Wednesday, 8 July 2015
4 Digital Marketing Strategy Studies: Formats, Trends, Influencers & Engagement
What spells success in content marketing and other digital disciplines? Is it about the format, the distribution or the timing? Contributor Kelsey Libert explores all the important factors.
Kelsey Libert on February 3, 2015 at 9:00 am
2.3K
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Marketing-Strategy-Studies
Success begins with a good plan. A good plan, in turn, begins with research to understand which solutions might offer the best outcomes for your challenges.
Four new studies have taken on answering the who, what, where, why, and when of digital marketing, giving us insights on the right solutions for brands in every vertical.
Social Content Calendar
A successful marketing effort relies on your ability to deliver the content that audiences want, when they want it.
Figuring out these two components can be challenging, so BuzzStream and Fractl (my employer) looked more closely at sharing among 11 different verticals over six months to find patterns with popular content.
Using BuzzSumo, we tracked 220,000 pieces of content in these formats: how-to articles, lists, what posts, why posts, and videos.
How-To Articles
This format peaks in October, but earns strong shares in August and November as well. How-to articles are the most successful format for the food vertical, earning 37% of all shares during our study period. How-to articles also perform strongly for the news vertical — earning a close second place — with 22% of shares.
Lists
Lists lead content sharing in the summertime. In June through August, this format earns between 17K and 24K shares consistently each month.
Lists are also the strongest content type for the health and travel vertical, and tie for most-shared format in the food vertical.
What Posts
This content type, which typically asks a question or describes an insight such as What Bartenders Actually Think of Your Drink Order, emerged as the riskiest format in our study, earning both the highest high and lowest low in social sharing over six months.
What-posts spiked with 29K shares in October with a surge in the news vertical; however, what-posts rarely received even 1K in shares in June or July.
Why Posts
Content that explains – called why-posts – is the second most-shared format and receives the most attention in the fall, earning an average of 24K shares per month in September, October, and November. Why-posts are particularly strong earners in the lifestyle vertical, accounting for 36% of overall shares.
Videos
Videos earned 27–35% of of shares in the education and entertainment verticals, but ranked last for many other verticals. Video trends may be ones to watch as both Facebook and Twitter compete for stakes in this format.
Evergreen content formats
Lists and why-posts emerged as the highest performing content types overall, earning more than 20% of all shares in the dataset and 22–32% of shares in the Entertainment, News, and Travel verticals.
However, as the chart above suggests, timing plays a big role in content sharing success. For more, we’ve compiled the results by vertical, content type, and month in our Social Content Calendar.
Marketing Trend Report
Marketers are working faster than ever to keep up with the content preferences of digital audiences. A myriad of tools and options have been developed for marketers and advertisers to engage online, and we set out to see which are rising (or falling) in popularity.
Using Google Trends, BuzzStream and Fractl tracked searches for 20 key marketing terms regionally and globally. Here we share results for five terms related to online marketing strategies.
Online Marketing Growth Strategies
Native Advertising: The late bloomer of the bunch, native advertising didn’t earn its first blip on the marketing industry’s radar until March of 2011 and didn’t gain traction until November of the same year. Since then the term has earned a mostly positive rise, peaking in August of 2014 when it briefly surpassed the traffic volume of pay-per-click.
Content Marketing: Pay-per-click earned nine times more search interest than content marketing in January of 2008, but by the end of 2014 the roles were reversed – content marketing now leads with three times the traffic. The switch took place in November of 2012 and the gap has widened continuously ever since.
Social Media Marketing: Searches for social media marketing began in 2007, the same year that Microsoft announced its investment in Facebook. But 2009 marked the beginning of a two-year, 80% rise in interest that has kept the tactic near the top in marketing searches. Searches have fluctuated 20–30% over the past three years, but hit an all time high in April of 2014.
Landing Page Optimization: The most turbulent of trends in the marketing strategy category, landing page optimization garnered its initial and greatest gain in interest between May and June of 2008. The past seven years have been extremely inconsistent for this tactic, with searches rising and falling as much as 55% in a single month. This lack of stability is a signal that the industry has not yet adopted landing page optimization as a staple marketing approach.
Pay-Per-Click: The preferred approach at the start of 2008, searches for the phrase “pay per click” have fallen 68% over the past seven years. The acronym PPC earns more search traffic by volume – an indication of the industry’s embrace of this approach – yet searches for this abbreviation have also fallen 84% during the same time period.
We’ve included the results for all 20 terms in our long-term global analysis and recent regional insights in our Marketing Trend Report.
The Influencer Marketing Discussion Trending On Twitter
After learning which marketing tools and tactics are being most searched, we turned to Twitter to find out what marketing influencers are saying about the industry. BuzzStream and Fractl scraped nearly 5,000 tweets that contained at least one marketing keyword or hashtag from our list:
Media Relations
Influencer Marketing
Digital PR
Outbound Marketing
Brand Recognition
Earned Media
PR
Public Relations
Publicity
Press Release
Then, we utilized Peer Index, Twitonomy, and the Alchemy API to discover the tweet types, sentiments, and key influencers in the discussion.
Marketing Conversation
We found that influencers in the marketing field appear to practice what they preach when it comes to value-added content.
At least half of all tweets in this study included helpful tips or marketing insights, including resources like Entrepreneur’s roundup of Marketing Trends Experts Want You to Avoid and Ragan’s write up on How to Avoid Journalists’ 5 Worst Pitching Peeves.
This was especially true for the emerging keywords “earned media” and “outbound marketing,” in which trends were the dominant category of tweets.
Marketing Influencers
We were surprised to discover that many of the most influential people tweeting with our marketing key terms weren’t people at all – they were brands. 52% of the top influencers we identified using Peer Index included PR teams for brands ranging from commercial companies like Nestlé and Disney, to public information groups like the Los Angeles Police Department and NPR, to industry resources like PR News and Help A Reporter Out.
Of the percentage of influencers that are individuals, at least 41% are in leadership or consulting positions. Job titles like Director, CEO, CMO, and Consultant dominated the list, followed by people in writing, blogging, and strategist roles.
Our full dataset of tweets and influencers is available to download with our findings on Influencer Marketing.
Twitter Engagement Unmasked
Finally, a fascinating new study from Stone Temple rounds out the research that caught my eye this month. In their research on Twitter engagement, 1.94 million tweets revealed that social authority can have a great deal of influence over how various messaging tactics will engage followers.
StoneTemple Twitter Engagement Images Favorites
One of the most striking examples from their finding concerns the use of images. At the lowest authority levels, photos and graphics can earn up to 12X more favorites than tweets without images. Similarly, Low Authority accounts also earn the most RTs by employing images – up to 9X as many in the very lowest category.
In terms of both favorites and RTs, engagement drops off sharply for Twitter accounts in the moderate social authority range, and falls even lower for those with the highest authority.
Considering how social authority may impact your marketing strategy is an important angle, especially in light of findings that suggest that some tactics may actually hurt engagement depending on your brand’s authority position. Read the full study and findings at Twitter Engagement Unmasked.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
Be a part of SMX East, the world's largest search marketing conference programmed by the team from our sister site Search Engine Land. The robust agenda covers the latest tactics in paid search, SEO, mobile, analytics and more. Register today and save $300, or come as a team and save 10%-20%.
Kelsey Libert on February 3, 2015 at 9:00 am
2.3K
MORE
Marketing-Strategy-Studies
Success begins with a good plan. A good plan, in turn, begins with research to understand which solutions might offer the best outcomes for your challenges.
Four new studies have taken on answering the who, what, where, why, and when of digital marketing, giving us insights on the right solutions for brands in every vertical.
Social Content Calendar
A successful marketing effort relies on your ability to deliver the content that audiences want, when they want it.
Figuring out these two components can be challenging, so BuzzStream and Fractl (my employer) looked more closely at sharing among 11 different verticals over six months to find patterns with popular content.
Using BuzzSumo, we tracked 220,000 pieces of content in these formats: how-to articles, lists, what posts, why posts, and videos.
How-To Articles
This format peaks in October, but earns strong shares in August and November as well. How-to articles are the most successful format for the food vertical, earning 37% of all shares during our study period. How-to articles also perform strongly for the news vertical — earning a close second place — with 22% of shares.
Lists
Lists lead content sharing in the summertime. In June through August, this format earns between 17K and 24K shares consistently each month.
Lists are also the strongest content type for the health and travel vertical, and tie for most-shared format in the food vertical.
What Posts
This content type, which typically asks a question or describes an insight such as What Bartenders Actually Think of Your Drink Order, emerged as the riskiest format in our study, earning both the highest high and lowest low in social sharing over six months.
What-posts spiked with 29K shares in October with a surge in the news vertical; however, what-posts rarely received even 1K in shares in June or July.
Why Posts
Content that explains – called why-posts – is the second most-shared format and receives the most attention in the fall, earning an average of 24K shares per month in September, October, and November. Why-posts are particularly strong earners in the lifestyle vertical, accounting for 36% of overall shares.
Videos
Videos earned 27–35% of of shares in the education and entertainment verticals, but ranked last for many other verticals. Video trends may be ones to watch as both Facebook and Twitter compete for stakes in this format.
Evergreen content formats
Lists and why-posts emerged as the highest performing content types overall, earning more than 20% of all shares in the dataset and 22–32% of shares in the Entertainment, News, and Travel verticals.
However, as the chart above suggests, timing plays a big role in content sharing success. For more, we’ve compiled the results by vertical, content type, and month in our Social Content Calendar.
Marketing Trend Report
Marketers are working faster than ever to keep up with the content preferences of digital audiences. A myriad of tools and options have been developed for marketers and advertisers to engage online, and we set out to see which are rising (or falling) in popularity.
Using Google Trends, BuzzStream and Fractl tracked searches for 20 key marketing terms regionally and globally. Here we share results for five terms related to online marketing strategies.
Online Marketing Growth Strategies
Native Advertising: The late bloomer of the bunch, native advertising didn’t earn its first blip on the marketing industry’s radar until March of 2011 and didn’t gain traction until November of the same year. Since then the term has earned a mostly positive rise, peaking in August of 2014 when it briefly surpassed the traffic volume of pay-per-click.
Content Marketing: Pay-per-click earned nine times more search interest than content marketing in January of 2008, but by the end of 2014 the roles were reversed – content marketing now leads with three times the traffic. The switch took place in November of 2012 and the gap has widened continuously ever since.
Social Media Marketing: Searches for social media marketing began in 2007, the same year that Microsoft announced its investment in Facebook. But 2009 marked the beginning of a two-year, 80% rise in interest that has kept the tactic near the top in marketing searches. Searches have fluctuated 20–30% over the past three years, but hit an all time high in April of 2014.
Landing Page Optimization: The most turbulent of trends in the marketing strategy category, landing page optimization garnered its initial and greatest gain in interest between May and June of 2008. The past seven years have been extremely inconsistent for this tactic, with searches rising and falling as much as 55% in a single month. This lack of stability is a signal that the industry has not yet adopted landing page optimization as a staple marketing approach.
Pay-Per-Click: The preferred approach at the start of 2008, searches for the phrase “pay per click” have fallen 68% over the past seven years. The acronym PPC earns more search traffic by volume – an indication of the industry’s embrace of this approach – yet searches for this abbreviation have also fallen 84% during the same time period.
We’ve included the results for all 20 terms in our long-term global analysis and recent regional insights in our Marketing Trend Report.
The Influencer Marketing Discussion Trending On Twitter
After learning which marketing tools and tactics are being most searched, we turned to Twitter to find out what marketing influencers are saying about the industry. BuzzStream and Fractl scraped nearly 5,000 tweets that contained at least one marketing keyword or hashtag from our list:
Media Relations
Influencer Marketing
Digital PR
Outbound Marketing
Brand Recognition
Earned Media
PR
Public Relations
Publicity
Press Release
Then, we utilized Peer Index, Twitonomy, and the Alchemy API to discover the tweet types, sentiments, and key influencers in the discussion.
Marketing Conversation
We found that influencers in the marketing field appear to practice what they preach when it comes to value-added content.
At least half of all tweets in this study included helpful tips or marketing insights, including resources like Entrepreneur’s roundup of Marketing Trends Experts Want You to Avoid and Ragan’s write up on How to Avoid Journalists’ 5 Worst Pitching Peeves.
This was especially true for the emerging keywords “earned media” and “outbound marketing,” in which trends were the dominant category of tweets.
Marketing Influencers
We were surprised to discover that many of the most influential people tweeting with our marketing key terms weren’t people at all – they were brands. 52% of the top influencers we identified using Peer Index included PR teams for brands ranging from commercial companies like Nestlé and Disney, to public information groups like the Los Angeles Police Department and NPR, to industry resources like PR News and Help A Reporter Out.
Of the percentage of influencers that are individuals, at least 41% are in leadership or consulting positions. Job titles like Director, CEO, CMO, and Consultant dominated the list, followed by people in writing, blogging, and strategist roles.
Our full dataset of tweets and influencers is available to download with our findings on Influencer Marketing.
Twitter Engagement Unmasked
Finally, a fascinating new study from Stone Temple rounds out the research that caught my eye this month. In their research on Twitter engagement, 1.94 million tweets revealed that social authority can have a great deal of influence over how various messaging tactics will engage followers.
StoneTemple Twitter Engagement Images Favorites
One of the most striking examples from their finding concerns the use of images. At the lowest authority levels, photos and graphics can earn up to 12X more favorites than tweets without images. Similarly, Low Authority accounts also earn the most RTs by employing images – up to 9X as many in the very lowest category.
In terms of both favorites and RTs, engagement drops off sharply for Twitter accounts in the moderate social authority range, and falls even lower for those with the highest authority.
Considering how social authority may impact your marketing strategy is an important angle, especially in light of findings that suggest that some tactics may actually hurt engagement depending on your brand’s authority position. Read the full study and findings at Twitter Engagement Unmasked.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
Be a part of SMX East, the world's largest search marketing conference programmed by the team from our sister site Search Engine Land. The robust agenda covers the latest tactics in paid search, SEO, mobile, analytics and more. Register today and save $300, or come as a team and save 10%-20%.
10 Digital Marketing Trends In 2015 That Will Boost Your Strategy
Digital marketing is an impulsive, erratic, and volatile industry. The moment you catch the tiger by the tail, there’s a new tiger whose fugacious tail requires catching.
Keeping up with a changeable industry seems like a fool’s errand. Where is the balance between chasing capricious trends, on the one hand, and ossifying into a Luddite on the other?
Thankfully, there is an in between — a balance. If you can identify current trends, settle on an actionable strategy, and take measurable movement forward, you’re bound to succeed. I’ve identified X such strategies that you should keep in mind over the next few months, if not the next few years of digital marketing.
1. Stop relying on Google.
Don’t misinterpret this point. I’m not saying that Google is not on its way out. After more than a decade of domination, however, it may be on the decline. Up-and-comers like Duck Duck Go aren’t anywhere near dethroning Google GOOGL +0.77%. What their rise indicates is that consumers want alternatives — a choice not to depend on Google if they don’t have to.
Marketers should take heed. Google is one basket, but it doesn’t deserve all your marketing eggs. Search engine optimization is important, but a searcher can accomplish her goal through more means than just Google.
I advise digital marketers to rely less on Google, and engage more direct forms of interacting with their target market.
2. Mobile. Just mobile.
I wanted to say that “mobile dominates,” but that line is so utterly cliche, that I had to state it differently.
The importance of mobile search, mobile optimization, mobile conversions, and mobile ubiquity cannot be overstated. Mobile devices and our collective addiction to them are fixtures of the modern marketing era.
This article is not the place to wax verbose on the importance of mobile. Instead, my intent is to remind you that mobile is the method of the masses, and should, therefore, be a priority of the marketers.
3. Social conversion is coming.
Enough has been said about the power of social networks. Not quite enough as been said about the importance of social conversions. For ecommerce and lead generation sites, social provides a growing opportunity to improve conversion rates and gain new conversion channels.
4. New payment methods are on the rise.
With the advent of EVM credit cards (October 2015), the public is in for a new experience when it comes to payment methods. These changes will have a ripple effect on online payment and e-commerce sites.
Privacy issues are a mainstream concern and it’s up to digital marketers to lead the way in reassuring, educating, and coaching customers through the transition.
Keeping up with a changeable industry seems like a fool’s errand. Where is the balance between chasing capricious trends, on the one hand, and ossifying into a Luddite on the other?
Thankfully, there is an in between — a balance. If you can identify current trends, settle on an actionable strategy, and take measurable movement forward, you’re bound to succeed. I’ve identified X such strategies that you should keep in mind over the next few months, if not the next few years of digital marketing.
1. Stop relying on Google.
Don’t misinterpret this point. I’m not saying that Google is not on its way out. After more than a decade of domination, however, it may be on the decline. Up-and-comers like Duck Duck Go aren’t anywhere near dethroning Google GOOGL +0.77%. What their rise indicates is that consumers want alternatives — a choice not to depend on Google if they don’t have to.
Marketers should take heed. Google is one basket, but it doesn’t deserve all your marketing eggs. Search engine optimization is important, but a searcher can accomplish her goal through more means than just Google.
I advise digital marketers to rely less on Google, and engage more direct forms of interacting with their target market.
2. Mobile. Just mobile.
I wanted to say that “mobile dominates,” but that line is so utterly cliche, that I had to state it differently.
The importance of mobile search, mobile optimization, mobile conversions, and mobile ubiquity cannot be overstated. Mobile devices and our collective addiction to them are fixtures of the modern marketing era.
This article is not the place to wax verbose on the importance of mobile. Instead, my intent is to remind you that mobile is the method of the masses, and should, therefore, be a priority of the marketers.
3. Social conversion is coming.
Enough has been said about the power of social networks. Not quite enough as been said about the importance of social conversions. For ecommerce and lead generation sites, social provides a growing opportunity to improve conversion rates and gain new conversion channels.
4. New payment methods are on the rise.
With the advent of EVM credit cards (October 2015), the public is in for a new experience when it comes to payment methods. These changes will have a ripple effect on online payment and e-commerce sites.
Privacy issues are a mainstream concern and it’s up to digital marketers to lead the way in reassuring, educating, and coaching customers through the transition.
Digital marketing strategy
Improve your Digital marketing strategy with our hub page
Use our hub pages as a reference to get up-to-speed on all the main digital marketing techniques. They will help you quickly understand how to make the most of the technique through definitions and recommendations on our member resources and blog articles covering strategy, best practices and the latest statistics.
We believe that a digital marketing strategy is essential to take advantage of the growing opportunities from digital marketing, yet many companies don't have a digital marketing strategy!
Yet our Managing Digital marketing in 2015 research (a free download) showed that half of companies don't yet have a planned digital marketing strategy:
Digital Marketing Strategy 2015
An integrated digital strategy will give you a foundation for all the key online marketing activities we recommend in the Smart Insights RACE digital marketing planning framework.
This page groups our key recommendations on creating a digital strategy. If you're new to Smart Insights we recommend another free download, our Digital marketing strategy template.
Recommended Resources
Creating plans for digital marketing
At Smart Insights we believe that marketers with the best plans win. The best plans start with a solid framework to make them easy to create and communicate. This planning primer shows our main resources for planning .
Introducing RACE: A practical framework to improve your digital marketing
ARTICLE
Creating a Digital Marketing Plan Fast Start
ARTICLE
RACE Planning Qualification - a comprehensive online marketing course
EXPERT
Free digital marketing plan template
BASIC
Digital marketing strategy guide - 7 Steps to Success
EXPERT
Online marketing benchmark / audit spreadsheet
EXPERT
Digital strategy template toolkit
EXPERT
Digital Marketing Healthcheck
BASIC
An introduction to SOSTAC® planning
ARTICLE
Digital marketing strategy quick guide
Digital marketing strategy success factors
An effective digital strategy will help you take the right decisions to make a company successful online. A strategy process model provides a framework that gives a logical sequence to follow to ensure inclusion of all key activities of strategy development and implementation. We recommend the SOSTAC planning approach.
A Digital Marketing Strategy should involve a review to check that all of your capabilities are in place to help your organisation manage all of the digital touchpoints. But which capabilities are important, which do you need to review?
In our Managing Digital Transformation Guide for Expert members we show these in our capability visual:
Digital Marketing Capabilities Model
A successful Digital Strategy should be built on reviewing 7 core capabilities which are strategic approach, performance improvement process, management buy-in, resourcing and structure, data and infrastructure, integrated customer communications and customer experience.
Digital marketing strategy definition
A digital marketing strategy is a channel strategy which means that it should...
Be informed by research into customer channel behaviour and marketplace activity = intermediaries, publishers and competitors
Based on objectives for future online and offline channel contribution %
Define and communicate the differentials of the channel to encourage customers to use it,
BUT, need to manage channel integration
So put another way, digital marketing strategy defines how companies should:
Hit our channel leads & sales targets
Budgets for Acquisition, Conversion, Retention & Growth, Service
Communicate benefits of using this channel – enhance brand
Prioritise audiences targeted through channel
Prioritise products available through channel
Recommended member resources for Digital marketing strategy
Toolkits on Digital marketing strategy
Digital marketing strategy toolkit
Ebooks on Digital marketing strategy
Competitor benchmarking guide
Digital marketing strategy guide
In-depth digital marketing case studies
SOSTAC® Digital Marketing Planning Guide
Online training on Digital marketing strategy
Live Training - watch and download past training
RACE Digital Strategy Qualification
Smart Insights Live Online Training
How to videos on Digital marketing strategy
Creating a Digital Marketing Plan Fast Start
Market analysis - video tutorials
Marketing templates on Digital marketing strategy
Digital marketing plan example
Digital Marketing Plan Workbook
Digital marketing strategy audit
Free digital marketing plan template
Free digital marketing planning infographics
Lifetime Value Spreadsheet
Online Customer Acquisition Plan guide
Online startup business model template
Q1 2015: Online Marketing Statistics Compilation - Adoption and Usage of Digital Platforms
Use our hub pages as a reference to get up-to-speed on all the main digital marketing techniques. They will help you quickly understand how to make the most of the technique through definitions and recommendations on our member resources and blog articles covering strategy, best practices and the latest statistics.
We believe that a digital marketing strategy is essential to take advantage of the growing opportunities from digital marketing, yet many companies don't have a digital marketing strategy!
Yet our Managing Digital marketing in 2015 research (a free download) showed that half of companies don't yet have a planned digital marketing strategy:
Digital Marketing Strategy 2015
An integrated digital strategy will give you a foundation for all the key online marketing activities we recommend in the Smart Insights RACE digital marketing planning framework.
This page groups our key recommendations on creating a digital strategy. If you're new to Smart Insights we recommend another free download, our Digital marketing strategy template.
Recommended Resources
Creating plans for digital marketing
At Smart Insights we believe that marketers with the best plans win. The best plans start with a solid framework to make them easy to create and communicate. This planning primer shows our main resources for planning .
Introducing RACE: A practical framework to improve your digital marketing
ARTICLE
Creating a Digital Marketing Plan Fast Start
ARTICLE
RACE Planning Qualification - a comprehensive online marketing course
EXPERT
Free digital marketing plan template
BASIC
Digital marketing strategy guide - 7 Steps to Success
EXPERT
Online marketing benchmark / audit spreadsheet
EXPERT
Digital strategy template toolkit
EXPERT
Digital Marketing Healthcheck
BASIC
An introduction to SOSTAC® planning
ARTICLE
Digital marketing strategy quick guide
Digital marketing strategy success factors
An effective digital strategy will help you take the right decisions to make a company successful online. A strategy process model provides a framework that gives a logical sequence to follow to ensure inclusion of all key activities of strategy development and implementation. We recommend the SOSTAC planning approach.
A Digital Marketing Strategy should involve a review to check that all of your capabilities are in place to help your organisation manage all of the digital touchpoints. But which capabilities are important, which do you need to review?
In our Managing Digital Transformation Guide for Expert members we show these in our capability visual:
Digital Marketing Capabilities Model
A successful Digital Strategy should be built on reviewing 7 core capabilities which are strategic approach, performance improvement process, management buy-in, resourcing and structure, data and infrastructure, integrated customer communications and customer experience.
Digital marketing strategy definition
A digital marketing strategy is a channel strategy which means that it should...
Be informed by research into customer channel behaviour and marketplace activity = intermediaries, publishers and competitors
Based on objectives for future online and offline channel contribution %
Define and communicate the differentials of the channel to encourage customers to use it,
BUT, need to manage channel integration
So put another way, digital marketing strategy defines how companies should:
Hit our channel leads & sales targets
Budgets for Acquisition, Conversion, Retention & Growth, Service
Communicate benefits of using this channel – enhance brand
Prioritise audiences targeted through channel
Prioritise products available through channel
Recommended member resources for Digital marketing strategy
Toolkits on Digital marketing strategy
Digital marketing strategy toolkit
Ebooks on Digital marketing strategy
Competitor benchmarking guide
Digital marketing strategy guide
In-depth digital marketing case studies
SOSTAC® Digital Marketing Planning Guide
Online training on Digital marketing strategy
Live Training - watch and download past training
RACE Digital Strategy Qualification
Smart Insights Live Online Training
How to videos on Digital marketing strategy
Creating a Digital Marketing Plan Fast Start
Market analysis - video tutorials
Marketing templates on Digital marketing strategy
Digital marketing plan example
Digital Marketing Plan Workbook
Digital marketing strategy audit
Free digital marketing plan template
Free digital marketing planning infographics
Lifetime Value Spreadsheet
Online Customer Acquisition Plan guide
Online startup business model template
Q1 2015: Online Marketing Statistics Compilation - Adoption and Usage of Digital Platforms
The Case For Niche SEO Specialists
woman-think-plan-ss-1920
Search engine optimization (SEO) is comprised of dozens of separate, interlocking, smaller strategies. Google’s search ranking algorithm has evolved to a point where it incorporates millions of data points from all over the web to calculate the rank of each indexed website.
In the search engine’s infancy, SEO was a relatively simple, straightforward matter, and a handful of structural changes could easily get you on page one. Today, you’ll have to carefully navigate multiple landscapes in a consistent, organized way if you want to get the most out of your search visibility.
For most entrepreneurs and marketers, this is too much to handle alone. The usual solutions involve hiring additional team members, outsourcing portions of the work, or simply partnering with an outside agency that can handle all these individual tasks.
However, one of the most efficient strategies is to seek out individual experts in niche fields — people who have developed an expertise in one, highly specific area of SEO rather than a decent level of expertise in all of them. Some agencies operate by collecting masters of individual niches into one consolidated location; so whether you seek such an agency or hope to recruit your own team of niche specialists, these specific experts are the most efficient route to go.
Following are the main reasons why a team of niche specialists can be preferable to a generalist.
The Time Factor
First up, there’s the time factor. Trying to handle every task and every tactic in a broader SEO strategy is going to be a nightmare, especially for an entrepreneur trying to do everything alone. Working with a dedicated SEO expert will save you some time, but working with niche specialists will save you even more time.
With a generalist, you’ll spend time training and getting up to speed on new topics, while specialists tend to be better informed in their individual areas of expertise. Generalists also have to shift gears throughout the day, performing the roles of an entire team of people. Specialists are able to accomplish more in shorter stretches of time — after all, they’re more familiar with their territory.
The Skill Factor
Generalists aren’t always sloppy, but the nature of SEO work favors specialists when it comes to the accuracy and efficiency of executing tasks.
Here are the main problems with generalists:
Generalists typically haven’t spent as long cultivating their skills in any one particular area, so they’re less efficient and less precise when executing tasks.
Generalists tend to read general SEO news and can easily fall behind their specialist counterparts when it comes to new strategies.
Generalists have less experience and familiarity with finding the best possible strategy for a situation and diagnosing problems when they come up.
In most scenarios, the sheer skill level of specialists will lead to fewer mistakes and greater results.
The Money Factor
The money factor can be a hindrance to some; after all, if you hire a full team of individual specialists to do your work, you’ll spend more money than you would spend hiring one or two generalists. However, if you’re smart and careful with your budgeting, you can make a team of specialists far more affordable.
If you segment your work and only hire specialists for what you need them to do (i.e., hiring part-time or contract-based work only for areas where your generalist is weak), you can save money in the long term. Partnering with an agency that exclusively uses specialists will be far cheaper and more efficient than any other strategy (for most businesses).
The Organization Factor
There is a downside in working with specialists: If you aren’t digging into everything yourself as a generalist, you might not be as in tune with the daily events of each individual area.
The flip side to this, of course, is that you’ll be able to look at your campaign at a higher level. You’ll get the 10,000-foot view of your SEO strategy, abandoning the organization and execution of smaller-level tasks in exchange for a bigger perspective.
5 Types Of Specialists
If you’ve landed in favor of hiring specialists to handle your SEO strategy, there are several types of experts you’ll need:
Content Writer. Content writers are good at writing material that engages people. They’ll learn your target audience, develop your brand voice, and consistently produce content that gets people to visit your site and convert, which will increase your brand reputation and domain authority.
Technical SEO. The technical SEO practitioner might double as a developer or designer. They’re good at making sure your site is structurally sound, with updated code, fast loading times, mobile optimization, and proper schema.org markup.
Link Builder. Link builders specialize in off-site optimization, but be careful who you choose here. Low-quality “specialists” might focus on quantity over quality, but you want the opposite. Seek candidates who know what quality really means and how to acquire inbound links in a safe, effective way.
Social Media Expert. Social experts are masters at building a following and generating traffic. They’ll take your content, learn your brand, and get involved on a social level to bring more attention to your brand and site.
Local Reputation Specialist. Local reputation building is an emerging niche, but it’s an increasingly important one. These specialists will build your local citation profile and ensure your business’s presence on third party apps like Yelp and Google My Business is consistent with best practices.
When you start using niche experts to execute your business’s SEO strategy, you should notice an almost immediate difference. You’ll worry less about your performance on individual tasks, and you’ll see a bigger picture perspective on how everything else ties together.
Stay involved by reading SEO news and optimizing your own efforts for search engines when possible, but for the most part, choose your experts wisely and they’ll be able to handle the rest on their own.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is comprised of dozens of separate, interlocking, smaller strategies. Google’s search ranking algorithm has evolved to a point where it incorporates millions of data points from all over the web to calculate the rank of each indexed website.
In the search engine’s infancy, SEO was a relatively simple, straightforward matter, and a handful of structural changes could easily get you on page one. Today, you’ll have to carefully navigate multiple landscapes in a consistent, organized way if you want to get the most out of your search visibility.
For most entrepreneurs and marketers, this is too much to handle alone. The usual solutions involve hiring additional team members, outsourcing portions of the work, or simply partnering with an outside agency that can handle all these individual tasks.
However, one of the most efficient strategies is to seek out individual experts in niche fields — people who have developed an expertise in one, highly specific area of SEO rather than a decent level of expertise in all of them. Some agencies operate by collecting masters of individual niches into one consolidated location; so whether you seek such an agency or hope to recruit your own team of niche specialists, these specific experts are the most efficient route to go.
Following are the main reasons why a team of niche specialists can be preferable to a generalist.
The Time Factor
First up, there’s the time factor. Trying to handle every task and every tactic in a broader SEO strategy is going to be a nightmare, especially for an entrepreneur trying to do everything alone. Working with a dedicated SEO expert will save you some time, but working with niche specialists will save you even more time.
With a generalist, you’ll spend time training and getting up to speed on new topics, while specialists tend to be better informed in their individual areas of expertise. Generalists also have to shift gears throughout the day, performing the roles of an entire team of people. Specialists are able to accomplish more in shorter stretches of time — after all, they’re more familiar with their territory.
The Skill Factor
Generalists aren’t always sloppy, but the nature of SEO work favors specialists when it comes to the accuracy and efficiency of executing tasks.
Here are the main problems with generalists:
Generalists typically haven’t spent as long cultivating their skills in any one particular area, so they’re less efficient and less precise when executing tasks.
Generalists tend to read general SEO news and can easily fall behind their specialist counterparts when it comes to new strategies.
Generalists have less experience and familiarity with finding the best possible strategy for a situation and diagnosing problems when they come up.
In most scenarios, the sheer skill level of specialists will lead to fewer mistakes and greater results.
The Money Factor
The money factor can be a hindrance to some; after all, if you hire a full team of individual specialists to do your work, you’ll spend more money than you would spend hiring one or two generalists. However, if you’re smart and careful with your budgeting, you can make a team of specialists far more affordable.
If you segment your work and only hire specialists for what you need them to do (i.e., hiring part-time or contract-based work only for areas where your generalist is weak), you can save money in the long term. Partnering with an agency that exclusively uses specialists will be far cheaper and more efficient than any other strategy (for most businesses).
The Organization Factor
There is a downside in working with specialists: If you aren’t digging into everything yourself as a generalist, you might not be as in tune with the daily events of each individual area.
The flip side to this, of course, is that you’ll be able to look at your campaign at a higher level. You’ll get the 10,000-foot view of your SEO strategy, abandoning the organization and execution of smaller-level tasks in exchange for a bigger perspective.
5 Types Of Specialists
If you’ve landed in favor of hiring specialists to handle your SEO strategy, there are several types of experts you’ll need:
Content Writer. Content writers are good at writing material that engages people. They’ll learn your target audience, develop your brand voice, and consistently produce content that gets people to visit your site and convert, which will increase your brand reputation and domain authority.
Technical SEO. The technical SEO practitioner might double as a developer or designer. They’re good at making sure your site is structurally sound, with updated code, fast loading times, mobile optimization, and proper schema.org markup.
Link Builder. Link builders specialize in off-site optimization, but be careful who you choose here. Low-quality “specialists” might focus on quantity over quality, but you want the opposite. Seek candidates who know what quality really means and how to acquire inbound links in a safe, effective way.
Social Media Expert. Social experts are masters at building a following and generating traffic. They’ll take your content, learn your brand, and get involved on a social level to bring more attention to your brand and site.
Local Reputation Specialist. Local reputation building is an emerging niche, but it’s an increasingly important one. These specialists will build your local citation profile and ensure your business’s presence on third party apps like Yelp and Google My Business is consistent with best practices.
When you start using niche experts to execute your business’s SEO strategy, you should notice an almost immediate difference. You’ll worry less about your performance on individual tasks, and you’ll see a bigger picture perspective on how everything else ties together.
Stay involved by reading SEO news and optimizing your own efforts for search engines when possible, but for the most part, choose your experts wisely and they’ll be able to handle the rest on their own.
50 Reasons Your Website Deserves to Be Penalized By Google
Unfortunately, there’s a flipside: a penalty. That’s the consequence of Google taking issue with something on your site. Sometimes a penalty is well deserved, but even if you know you’re in the wrong, you probably want to do something about it.
What Is a Google Penalty?
Google has been changing its ranking algorithms since December 2000. That’s when it released its toolbar extension. At the time, the toolbar update represented a sea change that would create the SEO industry as we know it. In fact, it was the first time PageRank was published in a meaningful or usable form.
Over the next decade-and-a-bit, Google continued to refine the quality of its search results. Over time, it begins to eliminate poor quality content and elevate the good stuff to the top of the SERPs. That’s where penalties – come in.
The Penguin update was rolled out in 2012. It hit more than 1 in 10 search results overnight, wiped some sites out of search entirely, pushed poor quality content off the map and forced optimizers to think much more carefully about their content strategy. Since then, SEO professionals have been very tuned in to Google’s plans, fearing the next update in case it results in a penalty for a site they’re working on.
Recognizing a Penalty
Penalties can be automatic or manual. With manual penalties, you’ll probably be told, but you may not always know you’ve been targeted if the cause is algorithmic. Those penalties may take even the most experienced SEO professionals by surprise.
For algorithmic penalties, here are some sure-fire clues.
Your website is not ranking well for your brand name any more. That’s a dead giveaway. Even if your site doesn’t rank for much else, it should at least do well on that one keyword.
Any page one positions you had are slipping back to page two or three without any action on your part.
PageRank for your site has inexplicably dropped from a respectable two or three to a big fat zero (or a measly PR of one).
The entire website has been removed from Google’s cached search results overnight.
Running a site search – site:yourdomain.com keyword – yields no results.
Your listing – when you eventually find it in Google – is for a page on your site other than the home page.
If you see one or more of these factors, you can be pretty sure that a penalty has affected your site.
Why Has Google Penalized My Site?
Google is continually tweaking and revising the way it indexes content.
While it does publish clues about its algorithm updates, it rarely comes clean about all of its reasons for changes. Fixing things can be tough.
To get you off on the right track, here’s the part you’ve been waiting for: 50 common reasons for Google taking issue with your site. While we’re not saying we know the definite reasons for a penalty, we do know that these factors all contribute.
Buying links. Some swear it doesn’t happen, but actual evidence is mixed. Buying links could certainly be seen as an attempt to manipulate PageRank, and therein lies the controversy. If you’ve been buying bad links (and lots of them), your actions could have caught up with you.
Excessive reciprocal links. Swapping links was once an innocent marketing tactic until it started to be abused. If you’ve been exchanging lots of links with clients, it could be seen as a manipulation attempt.
Duplicate content. Hopefully this one’s obvious: any duplicate content on your site makes it less useful in Google’s view, and that could result in a penalty. Make sure your content is unique and well-written; use tools like Copyscape and CopyGator too
Overusing H1 tags. Correctly structuring content helps with SEO. The H1 tag helps Google to understand what the page is about. Excessive H1 tags could be seen as an attempt to pump Google’s listing with keywords.
Internal 404s. Google wants to know that you tend to your content and weed out any errors and problems. If you’re delivering 404s inside your own website, it’s a sure fire signal that your users aren’t getting the information they ask for.
Links from sites in another language. This one seems unfair, right? You’ve got a legitimate link from a client in another country, yet it’s technically counted against you. Well, Google’s reasoning is sound: users generally tend to prefer one language, so linking to sites in another language isn’t that useful for them.
Keyword stuffed content. There are all kinds of weird and wonderful ‘rules’ about keyword density in content. The truth is that none of these rules are proven, and a very high keyword density is a flag for poorly written content. If Google detects a weirdly high number of keywords in a page, it may penalize you – rightly or wrongly.
Footer links. Some web designers use footer links as a navigational aid; some try to manipulate PageRank by using the footer as a place to pass link juice unnaturally. There’s a short discussion about this on Moz.
Missing sitemap data. Google uses the XML sitemap to parse your site’s structure and learn how it’s put together. Make sure your XML sitemap is available and up-to-date, and then submit it in your Webmaster Tools account.
Hidden links. All of the links on your site should be visible and useful to users. Anything that’s hidden is considered suspicious. Never make a link the same color as the background of a page or button, even if you have an innocent reason.
Broken external links. If you don’t keep links up-to-date, Google will assume you don’t care about the user experience and are happy to pack visitors off to various 404 error pages. Check links periodically and pull the duff ones.
Scraped content. Sometimes website managers pull content from other sites in order to bulk our their own pages. Often, this is done with good intentions, and it may be an innocent error. But Google sees this as pointless duplication. Replace it with your own original content instead.
Hidden content. Less ethical optimization tactics include disguising text on a page to manipulate the theme or keyword weighting. It goes without saying that this is a big no-no.
Anchor text overuse. Once upon a time, SEO experts worked on linking certain keywords in order to reinforce their authority. Since the 2012 Penguin update, the over-use of anchor text linking is strongly discouraged. Switch out your forced, unnatural keyword links for honest links phrased in real English.
Neglecting hreflang. Neglecting what now? ‘Hreflang’ is designed to notify Google that you have intentionally published duplicate content for different languages or localities. The jury’s out as to whether it really helps, but using it can’t hurt in the meantime.
Website timing out or down. When a website goes down, everyone gets upset: the visitor, the webmaster and the search engine. If Google can’t find your site, it would rather de-index it rather than keep sending visitors to a dead end.
Keyword domains. While domain names aren’t that risky in themselves, domain names with keywords in might be. Consider the anchor text linking issue: if we repeatedly link to that domain, Google might see that as anchor text manipulation. If you do use an exact match domain, make sure it has plenty of great content on it, otherwise Google will assume you’re trying to fool people into clicking.
Rented links. Some experts still believe rented links are valid and useful for SEO. They pay for them on a monthly basis and change them around occasionally. However, we’d consider them paid links, and so would most of these experts on Quora.
Using blog networks. As far as Google is concerned, any kind of network is a sign of potential SERP manipulation. Most blog networks have now shut down or given users the chance to delete all of these incoming links. You should too.
Affiliate links all over the place. Google isn’t necessarily opposed to affiliate websites, but a high number of affiliate links is a red flag that the content may not be up to scratch. Although it’s possible to mask affiliate links with redirects, Google is wise to this tactic, so don’t rely on it.
Site-wide links. We all need to link pages together, but Google is constantly scanning those links for unnatural patterns. A classic example is a web developer credit in the footer of a page. Don’t just nofollow: remove them entirely.
Overusing meta keywords. Meta keywords have been a topic for debate for some time. They are way too easy to manipulate. Make sure you use no more than five per page.
Slow speeds. If your site’s slow to load, your users will get frustrated. Many, many factors affect hosting speeds, so this is quite a tricky problem to assess and troubleshoot. Use a caching plugin or a CDN right away. You could also move your site to a data center closer to your most frequent visitors: that’s a little more involved.
Spun content. Spinning is content theft. It could land you in hot water if the Google penalty doesn’t catch up with you first. Bought some super-cheap articles? Sometimes content is spun by the ‘writer’, so you may not even know about it. If the price was too good to be true, that’s a sign you may have bought spun articles.
Comment spam. Most commenting systems have an automated spam detection system, but some comments still make it through. Keep a close eye on the comments you’re getting. Also, don’t let spam build up; if you don’t have time to moderate it, switch commenting off entirely.
Black hat SEO advice. If you publish information about manipulating SERPs using black hat methods, expect to be penalized. Matt Cutts hinted at this in a video blog.
Hacked content. If your site has been hacked, Google will quickly remove it from SERPs. Act quickly to contain hacking attempts and restore sites from backup if the worst does happen.
Speedy link building. It’s natural to want your new site to rank quickly. Don’t overdo it. Lots of similar links pointing to the same place is a sign of automation. Don’t artificially bump your link velocity: make gradual changes over time.
Spam reports. Google has published an online form for spam site reporting. Your site might have been submitted as a potential source of spam, genuinely or maliciously.
Forum linking. We’ve all used forums awash with signature links. Sometimes there are so many, it can be hard to locate the actual posts. If you add a forum link, use good, natural linking techniques and consider making it a nofollow too.
Hiding your sponsors. Having a sponsor is no bad thing. Plenty of sites wouldn’t exist without them. Don’t try to hide your sponsors, but follow the rules: nofollow sponsor links and make sure Google’s news bot doesn’t crawl pages where those links can be found.
Robots.txt flaws. The robots.txt file should be used to tell search engines how to deal with your site. While there are legitimate reasons for excluding pages from robots.txt, do it sparingly: excessive blocking could be the cause of your penalty.
Links to suspicious sites. Never associate yourself with a website that is doing something ethically or legally dubious. Hacking, porn and malware-ridden sites should be avoided. Also, try to remove links to other sites that have been penalized in the past, assuming you know about it.
Landing pages. Businesses sometimes try to use multiple landing pages in order to improve their position in SERPs. Some companies also try to improve their position by creating lots of one-page websites optimized for a single keyword, then funneling users through to another site. Google considers this kind of thing to be bad practice.
Over-optimization. Google doesn’t like to see too much of a good thing. An over-optimization penalty usually means you’ve gone a step too far in your bid to obsessively out-SEO everyone else in your industry. Cool it and publish some natural content before your rank suffers.
Advertorials. The controversy around advertorial content was perhaps the most well-known of the pre-Penguin 2 debates. An advertorial is basically a page of content riddled with paid links, and often these pages were being used for aggressive manipulation of search results. The most famous example was Interflora: read about its penalty here.
Too many outbound links. When linking to other websites, keep it natural. A high quantity of links is a sign that you’re swapping links with people for the sake of mutual SEO benefit.
Redirection. If you’ve received a penalty on your site, using a 301 redirect could transfer the penalty to a new location. What’s more, the penalty could linger if you remove the redirect later. To be safe, don’t do it.
Error codes. Aside from the obvious 404 error, there are a range of others that Google really hates to see. 302 (temporarily moved) isn’t ideal; if you really must redirect something, use 301. Also, if you see any 500 errors, deal with the root cause as soon as you can. Find invisible errors with this WebConfs HTTP Header Check tool.
Duplicate metadata. Some blogging tools and CMS platforms make it all too easy to create duplicate metadata by accident. While metadata isn’t a cause for a penalty on its own, it can be a sign of a duplicate content issue on your site. In any case, it’s undesirable; try to deal with it.
Malicious backlinks. Your site NEVER deserves this penalty – but it is something you should know about. If you’re really unlucky, an unethical competitor may try to shove your site down the SERPs by getting it penalized. The most common cause is a malicious backlink campaign.
Targeted keywords. Google is waging war against some of the keywords most frequently appearing in spam sites. ‘Payday loans’ is a good example of a keyword that has already been targeted, although some people feel that it could do more. If you legitimately operate in an industry that’s rife with spam, expect to be caught in the crossfire.
Smuggled links. Don’t be sneaky and put links into script files. Google is much better at analyzing scripts and picking out weird links that shouldn’t be there.
Poor mobile websites. Google can normally detect a valid link between your mobile site and your website. If it’s poorly designed, it may not. Make sure the mobile site is sent to a device where the user agent is set to mobile. Matt Cutts also suggests using a separate subdomain.
Few outbound links. Google wants to see content that references other content of a similar standard. If you don’t share the love, it might look like an attempt to attract traffic unnaturally.
Domain has a bad rep. You may have innocently purchased a domain with a bad history, and that could cause you problems when you try to build a new site around it. Unfortunately this is often a dead end street; you may be best cutting your losses and buying another domain rather than throwing more money at the problem.
Content theft. Even if you don’t steal content, someone else could steal yours. This is troublesome, since getting the content removed could involve filing multiple DMCA takedown notices or pursuing sites in court. If you’re penalized for this, try asking Google to remove the stolen content.
Prominent ads. Advertising is OK when treated as a secondary concern. Ads should never dominate the page content or play second fiddle to an article or blog.
Using a content farm. Over the two years since Panda was phased in, it has been considered poor form to buy content from a ‘farm’ (defined as “sites with shallow or low-quality content”). If your content is poorly researched, light on detail or exists mainly to fill up the page, employ a professional rewrite it.
Beware of quick fixes. Don’t employ anyone that claims to have a magical, foolproof technique that will help to get your site to the top of the SERPs. The only way to rank well is to put in the groundwork over time.
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