2019 Digital and Content Marketing Guide for Small Businesses
TABLE OF
CONTENTS P.01
HOW TO SUPERCHARGE YOUR GROWTH BY OUTSOURCING MARKETING
P.04
TOP 2019 BLOGGING TRENDS: MOBILE, VIDEO AND AI: OH MY!
P.07
TIPS FOR CREATING EVERGREEN CONTENT
P.11
FROM ADWORDS TO GOOGLE ADS: 2019 GOOGLE UPDATES YOU NEED TO KNOW
P.15
FINAL COUNTDOWN: FORMULATING YOUR PRE-LAUNCH MARKETING STRATEGY
P.18
WHY YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY ISN’T WORKING
P.21
P.24 P.27
LET’S GET ANALYTICAL: HOW MARKETING DATA ANALYTICS CAN HELP INCREASE BUSINESS AND SAVE MONEY
MOBILE MARKETING TIPS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES
YOU TOO CAN YOUTUBE: SCRIPTING, FILMING AND DISTRIBUTING YOUR VIDEO MARKETING CONTENT
HOW TO SUPERCHARGE YOUR GROWTH BY OUTSOURCING MARKETING
1
While it can be difficult to let go, many of the best leaders, business owners, and entrepreneurs grow their businesses by delegating and outsourcing as much work as possible. Working with an outsourced virtual assistant is one of the best ways to increase productivity, efficiency and bring in additional expertise to a business without the cost of hiring more employees. Outsourcing allows business owners and employees alike to focus on vital business matters and delegate the rest. In recent years, outsourcing of virtual assistance has expanded to a wide variety of business functions — including marketing. Gone are the days of virtual outsourcing a oneoff project to an inexpensive unskilled worker — today strategic businesses are integrating highly skilled US-based virtual marketers into their existing marketing team. The result is less of a freelancer and moreso a virtual teammate with all the skills and expertise of a modern digital marketing agency.
Why Should You Outsource Your Marketing?
What is the Best Way to Outsource Your Marketing? 1. Honestly assess your company’s marketing needs. It is one thing to have a few marketing campaigns that have stalled or could use some optimization; it’s another to have no digital marketing strategy in place. If you need someone to work on existing campaigns, a marketing virtual assistant is your best bet. If you’ve never put together a cohesive digital marketing strategy and implementation plan, you’ll want a marketing strategist to plot a course and figure out where you should be focusing your efforts. 2. Standardize your workflow with your marketing assistant. Working with a virtual assistant requires you to invest time initially to ensure proper workflow procedures are in place. This includes deciding on how and when you will communicate with your marketing assistant. You may want to set up a regular weekly or bi-monthly call to touch base on strategy, brainstorming, and potential issues that arise. Clearly communicate how you’d like your
There are a variety of reasons why outsourcing your marketing can bring value to your organization. Frequently companies do not have the bandwidth to properly invest proper time and energy into digital marketing. When individuals with multiple responsibilities are tasked with marketing activities, and an urgent matter arises in another facet of the business, marketing efforts may take a back seat or get abandoned altogether. This stopping and starting of marketing campaigns can sink even the most well-conceived strategies and make it difficult to assess whether a campaign
assistant to reach you. Is email, a phone call,
is working.
along the way.
or texting the best way for them to get a hold of you? Let your virtual marketing assistant know how you plan on reaching out to them as well. Consider how you’d like documents, ideas, content, data, and other materials shared between you, your marketing assistant, and the rest of your team. Make sure everyone who needs access has it. You’ll also want to develop reporting procedures. Decide how you’d like results reported to you and in what format. Set regular calls to discuss results 2
3. Decide how you will measure success.
these goals to ensure they still align with
Every business wants their marketing efforts
your overall marketing goals.
to positively impact the bottom line, but you need to set intermediate goals that determine whether your marketing campaign is working. These goals also force you to think through how the marketing campaign is going to work, step-by-step. A good way to do this is to work backwards from making a sale and figure out how that sale is made. Four common intermediate goals include:
Outsourcing and delegating work is an investment in your business’ future, and it isn’t just reserved for large corporations. Affordable options are accessible to sole proprietors and large conglomerates alike. As AI and Machine Learning continue to rock the small-to-large business boat, creative thinking, storytelling, and digital marketing are far from replaceable. Think of a virtual marketing associate as an
Increasing Leads: If your business typically
outsourced team member, they treat business
makes sales only after a sales call or email
with the respect and diligence of an employee
contact with a prospective client, you’ll want
without the hassle of onboarding new staff.
to focus on this metric.
Small businesses, startup founders, and
Increasing Web Traffic: If you’re trying to
independent entrepreneurs are taking full
increase sales derived from your company’s website, you’ll want to focus on increasing the number of people visiting your site. Increasing Conversion Rates: Alternatively, you may have a lot of people visiting your website, but only a small percentage who become a lead or make a purchase. The focus of your campaign here should be to increase the quality of your existing web traffic. Increasing Awareness: You might want to get your name out there. A good metric for awareness is tracking where you rank in online searches for key terms and potentially impressions on social media, blogs, published articles, and other places you or your brand has a web presence. Use these tips to set quantifiable goals for a predetermined timeline. As the project moves forward, you’ll want to reassess 3
advantage of it too. Even if your business is your “baby” or a labor of love, outsourcing your marketing will eventually result in increased efficiency and productivity in your operations, and turn your business into a supercharged growth machine!
TOP 2019 BLOGGING TRENDS: MOBILE, VIDEO AND AI: OH MY!
4
Studies have shown that businesses with a blog In addition to voice, visual search is also generate 126% more leads than companies
trending upward. Tools such as Google Lens and
In addition, studies show that Pinterest’s Lens are worth learning more about. organizations that regularly publish original According to Search Engine Journal: without one.
content receive 8 times more traffic, reduce their
Google Lens is the AI version of Google’s
overall marketing spend by over 60% and receive
reverse image search, backed with a twist of
3 times more leads.
AR and machine learning power. It will make
Blogging is not the new kid on the marketing
our smartphones even more addictive. The
block anymore, but it has evolved quite a bit since
big picture is, when using Google Lens, your
the platform went mainstream. There are a few
smartphone camera won’t just see what you
blogging trends that are significantly different in
see, but will also understand what you see to help you take action.
2019. Make sure you’re on the up and up so your blog doesn’t get left behind!
With these tools, people can take pictures
Artificial Intelligence: Optimize for Voice and Visual
of
Consumers have begun to move away from typing in their search queries, instead speaking to search engines via a smart hub, such as Google
things
they’re
interested
in
and
find
their way to your blog. Here are a few tips for optimizing your blog for visual search: Visual
Branding:
your
branding
Make and
sure
logo
to
on
have
images
Home, Amazon’s Alexa, and Apple’s Siri. When fifty percent of all searches are accomplished by voice search in 2020, you’ll be thankful your
DID YOU KNOW? Businesses with blogs
GENERATE 126% MORE LEADS than companies without one? and
products
as
much
as
possible.
blog is optimized for voice. One way bloggers
Alt Tags: Any images on your blog should
can optimize their posts for voice search in
have the alt tags filled out with the appropriate
2019 and beyond is by using questions in their
metadata.
titles, updating their metadata, and using social advertisements to drive traffic, giving you a higher overall rank. 5
Optimize Exif Data: Photo file data (e.g., image size, date/time taken, and geo coordinates) should
be
automatically
populated.
Optimizing this data is a more advanced image optimization tactic. Although voice and visual search are still in their relative infancy, it’s important to get on board early to optimize your blog sooner rather than later.
Secure your Blog with an SSL Certificate Back in July of 2018, Google went live with Google 68. This browser upgrade required websites and blogs to have updated SSL certificates in order to be considered secure. These SSL certificates are needed to transition sites over from “HTTP” to “HTTPS” for a more secure web browsing experience. If your blog does not have an updated SSL certificate, anyone visiting that site will see a very prominent message in the site’s browser bar announcing this site is “not secure”. This message will likely result in a decrease in trust, fewer customers visiting your site, and in turn, lost business. Now in 2019, it’s an official SEO ranking factor.
Making Your Blog Mobile-Friendly In 2018, US adults spent an average of 3.5 hours a day on their mobile devices. For business owners, this means your audience likely spends a large amount of time browsing on a mobile device as well. In order to stop losing potential mobile traffic, make sure you’re testing your website on a smartphone and/or tablet. Blogs that are difficult to read on smaller devices are doomed for a high bounce rate. Not to mention, sites that are not optimized are known to have a lower SEO rank, making it less likely for searchers to find your content. Blogging is alive and well in 2019, are you on board yet?
6
TIPS FOR CREATING EVERGREEN CONTENT
7
There are few things more frustrating than
Interviews.
Interviews
are
timeless,
allow
spending time on a blog, social media post, for a great deal of flexibility, and can provide or email marketing campaign and having the information as well as insight to readers. content become obsolete as quickly as last Interviews also represent a win-win: you generate month’s most tweeted meme. While frequently
content for your website and the subject of the
creating new content allows for more SEO interview gets a little more cachet and an SEO opportunities, evergreen material can actually
boost for your site. You don’t need to interview
be more effective than constantly churning out celebrities to create this type of content. Identify new content. Evergreen writing can be more impactful than the material that targets the latest trending hashtag because it can be written once and enjoyed by
somebody that can provide a unique perspective into topics that interest your clients. Interviewees can include industry experts, clients, and social media influencers.
many readers over time. Not having to create new
Introductory Material. Content that introduces
content as frequently also allows for necessary
the basics of your specialty can be particularly
employee downtime, or can free up your and
useful material. Introductory pieces can educate
your team’s schedule to focus on matters other potential clients about the products or services than content creation. Remaining relevant online
Evergreen content tends to rank highly in the search engines.
is important no matter the industry you’re in or the content you produce. Writing evergreen material for your blog, social media networks, and marketing campaigns not only saves you and your team time; it can provide your clients and readers with informational, descriptive, and timeless content as well.
Types of Evergreen Content How To. “How to” content is some of the most widely searched on Google. When creating guides, however, avoid making the subject of your “how to” article solely technology-focused. Technology can change frequently and tech-based “how to” articles on yesterday’s software or devices will be of use only to antiquarians. Business topics often
you provide. If the essence of your business is
providing
expert
assistance
to
clients,
introductory content is a way to display your mastery of the field without giving too much information away for free. Finally, the basics of your product or service are likely to remain fairly constant over time. Opinion Pieces. People have a nearly insatiable
stay relevant for a longer period of time. Rather appetite for commentary and opinion. Opinion than writing a narrow blog about how to perform
pieces that take a surprising or counterintuitive
tasks using software, focus on larger business
position can attract attention. But not all opinions
processes and discuss strategy, management, are evergreen. Avoid making predictions about and organizational tips.
the future of your industry or addressing newsy 8
topics, as these opinions can become stale or
around the world. Once a video is created, they
outdated.
can be referred to in web copy, placed into emails
Lists. Top 10 lists and resource lists are usually reliable evergreen material. Lists provide helpful
and even featured in a blog. Creating mixed platform content will encourage a higher click-
through rating, driving more informed web traffic content to users and can be updated in the and increasing your overall SEO rank. piecemeal fashion. For example, rather than having to create an entirely new blog, a top 10 list can be revised by deleting out-of-date entries for more current ones. Video. The benefits of video are abundant. By 2021, it’s expected that 82% of all web traffic will be from video. Fortunately, it’s never been easier to create evergreen video content for your website, social media, and emails. Not to mention, since Google’s acquisition of video giant YouTube, search engines are optimized to deliver video results along with other web content. An easy way to begin could be to make one of your more popular blogs into a video essay. Try distilling each paragraph down into smaller bits, then use a video editing software to add stock videos,
How to Create Evergreen Content
Address fundamental issues, rather than niche concerns. For example, businesses are constantly asking how to become more efficient, rethinking strategy, looking to increase growth, and seeking to minimize risk. Build your blog around these broader concerns, rather than trying to address a niche area. Most readers are not inherently interested in a blog about cloudbased project management platforms; they are interested in software that can help them become more efficient. Similarly, there likely aren’t many small business owners dying to understand the rules governing the classification of workers as employees but all small business owners want to identify potential liability that could result in an employee lawsuit. Make sure that your blog addresses core concerns (what your audience cares about), rather than starting with your particular solution (what you care about). Create comprehensive material. One way to create continued interest in online material is to make it a useful go-to reference. You’re going to want your content to be self-contained so that
music, and titles to convey the information. How-to content can also be used as evergreen video content. The “How-to” YouTube trend
readers continue to read through your material, rather than clicking off to another site that can fill in gaps in their knowledge. Provide necessary background so that less informed readers can
exploded in 2015, seeing a 70% increase in understand what you are trying to convey and overall watchtime. To this day, how-to videos avoid the use of jargon. continue to rack up thousands of views from 9
Update
your
content.
Occasionally,
your
evergreen content will need updating and maintenance. With blogs that list a number of tips or several potential solutions, you may want to substitute out an item that has become less relevant with a timelier tip or solution. You’ll also want to go through your existing material and make sure all your links are still working. Don’t be afraid to re-use or recycle old topics and content. For example, if a realtor writes a piece on how to buy your first home, the same article can be adjusted accordingly and republished the next few years, replacing key figures such as mortgage rates and local housing prices with current data.
10
FROM ADWORDS TO GOOGLE ADS: 2019 GOOGLE UPDATES YOU NEED TO KNOW
11
Google Ads (formally AdWords) is a staple Depending on the desired goals, such as office of many digital marketing campaigns. The
calls, visits, or e-commerce, Google promises
search engine giant consistently releases new that Smart Campaigns will show ads to users who updates to its advertising platform, often adding are most likely to take action using signals like innovative features to guide their users toward
behavior, location, and devices. The company’s
better results. While an ever-changing platform
research has shown that Smart Campaigns are
may seem intimidating, Google has kept their 3 times more likely to place an ad “in front of the core-customers
in
mind—small-to-midsized
businesses—making it easier than ever to create winning campaigns with real results.
right audience.” One example of a Smart Campaign would be a Realtor aiming to capture more local leads. Using
The new updates for 2019 bring exciting a Smart Campaign, Google would customize their possibilities. This blog breaks down the latest ads placement to only show the ad to people who and greatest features, providing examples of how
are motivated to buy or sell their home. The ad
an enterprise can begin to implement today.
would show images of previous listings and allow the user to call their work number directly from
Smart Campaigns
the advertisement.
Smart Campaigns is designed specifically for small businesses. As mentioned, Google aims to make marketing with their platform as fluid
Responsive Search Ads Any marketing strategist can attest, creating “the
as possible for customers without experience. perfect ad” can be a frustrating process—seeing a combination of ad copy that is ‘for sure a winner’ can flop. Google’s response to this issue may be nothing short of genius. The new Responsive Search Ad (RSA) system allows a user to utilize machine learning to test various combinations of ad copy for maximum effectiveness. A user would first provide multiple different headlines and descriptions to be used as ad copy. Once submitted, Google’s machine learning technology will test the effectiveness of each Smart
Campaigns
does
just
that. Smart
Campaigns is the default campaign type for new advertisers. The campaigns are almost entirely automated, connecting machine learning to Google’s vast pool of consumer data to create a winning ad formula in minutes.
headline and description. The system also takes into account the searched keywords, device searched from, browsing history, and more for up to 43,680 different permutations. Over time, the RSAs will deliver the best performing message depending on the set goals. 12
Ad Strength If configuring even one combination of killer keywords is a struggle, Google can help there, too. In addition to the RSA machine learning feature, Ad Strength will evaluate and score entered ad copy on a scale of poor to excellent. The scores are based on the keyword relevancy, quantity, and diversity of language in the ad copy. In the same window, Google will provide various suggestions it believes can improve an ad’s performance, claiming to increase the number of clicks up to 15 percent. Example: Ruff Life Dog Walkers wants to increase the number of calls to the office. After defining the goal with a Smart Campaign, the admin would insert various headlines into Google’s Responsive Search system: Professional Dog Walking in Philadelphia, PA; Ruff Life Dog Walkers — Philly, PA; Ruff Life Philly | Philadelphia’s Best Dog Care; etc. They’ll also add various descriptions that will be shown beneath the headline. After the Ad
within a YouTube advertisement. In the past, YouTube lead-capturing required a customer to leave their video tab and travel to a landing page. This new feature allows contact information to be solicited without disruption. For a local law practice, this new feature could be extremely effective in capturing soft leads. To put the power of YouTube in perspective, imagine a standard law practice commercial on television that would allow a potential lead to provide their name, number, and email directly from the screen. Incredible, right? Now imagine that the only viewers who were shown the ad are people that searched for a local lawyer in the past month. Rather than wasting budget on a broad television audience, YouTube ads deliver the message to customers who are most likely to engage. When a YouTube lead is processed, the practice can begin a dialogue via email, call the lead on their own time, or begin to build a relationship via drip campaigns or a newsletter.
Landing Pages
Strength evaluation comes back “excellent”, For the nearly half of all small businesses that they can let Google get to work optimizing their don’t have a website but still want to utilize Ads, budget. Every time a user calls the office directly
Google’s auto-optimized landing pages provide a
from their Google search, Ruff Life will be billed.
functional alternative to creating, managing, and updating a website. The landing pages, powered
YouTube Leads YouTube is both the second largest search engine and the second largest social media platform in the world. The diversity in the audience, both searchers and consistent users, creates a great opportunity to reach a large number of potential customers. A recent update to Google’s YouTube Ads will allow an admin to provide a contact form 13
by Google machine learning, pull information from submitted advertisement copy to create a virtual page with a business title, description, and contact information. Designing, building, and maintaining a website can be a cumbersome and expensive task. Using a Google landing page, small businesses
can begin to connect with clients using Google without the hassle of website upkeep.
SSL Certificates One of Google’s 2018 updates brought updated security features for its users. The new standards will only categorize a website as ‘secure’ if it’s SSL certificates are updated. SSL certificates ensure a more secure web-browsing experience. Without a proper update, Google will show a prominent message next to a site’s URL that reads “not secure.” With a notification like that, business owners run the risk of bouncing customers visit, burning trust, and losing business. Google’s
new
updates
provide
limitless
opportunities to capitalize on its vast user base (Google processes around 40,000 searches per second). However, navigating the Google Ad system and creating a strategy that works will take time and patience. For those willing to make the investment, the rewards will be well worth it.
14
FINAL COUNTDOWN: FORMULATING YOUR PRE-LAUNCH MARKETING STRATEGY
15
Whether you are an established small business
the costs of pay-to-use channels including the
advertising a new service or product, or a new
cost of keywords for PPC marketing. Knowing
startup that has yet to go live, developing a pre- where to advertise and how much you can expect launch marketing strategy can help effectively to spend on your marketing beforehand will be spread the word and draw in new customers. extraordinarily beneficial for planning down the But why is pre-launch marketing so important? line. Results from marketing, particularly digital marketing, don’t happen overnight. It takes time to gain social media followers and for web
2. Build a social media following. The earlier you can gain a significant social media presence, the better. You don’t want to only have two followers
content to become popular and have reach on on Twitter or one “like” on Facebook (Thanks the web. You’re going to want to prepare so that Mom!) when your business launches. Growing when your business has launched, you’re ready and supporting your social media presence early to let people know about it.
on also provides the opportunity to build some
pre-launch buzz about your new company or your 1. Research your target audience. Develop a latest product or service. You can increase your profile of your ideal consumer. Figure out where organization’s online presence by identifying and your target audience gets their information, both
connecting with influencers within your field and
online and offline, so you can know where to focus even those in related disciplines. your marketing efforts. If you’re trying to sell a fashion accessory for women, Instagram, which 3. Create ready-to-go marketing content. is a visual platform and skews toward women, Before launching, you will want to have a lineup of marketing content ready to go. Your prelaunch content marketing can include a number of blogs, infographics, videos, or eBooks. You’ll want to ensure your website has also been created or updated with SEO in mind, so visitors and potential new customers can easily find it online. In addition, create and offer free content to build a list of prospects even before you make your product or services available. 4. Have an initial email marketing campaign. may be a good place to get your message out. On
Assembling
a
contact
list
of
prospective
the other hand, if you’re marketing a B2B service, customers also allows you to get a leg up on an LinkedIn might be a better platform. If you are email marketing campaign. Let these interested pursuing a digital marketing strategy, figure out
customers know about your launch with an email
the keywords your target audience uses to search campaign you have ready to go once your product for products and services online and research or service is available. Over time, you’ll want to 16
follow up with the individuals on your initial list by sending blogs, business updates, and other content related to your company. 5. Know what you’re willing to pay for a lead. More established businesses launching a product or service have the advantage of having data on how much it costs to acquire a customer. This data may come from past marketing campaigns or sales efforts in related business areas. With a target cost of customer acquisition, you can calculate the amount that you are willing to spend per lead, or, in the digital advertising realm, per click. For example, assume that your company has previously spent $50 per lead via telemarketing and sales calls. You don’t want to spend more than that on your newly launched product. You know from previous data that you convert 10% of visitors to your website. You’re now launching a digital marketing campaign and expect a click through rate of 5%. You should be willing to spend up to $.25 per click ($50 x .10 x .05). Pre-launch marketing can help accelerate the rate at which your startup grows. You’ll gain visibility and generate excitement for your new business before it even launches. With a proper marketing strategy in place, your opening will be greeted with a host of visitors on your new website and calls from interested customers.L
17
WHY YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY ISN’T WORKING
18
Marketing a small business is an exciting and your target customers, where you find them, daunting task. There are countless choices as to and messages that match your current value how you spend your marketing budget online, and proposition can greatly improve the effectiveness campaigns that were effective several months ago may suddenly lose their potency. A strategy that worked for reaching one set of customers may fail to reach another.
of your marketing campaigns.
2. You’re not paying attention to what your competition is up to. Many small businesses are reluctant to look at their competitors’
Poorly planned marketing efforts or half-baked
marketing efforts. For some business owners, it
campaigns have the potential to be nearly as
is an anxiety-inducing exercise to see what other
damaging as no marketing at all. But even if you’re companies, often in a better market position an established business that has previously gone
with more resources, are doing. Other business
through the effort of mapping out a marketing owners may be resistant to the idea that their strategy, it is crucial to revisit your marketing to
competitors may have valuable ideas worth
check its effectiveness and investigate whether
emulating. It’s important to take an unbiased
there are other avenues you can venture into. look at your competitor’s successful strategies There may even be marketing mistakes you
and to learn from their failures. It can help guide
made when you first started your business that
you in the decisions you make for your own
you can now improve as well as campaigns that
business. A simple analysis can get you started.
have proven themselves ineffective that may be
It doesn’t have to be fancy or complicated; you
eliminated altogether.
can simply use a whiteboard or a sketch pad.
If your marketing efforts aren’t yielding the results you had hoped for or have slowly tapered
The point is to give yourself an overall picture of your current marketing efforts and opportunities
off, you’re probably wondering:
What Am I Doing Wrong? 1. You’re using the same marketing plan you had in place when you started your business. By now, you probably know a lot more about your product, services, and sales model than when you started your business. Additionally, new marketing styles and systems are being developed every day, so if you find to do business in comparison with your yourself in a rut with your old marketing plan competition. Look at your competitor’s website and your marketing is not driving new customers with BuiltOn’s free tool. It will show you what
or sales, now is the time to look at some new they are using for emails, contact forms, plugins, marketing strategies. Assessing your current advertising, and a whole list of other things. marketing strategy and updating it to match 19
3. You’re not tracking data on your successes or failures. You can update your marketing plan and sales strategy, but if you aren’t keeping track of what’s working and what’s not, then it won’t do you much good. There are many metric tracking sites available. Many are based on a monthly subscription and help with automating your social media as well. Google Analytics, however, is the best free and widelyused option. It offers an abundance of information and tools. By tracking your data, you’ll find out which marketing campaigns are yielding the results you want and which are underperforming. This includes identifying the people responding to your marketing efforts (it might surprise you); the effectiveness of varying versions of the ads you are running; and figuring out the times that your audience is most likely to engage with your social media postings. You need to know the sources of your web traffic, the composition of your audience, and how much of your traffic converts to sales. Test the effectiveness of your marketing channels and adjust accordingly. Is your blog not increasing company visibility? Revisit the subject matter you are writing about or increase the platforms on which you share your blog. If your business’ LinkedIn page isn’t leading to as much customer engagement as you had hoped, try posting different content or focus more of your efforts on a different social media network.
20
LET’S GET ANALYTICAL: HOW MARKETING DATA ANALYTICS CA N H E L P I N C R E AS E BUS I N ESS A N D SAV E M O N EY
21
The 2011 film “Moneyball”, dramatizes the story of how Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, got a step ahead of his competitors in Major League Baseball by taking a more analytical approach to evaluating players. Billy Beane used data analytics to identify players with undervalued strengths and built a team that outperformed expectations.
With a little familiarity about what to look for, you’ll be in a good position to evaluate how your marketing campaigns are performing and areas in which they can improve.
Key Traffic Metrics
The critical metrics for measuring the success of a digital marketing campaign will often center on web traffic. Most marketing campaigns are In the same vein, marketing analytics - the designed to persuade the target audience to measurement and optimization of your take actions that increase traffic to your site. For marketing activities through data - is not so example, your marketing campaign may drive users to a landing page, prompt them to search for more information about your company, or persuade them to fill out an online contact form. You’re therefore going to want to familiarize yourself with metrics that track how much traffic you’re attracting to your website and what users are doing. Although there are a wide variety of tools and platforms that can track metrics, in this article we will focus on analytics available -John Wanamaker through Google Analytics.
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
different. In the internet age, a clear digital marketing strategy is critical to the success of your business. In particular for small businesses and entrepreneurs who need to make sure their marketing dollars count, it is important to be able to identify whether your marketing efforts are succeeding, and which specific activities are responsible for that success.
• Conversions: This is a critical metric that should be defined with care. A conversion occurs when a website visitor completes an activity you have defined as valuable to your business—such as purchasing a product, signing up for your service, subscribing to your newsletter, or downloading your app. Conversions represent your fulfilled target objectives that contribute to the success of your company.
You probably think you don’t know anything about data analytics. Not so! If you’ve ever • Sessions: You are going to want to know how many times your website is being visited watched baseball, played in a fantasy and used. The number of sessions initiated football league, or obsessively follow Nate every day will tell you just that. While the raw Silver’s 538 blog, you’re familiar with analytics. number of sessions alone probably isn’t that Here’s a quick primer for the small business useful, knowing the length of sessions or the owner on metrics that will commonly be central number of pages visited during a session, to evaluating the success of a marketing effort. 22
can provide you with a better understanding appropriate metrics to track to ensure that you of how users are interacting with your site. are meeting it. • New Users: One key metric for traffic is the number of new users you are attracting to your site. While the number of sessions on your site may be a good metric for how often your site is being used, most marketing campaigns seek to attract new customers. This is a good metric to monitor to see if your campaign is reaching people who haven’t previously heard about you or your products.
2. Periodic reporting. Google Analytics can provide customized reporting to you based on the key metrics that you have defined as important. The report should include the metrics that you use to measure your goal as well as related metrics. For example, if you seek to drive traffic to your landing page, you will want to know more than the number of users. You’ll want to know the bounce rate, the average length of time users spent on the page, and possibly whether visitors • Bounce rate: Bounces deal with bounced took an action, like signing up for a newsletter or sessions, which means a visitor only viewed making a purchase. one page during a session and didn’t interact with a page. High bounce rates are usually a 3. Suggestions for improving performance. problem. They indicate that the users who are Even if your campaign is performing well, don’t visiting a page do not find the content engaging become complacent. Consider actions that can be or relevant enough to take further action. taken to improve key metrics. For example, if you are using a pay-per-click ad campaign, conduct • Source/Medium: You need to know where A/B testing to compare whether changes to ad your traffic is coming from to evaluate the wording or landing pages improve performance. success of a marketing campaign. For example, if you are promoting products on different Whether you are collecting and analyzing social media sites, you will want to know your marketing data yourself or utilizing a which sites are generating the most traffic. virtual marketing assistant to do it for you, a successful marketing campaign requires clearly • Monitor Your Campaign: Monitor whether understanding and defining your goals and your marketing campaigns are achieving their monitoring campaign performance to ensure goals. Here are some steps to take to make that those goals are being met. sure that your marketing efforts stay on track.
Outline what you want to achieve and set goals. 1. Make sure that your marketing campaign has a measurable and realistic goal. The goal of the campaign may be to increase website traffic to a particular landing page, generate leads, or encourage social media engagement with your community. Define a goal and identify 23
MOBILE MARKETING TIPS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES
24
One
of
the
most
important
components
mobile search. Most search engines vary
to being a mobile-ready business is being
results based on the location of the mobile
accessible; you want your customers to be
device on which a search is conducted, so if
able to easily find your small business online
a user Googles “shoe repair”, near your shoe
and interact with you in a streamlined manner.
repair store, your website is more likely to
Without mobile marketing integrated into your
appear higher in results. This highlights the
organization’s overall marketing plan, you are
importance of search engine optimization
missing out on potential business. Ensure
(SEO). Additionally, make use of tools
your company is findable, accessible, and
that provide search engines with detailed
functional on mobile platforms with these tips.
information about your business, including
• Make your website mobile-friendly. The most important step you can take to making your business mobile-ready is having a website with a design responsive to mobile browsers. If you don’t, you risk having a difficult-to-read site with text that doesn’t fit on the page correctly. Confused readers that can’t find information that doesn’t appear properly on their mobile browser, are frustrated users who won’t be
Google My Business and Bing Places. Finally, target sites and apps that allow users to find businesses by location by ensuring that your business has a complete profile. For example, the Yelp app, allows users to search by proximity. You should make sure that Yelp has all relevant information about your business and encourage your best customers to rank your business on Yelp.
visiting your website again anytime soon. • Make sure signup forms can be easily completed by users on mobile devices. If some information is difficult to find or if necessary information can’t be completed, you may effectively prevent customers from signing up for your service. Be particularly careful with animations and video. These features may translate poorly to mobile and may simply take too long to load on many wireless
networks,
frustrating
potential
customers and stopping them from visiting your website in the future. Mobile-friendly websites also rank higher in Google search results than those not optimized for mobile devices.
• Make
purchasing
and
discounting
customer-friendly via social media and apps. Facebook and Twitter aren’t just for finding out what your high school nemesis is up to these days. Social media platforms offer great ways to find and secure new customers
• Take advantage of searches conducted
too. When people seek to make purchases
on mobile devices locally. Businesses with
on mobile devices, they need a simplified
physical locations have an advantage on
purchasing process. You can use “buy now”
25
buttons on many social media networks so users don’t even have to navigate away from their news feed to make a purchase. You can even offer mobile-only deals sent straight to your consumers’ smartphones (for those who have signed up, of course). SMS coupons have redemption rates 10 times higher than print coupons, which is good news for business. You can also use mobile-only social media applications like Snapchat and Periscope to interact with your customers by conducting fun FAQ sessions, sending exclusive invites to in-person or online sales events, or host contests to engage your client base. 70% of searches performed on mobile devices are connected with a business. 52% of searchers called a business they looked up, 50% looked for a business address or location on a map, 48% visited the website of the business, and 66% of people who performed a mobile search actually visited the business. Mobile search provides a great opportunity to convert potential customers in your vicinity. Make sure that nearby mobile users can find your business and, when they do, that it’s portrayed in the best possible light.
26
YOU TOO CAN YOUTUBE: SCRIPTING, FILMING AND DISTRIBUTING YOUR VIDEO MARKETING CONTENT
27
YouTube is a powerful and user-friendly platform for video creators. It not only allows brands to create YouTube channels to regularly update and connect with followers, but offers the ability to provide content to customers that is meaningful and engaging. In fact, according to Forbes, 90% of customers say video helps them make buying decisions and 64% of customers say that seeing a video makes them more likely to buy.
analytics which can allow for the collection and analysis of more data. Thankfully, YouTube makes setting up a channel an easy process. These instructions can walk you through it.
2. Develop an editorial calendar. An editorial calendar is incredibly important in helping you plan ahead with the kind of videos you want to create and to stay within a timeline of when you will need to shoot, edit, and post your videos. Editorial calendars also serve to ensure a brand’s This article, we’ll go over the nuts and bolts content is consistent and integrates effectively of how to implement your vision—setting up with the company’s content marketing strategy. a channel, scripting, filming, and distributing Even if you don’t have a fancy editorial calendar your content on YouTube. tool, you can always use free platforms like Google Calendar to organize your content calendar. 1. Create a YouTube business or brand channel. There is a difference between having 3. Consider the length of your videos. a YouTube account and creating a channel; According to Hubspot, video length should a “channel” generally refers to the parts of depend on the platform you host them on. In your account that you’ve chosen to make public general, the most successful videos on YouTube and upload videos to. Branded YouTube channels are under two minutes. Even less than that allow for customization of design elements such for platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Videos, of course, can be longer, but it is recommended when recording a video to err OVER ONE on the shorter side. If you need longer than 5-10 minutes, consider breaking the video up into a BILLION USERS series of several videos.
That’s how many users YouTube has – which amounts to almost one-third of the Internet.
4. Write a video script. Although reading from a script verbatim does not make for engaging video content, ad-libbing can be disastrous. A as banners, color scheme, and logos which can well thought-out and concise script will help mean integrating the channel with the whole of keep you on track and on message. And don’t your brand’s design. Branded YouTube channels be afraid to rehearse your script a few times can also restrict users of a certain age and before you film; this can help avoid extra takes redirect visitors based on location, which lets spent tripping over your words or forgetting brands segment their audiences according what you wanted to say. You can find a video to specific requirements. To make sure you’re on how to write a YouTube video script on….you getting the most out of your content, branded guessed it…YouTube. YouTube channels also track viewership 28
5. Location. Location. Location. Where you choose to film your video is important. You want the space to be well lit, soundproofed (or at least reliably quiet), and with aesthetics that suit the mood and message of your videos. This doesn’t necessarily mean putting on your fanciest garb or filming on a professional set. For example, popular vlogger, Charlie Schneider of “Emergency Awesome” does most of his episodes in a t-shirt, sitting at what looks like a desk in his bedroom. This works well for him because he does recap shows of pop culture TV shows like Game of Thrones, Westworld, and The Avengers. If Charlie was providing financial expertise on 401(k) investing, not so much.
editing experience and what you’re trying to accomplish with your videos. 8. Distribute your video content. Once you have your videos uploaded to YouTube, you’ll need to decide how you want to get them in front of your viewers. Will you be utilizing email marketing to let your followers know? If you don’t yet have any YouTube channel followers, will you be posting to your company’s established social media platforms? Or would
6. Don’t wait until the end of your video for your call-to-action (CTA). Generally, your audience will diminish as your video goes on, so you want to make sure you show important and engaging content in the beginning. 7. Film and edit your video. Rather than use the webcam on your computer—which will likely result in a poor quality video or sound— or film with your cell phone, consider making an investment in a better webcam to hook up to your laptop or desktop (a good option for beginners who don’t want to spend a lot of money upfront) or a DSLR and tripod (for more experienced videographers). You’ll also need video editing software since you can’t expect to film everything perfectly in one shot. Video editing software also allows you to edit your video and sound separately, and even add graphics (like an intro and/or outro) to personalize your content further. There are software options ranging from free to $200, from iMovie to Final Cut Pro; the particular software you’ll need will depend on your 29
you rather share your YouTube videos on your company blog? Whether the videos people watch are educational or entertaining, it’s clear that YouTube is a captivating and profitable tool for businesses. It is a platform that allows marketers to share content in a unique, engaging, and creative way for consumers to easily view and share. So go on out there and unleash your inner Martin Scorsese on the YouTube Universe.
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