Benchmark Search Magazine - Issue 9 by ClickConsultLtd

SEARCH MARKETING MAGAZINE

BRANCHING OUT IN 2021/22 N E W F I N A N C I A L Y E A R . N E W D I G I TA L S T R AT E G Y.

NEWS

SPRING 2021

TRENDS

PREDICTIONS

LET’S BEGIN...

A WORD FROM THE CEO Hello and welcome back to Benchmark Search Magazine. This is the first issue of 2021 and ninth issue in total. With the outbreak of Covid-19 and alterations to the way many businesses work we’ve taken a little break but we know the importance of this publication. That’s why we have packed this edition with 72 pages of content to help you understand the ever changing digital and search marketing landscape. Businesses and brands are fighting over the digital space, especially in highly competitive markets. This means that if you are to grow then you need to stand out from the competition and give your site the best opportunity to rank for your key search terms. Over the coming pages you will get plenty of actionable advice about boosting your online performance, building trust and expanding your audience. When businesses look to either stand out or change tack, they do so knowing that there is much work to be done. With the new financial year, comes new budgets and the chance to expand into different market spaces. By understanding where you are as a company and where your audience is, it is possible to get a better return from all of your campaigns. For those that haven’t thought about the social platforms they use, the power of digital PR, the nuances of SEO that leads results and the profit that can be generated from spending on PPC, now is the time to act. As always we’ve picked the brains of our experts so that you can get the answers to your queries and the return on your investment. We hope that you enjoy this issue and the features within and as always, thanks for reading. Do make sure you keep a look out for issue ten which will be with you in July, featuring insightful interviews and of course, informative opinion to help you get the most from your website, content and marketing.

CONTRIBUTORS CONTENT John Warner Scott Rumsey Adam McKinley Adam Warriner Alan Reeves Karen Ngai Radina Ivanova Hannah Wilkinson DESIGN Lisa Anne Mittal PUBLISHED BY Click Consult Ltd ADDRESS: Willow House Oaklands Office Park Hooton Cheshire CH66 7NZ PHONE: 0333 009 8299 WEBSITE: www.click.co.uk

Until next time…

Matt Bullas, CEO

CONTENTS

CONTENTS 6

INDUSTRY NEWS A round up of everything search marketing, bringing you the most important updates of the last few months

YOUNIVERSITY: HOW FEDERATED LEARNING WILL CHANGE SEARCH

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THIS QUARTER IN SOCIAL Adam McKinley covers all of the latest social media developments and stories of the last 12 weeks

ORGANIC SOCIAL MEDIA Adam McKinley looks at improving your ROI and getting wiser with your social media budgets

5 ‘STARTING STEPS’ TO FACEBOOK ADVERTISING Adam Warriner highlights the best way to get started with Facebook Advertising

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ORGANIC SOCIAL MEDIA

GOOGLE PRIVACY SANDBOX: WHAT IS IT AND HOW CAN IT HELP YOUR BUSINESS? Alan Reeves breaks down the latest Google Privacy Sandbox announcement and looks at the key features

PREPARING FOR THE CORE WEB VITALS UPDATE John Warner gives you a step-by-step overview of the latest CWV news and helps you prepare for the update in May this year

YOUNIVERSITY: HOW FEDERATED LEARNING WILL CHANGE SEARCH Federated learning is a hot topic at the moment so why not let John Warner take you to ‘Youniversity’

CONTENTS

OUR RESOURCES The chance to download one of our free resources.In this issue we showcase … UX & Accessibility: Building better websites

2021: THE YEAR OF CREATIVE CAMPAIGNS

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CASE STUDY - UTILITY BIDDER See how our digital PR campaign delivered in all areas of a competitive market for on of the UK’s biggest energy comparison providers

ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF DIGITAL ON FUTURE MARKETING STRATEGIES Scott Rumsey assesses the impact of digital on future marketing strategies

TACKLING THE PROBLEM OF MEASURING DIGITAL MARKETING EFFECTIVENESS Straight from Click’s Marketing team we tackle the problem of measuring digital marketing effectiveness

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ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF DIGITAL ON FUTURE MARKETING STRATEGIES

TECHNICAL SEO: WHY SHOULD YOU CARE? Radina Ivanova asks the question ‘why should you care about technical SEO?’

2021: THE YEAR OF CREATIVE CAMPAIGNS Karen Ngai discusses why 2021 will be the year of creative campaigns

THE BENEFITS OF HAVING A DIGITAL PR STRATEGY FOR YOUR BUSINESS Hannah Wilkinson explains the importance of digital PR in the new financial year

CASE STUDY - CITATION Find out how we have helped one of our clients excel with their search marketing despite the challenges of 2020 - In this issue we look at Citation

INDUSTRY NEWS

INDUSTRY NEWS GOOGLE BLOCKS 3.1 BILLION ADS IN 2020, SAYS ANNUAL ADS SAFETY REPORT It’s been a turbulent year for marketing, and Google’s latest Ads Safety Report reflects the trends advertisers have been noticing and adjusting to for a while: “In 2020, our policies and enforcement were put to the test as we collectively navigated a global pandemic, multiple elections around the world and the continued fight against bad actors looking for new ways to take advantage of people online.” Google involved both manual and automated ad monitoring to ensure that all advertisements served through the platform met the existing, new, and updated ads policies. Carolyn Lyden of Search Engine Land posted that Google had updated its Sensitive Events Policy with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and then later with the misinformation surrounding the election. These event policies eventually escalated to include bans on ads related to politics as well as COVID-19.

GOOGLE TESTS DISPLAYING COST ESTIMATES IN LOCAL SEARCH RESULTS A Google spokesperson confirmed with Search Engine Land the company is testing displaying cost estimated directly in the local panel in the search results. This information comes through a partnership with Homewyse, a fact-based, independent reference for home product, installation and service estimates. Google displays an estimated range of the cost to have certain jobs done in your local area for your home. As you can see below this could soon become the norm and will affect many industries.

Regarding the pandemic, Google banned ads related to price gouging of important pandemic-related supplies like masks and hand sanitizer. Their policies included restrictions on ads that promoted false cures and opportunistic abuse of audiences. Google also initially banned election-related ads after US polls closed on November 3 through December 10. When the insurrection at the Capitol occurred on January 6, Google again shut down all ads mentioning politics, impeachment, the inauguration, and the insurrection at the US Capitol. The ban was meant to stop the spread of false information and violent actions. GOOGLE MY BUSINESS RELEASES TOOL TO MANAGE YOUR REVIEWS The newest feature within Google My Business allows local SEO practitioners to see recent reviews on their listings in a single place and check the status of reviews they reported to Google. This feature seems to only work for Google My Business accounts that have a small number of listings in them. Previously, there was no real way to see the status of reviews you submitted for a takedown in an organised fashion. Now there is by using this new tool.

GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE RICH RESULTS REPORT UPDATED Google has made two changes to the rich results report in Google Search Console. One of the changes was related to the job posting report and the other change was related to the FAQ and Q&A rich results report. Google explained that starting on March 11, 2021 and going forward, Google has changed its requirements for the Education, Experience, and ExperienceInPlaceOfEducation properties of job posting structured markup. Because of these changes you may notice an “increase in warnings for Job Posting instances,” Google said. If you see these new errors or notices in the rich results report, make sure to review those warnings and make sure your job posting structured data follows the new requirements in the documentation.

INDUSTRY NEWS

PINTEREST POWERS UP CREATORS AND RETHINKS STORIES AND INFLUENCERS

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“The content on our platform is about you and what you want in your life. We really tried to harness planning that became way more short-term last year during the pandemic. We wanted to fit people in their current lives and how they planned in the hour.” explained Colleen Stauffer, Global Director of Creator Marketing for Pinterest. The pandemic didn’t just change our lives out in the real world, it changed digital lives as well. It modified the demands users placed on familiar tools. For marketers, taking note of these shifts on social media platforms is essential. For the architects of these communities, the trends cut deep into human experience. Before the pandemic, Stauffer was aware of the tendency for users (called “Pinners”) to be “future-looking” in the content they sought out. They might be planning a vacation, or maybe they were redesigning a room in their home. With the pandemic, those same people were now searching out short-term solutions. What quick meal could they prepare just before a work-from-home meeting, while their child did remote learning on the family laptop?

As a quick response last March, Pinterest moved up the launch of their Today tab. The feature allowed users to get quick updates from reputable sources like the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organisation. Users could also find kid-friendly baking recipes and recommended movies to fill all the downtime indoors. At the end of September, Pinterest introduced Story Pins, the ability for creators to tell multi-page stories. This beta version also included a new creator profile and analytics tools to track performance. Pinterest is also giving creators access to analytics across the community through its trends tool. With the new beta Story Pins, creators can also publish directly to Pinterest. Also, Pinners can browse and then message creators directly within the platform via the new profile.

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“Creators want the content to live in one place. Creating content directly on Pinterest has been a need for our Pinners. They want to find an amazing food creator, see their Story Pin, and get the recipe, all within our ecosystem.” - Stauffer

INDUSTRY NEWS

GOOGLE MY BUSINESS ADDS MESSAGING TO DESKTOP INTERFACE Google is rolling out the messaging functionality within the Google My Business desktop interface. This is not fully live yet, but many can see it already. Previously, messaging was available through the Google My Business mobile app, but not within the Google My Business desktop interface. When you log in to Google My Business on your desktop browser, you may see a “Messages” button on the left side navigation. If you click on it, it loads the messaging chat box tool. You can see your customers on the left, click on them to load the chat window and then respond to their chats. Many businesses have desktop computers open and ready to use. Often it is easier and faster to type on a full size keyboard when responding to customer requests. So this should make the process of responding to customers easier for some businesses.

INDUSTRY NEWS

GOOGLE SEARCH DARK THEME MODE EXPANDS BUT SEARCH ADS ARE HARD TO DISTINGUISH Google has been expanding its roll out and test of dark mode or dark theme for the company’s search interface. Google started testing this back in December 2020. Recently, more and more searchers are noticing the new dark theme show up in Google Search on desktop or mobile. It is much harder to see the “Ad” label in the Google dark theme than it is in the light theme. If you are in this beta and you have access to the new appearance controls in Google Search, you will have an option in search settings to toggle on or off dark theme. There is an “appearance” section that gives you these three options; “device default,” “dark theme” or “light theme.” GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH UPDATE REDUCES DUPLICATE IMAGE RESULTS Google announced on Twitter that in November 2020 it has released an update to Google Image Search that reduces duplicative images in the image search results: “We made an improvement to Image Search to reduce duplicate images, so that we can display others that are relevant yet visually distinct.” Google has said the images it shows are now more visually distinct from each other, providing a more diverse set of relevant images for your query. Google said in its announcement that this went live in November 2020, “we hope this improvement, which we introduced in November, helps everyone better make use of Google Images to be inspired and informed as they search visually.” Google added that it made improvements to the images and categories it uses for alternate meanings of words. The obvious example Google presented was jaguar, which can be the animal, sports team, car manufacturer or others. NICK CLEGG: FACEBOOK SHOULD BE TREATED AS SOMETHING DIFFERENT, NOT AS A PUBLISHER The Vice President for Global Affairs and Communications at Facebook since 2018, Nick Clegg, recently made comments on Facebook in the Telegraph which is the national British newspaper in London. Nick Clegg has said that Facebook should be treated as something different and not as a publisher. It has come to notice that Facebook rolled out a new tab that will showcase news content according to the preferences of the 51 million UK users of Facebook. Each user has also been given the feature to personalize the news as they please and pick only those areas of news in which they are interested in. This includes Facebook hiring paid publishers for their content and it will also be paying journalists to pick out stories and articles of interest that will be expected to appear on the news tab every day to keep the users entertained. The news section will deliver a variety of news from different categories such as entertainment, health, beauty, business and local news. Nick thinks that this move is a big step for Facebook’s reach towards journalism.

INDUSTRY NEWS

FACEBOOK TESTING BRAND SAFETY TOPIC EXCLUSIONS FOR ADVERTISERS Facebook announced today that it will begin testing news feed topic exclusions for advertisers this year. Citing advertisers’ brand safety concerns, Facebook says the new feature would allow marketers to choose whether or not to show their ads alongside potentially sensitive content: “For example, a children’s toy company may want to avoid content related to a new crime show, so they could select the ‘Crime and Tragedy’ topic,” the blog announces. Along with Crime and Tragedy, other topic exclusions being tested include News & Politics and Social Issues, according to a Facebook spokesperson. The idea is to give advertisers more control over where their ads may appear in a user’s newsfeed and means brands will be able to ensure that their products and services don’t show up next to topics the brand doesn’t associate with or believe in. Facebook says they “will continue to listen and learn during the test,” so there could be more topic exclusions added or the currently planned exclusions could evolve. GOOGLE ADDS BLACK-OWNED BUSINESS LABEL TO PRODUCT RESULTS Google announced that black-owned businesses can now also show a special label or indicator in their product and shopping results within Google Search. The label reads “identifies as Black-owned” and shows in the product listing results within Google Shopping. The label is available to businesses that identify as Blackowned. Google said “starting today, we’re extending the Black-owned attribute to Google’s Shopping tab, so people can easily identify and buy from Black-owned businesses on Google.” This “feature will become visible to shoppers and available to all U.S. Google Merchants in coming months.” So this is only launching in the U.S. right now. GOOGLE WILL NOT BUILD OR USE ALTERNATE IDENTIFIERS TO TRACK USERS Once third-party cookies are phased out, Google will not build or use alternate identifiers to track users across the web, the company announced on Wednesday. It also reiterated that its web products will be driven by the Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) API, which groups people with similar interests into cohorts so that advertisers can still serve relevant ads while providing a degree of individual privacy. Google seems committed to its Privacy Sandbox, the company’s initiative to set new standards for targeted advertising, emphasizing user privacy. As an alternative to third-party cookies, FLoC is a major part of that, so advertisers may have to get accustomed to this new method of targeting, especially if alternate identifiers prove to be unviable.

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“People shouldn’t have to accept being tracked across the web in order to get the benefits of relevant advertising. That is why Chrome made the decision to deprecate support for third-party cookies. We believe that aggregate and de-identified methods being developed in the Privacy Sandbox can effectively monetise web publishers,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land.

INDUSTRY NEWS

WHATSAPP ADDS VOICE AND VIDEO CALLING TO DESKTOP APP WhatsApp is rolling out support for voice and video calling to its desktop app, the Facebook-owned messaging service said Thursday, providing relief to countless people sitting in front of computers who have had to reach for their phone every time their WhatsApp rang. For now, WhatsApp said its nearly five-year-old desktop app for Mac and Windows will only support one-to-one calls for now, but that it will be expanding this feature to include group voice and video calls “in the future.” Video calls work “seamlessly” for both portrait and landscape orientation, and the desktop client is “set to be always on top so you never lose your video chats in a browser tab or stack of open windows,” the firm said, which began testing the feature with a small group of users on desktop late last year.

TWITTER WORKING ON INTEGRATING NEWSLETTERS ON ITS SITE, FOLLOWING REVUE ACQUISITION Twitter announced its acquisition of newsletter platform ‘Revue’ at the end of January. The company has already begun to integrate the product into the Twitter.com website. It appears “Newsletters” will soon be the newest addition to Twitter’s sidebar navigation, alongside Bookmarks, Moments, Twitter Ads and other options. The company is also readying a way to promote the new product to Twitter users, promising them another way to reach their audience while getting paid for their work.

INDUSTRY NEWS

GOOGLE’S FLUTTER TOOLKIT V2 ADDS SUPPORT FOR DESKTOP AND WEB APPS At an online event, Google announced Flutter 2, the newest version of its open-source UI toolkit for building portable apps. While Flutter started out with a focus on mobile when it first launched two years ago, it spread its wings in recent years and with version 2, Flutter now supports web and desktop apps out of the box. With that, Flutter users can now use the same codebase to build apps for iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, Linux and the web.

MICROSOFT LAUNCHES ‘GROUP TRANSCRIBE A new project from Microsoft’s in-house incubator, Microsoft Garage, introduces a different take on meeting transcriptions. TechCrunch reports that while today there are a number of real-time transcription apps to use on your phone — like Otter. ai or Google’s Recorder app for Pixel devices, for example — Microsoft’s new Group Transcribe app reimagines meeting transcriptions as a more collaborative process, where everyone simultaneously records the meeting on their own device for higher accuracy. It also offers real-time translation for languages spoken in over 80 distinct locales. To use the app, one person would first initiate the meeting in their own device. They can then invite the other meeting attendees to join the session via Bluetooth, a scannable QR code or by sharing a link. After the other participants join the session and the meeting begins, each person will see the transcript appear in real-time on their own device.

THIS QUARTER IN SOCIAL

CLUBHOUSE APP CONTINUES TO RISE This story started to make waves through early 2021, where more and more people who have been given an invitation, started to head on over to Clubhouse App to see what all the fuss is about. The social networking app is focused around drop-in chats and has already become popular with individuals wanting to learn more from industry experts in fields such as marketing, cryptocurrency, mindfulness and business ventures.

Well, in February, it surpassed 10 million downloads and is still technically in the Beta testing stage, with only those who have been given an invitation from an already member able to take part, so we expect to see this grow further. ‘STORIES’ NOW ON LINKEDIN COMPANY PAGES LinkedIn introduced ‘Stories’ to its channel towards the back end of last year, allowing personal profiles to create stories that are featured at the top of timelines when visiting on a mobile device, finally catching up to some of the other social channels with this feature. Well, it is now available to company pages too. The offering gives companies the ability to create content in the Stories format. This content could include anything like “timely information, thought leadership, and behind-thescenes content,” just like on other platforms so far. The one big difference that could become very useful to page admins is the “swipe up” ability, meaning you can direct people to any URL through your story, which could be great for directing people to a service, a new blog post or a place to purchase/ sign up for tickets to any of your events and exhibitions.

TWITTER IS TESTING ‘SPACES’ AND ‘SUPER FOLLOW’ Of course, with everything in the social media world, it is only a matter of time before the big-hitters start to take ideas from others and build it for their own platforms. This is what Twitter is testing with ‘Spaces’, it’s own version of the Clubhouse App in the Twitter platform itself, and ‘Super follow’ which lets users charge followers for exclusive regular content, similar to Patreon and Substack. Starting with ‘Spaces’, this will allow Twitter users to create a public space which you can then invite up to 10 accounts to attend. Once inside, you can share thoughts, emojis and a lot more. You can then decide who has speaking privileges and who is just there to listen, creating a space to share ideas and thoughts without having to type it all out. ‘Super follow’ is being introduced so people can follow your account, but gain access to content that is not available on your usual timeline, similar to a newsletter. This could be a great option for industry leaders who use their normal timeline to entice people in, then their ‘super follow’ timeline to give content, advice and ideas that are worth the subscription. Keep an eye out for these becoming part of your normal Twitter experience.

THIS QUARTER IN SOCIAL

INSTAGRAM INTRODUCES THE “PROFESSIONAL DASHBOARD” It seems like Instagram have finally got to grips with the increase in businesses turning to the social channel for their marketing efforts. Their latest update is the “professional dashboard”, a hub for businesses and creators with a professional/business account to get more advice and tips from Instagram on how best to use the platform.

FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM COMBINE FOR CROSSAPP MESSAGING It is no secret that Facebook continues to ensure the two apps are working more closely than ever, with the ability to automatically share content across both, but now it has also combined its direct messaging features. What this means is that you can search for and message, video chat, or reshare posts with people across Instagram and Facebook. You can however still choose who messages you, with the settings being updated to ensure you have full control over your messaging. To decide where you receive message requests and who can contact you, head to Message Delivery Settings on Facebook. However, your Active Status, when enabled, now works across Facebook and Instagram, so people on either platform can know when you are online.

The new dashboard, which is available at the top of your profile when on the mobile app, has been created to help you make better decisions and stay informed about everything Instagram wants you to know, such as new updates. It consists of three features – discover insights on your performance, tools to help grow your business and a bunch of educational resources to read and improve your knowledge. Pretty handy right? It comes off the back of 82 million accounts visiting the previous hub which was being tested, take a look yourself. SHARING YOUR TWEETS ON SNAPCHAT AND INSTAGRAM STORIES This is something you have probably seen a lot more recently on your own timelines, but following on from the ability to share tweets through its own Fleets feature, Twitter has now also made it easier to share tweets directly to Snapchat and Instagram Stories, when using the mobile app. When you click on “share tweet”, you will find these options in there, along with the usual copy link etc. and it is a great way to promote any deals, competitions or product launches you might be promoting on Twitter, allowing you to cross promote to these other platforms easier. It is also a good way of sharing testimonials of your products and services, meaning you can share tweets from anyone who has tweeted about your brand in a positive way. Certainly one to try out for easy promotion.

THIS QUARTER IN SOCIAL

TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR LINKEDIN COMMENTS The latest update from LinkedIn is one businesses can use to fight the increase in bullying and spam on the social channel. The new update now allows you to take control of your LinkedIn comments when you publish new content, meaning you can now restrict certain accounts from commenting, everyone as a whole and also curate your own feed.

LINKEDIN HAS INTRODUCED PRODUCT PAGES LinkedIn Marketing Solutions has announced the launch of LinkedIn Product Pages, which is a dedicated tab on company pages for products. This tab, which can be added to company pages that are selling products through LinkedIn, can be highlighted to allow for people visiting your page to purchase directly through the platform.

The three updates from LinkedIn regarding this are – restricting audiences from individual posts (target just connections or those who have RSVP’d to an event for example), restricting just the comments (so people can still see the post) or curating your own feed on the channel so you don’t have to see all the posts from connections you don’t want to see.

Businesses that are using this feature can use Product Pages to “spotlight product endorsements and testimonials by users, gather ratings and reviews from current users, and generate leads.” This can be achieved with custom call-toaction buttons, including demo request forms or contact sales forms.

This update is currently for personal profiles, but expect to see if for business pages in the future too. DEDICATED PAGES FOR HASHTAGS ON YOUTUBE This is along the lines of something we have previously reported on, with YouTube pushing its discovery pages, allowing for people to find more content than ever before. The latest update is the next step to this. YouTube is finally creating dedicated pages for hashtags, allowing you to follow and discover content based on the hashtags you are most interested in, pretty similar to most other social channels, so we feel this is a bit late, but still handy. To find these hashtags pages, if you are watching a video on the channel, click on the hashtag to then see a full page of every video on YouTube that has also used the hashtag. This is great for consumers and audiences who are watching the videos and want to see similar content, but it is also useful for businesses too, meaning there are more opportunities for your videos to be watched and discovered if you optimise them properly with hashtags when you upload. A NEW WAY TO VIEW SHORT VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE Back in September, YouTube announced its new video format “Shorts” which is similar to the types of videos we are used to seeing on TikTok. It has recently been testing out new ways for users to view these shorts on its platform. If you are viewing YouTube on your mobile device, it is now testing out a “Shorts” icon to the top or bottom row of the app, making it easier to view and discover this video format. Users who are part of the experiment will either see a Shorts icon instead of the Explore tab or a Shorts icon instead of the Cast icon in the top row. The Explore icon has been moved to the top row, while casting can still be done in the player while watching a video. It seems like YouTube is pretty focused on pushing this video format in 2021, giving another option for businesses and creators to work together to create compelling and exciting content.

What makes this different to other platforms? You can specify certain job roles relatable to the products being sold, such as “Social Media Specialist” for example, which will then show your product to the relevant people.

TWITTER IS BRINGING BACK ITS VERIFICATION PROGRAM Having not verified any accounts or given the option to since 2017, Twitter has announced that it is bringing back its verification program, meaning more accounts can be verified on the platform. Twitter has updated its references to align better with Wikipedia’s “published standards for notability and article quality.” The “News” category will now include “News and Journalists,” the “Sports” category will include “Sports and esports,” and the “Entertainment” category now clearly includes digital content creators. Of course other things like proof of identity, follower numbers and engagement will be taken into account alongside this, but expect to see new accounts verified coming into the new year. This also means some accounts that were previously verified may now lose their verification if they don’t fall into these new categories, or were previously verified by mistake.

THIS QUARTER IN SOCIAL

FROM OUR EXPERTS

ORGANIC SOCIA HOW BEING WISER WITH YOUR BUDGET CAN INCREASE PERFORMANCE - ADAM MCKINLEY HEAD OF SOCIAL

The role of the social media manager has adapted and evolved dramatically over the years. From the early days of keeping on top of your businesses’ timeline posts to what now seems like a minefield of stories, influencers, evaporating messages, automation, carousels and video to name a few, it can feel overwhelming to know exactly where you should be focusing your efforts. Social media marketing is becoming increasingly more important to brands and businesses, as senior decision makers switch on to the results it can achieve for sales and awareness when done right. However, knowing what % of the marketing budget should be set aside for social media can be a stumbling block, with those running the social media strategy often short changed with what they can do. It doesn’t always have to be the case, you can still achieve your main goals and KPIs through social media on whatever budget is thrown at you, it’s about being clever with your strategy.

FROM OUR EXPERTS

L MEDIA CHOOSING THE RIGHT CHANNELS One thing that business owners often make a mistake with when it comes to social media marketing is thinking they have to be on every social channel, this isn’t the case. If you are hiring one social media manager, and you want your brand to be active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Snapchat, Messenger, Pinterest, Reddit and YouTube, then your content (and their time to focus on each) is going to be watered down and less effective. You don’t need to be on every social media channel. Each channel has a different focus audience, so picking the right ones based on your target audience and product/service will have a much bigger impact and use of your budget than being on them all. Does your brand create wall art for apartments? Head over to TikTok and showcase that living room before and after “glow up”. Financial certifications? You’re going to be drowned out with disinterest on Instagram so focus your attention on LinkedIn. This will allow you to build a community of the right people who get switched on to your brand through that social channel, and also allows you to invest more money into the right place, to be clever with your content and to try new things.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL LISTENING We can’t stress this enough, social listening is one of the most important things when it comes to your social media strategy. Understanding your audience, what their interests are, what is trending for them, what content they react to the best, what topics they are discussing and what is working from competitors can have such an impact on your success. Getting this right, and investing budget into doing it properly right at the start of your strategy means you can go into your content plan with confidence in what those who would purchase from you will react to, rather than using your time and budget to create and publish content without that prior knowledge. Of course, social listening is something you can invest in right throughout your strategy too, to ensure you always stay on top of the industry. This can be done through working with a social media agency to produce detailed reports for you, or through social listening software. You can also find some pretty handy insights through the channels themselves, such as top performing posts, who your audience are, their interests and month-by-month comparisons.

FROM OUR EXPERTS

INVEST IN GOOD QUALITY CONTENT OVER QUANTITY Next up is your content. Once you have a more tailored approach to which social channels you are focusing on, and what your audience are interested in, it’s all about mastering the right content. You don’t need to be creating 5 or 6 different pieces of content each week to make sure you are posting every day on social media. Again, this will create a watered down strategy, you are much better off producing one great piece of content a week, that is highly engaging to your audience. Investing in video content is a great strategy for social media, with 53% of marketers saying video has helped them build awareness in the past, and 94% of marketers who have used video look to continue with it. On the other side of things, 66% of consumers prefer watching video than reading about a product. Getting your content like this up to scratch, and seeing the results on ROI you are getting from it will be a much better use of time and budget. Creating video content for example, doesn’t have to be expensive either, social channels such as Instagram and TikTok, along with third party apps for mobile, is making it easier than ever for brands to create video content for their social media channels. This is also an effective strategy as posting too often on social media channels such as Facebook, can actually have a negative impact, as the more people see your less thought about content, the less likely they are to engage with it, meaning you could be dropped down people’s timelines due to the algorithm. It’s important to get that balance right.

FROM OUR EXPERTS

WORKING WITH THE RIGHT COLLABORATORS AND INFLUENCERS Another area that can be easy to waste your money on is through influencers and collaborators, with marketers believing getting a feature from someone with loads of followers as a success. This isn’t always the case, follower numbers should not be the focus when working with influencers, due to the availability of purchasing fake followers. Engagement rate is where you should be looking. Putting time and budget into picking the right influencers to work with will get you much better results. Getting featured from a micro-influencer with 10,000 followers and an engagement rate of 10% is much better than working with an influencer with 100,000 followers and an engagement rate of 0.5%, as the micro-influencer audience is much more dedicated to the content they are publishing, meaning there is more trust when they feature your brand. There are certain influencer industries that are starting to get over-populated too, with brands starting to work more closely with niche influencers from areas such as flower arranging or woodwork as an example, working closely with them as to how best to fit in the brand using their speciality and knowledge. This can be a much more effective use of your budget, and a great opportunity to be memorable by thinking “outside the box”. The rise in TikTok is not one to be missed when it comes to collaborators too. More brands are turning to the channel (when related to your audience of course), but here it is effective to give more artistic license to the collaborator, rather than a strict brief, they’re the experts on the channel and they know exactly what their audience would be interested in. Use their knowledge.

FROM OUR EXPERTS

Five ‘Starting Steps’ to Facebook Advertising - ADAM WARRINER PAID MEDIA STRATEGIST

FROM OUR EXPERTS

1 SETTING UP YOUR ACCOUNT THE RIGHT WAY Facebook, unfortunately, isn’t as plug and play as Google when it comes to setting up your account. With Facebook, there’s a lot of different levels and ways to advertise your page - and it’s crucial that you’re advertising in the right way on Facebook if you want to get the most out of your performance, and the most visibility out of the impact you’re having. It’s easiest to think of Facebook Advertising as having 3 core ‘levels’. • • •

Facebook Business Manager Facebook Ads Account Facebook Page

You could run ads at a Page level, boosting the posts which are doing well to try and increase reach - but you’d be limited to only Impression, reach, and engagement metrics within the interface.

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It’s crucial that you’re advertising in the right way on Facebook if you want to get the most out of your performance, and the most visibility out of the impact you’re having.

You could go a level up, running ads from your Personal Ad Account. This would give you more access to choosing your targeting, as well as letting you see more performance metrics for the ads you run. It would also put you in better control of how the budget is spent for each campaign. It would also open up the Facebook Pixel - allowing you to properly track events on your website and control what you’re optimising for more granularly on campaign by campaign basis. Most of all, it allows you to target Lookalike audiences - some of Facebook’s best performers. The highest level - the Facebook Business Manager, allows you to control and manage the access to your Ad Account, as well as have multiple Ad Accounts if so required. It unlocks the ability to use a Line of Business, which helps you look at your performance data under different Attribution Models and Attribution Windows. In our mind, the more data and information you can get and play with the better, so we believe it’s imperative to fully set up your account the right way, so you can run your ads effectively.

FROM OUR EXPERTS

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It’s important with interest based targeting to think beyond the standard match-ups and take advantage of the data Facebook has.

2 CAMPAIGN STRUCTURE IS KEY Facebook has a wide breadth of targeting options - where do you start? It’s best to think of Facebook activity like a funnel similar in concept to a ‘purchase funnel’ on a website. Top of the funnel are those that aren’t aware of your brand. Middle of the funnel are those that are aware of your brand but aren’t actively engaged. Bottom of the funnel are the low hanging fruit - people that have engaged with your brand and been on your website, but not taken that last big step to purchase. When you break up your audiences into a funnel like this, it becomes less daunting as a management task. We mimic this funnel breakdown in the campaign structure, having separate campaigns for each area of the funnel. This allows you to break up the performance by quality (as the bottom of funnel users are going to be better engaging and better converting on your ads), and see at a glance how the different areas of the funnel are helping boost your business.

FROM OUR EXPERTS

3 CHOOSING YOUR AUDIENCES It’s no secret Facebook has a multitude of information available about its users. From relationship status to political affiliation - where you like to buy your eggs to educational level. But how can you best use this data? There are 3 main types of audiences: • • •

Interest Based audiences Demographic audiences Custom audiences

The demographic audiences are self explanatory - what are the demographics of your audience. Limiting who your ads show to by age, gender, marital status etc. These settings are best used to hone in on any personas your business has. We wouldn’t recommend however, excluding any demographic groups outside of this - instead, move them to a different ad set and see how they perform. This may just shed light on a new target persona you’ve been missing out on!

4 OPTIMISING YOUR CAMPAIGNS So you’ve got your campaigns and audiences running, what’s next? For Facebook, ad copy is key. It’s easy to sweep it aside and add in some standard headlines and body text like you would for a platform like Google - but the key difference between Google and Facebook is the search intent. People aren’t searching for your ads on Facebook, they’re being shown them while they’re trying to do something else. Having striking, eye-capturing copy that’s relevant to your audiences and their needs is crucial above all else on Facebook. You want to be running multiple variants of your ads - constantly testing to see which bit of ad copy or CTA is evoking the strongest response. It’s staggering the difference you see in performance by changing even 1 word on your ads. You also want to be getting knee-deep into your campaign’s performance, looking for every opportunity to split out a group into a new ad set. Maybe you see a spike in sales during the mornings - you want to get the best control you have over this time of the day, and ensure enough budget is being allocated to it. Don’t assume Facebook’s automatic optimisations are doing the best job possible!

Like the name suggests interest based audiences are targeting the interest your user has. What brands do they interact with? What industries are they in? What football team do they support? It’s important with interest based targeting to think beyond the standard match-ups and take advantage of the data Facebook has. For example, you’re a company that sells biscuits so you target other biscuit brands - that makes for a strong audience. But what other audiences can you do maybe you sell fancy biscuits - what other shops are your fancy-biscuit-eating audiences going to go to? Custom audiences can be retargeting audiences set up through the Facebook pixel, (GDPR compliant) email lists, audiences created through 3rd party tools, or those generated by Facebook, such as Lookalike audiences. Lookalike audiences are some of the strongest performing audiences we have, and are based on a seed audience. You can show Facebook the users who have visited your site in the last 2 months, and Facebook will look at all the information about those users, and find those most similar to them.

5 REPORTING ON YOUR SUCCESS Because Facebook doesn’t have the search intent that Google has, it’s important to recognise how it’s helping audiences convert without you realising it. Although you will see ‘last click’ conversions that happen in the same session, a lot of users aren’t ready to convert there and then - and may be busy in the real world. Remember that this isn’t time they’ve set aside to look something up like on Google, this is an extra 2 minutes they had to look at their phone. Facebook’s Attribution Windows are a great way of accounting for this, bringing in the assisted conversions into the interface. Facebook’s automatic attribution window is 7 day click (previous 28 days) and 1 day impression. This means if they click on your ad and convert within the next 7 days even if they come back directly or through organic search, Facebook will claim this conversion. You can also look at your Facebook performance through different attribution models (if you have your account properly set up!) and compare and contrast. There is no ‘one size fits all’ method of attribution for every business, so it’s important to think about the way your users go through to purchase or complete a lead form, and find the right method for you.

FROM OUR EXPERTS

Google Privacy Sandbox What is it and how can it help your business? - ALAN REEVES DIRECTOR OF SEARCH Google, as we all know, holds the keys to search marketing success for many businesses. Brands across the globe must adhere to a strict set of rules and must accept a set of best practices in order to ensure that their websites are displayed for their target keywords. Failing to understand the importance of the Google algorithm and the way the business operates in terms of ranking websites can be a fatal mistake and ultimately can have a detrimental effect on a businesses search performance. It is for this reason that when the company makes an update, the industry, and those operating in it must sit up and take note. With the way data is collected and managed changing drastically over the last few years it is perhaps no surprise that the search engine decided to make changes to the way they process, hold and manage data. Google recently announced that they were moving away from third-party cookies and that they would introduce a ‘new look’ Privacy Sandbox in order to maintain fairness and continuity. For all of the pressure that businesses faces whilst thinking that they have to obey the ‘Google’ machine it is fair to say that Google is going through great lengths to include the industry in the Privacy Sandbox, in terms of getting everyone’s input and feedback. There can’t be many businesses that would/ could employ 6000+ engineers for 2-3 years and foot the bill for this kind of development - and for the industry that’s a huge win-win. Google initially said that: “Third-party cookies would be killed off in Chrome by 2022 and that it was only a matter of time until they were purged from advertising.” This led to the aforementioned Privacy Sandbox - a fancy name for the framework that the company wants all advertisers to adopt in

order to let advertisers run targeted ads without having direct access to users’ personal details. It will become a place for tips and advice and home to guides and information shared not only by Google but industry experts and developers.

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Commenting on this Digiday said: “Unsurprisingly, Google stands to profit the most from the death of the third-party cookie. In the absence of third-party cookies’ use with Chrome, the alternative for advertisers is to use Google’s first-party data within its own tools.” “This cements Google’s dominant position in digital advertising. Google already tested a similar theory last year when it launched the Ads Data Hub; that interface now represents the only way advertisers can understand userlevel information about programmatic campaigns.” SO WHAT IS THE PRIVACY SANDBOX AND WHY DOES IT MATTER? In the cookieless future, Google wants ad targeting, measurement and fraud prevention to happen according to the standards set by its Privacy Sandbox, whereby cookies are replaced by five application programming interfaces. Google announced the changes in January 2021 and set out the amendments to working process in the following statement:

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“The Privacy Sandbox introduces a set of privacy-preserving APIs to support business models that fund the open web in the absence of tracking mechanisms like third-party cookies.

FROM OUR EXPERTS

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This year has been like no other and Google want to help businesses accelerate their recovery by getting privacy right.

The Privacy Sandbox APIs require web browsers to take on a new role. Rather than working with limited tools and protections, the APIs enable the user’s browser to act on the user’s behalf—locally, on their device—to protect the user’s identifying information as they navigate the web. The APIs enable use cases such as ad selection and conversion measurement, without revealing individual private and personal information. In engineering terms a sandbox is a protected environment; a key principle of the Privacy Sandbox is that a user’s personal information should be protected and not shared in a way that lets the user be identified across sites.” This is a shift in direction for browsers. The Privacy Sandbox’s vision of the future has browsers providing specific tools to satisfy specific use cases, while preserving user privacy. A Potential Privacy Model for the Web sets out core principles behind the APIs: • •

To establish the range of web activity across which the user’s browser can let websites treat a person as having a single identity. To identify the ways in which information can move across identity boundaries without compromising that separation.

WHY HAVE GOOGLE DONE THIS? Well, the short answer to this question is that this year has been like no other and they want to help businesses accelerate their recovery by getting privacy right. Indeed this was the topic of discussion in the latest vlog by Matt Brittin, President of Google EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa). Publishers and advertisers want to provide content, including ads, that is relevant and interesting to the user. On today’s web, people’s interests are often gauged by observing what sites or pages they visit, relying on third-party cookies or less-transparent and undesirable mechanisms like device fingerprinting. As a result Chrome will launch an origin trial for the Federated Learning of Cohorts API (FLoC). FLoC proposes a new way to reach people with relevant content and ads by clustering large groups of people with similar browsing patterns, hiding individuals “in the crowd” and keeping their web history on their browser. Initial tests of the FLoC algorithm, show that the proposed API could be similarly effective as third-party cookies in serving relevant interest-based ads. Indeed federated learning is fast becoming ‘a thing’ and has been covered in more depth by our very own John Warner in an article later on in this magazine.

FROM OUR EXPERTS

OUR KEY TAKEAWAYS Click Consult’s Director of Search, Alan Reeves highlighted some areas that he thought would affect the market in the coming months. First he mentioned that there seems to be a lot of talk around value based bidding, specifically when it comes to third party data and secondly the considerations that we have to make regarding predictive modeling for non-click consent. Value based bidding The changes to GDPR two years ago means that there is a need for consent for a user to be targeted on their previous searches and queries. There is also a subset of data on this based on the preferences of the user and other information they have shared with partner sites. Companies want to get the highest return on their investments and as such PPC is an attractive proposition. Of course, this process is often reliant on advertisers connecting their first party data to their accounts in order to allow optimisation towards improved conversion value. If businesses are targeting the right people at the right time then they have a far greater chance of success. The data and analytics that are available means that it is far easier to measure performance in 2021 and as a result there are more touchpoints for businesses to use to optimise their efforts. Google says that users can maximise the total conversion value of their campaign within a specified budget with a maximise conversion value bidding strategy. This type of bidding strategy uses advanced machine learning to automatically optimise and set bids. It also offers auctiontime bidding capabilities that tailor bids for each auction. Users are able to define the value that they want to maximise, such as sales revenue or profit margins, when they set up conversion tracking on their account. Through the process of machine learning we once again touch on the importance of utilising responsive search ads as part of your strategy. Responsive search ads are the most flexible ad format to date, allowing advertisers to add up to 15 different headlines and up to four descriptions. Google will then start testing different headline and description combinations and automatically adapt in order to provide the most relevant ad combination to customers, taking into account elements such as the keywords audiences look for, the devices they use, their location and online behaviour. We’ve previously covered the advantages of using responsive search ads, highlighting that increased length means that you will be able to show more text to potential customers, while the ads’ flexibility will allow you to specify elements such as width, helping you to improve the visibility of your ads on all devices, including mobile and tablet. Another flexible characteristic is the option to ‘pin’ headlines and descriptions to certain positions, ensuring that essential information will always show.

Secondly, the way responsive search ads work ensures that your ads will show up in more relevant searches. By having multiple headline and description combinations, your ads will have more opportunities to compete in auctions. The result? More chances for your ads to be seen by your target audience and for you to increase your click-through rate, lower cost per click and achieve your advertising goals. While responsive search ads are an important step in Google’s mission to help users optimise their ad performance and save time through machine learning models, it is important to understand that automation needs to be combined with your own creative approach to ad group management in order to maximise your results. It is also worth keeping in mind that responsive search ads are new and they will improve over time, therefore make sure you regularly monitor their performance and status so you get the most out of this new ad format. Predictive modelling for non-click consent Predictive modelling is always tricky as you are effectively going to the market blind. Google have created some nice additions to their offering that will change this and will at worst make your efforts blinkered. Recently they announced they would be launching consent mode in beta to assist with conversion tracking and remarketing efforts. It is important therefore that businesses running PPC campaigns through GA consider the tracking tags placed on ads (more on this later). Consent mode allows you to adjust how your Google tags behave based on the consent status of your users. You can indicate whether consent has been granted for analytics and ads cookies. Google’s tags will dynamically adapt, only utilising cookies for the specified purposes when consent has been given by the user. Once consent mode is deployed, it will adjust the behaviour of these types of pings: Consent status pings (Google Ads and Floodlight tags): •

• •

Consent status pings are sent from each page the user visits where consent mode is implemented, and are also triggered for some tags if the consent state changes from denied to granted. (e.g. if the user opts in to a consent dialog). These pings communicate the default consent state configured by the site owner and/or the updated consent state (i.e. granted or denied) for each consent type (e.g. ad storage, analytics storage). Conversion pings: Conversion pings are sent to indicate that a conversion has occurred. Google Analytics pings: Google Analytics pings are sent on each page of a website where Google Analytics is implemented and upon events being logged.

When consent is granted, the associated tags will function normally. So, what about those that don’t consent? When consent for ad storage or analytics storage is denied, the associated Google tags deployed via the global site tag or Google Tag Manager will adjust their behaviour accordingly.

FROM OUR EXPERTS

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The data and analytics that are available means that it is far easier to measure performance in 2021 and as a result there are more touchpoints for businesses to use to optimise their efforts.

FROM OUR EXPERTS

Tracking tags According to Google consent and conversion pings may include the following behaviours depending on the state of the consent settings and the configuration of your tags:

AD_STORAGE=’GRANTED’ AND ANALYTICS_ STORAGE=’GRANTED’ (DEFAULT): • • • •

Cookies pertaining to advertising may be read and written. IP addresses are collected. The full page URL, including ad-click information in URL parameters (e.g. GCLID/DCLID) is collected. Third-party cookies previously set on google.com and doubleclick.net, and first-party conversion cookies (e.g. _gcl_*) are accessible.

AD_STORAGE=’DENIED’ + ADS_DATA_REDACTION=TRUE: • • • • •

AD_STORAGE=’DENIED’: • • • • •

• •

Cookies aren’t used for advertising purposes. Existing first-party advertising cookies won’t be read. Third-party cookies previously set on google.com and doubleclick.net may be sent in request headers (but limited to use for spam and fraud purposes). Google Analytics will not read or write Google Ads cookies, and Google signals features will not accumulate data for this traffic. IP addresses used to derive IP country, but are never logged by our Google Ads and Floodlight systems and are immediately deleted upon collection. Note: Google Analytics collects IP addresses as part of normal Internet communications. Learn more about IP anonymisation in Google Analytics. Other fields normally collected by advertisers’ tags (e.g. order id, value) are still sent. Full page URL is collected, may include ad-click information in URL parameters (e.g., GCLID / DCLID). Ad-click information will only be used to approximate accurate traffic measurement.

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Cookies aren’t used for advertising purposes. Existing first-party advertising cookies won’t be read. Requests are sent through a different domain to avoid previously set third-party cookies from being sent in request headers. Google Analytics will not read or write Google Ads cookies, and Google signals features will not accumulate data for this traffic. Full page URL is collected, may include ad-click information in URL parameters (e.g., GCLID / DCLID). Ad-click information will only be used to approximate accurate traffic measurement. IP addresses used to derive IP country, but are never logged by our Google Ads and Floodlight systems and are immediately deleted upon collection. Note: Google Analytics collects IP addresses as part of normal Internet communications. Learn more about IP anonymisation in Google Analytics. Other fields normally collected by advertisers’ tags (e.g. order id, value) are still sent. Page URLs with ad-click identifiers are redacted.

ANALYTICS_STORAGE=’DENIED’: • •

Will not read or write first-party analytics cookies. Cookieless pings will be sent to Google Analytics for basic measurement and modelling purposes.

FROM OUR EXPERTS

FINAL THOUGHTS As with death and taxes, the only other thing you can be certain of is that Google will move the goalposts and will evolve their offering in order to remain the go-to search engine and ads platform for web users. Whilst this is great for advertisers in practice, in theory it means more work and more learning. We’ll keep and eye out for future updates and share them on the blogs as well as in our downloadable resources. But don’t let change put you off... There are many benefits to running digital ads as part of a search marketing strategy. Well-crafted and highly optimised ads can raise brand awareness and exposure, putting your immediate details into the public domain at the time they are searching for products in your sector. Your ads get your message out to a highly relevant audience which ultimately increases the potential of extra traffic and, ultimately, conversions. If your ads are correctly placed and optimised to appear next to certain searches then they can improve your unique visits. If the content on the landing page is specific to the user search and includes a clear call-to-action (CTA) such as a downloadable brochure, an email subscription or a call back request, you are another step along the marketing path. These leads direct customers to your online store where they can convert from browsing to purchasing.

FROM OUR EXPERTS

P R E PA R I N G F O R THE CORE WEB V I TA L S U P D AT E - JOHN WARNER SENIOR SEO MARKETING & CONTENT EXECUTIVE

FROM OUR EXPERTS

The Core Web Vitals update has the potential to be one of the most important Google updates of the last decade. It won’t be felt immediately but, as with the shift to mobile, over a few years. Although that gives us a little time, it doesn’t give us an excuse. The Core Web Vitals update is, collectively, one of the first major inclusions of UX into the way that Google ranks websites in search results. Likely to have fairly small immediate impact, the advanced warning that Google has offered has really only come for the mobile and page speed updates over the last few years. While the algorithm is seemingly in a near constant state of low level flux, these major additions tend to be signposted as they represent nudges from the search engine toward where they need webmasters to go. As a result, the impact of this in the mid-to-long term of this and inevitable other UX related updates, will be cumulative. So, while your site may not suffer from poor scores immediately, it is well worth taking it seriously. Over the coming pages we’ll look at the three main areas to focus on...

FROM OUR EXPERTS

CLS

Cumulative Layout Shift is the sum of all individual layout shift scores for all unexpected layout shifts that occur during a page load. If text moves on a page without warning, or you are about to click on an element and the element moves, that is a bad CLS. Sites should strive to have a CLS score of less than 0.1. Layout shift score = impact fraction * distance fraction: The impact fraction measures how unstable elements impact the viewport area between two frames. The distance fraction measures the distance that unstable elements have moved, relative to the viewport. Last minute image sizing is one of the main causes of poor CLS, so always include width and height attributes on your images and video elements. You can also reserve the required space using CSS aspect ratio boxes - this ensures the browser can allocate the correct space in the document while the image is loading. Anyone who has used the web will be aware of layout shifts that cause unwanted ad clicks, but not only is this poor UX, it will also impact your CLS score. However, if sites load the container prior to the ad insert, you can ensure that the impact on the user is minimised. Font loading can also cause poor CLS scores. As such, sites should ensure that they are, wherever possible (and it should be in most places) use a combination of <link rel=”preload”> and font display: optional to preload fonts and avoid content shifting. Use iframes for rich media - just as with ads and images, it’s important to ensure that the space is blocked out in advance to avoid the layout shift that can come as a player resizes.

FROM OUR EXPERTS

FID

First Input Delay measures the time from when a user can first interact with a page (when they can click a link, tap a button or use a custom, JavaScript-powered control) to the time when the browser is able to respond to that interaction. Sites should strive to have a First Input Delay of less than 100 milliseconds. SOME WAYS TO OPTIMISE FOR FID As with LCP, for those pages with JS that is required but not critical to the user interaction with the page, you can again use defer to postpone the loading of these sections until when they’re required. Main thread blocking causes input delay, so web workers make it possible to run JavaScript on a background thread. Moving non-UI operations to a separate worker thread can cut down main thread blocking time and consequently improve FID. Consider using the following libraries to make it easier to use web workers on your site: • • •

Comlink: A helper library that abstracts postMessage and makes it easier to use Workway: A general purpose web worker exporter Workerize: Move a module into a web worker

Often sites will include the JavaScript libraries used throughout the site in a single JS file. That means that these sites will be loading a whole site’s worth of JS instances for every page - even when those pages require little or none of the JS in the file. By separating this into multiple files, you can make only the requests each page needs.

FROM OUR EXPERTS

LCP

Largest Contentful Paint measures when the largest elements in the viewport become visible. It is used to determine when the main content of a page has finished rendering. Sites should strive to have Largest Contentful Paint occur within the first 2.5 seconds of the page starting to load. This includes the following: • An element with a background image loaded via the url() function (as opposed to a CSS gradient) • Block-level elements containing text nodes or other inline-level text elements children • <img> elements • <image> elements inside an <svg> element • <video> elements (the poster image is used) • <video> elements (the poster image is used) Your LCP depends largely on the amount of time your user’s client (browser) spends making and receiving requests from your server. You can minimise this time in a number of ways. One way you can reduce this time is to preconnect or prefetch your third party requests. These are two similar, but different ways you can do this - and you can use both to offer fallbacks for browsers which don’t support one or the other. In the before times, the pastos - history people – used to have Christmas tree lights on a single circuit, which meant that if one bulb blew, the entire string of lights would stop. This is the way many sites deploy their JavaScript and CSS - with each execution waiting for the completion of the last. You can minify both JS and CSS, inline critical CSS requests and load JavaScript asynchronously to avoid slowing down or stopping the loading process. If your site doesn’t change with every request, caching can prevent it being recreated unnecessarily every time it is accessed. You can store a copy of the generated HTML on a disk, and server-side caching can reduce TTFB and minimise resource use. Images are often a large drain on the largest contentful paint, so the Google dev site offers the following advice: • Consider not using the image at all – if it isn’t relevant, remove it. • Compress images (with imagemin or Squoosh, for example) • Convert images to next-gen formats (JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, or WebP) • Use responsive images • Consider using a CDN

FROM OUR EXPERTS

CLIENTS

CACHE

SERVICE

PHONE PT PC PT

NETWORK LAPTOP PT

SERVER PT SERVER

REQUEST & RESPONSE

CLIENTS

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How Federated Learning Will Change Search - JOHN WARNER SENIOR SEO MARKETING & CONTENT EXECUTIVE

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Potentially revolutionary, definitely an antitrust lawsuit waiting to happen, federated learning is Google’s machine learning answer to the personalised internet necessary for the future without the personal information necessary for our privacy

WHAT IS FEDERATED LEARNING?

Federated learning, or federated learning of cohorts as a recent announcement on its use for paid media names it, is a machine learning process which uses edge devices to train a central model. There’s a great proof of concept piece here, but roughly translated, this is a way of allowing users to anonymously train a machine learning model to better serve their needs without sacrificing their personal data.

As you can see from the above image, the ‘upside down’ method hosts the main machine learning model centrally while edge devices are used to train iterations of the latest model. These are then reuploaded to the main servers and used to train the next iteration of the model which is then sent back to users to train again. As it is the model that’s downloaded and uploaded each time, there is no need for the user’s personal data to leave their device.

THE HISTORY OF FEDERATED LEARNING

The term, first coined by a Google paper in 2016, has become an active area of study in the years since – and was officially announced by Sundar Pichai at Google I/O 2019. The interest has since generated more than a thousand papers since (many of which can be found on Arxiv.org). Despite the growing academic research around the topic, however, there’s a pretty good outline of the technique (and clues as to its potential uses) in that initial paper:

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Modern mobile devices have access to a wealth of data suitable for learning models, which in turn can greatly improve the user experience on the device. For example, language models can improve speech recognition and text entry, and image models can automatically select good photos. However, this rich data is often privacy sensitive, large in quantity, or both, which may preclude logging to the data center and training there using conventional approaches. We advocate an alternative that leaves the training data distributed on the mobile devices, and learns a shared model by aggregating locally-computed updates. We term this decentralized approach Federated Learning. Source: H. Brendan McMahan, Eider Moore, Daniel Ramage, Seth Hampson, Blaise Agüera y Arcas CommunicationEfficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data (2016)

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Since then, Google has followed a semi-open source approach to the technique, with TensorFlow Federated offering them the best possible argument against antitrust lawsuits – as it offers the opportunity to use the open source framework to develop their own unique federated learning models. There are also companies such as OpenMined (there are a few actually, but I liked the website, and their name is a pun, so they win) which are extending PyTorch and Tensorflow for data analysis. The mission statement on their website is as follows: With OpenMined, people and organizations can host private datasets, allowing data scientists to train or query on data they “cannot see”. The data owners retain complete control: data is never copied, moved, or shared. This makes the method ideal for privacy conscious development of machine learning models and paves the way for a variety of business uses which offer users the security of total data privacy.

WHY GOOGLE DEVELOPED FEDERATED LEARNING

It’s difficult to know for certain, but the early applications of the technique and announcements surrounding it have all been privacy related – and there’s little reason to doubt that that will have been a key concern even if the process began in 2013/4. It’s been noted for some time that privacy concerns have been growing at around the same rate as demand for personalised experiences of the web and the two issues seemed to cause an intractable problem. However, with a remote learning model which can still employ the best of Google’s Tensorflow neural network learning methods, Google has the potential to provide a leading privacy focused advertising and UX service – while retaining a level of plausible deniability for anti-trust lawsuits if they can provide a workable opensource option for other brands to create their own. However, the technology has utility beyond advertising and could well tie in with other Google products – though Google has often advised that it doesn’t personalise search results, it does offer dozens of other related products, such as Google Discover, Google Assistant, YouTube (especially as the existing recommendations algorithm has come under fire repeatedly for its role in radicalisation) and many recommendation and map related resources. If Google can train the Google Assistant in the same way, however, then it could prove to be a decisive factor in the battle it is waging with various other digital assistants – and a huge leap forward in the performance and usefulness of voice search.

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HOW FEDERATED LEARNING WILL APPLY TO ADS

We mentioned the possibility that federated learning might be Google’s answer to the end of cookies at the end of 2020 in our 2021 trends report, and the reason we made that assumption is that it lends itself to the use so well. The purpose of federated learning in the post cookie world will be as a predictive model – like a supercharged, privacy focused ‘similar audiences’ targeting option. By training the model on user devices, and constantly updating the model, it will be possible for the updated model to infer interests from specific actions without requiring any third-party data. Google has already stated they expect to see 95% of the performance of cookie-based advertising – and that is likely to improve as the model receives real world training over the next few years. It’s not unreasonable to assume, even, that performance will exceed what is presently expected of cookie-based paid media. Google’s section on FLoC on their Privacy Sandbox page states:

We’re encouraged by what we’ve observed and the value that this solution offers to users, publishers and advertisers. Chrome intends to make FLoC-based cohorts available for public testing through origin trials with its next release in March and we expect to begin testing FLoC-based cohorts with advertisers in Google Ads in Q2. If you’d like to get a head start, you can run your own simulations (as we did) based on the principles outlined in this FLoC whitepaper.

CHANGES TO SEARCH

All this means that we have two major changes to search – one is that FLoC will mark a huge shift in online privacy – allowing for greater personalisation without personal data, the second, less positive change is that we could see Google become even more opaque when it comes to providing brands with data – whether for organic or paid search. While the number of possibilities that FLoC opens up is huge, how major these changes are will rely on how well early tests perform, and whether or not Google continues to opensource the project so that it doesn’t face legislative issues down the road.

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UX & ACCESSIBILITY : BUILDING BETTER WEBSITES Consumers today demand a better web experience and optimising your site is vital if you want to get ahead of the competition - find out how with our UX & accessibility building better websites eBook. The way brands and businesses of all sizes are working in 2021 has changed beyond all recognition. The people behind the scene are working from home, the customers can get to physical locations and the audiences are changing largely due to an increased use of social and digital media. In order to thrive and in some cases survive, it is imperative that businesses adapt and that they invest in their search marketing in order to get the best results. Developing your offering or tweaking an existing strategy is fine as a starting point but one thing that isn’t often considered is how the changes behind the scenes reflect in the real world. Users want not only the best answer to their queries but they want a positive user experience (UX) to match.

That’s why when it comes to your website you need to make them more accessible and more user friendly. This guide will look at some of the things you can do to make sure both boxes are ticked and The ‘UX and Accessibility – Building Better Websites’ eBook includes: • • • •

What is UX? What is digital accessibility? Factors that may affect accessibility Is accessibility the new UX?

Download ‘UX and Accessibility – Building Better Websites’ eBook and prepare yourself for your most successful year in search yet!

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CASE STUDY

CLICK CONSULT CASE STUDY

ABOUT THE CLIENT Utility Bidder is a business energy supplier established to ensure clients get the most cost effective gas and electricity deals for their company. OBJECTIVES Utility Bidder tasked Click Consult with acquiring a greater number of backlinks to the business’ website and thereby improve their search engine performance. Click Consult also identified that links would have to be very topical, relevant and of extremely high quality. Digital PR therefore became an essential part of their SEO strategy to facilitate this.

CASE STUDY

HOW WE HELPED When the United Kingdom went into national lockdown in March 2020 and almost all of the country was forced to work remotely, we encountered an unexpected problem: it would be almost impossible to create any PR campaign around business energy given that most offices were closed. However, with a unique situation came a unique opportunity to explore the impact that remote work was having on the British public during lockdown. Therefore, over this period, several miniature PR campaigns were created for Utility Bidder on this topic: a study into how many workers did not have access to the technology they needed to do their jobs from home; a guide to how remote workers could claim back energy expenses; and a thought leadership piece about the ways in which office etiquette would change post-lockdown. RESULTS Over the course of this period, 54 news stories were written about the PR campaigns created for Utility Bidder of which 30 included links back to the client’s website. The coverage had an average domain authority of 58 and our top performing stories were from Computer Weekly and the Daily Express.

54 58

NEWS STORIES

AVERAGE DA

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A SS E SS I N G T H E I M PACT O F D I G O N F U T U R E M A R K E T I N G S T R AT - SCOTT RUMSEY SENIOR MARKETING & CONTENT EXECUTIVE

The economic challenges faced in 2020 as a direct result of the Covid-19 pandemic are still being felt in early 2021. The Government is looking to piece together a ‘roadmap’ back to normality but, as with everything, these plans take time and take a broad view. It is difficult to even look at business on a sector by sector basis, let alone at individual companies, and so many of the top level concerns around safety, support, and pay mean that companies have to look out for themselves. This means focusing on markets which are open, such as digital and eCommerce, and looking at new ways to attract and engage with new audiences is vital in the new financial year. When it comes to the direct impact digital marketing has on a business, there are a number of positives to focus on, and the remainder of this feature will do exactly that. We’ll look at what you can do in terms of strategy planning, how to conduct competitor analysis, the ROI various channels provide, and we will highlight some of the things you can implement today to make sure that you are growing online.

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G I TA L TEGIES WHY DIGITAL MARKETING? Why not? The truth is that there has been a shift toward digital for many years now and, in fact, this is an area that continues to pick up speed. Choosing a digital strategy can be an agile way to ensure that you are not only in the right place or space, but that you are there at the right time. The global crisis we are currently facing means the time to invest in digital has never been so important. Customer behavior has changed, and I for one feel this is permanent. Yes you might have to go into a coffee shop for a coffee. but there is a market for quality and hence the increase in coffee cups, machines and beans in recent months. Sure, this could be due to the time we are spending at home, but the truth is that people are more willing to adapt their behaviour for quality and lower prices. This has become the new ‘normal’. If you offer the correct products or services, at a competitive price, quickly and efficiently, you can build your brand, your sales and your image quickly. The need for digital marketing is big, but if you’re reading this, and thinking about it for the first time, the chances are someone else has already started. Making smart investments in your strategy can get you on track for success in a digital future, and that’s the real reason this is so important. THE BENEFITS OF DIGITAL MARKETING There are many benefits to choosing digital marketing as part of your strategy, but the main one is that it is the most effective way of reaching potential customers where they spend their time and money. In the current climate there is a noticeable increase in the amount of time people are spending online. This is both as customers making purchases, and as people conducting research into products and services. Digital marketing allows businesses of all sizes (if they get their message, content and SEO right) the opportunity to level the playing field. Yes, we know that companies such as Amazon hold a large slice of the market and this is largely due to their budget, marketing and ability to offer next (or same) day delivery, but for specific products, there is no reason why the ‘little guy’ can’t win. Digital marketing allows you to compete by exposing your brand to a wider audience on a much smaller advertising budget. When managed effectively, it gives businesses control over where and how they spend their money. When you have this kind of control and the data to support decisions, you make smarter ones and the returns are often better.

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WHAT ARE YOU DOING? As we often say here at Click Consult, the importance of a balanced, bespoke search marketing strategy is vital if you are to get the most out of your online performance. Businesses and brands across the country are looking for a competitive edge when it comes to improving both their search visibility and improving conversion and ROI. In order to gain an advantage and stand out from the competition, it is important that businesses continually test new marketing methods and tweak their approach to ensure optimum performance. One of the best things that you can do is to perform an SEO Audit, this will not only give you an accurate reflection of where you are presently operating online, but also what changes have worked and which areas still need technical improvements. Whether it’s weekly, monthly or annually, brands need to know where their site is performing well and what needs to be improved. It’s unlikely that there’ll be concrete guidance on Google updates anymore (barring big shifts such as the introduction of new areas to the ranking algorithm - as with mobile, speed and CWV), and how to adapt to them is left to us – so benchmarking where you are at any given point is an absolute must. Not only can regularly auditing our organic performance help us to improve, it can also demystify changes in our organic rankings, traffic and performance. The aim of a full technical website audit is to both assess current performance and highlight areas for future growth. A comprehensive technical audit seeks to find and highlight all issues affecting the implementation of technical on-page technologies, before providing guidance on how best to rectify the issue. Some of the areas that it is vital to look at when conducting a technical SEO audit are as follows:

A domain and server profile Canonicalisation Indexing Navigation and URL structure Website/ webpage speed In terms of how you are ranking in search results this depends largely on your link profile. I know as I write this that there are well over 200 ranking factors but conducting a link profile analysis as part of your audit is a good way to start. Businesses should look at the following areas when reviewing their link profile:

Link stats Top authority links Top authority domain Anchor text Link distribution Link history Link toxicity Link geography and top level domains Type of links Speed and user experience Today’s consumers are not only savvy but they are time starved and, as such, they want what they want quickly; this means that the need to fill this demand is huge. User experience (UX) is one of the areas that businesses are focusing on to ensure that they not only offer the products and services, but also that their customers stick around (and return).

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The relationship between SEO and UX has never been bigger, largely because it is the ‘end point’ of most consumer journeys. Good SEO, in terms of ranking highly (visibility) and ranking for the correct or relevant keywords (optimisation) means you have the best chance of being chosen by the user. Once this user becomes a visitor to your site, it is the UX that bridges the gap between a visit and a conversion. If you are offering the product or service that you say you are, and it is easy to read more about it/them, then you are increasingly likely to keep the interest of the visitor. Additional content that answers any questions they may have, or that gives them the technical specifications of a product will help your business appear more authoritative and knowledgeable. This, in turn, builds trust in the brand and can help lead to a purchase or conversion.

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“The ideal online customer journey is a user-friendly website that combines seamless navigation; a clean cut purchasing journey; dynamic and digestible content; top notch customer support and mobile device compatibility. By combining these elements a business can create an online environment that can make a brand.” - The Digital Marketing Institute A survey that followed this definition of a good UX website revealed that 79% of all customers admit to searching for another site if the one that they ended up on didn’t live up to expectations. When discussing the topic our Head of Technical SEO, Charlotte Chapman said: “For me the focus has to be on speed and user experience in 2021.

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“With the page experience update due to roll out in May 2021, it has never been so important to ensure all key user experience metrics are optimised. These metrics include how quickly each URL loads, if the site is mobile friendly, has intrusive interstitials and is secure.”

“We started to prepare clients for user experience becoming a racking factor in 2019/2020 but it’s an on-going task that will continue into 2021.” UX - think about the journey There are six distinctive stages to the consumer journey when it comes to the link between SEO performance and user experience (UX) and by following this route you will gain better traction, build brand image and ultimately realise your KPIs. The first step is the ‘user intent’ phase. This is where the potential customer asks a question of a search engine that they hope will take them to the appropriate results, and which will ultimately begin them on the path to fulfilling a need. Next is the ranking stage, this is where the SEOs optimise the content on a site to make sure that it is picked up and that it hits the top of the SERPs – the higher the rank the more positive the correlation between the number of sessions and level of traffic. Up next is the qualifying stage where the SEOs use keywords and other tactics to qualify the traffic that has been received. They learn from this and alter strategies and approaches if there is such a need. Constant testing in the form of CRO with any SEO work is a must and can lead to a more polished, profitable performance. Stage four is the digital interaction stage where both teams (SEO and those tasked with UX) work together to optimise performance and boost conversions. Up next is the work on the website footprint. This is where the SEO team looks at the data and gives a larger viewpoint of the customer journey. Those working on the UX side of things continue to test. The final stage is the review, where teams build upon what they have learnt and update, the navigation of a site or things like meta data. This is also the stage where they refine the strategy for moving forward.

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WHAT ARE YOU COMPETITORS DOING? Over the years, we have covered a variety of ways that businesses can conduct competitor research and how they are operating in a given market. In a speech at the Benchmark Search Conference our SEO Director discussed this further. He noted the following…

You should bear in mind that, as in this example, you will also be competing with other brands who may not immediately spring to mind when it comes to your product or service, but are still ranking for exactly the same keywords. In addition, Amazon and eBay always rank highly for eCommerce keywords in terms of coverage, but they don’t always appear on P1.

Firstly, you need to identify the market leaders in your industry, so that you can emulate their strategies and success.Find as many relevant keywords as possible – a minimum of 300 – using tools such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush or Moz.

In the second example, we looked at the insurance market covering car, home, travel, motorbike insurance etc, using over 2,000 keywords. As might be expected, the big four comparison sites appear in the top right quadrant.

Once you have a list, find out who’s ranking in the top 50 positions for each term. Then plot this on a graph – using a tool such as Tableau, as in this example:

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MoneySuperMarket (the market leader): 93% coverage and average rank of 4.4 Go Compare: 81% coverage and average rank of 9.5 Confused.com: 78% coverage and average rank of 10.3 Compare the Market: 78% coverage and average rank of 10

All of the market leaders above will have vast link profiles. The motorbike insurer Bennetts stood out:

X axis shows coverage, while the Y axis shows average rank. YourDomain.co.uk has an average rank of 10 and 70% coverage. As a simple example analysis of 100 keywords, this would mean they rank, on average, position 10 for 70/100 keywords. We carried out this exercise with the white goods market, using a list of 2,300 keywords (such as washing machine, dryers, Smeg fridge, chest freezer, etc).

We were intrigued that a couple of other motorbike insurance sites appeared in the chart. The graph wasn’t a completely accurate representation of their marketplace because it contained keywords to do with travel and car insurance – which they don’t cover. When we narrowed our research to just motorbike insurance keywords, Bennetts moved further to the far right, indicating them as market leaders, but still directly competing with the big four comparison sites. The sites we decided to analyse were: • • •

The market leaders appear in the top right corner – these are the ones ranking for the majority of keywords and in the top positions. This is how they stack up: • • •

Currys: 91% coverage and average rank of 4.7 AO: 80% coverage and average rank of 0.2 Appliances Direct: 77% coverage and average rank of 7.8

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Bennetts The Bike Insurer Scooter Insurance chosen (for comparison as it’s not ranking as well as the others) Carole Nash

We used Searchmetrics to examine the visibility of keywords for which these sites were ranking, their position (and weighted by search volume), looking for major drops in visibility around Google updates – specifically Penguin. Using data like this allows you to see where the gaps lie, the keywords you can target and the areas in which you can improve.

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You can follow these points to ensure the best performance: • • • • • • • • •

Link features are still commonly the most important ranking factors. Analyse market leaders to determine what makes the best link profile in your industry. Keyword lists should consist of a minimum of 300 keywords. Unless you are number one for all of your keywords (and even if you are), there are things to be learned from your competitors. Plot links by DA (Moz) to determine your industry’s natural distribution curve. Focus content marketing efforts develop a natural but great quality link profile. Monitor link acquisition rates to determine how fast you need to accrue links, or what would be deemed as unnatural growth. Find out what distribution of brand/exact and long tail anchor text works best in your industry. Link juice flows, but where it starts is down to tactics – again, this will be unique to your industry.

A gap analysis is the method of assessing and understanding whether or not a business’ objectives are being met and, if not, the tactics that will need to be employed to ensure that they are. The ‘gap’ is the space between where a business currently sits and where they want to be within a certain timeframe. In some circles, a gap analysis may also be referred to as a ‘needs analysis’, ‘needs assessment’ or ‘need-gap analysis’. For the purposes of SEO, however, a gap analysis looks at several things: • • • • • •

Missing content Undiscovered topics Undiscovered keywords Content your competitors are targeting New industry developments New product information

With testing, and a trial and error approach, playing such a vital role in a gap analysis, you need to ensure that your planning is prepared properly and that you can adapt your strategy as and when you need to. The following tips will help your discovery phase and can lead you to a successful gap analysis.

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USING DIGITAL TO EXPAND YOUR AUDIENCE Businesses which are at the ideas stage of a concept and which are looking to attract an entirely new selection of customers will have to come up with a comprehensive buyer persona. Those which are at the expansion stage will be looking to increase their following. To do this businesses will have to decide the demographics of the people they wish to engage with. Think about what your ideal customers’ values and objectives are, whether to use a personal and/or professional model (depending on whether your business operates a B2C or B2B service)? Ask what motivates them and what frustrations do they face? This can help you to identify and improve the way you solve problems for your customers and prospects. You could also include traits such as attitude and behaviour, or even a phrase they might use and complaints they might have, for example, “I know quite a bit about recruitment, but further guidance would reassure me”, or “I can never find the right swimwear for my body shape”. It can also be useful to think about what they don’t want. These demographics, for example could be based on things such sex, age, marital status, income and geography. If this is the case then one of your target customers may look something like this: Sex: Male Age: 21-30 Marital status: Single Income: £25,000 – £31,000 Geographical Location: South East London

When added together these two pieces of data help to build a clearer buyer persona and offer a more targeted approach when it comes to marketing, advertising and selling. If your business is a modern café in Greenwich that opens until midnight, plays some live music and serves craft beer in the evenings, then you could engage with this same user on Twitter, targeting them with a link titled, ‘Ten best, late night cafes in London’ or ‘Ten hidden music spots in South London’. The offering here is more bespoke and indeed enticing and could lead to further conversions. Obtaining answers to some of the secondary questions means that you may be able to further decipher buying factors. If the person who answered the questions above were a real client and you knew that their newspaper of choice was the Telegraph, then you should ask the question, who are the Telegraph’s readers? This could give you an insight into other potential targets. In a similar vein, you could find more about a person through social media.

All of this information is great and it gives you a real feel for the types of people that you are targeting but you may find that you are still struggling against the competition that is pursuing the same individuals.

If you were a health and fitness brand releasing a new range of healthy snacks you may want to better understand your market. Looking at similar items made by competitors or researching certain trends such as food and drink alongside health and well-being, you may end up finding a user on Pinterest.

If your business operates in the food and drink sector of the market, and has a café in Greenwich, then you may want to target these individuals with a general blog post titled; ‘Ten best cafes in South London’. This general approach may raise some awareness and leave the decision with the reader.

This person could be a female in her 20s with a focus on health and whose hobbies include cooking at home and yoga. The first part of this profile is the demographic; the later part is the psychographic. Together they form a larger buyer persona.

For this reason, it is vital to make sure that your buyer persona is as detailed as possible. This is where psychographics come in. Demographics essentially tell you who the clients and customers are, yet psychographics will tell you why they make a purchase. Fundamentally, psychographics is the study and classification of people according to their attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria, especially in market research.

Posts which might help her to engage and buy or download from your brand may cover topics such as the health benefits of your product, personal posts about people who have lost weight eating your product or people that use your produce as a healthy snack before a yoga/fitness class. These types of post are far more likely to resonate and be shared.

Things falling under the psychographic tag could be focus, social media preference, perception of quality, personality, political stance, newspaper of choice or values. If you take these into consideration and add them to the original you may find that your buyer persona looks something like this.

Sex: Male Age: 25-36 Marital status: Married Income: £25,000 – £31,000 Geographical Location: South East London Focus: Enjoys socialising Social media preference: Twitter Perception of quality: Enjoys luxury over economy Personality: Outgoing, music fan Political Stance: Socialist Newspaper of choice: The Guardian Values: Charity is important

PICKING THE RIGHT DIGITAL CHANNELS Looking at what has made people connect, click or call in the past is a huge clue to why people are using your services. If a customer has responded to a particular call to action (CTA) this could be a clue to the type of person they are when interacting with a brand.

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If a visitor, or the recipient of an email, clicks on a link offering a big discount, this may mean they fit into the thrifty sector of the market, regardless of whether they believe they are a bargain hunter. If you gather enough of these types of people in your database or in your target market then it may be possible for you to re-engage with them further down the line. So how do you choose an audience? In the age of search marketing, personalisation and relationship-building are key. Added to that, the growing complexity of today’s customer journey means that understanding your audience is a vital first step towards a successful search marketing strategy, whatever your business’ size or sector To attract visitors, increase brand awareness, convert leads and increase return on investment (ROI), you need to adopt techniques that will engage advertising-savvy, time-poor, multichannel and multi-device using individuals. Creating meaningful, authentic, lasting connections with your customers is impossible without first understanding your audience. The growing complexity of today’s customer journey means that thorough research is a vital first step towards a successful search marketing strategy. The aim is to offer high quality content in a relevant context to create a rich, personalised experience. This requires thorough research into your target audience using analytics tools such as Google Analytics, and by studying their online behaviour: How and when they use the internet The search terms they use The way they interact with your content Their social media activity The best way to start this research is by defining your target audience through the creation of customer personas In order to attract your target audience to your site, you need to engage them with irresistible content that inspires them, educates them, and provides answers to their questions. But first you need to define your target audience – their characteristics, behaviour and interests – by creating customer personas – fictional representations of your ideal prospects and customers. These are tools specific to your own business, so can be as in-depth or as brief as you need them to be, and as formal or informal. Consumer personas should be entirely dynamic, open to change based on the data you discover during the investigation process, however, it is important for you to have at least sketched an outline to build on. FINAL THOUGHTS… As we have said throughout there are numerous changes you can make to your strategy in order to get the most from your online offering. Allocating budget in the right areas and at the right time (now) offers the best chance of success and with more brands filling the eCommerce space you need to consider the quick wins as well as the long term projects.

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Tackling the problem of measuring digital marketing effectiveness - JOHN WARNER SENIOR SEO MARKETING & CONTENT EXECUTIVE

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For an industry that perpetually preaches about breaking down silos, digital tends to neglect the same holistic approach to measuring the effectiveness of marketing spend across organic, paid and social. While it’s reasonably easy (provided you have a good attribution model in place) to monitor how paid media is impacting your brand, overall marketing effectiveness is something that has caused head scratching for decades. Back in the pre-digital era of the 80s – before Click Consult, before Google, before the internet, marketing professors Thomas Bonoma and Bruce Clark stated that:

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“[Perhaps] no other concept in marketing’s short history has proven as stubbornly resistant to conceptualisation, definition, or application as that of marketing performance[.]” While both marketing and the internet have aged somewhat in the meantime, the statement remains largely true. While digital advertising has permitted marketers a far better access to ROI data than Bonoma and Clark would have dreamed of in 1988, there is – especially as Google continues to blur their keyword data – a sense that another voice of marketing past, John Wannamaker, may still have a point when he said ‘[half] the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.’ The truth is that marketing produces both tangible and intangible effects, or as a more recent marketing paper by Jagdish N. Sheth et al put it:

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“[History] impacts marketing effectiveness – expenditures tend to be accounted for annually, whereas the influence of those expenditures is cumulative, thus a change in sales volume in one year could be the residual echo from previous years activity rather than current activity.” So, what can brands do to ascertain the impact of their marketing – especially when, contrary to the findings of every academic study, marketing budgets still tend to be the first cut during times of economic uncertainty and recession? In his 2003 text ‘Marketing and the Bottom Line’, Professor Tim Ambler noted that there are five stages of how a company handles the subject of marketing effectiveness: • • • • •

The company is unaware of the issue of not measuring marketing effectiveness Assessment is introduced but only in financial terms Using financial measures alone are recognised as inadequate and a multitude of nonfinancial measures are introduced The company develops market focus and the assessment measures used are streamlined to give a single coherent view of the market A scientific method of assessment is adopted using a database of past and current metrics, derivatives and diagnostics to produce a shortlist of sensitive and predictive metrics

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There will doubtless be one or two steps that will be familiar to marketers, however – and companies tend to vacillate between steps 2 and 3 with few seeming to progress further, and this is what leads to the undervaluing of digital marketing techniques like SEO and the over-reliance on fads like partnerships with the Insta-famous. It’s also why paid media has been a consistent earner for Google regardless of their reliance on black box technology – there are immediate, measurable, financial impacts of paid search.

One of the best descriptions of the situation we still find ourselves in comes from a paper by Brooks and Symkin, who wrote (a decade ago):

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To quote Clark (2000, p21), “Clearly managers are capable of assessing multiple dimensions regarding performance. The question, then, is whether they are assessing the right dimensions for their business.” Marketing academics do not always help. By couching their views in complex technical terms they can easily put off practitioners from considering new measurement options – consider this description for example, “a principal components multinomial logit regression model for estimating the Markov brand-switching matrix” (Rust et al., 2004b, p123) – one that would perhaps be immediately consigned to the rapidly growing ‘too difficult’ pile that exists on every marketing managers desk. The same paper, however, also offers six points as a potential solution to the difficulty of measuring marketing effectiveness – specifically for SMEs, for which it can be especially difficult:

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Work within whatever historic information the company has (financial, anecdotal, …) but authenticate elements with customer/partner surveys and competitor reviews where possible. Consider as many aspects of the full marketing process as are reasonably practical within the confines of the SME’s current situation. As a minimum this might need to be restricted to Segmentation, Targeting and Position and the marketing mix alone, especially when the company culture does not consider anything other than promotion to be ‘marketing’ (Siu and Kirby 1998). Broader elements of the marketing process can be considered in future iterations after the SME has ‘learnt’ to capture relevant information and understand the motives and implications of such. Create a jargon-free method of communication that the practitioner and company can use to rationally discuss/ decide on marketing matters. Use visual indicators to deliver a marketing effectiveness measure (or maybe just a marketing mix effectiveness indicator) that the company can understand and accord with. This indicator will most likely be an aggregate of a number of marketing measurement metrics, the constituents of which may not need to be exposed to the company management. Create an agreed activity plan for the marketing areas that will improve future effectiveness along with easily understood measurement criteria to measure that improvement. Try to create a company culture that readily captures and retains base data that is useful to future marketing effectiveness measurement.

This is the approach that we’ve been attempting to bring in at Click Consult internally over the last few years, so we’ll go through these and see if we can offer some guidance on how to accomplish this for your digital marketing.

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Work within whatever historic information the company has (financial, anecdotal, …) but authenticate elements with customer/partner surveys and competitor reviews where possible. One thing digital does well is historical data – provided you’ve had an Analytics tracker attached to your site – be it Adobe, Google or any other, you will have plenty of data you can use. The important and overlooked aspect of this is the impact that historical competitor reviews and customer surveys can have on determining the effectiveness of marketing. So, while we can (and do) advise on the importance of analytics and collecting data through analytics, I’m also going to suggest making client/customer surveys a part of what is often referred to as the ‘onboarding’ process – but which is essentially post purchase, or post contract. Ask why they chose you for their purchase or service provision and follow up on that at renewal stage – or a version of it for each additional purchase.

Consider as many aspects of the full marketing process as are reasonably practical within the confines of the SME’s current situation. While it is always tempting to see digital marketing’s value as immediate uplift in sales, profit or visibility, it should also be assessed whether your ability to reach your target demographic has improved, whether there has been movement in qualitative measures such as perceived quality, brand awareness and share of voice (on social media, or external articles, for example). It can be reasonably easy to measure the performance of a content marketing campaign, for example, using utm tracking and traffic from specific campaigns, but what is the uplift in general citations of the brand beyond your campaigns?

While it may not be quantitative data, this kind of assessment is important qualitative information that can be used to assess the performance of your marketing over time.

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Create a jargon-free method of communication that the practitioner and company can use to rationally discuss/ decide on marketing matters. This can be harder than it sounds – we develop jargon as a language of shortcuts. While jargon has become almost synonymous with what Orwell referred to as duckspeak – a thoughtless kind of waffling – at its core, jargon is a vocabulary which allows professionals within a field to communicate complex ideas in shorthand. The main issue with jargon is that it spills over into conversations outside of the field and it’s this that causes issues with communication. For that reason, it’s important to address (and address early) the creation of a common vocabulary which can be understood by all stakeholders and to use that common vocabulary whenever issues of measurement, planning and strategy are presented for use outside of the marketing department. You can have the best measurement methodology in your field, but if it can’t be understood by decisionmakers, it’s useless.

Use visual indicators to deliver a marketing effectiveness measure (or maybe just a marketing mix effectiveness indicator) that the company can understand and accord with. Similar to point three, this is about ensuring that there is agreement in place as to what effectiveness looks like (taking into account that it should not just be ‘more revenue’) and to stick to a practice of establishing these in advance of measurement – even if this is an amalgamation of more detailed measurements. The important thing is not comprehensiveness, but comprehension.

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Create an agreed activity plan for the marketing areas that will improve future effectiveness along with easily understood measurement criteria to measure that improvement. Again, this ties in with the previous two points – and is the reason we have spent so long over the last couple of years building custom Data Studio dashboards for client reporting. By agreeing not just campaigns and activities, but more holistic measures of success and more comprehensive reporting. This is in line with a statement that I heard somewhere but couldn’t attribute (apologies) which is that top level results – the stuff important to everyone – should be visible at a glance, while those with a deeper knowledge should have the ability to analyse the report at their own level of understanding.

Try to create a company culture that readily captures and retains base data that is useful to future marketing effectiveness measurement. This maybe the most important for ongoing development of measurement – and requires ‘buy-in’ from other departments – from sales in asking the ‘where did you hear about us’ question, from account managers who will need to oversee existing client surveys (or your web development and email team who will need to build a method of surveying consumers), but also from marketers who need to move beyond monthly or quarterly reports to ongoing data collection and a greater attention to historic performance and the impact of historic activity on present performance – however, it also needs the support at c-suite level for the additional resources that that will take and the gains that can be achieved from proper measurement.

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TECHNICAL SEO WHY SHOULD YOU CARE? - RADINA IVANOVA SENIOR ORGANIC SEARCH STRATEGIST

Technical SEO is the process of ensuring that your website can be crawled and indexed more efficiently by search engine spiders with the goal of improving organic rankings. Important elements of Technical SEO include crawling, indexing, performance, and website architecture. Within these Technical SEO pillars, there are a number of factors that can affect your organic search performance. To create great websites that are both SEO friendly and provide exceptional user experience, you need a solid Technical SEO foundation that complements quality and authoritative content.

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CRAWLABILITY – CAN SEARCH ENGINES FIND YOUR SITE? A search engine like Google, consists of a crawler, an index and an algorithm. The crawler, also known as a bot or a spider, follows the links to find your website and the pages within. Crawlability has to do with how easy Google can crawl your site. This could be affected by various factors – rules in the robots.txt file, site architecture, internal linking structure, XML sitemap, broken pages, server errors, duplicate content, and crawlable JS and CSS files. These elements can affect your rankings as well as the site’s crawl budget, which is why it’s important to constantly check and improve the structure of your site and remove or update any outdated content. Think of it this way, crawling costs Google a lot of money and if the crawl spiders continue to find broken pages on your site, they will decide to crawl it less frequently which becomes a problem when fresh content is uploaded but it takes much longer for the crawlers to find it. Crawl depth is another element to be considered when analysing your site’s structure. Are the most important pages of your site only a few clicks away from your Homepage? Do you have heavy blog categories with valuable and authoritative copy hidden 10 or 15 clicks away? The good thing is that we can communicate to the crawler through our robots.txt file and help the spider understand what pages we would like crawled. For example, a common practice is to exclude onsite search results via the robots.txt file to save crawl budget. You can also prevent certain types of files such as PDFs from being crawled and found by the bots. That said, it is important to regularly review your robots.txt file and also check your Google Search Console’s Coverage report to discover and resolve crawling issues.

INDEXATION – IS YOUR SITE FOUND IN THE INDEX? Crawling and indexing are not the same thing. Even if your pages have been crawled, they may not appear in the index. For example, if you have included a noindex tag to a particular section of your site, Google will not include the specific URLs in the index. However, Google may also decide to not include pages in the index due to duplicate content or redirect chains. Comparing the pages submitted in your XML sitemap and the ones found in Google’s index is a good place to start reviewing whether a particular set of pages is not in the index.

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PERFORMANCE Page speed has been a ranking factor for a long time but we see Google placing even more value on page experience with the Core Web Vitals officially coming into play in May 2021 as part of the Page Experience Algorithm. The three metrics – LCP, FID and CLS have made the headlines more than once in the past couple of months and for good reason. Google considers these metrics important in the overall user experience and webmaster should strive to make sites as fast as possible. There are now different ways to audit your site to discover Core Web Vital issues. This requires more bespoke approach and there is no one size fits all solution. Start by examining your Mobile and Desktop reports. Whilst Google Search Console only shows a sample of pages within each category, you can still use this to carry out further analysis into what elements could be causing page speed issues. Using Lighthouse of Page Speed Insights you will be able to pinpoint specific issues for each page on your site. For example, check whether the server response time is too long or whether key requests such as fonts have been pre-loaded. The Page Experience update that is scheduled to roll out later this year also takes into consideration site speed, safe browsing, intrusive interstitials, and mobilefriendliness. As part of a site’s performance, we also assess server and client-side JavaScript rending. Is the content found on your site dependent on the client-side Javascript or not? HTTP status codes, structured data, thin and duplicate content, and canonical tags are also key factors we review when we assess a site’s performance.

SITE STRUCTURE AND NAVIGATION When we talk about the site structure of a site, we refer to how well the pages on the site are organised and how the relationship between categories and subcategories is communicated to the search engines. Site structure also plays a really important role in your internal linking and helps spread link authority through the inner pages of your site. With this in mind, you want your site structure to be well-organised, ensuring that that search engine bots and customers can easily find your most important pages. This is where we look at crawl depth and orphan pages as poorly designed site structures can result in creating new pages that are not linked to from anywhere on the site. So what would be the optimal structure for a website? The below graph is taken from Moz and it perfectly demonstrates an SEO-friendly menu structure, which has a minimum number of links between the Homepage and the inner categories.

WHY SHOULD YOU INVEST IN TECHNICAL SEO? We continue to see fantastic web designs across different industries. Sites with amazing functionalities and impressive branding stop us in our tracks but the reality is that even with the most inspiring sites, if Google can’t find them, neither will your customers. This is where SEO comes in and it can help strengthen brand recognition, build trust and credibility with your existing audience and open doors to potential customers. Technical SEO goes hand in hand with keyword research and unique content and it is the backbone of strong organic performance.

2021: THE YEAR OF CREATIVE CAMPAIGNS - KAREN NGAI DIGITAL PR OFFICER The pandemic has accentuated a drastic shift from bricks to clicks, which meant that many brands and businesses have had no choice but to adapt and develop their digital strategies. So in the new financial year of 2021, brands who have already been in the digital marketing and PR sphere will see a surge in newcomers working towards the common goal of attracting new customers and building brand loyalty. With there being an anticipated rise in competition within this field of work, brands will have to work much smarter for them to be noticed. In order to stand out from the crowd, creative campaigns are almost non-negotiable during this ever growing era of consumer-first mindset. Here are a few things to consider.

KNOWLEDGE BASE

THE EXPANDING DIGITAL DEMOGRAPHIC Brands and businesses have conventionally formed their digital strategies around the likes and needs of a younger demographic. This assumption is backed up by stats and data that show those aged between 25-34 are the most active on various digital platforms, with those aged 18-24 coming at a close second. However, with the closure of most physical stores, the pandemic forced many of us to have to shop online. According to IBM’s recent retail index data, the pandemic is estimated to have caused the world to accelerate the shift to e-commerce by 5 years. Brands and businesses need to be aware of the expansive growth in internet users across all age groups and address each of these strategically. Most brands and businesses are seasoned experts when it comes to communicating with the tech native Gen Zs and tech-savvy millennials, but lack understanding in digital users of older age groups. It’s been revealed that those aged between 38 and 54 are the most digitally-engaged generation (Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative), meaning short-form content and microstorytelling won’t be as effective on this group of consumers. Instead, brands will need to put new efforts and resources into creative campaigns that address the needs and wants of the expanding demographic of digital users. An older age group in the digital sphere may respond better to long-form, investigative and informative content. WHEN CREATIVITY MEETS DATA Besides the expanding digital demographic, forming unique ideas are also crucial to creating an impactful campaign. The benefit of having the internet on our fingertips is that there is a vast amount of information available for marketers to use and repurpose. Big data and in-depth research led by corporates, industry leaders and the government are made accessible to the public which means that marketers require creativity when researching for their brands or clients and creativity in recognising how they can leverage these bits of information and create a campaign that would allow a cohesive and compelling narrative to be formed. Brands and businesses can start by looking for datasets relevant to their industry and analyse the data by segmentation. This can be done by temporal trends, by regional differences (or similarities) and more. Additionally, if more than one set of data is available, marketers can consider using a unique scoring system. This allows an interesting comparison within a chosen category. For example, for one of our clients, Lease Car, we created a unique scoring system that looks at each UK region’s preparedness for an electrical vehicle revolution in line with Boris Johnson’s ‘Ten Point Plan’. We took 9 UK regions and scored them based on 4 different EV-ready markers: The number of licensed EV cars in the region per 100,000 people; the number of rapid charging devices in the region per 100,000 people; the number of regular charging devices in the region per 100,000 people; and the total CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) caused by transport in each region in 2018. Each of these were based on unique datasets but were put together to create a strong story and narrative and generate success amongst influencers and journalists alike.

WHEN CREATIVITY MEETS INNOVATION Digital disruption has accelerated innovations such as marketing using new forms of mediums for brands and businesses to use as part of their creative strategies. Brands in the coming year need to understand that it isn’t just about creating unique ideas, but instead diversifying from conventional mediums, like infographics, videos and interactives and realising that you can present these same ideas in new, more exciting medium forms. Brands need to be visible in order to reach existing and future customers, which then leads onto conversion, engagement and further advocacy of the brand. Creative campaigns are fundamental to achieving the first of the 4-step process. In recent years, brands are putting more emphasis in experiential story-telling for their consumers. For example, one of the most effective new mediums is augmented reality, these take products and creative campaigns as we know them and repurpose these into a more interactive and lively medium. For businesses and brands wanting to give these new (slightly foreign) mediums a go, you can collaborate with an expert within the field and make use of their expertise to create an impactful creative campaign together. CULTIVATING BRAND LOYALTY THROUGH COMMUNITY On the topic of finding new ways to engage with consumers, brands and businesses are conventionally highly focused on using emotive campaigns to spark an instant connection with their customers. These are often one-off and focus on triggering a specific emotional response, like humour, sadness and even anger. However, after a year of solitude, consumers aren’t just passively waiting for an interesting brand to come by, but are eagerly looking to participate in a community of value, where they can stay connected with like-minded people. Lotus Bakeries, ranked as one of the best brand improvers of 2020, created a stream of organic Instagram content showcasing what normal people made for breakfast amidst lockdown. The Drum reports that ‘[t]his offered a space and community for people to connect and share ideas for recipes using the brand’s products’. Where brands and businesses previously focused on establishing a recognizable identity, in order to maintain or foster success, the coming year will be about using creative campaigns to weave your brand into everyday conversations. Marketers need to stay in the know and be observant over emerging conversation topics that can be transformed into creative campaigns. BRANDS WITH A PURPOSE Besides the pandemic, 2020 has been a year charged with social awakening. We’ve just gone through a period of time that has forced many of us as people to question and reevaluate our values. And as a result, we have seen strides being made in various issues including racial disparity, environmental issues and gender inequality.

KNOWLEDGE BASE

Consumers recognise that businesses have an immense impact on our society and the world, and are therefore demanding much more transparency and efforts in showing their support for these social issues. They are now actively looking for brands that not only reflect their personal values but are actively taking part in these difficult conversations and driving change. Brands and businesses not only have to be more conscious and deliberate with their messaging, but use creative campaigns to address otherwise sensitive conversations. Those that do it well, and correctly, are often rewarded with long term brand loyalty and support.

In the coming year, brands and businesses will have to work smarter and harder in order to stay relevant in the fast evolving landscape of consumer desires and going digital is only part of that ‘recipe’. Consumers will develop more loyalty with those brands that are devising purposeful and creative marketing strategies. Campaigns play a huge part in successful digital marketing strategies, however, in order to do so you need to first understand what is required for a campaign to be successful in the coming year. This includes understanding the needs and wants of the expanding digital demographic; generating unique ideas; exploring and utilising new medium forms; and weaving your brand into the everyday lives of your consumers by getting involved in both everyday and important conversations.

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THE BENEFITS OF HAVING STRATEGY FOR YOUR BUS - HANNAH WILKINSON DIGITAL PR EXECUTIVE Public Relations has been a tool used by businesses for years with the art of press releases to promote and inform changes or share big announcements being a process since the early 1920’s. However, a new form of PR has arrived and made a lasting impact on the digital marketing world; Digital PR. Combining the intersection of traditional public relations, content marketing, SEO and social media, Digital PR allows businesses to discreetly advertise their business to a more extensively wide audience than ever before.

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G A DIGITAL PR SINESS

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Digital PR allows practitioners to go beyond the standard press release by combining a brands message with engrossing storytelling to achieve wider online coverage with the added possibility of backlinks to a company’s website. Digital PR is essentially a strategy that involves applying the principles of PR to digital content – creating content with a unique angle or hook and outreaching to bloggers and journalists in order to get coverage (and therefore links) on relevant websites. Creating interesting campaigns and using compelling storytelling, Digital PR is able to access coverage in a way traditional PR never did. Businesses are no longer stuck to the ideology that one channel or one category fits their brand, with the ability to outreach and combine all methods of content marketing with that of a strong narrative, Digital PR is allowing businesses to promote more strategically. GENERATES RELEVANT LINKS FROM CREDIBLE SOURCES AND SITES When respected sites reference a business as a source, consumers begin to see that company as a source of valuable information – as does Google. Links to a website from third parties are seen as a ‘vote of confidence’ by search engines like Google, who recognise that if other people are citing pages on a businesses’ site, it’s probably because they include something worth seeing. Digital PR is now a go-to for most digital marketers as toptier websites such as national and international press, as well as many niche publications, just won’t link to a site for any reason other than a great news story. INCREASES WEBSITE TRAFFIC By achieving the attraction of other high domain sources and huge audiences link back to a business’s content that attracts more audiences to that company’s content equalling to a greater number of visitors to their site. Having more people visiting a business’s website can then influence purchases. Though this isn’t the aim of a Digital PR campaign, it can be a welcome side-effect. Some content naturally conveys key messages and USPs to potential customers. However, journalists won’t touch anything that is salesy so ensuring that receiving purchases isn’t the focus is key. IT STILL HAS ALL THE BENEFITS OF TRADITIONAL PR The main purpose of PR has always been about staying at the forefront of people’s minds. By helping to ensure a brand is associated with trusted publications like major news sites or niche industry titles – in turn, boosts feelings of trust between target audiences and brands.

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This is still achievable from Digital PR, as well as introducing a brand and its products to an entirely new audience and increasing a sense of expertise and credibility. Digital PR is not just about large-scale, content-led campaigns; an effective Digital PR strategy should also cover thought leadership outreach, the pitching of quotes and insights from experts within an organisation, and other traditional PR tactics. ENHANCE A BUSINESS’S REPUTATION Social media, Trust Pilot and TripAdvisor can be both a blessing and a curse for businesses. There will always be the possibility that consumers might have a bad experience with a company and have decided to avenge this via bad reviews. It’s more likely that someone will go out their way to tell people about a negative experience instead of a positive one. This is where Digital PR comes in, as it enables a business to drive its brand’s reputation in anyway it wants, delivering messages on what is crucial to their company while offering a crucial opportunity should a crisis happen. Aside from crisis management, getting a company’s name out to the media will also boost reputation by having a positive influence on target audiences to see their business. If the big publications, such as The Times or smaller industry publications are talking about the brand, that is instantly a vote of confidence in their favour to their audience. REPURPOSED CONTENT Content marketing is an important part of a digital PR campaign. The more that content is shared and found, the more a business’s reputation and status as an authority begins to grow. Content that is already written can be transformed into a different form of content and shared or published on a different platform by repurposing. This is a great way to keep costs down when doing Digital PR as, for example, a single blog post can be expanded with new information added and repurposed into several other types of content such as: • • • • • •

An infographic A listicle An article in the local newspaper An article in a trade publication A LinkedIn news update A short video

In this way, one piece of content can be transformed into information for multiple sources, all of which can be shared to help promote and grow a business’s reputation. It’s not a matter of simply rewriting the content, but also to continue adding value and reinforcing their voice as an authority. This is also great for when part-taking in reactive PR.

CASE STUDY

CLICK CONSULT CASE STUDY

ABOUT THE CLIENT Citation is dedicated to helping small and medium-sized businesses to succeed with their unrivalled HR and Health & Safety support and expertise. Their team of consultants are committed to help their clients navigate a range of legal and administrative tasks and offer highly trusted, practical advice. OBJECTIVES Citation tasked Click Consult with improving their link profile by outreaching a campaign relevant to office workspaces, the return to work following the covid-19 outbreak and how the future of work might change.

CASE STUDY

HOW WE HELPED Coronavirus changed the working world almost overnight. In March, when the Government announced a national lockdown, it forced businesses to not only adjust to remote working but also grapple with how they would eventually welcome their staff back to the workplace. Understanding this was a major concern for both employers and employees, we endeavoured to create a digital PR campaign that tapped into this theme. Our objective was to create a fun, sensationalist story around this topic that would appeal to both national and regional journalists, all the while demonstrating Citation’s expertise in human resources and health & safety. To achieve this, we came up with the idea to investigate some of the surprising ways in which the workplace might adjust post-coronavirus. We set up an interview with our go-to expert on all things futurology: Dr. Ian Pearson. Pearson has excellent relationships with the media; his expertise has been utilised by the Metro, the Sun and the Mirror in the past. We knew he could be relied on to not only provide insightful, scientific predictions around health and technology but also give out-of-the-box ideas that would be great for generating headlines. Afterwards, we also compiled a large amount of research from industry experts and business leaders on the topic of the post-coronavirus workplace. This was eventually merged into an article exploring how various areas of the traditional workplace would alter when lockdown is lifted.

RESULTS We identified that the strongest “news hook” in the content would be Dr. Ian Pearson’s claim that workplaces may have to ban the office tea round, implement artificial intelligence and introduce outdoor meetings in places like beer gardens. This formed the headline of our press release, which was distributed to a media list of almost 100 journalists. The story proved to be newsworthy after Boris Johnson’s press conference at the beginning of August urging employees to return to the office. This allowed the press release to be very timely when it was distributed in the first week of the month. Citation’s campaign was picked up by many regional news publications including MyLondon, Bristol Post and Wales Online off the back of this. It was also published by a number of HR websites, including HR News and HR Director. Later, the popularity of these stories allowed the campaign to gain extra coverage on several business blogs too. The campaign has gained 30 placements so far with an average domain authority of 63 which link to Citation’s campaign page.

30 63

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We also decided that the best way to communicate this to readers would be via a series of isometric floor-plans.

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