Marketing Online - Issue 7

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AUGUST 2016 ISSUE SEVEN

ROCKING TESTIMONIALS FOR YOUR BRAND PROFILE

The Myth of Free Traffic Six Free Plagiarism Checkers Content Marketing v Advertorials WWW.MARKETINGONLINE.CO.NZ

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EDITORIAL T

echnology was once the saviour of small business, but could it be their doom? There was a time when technology was seen as the great leveller. If a small company had a good website, they could go toe-to-toe with the big corporates.

But could it now be that advancing technology will also be the end of small business competitiveness?

I recently attended the Adobe Symposium in Sydney and was blown away by the advancements in marketing technology that Adobe is rolling out to ensure that companies who use their products are not only super responsive, they also deliver an amazing customer experience.

Adobe’s Executive Vice President and General Manager, Digital Marketing Brad Rencher told the more than 2,000 people in the auditorium that we are no longer an economy of products and services, we are an economy of experiences.

“As great as our product may be, if the experience of shopping and buying and getting support is not delightful to the customer, it’s game over,” he said.

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Adobe is building the infrastructure to ensure responsiveness and great experiences, because that’s what consumers are demanding – and all power to Adobe. But, products like that are not cheap.

A marketing cloud ecosystem can start at fifty thousand United States dollars per year. Small companies cannot afford that kind of money, which means they will struggle to deliver to the capability of the bigger players.

Just to clarify, I have no problem with the cost of enterprise level software. It is the market and the customer needs that Adobe and others like them serve, and that’s good. Again, they are doing a great job – bearing in mind it also costs an arm and a leg to develop these tools and to keep on innovating at the very frontier.

It may be that copycats come along to serve the smaller end of the market, or that some of the enterprise level products do become more affordable over time, but in the interim the smaller companies may get left behind and you have to wonder if they’ll be able to recover.

Colin

8. CONVERSION The Myth of Free Traffic 10. WEBSITE SPAM Most NZ Small Business Sites ‘Probably’ Infected with Spam 12. PLAGIARISM Six Free Plagiarism Checkers for Writers

BY Leila Summers 16. CONTENT MARKETING The Difference between Content Marketing and Advertorials 20. BOOK REVIEW Online Reputation Your Most Valuable Asset in a Digital Age 21. CONTENT User Generated Content Can Help Take Pressure off for Marketers 22. DID YOU KNOW? User Generated Content Can Help Take Pressure off for Marketers

ABOUT / Short and sharp, Marketing Online is a free eMagazine delivering thought provoking and enlightening articles, and industry news and information to forward-thinking marketing people.

EDITOR / Colin Kennedy ART DIRECTOR / Jodi Olsson

CONTENTS

4. FEATURE Rocking Testimonials for your Brand Profile

CONTENT ENQUIRIES / Phone Colin on 027 2456060 or email colin@espiremedia.com ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES / Phone Jennifer on 03 443 6316 or email jenniferl@espiremedia.com WEBSITE / www.marketingonline.co.nz

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FEATURE

ROCKING TESTIMONIALS FOR YOUR BRAND PROFILE

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BY Rebecca Caroe

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STARTING FROM ZERO A different opportunity exists for businesses without any rave reviews. You may feel it’s hard to ask for favours, to ask for sales or to ask for testimonials. Let us help you make it easy.

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estimonials are an excellent way to win new clients and grow your business profile. If you want to consider adding them to your tactical marketing armoury, there are some prior considerations to resolve.

1. Does your business get testimonials spontaneously?

2. Have you got any existing testimonials?

If you aren’t a long-established business, then it will be harder to encourage spontaneous outpourings of delight and joy.

Never fear, we’ve got a plan for you.

Business ‘workflows’ are a trendy catchphrase that is a way of describing ‘how-we-dothings-round-here’. Any marketing activity which you do more than once deserves a workflow process. The reason is that it becomes part of normal business life and is easier to reproduce if you do it frequently.

Think about how you are going to set up the business process to get new testimonials regularly from clients and customers.

HERE’S OURS

Our marketing meeting has ‘Testimonials’ as an agenda item. We review a list of recent customers and pick a couple to approach. The WHAT’S ALREADY IN THE CAN? lead person who works on the client phones up and asks (using a pre-agreed script) if we can Start with any existing documented positive feedback that you or your client can find. And have a testimonial. Further, we ask for it in three places - spoken, on LinkedIn and Google. The plan a page on your domain where you can spoken one we write down as we chat and then drop in all the quotes from customers. send back to the client for approval.

Make it easy to find e.g. www.<yourdomain.

What’s so easy about this is that the client co.nz>/testimonials. doesn’t have to write anything - they just Get the most out of the page so the viewer talk. Most people find that easier. finds it a helpful resource, not a chore. Lay Then we upload the testimonial or ask the client out the page so the most recent testimonial to do it on social pages. We also link back to is at the top, and the reader scrolls down the client’s website (like we do on the Creative to see others. If there are obvious different Agency Secrets Testimonials page). It’s nice to services or products which have received reviews, clearly separate them too. A series of give them back some strong SEO link juice. embedded tabs can be a neat solution here.

Task completed!

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TESTIMONIALS ADD TO YOUR SEO Ask for testimonials on your Google My Business page. Note, you have to have a Gmail address to create these so it can be a challenge for some clients if they have to create an account. The significant output from this is that your testimonials are visible in public search (alongside the search map) and when you have over five published, you get a star rating too. That makes you stand out even more from competitors.

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GAMIFICATION OF TESTIMONIALS

GET MORE MILEAGE FROM EACH TESTIMONIAL

Inspired by Gabriel McIntyre’s “Getting Paid Faster with the Invoice Challenge” we set about adapting it to suit our need for client testimonials.

[Seriously, watch that video - it’s genius.]

Remember I suggested you get clients to ‘just talk’ and you write the testimonial? Well, that chatting will almost certainly contain a lot of information. Take all your testimonials and copy write a long and a short ‘sound bite’ version of each. Put the short version on the website testimonials page.

we ran to get testimonials and support a good cause.

Copy the long version of each to a blog post - and link to it from the short version on the testimonials page. Creating on-site links is good (reduces bounce rate) and also helps show an expanded authentic ‘customer voice’ to each one.

Here’s the case study of the campaign

Now, where else can you get and share testimonials? We know they’re on Linked In, Facebook, Neighbourly (NZ local media), Yelp, Finda, Localist... There are heaps of places - but don’t try to game the system.

Just pick the site(s) you know your clients and prospects use.

Over to you to share your favourites.▼

WWW.CREATIVEAGENCYSECRETS.COM

Rebecca Caroe is the CEO of Creative Agency Secrets experts in getting websites working hard for your business.

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GOT A PRODUCT, SERVICE OR BUSINESS WORTH TALKING ABOUT? Want to grow brand awareness in a more effective and useful way?

TALK TO ESPIRE MEDIA ABOUT OUR CONTENT MARKETING SERVICES We offer a range of ways to attract and retain customers, by creating and curating relevant and valuable content to engage and add value to your audience.

BENEFITS: • Expand your digital footprint • Grow brand awareness • Increase traffic to your website • Thought leadership • Media exposure • Attract new customers • And... grow SALES!

Get in+64touch with Jennifer now to discuss our options.

3 443 6316 (NZT) | jenniferl@espiremedia.com | www.espiremedia.com Check out our blog for content marketing advice, tips and ideas, plus a free copy of our content marketing guide The Content Creation Cookbook! w w w. m a r ke t i n g o n l i n e . co . n z

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CONVERSION

THE MYTH OF FREE TRAFFIC

BY Luca Catania

BY Luca Catania

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f you are in business online, there are two things you should be focused on, driving traffic and converting your traffic into sales. Most companies work on generating what’s known as paid traffic and ‘free traffic’.

However, there is a little-known fact about this ‘free traffic’. It is a myth that has grown and spread, and it diminishes the truth about each visitor that comes to your site.

Don’t believe this myth another day, here is what you need to know about traffic to be successful.

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THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS FREE TRAFFIC senior conversion specialist, Roland Mirabueno , recently spoke at the Genius Marketing Summit in Kiev, Ukraine, where he highlighted the importance of conversion rate optimisation, pinpointing the fact that each visitor to your website is the result of some cost your company incurred.

Catchi’s

First, there’s paid traffic where you bid for keyword rankings and score with platforms like Google AdWords. Paid traffic costs you directly but tends to pay off relatively quickly and helps you to gain visibility on search engine result pages.

On the other hand, there’s organic ‘free’ traffic, which is the traffic you get by providing your audience with quality, consistent SEO content. This requires a lot of time, skill, and patience before you’ll start seeing results.

Not only that, often you need to hire a professional writer to create good content on an ongoing basis, you need someone to manage your social media pages, you need an SEO specialist to optimise your website, etc.

Whether the costs you incur for driving organic traffic to your site come in the form of outsourcing, hours spent maintaining your site, or the fees you pay an SEO agency on a monthly basis, every person who visits your site because of these actions has a cost. Although it is not as direct or straightforward, it is a calculable cost.

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Time is money.

Don’t waste your time. Track your customers and focus on the top sources for your business.

MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR TRAFFIC OR LOSE So when it comes down to it, you’re paying for your website’s traffic, whether in the form of time or money; direct or not. Each visitor has a value. If you’re not converting your traffic into paying customers, you’re losing out on your investment. Wasting time and resources. It is important to analyse which traffic-driving efforts are resulting in conversions so that you can invest more in those and scrap tactics that aren’t as effective.

Time is money. Don’t waste your time.

Track your customers and focus on the top sources for your business. You’ll be amazed at how much your business can grow when you make small, continuous adjustments in the right direction.▼

www.catchi.digital

Luca Catania is a conversion rate specialist at Catchi.

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▼ WEBSITESPAM

MOST NZ SMALLBUSINESS SITES‘PROBABLY’ INFECTED WITHSPAM

BY Colin Kennedy

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New Zealand Google partner company is warning that the websites of most SMEs in this country have likely had their Google analytics hacked by spammers.

CEO of Google AdWords certified partner Ark Advance, Chris Price, said that every single website his company has worked with in the last year was infected by the referral spam, which distorts the site’s traffic reports.

“The people who are doing this will use software to hack into your Google Analytics account where they deposit referral spam.

Infection rates may be as high as 90% or more here in New Zealand,” he said.

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The referral spam creates two problems for website owners. “If you go into your Google Analytics account, you will see that there are a few ‘sites’ that are referring a tremendous amount of traffic to your website. You may be tempted to click on the link to see who they are, and that’s when you end up being referred to a spam website – with all the inherent risks, like an infection from malicious malware.

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Websites represent a significant investment for some companies who need them to do their job. But when you can’t understand the numbers, because they’re being distorted, it undercuts all the money and work that has gone into that website.

“The other problem is that your data is distorted. You may think that your website is doing great, so you don’t need to make any fixes or improvements when in fact your site is performing poorly,” he said.

There are two ways to identify that your site has been infected by referral spam: 1. Look for a very high bounce rate of between 90% and 100%. A reasonable bounce rate should be between 20% and 40%.

2. Under the heading ‘Acquisition’, click on ‘Referrals’. Look for oddly named referral site links that originate offshore. For example, two standard spam links are: • law-enforcement-dd.xyz <http://law-enforcement-dd.xyz>; and • magicdiet.gq <http://magicdiet.gq>

“This has been going on for a couple of years, and they do it because they want you to click on the link out of curiosity. Perhaps for a website receiving a million hits a day it is insignificant, but to a small business website in New Zealand, it is certainly disruptive.

“Websites represent a significant investment for some companies who need them to do their job. But when you can’t understand the numbers, because they’re being distorted, it undercuts all the money and work that has gone into that website.”

Mr Price said there are a few fixes, but the easiest solution was not to click on the spam links and to customise the analytics report so that you only see results for New Zealand – in other words, filter out overseas results.

“Of course, this only works if you are interested in local traffic, which I think applies to most SMEs. Any other fixes are relatively technical and will require some expertise,” he said.▼

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PLAGIARISM

SIX FREE PLAGIARISM CHECKERS FOR WRITERS

BY Leila Summers

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hile the Internet has opened up an incredible opportunity for online learning and research, it has also allowed for the increased likelihood of plagiarised content whether intentional or not.

Plagiarism is not only copying and pasting text directly from the source into your own writing but also the copying of ideas (including paraphrasing where words, ideas or information have been changed into your own words so as not to resemble the original text) without crediting the source.

PLAGIARISM CHECKERS

Plagiarism checker tools can also help you to find out if anyone else has copied your content.

I have taken the time to test out a long list of free plagiarism checkers using a fabricated document with a large percentage of intentional plagiarism.

There are a lot of other free plagiarism checkers out there, but I found many to be quite useless and so I have only added the ones that work well and are helpful. While they don’t all catch everything, they do pick up most plagiarisms. I found that running my document through a few of them to double check was helpful as a few of them picked up different things. Below is a list of the top six that I recommend.

CITING SOURCES

DUPLICHECKER

For most informal writing, it is acceptable to cite sources by either using quotation marks or indented block text and include the source in in-text citation and/or the end notes. To cite an online reference, one should include at a minimum the author’s last name (or short title if there is no author), publication year and “Retrieved from http://URL”. For example Author, A. (date). Title of document [Type of document].

Retrieved from http://URL

DupliChecker is an accurate free online plagiarism tool for checking up to 1,000 words. Each sentence is dissected, and all the source websites from where the content was copied are displayed. This checker works really well, although it only allows you to check 1000 words per day without registering (one way to get around this is to clear your history and try again or try a different browser). Registration is free.

Any words, including quotes or paraphrasing, as well as ideas that are not your own should be clearly marked in indented block text or quotation marks, and sources should be properly cited. See more information on citing sources below.

To avoid plagiarism, make notes and citations as you write, give proper credit to sources, and finally, use a plagiarism checker to ensure that your work is entirely original.

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PLAGIARISM

PLAGIARISMA.NET Plagiarisma offers a limited free version using a copy and paste online option (2,000-word limit), an entire URL search, or a file upload option. They provide a detailed, helpful report which includes sentences which are completely unique. You can use the checker about three times without registering for free.

VIPER Viper is a free plagiarism scanner that requires installing software on your computer and registration. The software then requires you to log in, upload your document, add a category and scan. Viper scans documents against 10 billion sources and offers side-by-side highlighted comparisons for plagiarism. I found the software to be accurate and although it missed a few of the plagiarisms that some other online checkers had picked up, it picked up several additional ones that all the other online checkers had missed. Note that Viper is available to Microsoft Windows users only.

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PAPERRATER Paper Rater offers grammar checking, writing suggestions and an average plagiarism detection in the form of a percentage with only a few of the web pages which may contain content matching the document.

Uploads are limited to 2,000 words. You need to make sure you have chosen the optional plagiarism detection option before proceeding to ‘Get Report’. Although the feedback is not thorough, it may be helpful to do a quick check on the plagiarism percentage of the document.

PLAGIARISMCHECK

SEESOURCES SeeSources is a free online plagiarism checker for up to 1,000 words. Copy and paste or upload MS Word, HTML or text formats and press ‘Start Analysis’. The results are helpful, though not as thorough as the previous checkers.

To use this plagiarism checker requires a free registration. After you upload your document, PlagiarismCheck checks your document and after some time emails you a link to a pdf report. If the link doesn’t work, as happened in my case, you can view the report online by logging into their website. I found this checker to be relatively accurate, although it still missed some of the intentional plagiarism in my fabricated document. ▼

WWW.SPREAD-THE-WORD.CO.ZA

Leila Summers helps writers publish and get published. Find out more about her services at http://www.spread-the-word.co.za/

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CONTENTMARKETING

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONTENT MARKETING & ADVERTORIALS

BY Richard Liew

SO WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONTENT MARKETING AND ADVERTORIALS? Well, it all comes down to intention. That is, the intention of the marketer or writer at the time of creating the material.

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’ve met a number of publishers and advertisers recently who are still having a hard time distinguishing between content marketing and advertorial pieces.

“Huh! Content marketing…,” they say, “is what we’ve been doing forever. It’s basically just advertorials with a fancy name.”

Wrong! Do not pass Go and do not collect $400!

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Yes, it is true that the underlying purpose of both content marketing and advertorials is commercial in nature. Both are undertaken with the goal of helping our businesses and brands find and engage more customers, hopefully resulting in increased sales.

But the way in which content marketing and advertorials attempt to achieve this outcome could not be more different.

FIRST, LET’S REFRESH OURSELVES ON THE FUNDAMENTALS OF CONTENT MARKETING The purpose of content marketing is to build trust and awareness with your target customers, by delighting them with content that does one or more of the four following things: a. inspires them, b. educates them, c. informs them, or,

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Your content needs to be relevant, valuable and customer centric.

That means relevant and valuable to your customer, not to your business or brand.

d. entertains them.

By providing high-quality content on a consistent basis, that serves your customers in one of the four above ways, without expectation of anything in return, your business or brand can earn the trust and awareness of your target audience over time.

LET’S ANALYSE THE KEY ELEMENTS IN A LITTLE MORE DETAIL

Why do we care about gaining trust and recognition when what we want at the end of the day is a sale? Well because if there is no trust or no awareness, there can be no sale. Yes, you can buy awareness through advertising, but does that build trust?

HIGH-QUALITY CONTENT Above all this means your content needs to be relevant, valuable and customer centric.

That means relevant and valuable to your customer, not to your business or brand. This requires having a deep understanding of your customer or buyer personas. What are their problems? What are their goals? What keeps them up at night? Too often marketers are unable to do this well because they simply can’t relate to their customers.

Shouldn’t the goal be to occupy the mind of your target customers before they have a need so that they know exactly who they’ll turn to when that need arises? To build such trust and loyalty that even your competitors biggest, noisiest most expensive ads can’t undermine the belief your fans have in your brand?

A classic example of this is when marketers try and write material for business owners. Unless you’ve been a business owner and experienced the myriad of problems, challenges, stresses and responsibilities that business owners face for yourself, it’s very hard to write something that resonates with them.

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CONTENTMARKETING

A CONSISTENT BASIS Spending time and money writing one or two pieces of content in the hope that it’s going to result in any meaningful increases in sales is a recipe for disappointment. Think about the people and brands you trust in your life. There’s a good chance that one of the reasons you trust them is because they have demonstrated over time that they can be relied upon to keep ‘showing up’, that they are in it for the long haul and that their interest and care for you is beyond just what you can do for them. Content marketing requires a long-term focus on delighting your customers, nurturing them and helping them, staying at the top of mind until they are ready to buy.

WITHOUT EXPECTATION OF ANYTHING IN RETURN This I believe, is the bit that causes the most trouble for marketers struggling to get to grips with content marketing. “But where’s the call to action?!” and “How can we justify spending all this time and effort creating this awesome content if we’re not even going to ask the reader/viewer/visitor to buy something in it?!” are objections we commonly hear. “How can I explain this investment to my boss if I can’t point to any sales from this piece of content?”.

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To advertisers and marketers who are used to being able to point to a direct correlation between an advertising campaign and sales, be it a television commercial, a radio promotion, a direct mail piece, a payper-click promotion or any other type of advertising, this question is entirely valid.

But here’s the thing. Content marketing IS NOT advertising! The purpose is to inspire, educate, inform or entertain – not to be a direct call to action or invitation to buy.

Today’s customers are savvy, and they are cynical. They love to buy, but they hate to be sold so the quickest way to discredit your content marketing efforts and destroy trust with the people you are trying to earn it from, is to ask them to buy something from you, just when they’ve started to trust you.

It’s like inviting someone in for a cup of tea and then half way through asking them to join your multilevel marketing scheme!

Does Redbull stick a big call to action to go buy a can of Redbull in the middle of each article in The Red Bulletin? No. Does The North Face put a big call to action to buy The North Face gear in the middle of its fitness videos on YouTube? No. They could, but they don’t. Why not? Because they understand, it’s the wrong medium and the wrong time. Most people don’t voluntarily consume ads if they can help it and they don’t want to find out that the supposedly valuable piece of content you have just asked them to invest their precious time in consuming was just another self-serving ad.

Talk about destroying trust!

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The very act of creating and making this cool content available to their customers is, and of itself, advertisement enough for the brands behind it. The goodwill earned from being generous in your desire to serve your customers before, during and after the sale is invaluable.

BEWARE THE WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING While it may very tempting (for some, irresistible) to ‘strike while the iron is hot’ and slip in an offer or call to action while you have your potential customer’s attention, you must resist this at all costs, as each time you do there is a cost to your credibility.

Instead, the very act of creating and making this cool content available to their customers is, and of itself, advertisement enough for the brands behind it. The goodwill earned from being generous in your desire to serve your customers before, during and after the sale is invaluable.

So here’s the rule. Use content to inspire, educate, inform and entertain your customers. Use ads and offers to ask them to buy. Do not confuse the two!

Otherwise, you end up with these horrible hybrids called (you guessed it) advertorials, which are the advertising industries early attempts to pass off ads as credible customercentric content and which as a result, fail at being both good content or good ads. ▼

WWW.CONTENTMARKETING.CO.NZ

Richard Liew is the founder of content marketing agency Espire Media.

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BOOKREVIEW

ONLINE REPUTATION

Your Most Valuable Asset in a Digital Age

BY Sarah Pearce

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hanks to the instant access, speed and reach of the Internet, we now live in an age of high transparency and connectedness. More than 3 billion people around the world use the Internet. What’s more, 2 billion people have social media accounts (Kemp, 2015), and these numbers are growing daily.

Social media is both a positive and dangerous force. It has become the digital form of word of mouth and as a result, everyone now has a voice. An unhappy client can share their views with the rest of the world before they have even left the car park.

What people say about you and your business online has become the most important reflection of your integrity, reliability and skill. Social media can kill a great reputation in less than a minute! In our digital age, online reputation is crucial.

In her book, Online Reputation: Your Most Valuable Asset in a Digital Age, Sarah Pearce, provides new insights on how to manage a digital identity as a top business priority.

Readers will learn how to proactively develop a powerful online brand presence while avoiding reputation-wrecking balls that can destroy your online reputation in an instant. Sarah’s book will empower you to have the upper hand with social media and protect your reputation in a constantly changing digital world. ▼

Find ‘Online Reputation: Your Most Valuable Asset in a Digital Age’ on Amazon

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CONTENT

USER GENERATED CONTENT CAN HELP TAKE PRESSURE OFF FOR MARKETERS C

ontent marketing is a hungry beast that needs to be constantly fed with new content to such an extent that marketers now say that 62% of their time is taken up by content creation, and 71% feel ‘pressure’ to create more content. The solution however, may be staring us all in the face.

like Twitter and Instagram for people who are talking about the brand, its products and services and competitors. The platform enables brands to contact the user – for example someone on Twitter – for permission or rights to re-use that content.

Kretchner said the platform also filters out spam.

Jordan Kretchmer, the founder of social engagement platform Livefyre told the Adobe Marketing Symposium in Sydney recently that 1.8 billion pieces of content are created every day, and most of it by people not engaged with a brand or company. In other words, ‘user’ generated content.

“If somebody tweets a selfie, for example at the Adobe Symposium, Livefyre finds it, tweets the user and ask him or her to approve rights to publish that piece of content.

“Ninety-two percent of consumers trust user content over brand generated content, and we see a 20% increase in the time spent on a website where that website integrates social media.”

Kretchner’s reasoning is that it makes sense for marketers to discover user generated content and to put it to work for the company.

Recently acquired by Adobe, Livefyre is essentially a platform that enables marketers to search social media platforms

“Livefyre then tracks all interactions with that person. It is a way to build a community,” he said, noting that 80% of users grant permission, while the other 20% either decline or don’t respond.

While Livefyre’s content curation and audience engagement service will be integrated into Adobe’s Experience Manager, and also offered as part of Adobe’s Marketing Cloud, marketers will still be able to access the platform regardless of whether they are customers of Adobe’s broader product range.

Similar platforms include Fockler and Chute. ▼

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DIDYOUKNOW?

DID YOU KNOW? What does all that online marketing come down to?

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ales Enablement Manager at HubSpot, Kat Warboys, told the Grow Auckland event in July that 35 to 50% of deals go to the vendor who responds first…

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This succinctly distils the essence of online sales and marketing down to its core component. All the work online marketers do is for the deal, but in the end it may come down to your response time — put it off, and you’ll probably lose the sale.

Email templates are of course a good way to make sure your reply is instant, but it will be formulaic by necessity.

Nothing, however, beats responding personally to an inquiry, but even better than that is to engage the customer in a friendly conversation.

All the marketing in the world is for nothing if we can’t respond immediately and professionally to an inquiry.

So before you go do any online marketing, make sure your response infrastructure is ready and waiting to go. ▼

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