innovations, and programmatic advertising.

In addition to the remarkable training opportunities, the summit also has substantial opportunities for guests to network. The welcome reception allows attendees to network with industry leaders, summit sponsors, and Adobe experts. At the end of the summit, a final bash features private entertainment from headliner artists.

 

Digital Marketing Innovation Summit

The Digital Marketing Innovation Summit, or #DigiMarketing, is held in New York and organized by Innovation Enterprise. The company organizes numerous global summits on specific topics such as digital strategy innovation, women in strategy, modern data management, and predictive analytics innovation. They are thought leaders that cultivate the most recent information in the field and create white papers, webinars, eBooks, and in-depth articles for their audience.

The focus of this summit is on brand communication to create a greater customer reach and return. There are more than 28 industry leaders who will be presenting and more than 150 senior level attendees. Topics include information on the latest SEO best practices, monetization of social media presence, developing relevant content to increase outreach, improving customer experiences by creating a multichannel experience, personalizing the customer’s experience with advanced attribution and tracking techniques, and methods to establish real connections in the industry.

The two-day event offers on-demand access to all presentations after the conference and more than 20 hours of networking opportunities.

 

Social Media Marketing World

Social Media Marketing World is a three-day event held in San Diego, California. It is advertised as the largest conference devoted entirely to social media marketing. More than 120 industry leaders give live presentations to about 3,000 attendees every year. The content is tightly focused and pitch free, a considerable draw for many guests and offers insights for both creators and marketers.

During the day, there are structured networking opportunities scheduled throughout the day. Four different events ensure no one is forced to miss a presentation in order to make room in their schedule to network with other attendees. There are also networking ambassadors who help people make the connections they most need. Networking lunches, power walks, and parties are also part of the package ensuring guests will have ample time to learn the newest techniques and make lasting connections.

 

Content Marketing World

CM World has been billed as the largest content marketing event in the world. It is a four-day event with more than 80 workshops and learning sessions presented by 225 industry leaders. Topics include measurement, strategy, and integration.The 2016 event hosted nearly 4,000 marketers from more than 50 countries and 2017 is expected to have even more attendees.

In addition to learning all the latest tips and tricks in the world of content creation, there are also ample opportunities to network with the presenters, sponsors, and other guests.

 

Content Marketing Conference

The Content Marketing Conference and Expo is celebrating its third year. The three-day event will be held in Boston this year. The previous conferences were held in Las Vegas and drew more than 300 guests in 2016. The core focus of this conference is helping attendees learn new techniques to organically grow their business with content marketing.

The theme this year is “Superpower Your Tactics”. There will be 30 superhero presenters with 8 keynote addresses, 6 workshops, 6 tracks, and 30 tactical sessions. Some of the topics that will be covered include, optimizing conversion rates, content strategy, SEO best practices, content marketing, content creation strategy, content planning systems, content optimization, and productivity.

The event also has numerous networking opportunities built in throughout the day and group events each night to promote interaction between attendees, sponsors, and presenters.

 

Marketo Marketing Nation Summit

The Marketing Nation Summit is one of the leading industry events for anyone in the field of digital marketing. This four-day event in San Francisco brings together leaders from marketing, IT, services, advertising and more. Before the conference even begins, attendees have the option to attend the pre-conference University Day which features additional workshops, presentations, and demonstrations by Marketo experts.

One of the unusual benefits of attending the summit is an opportunity to take the Marketo certification exam before leaving to become a Certified Expert. This is a well-respected credential that indicates expertise for Marketo practitioners.

In addition to the core topics covered by presenters, there are also numerous opportunities for guests to network in the evenings and throughout the day.

 

Gartner Digital Marketing Conference

The Gartner Digital Marketing Conference is hosted in San Diego, California. It is specifically designed for those who have a role in one of the following fields; marketing, analytics, customer experience and commerce, and multichannel marketing.

The topics for the conference include actionable information for marketing leaders who need new techniques to thrive during an era of empowered customers. New technologies, trends, techniques, and tools are covered to help conference attendees master their craft. The three primary tracks for this year’s conference are differentiation with a customer-first policy, facilitating multichannel growth strategies, and leveraging technology for a marketing advantage.

Specific topics on the agenda include marketing budgets, ad strategy, and efficacy, content marketing, customer journey mapping, choosing service providers, data-driven marketing, data management platforms, and multichannel marketing.

Networking breaks are scheduled throughout the day to ensure people have time to connect with those at the conference. There are also events planned before the beginning of each day and at the end to provide additional opportunities for industry leaders to connect.

 

Social Media Week

Social Media Week is both an organization and a collection of annual conferences. They host conferences on six continents for a total of more than 70,000 attendees, 5,000 speakers, and an additional 1 million people connecting to the events via mobile and social channels.

The global theme for all of the 2017 conferences revolves around algorithms and their role in the communication of the future. Discussions about the advances in software to cultivate and manage digital content and how it will impact our ability to communicate with one another will be the primary focus.

Five trends in this area will also be explored, including the emerging role of video, the power of messaging applications, the prominence of voice interfaces, machine assisted communication, and immersive experiences with augmented and virtual reality.

New elements of language that have begun to emerge will also be examined. These include GIFs, emojis, voice command, chatbots, online video, geo filters, and haptic responses. Presenters will look at how these innovations are fundamentally changing the way we communicate with one another, companies, and our devices and the impact it will have on future content development and marketing.

Official conferences will be held in Hamburg, Lagos, New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Milan, Jakarta, London, Miami, São Paulo, Chicago, and Rotterdam. Independent conference cities include Atlanta, Austin, Copenhagen, Toronto, Bristol, Rome, and Dubai.

 

Search Love

Search Love conferences are hosted by Distilled, an online marketing firm. The company holds several two-day events around the world. In 2017 there will be Search Love conferences in San Diego, Boston, and London.

These events will gather industry leaders from around the world to discuss the latest breakthroughs in analytics, search, content creation, paid promotions, and website optimization. These conferences tend to be midrange in size which makes them fantastic opportunities to network with not only other guests but also the presenters.

 

SEOToolSet Training

SEOToolSet is a company that offers advanced SEO tools for organic optimization. The founder, Bruce Clay began finding ways for websites to increase their search ranking in 1996. By 2000 the field of optimization was beginning to explode and spam began to increase exponentially. Bruce realized the industry needed a leader to provide ethical and effective SEO practices. He began sharing his knowledge and tools in training sessions that year.

The code of ethics he created at the same time has been translated into 18 languages and the training course he developed soon included a certification process for dedicated marketers who realized the value of ethical practices.

SEOToolSet Training is primarily held in California. Three 5-day training sessions are scheduled for 2017. These classes are held in intimate settings that facilitate greater learning opportunities for students. The founder takes part in the training along with other Bruce Clay, Inc., SEO specialists. The training sessions are ideal for anyone who has a need to understand SEO more thoroughly. This includes business owners, IT specialists, marketing managers, content creators, and web developers.

 

An Event Apart

There are multiple locations for An Event Apart each year. The 2017 locations include Seattle, Boston, Washington D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, and Denver. They are designed for UX developers, professionals, graphic designers, UI designers, and interaction designers. Project managers, marketers, writers, editors, and strategists also attend for the powerful presentations.

Each event takes place over the course of three days. Expert speakers discuss code, design, and content creation. There are ample opportunities for networking with other attendees and speakers.

 

Professional Development is Essential

In a field that changes as rapidly as digital marketing, professional development is essential for those who wish to provide the best results for themselves and their customers. Due to the pace at which the field evolves, traditional college courses and professional development classes aren’t typically the best solution. Professional conferences provide attendees with maximum access to some of the most brilliant minds in the field along with their latest tips, techniques, and advice for the upcoming year.

Categories
Digital Marketing

Why Traits Matter More Than Skills When Hiring Staff

When your business reaches the point where it’s time to bring on employees, there’s a certain happiness, accompanied by some nervousness. You want to bring on people who share your vision, and whom you can trust to take care of your baby when you’re not there. Hiring an employee can be a costly endeavor. If you hire someone who doesn’t stick around, or doesn’t perform the way they’re expected, you’re back at square one looking for another candidate. That’s why the decision to hire someone shouldn’t be taken lightly.

While skills matter, skills can be taught. Personality traits, on the other hand, cannot be taught. Whether you’re hiring one person or 50, and whether those people will work directly together or not, your goal as a business owner is to foster a healthy company culture. That’s why focusing on the personality traits, rather than skills matters. When you have that ideal company culture, you have a team of people who are happy to be working for you. When your employees are happy – your customers are treated better, and when your customers are happy, your bottom line will show it.

Seven years ago I hired my first Sachs Marketing Group employee, who’s still with us today. One of my goals was to create a casual work environment – no dress code, bagel Fridays, snacks and coffee in the office, and a personalized foosball table. I wholeheartedly believe the cool company culture I’ve created means people focus less on “office politics” and more on getting the job done.

 

Skills are Teachable

What you know changes from day to day, and though people can change, it’s not likely they will. Who you are at your core doesn’t fluctuate much – so if you’ve got someone who’s rude and has an issue with authority –  even if they are highly qualified in terms of experience and skill, they probably won’t be the better hire in the end.

Studies show while people can create new habits, it’s incredibly difficult to change a core personality trait, such as introversion or extroversion. This means, even if you have a highly qualified employee with lots of experience who does a good job at the skills required – they can still fail at your company because they don’t fit in with the rest of the crowd. It’s difficult for an extrovert to succeed in a culture of introverts – even though they’re good at the skills they know. The same can be said of an introvert who’s asked to excel in a crowd of extroverts. When these core traits don’t mesh, the employee may begin to feel isolated and alone, which could negatively affect their performance.

Sure, you may have to spend time (and money) teaching skills to the ideal candidate who fits the personality profile to a tee. But, wouldn’t it be worth it to know you’ve got someone who will feel right at home with your company, and know they’ll have a better shot at getting along with their coworkers? All it takes is one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch. One unhappy employee could easily impact morale, which has a way of affecting everything – down to your profit margins.

 

You Won’t Find It If You’re Not Looking For It

Before you can hire someone based on personality traits, you must first know and understand the traits you are looking for. The Targeted Selection hiring methodology is a popular one because it’s based on identifying the personal characteristics of people who are already thriving, and then ire people like them.

With this model, your company seeks to understand their best performers, by finding their target behaviors and attitudes. Then, they develop interview questions to help find people with those attributes. A key thing to remember here is these questions need to be about achievements and facts. Managers are not psychologists, so questions geared toward psychoanalysis should be avoided. If you’re asking theoretical questions, you won’t get useful data to help you find the employees you’re looking for.

For example, if you’re building a company culture based on flexibility, you could ask the candidate to tell you about the last time they broke the rules. If you have someone tell you they’ve never broken the rules – they’re either telling you this because they think it’s what you want to hear – or because they are so rigid and by the book that it would be nearly impossible for them to display the kind of flexibility you’re looking to include in your company culture. You can of course, go against your gut and hire them anyway, but if you do – don’t be surprised when they are not as flexible as you need them to be.

 

Standard Interviews Aren’t Effective

The best way to see how someone will do in your company is to watch how they work.The problem with this is, most industries don’t use this approach with their interviews, because it’s just not necessarily practical.

For others, like the culinary industry, it’s standard practice to have what’s known as a stage, where after a short interview, the applicant will come and work in the actual kitchen. Depending on the nature of the job and the restaurant, the stage may last a couple of hours, an entire shift, or several shifts. And it may or may not be a paid engagement. It’s an accepted practice, simply because you don’t know how well a line cook will be able to perform on the line – until you see him or her do it. And if you can’t see how they work until you throw them out there, you could see your restaurant go down hill – after you’ve made the hire.

In certain industries, it’s possible for management to go around to other job sites and look at the way the workers are performing. It’s how sports recruiters identify people they want to bring from high school to college teams on scholarship, and from college to professional league teams.

So, what about the industries where an actual on-the-job type trial just won’t work? That’s where simulation comes in.

Amazon uses simulation in their application process for customer service representatives. It also serves as a small amount of training for what those agents should do on the job, if hired. They use sample calls to demonstrate how it should be done, and give the applicant a certain amount of time to respond – knowing they have the information they need to complete the call correctly.

Though job simulations can help employers see how a candidate is likely to perform on the job, and can help applicants see whether or not they’d really enjoy the work in a fair way, they do come with drawbacks. Job simulations are time-consuming and expensive to development. You must have a space to conduct the simulation, as well as people to rate the simulation performance, and the necessary scheduling program that allows candidates ample time to complete the simulation.

Recruiting Efforts Matter

You cannot hire someone who doesn’t apply for your job. But, this is definitely a case where quality matters more than quantity. How can you ensure your business follows this philosophy? Rather than investing time and money into countless random job boards, start close to home. Talk to your current staff and ask them if there’s anyone who they’d be interested in referring to the company.

The reason for this approach? Generally speaking, people tend to spend time with people who are similar to them. If a person is thriving at your company, there’s a good chance they’ll know someone else who could also thrive there.

Many companies have employee referral programs in place, where if someone they recommend to the company gets hired to fill a vacancy, they get some kind of bonus. Sometimes, it’s a monetary bonus, while others it’s another kind of reward – but this depends on the terms of the program. Studies show referred employees are more satisfied with their jobs compared to jobs they’d previously had where they were not referred. And, they tend to work at a company longer – more than five years.  As they work with the company longer, their satisfaction with how and where they fit in the company culture and their ability to fulfill their job requirements tends to increase.

Enterprise Rent a Car posts a leaderboard to show what regions are referring the most candidates, to create a fun, healthy competition between branch locations. This results in a higher number of referred candidates.

While most would think the size of the referral bonus would directly affect the number of referrals, this doesn’t seem to be the case. When GoDaddy cut their referral bonus from $3,000 to $1,000, they saw an increase in referral volume. What this tells us is people recommend others for job vacancies because they’re happy and want to bring them on board, not because they’re concerned about the reward they’ll get if their referral is hired.

Another option, if you have the available staff on hand do take this route, is to promote from within. Employees who know there are opportunities for advancement are much more likely to stick with the company than people who think there’s nowhere for them to go from here. It’s less expensive to hire from within than to recruit an outside employee. It helps employees show loyalty, and teaches them that you value it. It also helps foster a seamless transition from one set of duties to the next.

Statistically, external hires are paid 18% to 20% more, and have higher exit rates. If they do manage to stay with your company longer than two years, though, they tend to get promoted faster than those who are promoted internally.

The Great Balancing Act

Personality matters when hiring, but it’s not the only thing you should base your decisions on. While skills are teachable – you can easily have two people who share the core personality traits you’re looking for, and have one be more qualified than the other.

Robert Jerjavec, CEO and founder of the Herjavec Group and investor on the ABC series Shark Tank says, “I’ve hired for the person, for the job, as a favor – I’ve done it all – but I can tell you that at the end of the day, it’s a balancing act to ensure you get the right mix of passion, drive, expertise, talent, and teamwork that will help your corporate environment flourish.”

You’re not going to get every hire right from the start – some people will stay with you for a while, and others will leave. Don’t beat yourself up if someone you thought would stay for a long time decides to leave. Sometimes, things don’t work out the way you expect, and that’s okay.

What kind of experience do you have hiring employees for your company? What tips and tricks would you say helps makes the process easier? Share in the comments below.

Categories
Digital Marketing SEO

Why Your SEO Needs to Be Executed by Professionals

It’s high time you get serious with SEO.

More than 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. The search engine is the first thing that people use to find something they’re interested in. Even if you’re running an AdWords campaign, you’re still not getting 100% of organic traffic that your website deserves because over 80% of internet users ignore paid ads and people prefer clicking on organic links as compared to paid links.

Don’t relegate SEO to the side. If you’ve been looking for a proven channel for acquiring customer, then SEO is a must for you. The question is: Who should do it? Should it be left to professionals or someone from your team who has no prior experience with SEO?

I would say, let the professionals handle your SEO. But don’t take my word for it, here are seven reasons why you should leave SEO to the experts:

 

1. Save time

Small and medium-sized businesses have a limited workforce. If you own a small business, chances are you’re already short of people so doing SEO by yourself can be a waste of time and resources. Hiring a professional SEO company can save you time.

SEO requires a lot of time – it’s not like building a few links in a couple weeks and you’re done. You’ve got to build links consistently. It can take 6 months to a year before you start seeing any noticeable change in organic traffic and rankings.

Let professionals do SEO for you while you focus on other important business tasks that are of strategic nature. For instance, instead of spending time acquiring more links why not use the same time to find business partners and move into new markets?

It’s all about hiring the right SEO agency that knows what they’re doing. They can work with minimal testing and experimentation, which means an expert will get to link building immediately as compared to an amateur or your in-house team that will spend several months on this testing and experimentation, which ultimately costs you time. Save it for your business.

 

2. Real results

Not every SEO campaign turns out to be successful. In fact, most of them fail. Do you really think SEO is all about building links? Not exactly.

Below is a complete SEO campaign planning pyramid that works at the backend of every successful SEO campaign.

Credit: Qualinsoft Blog

Can you develop such a strategy in-house? Amateurs cannot do it either. A professional will do it and once it’s done, you’ll see results.

Professional SEO experts will drive results, save you from penalties, and help you get rid of bad links. Getting the results you desire for your company can’t be completed by any amateur SEO team – it’s the work of experts.

 

3. SEO is difficult

Search engine optimization (SEO) is like the stock market. Search engine algorithms evolve with every search query. A website that is on page one at 4pm in California won’t be on page one at 4pm in Texas. Search engine algorithm is changed based on the search engine queries – so anything that works today might not work tomorrow.

This is because search engines (like Google) are dynamic and are always busy tweaking their algorithm. Google, for instance, released more than 11 major updates in 2016. Every new update means you have to revise your SEO strategy to make sure you are following the new rules.

If you’re new or unskilled in SEO, you can’t stay updated with all the algorithm updates and even if you somehow know about an update, you’ll be clueless as to what you’re supposed to do next.

You’ve got to understand that SEO isn’t just complicated, it’s difficult because you can’t do it in isolation. You have to stay updated and acquire new knowledge that you can implement right away – this is what professionals do.

The make SEO easier with their experience, industry connections, and knowledge. They make it work for you and your business irrespective of how tough it gets.

 

4. In-depth analytics

In a survey by a research institute, 44% of businesses reported that they don’t have the quantitative metrics to evaluate marketing ROI while 67% businesses don’t evaluate marketing analytics.

Imagine you’ve been spending thousands of dollars on SEO every month for the past 8 months. Your marketing team has undergone several SEO training but you don’t see any results. Your team is unable to tell you when it will work, why it isn’t working now, and when it’s expected to work.

Professionals, on the other hand, can tell you clearly what’s happening and how to make things better because they have the tools and resources to measure the progress and forecast results. You’ll be able to see the value of every single dollar spent on SEO with the help of charts, graphs, and detailed reports. For instance, do you know that you can assign a dollar value to your organic traffic (i.e., visitor) in Google Analytics? I bet not.

While an amateur SEO may know how to do that, he might not be in a position to provide further analytics and reporting on it, while a professional agency will make it easy-to-understand for you.

Besides, analytics don’t matter. How you use analytics for planning, forecasting, and improving ROI is what matters.

Everyone has access to Google Analytics but there are only a few who know that conversion funnels can be created in Google Analytics. Only a few have created the funnels. But there are professionals who know how to reduce funnel leakages, how to boost conversions, or how to fix the low conversion rate of organic traffic. This is something that only experts can do; they just don’t throw reports, but they make those reports meaningful, understandable, and tweak their plan on the results of the analytics.

 

5. Experience

SEO is more about experience than learning.

Professionals are experienced; they have done it in the past, and they can do it again today.

Beginner SEOs, on the other hand, may not know how to do it. Maybe they have never ranked a web page in the past but have read hundreds of case studies, know everything on link building, and can tell you their entire SEO plan in no time.

Would you prefer a professional or a beginner?

The truth is, a professional SEO agency is more than an outsourcing agency – they’re your best partner. Take it as a partnership opportunity.

Here is an example of what experience in SEO means and can do:

Eric Ward was having a live Q&A Google Hangout with his subscribers. During the session, a viewer asked why a certain website was ranking so high in Google despite poor SEO and a few links. Eric used Ahrefs to monitor the backlink profile of the subject website, which had only 6 backlinks and it was ranking on the first page for an extremely competitive search term with 1.6 million results.

Beginners will stop here but Eric moved on and ran a search query to monitor mentions of the website. The search showed that the website was mentioned (not linked to) from some top authority sites. He further inspected the social accounts of the website which had thousands of engaged followers. From there, he showed the viewers why Google was ranking this website despite having only 6 backlinks.

This is what experience can do to your website and SEO strategy.

 

6. SEO evolves rapidly

SEO strategies that used to work in 2012 don’t work today. In fact, what works for one website might not work for another.

Search engine marketing techniques evolve with:

  • Changes in search engine algorithms
  • Competition
  • Advances in technology
  • Search engine market share
  • Geographical location

SEO is a fairly large industry that can’t be conquered in a few days. Therefore, it’s better left to professionals who are in the industry to deal with the external factors.

Of course, your DIY SEO strategy might work exceptionally well for a few months, but a minor change in the algorithm can push you down the SERPs. By the time you’ll realize it, it’d be too late.

SEO experts have deep insights about the future of SEO or at least they try to analyze it. They can thus help you:

  • Avoid penalties
  • Adapt to new changes
  • Amend SEO strategy as and when required
  • Follow the trend

 

7. Consistent links and traffic

SEO is a long-term strategy; it can take as much as 22 weeks to see the impact of a link in terms of improved organic search ranking.

Links that you’re building today will continue to impact rankings for months to come. It’s not a one-time strategy. Instead, how you distribute links over a period of several months (or maybe years) is what’s needed.

This is where professional SEO marketers can come in to guide you. They can craft a strategy for your website and a link building strategy that will boost traffic, conversions, and improve and maintain the rankings.

Imagine engaging your marketing team full-time for SEO? You can’t afford it because your marketing team has to do a lot of other things.

If you stop building links once you’ve achieved the desired rankings, there’s every tendency that you’ll lose your positions. You have to generate links consistently to maintain the rankings. So, let a professional do it for you.

 

In conclusion…

If you need consistent, reliable, risk-free, and long-term organic search rankings for your web pages, better leave it to professionals. Anything less than a professional is a big NO.

Categories
Digital Marketing

How to Gather Customer Data Without Annoying the Hell Out of Them

Today’s businesses have to rely on customer data, not only to make strategic decisions to keep themselves ahead of the competition, but to better personalize the customer experience. And though customers want more control over data privacy and how their information is used, they are willing to share personal data when there are clear benefits delivered in exchange for that information. Nearly everyone will share information in exchange for cash rewards, whereas only 65.2% will share it in exchange for loyalty points redeemable for products and services.

So how can you collect the data you need to succeed in business and giving customers what they want, without being intrusive and annoying? It’s not easy, but it’s not as difficult as you may think.

 

Customer Data and Trust

Let’s take a second to talk about data and trust. That same study revealed 83% of people expect brands and advertisers to ask their permission before using any digital information. This “informed consent” is smart because it helps to establish trust between the consumer and the brand.

Customers are conflicted. One study showed 60% of consumers want those personalized, real-time offers from retailers, yet only 20% of them are okay with sharing their location, and only 14% are willing to share their browsing history. They want their cake, and to eat it, too – and it comes down to an issue of trust – or lack thereof.

Why are you collecting the data you’re collecting? Only when you understand the kinds of information you need and why, will you be able to properly communicate the reasons behind why you’re doing what you’re doing. If you don’t need someone’s credit score – then don’t ask for it. Take the time to outline the kind of information you’re collecting, why you’re collecting it, and how you keep it secure. Develop a comprehensive privacy policy and an opt-out policy, and make it easy for customers to participate in either case.

Once you have it all figured out, be transparent about it. Customers may not be too happy about having to share their location with you – but when they understand how and why it is used, and they see the benefit of it, they may do it anyway. If they are given the option to not share their location with you, and understand how their experience is effected if they choose not to, they will feel more in control of the situation.

 

Website Analytics

Google Analytics, and other website analytics options, such as heat maps and split-testing, will provide you with a plethora of information about the people who are visiting your website. Though the data is anonymous, it still gives you some insight you can use to create a better user experience in the future.

With Google Analytics, you can see information like:

  • Demographics: Country of visit origin, city, language, gender, age,
  • Engagement: Whether they are a new or returning visitor, the session duration, frequency and recency of the visits
  • System information: Browser, operating system, service provider; mobile operating system, mobile service provider, and mobile screen resolution
  • Traffic Acquisition: Where the visitors are coming from – search, social media, AdWords, and more
  • Behavior: Pages on the site they’re visiting, where they come in, where they leave, what they’re searching for on your site
  • Interests
  • Conversions

With heat maps, you can see where people are spending the most time on your website – you can use this to determine where their eyes naturally go, and whether or not they are scrolling to see all the content.

With split testing, you can serve two different versions of your website to randomly selected users – so you can determine which they respond to the best. It’s best to run a single split test at a time, so you can isolate the variables that made a difference in their response. You can test everything from the layout, to the site copy, to colors, to images and video, and more. Repeating split-test after split test can help you craft the “perfect” website for your audience.

 

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System

Surveys, Quizzes,& Polls

Whether you use an external service like SurveyMonkey, or something like Google Forms, or the built-in Facebook Polls feature, this is a non-intrusive way to get customer feedback data you can use to make improvements. You can also use it to learn more about your target audience preferences, thoughts, and opinions.

 Many retailers, like JustFab, are using quizzes to improve the user experience – tailoring it to the wants and needs of their customers based on their quiz results. Jamberry’s Stylebox subscription, uses a style quiz to let each customer customize their box, getting more value from their $25/month.

 

Social Media

Just like your website analytics can provide a wealth of information about your audience, so you can social media analytics data.  You can see demographics information about your audience, as well as engagement data to determine how people are responding to the content. This information, combined with information from other sources can help you make more informed business decisions and better targeted marketing campaigns.

 

Contests & Giveaways

If you have information you need to get, but feel like people would be reluctant to give it to you, try running some kind of contest or giveaway. You can tap into people’s love of free stuff, and they’ll give you a bunch of information in exchange for a chance to win.

If you’re seeking to collect emails so you can stay in contact with them after they’re done shopping with you, or in an effort to make them shop with you in the future, offer them a discount code that’s valid for a certain amount of time, just for joining your email list.

 

Loyalty Cards/Programs

Practically everywhere you look, there is a brand with a loyalty card or some sort of loyalty program. The specifics of each program vary, but the basic principle is the same. Sign up – give us your name, address, phone number, email address and X other data depending on the type of the program. Use this card every time you shop with us, and we’ll give you X free product, or X discount when you reach a certain threshold.

These types of programs attach each customer to their purchase history. Depending on the nature of the program, it may be to send the customer personalized coupons on a regular basis, to upgrade their status once a certain spending threshold is reached (Kohl’s Charge customers reach MVC – most valued customer – status when they spend $600 per calendar year. This gets them additional perks, such as free shipping codes throughout the year.)

 

Wishlists

On a variety of websites, like Amazon, customers have the option to “window shop” or compile a list of products they want to buy at some point. These are a great way to share gift ideas with friends and family, keep track of items you wan to save to purchase later, and remember items without actually placing them in your shopping cart. Wishlists are so popular, there are a number of websites where you can create your own wishlist from products across multiple retailers and websites.

From the business perspective, it helps keep an eye on which products are most desired and find patterns. For instance, maybe you notice that the majority of accountholders who are woman between the ages of 18 and 25 are the only ones with a particular product on their list. You can survey them to find out what is holding them back from buying – is it a want vs. need thing? A financial thing? Maybe put the product on sale and see if that entices any of the customers to move it from their wish list t their cart, and then go through the checkout process?

 

Content Marketing

No matter your niche and the products or services you’re trying to sell, your experience has value. And customers out there want to learn. Use keyword research and Google autocomplete, along with tools like Ask the People to find ideas for tutorials that people want.

Continuing with the Jamberry example – they are a direct sales company, selling vinyl nail wraps, nail polish, and other nail care products. Because the nail wraps are essentially stickers that must be applied with heat, many customers who are new to the company are nervous about the application process. The main company has a series of tutorials on their website, but individual consultants have created their own YouTube videos showing the various application and removal methods, to help educate their current customers and draw in new ones.

They’re not necessarily collecting customer information with those videos, but it does provide another source of analytics data to help make informed decisions about ways they can market their business to stand out from the competition from other consultants.

 

Data is Everywhere – and Makes the Digital World Go Round

 According to the IDC, we created 1.8 zettabytes – that’s 1.8 trillion gigabytes – of information in 2011. The following year, we reached 2.8 zettabytes, and we’re forecasted to reach 40 zettabytes by 2020. That’s a lot of data, and most companies won’t ever be able to use all the data they store. Instead of collecting all the data you can get your hands on, collect only what you know to be useful – and what you know you will use.

It will help foster trust with your customers, make the information easier to analyze for strategic decisions, and reduce the need for massive storage devices or costly cloud storage plans.

How do you feel as a consumer about the data businesses collect? As a business owner, do you feel like you understand it better, and does this make you less hesitant to hand the information over? Leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts.

Categories
Digital Marketing

Is it Time for a PPC Audit?

When’s the last time you looked at your PPC account? Is it doing well? That’s no excuse to leave it running on autopilot. When you audit your account, you’re looking deep into the nuts and bolts, trying to determine if there are areas that need work or some extra attention to improve performance.

 

When Should You Audit?

You can audit your account just about any time you want, because chances are you’ll always find something to improve your results. But, you should avoid audits when you’ve recently made changes to your strategy or made an account update. This is because the data could be skewed, which ultimately steers your audit in the wrong direction.

You should always audit the account when it switches from one account manager to another. The simple fact is that each account manager will set things up the way they prefer – in the way that works best for them. And what works for them may or may not work well for you.

I mean, think about how you have your phone set up – you have the apps you use most often on your home screen, right? But if someone else were to use your phone, they’d either have to download more apps, or move things around to get it the way they’d like it. It’s the same thing with PPC accounts. Do an in-depth audit when you take over management of any account.

 

Why Should You Audit?

You should audit your account if you’re having performance issues. You may want to audit the account when the same person has been taking care of it for a while, just so you can get a fresh perspective. You should always edit to seek improved performance.

 

Who Should Audit

It depends on why you’re auditing. If you’re auditing because of a certain issue in your account, then you could handle it yourself. It’ll be easier because you know the exact areas you need to dig into to solve the problem.

But, if you’re really digging deep for a comprehensive audit, consider outsourcing it. Why? Well, if you’ve been managing the account for any extended period of time, you’re slightly biased because you know you uploaded it, and you thought it would work. It may be harder for you to be objective, face the fact the that what you thought would work isn’t, and change it. And, if you set up the account, it’s easier to overlook the basics under the assumption that you set up everything correctly when you initially started the account.

 

How to Audit

Set up your date range

Go beyond 30 days – you need more conversion data than that. If you’re diagnosing a specific issue, look at the last three months. If you’re setting up for a general audit, look at the last year.

Make sure you know your key performance indicators (KPIs)

Without a solid understanding of the KPIs you’re going after, you won’t know the metrics you really need to dive into. If you’re handling an account audit on your own account, you’ll know what these are. But if you’re handling the audit for someone else, double check with the client or account manager to make sure you’re focusing your efforts where they need to be.

Make sure you’re properly tracking conversions

This is a huge mistake, because without the right conversion data, you can’t see whether all the PPC is actually working to help you, or the client, reach goals. This, of course, should be done as one of the first things during account setup, but a report shows only 29% of more than 2,000 audited accounts had effective conversion tracking – so it’s worth saying.

Why is that conversion tracking so important? Without proper conversion tracking, you won’t be able to determine which keywords aren’t earning you conversions. You should be spending a large portion of your budget on keywords you know have a history of producing conversions, because these are the terms your audience is finding you with.

Looking at the 29% of accounts that had proper conversion tracking in place, we see that 61% of the budget was spent on keywords that never converted. That means more than half of their ad spend was wasted. Of course, the more you spend on AdWords, the less gets wasted, but the average account wastes more than ¾ of their budget targeting the wrong search terms.

That wasted ad spend can be found and reallocated once you have the right conversion methods in place.

What happens to your cost per conversion if you’re continually wasting ad spend? It’s not as linear as you may think. Instead of a 10% increase in cost per conversion with a 10% wasted ad spend – you’re looking at an increase of 44% to 72%. And that increase goes up with every 10% wasted.

With a $10 cost per conversion, and a 30% wasted ad spend that increases to 40%, your cost per conversion goes up to $14.40-$17.20. But, if you decide to go a little crazy and bid on new keywords – and increase that wasted ad spend to 76%, then your new cost per conversion is $53.79 to $120.20.

That’s because the more money you waste on the keywords that don’t convert, the less money you can spend on the ones that do – driving your cost per conversion way up. And that trend occurs in every industry.

If your conversion tracking settings are wrong – the first thing you need to do is generate and implement conversion tracking code. Place it on the page that appears after a conversion is completed.

Check your targeting settings

Your campaign targeting settings take about five minutes to setup, so it makes sense to think you’ve got right and skip it. But, the truth is, a small mistake in this area can greatly affect your account performance. Double check your new campaigns to make sure the targeting settings make sense for the business – especially if the account has been in the hands of another manager in the recent past.

Check that the targeting is set to either the search network or the display network – not both. The networks target users in different scenarios/ And, metrics for each network are combined, which makes it hard to see how each one is doing. Plus, it takes away the ability to segment the budget by network.

If you’ve got campaigns targeting both – separate them now.

Use the search network when you’re working on a limited budget, and when you’re selling a product that people look for when they need it, like plumbers, electricians, HVAC professionals, and locksmiths.

Use the display network when you want to help familiarize people with your brand, when your sales process is long (to keep your brand at the top of mind with remarketing), and you have a sexy product that sells with images. You should also use it when you have compelling video assets.

You can still run campaigns on both at the the same time – but take the time to create a campaign for each network, allowing you to craft messaging for each network and control budgets and bids.

This way your data stays clean and it’s easier to make data-driven decisions for your business.

Check to make sure you’re setup for the right target locations, and that you’ve set your mobile bid adjustments accordingly, so your ads can show on mobile, if desired.

Check ad group relevance

Look through your ad groups to make sure none of them have more than 15 to 20 keywords. Clean up the ones that do. This is to keep data simpler for you, because larger groups won’t impact your performance.

You’re serving the same set of ads of all the keywords in each group, so if the list of keywords is too big, you’ll end up having to write generic ad copy. It’s better to break the ad groups into smaller chunks of keywords so you can create more specific ad copy for each semantic theme. This ensures your copy is more reflective of what the searcher is looking for – increasing the likelihood they’ll click om your ads.

Look at number of ads per ad group

If you’ve only got one active ad in each group, the previous account manager wasn’t testing ad variations. This can limit your account optimization. But, if you’ve got too many ad variations in each group, it can be hard to see which ones are performing the best. Aim for two to three variations in each ad group so you can more effectively test. Once you’ve found a winner, stop the losing ads, and test a new variation.

Setup ad extensions, if they’re not already

If you don’t have any ad extensions, get to it. The extensions do affect the rankings, but just putting them there isn’t good enough. You need to make sure the extensions are appropriate for the business itself.

If you’re using call extensions, make sure the phone lines are well-staffed so they can handle the call volume. If you can’t have someone there to man the phones 24/7, make sure the extension is only set to run during business hours. If you’re running an e-commerce store, make sure to get rid of location extensions so the ads won’t appear in Google Maps.

Check automated extensions to make sure they’re not negatively affecting your performance. Usually, they don’t, but if you notice they are, opt out to avoid wasted ad spend.

Check your keyword match settings.

A quick refresher:

  • Broad: Your ad may show for searches that include any of the keyword terms, including related searches, relevant variations, synonyms, and misspellings.
  • Modified Broad: Your ad may show for searches that contain all the terms, preceded by a + sign, in any order.
  • Phrase: Your ad will only show when the search query has the keywords in the exact order you enter them – but other words are allowed before and/or after the phrase.
  • Exact: Your ad will only show for searches that are the exact keyword phrase by itself.

A common mistake is to run all the keywords with the same type – which Google defaults to broad. While they can get you plenty of traffic from people searching, they won’t necessarily convert well because they’re only loosely related to your business. Using all phrase or exact match, however, can be just as bad, because this can greatly damper the search volume.

Look at what’s there and determine the strategy behind it – and how well it’s been working. Make adjustments accordingly.

Look over your negative keyword lists

Use negative keywords to defend against impressions and clicks from the searchers that aren’t qualified. If the account manager before you didn’t use this strategy, you have a lot of work to do. Look at your reports to see the terms that have been triggering your ad, and then look through them to see if there are any terms you don’t want to continue show for. If you find them, set those as negative.

If there’s already a list of negative keywords, look over them closely. Make sure all of them are a good fit and aren’t stopping impressions for your keyword. Check the negative keyword match settings to make sure they’re behaving as intended.

 

Create Your Plan of Action

Now that you’ve gone over everything in the account, it’s time to craft a strategy for improvement. You know exactly what you need to do to get the account in good shape, and can start tackling it one task at a time. Audits may not be fun, but they’re a necessary part of the journey.

How often do you audit your own PPC accounts?

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