Here’s How My 5-Step YouTube Optimization Strategy Generated 5,121,327 Views

Posted by amirj

How did I get millions of extra views on YouTube without any ads?

In a word—annotations.

In this YouMoz, I'll explain how following a 5-step process enabled me to increase my annotation click-through rate (CTR) by 22,400% (from 0.2% to 45%), how I received 150,000 views from annotations, and how this resulted in millions of views.

All the screenshots and examples I’m using are from one of my channels, DoctorMadScience:

The most important indicator on YouTube: watch time

Before we jump into optimizing annotations, let's talk about why annotations matter. With the help of YouTube annotations you can increase your viewership, grow your subscribers, sell merchandise and drive traffic to your website.

But one of the most powerful uses of annotations is to increase your watch time.

YouTube describes watch time as one the most important metrics for measuring the success of channels and videos. One way to understand the importance of watch time is to take a look at the new analytics dashboard. YouTube recently revamped its analytics dashboard and one of the big changes is how prominent watch time has become as a metric. Watch time has, for the most part, replaced views. The old "Views report" is now "Watch time report," and the first element of your analytics dashboard is the watch time report.

What's watch time?

In 2012, YouTube shared the following message:

"In particular, we’ve discovered that time watched is one of the best indicators of a viewer's engagement. As a result, we’ll be focusing more prominently on time watched in providing Related and Recommended videos starting next week. [...] What matters is that your audience stops clicking away and starts watching more of your videos. " YouTube Blog

What this means is that if I get my viewers to watch more videos and stick around on YouTube longer, this sends a strong signal that they're happy with the content they just watched. As a result, YouTube will send free traffic to my videos by showing them as suggested and related videos.

That was 2012. Since then, watch time has continued to become a more important metric. Just last month, YouTube launched their subscription service, YouTube Red. The revenue generated from the subscriptions of YouTube Red will be split based with creators on their watch time and not views.

My results

It's been more than a year since I have started using this strategy on this channel. Below is a snapshot of my yearly traffic sources after I implemented my 5-step annotation optimization strategy. Since then, Suggested videos as a source of traffic source has grown to become my largest source of organic traffic, with more than 4.2 millions views. I attribute 150,000 of those views to my annotation strategy alone.

My starting point

Here are some of my metrics before I started using my 5-step plan:

Annotation click-through rate (CTR): 0.02%

Annotation close rate: 5.62%

More people were closing my annotations than clicking on them.

My end results

After months of tweaking and modifying my annotations, not only did I drastically increase my CTR, but I also managed to decrease the annotation close rate.

Annotation CTR: 48.6%

Annotation close rate: 1.57%

---

My 5-step annotation optimization strategy

Step 1: Find your best opportunities.

Step 2: Understand viewer behavior (retention optimization).

Step 3: Create your annotations.

Step 4: Write an effective call to action (pitch).

Step 5: Measure and optimize your annotations.

Step 1: Find your best opportunities

1. Visit your 28-day analytics views report.

2. Find out which videos are getting 80% of your views.

3. Select one or two videos to get started.

➜ [Video Guide]

Don’t add annotations to your videos just yet. First, let’s find an annotation structure that works for one video. The best place to start is with one of your most popular videos, and then scale from there. It’s very common for one video to receive a significant majority of your total new views. To find your most popular videos take a look at your 28-day analytics report. It allows you to see the breakdown of views and watch time per video for the time period selected. The 28 day measure is long enough to give you meaningful data and short enough to provide recency.

Since 70% of the new views (and watch time) are happening on the “Milk + Soap = Magic ” video, I chose to only focus on that video as my starting point. Once you figure out a successful structure for the annotations on one video, then you can scale the structure to other videos.

Step 2: Understand viewer behavior (retention optimization)

1. Go to the Audience Retention tab of your analytics dashboard.

2. Select the videos you chose in step 1.

3. Find the drop-off point for your views on the videos.

➜ [Video Guide]

Now that we have a video, let’s figure out the time when annotations should appear. The two most common ways channels use annotations are by placing a button over a simple screen or multiple b-rolls with annotations, like the picture below.

These types of annotations almost always appear at the end of the videos. There is no doubt they look cool and very engaging, but they have one big problem: Timing.

Most of your viewers will not watch until the very last second of your videos. Your drop off point is usually long before the last second of your video. So a good chunk of your viewers don’t even see your annotations, let alone get to click on them.

YouTube does a great job at is providing super detailed analytics and powerful tools to help you understand your viewers' behavior. By taking advantage of these, you can find the best time to show your annotations and have the information you need to optimize them even further.

One of my favorite tools is Audience Retention, as it allows you to track viewers' drop off points on each of your videos.

Audience Retention is very similar to scroll depth on a website. The lower the content is on a page, the fewer the number of viewers who see it. The same is true for videos. The closer your annotation is to end of the video, the fewer viewers see it.

How to read your audience retention metrics

On your analytics dashboard, click on the Audience Retention tool. If you’re logged into your YouTube channel, click here to go there directly. Now, select the video you plan to include annotations on. Now you should see a chart similar to the one below.

The X-axis shows the time on the video and Y-axis shows the percentage of viewers who watched that part. A number higher than 100% means your viewers replayed that part of the video. As you can see, there are less than 50% of my total viewers left by end of the video. Your drop-off point is when you start losing views at an increasingly faster rate.

I included mine at the 1:32s mark:

Simply by showing an annotation before my drop-off point (20 seconds earlier), my annotation will be viewed by 20% more viewers.

Also, at this point, my viewers haven’t decided on what they want to watch next, so they’re more open to suggestions.

The best part is the data tells me the exact time to show my annotations.

Step 3: Create your annotations (placement and size)

1. Go to the annotation editor for your video.

2. Add the annotations based on the drop-off time.

3. Position the annotation on the lower right and make sure it's noticeable.

➜ [Video Guide]

By this point, you have found the best video to start with, figured out the time to show the annotations and simply have to create the annotations.

You do this by simply going to the URL of your video and clicking on the annotations button. Or you can just put your video ID at the end of youtube.com/my_videos_annotate?v=[VIDEO ID]

In step 1, I decided to show my annotations 20 seconds earlier, and this comes with a compromise. When you have your annotations at the end of the video, you have the luxury of space. The video is finished and there is nothing else going on except your annotations. But now we are showing the annotations much earlier and in the middle of our prime content. So our options for the placement of the annotations are limited to the sides of the video.

Annotation location

Where you place the annotation has all to do with your viewer’s attention pattern. This is very similar to the way you think about placing your call to action button on a website. By understanding your viewer’s attention patterns, you are able to place the annotations in the area where they are most likely to be noticed and effective.

After doing a lot of testing on the position of my annotations, I found that the lower right section of the video gets significantly higher click-through rates compared to the left side, 40%-60% more in some cases.

Recently I came across an eye-tracking study done by Sawyer Ricard on eye tracking on the layout of video websites. They used eye-tracking technology to understand the attention patterns of viewers on video platforms, including YouTube. One of the main findings was that many of the viewers fail to focus on the video and get distracted by the suggested content on the right side.

Using the results from the eye-tracking study, I ended up with what we see below:

Viewers are getting distracted by the content on the right side of the page, and this is where they will choose the next video they watch. Placing your annotations within the viewer’s natural attention path will grab their attention much easier. So annotations on right side do have an advantage.

Annotation size

Choosing the right size is tricky. My rule of thumb is to start with the largest size you can get away with it, as large as you can without taking away from the main content. Then look at the close rate vs. CTR of the annotations. As long you have more people clicking on them rather getting annoyed by them, you’re golden. Then let the annotations run for a few days and check the results.

But how can you tell if your viewers find the annotations annoying?

Annotation close rate

With YouTube analytics you can almost track everything! YouTube allows you to track and compare the percentage of people who click on your annotations vs. the percentage of people who closed them.

Based on steps 1–3, I completely changed the way I use annotations, and now focus on a single large button that’s timed to appear well before the video actually ends.

Structure of the annotation

Call-to Action: The best call-to-actions (CTA) are super simple. I limit mine to one word.

Title/Pitch: I’ll use this space to pitch and sell the viewer on watching the next video. (I’ll explain how to write an effective pitch in the next step.)

Step 4: Write an effective CTA (pitch)

1. Find the shared context of your audience.

2. Write a simple title based on the shared context.

3. Paste the next video's link and publish your annotation.

➜ [Video Guide]

The most important element of a great pitch is context. Context defines how your copy is understood. First, you have to find out what’s the one thing all of your viewers have in common. Is it their age, location, interests, or language?

Probably not.

By the time my annotations appear, they will all have one thing in common: They just watched my Milk + Soap = Magic video.

So the most effective way to write a call to action that's relatable to the largest number of viewers is to use the context of the video they just watched.

Milk + Soap = Magic is a simple science experiment using milk and soap to make some cool effects. With that title, my viewers understand my video title structure:

• Title - Milk + Soap = Magic

• Structure - Item 1 + Item 2 = Cool Effects

This will help create a very clear and accurate expectation of what the next video is.

Now I have a short but very effective way to describe the rest of my videos. Borrowing from the title of the video they just watched (Milk + Soap = Magic), I can now write the pitch for next video: Wool + Battery = MAGIC

So instead of being super descriptive, I'm only using the title of the video they watched to describe the next one.

Now I'll just add the link of next video to my annotation, and I'm done.

Step 5: Measure and optimize your annotations

Step 1. Check your annotation CTR.

Step 2. Check your annotation close rate.

Step 3. Tweak, wait, and optimize.

➜ [Video Guide]

You must wait long enough to get a decent sample size (400+ unique views or so) before you can judge the performance of your new annotations. Optimizley has a great tool for you to figure out how large your sample size needs to be. (Resources: Check here for unique views info; for annotation CTR, read this.)

The other metric you have to keep an eye on is your annotation close rate, which can be tracked against your CTR.

As your annotations get more views, your close rate will might go higher, but the keep your focus on keeping your CTR higher than your close rate. To bring down the close rate, try to tweak the size, placement and timing of your annotation.

If your close rate is too high possible, one of three likely culprits is at work:

a. The annotations are showing up too early, when the viewer is highly engaged with your main content.

b. The annotations are too large and distracting.

c. Their placement is taking away from the main content.

Results

Optimizing annotations does take a while to yield results, as you can see from graph below. It took a lot of trial-and-errors for me to find the sweet spot.

I hope the steps I've given you in this post give you a solid framework for improving the results you're getting from YouTube.

I know many of you have done your own experiments with YouTube, and I would enjoy trading tips with you in the comments.

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A Recipe for Failure: 6 Mistakes Marketers Make When They Copy Tactics

You spend a lot of time reading blog posts and e-books to learn how to market your business more effectively.

So, why isn’t it working?

Sure, you might be getting some traffic, maybe even a few sales, but are you getting a stream of both that's growing steadily?

If you’re like 95% of business owners or marketers, you’re not.

Although you’re using all the same tactics the pros are using and succeeding with, they just don’t seem to work for you.

Some business owners spend years repeating this fruitless cycle until they deem online marketing a failure.

And it’s a shame because it could help them a great deal.

You and I both know it.

Do you want to know the cause for these struggles?

I can sum it up in one sentence:

It’s not enough to know how to use a tactic. You need to know why it works.

Let that sink in for a second.

Anyone can read an article on a popular blog like Quick Sprout or Backlinko and learn about marketing tactics that work.

They are usually broken down step-by-step so that just about anybody could figure out the technical details.

But what most marketers don’t realize is that certain tactics only work in certain situations.

You can adapt many of them to your specific business, but in order to do that, you first have to understand why they work.

The best way for me to show you the mistakes you might be making with tactics is to show you the most common ones.

And that’s what I’m going to do for the rest of this post.

1. The most common content marketing blunder: A product-audience mismatch

It absolutely kills me to see this mistake.

It’s one that beginner marketers make, but it’s not until they become more experienced that they see the results of the mistake.

You see, many marketers learn to use the tactics they read about really well.

They are persistent and work hard to apply those tactics, which helps them drive traffic and convert that traffic to subscribers.

Sometimes, they do this for years.

And that’s why it’s heartbreaking…

…because despite all that work, they’be been building the wrong audience.

When they finally decide to sell a product to that audience, they fail. There are two main scenarios where this failure occurs:

• Scenario #1 – Trying to sell an existing product to the audience


• Scenario #2 – Trying to replicate a successful product and then trying to sell it to the audience

These scenarios happen because of one mistake: not understanding the product-audience fit.

Why not understanding product-audience fit leads to failure: First, you need to understand that every type of content attracts its own type of audience.

For example, if you create incredibly in-depth content like I do, it attracts those readers in your niche who are extremely passionate about your niche and will devote a lot of time and effort to it.

But if you create content like “10 quick tips to do X,” you’ll attract people who just want a simple solution. They don’t actually care about “X.” They just want the result.

And those are just two examples.

The point is that each tactic you follow will produce a different type of audience.

What happens as a result is that you end up with an audience of many different types of people.

When you’re selling a product, your goal is to make that product as appealing as possible to your audience.

If a large part of your audience is interested in it, that means you have a good product-audience fit. This is similar to the product-market fit concept.

Can you see the fatal flaw in copying tactics yet?

Since your audience is composed of many different types of people, it’s going to be almost impossible to find a product that appeals to a large portion of them. That’s basically what happens in scenario #1.

Sometimes, you’ll get lucky by copying those tactics and create an audience that is fairly cohesive.

That’s a great thing and gives you a chance to succeed.

But most marketers then enter scenario #2.

Since they’re used to copying tactics to generate traffic and subscribers, why wouldn’t they copy product tactics as well?

They’ll come across posts like this one by Derek Halpern in which he talks about how selling courses has helped him generate well over 6 figures.

Then, our marketer will think something like, “That’s a great idea. I should make an online course to sell to my audience!”

Maybe that sounds familiar. If not, be wary of falling into that trap.

That's because once you decide to create a product, you need to be ready to invest months of hard work creating it and possibly a lot of money as well.

What often ends up happening, as you might have guessed by now, is that the product flops if it doesn’t fit the audience.

And in many cases, it won’t.

If your audience isn’t interested in learning how to do everything themselves, they won't be interested in buying a detailed course.

Instead, you’d be much better off selling tools that automate things or services that get them the results they want.

If you only take away one thing from this post, let it be this:

Always consider the audience you’re building with different tactics. Then, sell products that match their desires and needs instead of just creating the latest, trendy type of product.

2. You can’t only give value

What’s the first lesson of content marketing?

Give value.

The basic idea is a sound one because it's based on the rule of reciprocity.

When you give people something, they feel obligated to give you something in return.

In the context of content marketing, you give them valuable content, and in turn, they give you their attention and even email addresses.

The more value you give, the more traffic and subscribers you typically get (as a general rule).

If you understand that, fantastic.

But here’s where most marketers go wrong.

They give, and give, and give some more until they can’t give anymore.

They don’t understand that you need to give your readers an opportunity to give back to you in the form of financial support.

In other words, you need to sell products.

If you don’t, you don’t have a business—you have a hobby.

Eventually, you won’t be able to afford to keep creating great content for your audience, which limits how much you can help them.

But if you have a business that generates revenue, you can afford to invest in even better content.

Selling products isn’t an evil thing: The reason why so many beginner, and even intermediate, marketers are so hesitant to sell something is because of how they perceive it.

They believe that by selling a product they are “taking” something from their audience.

And while I understand where this feeling comes from, it’s also completely ridiculous when you start to examine it closer.

First, and most important of all, products can be good.

I am more than happy to pay a lot of money for my favorite products. They add a lot of value to my life.

I’m sure you have products like that too. In fact, everyone does.

So, why can’t you create a product like that for your audience?

You already understand them well enough to produce valuable content, right? So, the next step is to create something larger that can have an even bigger impact on their lives.

The second thing you need to realize is that your audience has been paying for your content the whole time.

Not with money, but with their attention and time.

Both of those things are very limited and worth a lot. Your audience is still giving you something in return for the value you give them.

The takeaway: Marketing isn’t just about giving away content. It’s about finding multiple ways to make a difference in your audience’s lives and getting compensated for that work.

You don't have to resort to tricking or scamming to build a successful business. Just focus on creating as much value as possible, but give your audience a chance to buy products from you.

3. What opt-in conversion rates are really determined by

Most content marketers have the same basic goals.

Create content.

Get traffic.

Turn that traffic into email subscribers.

Marketers have finally learned the value of email subscribers, and the conversion rate from traffic to subscribing has become a huge focus.

This has led to endless posts about tactics you can use to increase your conversion rate.

Since everyone is using the same tactics, they should get about the same results, right?

But that’s not what's happening.

Even with the same tactic, one person will get conversion rates below 1% while another will get conversion rates over 20%.

The truth is most marketers don’t understand what factors determine conversion rates. They blame the tactic and keep searching for more tactics to try.

If this sounds familiar, stop it.

Instead, take a minute now to learn why you’re not having the success you should.

There are two factors that determine opt-in rates.

Factor #1 – Exposure: On a basic level, no one can sign up for your email list unless they get the opportunity to.

Therefore, if you have zero opt-in forms on your site, you can't get any new subscribers.

Exposure is the “easy” factor, and it’s what most conversion rate blog posts focus on.

They convince you that pop-ups, content upgrades, sidebar forms, or any number of different tactics will produce the best conversion rate.

And to be fair, some of those are better than others.

From an exposure point of view, pop-ups are fantastic. If you set a pop-up to show up after a page loads, almost everyone will see it, which means they have an opportunity to opt in.

This is where most marketers start and stop.

They go from exposure tactic to exposure tactic, trying to find one with a better conversion rate.

Most of these marketers never get more than a low conversion rate because this is all they’re focused on.

But smart marketers know there’s one more piece to the puzzle.

Factor #2 – Value: For some reason, value is often ignored when it comes to opt-ins.

Most sites offer a weak incentive to sign up for an email list. For example:

• Sign up to get more posts like this


• Sign up to get a free checklist


• Sign up to get some exclusive content

Seriously, do you think your content is so damn good that everyone will opt in just so that they might not miss a post?

Even I don’t think that.

Those examples I’ve given you are not valuable.

Sure, they have some value, but nothing that’s going to make a real difference in your readers' lives.

But what if you offered someone $100 to sign up for your email list?

I bet just about everyone would sign up because that’s an insane amount of value.

Now, obviously most people can’t do that, but do you see how the value of the offer affects your conversion rate?

The real formula is something like this:

Opt-in rate = Exposure * Value of Offer

A valuable offer alone isn’t enough, however; you also need to get it in front of your audience.

But when you have a tactic that gives you exposure along with an offer that is actually valuable, that’s when you get incredibly high conversion rates (e.g., Bryan Harris often gets over 20% conversion rates).

Most marketers spend very little time on creating a valuable offer, and then they wonder why their conversion rates suck despite trying all the different exposure tactics.

It should be clear to you now why this doesn’t work.

So, how valuable should your offer be?

There’s no specific amount. Just make it as valuable as you can.

As an example, look at the sidebar on Quick Sprout, which contains an offer for a free course:

As you can see, I value it at $300.

If you’ve taken the course, you'd probably agree that it's not far-fetched.

While it wouldn’t make sense to give away $300 in cash, I am able to give away this course because it costs me virtually nothing after the initial creation costs.

So, ask yourself how much your current offer is truly worth.

In the case of low conversion rates, it’s usually not much.

Find an effective exposure tactic or two, and then spend your time and effort testing the value of your offer. You’ll have far more success.

4. Being first counts for a lot

If you rely on bloggers to show you new tactics, I have some bad news.

While you can find effective tactics in blog posts, most of them have been discussed and tested behind closed doors in mastermind groups and private chat groups.

This means that by the time you finally see a tactic, many marketers have been already using it.

Why is this a big deal?

It’s a big deal because you miss out on first-mover advantage.

While this term typically applies to technology, I think it also applies to marketing tactics.

Basically, it states that the first company to offer something new will have a great advantage over those who come after.

That’s not to say that copycats can’t be successful, but it’s much harder for them to succeed than for those who are first.

When it comes to marketing tactics, first-mover advantage would simply mean being one of the first to use a particular tactic, before hordes of marketers jump on the trend and saturate it.

A great example of this is using infographics to build links.

As you might know, I used infographics extensively in the past. I still occasionally publish them but much less often because they’re not as effective anymore.

From 2010 to 2012, I published 47 infographics, which generated 2,512,596 visitors and 41,142 backlinks from 3,741 unique domains. That comes out to an average of 53,459 visitors and 875 backlinks from 79 unique domains per infographic.

In the following 2 years, my results declined dramatically even though the infographics were just as good (probably even a bit better).

The infographics I produced during that time period produced an average of 21,582 visitors and 371 backlinks from 34 unique domains.

Overall, the results declined by over 50%!

And since then, the results have diminished even further.

No doubt you could still create infographics that go viral, but it’s much more difficult now.

Instead of struggling to compete with thousands of other marketers doing the same thing, wouldn’t it be better to find a new tactic to be among the “first” to implement?

How to get a first-mover advantage of your own: The fundamental reason why most marketers are behind the curve is not even because they rely on blogs for tactics (although it doesn’t help).

Some blogs do mention tactics early enough that you can still be part of that first group (there were certainly blogs mentioning infographics during 2010-2012).

But there’s one thing about infographics back then that you can’t appreciate now:

It was much more difficult to make a great infographic back then.

There were fewer designers who were experienced with them; they charged more; and there were no tools like Canva to help you produce them by yourself.

So, if I ask you now why you didn’t create more infographics during that time period (assuming you were in marketing then), the answer probably isn’t because you didn’t know about them.

Instead, you found out about them, but they seemed difficult.

And that’s the key marker you should be looking for.

Tactics get easier over time as more case studies are published and as tools are created to make it easier to implement them.

Not coincidently, as tactics get easier, more and more marketers start using them, lowering the results they produce.

Ideally, you want to get on the ground floor of a tactic.

To do that, look for unsaturated tactics that seem difficult to use.

This means that you will have to figure out how to execute them. It’s going to take you some extra time and resources upfront, but that will allow you to get better results before others catch on.

I can give you a few tactics right now that are still pretty difficult but getting easier and more popular every day.

First is webinars. While they’re not exactly “new,” they haven’t been adopted nearly as fast as infographics.

This tactic is currently producing fantastic results, and I’m holding webinars regularly on NeilPatel.com.

Webinars take a lot of work, and there are still some difficult parts, but if you’re willing to put in some work, you too could get the same results. If you’re interested, here’s my guide to getting started with webinars.

Second, what about using tools as a link-building and traffic-generation tactic? The Quick Sprout analyzer tool is responsible for hundreds of thousands of visits, a ton of links, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.

Tools are difficult to make because you need to know how to develop or hire a developer. That’s what gives you an opportunity to massively benefit from making one.

But have no doubt, there are already tools being developed so that non-technical marketers can make their own simple tools.

These will become more and more advanced in the coming years, and creating tools as part of content marketing campaigns will become more common and less effective.

5. There is no single perfect email outreach template

Outreach has been a huge part of marketing tactics for the last couple of years as more and more businesses have realized that they should be using white hat techniques.

Of course, many articles have been written about writing emails to help you drive links, mentions, shares, and all sorts of useful things. On top of that, many tactics include email outreach as a main component.

And in those articles (the best ones at least), the author typically includes a template of what they might send in an email. For example, here’s a screenshot of a template I provided in a past post:

It’s a good email.

Sorry, I should really say it was a good email.

Since I published that, that exact template has been sent thousands of times (even to me a few times!).

Obviously, when someone receives an email (or more) that is exactly the same as the one they got in the past, they’re going to realize something’s going on. The email obviously isn’t personal, and the recipient is going to feel used.

The emails you see in templates are often very effective at first. However, following the first-mover advantage concept, they will become less effective over time because other marketers will start copying them.

If I publish a template email, I will never personally send that one again because I know that it will produce diminished results.

If I say an email is converting at 10% and then give you a template, don’t expect to get the same results if you just copy that email. Other people will as well, which will impact the email's effectiveness.

Using email templates the right way: Does all this mean that you should ignore templates when you see them in posts about tactics?

Not at all. What it means is that you shouldn’t just straight copy them.

Instead, break them down section by section, and determine the purpose of each sentence. Then, rewrite them so that you have an entirely unique template that accomplishes the same purpose.

For example, the first sentence of the email above is:

I love the work you do on (site name). In particular, I was blown away by (title of content you linked to) when I was researching my latest post.

The purpose of that line was to show how you came across your target's site.

You could rewrite it in many ways to be completely unique but still mention the post on their site that you were interested in. For example:

I’m a blogger myself, and I was seriously impressed when I came across (title of content you linked to) when I was doing some background research for my next post.

This opening is very similar in meaning and effect to the original, but it doesn't look like a duplicate.

Do this for each line in the template, and you can create your own template that will get similar results to those of the original.

In most cases, you can improve upon templates: When it comes to email outreach, templates are used to save time (instead of writing emails from scratch).

However, that limits their effectiveness because they aren’t usually personalized.

In general, the more personalized an email is, the more likely it will be opened and acted upon.

You can also improve the effectiveness of templates if you understand their limitations.

If you’re willing to add some sort of offer or gesture of value to the person you’re emailing, it will take more time per email, but you will get better results.

For example, in the above email, you could say that you’ve shared the post on social media or signed up for their email list. Just make sure you actually do it.

6. Some tactics depend on having an existing audience

The final mistake I often see marketers make is trying to copy tactics that require an audience when they haven't built a sizable one yet.

Some tactics are best used when you’re starting out, and some are best left for when you have an audience.

Let me give you a few examples.

Writing about controversial topics has long been a great way to generate comments and links because people love to talk about controversial topics.

The only problem is that they require a great deal of authority.

For example, I wrote a post about why link building is not the future of SEO:

It got hundreds of comments and tons of shares on social media.

But the only reason I was successful with this post was because I already had a large audience to show it to, and I have a pretty recognizable name in the SEO world.

Once a discussion is started on a controversial topic, most people want to weigh in and share it with their friends.

But you can’t easily get that initial discussion without an audience.

If someone with 50 subscribers published the same post, it wouldn’t have gone anywhere.

You can use the same tactics, but don’t expect the same results: When I publish a new post, I rank for all sorts of long tail phrases in Google after the first week.

Targeting long tail keyword phrases is an example of a tactic that works best on established sites.

Quick Sprout has tons of domain authority and hundreds of high quality articles. That’s why I rank so fast and easily.

But if you are on a brand new domain, it will take months of link building and content publishing to rank for long tail phrases.

This is an example of a tactic that can work even if you don’t have an audience, but it will work slower and take more effort.

What you need to take away from this is that when you read about a tactic, first consider whether it will work with your audience and website.

If you think it will, consider if you should expect to get the same results as the author. If not, lower your expectations, and prepare to put in more work.

If you don’t think a tactic will work for your audience, save it for later, and find a more suitable one.

Conclusion

Marketing tactics are the most popular topics in the marketing world.

It’s great to learn about new ones and add effective ones to your arsenal on an ongoing basis.

However, if you blindly copy them, it’s unlikely that you will find much success for the 6 reasons that I’ve outlined in this post.

I urge you to determine whether you’ve made any of these mistakes in the past and to understand them so you don’t repeat them in the future.

If you avoid making these mistakes, you will find that the tactics you apply will work much better than they have in the past.

If you’ve made any of these mistakes, please share the details in a comment below. I think it’d be great for others to hear so that they can learn from them too.

Link Wars: The Force Awakens

Link building looked different a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away). Columnist Winston Burton explains how things have changed and what works today. The post Link Wars: The Force Awakens appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

10 Things To Do After Your Post Goes Live

Many bloggers consider that hitting the "Publish" button is the final step of the post production. However, this is not so. After your next article goes live, you shouldn't throw it into the flow, but guide its free swimming. In […]

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

10 Things To Do After Your Post Goes Live

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Written by Elena Vakhromova, Freemake

The post 10 Things To Do After Your Post Goes Live appeared first on Search Engine People Blog.

The Hardest Part of Growing a Business

The Hardest Part of Growing a Business written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Frank Pegram and Kevin Jordan

Business ownership is certainly not for the weak. Nor is it for those who panic, those who get impatient or those who cannot embrace change.

I've interviewed hundreds of small business owners over the years and I can tell you that while most admit that marketing is a great challenge and that learning to manage people as they grow can be very difficult, it's the act of knowing when to let go and get outside help that can present the greatest challenge.

My guests for this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast are Frank Pegram and Kevin Jordan. Frank is an entrepreneur and long-time owner of Dynamark Security of Richmond, VA. Kevin is a founder of Redpoint Marketing and a certified Duct Tape Marketing Consultant. We talk about entrepreneurship and what it takes to run and market a successful business.

Pegram is like so many successful business owners – he got to where he got primarily through his ability to sell. But, as many business owners find that can only take you so far.

As we discuss in this dual interview, when he made the choice to go out and engage a marketing professional to help him sort out the role of sales and marketing in the organization he felt he finally gained a measure of control over what his overall marketing efforts look like going forward.

I think perhaps more than anything else – when you look at marketing as a system and you adopt a systems mindset – you gain control over your marketing and suddenly marketing becomes much easier.

Questions I ask Frank and Kevin:

• What compelled you to start in the security industry?
• Are you achieving the vision you had for your business when you started?
• What is the #1 issue facing your business and how does having a marketing consultant help you address it?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

• Why you should build a referral program.
• How great reviews can help you land sales.
• How to set realistic growth goals.