Our Top 10 Search Marketing Posts of 2018

Search marketing has continued to mature throughout 2018. At each twist and turn along the way, we've done our best to not only cover each change, but also offer insight and research-based strategy to help savvy digital marketers along the way. We’re fortunate to have a fantastic group of digital marketing professionals contributing to the TopRank Marketing Blog, with our CEO Lee Odden, Associate Director of Search & Analytics Tiffani Allen, Vice President of Client Accounts Alexis Hall, Content Strategist Anne Leuman, and others, each contributing search marketing insights, tips, and tricks this past year. To help our blog community grow its search marketing knowledge, we’re happy to offer this list of our most popular search marketing posts of 2018.

Our Most Popular Search Marketing Posts in 2018:

1. Google Game Changers: 5 Recent Updates and How They Affect Marketers — Anne Leuman

The talented Anne Leuman wrote the most popular search marketing post of 2018 on our blog, taking an important look at how to up your Google game by understanding and utilizing HTTPS warnings and numerous other factors that were being rolled out this year. Anne broke down some the latest and greatest game-changing updates from Google, what they mean for marketers, and how marketers can adapt. Check out all of Anne's posts here.

2. TopRank Marketing’s Top 6 SEO Predictions & Trends for 2019 — Tiffani Allen

The second most popular search marketing post of the year is by Tiffani Allen, who deftly explores the top SEO predictions and trends marketers should know now and keep an eye on into the new year. Check out all of Tiffani's posts here.

3. 5 Powerful Types (And Examples) of Link-Worthy Content — Anne Leuman

Anne also earned the No. 3 spot on our top search marketing posts of 2018 list, in an excellent post showing how to boost credible referrals, back-links, and organic visibility using five powerful types of link-worthy content.

4. Why Marketers Are Disenchanted with SEO — Anne Leuman

Anne also wrote our fourth most popular search marketing post of 2018, addressing why some marketers are disenchanted with SEO. She explores the modern marketer’s SEO struggles, and shows you why now is not the time to quit. Rather than abandoning a tried-and-true tactic, Anne looks at how to shift your search marketing strategy.

5. Redesigning Your Website? Make Sure SEO & Content Have a Seat at Website Migration Table — Alexis Hall

Alexis Hall earned spot the No. 5 on our top search marketing posts of the year list, with a helpful look at how SEO and content can combine to create a better website migration strategy. Alexis shows why SEO can’t stand alone, exploring how it needs a content lens to ensure solid performance after the migration switch is flipped. Check out all of Alexis' posts here.

6. Power Pages and Best Answer Content: Should You Go Long or Short Form? — Lee Odden

Our CEO penned the sixth most popular search marketing post of 2018, with a detailed look at a perennial question — which is better: long or short-form content? Lee explains how savvy marketers know that while statistical generalizations have their place, they aren't always so useful in practice. He then dives into the intertwining of engagement and reach, and looks at depth-over-length and authority signals. Check out all of Lee's posts here.

7. The Key to SEO & Content Marketing Success: Understanding Search Intent — Anne Leuman

Anne makes another appearance on our best-of-2018 list with another excellent post, showing the key to SEO and content marketing success. She dives into understanding search intent in its four incarnations — informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional — and goes on to offer three steps for building intent into your strategy.

8. How to Leverage Influencer Marketing for Improved SEO #Pubcon Florida — Lee Odden

Lee earned another spot on our top search marketing posts of 2018 list, with a take-away-filled live-blog piece from the Pubcon Florida conference. Lee shares an impressive number of insights from a session that featured Marcela De Vivo of SEMrush and Dixon Jones of Majestic, showing some of the best methods for leveraging influencer marketing to improve SEO.

9. SEO + Paid Search: An Aristotelian Lesson in Search Marketing Integration — Anne Leuman

Making an impressive fifth appearance on our search marketing top 10 list, Anne provides us an Aristotelian lesson in how SEO can combine with paid search for powerful search marketing integration. In this helpful post, Anne shows how integration makes the digital marketing world go round and how it can bring balance and harmony to your efforts.

10. Relationship Powered Link Building #Pubcon Florida — Lee Odden

In Lee's third appearance on our top 10 list, this piece covers a session presented by Ann Smarty of Internet Marketing Ninjas during the Pubcon Florida conference, sharing numerous actionable tips for link-building through relationships. We can't thank Anne, Tiffani, Alexis, and Lee enough for these top 10 search marketing posts of 2018 — congratulations on making the list!

Thanks TopRank Marketing Writers & Readers

Thanks to each of you who read our blog, and to all of you who comment on and share our posts on the TopRank Marketing social media channels. We hope you find continuing benefit from these excellent search marketing posts from 2018. We published dozens of posts this year specifically about search marketing, and plan to bring you even more in 2019, so stay tuned for a new year of the latest helpful research and insight. Please let us know which search marketing topics and ideas you'd like to see us focus on for 2019 — we'd love to hear your suggestions. Feel free to leave those thoughts in the comments section below.

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Weekend Favs December 29

Weekend Favs December 29 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

• Draftium – Create website prototypes quickly.
• OneTeam – Set weekly team goals in Slack and track progress throughout.
• Motion – Turn an image into a geometric GIF.

These are my weekend favs, I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape

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Help Us Celebrate 15 Years of Blogging – TopRank Marketing Blog

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Digital Marketing News: Google Lens & Visual Search Updates, Social ROI Study, & App Ad Market Growth

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Talent and a Team for Our Times

At this time of year, we all have a tendency to look back and assess the past 12 months. So, I’d like to take the opportunity to touch on something my thoughts have increasingly been returning to in the latter half of 2018.

Talent

I’m referring to talent that runs towards the cerebral, analytical, and smoothly efficient. You know, the kind of talent not usually profiled in glossy online business magazines or ever considered eligible for company awards. Yet this kind of talent often has an arguably larger, yet quieter, and more difficult to measure impact on our business world than most others. Unfortunately, the business world seems to have a sparse supply of the kind of patience it takes to consider, assess, and celebrate value generation at the level played by people in the roles I’m thinking of.

Let’s highlight one such area where roles like this live.

Customer Programs

Forward-thinking, customer-centric high-tech companies pay close attention to the customer and the digital signals they emit, and endeavor to anticipate and proactively execute programs that address their needs. Such companies all possess people whose job it is to own and govern customer engagement and customer service processes. These people operate under a charter that typically says that the work they do must result in a downstream service that:

• Delivers faster and more consistently accurate results
• Includes meaningful outcomes that positively impact the customer’s business.

Thou Shalt Heed thy Customers’ Feedback

For example, these people often face the challenge of coming up with ways for ensuring that processes:

• Respectfully gauge customer feedback
• Improve the experience that customers have while using the firm’s products and services,
• Push content to customers is relevant and timely for where they are in their journey with the product.

The underlying philosophy revolves around this pertinent fact: If a customer has a more frictionless experience with the product or service, they will then be more inclined to make more use of it in an effort to derive more value from it for their business.

More value derived typically equates to a subscription renewal.

Charlie Brown Syndrome

People in customer programs are largely unsung heroes. While they are responsible for designing and building the process infrastructure that enables the organization to run at scale, they themselves are not directly attached to the firm’s products, its revenue, nor (interestingly enough) its customers. Their work, therefore, remains largely unseen. However, just as all great physical structures need the support of walls, pillars, beams, and other forces of strength that defy gravity, strong business processes also require support from the streamlined, efficient use of people, data, computing power, and other assets.

In other words, though the work of customer programs is hugely important, due to an almost intentional and necessary byproduct of design, it is vastly under-noticed. Still, do not feel guilty if you haven’t recognized the people designing these programs for their efforts. Ask yourself: When was the last time someone looked at a grandly-lit building and gave thought, let alone credit, to the electricians and the interior designers? If any role at all came to mind, it was likely that of the architect. The same holds true for those individuals who design, build, and administer processes utilized by customer-facing organizations like sales, marketing, and customer success.

Thou Shalt Traverse the Digital Frontier

Customer programs people tend to be passionately interested in the work they do, and too few of them realize they should proudly view it as being symbolic of what it means to work on the digital frontier. If you know how customer-centric companies operate, you also acknowledge that there is an elegant and delicate beauty associated with the consumption of customer information and its conversion into process behaviors that benefit those very same customers. The work these people do involves helping to demonstrate how to move digital transformation successfully from the conceptual realm of strategy to the very real realm of tactics. This capability to move from strategy to tactics will become even more important in the months and years ahead.

"By 2023, 95% of entities will have incorporated new digital KPI sets—focusing on product/service innovation rates data capitalization, and employee experience—to navigate the digital economy."

- IDC, from FutureScape: Worldwide Digital Transformation 2019 Predictions Nov, 2018

So, If You Think You’ve Had Your Fill of KPIs, Just Wait a Couple of Years

All measurements and metrics will eventually chiefly concern the impact upon customers and vendors. The more digitized our companies become, the more digitization opportunities will present themselves. Even this blog post stands as an example. Sure, for right now, we are concerning ourselves with opens and click throughs, but we can imagine a day when even more scrutiny and tracking becomes possible through linked digitized processes across organizations and into the customer realm. At that point, my boss might be able to ask the ultimate business question:

Is that thought leadership blog thing you are doing on the side a valuable use of your time and our money?  

And then we might see something resembling an accurate answer because of empirical evidence showing a relationship between collected metrics about the blog and its influence on a customer’s willingness to buy or their eventual decision to renew. You can almost compare digitization to when electric lighting was invented and rolled out to the masses. Its ability to illuminate darkness created entire new ways of living and that’s probably how you should think of digitization in business.

Applying Human Intelligence to Determine What to Do Next

To adapt and exploit digital at the level being discussed here requires a high degree of human intelligence and empathy, both in equal measure. It might seem ironic to outside observers, but we are witnessing that the more digitized a customer engagement model becomes, the more critical it is that the humans operating behind it do so from a solid base of empathy. And therein lies the trick. A particular talent that exists within every human on the planet will prove to be the most important for the people who work in these kinds of customer program roles. It’s also likely the most difficult talent to develop and make appropriate for those kinds of roles. It factors critically into the process of selecting a team, though.

Temperament

How we come across to others is obviously important in business settings. The aim of business conversations should be to achieve outcomes that allow both individuals to walk away thinking that their time was usefully spent and that some aspect of their respective business responsibilities was positively impacted. If one person’s temperament is off-putting, dismissive, or cold, then the odds that both sides feel the time was usefully spent are probably pretty low. If both sides exhibit negative emotions, then the odds on the conversation lasting longer than two minutes are near zero. Ill- temperament does not accomplish much in the world of customer engagement process design. In fact, it is counter-productive and will more likely result in a fatally-flawed process design that reflects the ill-temperament of the person who created it. And customers would definitely feel this ill temperament coming through.

Remoteness Doesn’t Always Mean an Absence of Intimacy

All the time, you hear stories about how technology, or more specifically AI and machine learning, will kill scores and scores of jobs. While there will certainly be disruption, consider the activities of the people who work in customer program roles. Ask them what they think about when designing a process for customer engagement at scale. What do they think the customer needs at any particular point? How exactly do they know what the customer needs? And how did they find that out? How do they assess after the process has been in production whether how they went about understanding customer needs was helpful or not?

While there are mechanisms for soliciting customer feedback at scale, the people in customer program roles have to iteratively build a level of customer sensitivity into their processes at the outset that leverage:

• Empathy
• An intelligent, light-handed application of technology
• An intense and authentic desire to make an impact

AI can’t do all that. Only people with the right temperament can articulate a human touch through technology—a touch that customers would appreciate and respond well to even if they never meet or even know the names of the people who designed the process in the first place.

Listening to your customers helps you improve their experience. Find out how by reading “Go Further with Customer Experience Optimization.”

Read the Guide

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Our Top 10 Influencer Marketing Posts of 2018

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The Top 5 Duct Tape Marketing Podcast Episodes for 2018

The Top 5 Duct Tape Marketing Podcast Episodes for 2018 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

In 2018, I had the opportunity to speak with an amazing group of guests on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. As the year draws to a close, I wanted to take a look back and share with you the five podcasts with the highest number of downloads for the year.

If you enjoyed what you heard here, check out the full line-up of shows. We’ll be back the first week in January with all new episodes and guests.

Joey Coleman – How to Attract Customers and Keep Them Forever

Joey Coleman is a marketing expert and the Chief Experience Composer at Design Symphony. He has an eclectic background that includes selling custom research to Fortune 500 executives, racing along the Great Wall, juggling in front of the Taj Mahal, and singing a solo at the Kennedy Center. He’s the author of Never Lose a Customer Again: Turn Any Sale Into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days.

Biggest takeaway: Retention is really the key to your business’s longterm success. If you’re able to get involved in the customer journey earlier and stick around for longer, you can convince all of your first-time customers to become loyal, repeat ones.

Click here to listen to the episode.

Petra Kolber – Letting Go of Perfection in Order to Reach Your Goals

Petra Kolber is an expert in positive psychology and fitness. She has worked with the likes of Nancy Kerrigan, Dana Torres, and George Foreman and served as a consultant to companies including Reebok, Adidas, and Gatorade. She’s also the author of The Perfection Detox: Tame Your Inner Critic, Live Bravely, and Unleash Your Joy.

Biggest takeaway: When we attach negative emotions to the concept of perfection, striving for it can paralyze us. But when we give up the idea of being perfect and make small, sustainable changes to create new habits around our thinking, we can achieve great things.

Click here to listen to the episode.

Garrett Moon – How to Create Content that Stands Out and Gets Results

Garrett Moon is the CEO and co-founder of CoSchedule, the web’s most popular marketing calendar and the fastest growing startup in North Dakota. He’s also the author of 10x Marketing Formula: Your Blueprint For Creating ‘Competition-Free Content’ That Stands Out and Gets Results.

Biggest takeaway: When creating content, you need to get specific about the problem you solve for your customer and define the one specific action you’d like them to take as a result of consuming the content. When you do that, you’ll create content that leads customers to associate the solution of their problem with your brand.

Click here to listen to the episode.

Mike Blumenthal – How to Help Your Local Business Get Found Online

Mike Blumenthal is the undisputed king of local SEO. He is the owner of Blumenthals, one of the founders of Local U and GetFiveStars, a review service that helps local businesses.

Biggest takeaway: Proximity, prominence, and relevance are the three major determining factors in how you rank in Google search results. Blumenthal covers the ins and outs of how to give your business the best shot at dominating local search and making sure you get found.

Click here to listen to the episode.

David Mihm – Tips for Attracting Local Clients

David Mihm is a digital marketing expert for small businesses, co-founder of GetListed.org (now part of Moz Local), and founder of Tidings. He previously served as Moz’s Director of Local Search Strategy, where he led the development of Moz Local.

Biggest takeaway: Google’s search results are now comprehensive enough where a customer theoretically doesn’t need to visit your website to do business with you—they can get all the information they need to complete a transaction from Google. This is why optimizing your presence on Google is critical, and Mihm shares tips on how to get the best results for your business.

Click here to listen to the episode.

Is your favorite episode on the list? If not, we’d love to hear which one you enjoyed listening to the most!

For our podcast audience, we can’t thank you enough for your support over the years! If you like the show, click on over and subscribe and if you love the show give us a review on iTunes, please!

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TopRank Marketing’s Top 6 B2B Influencer Marketing Predictions & Trends to Watch in 2019

How many of you can count the number of times you’ve purchased a product or made a decision based on a recommendation from a friend, acquaintance, review on the web or a celebrity endorsement? I’d venture to guess that most of you would say: "Too many to count." That’s because we all rely on advice from others to help us make sense of a complex world where we don’t always have all of the information we need to make a decision. Influencer marketing has been around for ages (literally), but it’s only begun to build steam within the B2B world over the past few years. The good news is that for many, B2B influencer marketing is still in its infancy—which means there are plenty of opportunities to begin implementing influencer marketing today. Interestingly, a report from Twitter found that recommendations from influencers are quickly gaining momentum and are nearly equal to receiving recommendations from actual friends. To help you navigate the future of B2B influencer marketing and guide your approach, we’ve put together six trends and predictions to watch for in 2019.

#1 - Increasing Data Privacy Concerns Will Impact the Role of Influencers

This year new GDPR regulations took effect across the EU, which left many global brands scrambling to make sure that they were appropriately handling personal identifying information. What many brands didn’t consider, was how it will impact influencer marketing programs. Some big brands have already begun evolving how they handle influencer information and what is needed in terms of documentation to properly meet new requirements. And that will only continue to increase. As Ursula Ringham, Head of Global Influencer Marketing for SAP*, told us earlier this year: “GDPR is going to be the stake in the ground for all data privacy—bar none. As GDPR kicks off, we’ll start to see lawsuits and controversies in the news and people will become increasingly aware and engaged. In the U.S., we’re already becoming more aware of data privacy issues, especially after Cambridge Analytica." She added: “But bottom line, GDPR will be really important. And as a result, our influencers will become even more important and valuable. They’re going to be our trusted brand ambassadors; our trusted voices. They’ll be a huge asset because people don’t trust brands outright—they trust people.” [bctt tweet="Bottom line, #GDPR will be really important. And as a result, our #influencers will become even more important and valuable. @usularingham #InfluencerMarketing #B2B" username="toprank"]

#2 - Capturing Influencer Attention Will Become Increasingly Difficult

As the demand for working with influencers increases, it will become more and more difficult to capture and hold their attention. As a result, before reaching out to influencers to collaborate, it will be even more important to first determine and communicate what's in it for them. Showing influencers value and displaying that you understand what they’re interested in will help you begin building a relationship of mutual value. As Rani Mani, Head of Influencer Social Enablement at Adobe, told us in a recent interview: "We at Adobe pride ourselves on cultivating and nurturing long term relationships with our influencers. We look at it as dating with an eye towards long term commitment which means we are always looking to establish a 'give to get' exchange where all parties come out ahead." The key that Rani touches on? Building lasting relationships, which will require more effort than simply reaching out when you need something. As Lee Odden, TopRank Marketing's CEO, recently wrote:  "Brands that use a shotgun approach to invite influencers only when they need them won’t see very high recruitment rates. The same goes for non-personalized, ego-centric messages from brands that are only concerned with what the brand wants to get out of the collaboration." And while we advise placing a lot of emphasis on building these relationships organically, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pay your influencers where appropriate. Think about what you’re asking of your influencers and make sure that you understand their expectations as well. Onalytica’s recent survey of brand and influencer relationships found that influencers have varying objectives, but many are most interested in building thought leadership and gaining exposure on specific topics followed by expanding their networks to reach new audiences. [bctt tweet="Brands that use a shotgun approach to invite influencers only when they need them won’t see very high recruitment rates. @leeodden #InfluencerMarketing #B2B" username="toprank"]

#3 - Emphasis on Specific Influencer Qualities Will Evolve

When you consider what makes for a good B2C influencer, the most sought-after quality is that they have an extensive network. For many B2B marketers, the emphasis has followed that same path. However, influence is not solely based on the number of followers that an expert has, something that is becoming more clear in the wake of fake social media accounts and inflated follower counts. True, social reach should be a consideration for your B2B influencer marketing program, but not the only one. Sometimes the influencers with the largest reach may not be engaging their audience in a meaningful way that leads to more users connecting with your content. As a result, if you aren't already, you need to be looking at a variety of influencer qualities (each of which are important) when identifying influencers to work with in 2019 and beyond. As you can see in the chart below, different types of experts can positively impact your program in several different ways. As your influencer program continues to mature, begin determining what the right mix of influencers to include for maximum impact. [bctt tweet="If you aren't already, you need to be looking at a variety of influencer qualities (each of which are important) when identifying influencers to work with in 2019 and beyond. - @azeckman #InfluencerMarketing #B2B" username="toprank"]

#4 - The Call for Tighter Topical Alignment

When many brands first start dipping their toes in the influencer marketing waters, it can be difficult to suss out exactly who to co-create content with. Unfortunately, one of the mistakes many brands make is working with influencers that don’t quite align with the topics they want to share with their target audience. As a result, in 2019 and beyond, you need to commit to meaningful influencer identification and collaboration if you want to co-create content that informs, engages, and resonates with your audiences. For example, if you want to collaborate with an influencer on the topic of “Account Based Marketing” it’s important to conduct critical research to determine what their take is on the topic, and if it’s a topic they publish content on frequently. Otherwise, you may not end up with the level of content that your audience is anticipating. Additionally, the influencer audience may not be a fit for the content topic which will not lead to the level of engagement you’re seeking. Part of TopRank Marketing’s process with our clients is to conduct research internally and externally to determine which topics should be included in influencer co-creation programs to best target the audience. Below is an example of how these topics could be priorities: But marketer beware. The goal is not to control the opinion of influencers. Instead, focus on finding the RIGHT influencers that already align with the message you’d like to create content around.

#5 - Influencer Video Content Will Reign Supreme

Video has been a rising content marketing star over the past couple years. But in 2018, video is officially dominating social media news feeds, search results, and the minds of our target audience. It's everyhere, and the launch and refinement of native video and Stories features on top social platforms has heightened this demand. Both live and pre-recorded video that can be uploaded natively on social platforms presents an opportunity for brands and influencers alike. Everything from talking head videos to interviews and motion graphics are all content co-creation moments that can be captured and shared again and again. So, as the overall demand for video increases, so will the demand for increased quality. If you plan on co-creating video with influencers, you need to plan for the unexpected. If recording remotely, be sure to prep your influencers beforehand and run a test before you begin recording. If you’re recording onsite (at somewhere like their office or event) be sure to create a contingency plan in case your original setup is not conducive to capturing great video. [bctt tweet="Both live and pre-recorded video that can be uploaded natively on social platforms presents an opportunity for brands and influencers alike. @azeckman #Influencer Marketing #B2B" username="toprank"]

#6 - The Battle Between ROI & Awareness Will Continue

Every B2B marketer wants to enhance brand awareness, recognition, and advocacy. But they also want to drive a high volume of qualified leads. But to get from one end of the spectrum to the other, you need to deploy tactics and strategies that are tailored to your audience where they actually are in their buyer's journey. The same goes for influencer marketing programs. Not all are created equal. For example, if your goal in working with influencers is to build awareness, you’ll need to deploy a specific strategy and mix of tactics that are vastly different than if your goal is demand or lead gen. In fact, the most recent Influence 2.0 Report from Traackr and Brian Solis found that the two top influencer priorities for marketers are to increase brand awareness followed closely by determining attribution and ROI. Influencer marketing can absolutely have an impact on both lead gen and awareness programs. However, in 2019 and beyond, it will be essential that you build an approach that aligns with your objectives. And as influencer marketing programs continue to mature, it will be essential that brands nail down exactly what they need to measure and how they’ll measure.

Ready. Set. Connect

2019 stands to be a big year for B2B influencer marketing. Consumers and influencers alike will expect more from the brands they work with, which means that one of the most important steps you can take as a brand is to build your influencer marketing program on a solid foundation. Instead of just throwing money at a program and expecting results, it’ll take time, effort and people to build meaningful relationships that will have a lasting impact. Want to know what’s on tap for social media marketing in 2019? Check out our top social media trends and predictions to watch in 2019.

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Six Ways to Enhance Your Sales Pipeline with a CRM

Six Ways to Enhance Your Sales Pipeline with a CRM written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Your sales pipeline is quite literally the thing that keeps you in business. That’s why managing it effectively is so critical.

CRMs provide you with all the data and functionality you need to make sure you’re talking with leads and closing the deal in the most efficient way possible. Plus, they allow you to see the bigger picture and to set strategic goals for your business based on your existing sales pipeline and how you hope to see it grow.

Here, we’ll take a look at six ways to enhance your sales pipeline with a CRM.

1. Don’t Let Leads Slip Away

When you’re juggling all of the many priorities that come with operating a business, it can be easy to lose track of leads. You’re so focused on delivering for your existing clients, that when a lead reaches out to learn more or you don’t hear back from someone immediately after you’ve initially made contact, you quite frankly might just forget about them.

But when you have a promising lead in your sights, you need to remain proactive about reaching out. They have a problem that needs solving and their own deadlines they need to meet, so if you’re too slow in getting back to them, they’ll go with your competitor that was quicker on their feet.

Fortunately, CRMs are a great way to stay on top of all points of contact. You can easily track and visualize when you last spoke with a prospect—without having to hunt through your email inbox or search through your call history on your phone—so that you can make sure you respond to inquiries in a timely manner and are on top of following up with those prospects who have gone radio silent over the last few weeks.

Of course, not all leads are created equal, so there’s value in assessing each lead and deciding how you’ll most effectively divide your time to attend to existing clients while also catering to your most promising leads.

2. Use Lead Behavior Scoring to Focus Your Efforts

There are some leads who will never convert, no matter what you do and how hard you try. You need to wipe those leads off of your radar screen so that you can spend your time wooing those who actually have a shot at becoming clients.

Lead behavior scoring is the process of evaluating your leads’ profile and actions and assigning a score that corresponds with how likely they are to convert. By using the data you’ve assembled on your current client base, you can establish a method for taking an educated guess about the value of a given prospect.

If a prospect shares nine out of 10 characteristics and behaviors with your current client base, that’s someone who could very likely need your services and want to do business with you! If it’s a prospect who only lines up on two of the 10 points, though, don’t spend copious amounts of time and effort speaking with them. They’ll likely never become a customer.

3. Analyze Your Pipeline Data

CRMs are great at collecting data about your current processes and allowing business owners to slice and dice the information in a way that makes sense for them.

You want to track the way your business guides prospects through the first part of their customer journey. What’s working and what’s not so effective?

Once you begin looking for patterns, you’ll likely see some room for improvement. Let’s say you’re a contractor whose homepage has a call to action button inviting prospects to sign up for your newsletter. The newsletter contains lots of tips and tricks on renovating, and when you analyze the CRM data, you notice that the CTA button gets a lot of clicks. But you also notice something else: you’re not seeing a lot of newsletter subscribers taking the next step and reaching out for a consultation.

This information alerts you to an issue in your pipeline and allows you to do a deeper dive into what’s not working. Maybe the newsletter is sent too frequently and so people aren’t reading it, or it’s ending up in spam folders. Maybe you don’t provide a clear next step for readers—adding a big, bold button at the end of the newsletter inviting prospects to reach out for a consultation might get their attention. Or maybe you already have a button there, but prospects are hesitant to do it because they don’t understand the terms of the consultation. When you add language clarifying that it’s free and has no obligation attached, you might see yourself getting some traction.

4. Set Informed Goals for Growth

Putting together an annual plan is a critical step in running your business. But it’s hard to set goals when you don’t know where you already stand. Fortunately, CRMs allow you to see what your typical pipeline is like at the moment and how you can work in the future to improve it.

Take a look at where you stand now. What are your conversion rates? How long is your sales cycle? What is the average deal size you see with first time customers? How many customers come back, and when they do, are they spending more money on bigger and better products?

Using this information, you can identify potential areas of growth. Let’s go back to the contractor example. Right now, you see that a lot of your first time customers are hiring you for smaller jobs like refinishing projects or building decks, and your customer return rate is low. Again, armed with this data you can begin to do some digging into the why behind the issue and then take steps to remedy it.

Maybe what you learn is that there’s a local architect who’s partnered with your biggest competitor, and as a team, they’re going out and winning the majority of bathroom and kitchen renovations in the area. If this is the arena you want to work in, you need to change your strategy. Establishing your own partnerships with suppliers of materials or another architectural firm could help to boost your visibility in this arena. Or maybe there’s a local interior designer who you can partner with and display your work jointly in a big design showcase.

When you know where your weakness lie, you’re able to take a strategic approach to addressing them.

5. Establish a Clear Process for Managing Pipeline

Sometimes businesses that don’t have a CRM in place can become a bit like the Wild West. Salespeople are left to go out and do their thing with little supervision, and you don’t have any visibility into what tactics are working, what’s not effective, and whether or not the sales team is taking the most effective approach to managing their workload.

Once you’ve taken a look back at the aggregate data in your CRM, you’re able to see what exactly is effective and what isn’t. From there, you can establish a clearcut system for dealing with leads.

The best way to find leads and stay in contact with them will vary from business to business. You also want to understand how the sales pipeline functions so that you can be sure you’re providing your team with the tools they need to succeed. Maybe that’s asking your marketing team to create white papers that address concerns prospects often mention to your sales team. Maybe that’s establishing best practices for how frequently the sales team follows up with prospects.

Salespeople often possess traits that would serve them well in any sales position, but every business is different and has their own unique needs and effective approaches.

You’ll want to provide training to your salespeople on best practices for your industry and your business. Maybe they relied heavily on email communications in their last job selling software to tech companies, but here you may have found that phone calls are the most effective way to generate business. Even small tweaks like that can help to improve the overall effectiveness of your sales approach.

6. Managing a Referral Program

We’ve dedicated a number of articles on the blog to the importance of referrals for any business. CRMs can help you to establish the most effective referral program and ensure that you have a steady stream of referrals coming into your sales pipeline.

Using audience segmentation tools to target your happiest customers with offers to join your referral marketing campaign is a great start. From there, you want to use the CRM to group those prospects who are coming to you via referral together so that you can be extra sure you’re providing them with a great experience. These leads are hot because they’ve already heard great things about your business—if you’re able to prove their referrer right, you’re very likely to successfully close the deal here (and maybe even generate future referrals from them)!

A sales pipeline can be an unwieldy thing to manage, and if you’re trying to keep track of your prospects and manage the customer journey without a dedicated tool, things can easily get out of hand. A CRM allows you to easily store, track, and analyze the data that you need to not only provide the best service for each and every prospect, but to more efficiently manage your big-picture business decisions.

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From Our Marketing Family to Yours, Happy Holidays, Marketers!

The post From Our Marketing Family to Yours, Happy Holidays, Marketers! appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

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Our Top 10 Content Marketing Posts of 2018

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Weekend Favs December 22

Weekend Favs December 22 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

• Remove.bg – Quickly and easily remove the background of a photo without fancy editing software.
• Costie – Calculate how much those long team meetings are really costing you (and decide if they’re worth it).
• Link2Sheet – Copy contact information from LinkedIn profiles into Google Sheets with this Chrome extension.

These are my weekend favs, I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape

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Digital Marketing News: Google’s WordPress Plugin, Snapchat Marketing, Facebook & Google Ad Bidding, & Mobile RTB Spend Rises

The post Digital Marketing News: Google’s WordPress Plugin, Snapchat Marketing, Facebook & Google Ad Bidding, & Mobile RTB Spend Rises appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

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New Year, New View: 3 Ways to Approach Analytics in 2019

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Insights from Oracle Social Cloud Puts Marketers in the Driver’s Seat

 

Business and customer insights are the foundation of an effective marketing strategy. That's why the Oracle Social Cloud Product team is excited to announce the launch of Insights. Insights is a new social analytics feature that gives marketers the flexibility to build custom dashboards that incorporate both owned and earned data channels without having to switch between applications.

How does it work?

Custom dashboards can be created based on an individual’s reporting needs. Users select only those topics that are relevant to them. Dashboards are set up using drag-and-drop widgets and have multiple chart formatting options. Marketers can also add notes and descriptions to the dashboard to describe what each report represents. Automated reporting makes it easy for marketers to export or share key information on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis.

 

For example, if a user wants to see Topic metrics for earned data, Owned metrics from social channels, and Engage metrics for their teams all in a single view, they can simply create a dashboard in Insights and pull all of the information into one place for a comprehensive view of these areas.

With customizable widgets, marketers can visualize campaign results and monitor brand health according to their specific campaign or strategic needs. They can choose which widgets they’d like to add to the dashboard via drag-and-drop, and can edit the title, chart type, and chart size. 

Marketers have all the flexibility they need to personalize according to their preferences by changing the date range applied to a widget, add or remove channels based on the data they’d like to see, and even apply filters like Indicators, Sentiment, Gender, Location and Content Type to their Topic metrics. 

Insights allows social teams to drill down into their Topic metrics to see all messages associated with a topic by clicking on a data point in the chart. If, for instance, a new product promotion is launched around the holidays, they can gauge impact by isolating results by media site and region from the first days-to-weeks, post-launch.

Sharing is Easy

Dashboards can be exported instantly. Users can even set up a scheduled export to be sent out periodically, specifying the frequency, file format, and the emails of the recipients. Permissions are specific to each individual’s dashboard. No other users would have access to that view of the dashboard unless shared with them. 

Learn More

At Oracle, we are committed to empowering marketers to use data to create irresistible, connected experiences. To learn more about Insights, check out a replay of the introduction webinar or review the Insights Help documentation. Contact us for information on how Oracle Social Cloud can help you keep your finger on the pulse of the market.

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The Top Four Marketing Trends for 2019

The Top Four Marketing Trends for 2019 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch on 2019 Marketing Trends

‘Tis the season for end of year lists and content that’s looking to trends in the New Year. Rather than run through all of the ins and outs of what I see coming up on the marketing horizon, I’ve decided to focus on what I see as the four most important marketing trends for 2019.

If you’re a small business owner or a marketing consultant who works with small business teams, these are the trends you can’t afford to ignore.

1. Get Up to Speed on Google My Business

Google has been trying to crack the social media and small business ad platform code for a while. Some attempts, like Google Plus, have not worked, but it seems like they may have finally found their sweet spot with Google My Business. This is a tool where local businesses can advertise and consumers can find nearby businesses on mobile devices.

Over the past few months, Google has been more and more focused on the Google My Business platform. It’s become more feature-rich and useful for business owners, and I think it’s likely that it will become a sort of social CRM tool in the near future.

Photo courtesy of Google

What do I mean by that? In addition to the features like leaving reviews, finding directions, and making suggestions to edit the page, Google has recently added a feature where people can follow a Google My Business page. Not only that, Google’s recently introduced an app just for their Google My Business product.

These changes lead me to believe that they’re aiming to make Google My Business like a social network for businesses. This serves local business owners well. When someone starts to follow your company on Google My Business, that’s obviously a strong indicator that they’re interested in what you have to offer. This provides yet another channel for you to identify hot leads and connect with your fans.

If you’re running marketing efforts for a small business, then you should be paying close attention to all of these developments and additions to the platform and keeping pace with them accordingly.

Eventually, I anticipate that a business’s Google My Business platform will become a ranking factor in Google searches. The more followers you have on your page, the higher you’ll rank in search results. The quality of your business’s online assets and reviews are already ranking factors, so it’s not a leap to think that Google My Business will affect ranking in the future.

2. Focus on Retention

There’s an awful lot of work that goes into generating leads. It’s time, it’s money, it’s effort. This means that retaining leads is really where a business’s bread and butter lies. Research has shown time and again that it’s cheaper to sell to an existing customer than to go out and find a new one.

So what does that mean for your marketing efforts? It means you need to focus on your basic online presence. Existing customers will only stick around if their experience in interacting with you is one that builds trust. When you have a shoddy online presence that’s inconsistent or has big gaps in information, you make your customers doubt you. Have you ever thought twice about using a particular service provider because they had a bare bones website or they weren’t anywhere to be found on Yelp?

Retention is also about focusing on building a robust on-boarding process for existing customers. This needs to be a process that’s clear-cut and allows you to monitor results and make changes and improvements based on the data you’re seeing.

Finally, you need to make sure you’re creating real value for your existing customers. Build campaigns that really train them, events that are experiences that surprise and delight, and a referral process that provides true incentive for them to pass your name along to others.

CRM and marketing automation tools can help you manage these processes. These tools allow you to segment your audience so that you can easily guide, train, and over-communicate with the customers you already have so that retention stays high.

3. Embrace the Cloud

In recent years, the Cloud has become a bigger and bigger part of doing business. And small business owners have already begun to use cloud-based technology to improve their internal systems and processes. Cloud-based storage and communication systems have made it easier for distributed teams to collaborate and get things done.

However, the future lies in harnessing cloud technology to provide an even better customer experience. It’s not just about convenience or lowering cost, it’s become a part of the customer’s expectation that cloud technology is used to enhance the customer experience.

As you begin 2019, think about how you can use cloud-based tools that help with payment collection, online collaboration, and other customer service features to make your customer experience even more seamless.

4. Use Video Content Everywhere

We’ve been talking about content and we’ve been talking about video separately for years, but I think 2019 is going to be all about video content. Short form video content, in particular, is an important marketing trend. Studies continue to show that video content gets the most engagement and highest return on investment.

Developers and tech companies have caught wind of the trend as well. They continue to come out with new tools and products that make it easier for anyone to produce short and engaging videos that can be used for any and all marketing efforts.

Video isn’t just something splashy to put on your website’s homepage anymore. It can and should be used to provide meaningful content all throughout the customer journey. You may use it during the early phases to introduce the brand story and team members, but it can also be employed further along the journey to share content that establishes you as a thought leader in your industry (building trust with prospects), and later to provide in-depth tutorials for customers so that they can get the most out of their recent purchases.

You should be using video across channels, too. Video on your website is great, but also put your video content to use in ads, social media posts, and as a way to introduce your blog posts. When video is used in this way, it goes beyond being just a tool to becoming something that produces deep, meaningful content all along the customer journey.

I hope taking a look at these trends gets you excited about all of the wonderful marketing possibilities ahead in the New Year!

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Loyalty Programs and Holiday Mailing

As Cyber Monday sales top $7.869 billion for 2018, a 19.3% year-over-year increase from 2017, many marketers are eager to “reward” their customers for their loyalty with ongoing promotions and offers to the inbox. It’s a great strategy when executed correctly. Brands are able to create special, individualized offers for existing customers and continue to drive sales through the rest of the holiday season. But there is a very important, often overlooked, caveat to this marketing strategy. Loyalty programs should always be treated as promotional, and not transactional, messaging.

Particularly for senders with dedicated transactional IPs, the idea of sending loyalty campaigns as a transactional message is tempting. Transactional campaigns are highly engaged with (receipts, shipping confirmations, recall notices, etc.), and typically have much higher delivery rates as a result. But this should never act as justification for the “ends justifying the means” of a bad mailing practice. In this case, the bad far outweighs the good and it’s your customers who could end up paying the price.

Keyword: Transaction

When asking yourself, “can this be sent as a transactional message?” consider the keyword in that sentence: transaction. Is the goal of this message to convey information about an existing transaction? Or is the intention to drive a further transaction? If the answer is to motivate a new purchase, the message is promotional. Period. Through this lens, loyalty programs clearly fall into the latter category. 

You may be thinking, “But this loyalty/reward was earned because of an existing purchase. It’s a logical follow-up communication. Clearly, that makes this transactional.” However, the intent of the message still needs to be considered as the determining factor. Ultimately, the reward in question is meaningless unless a further transaction is completed by the customer. It is still a tool to drive further sales. And when it comes to protecting your transactional mail, it is better to be safe than sorry. 

Promotional vs. Transactional

Keep in mind that ISPs don’t distinguish or care if the IP you are sending from is promotional or transactional. All inbound mail will be treated with the same scrutiny. Delivery will still be determined based on reputation and reputation is still based on all standard mailing metrics. Loyalty programs run the same risk of spam complaints, delete without opening rates, or bounce/trap rates as any other promotional message. The difference is the reputation impact they can have on a transactional stream of mail is far disproportional to that of general promotional mailing. Don’t risk the delivery performance of those critical messages that need to get to your subscribers’ inboxes. Keep loyalty programs promotional.

And read this blog post for further information on promotional vs transactional mailing guidelines.    

Getting your message delivered is vital to revenue performance. A slight increase at the top of the funnel can make a huge difference to your bottom line. Check out our guide Do More With Email Deliverability and Privacy for tips to tackle email deliverability and privacy.       

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