3 Lazy SEO Tips to Jumpstart Customer Acquisition

SEO means many things to many people.

To some, it's links.

To others, it's keywords.

In actuality, it's a broader concept designed to increase authority on particular subjects and popularity among peers to increase the odds of being properly classified.

It can get incredibly complex and time consuming on a large scale. However, it doesn't always have to.

Instead, you might be able to see awesome results by simply focusing on a few key areas; constructing a fulcrum for leverage rather than chasing your tail with the latest 'tricks' or 'hacks'.

But first, you need to understand where this thing is heading.

How to 80/20 Your SEO Strategy Based on the Evolution of Search Engines

Links still matter.

So too, does content. (Specifically, its accessibility + topic targeting + quality).

But in the last few years, a third factor has risen to become one of the most influential methods that determine exactly where you show up in a search result: RankBrain.

Chances are, you (mostly) know all about the first two. They've been talked about ad nauseum for years.

The third is a more recent development that employs machine learning to consider a mind-numbingly complex amount of data within half a second from receiving a search query.

RankBrain's success lies in its low level artificial intelligence, able to not only process stuff quickly, but also more increasingly accurate over time as it grows, matures, and adapts.

Couple this development with the increasingly personalized search results different users see, Google's push into 'instant answers', the continued layout tweaks of search engine result pages that alter what (and where) stuff shows up, and you've got your work cut out for you.

This doesn't even bring up the larger algorithm updates, or the smaller on-going tweaks to existing ones happen routinely to continually refine their approach.

All of this stuff to ensure that they get better at filtering the good from the bad.

That means hopefully, one day soon, you won't see the same unfortunately obvious junk polluting the prime 1-3 positions while you toil away in obscurity doing 'the right thing'.

It also means that if you strategize properly, you should be able to identify a few crucial areas that if executed properly should snowball enough to deliver the elusive marketing flywheel.

Here are a few of those areas to scrutinize.

1. Shortcut Your Keyword Research

Traditional keyword strategies are broken.

They're still incredibly important, no doubt. But not in a 2005 kinda way.

Instead of blindly looking for all things related to the phrase you typed in, they attempt to understand or interpret the meaning behind the words used.

That extends to words on a page. Sure, inserting a keyphrase X times in Y locations can help. But more importantly, is the context of topics and information around those keyphrases.

That means keyword research, or the process of identifying topics related to your site's pages, requires a hell of a lot more nuance than simply selecting stuff based on (inaccurate) volume estimates.

Ross from Siege Media laid out one incredibly thorough keyword analysis in this excellent post. Simply put: it's awesome.

Only problem?

It's SUPER f-ing time consuming. (He even admits as much, which is why he willingly shares the entire process. Cause most aren't gonna ever attempt it.)

For example, here's a snapshot of the results you get after going through it:

Yes. My brain hurts after reading that too.

If you've got the time and resources, follow that.

If not, try this.

Moz recently released a new Keyword Explorer tool that brings in several critical factors to analyze.

For example:

• Volume: An upgraded search volume estimate.


• Difficulty: A rough range of how competitive ranking on a specific page might be.


• Opportunity: The odds of click-through-rate based on how the SERP layout looks.


• Potential: An aggregate score to easily compare like-keywords by.

As you can see, it'll also pull in the top pages already currently ranking for that query so you can dive into details on the competition.

The toll will also help you pull up related or similar phrases, which you can then sort by relevancy and volume (and add to a custom list for further review).

Historically, you either didn't have access to some of this information, or you had to take the scenic route by manually researching and crunching numbers.

So what used to take days-to-weeks now takes maybe an hour – without sacrificing the additional nuance you need to successfully choose keywords in today's dynamic search environment.

(Please note that I'm not saying you shouldn't do a thorough job. I'm just saying sometimes, based on priority and availability of resources, you need to tackle the low hanging fruit first before coming back to this more in-depth work at a later date.)

2. Upgrade & Repurpose 'Unbranded' Content

There's a Catch-22 that many websites don't even realize they're struggling with.

1. They want to rank for a 'commercial' keyphrase like: “tax relief”.


2. Yet 99.9% of the pages on their website are branded.

So here's the rub:

How you gonna rank for that topic when information related to that appears on 0.01% of your website?

In the good old days of dumb algorithms, you simply force-fed primary pages like your Home page with said keyphrase, attempting foie gras but resulting in an incoherent mess that looked and talked and walked like spam.

I wish that was the only problem, but it's not.

The other is 'thin content'.

So the pages that DO contain information related to this stuff, only have ~200 words on them. Because they're going for 'creative' or 'branding' or whatever.

That's an issue, as the content ranking on an average first-page result has around 1,890 words per page.

What to do?

Despite how trendy-hipster it sounds, content marketing.

Specifically, good stuff around unbranded topics that you're trying to rank for. But…

Creating new skyscrapers can be incredibly time consuming. Instead, let's start with what you've already got, repurpose some existing stuff, and upgrade it.

(If you gaze at your analytics too, you'll notice that counterintuitively your most popular content in search engines tends to be your oldest posts too.)

First, go back to the basics.

What drives your customer's purchasing occasion? What's the problem or pain points, and how do you uniquely solve those?

Good. Those just became your themes, angles and blog categories.

Next up, pull up the aforementioned keyword tool to do some opportunistic research. The goal is to pre-identify specific topics that are already sitting there for you to capitalize on. That way you're not shooting in the dark, or crossing your fingers next time you hit Publish.

Third, is seduction.

Blog posts commonly fail because they dive straight into the solution. Or the tips. Or the process.

So you're left with ~250 words. And you're not giving new readers (or the peeps you're trying to appeal to with blog posts) the chance to (a) recognize the same issue in their life and (b) develop the empathy or interest required to actually read the damn thing.

The old copywriting PAS formula can help.

• Problem: Identify the root issue or pain point that's driving people to start searching for education, information, products, or services.


• Agitate: Discuss the various ways this issue manifests in someone's daily life with concrete examples.


• Solution: Only when you've properly outlined the issues can you solve them.

The old storytelling formula should apply to a blog post as it does to a movie or television show.

You build the foundation, introduce conflict, built tension, climax and release (get your mind out of the gutter).

Pulling from source material (like offline speeches or presentation, case studies with clients, testimonials from customers, industry research, proprietary studies, etc. etc.), you should be able to now go in and 'fatten up' your page content while also changing the focus from your company to your customer's problems.

Here's one example we did for a client:

New content creation is good and important. But stop being a slave to artificial deadlines (like we have to publish X times per week) and start with simply improving your existing stuff first to see a quicker lift.

3. Link Building = Marketing Campaigns

Link building can be an incredibly frustrating, often fruitless effort.

Especially when you consider today's minefield that is Google's algorithm updates.

So… just piggyback on your marketing campaigns.

Because the best link building results often come from larger campaigns or promotions leading the way.

You can see evidence of this when you review a few link profiles of established companies.

(You know, like real businesses. Not just online, info-peddling ones.)

Pull up any backlink-checking tool and sort by highest Domain authority or rating (to judge the aggregate strength or value of that link).

For example, this one from an online + brick and mortar retailer features a bunch of reviews and editorials covering their recipes and events.

Those links are high quality. And hard to get. You can't fake 'em. Or swap 'em with some anonymous tricksters in a forum.

Which means they're valuable and highly desired.

Or how about this one from the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego, highlighting Cyber Mondays deals from a specific promotion.

Point is, both link profiles feature links that are the result of larger promotional efforts and campaigns. NOT from classic 'link building' like emailing a million site owners about their 404 errors and hitting them up for links.

These links also have the added bonus of showing up in places that actual customers might actually search too.

What does that mean?

Let's stick with local businesses as an example.

Say you're going to throw an upcoming event at your location. Or you're going to put together a promotion for the upcoming holidays. Now with one campaign, you've got multiple link building opportunities.

Here's a quick list:

• Publish a new page on your site with details about the event/promotion/campaign, and set-up multiple CTA's across your website directing people back to it.


• Hit up the low-hanging-fruit of your own email lists and social accounts. Incentivize them to leave reviews on local listings. These will not only help where you show up in results, but are also trusted as much as personal recommendations by 88%.


• Next, look for journalists who've talked about [your thing] or promoted this stuff in the past. This gives you a 'warm' audience to reach out to, because they've already expressed some interest previously. Craft unique pitches to the journalists, emphasizing how this campaign fits directly into their point of view and would be immensely helpful to their readers.


• Find and invite the best local bloggers to participate somehow. Some kind of exclusive access to an event works, otherwise a special discount for their readers or even a revenue share agreement for everything sold through their site might pique their interest.


• Set-up specific ads or deals related to your campaign to increase visibility on local listing sites like Yelp or TripAdvisor (which are the first places people go when beginning to evaluate their alternatives – before they know you by name).


• Create retargeting ads, targeting anyone who visits your site (or this page) during this promotional push to capture or bring back as many people as possible (which includes a healthy mix of interested potential prospects, journalists you're wooing, bloggers you're pitching, and loyal customers who're on the verge of re-purchasing or referring you to their friends).

Conclusion

Companies always want to rank #1 for the term [fill in the blank].

But… do you deserve to?

Despite the fact that this over-prioritization of rankings is dying out, at the end of the day search results are designed to filter and surface the best stuff out there.

No amount of magic fairy dust or blackhat tricks some 'SEO' dude says will change that.

Search rankings are a lagging indicator. You provide awesome service, build an awesome product, get written up in the press and have customers spread the good word, and then you rank.

The good news is that SEO also doesn't have to be time consuming. It's just an extension of what you should already be doing, and paying special attention to a few small areas that deliver outsized results.

About the Author: Brad Smith is a founding partner at Codeless Interactive, a digital agency specializing in creating personalized customer experiences. Brad's blog also features more marketing thoughts, opinions and the occasional insight.

How to Become an Innovative Growth Hacker in One Month

So, you've got an amazing idea for a new business. If you build it and market it the traditional way, they will come, right?

Not anymore.

It doesn't matter what your niche is. There are bigger competitors in it, and traditional marketing has gotten them far. As for your business coming in and taking over? Good luck with that.

I tried that once. I created a product with my co-founder, Hiten Shah. It was pretty amazing.

But then we realized something disturbing.

We were competing against Google.

Ha-ha.

Google? You don't compete with Google. Instead, you get squashed, obliterated, bought out, or ignored.

We had to do something different. And that “something different” turned out to be growth hacking, and that's when I first developed my fascination with the field.

We still compete with Google, sort of, but our product is highly differentiated, incredibly value-added, and distinct in every way. (Business is booming, by the way.)

Let's face it: The old way of doing things works reliably only for large, established businesses-companies that have huge customer bases and vast marketing budgets.

Enter growth hacking. Since the term was coined by Sean Ellis in 2010, the concept has been shown to deliver amazing results time and time again. If your business is floundering despite supposedly tried-and-true techniques, it may be time to get on board.

Speaking of time, though, you may not have much of it. Don't worry. Right here, you'll learn everything you need to know to become an innovative growth hacker in a single month. 

What is growth hacking, anyway?

Perhaps I've gotten ahead of myself a little. You can't embrace growth hacking without knowing what it is.

At its essence, growth hacking is a method of quick product development and experimentation across marketing platforms. It aims to pinpoint the most efficient and effective ways to grow a company.

An affordable alternative to traditional marketing, growth hacking involves quickly testing and tweaking various marketing tactics to increase conversions while reducing the cost of customer acquisition.

Unlike with traditional product development, in which a product is fully formed before being tested, user testing begins during the earliest stages in growth hacking, and ideas are tested every step of the way.

One helpful way of thinking of growth hacking is with three overlapping circles. Marketing, experimentation, and automation or development of some sort all come together in a nexus of growth hacking.

Why engage in growth hacking?

Growth hacking is a modern alternative to traditional marketing, which has become increasingly ineffective for startups and small companies in the fast-paced digital era.

A hacker is more concerned with achieving an end than following a prescribed course of action and will cut corners to do so. Likewise, growth hackers' goals are similar to those of traditional marketers-but achieved in innovative ways.

You can have different types of growth hackers. For example, one popular iteration of growth hackers is the content hacker, who looks like this:

So, why engage in growth hacking? You do it when you need to hit the ground running with a new product or concept but can't afford to rely on traditional marketing efforts.

For example, with traditional marketing, you wait until a product is fully developed before subjecting it to user testing. This, of course, requires you to sink a ton of time and money into something that users may hate. Similarly, you may develop a traditional marketing strategy and follow it to a T only to discover that it falls flat.

With growth hacking, products are tested at every stage of development. Marketing techniques are continually tested and adjusted too.

Who benefits from growth hacking?

Companies that benefit the most from growth hacking are ones that are willing to put intense effort and focus into marketing and launching a product in exchange for much faster growth.

Like many startups and small businesses, yours may not be able to afford the time and money it takes to do things the traditional way. By becoming an innovative growth hacker, you begin marketing and testing right off the bat and continue all the way through product launch and beyond.

How does growth hacking work?

The growth hacking process is actually pretty simple to understand. Once you have a strong grasp of how it works, you can dive right in.

That's great news for you if you have an amazing idea for a new product and are eager to see how the market responds. By learning how to become an innovative growth hacker, you can watch your ideas either blossom or fall flat more quickly. And that allows you to move on to the next thing right away if need be.

Although it varies a great deal by company and circumstances, growth hacking usually unfolds as follows:

1. Establish mini goals

As a business owner, you probably already have a goal in mind for launching your new product. For example, perhaps you would like to see its website attract more than 250,000 visitors in a single month.

Attempting to achieve that goal in and of itself is daunting. Instead, break things down into mini goals to stay on track and to continually move toward reaching your ultimate goal. For instance, set a goal to attract at least 10,000 visitors to your website in a week.

2. Start analyzing from square one

Modern analytics provide information in almost real time, so there's no need to wait around to see how various techniques are faring. Since your marketing strategy will likely kick off with online marketing, set up an effective system for analyzing traffic to your site and landing pages immediately.

Continually tracking the effectiveness of your various marketing efforts helps because you can address problems right away. When you try something and it doesn't work, you can switch tactics virtually midstream.

When setting up your analytics, make sure to be tracking the right metrics. Whether you use Google Analytics or another app, set up advanced segments and goals. Keep an eye on KPIs like time on page and referral URLs. Don't forget to track mobile usage too.

3. Optimize your sales funnel

Be ready to pounce at every step of the sales funnel to keep prospects and customers moving right along.

For the acquisition stage, focus on content marketing. Amass a large library of high-quality content as soon as possible. Offer free webinars and e-books in exchange for email signup. Create and share infographics regarding trending topics in your niche, and maintain a PPC campaign from square one-even if your budget is small.

4. Act quickly

Growth hackers think quickly on their feet, which is why they are so successful at growing huge customer bases in short periods of time.

As soon as it's clear you're barking up the wrong tree with a marketing technique or product feature, scrap it. Better still, have backup plans ready to go so that you can seamlessly introduce them.

At the same time, make the most of techniques and features that do work. Leverage them for everything they're worth. For example, if you discover Twitter is where you're most likely to find your target demographic, intensify your efforts there.

Growth hackers aren't wishy-washy. They are decisive. Don't second-guess yourself if you need to abort what you initially thought would be an amazing idea.

5. Experiment and tweak

For you as a growth hacker, A/B testing is one of your best friends. Use it extensively while designing websites, landing pages, and other aspects of your campaign to quickly zero in on features that deliver the best ROI.

The simple act of adjusting where a call to action is placed can have a huge impact on the effectiveness of a landing page. The wording you use is highly influential too, especially when it comes to headlines.

As you test what resonates with your target audience, you will also learn more about it. This information will further enhance your ability to grow your business.

Tips for being an effective growth hacker

Now that you know the basics of growth hacking, you're probably ready to give it a go. Still, knowing which steps to take is merely the first step. True success lies in mastering subtler skills.

As you go about your growth hacking, keep the following seven tips in mind. When they become like second nature to you, you'll really start seeing results from your efforts.

1. Listen and suggest

Thanks to the Internet and social media, feedback about anything that you offer is readily available. You don't even have to create an official poll or survey.

Growth hackers know this and embrace it by being actively involved in online conversations regarding their company, products, industry, and niche.

Odds are that users will be commenting about things that matter to you and your business. By being there to hear it, you can implement users' best suggestions to further enhance growth.

At the same time, offer suggestions to visitors to your site and elsewhere online to keep them engaged in your brand. For example, if someone buys or expresses interest in one product, suggest another one they may like.

2. Be accessible

Don't assume your products will be used only one way or that those who want them will be found only in one place.

Instead, employ a multi-pronged approach by considering a variety of possibilities. In its infancy, Spotify offered streaming music across a number of different devices and platforms. In a wise move, Spotify also gave different ways for users to enjoy music.

Not surprisingly, the app has had a very broad appeal and has been a massive success.

3. Use scalable techniques

Innovative growth hackers don't focus solely on the here and now. They're visionaries, so they always keep an eye on the future. Instead of putting all their eggs in one basket by implementing a massive, expensive technique, they start small and see how things go.

At the same time, they leave plenty of room for growth. After all, that's what the process is all about. Facebook did this well early on by not sinking too many resources into any one particular thing. Instead, the company started small with new concepts and techniques, designing them to be scalable so that they could grow right along with the company.

4. Deliver content quickly

Rapid growth is likelier to happen when prospects receive content at the right place and time. In other words, you must be ready to pounce with the perfect content at any given moment.

You only need to look to Upworthy to see this done properly, at least when it comes to getting your point across quickly.

Engaging headlines play a huge role in this, so take the time to craft incredible ones. Include plenty of visual elements to pique users' interest.

Design your content to be easy to share. Viral marketing is a low-cost, low-risk venture you can integrate into your current efforts.

Don't be afraid to branch out in different directions. Just make sure your content is provided at the right time and to the right people.

5. Roll with the punches

Just when it appears a new product has finally “made it,” its target demographic changes course, and interest peters out. Unfortunately, such is the way of the world. Change is the only constant, and as a growth hacker, you have to be able to roll with the punches.

Instead of fearing change, embrace it. Always be on the lookout for the next big thing in your niche, and be ready to bring it to your customers. Even if you design an incredible product, it won't be perceived that way forever.

6. Nurture prospects effectively

In the mad dash to grow a business, it's easy to let viable prospects slip through the cracks. To be an effective growth hacker, you must have a strategy in place for nurturing leads to increase the odds of conversion.

First, you must know what your ideal customer wants in the first place. Once you do, figuring out how to appeal to them is somewhat intuitive. However, the method of doing so will vary depending on the prospect.

With that in mind, have plenty of tools in your arsenal. Ensure your content library is stocked with pieces that can be used to guide prospects along the path to conversion.

7. Be as niche as possible

The most successful growth hackers are thought leaders within their industries. It's almost always the case because they have focused on a specific niche and have become true experts.

Learn everything you possibly can about your niche. Use that knowledge to create compelling blogs, guest blogs, e-books, white papers, and other pieces of content. Conduct webinars, engage in email marketing, and be highly active on social media.

Eventually, you might even consider establishing a special forum for “insiders.” When they opt in, give them a login so that they can be among the first to learn about emerging trends in your industry.

Conclusion

Growth hacking has become so popular that businesses hire professional growth hackers. Luckily, you don't have to outsource this particular task. Instead, become a growth hacker yourself.

By taking a more innovative, outside-the-box approach to growing your small business or startup, you're more likely to get where you'd like to be in a timely manner. So, what are you waiting for?

How will becoming a growth hacker benefit your company?

Email Marketing: What's Really the Issue With Confirmed Opt-In?

It's been an interesting couple of weeks in the discussion surrounding confirmed opt-in (COI) and the direction that the industry is headed. I wrote about the inevitability of confirmed opt-in becoming the standard at some point in the future. The discussion began with a rash of Spamhaus listings, which were supposedly generated from a list bomber. We didn't discuss the merits of how the “list bomber” got the Spamhaus trap addresses, whose anonymity are key to their credibility.

We didn't talk about how the “list bomber” targeted mainstream marketers who used larger ESP's. We didn't talk about just how Spamhaus knew exactly which marketers to list. I bet you didn't tell Spamhaus if you were hit by this. You can draw your own conclusions from what's been written, and also what hasn't been written. It was also interesting timing for this to “randomly” happen just before the holiday period.

So, it's out there, and one could argue that this was a concerted effort on behalf of someone to drive senders to this practice. The funny thing is that COI isn't even a radical concept anymore. Think about when you purchase or sign-up for many programs these days. You get a please confirm your email address, confirm your subscription, or confirm your preferences message right away.

Companies do this for the security of their customers. They don't want to send your information to the wrong person, just because someone made a typo. COI is already a common email practice. You sign up for a Gmail account, and you have to confirm your email address. Nobody sees that email and freaks out, it is standard operating procedure.

Pradeep Mangalapalli, Director of Deliverability Operations, wrote a post last week which highlighted some extensive metrics that we pulled from across the marketing universe (Not just Oracle, we looked at senders regardless of ESP). We found that these campaigns perform at a very high level. Open rates are high, and read rates are also very strong. The spam complaint rate for these types of email is almost zero.

That's because we understand that for the most part, these messages are now part of the expected back and forth conversation with someone we are doing business with, or interested in receiving information. Affiliate marketers have been confirming permission for years, because they were trying to avoid those previously mentioned complaints.

If you are a marketer who doesn't want to do COI right now, that's fine. But I would encourage you to ask yourself (and your team), what are you really afraid of? We've established that consumers understand the process now. That wasn't the case 3 or 4 years ago, but it's basically mainstream these days. I would propose that the real issue isn't the actual COI, but a fear that you are going to lose subscribers.

If that is really the case, it is not because of the COI itself, but some other probably more important issues. What does it say if you think 75% of your subscribers won't click a link in an email whose only purpose is to protect your security?

Maybe they don't know they were “signing up” for your program. Is the user afraid they are going to be bombarded with email they don't want? Is it the fact that you aren't converting 100% of address to your list? Just because you have an email address doesn't mean it wasn't faked, made-up, mistyped, or is a valid address at an account they will just never check.

Would you want an ATM card that didn't have a PIN number, or a credit card where you didn't have to verify a signature? There's a reason why you have to activate a credit card you receive in the mail. You activate it so in case it falls in the wrong hands, there's a step required before that shopping spree. Clicking a link is so much easier.

If you fall in the category of “scared of confirmed opt-in” I would suggest you look a few levels above a simple email. Why would your customers not trust clicking a simple link that protects them and you as a sender from many dangerous elements?

The answer is most likely not the confirmation email, but something else that is probably already costing you money. You can wait until something like CASL comes along and freak out about the “changes” you must make at the last minute, or just fix the leaks today.

Another thing you could do is download Email Deliverability: Guide for Modern Marketers to find out how to achieve email deliverability that really delivers. 

How to Run Marketing Better with Effective Budgeting and Planning

It's business planning season and we all know what that means - you're in the trenches hustling to produce innovative, targeted, and dare I say it 'proven' business plans for how you are going to achieve corporate objectives and exceed revenue targets. And if you're really honest, you want to impress leadership and climb a few rungs up the corporate ladder.

Am I right?

Perhaps.

But, and it's a big but, how do you decide what initiatives to undertake? Do you know the revenue impact of your plan? Are your plans aligned with what leadership really cares about?

If these questions are making your head spin, don't fret. Just remember, as a marketer you have two jobs: to do marketing and to run marketing. Without both wheels turning concurrently, you'll soon find you're veering off course and further away from your goals and revenue target.

All Marketers Do Marketing (Obviously)

Doing marketing is the front-office of marketing. It's what is seen from the outside such as hosting events, sponsorships, and online advertising. In other words, it's the initiatives you have listed in your marketing plan that are contributing to your marketing objectives.

But doing marketing with no regard for how you run marketing is akin to throwing a dart at a dartboard, while blindfolded and hoping to hit the bullseye. Not to mention a disregard for the importance of a marketing system of record to accurately manage your marketing investments and track their impact - including targets, plans, forecasts, and actuals for both online and offline marketing activities.

The Top Marketers Do and Run Marketing.

As an Oracle Marketing Cloud customer, you're a leader at doing marketing. But, how well organized are you to run marketing? For every great performance, regardless of the discipline, it's the preparation, ongoing management and agile approach that help you maintain your performance and propel you forward. Running marketing means paying close attention to the 'I' in ROI and measuring to determine the next best marketing action aka Marketing Performance Management.

The top marketers know where their dollars are being spent and most importantly, why. We're not only talking at a campaign level but also at an executive and aggregate level. By connecting their campaigns and associated metrics to marketing budgets and corporate strategic plan data, the top marketers get a full view of their ROI and use that intel to influence their marketing plans and drive corporate revenue.

The responsibility for marketing performance, through running and doing marketing, is no longer limited to the scope of the CMO. Marketers as a whole are increasingly asked to demonstrate their value to their organization. When you're asked how your marketing plan is contributing to revenue growth, you want that information at your fingertips.

Amanda Lomas, Director of Marketing Analytics at Change Healthcare and Eloqua customer, previously spent 5 days per month mapping her expenditure to her investments in a bid to determine her ROI. The process was time-consuming and challenging to complete without much notice. Now that she is a running and doing marketing expert, she has efficiently condensed that process to 3-4 hours!

From a Walk to a Run

Amanda isn't alone. Hundreds of organizations are making the shift from an emphasis on only doing marketing to running and doing marketing simultaneously. Here are three easy steps to get your organization in the starting blocks:

1. Keep your eye on the prize: Align your marketing plan and budget with corporate objectives to make the right kind of impact and keep your plan focused.


2. Go for gold: Demonstrate how your plan will impact corporate revenue by estimating the ROI of your initiatives.


3. Stay agile: Create scenarios for 10%, 15% and 20% more budget. Also, be prepared for what you might cut if your budget decreases.

Invest an hour and join our webinar on October 5th, co-hosted with Allocadia, to hear how Eloqua customers, Change Healthcare, and Symantec have optimized their marketing performance through more effective budgeting and planning. In return you'll leave with practical tips to implement today, setting you on track for driving corporate revenue and demonstrating to leadership how your marketing team is adding tangible value. Now that's positive ROI!

The bottom line is always the bottom line. That's why you need to download the Marketing Budgets Report 2016, created by Econsultancy in association with Oracle Marketing cloud.

How to Build Momentum For Your Brands Around The World Through Content Marketing #CMWorld

Marketers are experiencing a major problem. That problem is that there is no longer a captive audience for anything. Consumers have tuned out advertising and traditional marketing tactics, leaving many marketers searching for a solution.

In her presentation at Content Marketing World, Tami Cannizzaro from Oracle offered some great insights that she has gathered from her years of experience at everywhere from IBM and eBay, to her new position as Vice President, Head of North America Marketing at Oracle.

She opened with a story about her experience on the New York Subway. One day she was getting off of the Subway and noticed that there was someone handing out money. Instinctively, she walked right by him. Similarly, marketers could literally be handing people money but people will move right by you if it feels like you're selling.

To help your get your marketing on the attention grid and build a captive audience, consider the following steps for building earned authority with your audience.

#1 – Build Advocacy

In Tami's role at IBM, she made a point to celebrate employee advocacy. She even went so far as to send out a newsletter to recognize employees that had participated.

In order for your brand to be successful, it's important that your marketing teams be highly engaged in social media. Also, if you're able to tap into the expertise of your internal team for content creation, social media and more, you can build a center of competency within your organization.

Another model for building advocacy is by working with influencers. Each influencer will have slightly different needs and value that they add but you can incorporate them into content, events and other types of projects.

#2 – Engage with Relevant, Timely Content

Before creating content, take some time to think about how relevant and timely your message is to your target customers. A prime example of timely content creation is when Oreo quickly responded with social ads when the lights went off during the Super Bowl.

#3 – Use Content to Build Authority & Boost SEO

This is a place for marketers to really think about building their thought leadership and marketing authority. Brands need to be asking what they're trying to drive and who the key personas are.

American Express does a great job of incorporating brand created content alongside 3^rd party content and tools to offer consumers what they need.

#4 – Target local. By Role. By Vertical.

Brands have an opportunity to build authority within specific verticals. One way to do that is to host meetups around particular topics. These types of events can be an inexpensive and effective way to penetrate local markets.

#5 – Personalize & Engage

While it can be tempting to create a single social ad or message for a campaign, a little personalization can go a long way. Instead of blasting the same message to everyone, you can create very targeted messages for the same product in a way that speaks to specific demographics.

Are You Building Momentum with Your Content?

Creating authority and trust with your audience doesn't happen overnight. It's a process that takes time, dedication and evolution of process. The insights that Tami provided in her presentation will help you get started down the path toward better, more impactful content marketing.

What do you believe is your biggest opportunity for building momentum with your content program?

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How to Build Momentum For Your Brands Around The World Through Content Marketing #CMWorld | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post How to Build Momentum For Your Brands Around The World Through Content Marketing #CMWorld appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Why Email Marketing Is Still Effective

Time for Friday Five, a curated collection of five recent industry-related articles on one topic. This go round it's Email Marketing. 

6 Reasons Email Marketing is Still an Effective Tool

For some reason, “older” has become synonymous with “obsolete.” But this is not always the case. For example, did you know today's LCD screens are based on technology from 1968? It's true. Many companies shy away from email marketing because they think it's an outdated approach, but 59 percent of B2B marketers said email is the most effective channel for revenue generation. And in 2014, email marketing was listed as the most powerful tool for customer retention. You should still use email marketing for these six reasons.

Read the full story on Business2Community.com.

7 Email Marketing Tips For Marketers

Marketers should always use email marketing to stay connected with their target audience. Regardless of the different strategies open to marketers today, you'll find email marketing to be integral to your marketing campaign. This is still the leading channel for getting the best ROI.

Read the full story on Forbes.

Email Marketing Is a Double Win for Customer Acquisition, Retention 

For most small- and medium-sized retailers in the US, email marketing is tops when it comes to both customer acquisition and retention. According to research, four-fifths of these professionals said email helps contribute to this outcome. 

Read the full story on eMarketer. 

Unlocking the full potential of B2B email marketing

A lot has been written about persuading consumers to click and buy. You probably know of some of the popular B2C (Business to Consumer) best practices. But Business to Business email marketing is different in many ways. Yes, there is a person on the other side reading your email, granted. But he finds himself in a business context, this makes that many of the precooked B2C marketing “rules” don't apply. Whoops! So what does a strong B2B email campaign make?

Read the full story on emailmonday. 

What Pokémon Go can teach us about email marketing

Last month, Pokémon Go exploded onto the scene, mainstreaming augmented reality and blowing engagement rates out of the water. Now, talk of augmented reality is everywhere, especially in branding and marketing circles. Pokémon Go is not the first app to integrate augmented reality technology into its platform, but it is certainly the most popular. And it's the first time we've seen AR scaled to a mass audience at this level.

Read the full story on Marketing Land.

Email marketing remains a very important tool in a marketer's arsenal. However, if a given email never arrives at its intended target, it won't make any difference. That's precisely why you need to download Email Deliverability: Guide for Modern Marketers.

5 Reasons You Need a DMP

With more companies seeking to implement a digital marketing strategy that reaches their target audiences in more effective ways while delivering high-quality traffic, the need to incorporate a data management platform (DMP) for your website and apps has become more critical. This is the most efficient process for managing one-to-one relationships. The idea behind the DMP is that it provides a way to collect more data and intelligence on the market, audience, and competition in order to enhance these relationships and build an advantage.

How a DMP Works

A DMP takes first-party and third-party user data from numerous digital marketing channels, including your own digital properties, and aggregates it. In order to understand these relationships it is necessary to know that although the third-party data collection often involves a purchase or affiliation agreement, it provides critical information on demographics or behaviors on the sites you don't own. There's also second-party data, which is data that is brokered between two brands or organizations that provides better targeting for both and more opportunities.

If you simply rely on first-party data, you can benefit from its exclusivity-but you'll be missing out, to some degree, because of its limited reach. Second-party data offers some advantages in its opportunities but generally does not involve any public data. Third-party data has become increasingly taped to get involved in programmatic advertising. If you were to combine all these types of data within a DMP, you can then narrow down your target audience and sharpen your focus for messaging, communication, and engagement; so it's more meaningful and successful.

Why Your Business Needs a DMP

If you think a DMP just manages data, then you are missing a large part of its true value and the reasons why your business needs one. Consider these five reasons why this is the way to go:

1. Improve your ad buying return: With leaner budgets, but more options available to reach your audience, you want to make sure you have created the campaigns and selected the spots for ad purchases that deliver the most return on investment in the form of greater response rates, higher conversion, and increased brand recognition.


2. Streamline data: Rather than scattering data across email, e-commerce platforms, customer loyalty channels, and social media; you can bring all that data together into one place, providing a better picture and understanding of your audience, results, and overall marketing environment. The results are more effective business decisions and a better picture of what your marketing strategy needs to look like. A DMP also lets you take in new data and fold it into your existing pool of data simply by adding tags to your website, emails, mobile apps and ads to retrieve new types of data. A DMP gives you greater control over your data and organizes it in the most effective way for you so you don't miss any critical patterns in the information that you could use to drive more revenue.


3. Effectively budget marketing spend: With access to hundreds of data vendors and more intelligence about the data you have within your DMP, you will be able to more appropriately budget how much you spend on marketing and through what types of marketing vehicles. Every action and cost within your marketing budget has to be accountable and connected to a strategic objective, so a DMP provides the framework of staying on top of those results to continue working within the budget and determining what future spending will look like.


4. Correctly manage multiple campaigns across devices: The more campaigns and devices you add to your digital marketing strategy, the more complex and cumbersome the marketing process becomes despite the opportunity to maximize your reach. However, a DMP serves as the hub for that activity and can disseminate the necessary data and track the various messaging and devices while gathering more data from each campaign that can be studied later on. This system does the heavy lifting for you and delivers the data in a way that you can easily understand while minimizing mistakes and eliminating duplication in information and effort.


5. Identify new potential audience segments: A DMP often provides new ways to look at segmenting the audience, which then can call out different groups that you had not previously seen or that you knew existed. It's robust segmentation features slice and dice the available data through rapid processing of information that a human marketer could not get through in years. Therefore, a DMP can identify new patterns and ways of looking at an audience that drills down much farther in terms of audience groups to provide a picture of what they look like and how to create messages that resonate with them.

The benefits of adding a DMP to your marketing structure are awaiting you. Download Mobile DMP: The Backbone and Brain of Successful Mobile Marketing, to help you through the process. You'll enhance your digital marketing efforts and deliver a cost-effective solution for handling and leveraging the massive amounts of data now available.