MarketingSherpa Blog

What is marketing data really? When used right, it’s not just numbers that tell you what happened.

That is what I like to call the “newsman approach” to marketing analytics – information that simply sums up previous customer behavior.

You don’t want to be the newsman. You don’t want to be Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw or Brian Williams. You, dear marketer, must look to the likes of Al Roker and Willard Scott. After all, it is the intrepid weatherman that discusses not only what already happened, but what is going to happen.

I discussed with Scott Hutcheson, Content Director, Paramore, how to effectively use marketing data to look beyond a simple gut reaction to numbers to find out what they can tell you about future customer behavior in this, the most recent episode of MarketingSherpa Marketing Research in Action …

In this episode, Scott and I discussed research from the MarketingSherpa 2013 Marketing Analytics Benchmark Report, which is sponsored by Paramore…

00:42 – Up is good, down is bad? Not so simple. Don’t settle for gut reactions to your marketing analytics. Scott and I discussed non-analytical decision-making strategies. 

4:44 – What can you learn from page views? Scott and I discussed content marketing metrics tracking.

  Read more…

Google AdWords campaigns are a terrific way to target specific audiences.

Unlike advertising on television or billboards, which tries to convince consumers they have a need for the product, search advertising tries to fulfill a need the customer already has.

The only problem is figuring out exactly what searches your customers are performing to express the need your product is the answer to.

Answering the following three questions is a great start to understanding your customers a little more, and will help you fulfill their needs and provide them with solutions.

Question #1.  What phase of the sales funnel are our targeted customers in?

Understanding where your target customers are within your sales funnel will help you know how they are searching for your products and what kind of queries they will be using to find them.

Here are a few points to consider when creating a Google AdWords campaign based on what stage of the purchase decision process a potential customer is in before they buy:

Initial – Very early on in the funnel, your potential customers may not even know your product exists. It is up to you to make them aware of your product, and to let them know what the benefits are of using it. For example, if a customer is just beginning their search for a new computer, they’ll probably start with general keywords like “laptop deals” or “cheap desktops.”

Intermediate – Even if your customers have a good understanding of what your product is and are interested in it, they are going to do more research on your product and compare it to similar products. This is where search queries will become more specific for products like “lightweight laptops with dual-core processors.”

Also, keep in mind at this stage, customers may begin to query brand names in their search efforts as well. This is where your keywords should become more specific about the details of your products.

Advanced – This is the stage where a customer has done their research and has reached a decision. In keeping with our computer example, it’s where search terms will likely be brand or name specific as the focus has now shifted to buying.

So if you are aware of what stage in the purchase decision process your customers are in, you can alter keywords to meet their specific needs.

You can even create different ads to match specific keywords customers will search for during each of the different phases as shown above. This will also help you discern which phases you should focus your paid search marketing efforts on.

For example, if most of your keywords are targeting customers in the early stages, you may want to concentrate on adding keywords they would use later in the funnel to make sure they follow through with the buy as ultimately every phase has the potential to turn into a buy.

Question #2. How are customers searching for us?

Potential customers generally search the Internet to find answers to questions or solutions to problems.

So, how will customers search for the answers and solutions your products can provide?

There are an infinite number of possibilities considering their queries may be an actual question, a symptom that they have a description of their problem or the cause of their problem.

For example, if someone’s air conditioner is broken, they may search “broken ac” or “how to fix a broken ac,” “why is my ac freezing over?” or  “ac repair in [anytown USA].”

Your ultimate goal is to answer those questions and solve those problems.

And, in order to do this successfully, your AdWords campaign should consider as many of the different search possibilities that relate to your products as possible.

It’s also worth mentioning whichever search terms customers use will also set certain expectations that your landing page or process needs to deliver.

So, when conducting your keyword research, you should list as many search query possibilities customers would likely use to search for your products, and match those searches with keywords that offer the most relevant solutions and answers.

Read more…

My wife would prefer it if I avoided Vegas forever.

I like gambling a lot and I’ve got a history of big bets. It scares the heck out of her when I plop down $1,000 in chips on a hand of blackjack. And yet, I hardly ever lose money.

Let me explain …

I spend hours playing the safe, boring hands. I make logical decisions. I slowly build up a big stack of chips. Then, I double down on a big bet and have more fun and excitement in one hand than most people have the whole weekend.

But, the point to my strategy to remember is that I never make those big bets until I’ve “saved up” enough chips for it not to matter whether I lose or not.

And, good content marketing is a lot like blackjack. Here’s why.

What are you talking about this time?

I’d like for you to think of your clout with the readers on your content marketing platform as a stack of chips. Every day, you’re producing useful, engaging content. You’re packing utility and value into every post and picture and video. You’re painting the proverbial fence, and growing your stack of chips.

Why? Because you eventually want to promote a product and doing so will require you to cash in a huge stack of those chips.

If you build it, they will come. If you sell, they will leave.

When done well, content marketing is remarkably product agnostic when you really think about it.  There is no selling involved because selling runs contrary to the primary purpose of content marketing, which is to become a trusted resource.

By building credibility with an audience as a trustworthy source, brands have been able to later leverage that trust, which can be viewed as a subconscious chip stack.  They’ve accumulated with readers at a strategic time to say “We’ve never tried to push any of our products on you, but we’ve got something you really need to see.”

And, that one sales pitch will cost the whole stack of chips. You can’t market your products directly to readers, despite the term “content marketing.” At least not with any real frequency.

Otherwise, they’ll stop believing your voice and trusting your brand.

John Deere understood this when they launched The Furrow, arguably the first recorded attempt at content marketing, back in 1895. They didn’t send out a catalogue of farm equipment. In fact, they didn’t mention their products at all.  Instead, they set out to make themselves useful to farmers by producing a guide to teach business principles and new farming technologies.

As it turns out, when a company becomes a trusted source of information in your industry, it makes sense to trust them to provide your equipment as well. But, John Deere never said that outright. Content marketing is more subtle than that. They simply produced valuable content and trusted farmers to make that connection on their own over time.

Or, for a more modern example, look at Red Bull.

If you visit RedBull.com, you’ll see extreme sports, surfing videos, skateboarding tricks, music reviews and a veritable who’s who of 20-something countercultural superstars.

In fact, Red Bull has become such a resource for this core demographic that their website is actually a destination for seekers of fresh, updated content on extreme lifestyles. What you won’t see are articles touting the benefits of Red Bull, the great taste or the wide margin by which the brand outsells its competition.

Red Bull is perfectly happy simply slapping its logo on the skateboards of some of the greatest tricksters on Earth and let kids make the connection on their own. There might be the odd banner ad for Red Bull products, but the content is carved out in a separate silo which is product agnostic.

Just for fun, I reviewed a bunch of top content marketing initiatives – everything from Red Bull to Procter & Gamble’s Petside and Being Girl initiatives. In all, I read more than 100 content marketing articles at random.

Do you know what most of them had in common?

More than 89% of the articles never mentioned a single product related to the company producing the content. They were virtually all product agnostic to the core. General Mills’ Tablespoon platform might offer great recipes which could conceivably contain its products. They might even show a picture of a product in the “ingredients” photo, but they stop short of shoving the General Mills brand down your throat. You’re left alone to eventually connect the dots on your own. If General Mills cares enough to give me all of these recipes, they probably care enough to make superior products as well.

Read more…

For roughly the last six years, my focus has been customer research – specifically how and why people behave the way they do when they come to a point of decision online.

After directing hundreds of real-time online tests and conducting a number of brand-side marketer interviews, I’ve discovered there’s simple a secret to using the Conversion Heuristic of MarketingSherpa’s sister brand, MarketingExperiments, to unlock some of the double- and triple-digit gains I’ve witnessed first-hand over the years.

I’ll explain with a recent story of my own.

There’s a story behind everything that’s bought

On January 2, my wife went from happily seven months pregnant to becoming a new mom two months early – in less than 48 hours.

She suddenly put her career on hold and committed to meeting the challenges our daughter faced from premature birth. We were in the hospital every day for a month and brought our bundle of joy home a month earlier than expected.

It’s safe to say my wife’s recent journey has been one of rediscovery with little notice. And, with her birthday coming up soon, I wanted to find a way to delight her and confirm her talent as a person. So, I went to build a custom gift presentation focused on one of her most promising and enjoyable hobbies: baking.

A company becomes my cornerstone

The first place I went to buy products for this presentation was one of the e-commerce stores she visits most – King Arthur Flour. Over the last year, she has mentioned things she would love to have from the site, so I decided to fulfill those requests all at once.

The added bonus here is it would excite her to have all of the new tools and special ingredients she wanted and would confirm my belief in her baking talents … one delicious confection after another.

So, from the homepage to checkout, I processed every piece of marketing content in context of what I was trying to do for my wife. If something didn’t fit my vision for this presentation, then it wasn’t for me.

My cornerstone gets cracked

It’s inescapable for anyone in e-commerce – some errors will occur. A potent baking ingredient came apart during shipment and also ruined two other key items for my presentation. Making matters worse … her birthday was in less than two days.

I quickly contacted King Arthur Flour to see if they could help. When I spoke with someone from the team about my situation, they agreed to process an overnight replacement of those items without question.

All seemed to be well again …

Until the package didn’t arrive the following day.

Read more…

Often, the best ideas for our content come from the MarketingSherpa audience,  such as  this note I received from Steve, “There was a very good graphic in a recent post from Rand Fishkin. I think it would be interesting for you to add some ‘quantitative metrics’ to this.”

Let’s take a look at that graphic …

I reached out to Rand, who is the CEO of Moz, to get a little background on the chart, which looked almost like a yin and yang of modern marketing to me.

“The items in red aren’t necessarily all terrible things you shouldn’t do,” Rand said.

“Interruption marketing can be well done, but as the graphic notes, there’s no flywheel effect generating momentum, and these channels/tactics, on average, lead to higher costs of customer acquisition. In some markets and for some companies, that may be a fine tradeoff, but it should always be a conscious one,” he explained.

Today on the MarketingSherpa blog, we’re providing a mixture of quantitative metrics, case studies, how-to articles and other resources to help you improve your own inbound marketing efforts by learning more about how your peers are effectively using these tactics …

SEO & PPC

Local search has had the biggest positive impact on marketing objectives, with 54% of marketers indicating so, according to the MarketingSherpa SEO Marketing Benchmark Survey.

How to Switch to SEO, PPC Strategies to Increase Leads: 10 Steps to Triple-Digit Lifts

Local SEO: How geotargeting keywords brought 333% more revenue

PPC Marketing: Two accidents reduce cost-per-lead 20%

Opt-in Email Lists

Only 39% of marketers maintain an opt-in only subscriber list.

Email Deliverability: How a marketing vendor with 99 percent delivery rates treats single opt-in lists vs. double opt-in lists

Read more…

Every Research Partner wants a lift, but we know sometimes, those lifts aren’t achievable without learning more about their customers first.

And often, our biggest lifts are associated with radical redesign tests that really shake things up on a landing page. That is because the changes are more drastic than a single-factor A/B test that allows for pinpointing discoveries.

So, how can you strike a balance between using these two approaches while still delivering results that satisfy expectations?

You can achieve this by managing your client’s or business leader’s expectations effectively.

It sounds easier said than done, but there are a few things you can do to satisfy a client’s or business leader’s needs for lifts and learnings. 

Step #1. Start with radical changes that challenge the paradigm

At MECLABS, we often recommend a strategic testing cycle with radical redesign testing (multiple clusters as opposed to a single-factor A/B split) to identify any untapped potential that may exist on a Research Partner’s landing page.

However, you must make sure you are not making random changes to a page to achieve a radically different control and treatment, but are truly focused on challenging the control’s paradigms and assumptions currently being made on the page by testing with a hypothesis.

For example, Sierra Tucson, an addiction and mental health rehabilitation facility, found with a radical redesign from a landing page focused on luxury to a landing page focused on trust resulted better with its target audience. The company also generated 220% more leads with the test to boot.

Step #2. Zoom in on general areas your radical redesign test has identified as having a high potential for impacting conversion

Next, we suggest refining with variable cluster testing, also known as select clusters.

If you identify a radical shift in messaging to be effective, as Sierra Tucson did, you might next want to try different copy, different designs or different offers, just to name a few options.

Read more…

In a recent MarketingSherpa webinar, I interviewed Eric Webb, Senior Marketing Director, Corporate Marketing & Brand, McGladrey, about his impressive work with the accounting firm’s content marketing.

You can now watch the video replay of that webinar – “Content Marketing: A discussion about McGladrey’s 300% increase in content production.”

But most of the questions I asked him weren’t my own, they were from you. In fact, we got tons of your questions about content marketing, and Eric has been kind enough to answer some of them here today on the MarketingSherpa blog.

Even better, Eric also provided you a tool his team used to help with its 300% increase in content production. Click below to download the template …

Submission form – with example

And now, your questions…

B2B online lead gen as a topic. – Mor, online marketing manager

Eric Webb: We use content to generate leads 70% of the time. Via Demand Generation, and social media, we promote specific content that resides behind a form. We may ask qualifying questions as well to help discern where they are in the buy cycle.

To do this, you need to repackage the topic to leave a breadcrumb of content that helps you accelerate the sales process. You may have a white paper which shows they are in discovery of the issue, then a podcast with a client and a case study. If they download these, they are likely more interested and are considering or feel they can benefit in some way from the solution.

Finally, a self assessment or an offer for a free 30-minute talk with the expert tells you they are truly interested and deserve a call.

Creating content for niche industries and clients – Maddie, marketing analyst

EW: I recommend looking to industry publication editorial calendars for ideas, clients and outside speakers.

Specific metrics and related incentives for the content creation team, please. – Marshall, CEO

EW: For content, the metrics we most watch are clicks and downloads, or form conversions if behind a form. We don’t necessarily offer an incentive except recognition for the SMEs (subject matter experts) on how the content they create is performing. But, you clearly could offer an incentive based on form-conversion leading to an opportunity.

How much content is necessary? – Christian, director of marketing

EW: Depends on your objectives – if you are just trying to build awareness, then you may measure retweets, likes or +. You could also look at a benchmark of current visits to a section and just say 10% above that. But ultimately, you have to determine what your objective is.

How do you re-purpose other’s content? – Christian, director of marketing

EW: We do curate content to help fill out a section and drive more time on site or to attract more people. But only the first paragraph and then we link out to their site. Otherwise, we look to vendors or partners to provide some of their content in totality.

Besides social, blogs and email – any other outlets? – Christian, director of marketing

EW: Networking sites like LinkedIn updates and groups. Partner sites, publications and association sites; some of our most clicks come on the heels of someone commenting in a news article and providing a link to our content. Slideshare. Reddit. Digg.

I love the idea of creating energy around content for SMEs and am looking forward to learning more about this. – Dee, founder

EW: Basically it comes down to being able to provide a breakdown of specific metrics by each content piece (clicks, downloads, form fills and opportunities). Develop a monthly report to show the value that the content is creating and highlight the author. Also, if you have a PR group, get them to promote the author as an expert, showcasing their content to reporters.

How quickly do you plan from idea generation for content to getting it up and available? – Nick, manager

EW: It depends on the topic. A blog post is usually a few days, depending on approvals required, but a white paper can be weeks and months, especially if it’s a regulated industry. We try to get teams to use content calendars and think at least three to six months out by assigning topics to SMEs.

How to develop a thought leadership culture in the workplace? – Kim, senior email marketing manager

EW: I noticed a change when you could report the metrics. And, with our marketing automation system, we now are close to showing a measure of influence of total revenue and direct attribution of particular campaigns and content offered to opportunities.

Explaining how your audience buys – their buy cycle – and then being able to show how they read through content to ultimately filling a form and wanting to engage helps as well. Consistency is key.

Read more…

Considering low costs and the potential return of driving significant volumes of traffic to your homepages or landing pages, banner ads would seem a safe bet to count as one of the most important elements of a successful marketing strategy. Yet in reality, most banner ads become lost in the afterthoughts of marketing campaign planning.

How does this happen?

One thing I have discovered in working with our Research Partners is the problem begins with an all too common approach to banner ads in which a focus is placed on “creating a few banner ads” instead of “creating highly effective” banner ads that appeal to visitors.

In today’s MarketingSherpa blog post, I wanted to offer three questions every marketer should ask themselves when crafting banner ads that you can use to aid your display marketing efforts.

Question #1. Do we know where the traffic is coming from?

Assuming you already have banner ads in place, a good place to start is by diving into your metrics to better understand the amounts of traffic your banner ads are currently generating.

If you are new to banner ads or have limited historical performance data, then consider some of the obstacles you must overcome to create an effective banner ad ranging from:

• Gaining a visitor’s attention
• Capturing visitor interests
• Driving visitor engagement to click on your banner ad

You should also consider the types of traffic coming to the website or page in which your banner ads are displayed because this information will play an important role in later design, messaging and CTA planning.

Question #2. Do we know where the traffic is going?

While it is important to know where your visitors are coming from, knowing where visitors are going throughout the overall experience can help you craft messaging and CTAs that deliver on the expectations set by the banner ads.

For example, if a banner ad redirects a visitor to a lead capture form, then using a call-to-action like “Learn More” would not be an optimal CTA versus using “Apply Now” or “Apply Now.” Analyzing where your traffic goes is also a great way to help you detect and fix any simple leaks in your funnel.

Read more…

Sometimes while working with our Research Partners, I hear interesting explanations on why they can’t move forward with testing a particular strategy.

And as you would expect, there are a few common explanations I encounter more often than others:

• “We’ve always done it like this.”
• “Our customers are not complaining, so why change?”

And my personal favorite…

• “We already tested that a few years ago and it didn’t work.”

While there are some very legitimate barriers to testing that arise during planning (testing budgets, site traffic and ROI), the most common explanations of “We can’t do that” I hear  rarely outweigh the potential revenue being left on the table – at least not from this testing strategist’s point of view.

So in today’s MarketingSherpa blog post, we will share three of the most common barriers to testing and why your marketing team should avoid them.

The legacy barrier – “We’ve always done it like this.”

Legacy barriers to testing are decisions derived from comfort.

But what guarantee does anyone ever have that learning more about your customers is going to be a comfortable experience? So, when I receive a swift refusal to test based on “We’ve always done it like this,” I propose an important question – what created the legacy in your organization in the first place?

Generally, many companies understandably create business constraints and initiatives around what is acceptable for the market at a given point in time.

But what happens far too often is that these constraints and initiatives turn into habits. Habits that are passed on from marketer to marketer, until the chain of succession gives way to a forgotten lore of why a particular practice was put in place.

This ultimately results in a business climate in which the needs of yesteryear continue to take priority over the needs you have today.

So, if you find yourself facing a legacy barrier, below are a few resources from our sister company MarketingExperiments to help you achieve the buy-in you need to challenge the status quo:

What to test (and how) to increase your ROI today

Value Proposition: A free worksheet to help you win arguments in any meeting

The false confidence barrier – “Our customers are not complaining, so why change?”   

The false confidence barrier is built on the belief that if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it – or at least it isn’t broken that you’re aware of.

This is especially important if your organization is determined to use customer experience in the digital age as the metric of success when evaluating a website’s performance – and this happens more than you would think.

So, considering for a moment a hypothetical customer is having an unpleasant experience on your website, ask yourself…

What obligation does a customer have to complain about their experience to you?

My recommendation in this case is to never assume customer silence is customer acceptance.

Instead, take a deeper look at your sales funnel for opportunities to mitigate elements of friction and anxiety that may steer customers away from your objectives, rather than towards them.

Read more…

At MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2013, I interviewed our keynote speaker – Jay Baer, President, Convince&Convert – about the book he was writing. Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is about Help not Hype will be released in two weeks, so we’re sharing that interview with you now …

A few key takeaways from Jay …

1:00 – Brands have to compete with customers’ friends and family on social media and in email.

1:27 – So how are you going to compete with friends and family? Just be useful.

1:41 – Make your marketing a benefit, not a burden.

2:16 – Hilton Worldwide’s instruction to employees monitoring social media – “Pay attention to Twitter. If you can find a place you can help, just help.”

3:02 – The difference between helping and selling makes all the difference.

To register to win your very own shiny new copy of Youtility, sign up this week for the MarketingSherpa Weekly Book Giveaway.

Related Resources:

B2B Social Media: Jay Baer discusses social media ROI and Facebook likes [Video]

5 Ways to Deliver B2B Marketing Content that Sells (Without Sabotaging Sales) (via Convince&Convert)

Value Proposition: How to use social media to help discover why customers buy from you