Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Friday, July 31, 2015
Marketing Day: Old Spice Instagram Campaign, Click-To-Call Report & More
Here's our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
10 Steps to Building a Repeatable Marketing System
10 Steps to Building a Repeatable Marketing System written by John Jantsch read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Marketing is a system, plain and simple. Now, some people take that to mean that you simply create a one size fits all, turn-key set of tactics and call it a day.
The truth, however, lies not in the repeatable tactics, but in the repeatable process based on the right strategy.
There is, in my view, a very systematic way to come up with a predictable path for growing any business, but every business is different – so, their system is unique, while the process for getting there does not need to be.
So you see, you don’t need a marketing plan so much as you need a marketing process.
Below are the ten steps I’ve used over and over again to help grow every business I’ve worked with over the last two decades.
Strategy for where you are going
The fist step is to determine where you want to go. I know everyone says this, but few do it. Or, if they do, it’s based on some over the top world domination dream that nobody can buy in to.
In my experience, three years out is a long view for most and merely a target to get a sense of the vision for growth. You can surround this vision with things like revenue and hiring projections, but the main thing it to create something that can guide your decisions today based on even a murky map of the future.
Now, what’s this year need to look like to propel you towards the three-year picture?
Strategy for where you are
I like to work in 90-day chunks because few people can focus much beyond that and most of the time things are so fluid you need to remain nimble enough to change course throughout the year.
The key thing here is to identify the 2-3 highest priority initiatives and focus all of your efforts on meeting the goals you set for each.
So, for example if the highest priorities for the quarter are to grow a new revenue stream and to increase client retention then all of your efforts need to be focused on those priorities, even if some pet projects need to be put on hold.
Build community first
The secret to sustained growth lies in creating a loyal community, monetizing this community and leveraging this community for additional growth.
Many businesses focus only on trying to find people to sell to. Today’s most wildly successful companies build a following and then figure out what they want to buy. It’s a model that few get, but it is the most profitable way to grow a business.
Now, if you’re starting a business or in a business that you want to grow, you may have to make community building a priority while you do the things that generate cash flow for today.
You can, however, make the community building frame of mind, something that you use to evolve your content marketing efforts, customer service, and even product development.
Put a free version of your product out, create premium content and invite community members rather than subscribers, surprise the heck out of every customer by doing something they never imagined you would do.
Set your near-term goals
Set measurable goals for every aspect of your short-term priorities and use the scorecard for those objectives as a way to hold everyone accountable for the tasks and projects associated with the goals.
The discussions you have around why goals are met or not is how you course correct and keep everyone focused on the priorities you’ve already established rather than things that don’t matter beyond the day to day grind.
Decide on some bets
Here’s the fun part in my mind. It’s hard to know what will work and won’t work for sure when it comes to marketing, that’s the reality. The best marketers make informed bets, but they test and measure everything.
Now, what these bets or optimizations are for your business will vary largely depending where you are. If you’re in startup mode, you can try big things. If you’re locked down and just trying to acquire more market share you test little things.
These bets or tests should be based on your near term goals and some amount of educated brainstorming, but as a team you must commit to what they are going to be and see it through.
A bet might be a total repositioning of your value proposition. It might just be using a video on the homepage or trying lookalike audiences on Facebook.
Again, the key is that the bets are based on your priorities and will be fully developed rather than seen as the idea of the week.
Implement with tests
Once you have decided on your bets, you must figure out the proper plan to execute and perhaps more importantly test, retest and measure every element as though the life of the business depended upon it.
This is the difference between building a marketing system and simply throwing stuff at the wall.
This is how you prune that bets that fail and go all in on the bets that work.
Experiment and analyze
Now that you are starting to measure results you can begin to test a winning email subject line against another, a winning landing page against one with some element changed or even one sales page against another.
Once you have some things working, you always try to better through experimentation.
Document and delegate
Now, here’s the part that even successful marketers tend to gloss over.
Once your bets start to pay off and are headed towards long-term implementation, document the process or system or campaign in a way that allows you to delegate it to a marketing assistant type or even a VA so you can move on and make some more bets.
This is how marketing gain momentum and this is the essence of an effective marketing system.
Review and plan
Every 90 days review your priorities, your scorecard, and every bet you’ve made.
The goal of this review is to create a new set of priorities for the upcoming quarter and to start to learn what’s been working and what hasn’t been. This is how you start to develop patterns that make you better at making hunches for future bets
Repeat
You probably knew this was going to end this way, but marketing isn’t ever done – the process never really ends – what you optimize will certainly evolve but working the system is your real job.
Thursday, July 23, 2015
SearchCap: Google Hotel Finder, Google Maps Timeline & Bing Revenue Porn
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
The post SearchCap: Google Hotel Finder, Google Maps Timeline & Bing Revenue Porn appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Monday, July 20, 2015
The Easiest Way to Ask for Referrals
The Easiest Way to Ask for Referrals written by Sara Jantsch read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
We have a great opportunity in the small business world these days that can be simply defined by one word: collaboration. Coming together and focusing on a common goal, contributing what resources you have, and working towards something bigger that just yourself is the idea here. I have the opportunity to work in collaboration with some of the world’s greatest marketing consultants on a daily basis with the common goal of helping as many small businesses as possible. So what does this have to do with asking for referrals?
The easiest way to ask for referrals is to think about your best possible strategic partnerships and create a game plan for how you can add value to their audience and in return gain exposure (Hint, hint: Coming back to the idea of collaboration here). What types of content would their audiences be interested in reading? What live events would their audience spare time in their busy day to attend? Below are four easy steps to creating your strategic partner referral plan.
Create list of possible strategic partners
It is time to start brainstorming. Sit down with your team members and create a list of potential strategic partners using the B2B or B2C checklists. Is there a local bank with a small business audience? What about a Real Estate agent out there networking with your potential clients on a daily basis? Or a graphic designer working in your niche? Simply creating this list is the first step, coming up with how to target these possible partners is next.
Co-brand educational content
Now that you have your giant list of possible partners, it is time to narrow it down a bit to your best possible opportunities. I would recommend starting with a list of your top five partners to target and then expand from there if needed. Once you have your top 5, audit your current and future content plans with your focused list in mind. What eBooks, workshops, videos would the other businesses want to share with their audience and therefore introduce you? Once you have “X company” and “X content” in mind, it is time to reach out and see if the potential partner would be interested in sharing the valuable content with their audience with the idea that they could co-brand the content. The gift to their audience is valuable education, the gift to you is exposure.
Get in front of a live audience
Speaking for leads is one of the most effective ways to get your message out there. One example of how a Duct Tape Marketing consultant speaks for leads is holding a 7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success Workshop for an audience of small business owners. A great opportunity here would be partnering with a local bank, lawyer, and insurance agent and having them invite their client base to an educational workshop. The consultant then provides value to their client’s while also establishing themselves as an expert at a live event. Another win-win in the books.
Come up with a follow-up plan
You have created your list, produced co-branded content, and spoken in front of a strategic partner audience – your job is done right? Nope – it’s just getting started. The main goal here is to add value. However, the 2nd goal is to gain exposure for your business. Before you partner with a company, make sure to have set guidelines for follow-up in place. Will you get the names and emails of the people that downloaded your ebook to target them directly? Will you get to add a sales pitch at the end of your presentation? After you agree on the process, think of the follow-up as another opportunity to add value. Don’t simply send off an email asking if they are ready to sign up for your services. Instead, follow up with an eBook or checklist where they can learn even more about your topic and by they way introduce the ways you could help them implement.
Friday, July 17, 2015
Online #BearStare Game Has Fun #DroughtShaming Californians Into Saving Water
Californians enduring the drought may be familiar with drought shaming, but Energy Upgrade California hopes to replace this trend with the "Bear Stare."
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Does Gated Content Really Increase Subscriber Rates?
When it comes to building email lists, one of the most widely accepted practices is to provide high-value content (e.g., ebooks, whitepapers, case studies, webinars) behind an opt-in form as gated content. Blogs like Harvard Business Review and Copyblogger gate their most valuable content. That means, in order to read their posts, you’ll need to […]
The post Does Gated Content Really Increase Subscriber Rates? appeared first on The Daily Egg.
3 Ways To Maximize Data And Increase Engagement Across Email Communications
Columnist Paul Ford discusses what marketers should bear in mind in order to deliver the best email experience and strengthen engagement.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
18 Point Checklist for the Perfect Website Redesign Launch
18 Point Checklist for the Perfect Website Redesign Launch written by John Jantsch read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
We’re in the process of a total redesign and restructure of the Duct Tape Marketing site so I’ve recently written about some of the processes we use to ensure a smooth redesign. I’ve been blogging since 2003 and have 1os of thousands of backlinks and lots of pages that rank in long tail searches, so I’m proceeding very cautiously with technical aspects. You can read my checklist on preparing for redesign here.
Now that we are getting close to hitting the launch button we’ve moved into checking and double checking what works and what doesn’t work. Ideally, a good design team like the one we are working with will do all of this checking ahead of the launch, but hey, this is my livelihood so I’m not taking any chances.
Use this checklist with you design team as a way to make sure all of the relevant details are looked after before you push your redesigned site live. My site is built on WordPress using the Genesis Theme framework so some of these elements are specific to WordPress.
1) Check your Spelling and Grammar – You can use a tool like Respelt to scan the entire site and then Grammarly to work on individual pages.
2) Test in multiple Browsers and mobile – See what your site looks like on your phone and in Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. Browser Stack is a great paid option.
3) Test your Links – Use a tool like Screaming Frog spider to see if any of your links are broken.
4) Do some Speed testing – Use a tool Pingdom Tools to see how fast the site is loading and what might be slowing it down.
5) Title and Description – Get a quick snapshot of all of your title and description attributes via Screaming Frog and be on the lookout for titles that are too long (keep under 55 characters), too generic, or duplicate. The WordPress SEO plugin from Yoast is a must for this going forward.
6) Check Image alt descriptions – alt descriptions tell the search engines what an image is all about. Use Screaming Frog spider to check and make sure you have images optimized.
7) Test Forms – Manually test every form on your site to make sure it is functioning as planned.
8) Favicon – test to see that your Favicon is showing browser
9) Tracking code – Make sure your Google Analytics and other tracking codes for things like AdWords, Facebook Ads, or retargeting is properly installed and functioning.
10) Check NAP with Schema – verify that your name, address and other contact data is correct and correctly formatted with Schema code – Check out schema.org for information on this.
11) Check your 404 pages – Type in a non-existent page URL on your site to get a 404 error page. Ideally you’ll want to use a custom page for this that has an error message that’s better than the default server error.
12) Check your 301 redirects – If you had to create a new URL structure, test a few key pages from your old site URL structure to make sure they are redirecting as expected.
14) Check your XML site map – If you are using a tool like the WordPress SEO plugin from Yoast, you’ll get your site map URL from the plugin. Make sure it’s rendering correctly.
15) Do a Plugin audit – have you kept some plugins and ditched others? Make sure all your desired plugins are active and up to date and make sure those that you are no longer actively using are deleted from the site.
16) Test Social contact – Test out all of your social icons to make sure they are taking people where you want them to go.
17) Email migration – if applicable make sure your email is set up properly with you new host.
18) Point Your DNS – Now that you’ve tested the major elements of you site redesign it’s time to push it live or point the domain to your new hosting nameservers.
Once you have your site up and running and you’re adding new content use my Perfect Blog Post Checklist to make sure every new piece of content is fully optimized.
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