Category Archives: digital media

July 15, 2015 · 10:50 am

Getting Found

Perhaps the biggest challenge in business is “discoverability.”  That’s just a fancy term for your business getting found.  If you’re a bricks and mortar operation, it might mean an eye-catching sign.  If you’re a digital business or a business that has a digital presence (are there any businesses that don’t?), it means doing the work needed so that when customers are using the web they can find your site.

That concern is something I get asked about by clients all the time.  They hear about Search Engine Optimization but don’t understand what it is or how to do it.  I’ll preface this by saying I don’t profess to be an SEO expert.  I can, however, get clients through the rudiments, take care of the technical basics, and, if our work shows results, bring in a resource to do the advanced stuff.  So with that in mind, let’s spend a minute on how your business can be more discoverable.

You might find this odd, but the answer is simpler now than it was a few years ago.  Many of the technical parts of SEO are no longer as important as they once were.  What’s important is a recurring theme here in the screed: focus on your customers or prospects.  Making your site content useful to a shopper will have the effect, in most cases, of being great SEO.  What do I mean?

People search either to buy something, to find a place and get there, or to find information.  The latter is why you do informational content (like this blog), the former are product pages, etc.  Making every page of your site clear with respect to what question you’re answering or problem you’re solving with probably mean you’re using the words people (not robots) use to find answers.  That’s good SEO because it is focused on user experience.

Yes, there are a couple of technical things you should do (good title tags is the main one) and you need to hope that people build links to your content (they will if it’s great!).  But the most important thing you can do in order to enhance discoverability is to be useful and clear.  For those of you who are hearing from SEO experts that want to charge you a fortune, you’re welcome (mail me – I’ll tell you where to send the check).  For all of you, I hope that helped.  Did it?

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July 14, 2015 · 11:16 am

Little Data First

One of the more interesting experiences is my first trip through a new client‘s analytics. Much of the time I will have asked them before I look what conclusions they are drawing from what they’re seeing. They are often very detached from the reality of what’s going on, usually because of a couple of reasons. Given the emphasis on data these days, this is a problem, so let me mention a few things and hopefully you can ask yourself if they’re true about your data.

The first reason is faulty setup. One client was all excited about their volume of traffic and the depth of visiting until I told them that they weren’t filtering out visits from their own office. Once we did that the traffic declined quite a bit (but was obviously more indicative of what was going on). Another reason is that there is no filtering in place for spam links. I’m not sure why these companies (whose names I won’t cite here to give them any more visibility) refer traffic to so many sites, but it has the effect of ballooning bounce rates, decreasing time on site, and distorting a few other things.

Another reason the data is less useful is that they haven’t set up site search to report. Most sites of any size have a built-in search box. Analytics can report on what is searched for. This can help spot problems in navigation or topics that need to be given more prominence – maybe promoting them to a main navigation tab, etc.  Sometimes the client has an app that replaces their mobile web experience but they’ve failed either to install analytics or to link them to their web reporting.  Both are huge data fails

Finally, and this one is a bigger problem than most of the others, clients fail to figure out why they have a website in the first place.  What is it that they want users to do?  Buy something?  Fill out a form?  Visit a particular page?  Those should be set up as goals and successful completions should be counted. They fail to link all their other tools such as Webmaster Tools or their paid search such as AdWords into the analytics suite.  All of these things allow you to figure out the most cost-effective ways to use marketing and your site to drive revenues.

It’s funny to hear people talk about big data when the reality is that they still haven’t figured out the little data.  Once you’ve got the little data under control, you’ll be well-prepared to add additional layers to the complex views that result.  Got it?

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July 7, 2015 · 9:18 am

Not Actionable Or Not Able?

Marketing Executives Network Group

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We discuss the need to measure the results of what you’re doing here on the screed fairly often.  As you’ve probably figured out by now, I’m a big believer in applying data to decision-making, especially after decisions are taken and tactics are deployed.  As it turns out, my views about that part are fairly typical within the marketing community.

In a survey of marketing executives, The Conference Board and the Marketing Executives Networking Group found 75% of the respondents in agreement with the statement that “A primary responsibility of marketing professionals is to generate data-driven insights about prospects and customers, and then create a brand or sales story based on those insights.”   I especially like that language because it is inherently customer focused.

Two other findings, however, disturbed me quite a bit.  Only 39% agreed with the statement that “Most information available from monitoring social media is not actionable” 56% agreed that “Most of the members of my marketing team are not as skilled in the use of digital marketing as they need to be.”   Those two statements are probably related and let’s think about why.

First, if you’re having trouble taking action on your social analytics, maybe you’re measuring the wrong thing.  I totally agree that “likes” is a useless number, but using conversion pixels to measure assisted conversions from social media can provide a wealth of information about how your customers come to buy.  Maybe you’re not doing sentiment analysis (that’s not baked into the standard analytics packages but readily available). You should be. Putting aside sentiment, we can focus on trending topics among your user base as well as feedback on your brands and those of your competitor.  Those are all highly actionable data points.

With respect to the second point.  If your team is lacking in some critical skill, whether it’s digital marketing, writing, or sandbox, your job as a leader is to help them improve that skill until it meets the organization’s needs.  If not getting them training is a “resource issue”, think about what it’s costing you in missed opportunities.  Flip that to the positive:  if you’re getting good results now, how much better would they be if you could agree with the statement on your team’s abilities?  Maybe that’s why the data doesn’t seem to be actionable.  Is it “not actionable” or are you just not able?

If the results of the survey resonate with you, get some help to improve your results.  I’d love to be that help but there are lots of qualified people who understand how to help your company live up to the promise that digital holds. I don’t think that dismissing it as “not actionable” is the answer.  Do you?

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