The end of the year is upon us, and it’s the perfect time to take a look at where marketing is going for the manufacturing and industrial industries.

While every manufacturing company is unique, there are specific industry trends and efforts that are essential for staying ahead of the competition and ensuring you’re achieving the highest return on investment (ROI) for your marketing dollars.

Trend #1: Content is still king

Content marketing has become so mainstream in the manufacturing industry that 82 percent of manufacturing companies are engaging in some form of content marketing.

Establishing yourself as a credible thought leader is even more essential when you consider that more than half of B2B buyers make their purchase decisions before ever talking to anyone at your company. In fact, according to Gartner, one of the main requests from B2B buyers is easier access to product, company, and industry information without talking with a salesperson. It’s important for manufacturers to establish their credibility by creating white papers, blogs, e-books, and even videos that help customers answer questions and solve problems.

Effective Content Plans Graphic

 

A good starting point for content marketing is your audience’s needs, your strategic goals for content, and the channels you’re going to use to share your messages. Many companies want to speak in sales language, but audiences think in terms of my need.

Understanding audience needs and developing persona-based content that addresses their questions is essential to any effective content plan. Ask questions about your audiences and what they want to know to establish a foundation of understanding about what motivates them.

When planning content, it is essential to think in strategic phases to accomplish different marketing objectives such as thought leadership, awareness, lead generation, prospect follow-up, and lead nurturing. A robust content program integrates across multiple strategic phases and drives toward your goals. Laying out a long-term plan also provides structural discipline, allowing you to build rich libraries of content from existing internal resources with clear direction and efficiency.

Learn how we achieved results for our client Wold with strategic content planning. 

Methods to grow your client roster

If everyone gathered information from a single source, content marketing would be simple. But audiences have different preferred channels where they seek answers to the questions they have. Good content marketing programs take content and shape it to appropriately fit a channel (industry magazines, social media, online search, etc.) for the most effective delivery and discovery.

Strategic content assessments, planning and reformatting can take existing content and give it renewed life. Be sure to review what you’re making available and making sure it’s still appropriate, has the right message, and is being shared on the appropriate channels.

Trend #2: The continued rise of video

Over the past three years, marketing professionals have been talking about how video will dominate all areas of manufacturing marketing. It turns out they were correct, and this trend is continuing into 2019.

It’s worth considering that viewers retain up to 95 percent of what they watch in a video, so it’s not surprising that complex instructions and overviews are extremely effective in a video format.

Here at Risdall, we’ve developed many different video strategies for our clients, including product demos, customer testimonials and how-to-videos. We’ve also helped efforts to optimize an existing library of videos.

No longer cost-prohibitive, there are a variety of low-cost, high-quality video creation options available for companies looking to develop effective video content. Talking through your goals, we can quickly outline a video creation and promotion strategy that fits in perfectly with your marketing efforts.

Trend #3: Precision lower funnel engagement and lead generation (aka laser customer targeting)

Nowhere is tailored content more powerful and necessary that in the effort to drive qualified leads. These individuals show a high interest in a product or service and the chances of making an effective transaction are higher.

With today’s data analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities, we can identify and target very specific audiences with incredible accuracy like never before. This allows manufacturers to deliver the right content with precision and provide a real-time, tangible opportunity to successfully engage with the exact audience and build a direct line to conversion and sales.

Combined with other content initiatives, lead generation can begin the process of closing a sale and provide your organization with a wealth of opportunities and measurable ROI.

We strategically increased the number of qualified, lower-funnel leads for Ecolab.

Trend #4 – The use of analytics and measurement

With data coming in from Google Analytics, SEO platforms, CRM systems, and social media accounts, there’s never been more information available. It’s important to capture and analyze this data properly to make sure your marketing efforts are attracting the right visitors and that these visitors are turning into customers.

Whether your buyer’s journey is completed entirely online or involves offline visits to a showroom, Risdall can properly track  which efforts successfully turned a prospect into a customer.

Conclusion 

As technology continues to evolve and new tools become available, more and more data will become available. Appropriate analysis is essential with getting correct and actionable insights from this data, which can feed granular detail into the buyer’s journey and optimization of efforts. The right data reporting can measure effectiveness and ROI of your efforts and determine which content is most impactful. For lead generation campaigns, data can actually provide great insight into the potential revenue that can be gained from content marketing efforts.

We have just scratched the surface on all of the digital marketing tactics available for manufacturers to use as they connect to customers. Make sure you’re working with a marketing firm that understands your industry to determine the appropriate mix of marketing efforts.

Google constantly updates their algorithm, which can have drastic effects on your rankings.

If you are running a modern digital marketing program, then organic search position is likely very important to attracting new business with the highest return on investment (ROI.)

Google is constantly tweaking the ranking factors, and sometimes they go beyond just little tweaks. Some changes are what they call a “broad core algorithm update.”

This week we released a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. Our guidance about such updates remains the same as in March, as we covered here: https://t.co/uPlEdSLHoX

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 1, 2018

These major updates occur several times a year. Sometimes, you may be a beneficiary of a big boost in search rankings and an influx of traffic.

You’ll ride their wave and this update could propel you forward.

Other times, your rankings significantly change for the worse. Your SEO ship has capsized.

Great Poseidon! Why do they do this?

Google continues to refine its algorithms over time so it can be a better search engine for users. Their goal is to get the most relevant results to the searcher.

Keep in mind that the way people are searching and the types of results served are also evolving. For example, over the last few years we have seen a big jump in mobile queries and voice search.

Google is constantly pulling data, figuring out which results generated in clicks and which did not. Trends are noticed and adjustments are made.

Monitoring the High Seas

So, how do we know when one of these waves of change to search engine results pages (SERP) will come crashing down? We don’t. Ever.

Unfortunately, Google does not send out a fair warning ahead of time. If you are diligent and check every day, you can use several tools to track SERP volatility

SEMRush

SEMRush provides a free volatility monitor showing major and minor updates. They also categorize the winners and losers from major updates.

https://www.semrush.com/sensor

SEMRush has premium options available for deeper insights.

RankRanger

RankRanger also monitors Google SERP fluctuations. We always recommend checking multiple sources to confirm index volatility.

https://www.rankranger.com/rank-risk-index

BrightEdge

While BrightEdge does not monitor SERP volatility, it does monitor keyword positions and can alert you to anomalies (both good and bad).

Screenshot of BrightEdge SEO tool

We’re Going to Need a Bigger Boat

Q: How do I fix my rankings after an algorithm update?

A: There is no fix, per se. What you should focus on is creating top notch content that fits your target’s needs while following SEO & web dev best practices.

According to Google…

Screenshot of Google SearchLiaison Tweets

The best thing you can do is build a solid ship to carry you across the search ocean. The foundation of the ship is built on best practices: secure, mobile friendly, page speed, page titles, links, etc.

Content will be the engine that drives your ship. The more quality content you feed the ship, the better position you’ll be in.

Do you need some help navigating the rough waters of SEO, content development and website best practices? Let our team help!

With more purchases being made online and the recent parade of big box retail store closings, it has marketers and consumers alike wondering if brick and mortar retail is dead or at the very least, how it can compete. For the foreseeable future, there will be many things consumers need to buy in a brick and mortar store like furniture, tools, appliances and some specialty clothing like work boots. No, retail is not dead, but many retailers are doing business both online and offline in order to compete.

Laptop on table

While lead generation on the B2B side and e-commerce provide a real-time, tangible look into successful engagement with a direct line to conversion or sales online, for brick and mortar retail the metric has proven more elusive. How do online efforts impact offline store traffic? And, more importantly, how can data prove it?

With a media landscape that continues to evolve and a marketplace that is fierce, marketers must find every advantage to leverage digital engagement to drive both online and offline traffic to an e-commerce site or store. It is very easy to execute a digital display or paid search campaign but knowing with certainty that the media mix investments are working for offline revenue, a strategic, well thought out approach of measurement and attribution is crucial in order to prove the value of the media investment.

If we go back in time a few years, you could measure this but it required painstaking manual testing with media channels being turned on and off in selected geographies to measure the impact of advertising on offline revenue at locations. This method was extremely challenging.

Today, online to offline measurement and attribution can be achieved with advanced machine learning sophistication. It is a seamless process to measure store visits to your entire footprint of brick and mortar locations and tie that data back to touchpoints of paid search, audio, video and display. It is also possible to say with certainty of statistical significance which creative messaging helped drive incremental lift in foot traffic to stores. Data helps define the media mix, the messaging, and takes the guesswork out of budget allocations for each channel. As you gather data based on store visits, that can continuously help drive conversions and refine your A/B/n tests of messaging.

How it works

Mobile technology allows the measurement of a mobile device ID being present at a given address defined by latitude, longitude, and radius. For the purpose of cross device targeting, the mobile device ID are aligned to relevant cookies across desktop and laptops using data signals to ensure the multiple devices belong to the same person. Next, paid media can be activated across channels such as paid search, audio, video and display. The technology allows reporting back on foot traffic or store visits for users who are exposed to one of the paid ads and at a later time visited a specific location. If conducting A/B testing on messaging and audiences, artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning algorithms further help optimize towards the best set of variables that will result in a lift in foot traffic.

This is also quite effective as a competitive advantage, using available competitor retailer location data and targeting device IDs of those who have gone into that store – serving competitive messages in a timely manner during their visit or after they leave.

Using an example to illustrate the process, let’s say the company is a leading furniture retailer. If a consumer visits a competitive brand furniture store, working with a variety of data management platforms, you can target the consumer and serve up an appropriate ad from your brand to incentivise a visit or purchase – perhaps highlighting a promotion. The goal is to provide something of value that engages them in that exploratory window of time, creates great relevance for your brand and moves them toward your brand or store. The technology allows the ability to measure the success of that effort based on their device ID appearing in one of your stores.

This type of attribution requires an investment, time, and expertise but shifting to an attribution model will prove successful.

To get started, there are five core steps:

  1. Assess current data – this exercise will tell you if your current data is useful, the gaps in your data and the easiest path to developing an appropriate attribution model
  2. Define an attribution model that best fits your goals – define infrastructure and technical requirements, and systems that could impact a cohesive program
  3. Conduct internal meetings to bring others along in the process – helping qualify budget, KPI goals and anticipated ROI
  4. Develop the creative campaign based on audience insights – rather than a promotional idea in order to align with a deeper area of need for your audience
  5. Execute A/B/n testing – optimizing campaign concepts allows opportunity to gain the best results

Contact us to explore online to offline attribution solutions for your brick and mortar locations.

The Risdall digital team attended DNN Summit, the largest DotNetNuke conference in the United States.  The conference offered sessions on the direction of the DNN platform, modern development practices, current themes in digital marketing and practical advice for running DNN websites across multiple verticals. Keynotes were delivered by Andy Tryba, the new CEO of DNN Software, and Shawn Walker, the creator of DNN.

DNN Summit on DNN Landing Page Optimization

Risdall team member Erik Hinds led a comprehensive session on creating high-converting landing pages in DNN. Erik addressed all aspects of landing page creation:

    1. Definition & goals
    2. Creating a workflow
    3. Audience definition
    4. Crafting an offer
    5. Tools for effectively building a page
  1. Best practices for landing page design
  2. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
  3. How to build landing pages in DNN

The bulk of the session focused on planning a proper conversion campaign by addressing the prospect’s needs, challenges, pain points and questions. Erik offered several strategies and tools to help identify those points and how your offer can help. Some of the tactics included:

As Erik said, “Landing pages are merely a conduit for creating multiple touch points in a marketing program. The effectiveness of the landing page is contingent on creating a very specific offer and presenting it to a segmented and qualified audience. Speaking in a transformational manner and presenting your solution in the right sequential order is much more effective than directing high volumes of traffic at a web page and hoping for the best.”

DNN landing page workflow

Best Practices for Building Landing Pages in DNN

 

Sample landing page layout

A fair amount of time was dedicated to covering best practices when designing and developing a DNN landing page. These best practices are universal across CMS platforms and addressed four key areas:

Testing CRO in DNN Landing Pages

Building a landing page is only the beginning of a successful landing page campaign. Erik discussed how to conduct optimization testing and some of the tools that can be leveraged.

As Erik noted, “Collecting quantitative and qualitative data is crucial to making smart decisions when determining whether the page is successful. There are a multitude of third party tools that can be easily integrated into DNN.”

Some of the types of testing and analysis Erik recommends are:

Erik finished up the presentation with an engaging Q&A session with audience members on some of the challenges they have faced when creating landing pages in DNN.

“It was a really great audience consisting of marketers and developers across multiple verticals. I loved how they engaged with thoughtful questions. I hope they received a lot of value from the presentation and Q&A.”

-Khan to lead charge in digital solutions as SVP Digital Media and Analytics-

Mahmood Kahn

ROSEVILLE MINN. (August 15, 2017) – Risdall is excited to continue the expansion of its digital marketing capabilities with the addition of Mahmood Khan as Senior Vice President of Digital Media and Analytics. Khan joins Risdall from Periscope where he served as the Director of Media and Analytics and led a team of digital media, paid search and SEO professionals. Prior to Periscope, he led international ecommerce campaigns for clients at Digital River. Khan currently serves as a Member of IAB Digital Media Buyer and Planner Certification Program Exam Committee which sets the standard for global certification. Khan will lead digital initiatives with a passionate data-driven perspective and his extensive expertise builds on Risdall’s integrated model of digital platform development, digital content marketing and communications, paid engagement and analytics.

In joining Risdall, Khan said, “The advanced web development and app development capabilities Risdall already possesses will easily integrate with the best practices and disciplines I am bringing and ultimately result in a very integrated digital solution for clients.”

“We are very excited about Mahmood joining the team,’ said Ted Risdall, Chairman and CEO of Risdall. “His knowledge and high level of expertise with national and global initiatives will help Risdall lead clients to live fully and effectively in the digital world and enable us to deliver business results that matter.”

About Risdall

Risdall is a full-service integrated digital marketing agency. For 45 years, Risdall’s marketing, communications and digital capabilities have constantly evolved, driven by an independent culture and a commitment to achieving our client’s business goals. For more information visit www.risdall.com

Grammar is critical to how smoothly an article reads. While not every reader will be a stickler for grammar, inconsistencies and mistakes can still throw off their ability to understand content.

When writing for the web, whether for journalism or marketing, AP style is the guide to abide by. Following these rules strengthens readability no matter the medium. Below are some explanations of the more confusing AP style rules that typically impact the readability of the writing.

9 of the Most Important AP Style Rules

  1. Rules for Titles of Media

Publications such as journals or newspapers are only capitalized. Anything falling under the category of art, literature and so on have titles in quotations.

Example: The Star Tribune gave “Inside Out” an emotional review.

  1. Rules for Titles of People

Capitalize a title if it goes in front of someone’s name. If the title stands alone, leave it lower case.

Example: Governor Dayton met with the president.

  1. Courtesy Titles Are Not Used in AP Style

Do not use Miss, Mr. or any other courtesy titles. The exception to this is if using those titles will clarify different people with the same last name.

Example: Mr. Shifty stated he was the only executive involved in the embezzling scheme, but Mrs. Shifty testified that Shady and Lawless also took part.

  1. Events to Capitalize

Official events and holidays are capitalized, but seasons never are.

Example: Independence Day followed Pride Weekend during a rainy summer.

  1. Rules About Time

Use a colon to separate hours from minutes unless the time is on the hour. Do not spell out numbers when stating exact times.

Example: 2:52 p.m. 8 a.m.

  1. Numbers in AP Style

Write out numbers smaller than ten unless they accompany a phrase like million or inch.

Example: Three different universities have banded together to analyze over 700 artifacts, which they estimate to be 2 million years old.

  1. Dashes and Hyphens and Many Exceptions

Hyphens string together words and dashes string together sentences, usually. Hyphens keep together words like 9-year-old or self-esteem, but any number of special cases exists. Check the style guide if your hyphen senses start tingling. Dashes are even more mysterious. There is the em dash (—) and the en dash (­–). The em dashes act like parentheses or commas to divide up sentences.

Example: Dr. Neko said the rescued cats had several parasites—the recent weather has been conducive to parasitic growth cycles—and they would not have lasted much longer without her care.

En dashes show ranges, such as 5–4 vote or Minneapolis–Miami flight. Dashes and hyphens have many different uses and every computer seems to format them in a different fashion. Check with your editor about any special rules or formatting they prefer.

  1. Toward, Forward and Similar Words in AP Style

These do not end with an s, nor do any other directions ending in “ward.”

  1. AP Style Drops the Oxford Comma

The Oxford comma is a comma that appears before a conjunction in a list and AP style officially ignores it. However, different publications may choose to break this rule, so use whichever your editor prefers.

With an Oxford comma: His new diet prevents him from eating meat, gluten, and dairy.

Without: His new diet prevents him from eating meat, gluten and dairy.

Keeping consistent with these rules will only help readers. They may not love a piece of content simply because of its impeccable AP Style, but they will appreciate the tidy presentation the AP style rules allow.

Photo Source: Flickr Creative Commons – “Typewriter”

Everybody loves a good war story. They are often a great way to inform people of your services, expertise and accomplishments in an engaging way. While telling your story, you have to tread on a thin line between an engaging story and outright bragging.

Holding on to these golden stories, but not letting the public know, is a missed opportunity for businesses. Sharing the positive aspects of your organization is the best tactic you can employ for your public image.

Here are three ways to share all the good your company is doing without sounding like you’re bragging.

Promote Your Company by Doing Good Things

In order to share the good things your company is doing, your company needs to do good things. Brainstorm how your business is improving people’s lives through the services or products it provides.

For example, if you’re in the financial industry, you could share a story about a low-interest loan that helped a person’s dream come true of owning his or her own business. Or you could promote your company by talking about your expert financial consulting that helped an older couple retire early.

You could also create your own stories by getting active in your community through volunteering or donating.

Share Useful Information 80 Percent of the Time. Promote Your Company 20 Percent of the Time.

When promoting your company, use the 80/20 Rule of content marketing. The 80/20 Rule says you should provide your audience with meaningful, interesting information 80 percent of the time and promote your company 20 percent of the time. This ratio allows you to provide your customers with meaningful content that they’ll enjoy, while sprinkling in salesmanship part of the time.

The purpose of this is to keep your audience interested. If you promote your company 80 percent of the time, your audience will become uninterested and move on to your competitor who is consistently providing interesting content.

Get Someone Else to Promote Your Company for You

Staff members provide the best insights into positive aspects of their companies. Public relations teams and content marketers can take these insights, turn them into stories and share them with the public in a way that gives your company objective, positive endorsements.

If you’re not sure how to go about sharing the good happenings around your company, consulting with a public relations agency is a good place to start. Contact us to find out how to promote your company without sounding like you’re bragging.

It can be easy to jump on the bandwagon of using holidays to start a promotional campaign for your business. While it makes sense for some companies, it doesn’t make sense for all. Especially when it comes to St. Patrick’s Day.

St Patrick's Day Parade

Deciding whether or not to participate in St. Patrick’s Day Marketing

If you’re in the business of bars, beer or green food dye, the answer is an overwhelming yes, you should participate in St. Patrick’s Day.

However if your business falls into the 99 percent of other products or services out there, you should consider the following two questions to decide whether or not St. Patrick’s Day marketing is an efficient use of time and money for your company.

Does St. Patrick’s Day marketing fit with your brand?

The big question here is whether the message of St. Patrick’s Day fits with the message of your brand. You should have a solid understanding of your brand’s voice, image and values before participating in any event – holiday or otherwise.

For many people, St. Patrick’s Day is associated with parades, shamrocks and the luck of the Irish. It’s also associated with pub-crawls, green beer, green rivers and “Kiss me, I’m Irish” T-shirts.

Pug in a hat

To determine whether you should participate in St. Patrick’s Day, compare the values of your business to the values of St. Patrick’s Day. If they align in a way that will make sense to your audience, then go ahead.

Another thing to consider is if a holiday post is within the scope of your brand’s voice. If your social media or blog is consistently sharing serious topics or information, then it may not be within your brand voice to do a light-hearted holiday message.

For example, let’s examine Law Firm A, which specializes in mergers and acquisitions:

On the other hand, we have Law Firm B, which specializes in accident injury cases.

Law Firm B would be more likely to participate in St. Patrick’s Day marketing than law firm A because it has a more relaxed voice, image and values.

If your business needs to be taken seriously to be successful, you may want to steer clear of associating it with St. Patrick’s Day if you cannot come up with a unique and engaging way of communicating the holiday message.

Does your St. Patrick’s Day marketing link your brand’s image with the holiday?

With all marketing, we want to leave a lasting impression with our audiences and further our business goals. In order to do this, we need something more creative than, “Share this post if you’re feeling lucky!”

If you can come up with an idea that shows your brand’s image and relates it to St. Patrick’s Day in a clever way, then of course, join in the festive marketing.

Best Practices for St. Patrick’s Day Marketing

Show your personality.

It’s not just about St. Patrick’s Day; it’s about your company! Use the buzz of St. Patrick’s Day as a platform to share your brand’s personality.

Offer your audience something.

If it’s within the capacity of your business to hold a promotion for a prize, a special discount or additional loyalty points, now is the time to do it.

Know your history.

If you are going to hold a St. Patrick’s Day contest, make sure you know more about the history of the event than your audience does.

Promote the holiday internally.

Encourage your coworkers to dress up and host a festive get-together with St. Paddy’s-themed foods or Irish beer taste testing. Share photos on social media, and ask your followers how they celebrated the holiday.

Play with the word green.

If your company has strong recycling habits, now is a good time to talk about them by playing with the word ‘green’ in your posts.

Engage with your audience.

Always remember, social media is social. Facts are fine, but engaging with your audience is like finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

St. Patrick’s Day marketing is a no-brainer for some businesses, but for others, it can be a waste of time or send unintentional messages. It all comes back to whether or not your brand’s voice, image and values align with St. Patrick’s Day.

Photo credits: cobalt123, Sébastien Barrégeraldbrazell,

When you conduct an analysis into the effectiveness of your SEO, be sure to focus on non-branded keywords.

Tracking non-branded keywords is the primary way you can gauge the health of your SEO efforts over time, and see what adjustments, if any, are needed.

But what exactly are branded and non-branded keywords?

Branded Keywords:

A “branded keyword” search query includes your brand name or some variation of it. For example, branded keywords for Risdall include search queries like:

Other keywords that don’t reference the brand name are considered “non-brand keywords.” A non-branded keyword search query does not include your brand name or any part of it, including any misspellings. It is important to analyze and understand your non-branded keyword traffic because it often represents the majority of your website’s new visitors and unique visitors.  Most importantly, these visitors may not already know about your brand and are searching for your product or service.

Person at computer

Non-Branded Keywords:

An analysis of non-branded keywords and traffic is important, particularly for large brands, because branded keywords can make up the majority of organic search engine traffic.

This is significant because branded keywords are not a function of search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Two reasons why branded key are not a result of SEO:

  1. 99.9% of the time your website will rank No. 1 for any and all variations of branded keywords.So no optimization is necessary to rank in the first position. Any organic traffic from branded keywords is not a result of search engine optimization because you can’t do any better than first position in organic results.
  2. Branded terms are a result of brand recognition.In other words, branded keyword searches are navigational in nature. The user is specifically looking for your website (which means that they’ve been exposed to your brand already and are simply typing in your brand name to find your website). It’s essentially the same as someone who types your domain name right into their internet browser (a.k.a. Direct Traffic).

Therefore, if interested in gauging the health of SEO efforts, you must dig deeper into the analytics data and focus on the organic number of non-branded keyword and non-branded keyword traffic.  Otherwise, trends and fluctuations could have little to do with actual search engine optimization. This is why we consistently report on the number of branded and non-branded keywords & the amount of organic traffic they drive.

Note, it’s also important to research and comprehend your branded vs. non-branded terms for paid search.

The (not provided) Keyword:

On 18th October 2011, Google made an announcement with some big news for website owners. They stated, “As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, we recognize the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results we deliver. As a result, we’re enhancing our default search experience for signed-in users.”  Dues to this,

“When you search from https://www.google.com, websites you visit from our organic search listings will still know that you came from Google, but won’t receive information about each individual query.”

Instead, these visits are grouped together in Google Analytics under the keyword (not provided).

Secure Google search pages are web pages where the URL begins https:// rather than http://. This means the information sent between your computer and the website is encrypted.

Examples of (not provided) sources include:

Google announced on September 23, 2013:

“We added SSL encryption for our signed-in search users in 2011, as well as searches from the Chrome omnibox earlier this year. We’re now working to bring this extra protection to more users who are not signed in.” – Google

Which means that Google has made a change aimed to encrypting all search activity, with the exception of clicks on ads. This means that, as of September 24, 2013 all organic search traffic from the Google search engine will be recorded in analytics as (not provided).  The increasing interest in the keyword (not provided) can be seen in the chart from Google trends below:

For more information on (not provided) and analyzing (not provided) data check out:

It is 2 p.m. on a gorgeous summer afternoon.

Half of the agency is already gone, your clients are checked out, and a rooftop happy hour is calling your name.

Why bother being productive?

Productivity is a matter of professionalism even at the most relaxed agencies.

You’d never bill a client for time you did not work, so why is your agency any different?

Your employer is your No. 1 client. Respect its time.

So resist the temptation to troll Tumblr GIF blogs for the next three hours. There are several productive things you can do on a Friday afternoon even if you are mentally spent.

1) Recap

A surprising amount of agencies do not keep a running toll of what their employees are doing. Sure, billable time is tracked, but does your boss really know when you go out of your way for a client?

Compile a high-level overview of your accomplishments for the week. Sending your boss weekly updates is a great way to reinforce trust and can make future raise/promotion talks significantly easier.

If you have one or two major clients, consider sending progress updates to account managers (or even the clients themselves.) Most clients love knowing that you’re working for them even when most of the world has scampered off to happy hour.

2) Plan

Use the waning Friday hours to get ahead on next week’s administrative tasks.

Organize your cube, throw out that hoard of Diet Coke cans, and clean up your desktop.

Next, create a short list of the most important things that you want to accomplisher before noon on Monday – starting with the most tedious. This will ensure that you are set up to be maximally productive when you skip back into the office next week.

3) Strategize

Make a list of 3 awesome and 3 horrible (or tedious) things that happened this week.

Ask yourself how you can maximize the occurrence of awesome in your work life and minimize the tedious moments.

Post your game plan for next week right by your computer monitor so you can refer back to it on Monday morning.

4) Help

Look around – who is left at the agency? Ask them if they need any help on their projects, even if it’s with a menial task.

Even if they end up declining the offer, you’ve just built up some goodwill points that may come in handy later.

5) Pitch

If there’s truly no pressing work left to do, think of ways that you can pitch new strategies to clients or your agency.

Even if your ideas are for an area outside of your expertise, continually pitching new tactics increases your value by demonstrating that you are thinking about your clients and agency in a strategic fashion.

Get to it!

Remember, Friday afternoon is not a time to slack. How you spend the end of your work week can have a powerful longterm impact on your career.

So, stay off of the GIF blogs and get to work it!

How are you maximizing your Friday hours? Tweet us @Risdall!

The online marketing funnel is the different stages of behavior and types of needs that customers move through on their way through the purchasing process. As an online marketing specialist, I have witnessed companies and clients that often narrowly focus on specific marketing channels.  It is easy to get lost in a specific channel and the efforts you are putting forth there.

However, it is our job as marketers to remember that a compelling and consistent message should be delivered throughout the entire digital marketing funnel. Our responsibility to our clients is to create and implement an online marketing strategy delivered starting with exposure, through customer relationship and retention.

 

Online Marketing Funnel

Online Marketing Channels

Exposure / Awareness

The exposure and awareness stage of the online marketing funnel is where the message you want to deliver to your consumer begins. It sets the tone of the visit to your website for your audience.  The goal of this messaging is to entice the potential customer to find out more. Often, a strong call-to-action can be successful in this channel; however, it is important that we do not lose human aspect in messaging. The conversation should start as realistic and natural as possible and continue to be throughout the entire marketing process.

This channel consists of:

Inbound: social media, blogs, forums, organic searchcontent, community, press, referring links, email, word-of-mouth, etc.

Sponsored: paid search, display, video, affiliate, social, etc.

Discovery

The discovery stage of the online marketing funnel consists of the first few visits to the website. Visitors are often focused on consuming content and learning more about the company and your products/services.  Often considered the research phase of the purchasing process, consumers are looking to learn more about why they should choose your company.  While quality, unique content is imperative at all stages of the funnel, during this stage, content is extremely important because users are seeking out information. Additionally, it is direly important that you have completed marketing research and implemented a content strategy that delivers your company’s message. In this stage of the digital marketing funnel, the goal is not to overwhelm the consumer with offers, but provide the necessary information to be considered during the purchasing stage.

Consideration

At some point, a visitor becomes a potential customer when they consider whether the service or product offered is a match for their needs. This may happen during their first visit to your website or months later. We often get lost in conversions and forget about the number of returning visitors. Our content and its messaging should speak to consumers who may be on-the-fence or just doing research at the time and return later for their purchase. A single serving message that attempts to get the visitor to convert now is usually the case for the majority of websites content. We lose sight that not everyone will convert on the first visit. However, at this point in the online marketing funnel, we want to make our unique value proposition clear and provide information that the user needs to make the purchasing decision.

Conversions

The completion of an action on your website converts a visitor into a customer.  This may be a purchase on an ecommerce website, an application completion on a university website, or a ‘contact us’ form completion on a website like Risdall’s. The train does not stop here! At this point, it often feels as if the job is done, but it is not. Your company’s narrative should not end at conversions.  The messaging you provide during and post-conversion needs to convey your marketing communications plan – all the way down to the content on your receipts.

Customer Service

The level of customer service, fulfillment, and happiness with your customer’s product or service all play a part of the consumer’s post-conversion experience. It is important that communications with your customers continue after the purchase; now that you have the consumers business and contact information, it should be easy to continue the conversation.  Understanding the importance of good customer service is essential for a healthy business in creating new customers, keeping loyal customers, and developing referrals for future customers.

Retention

If a customer has a great experience, they will often return to your company when they need your product or service. The value of the entire future relationship with your customer (a.k.a. Users Lifetime Value, or, LTV) is not something to disregard. Selling is harder than ever nowadays; consumers are increasingly tuning out advertising and sales conversations, instead, they are choosing to re-engage with brands much later in the marketing cycle. They may have done most of their research and nearly settled on their choice, or after purchasing your product or service. Unfortunately, if consumers are in charge of the conversation and tuning out your attempts to reach them, replacing lost customers is that much more of a challenge. This is why retaining customers and creating brand advocates is crucial to business today. Additionally, when consumers have a good experience with a brand, they often share that information with their friends.  These seem like prehistoric marketing tactics that do not apply to online marketing, but they do.

Without delivering your marketing communications strategy throughout the online marketing funnel in its entirety, none of your online marketing efforts are going to work. In order for your online marketing efforts achieve the highest level of success, an investment must be made to develop an online marketing strategy before specific tactics are executed. This takes a significant amount of time and effort, but is key to producing the best results.

Take a second and imagine yourself as one of your consumers performing a search for your product or service online.

What do you expect to find within the first page of results?

What do you want to find within the first page of results?

Google is on a never-ending mission to provide searchers with the most relevant and useful results.

But, how does Google determine which results users are finding more beneficial than others?

One way Google and other search engines determine search result rankings is by looking at large amounts of user data and analyzing user activity within the results.

Search engines analyze large sets of user data looking at a variety of things to determine user’s satisfaction with search results, one of these being “long clicks” vs. “pogosticking.”

Long Click vs. Pogosticking

Pogosticking (a.k.a. Short Clicks) refers to when an individual performing a search bounces back and forth between the search engine results page (SERP) for the search query and the sites listed within the results.

In this example the searcher is looking for one of my profiles and bounces back and forth between the search results page and websites until they find my LinkedIn profile.

A long click refers to when an individual performs a search, clicks on a result and remains on that site for a long time.

In this scenario the user does not end up coming back to the result page immediately to click on another result or to change their search query. In general, long clicks are an indicator for user satisfaction.

From Google’s perspective the results that receive the longer clicks successfully fulfill the search query.

How does pogosticking influence SEO?

“If people type something and then go and change their query, you could tell they aren’t happy,” said Amit Patel, a former Google engineer. “If they go to the next page of results, it’s a sign they’re not happy.” – From In the Plex by Stephen Levy

When a person does a search, search engines look at the results clicked on and  whether the user returns to the search page to click on more results or refine the search.

A search engine could also feasibly determine the time between clicks as a measure of satisfaction. This would reduce the chances of delivering results that do not deliver valuable content for a given search query. This information could be accumulated for each search query and compared to the average pogosticking behaviors by a page’s SERP rank.

For example, let’s imagine that Google notices that the first result for a search query has an unusually high bounce (or pogostick) rate. This information is read by the search engine’s algorithm as a negative signal.

Consequently, the search engine will reduce the page’s rank within the SERP in a future algorithm update. In order for the result to be flagged it would probably need a statistically above-average pogostick rate.

How to not be a pogostick:

Create high quality content that is hyper-relevant to the keyword words you are optimizing for.

Yes, content is still king.

This idea is not new.

However, creating high-quality original content should really be easier than it is.

If you are as knowledgeable and passionate about your product or service as you want your consumer to believe, then you should have the best results possible for the search queries that describe your products or services.

Creating awesome content should almost come naturally if you really are the best company in your industry.

Some things that help not being a pogostick are:

Google is constantly getting better at finding low quality content and adjusting new Panda updates that will impact the search results based on the quality of content.

“So if you are not ranking as highly as you were in the past, overall, it’s always a good idea to think about, ‘OK, can I look at the quality of the content on my site? Is there stuff that’s derivative, or scraped, or duplicate, and just not as useful?’” Matt Cutts recently told Search Engine Land.

Not surprisingly, Cutts notes that this is a type of content that doesn’t rank well, and it is the quality content that will be higher up in the Google search rankings.

What should a site owner do if they think they might be affected by Panda?

So, focus on your content first. Search engine optimization efforts are only adjustments to make it easier for search engines to find your content.

Where your website ranks it is highly (but not solely) based on the quality of your content.

How could your content be better?

Being average should not be the goal.

Make your content stand out.

One way you can do this is by looking at the websites that are ranking above you.

How is their experience better than yours?

What content do they provide that you don’t?

Now, go and make extraordinary content that people will want to share, bookmark, link to, retweet, and revisit! Check out the Whiteboard Friday below for more information on solving the pogostick problem.

Solving the Pogo Stick Problem – Moz Whiteboard Friday with Rand Fishkin

Solving the Pogo Stick Problem Whiteboard Friday Moz

Other resources and references on pogosticking: