Kicking and screaming it is. Despite grumbling about Google Analytics 4, the vast majority of marketers tell us they plan to make the switch anyway, even if they aren’t very excited to. What we found. About 70% of the 250 marketers we polled said they planned to switch and will handle the migration internally. Another 14% of respondents said they planned to switch but would hire outside consultants to help them get set up with GA4. Only 12% said they planned to explore other analytics platforms to use instead of GA4. The remaining 4% cited “other” scenarios, such as having already installed GA4 or that they use a different tool to handle their analytics now. Why this is happening. Google this month said it plans to sunset Universal Analytics, the current version of GA, in July 2023. The company also said users would not be able to port over data from the older version to the new GA4. That news both stung users and gave them a reason to migrate sooner than later so they will have at least some historical data in the new platform. Why we care (and why we’re not surprised). On one hand, Google has never been shy about retiring platforms, or making platform changes, despite user outcry. But the pushback on Google’s decision here highlights the ubiquity of Google Analytics and its power as a free tool. If there were equivalent free alternatives then more people would be using them. While making to switch to something like Adobe Analytics could give users more control over their data, that comes with a price that may be too steep for some organizations. It’s notable, though, that 14% said they plan to hire outside help. That shows how intricate some GA instances are today. That must seem more daunting to an organization when the platform you are migrating to is confusing and complicated, as marketers have complained about GA4. The bright side. Analytics expert Charles Farina this week took the glass-half-full approach, highlighting 10 features in GA 4 that he’s looking forward to in a long Twitter thread. These include audience-based conversion tracking, time between interactions data, custom and trended funnels, improved event segments and massive improvements in debugging. “At first look, Google Analytics 4 seems drastically different and that change can scare people off,” wrote Colleen Harris, a Google Analytics expert who runs our SMX Master Class on GA4, wrote for Search Engine Land around the time GA4 was first announced. “The good news is, as digital marketers, we’re all in the same boat of learning a whole new system. We also have time to learn this new tool.” It’s true. We have 16 months. The post Most plan to tough out the switch to Google Analytics 4 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/DlYzEa7
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SEO is not a set-it-and-forget-it thing, even if you or some of your clients wish it were. But all parties need to stay engaged in the project from start to finish for success. That means communication is key. Having a plan for how you will communicate with your clients throughout the engagement is an important part of SEO project management. Often when things go wrong, it’s not the work that’s the problem, it’s the client relationship. This is true not just of marketing projects. The Project Management Institute (PMI) reported that one out of five projects is unsuccessful due to ineffective communications. In our experience working with clients, a good communications plan keeps projects on track. Plus, having frequent touchpoints can uplevel your brand and service and make for happier clients all around. Here are eight communication touchpoints you can build into your client engagements. 1. Kickoff callsI cannot stress enough the importance of having a productive kickoff call. Even though you may already know what to do — and even though you may have had many conversations leading up to the client signing on — you still need the kickoff call. Here, everyone involved in the project (on your side and the client’s) gets up to speed on the scope of the work and what to expect. How often will you meet? What turnaround times will you need on deliverables and approvals? The kickoff meeting is your chance to lay out these procedural details. Expectations are key to a successful project. The project team must understand the client’s expectations before starting their work and vice versa. 2. SEO trainingTraining your clients on SEO is a fantastic way to keep the lines of communication open as you discuss their projects’ details. How will they know what questions to ask if, for example, they have no idea what a meta tag is? Speaking the same language is very important, so make sure you have consistent training shared by all project members. The SMX Master Classes series can be a great step here. If clients are already well-versed in SEO, your training is still key because it reinforces your approach to SEO — no two SEO vendors operate in the same way. SEO training also helps familiarize clients with everything that goes into your SEO services. They’ll know, for example, that you’re not just waving some magic wand behind the scenes and *poof* rankings appear. Education builds value in the eyes of the client. Conducting your training separately from your regular calls will allow you to keep the project work focused. Otherwise, you will spend more time explaining concepts during every touch-base call than you may have planned. 3. Status callsSome people dread standing meetings, but they are essential for project management. And they don’t have to be pointless. It is beneficial to have some structure and consistency for the project or it falls apart. Make sure you have an agenda ready to go ahead of time for each meeting so that the client knows what to expect on the call. And then take only as much time as you need. Make sure that everyone gets their concerns or questions answered, their next steps laid out, etc. After the call, you can send notes from the meeting, so it is documented, and everyone has a record. 4. One-off emailsHave you ever received an email from a service provider with a helpful note just because they thought it would be of value to you? Remember the impact that left? It’s these little touches that can go a long way in strengthening your client relationships. Think about how you can touch base with your client outside your regularly scheduled meetings. Maybe something in the SEO industry happened that pertains to your client. Or maybe something in their industry happened that could impact their SEO. Send a quick email to give them the details, why it matters and how it might impact them. 5. In-house resourcesAny time you create a useful resource that your client might benefit from, send it to them. Think ebooks, webinars, videos — really, any content marketing asset. Sure, you could send out an email blast to all your clients with a link to that ebook you did. But a more personal touch would be to send it to select clients that are struggling with the issue in the ebook along with a personal note. 6. Progress reportingA more official client-communications must-have is your SEO reports. Make sure you have a schedule for when and how you will report progress. And make sure the client knows when to expect that. For example, it might look something like this:
7. Client feedbackAt some point during the engagement, give your SEO clients an opportunity to give feedback on how they feel the project is going, what’s working, what’s not working and how you can improve. If it feels like you’ll only get honest feedback if it’s done anonymously, then send out a survey to your clients and make their answers anonymous. This is the format for an NPS score. You might do this at regular intervals during the engagement (recommended), or you might wait until the end of the project. What you learn from this feedback can be built into your client engagements moving forward. 8. Your blogMake sure your clients know about your blog! Better yet, ask if you can add them to the subscriber list when they first engage. It’s not uncommon for clients to never visit your company blog and miss that amazing resource for them. Once they’ve subscribed, your blog updates serve as an easy touchpoint to help keep your brand top of mind. So, make this a resource that you are sure your clients know about. Use communications to uplevel your serviceAccording to PMI, high performers create formal communications plans for nearly twice as many projects. In your SEO project management, take the time to review your communication plan to incorporate as many touchpoints as possible. The post How to keep your SEO clients engaged: 8 communication touchpoints appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/e36HfTk The post 202200330 SEL Brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/7FpzhAr The latest version of the AIOSEO (All in One SEO) WordPress plugin (4.1.9) adds integration with Microsoft Clarity. Clarity is Microsoft’s free analytics tool that provides insights into on-site user behavior. Clarity’s dashboard shows a visual overview of user behavior. Then you can dive deeper into heatmaps (to see where users interact most often and how far they scroll) and session recordings (to see mouse movements, clicks, taps and scrolls for all users, across pages and devices). AIOSEO is installed on more than 3 million websites. Clarity, which came out of beta in 2020, has also been integrated with Bing Webmaster Tools and Microsoft Advertising. How to activate Clarity in AIOSEO. Go to:
It will take Clarity a couple of hours to gather data. Why we care. This integration of Microsoft Clarity and AIOSEO will give you more analytics data to see what users actually do on your site. Search engines want to reward websites that provide a good user experience with better rankings. So use this information to help identify areas where you can improve and optimize your website to provide a better overall user experience (reducing bounce rate, optimizing content, adjusting design elements, improving conversion rates, etc.). The post AIOSEO WordPress plugin integrates Microsoft Clarity appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/zjvX43t Google recently released its Performance Max campaigns enabling businesses to advertise their ads across all of Google’s channels (Search, Display, Gmail, Maps, Discovery, YouTube, etc.) instead of creating specialized ads for each channel. However, as with any automated advertising platform, it’s best to oversee and guide the overall strategic direction to ensure campaign success. Join paid search experts from Adthena to learn three ways to boost your Google Performance Max campaigns to ensure they deliver real business results. Register today for “3 Ways Google Performance Max Campaigns Boost Paid Search in 2022,” presented by Adthena. The post 3 ways Google Performance Max campaigns boost paid search in 2022 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/PHzFQwu Was the meta description for this article written by Google? Or a human editor at Search Engine Land? You can’t tell, can you? That’s how far machine learning has come. Read on the learn the “shocking” truth. Auto-generating content summaries. Earlier this year, Google started automatically generating content summaries for Docs users. Google explains the technology behind how it works in this blog post if you want to dive into the natural language understanding (NLU) and natural language generation (NLG) of it all. In short, based on the text of your document, Google will suggest a summary for you. You can choose to use the summary if it looks good to you, or you can edit the summary to be more to your liking. This was interesting news because if there’s one thing I know from editing for 20+ years, it’s that people – even some great content writers – have a hard time condensing 1,000+ words into one or two short sentences or ideas that are optimized for search and act as a teaser to entice clicks (without giving away everything). Testing out Google Docs summaries. I was curious to see how good Google Docs is at generating summaries, so I looked at my five most recent articles. In short, Google Docs is surprisingly good at generating summaries. It’s by no means 100% perfect – but it’s at a level you’d expect from Google. I’m sure you already have seen Google’s intelligence at work in Gmail, offering responses to an email or suggesting how you should finish a sentence as you’re writing it. Here are the summaries Google Docs suggested for my articles: Facebook warns publishers to avoid ‘watchbait’ tactics Human: These tactics will result in fewer recommendations, less views and limited ranking. Learn how to avoid what Facebook considers watchbait. Google: This article is about how to avoid watchbait in your videos. It’s important to know what Facebook considers watchbait and what you should do to avoid it. Google’s is slightly long – and I’m not personally a fan of starting any meta description with “this article”. But this is pretty accurate. Swap “Learn” for “This article is about” and you’ve got a serviceable meta description. Thanks, Google. Human: Many brands already know TikTok drives sales. TikTok search ads could help attract qualified traffic (and get valuable keyword data). Google: This is a big deal. TikTok is testing search ads, and it’s a big opportunity for brands to attract qualified traffic. This is probably the strongest summary of the bunch – the most “human” sounding. Also, it’s interesting that Google somehow determined this was a “big deal” because the words “big deal” never appear within the text. Twitter adds keyword search to Direct Messages Human: Good news for brands and businesses who use Twitter for customer service: you can now find DMs by searching for keywords. Google: This is a long time coming. Twitter has been working on a DM search feature for some time, and now you can search your inbox by keywords. Google’s summary is not the best ever. It’s long and feels a bit repetitive (e.g., using the word “time” twice). But at least it’s not wrong. PPC salaries: How much in-house and agency search marketers make in 2022 Human: This data will help give you some bargaining power, whether you’re negotiating salary for a new role or seeking a raise from your employer. Google: This survey looked at the median salaries for PPC specialists in the U.S. and the U.K. It was based on responses from 715 respondents. This was easily the worst summary by Google. It’s boring. But more troubling: it’s inaccurate. The survey itself didn’t look at only the median salaries. That’s just what I wrote about. Also, my article didn’t mention the UK, so I have no idea where it pulled that from. The survey actually was global. So this one is a failure on Google’s part. The median salary issue is a “bigger context” issue that’s understandable – it can only output a summary based on what the author (me) has input. But the input/output theory wouldn’t explain the UK mention. That is just an oddball. Meta rebrands automated ad products, shopping campaigns coming soon Human: Meta is consolidating its products into the Meta Advantage suite, which allows advertisers to automate part of a – or an entire – campaign. Google: This is just a simple rebrand and making clear which of its products are automated. However, the company is also coming out with a shopping campaign later this year. Again, not awesome, not terrible, and fairly accurate. With a few tweaks, you’d have a decent meta description. Why we care. I use Google Docs all the time to write content. But never have I considered it a tool for SEO. Until now. If you struggle to write compelling meta descriptions (or excerpts or summaries) for your website content, simply hit the + button next to Summary in Google Docs. Those auto-generated summaries aren’t perfect, but it is generally a great “rough draft” that can help you write a compelling meta description. And even if you don’t use the summary Google generates (e.g., because it’s inaccurate, long, or has some other issue), that may be a big hint that you need to give your content another, deeper review. (You may also consider asking a friend, your editor, or someone else to review it.) Does it actually say what you meant or want it to? Because if Google (Docs) can’t understand it, it’s quite possible that when it publishes, neither will Google (search). Wait! Who wrote the meta description for this article? I did. Google’s was just too long: “This is a big deal. Earlier this year, Google started automatically generating content summaries for Google Docs users. The idea is to help content writers write compelling meta descriptions for their website content.” But good to know that Google Docs thinks that this technology is also a big deal. Summary, take two. The above summary generated by Google was on my rough draft version. After making my final edits, I deleted the summary from Google Docs, curious to see if it would generate a new summary, based on my revisions. It did: “This is a pretty interesting technology that’s making its way into Google Docs. Google Docs automatically generates content summaries for you. I tested it out with five articles I’ve recently written and it was surprisingly good.” First problem: too long. Second problem: the technology is already in Google Docs. If we delete the first sentence, it’s good. And that seems to be the overall pattern for these auto-generated Google Docs summaries: good, but not great. So, yes, Google Docs can help you write your meta descriptions, but more as a first attempt. Don’t expect Google Docs to generate a great meta description for you (you may have as much luck with a million monkeys banging on keyboards – eventually one of them is bound to produce a meta description worthy of Shakespeare). For now, anyway, human review, analysis, intuition and creativity are still essential job requirements. The post Google Docs can write your meta descriptions appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/cF0exOs First, you walk. Then you run. What if, instead, you learned to dance? While Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a key strategy today, going forward, B2B marketers will take a more holistic view. More of a dance than a race, marketing is evolving to look at the entire lifecycle and how to care for the customer relationship at each phase. Driven by this holistic approach, Forrester proclaims in its New Tech: Account-Based Marketing Q1, 2022 report that “the term Account-Based Marketing will disappear by 2025 as B2B organizations focus on the entire customer lifecycle.” As part of this evolution: Buying Group Marketing (BGM). While ABM blankets your key accounts with messaging, BGM targets the specific people involved in purchase decisions at your key accounts. It does this through carefully crafted buying group personas and delivering custom campaigns to buying team members. It’s a person-based marketing approach versus an account-based one. BGM is about relationship building – externally and internally. While that sounds great, the devil is in the details. One of the keys to implementing a successful BGM strategy requires a fundamental paradigm shift in how you market. As Forrester reinforces in the New Tech report, “sales and marketing must come together to identify and prioritize buying groups for effective ABM.” A lead isn’t something to be tossed over the wall at the MQL stage for sales to run with. Employing a BGM strategy, requires marketing and sales to work together at every stage of the customer lifecycle from awareness to deal and beyond. If your marketing and sales alignment has looked more like a tussle than a dance in the past, it’s time to streamline your moves into elegant choreography. Here’s how you and sales can ditch your two left feet and learn to dance well together. How BGM sales-marketing alignment worksLet’s set the scene with an example from the movie Dirty Dancing. In this 80s classic, there is a scene where Baby (the main character) is learning to dance the Mambo with Johnny (the dance instructor). His usual partner, Penny is on the sidelines and can see that Baby is struggling to learn the steps. So, Penny steps in and guides Baby from behind while Johnny leads. And the three of them move together in fluid unison to the music until Baby gets the moves down and learns the dance. How does this relate to Buying Group Marketing? In an effective BGM strategy, Johnny represents the sales team, Penny represents the marketing team, and Baby is the prospect. Marketing and sales work together to guide the prospect into finding the right steps and rhythm that will help them succeed. This is a fundamental shift in how sales and marketing has traditionally worked together. With BGM, marketing is no longer stuck on one side (or in Dirty Dancing… the corner) of the MQL wall but involved in all the stages of the process. Because of this, each department needs to know the steps and be able to dance together first. Then they can bring the prospect in and teach them to dance, too. 5 Steps to improve your marketing and sales alignmentBelow are five key areas to help you improve your marketing and sales alignment for an effective BGM strategy: 1. Align goals and operations To ensure that your funnel is unified, sales and marketing must have common goals and a common bench of metrics that deliver insights for continuous improvement. One of the first steps in the process is coming together to develop this operational backbone and to create service-level agreements, defining the goals and the lead management process from the top of the funnel to the bottom. 2. Share your data Sales and marketing teams need to have access to all the same data and insights around contacts and accounts at the same time. This will prevent missteps and ensure that everything that is created is of value to your prospects and enhances their journey. 3. Orchestrate your messaging Because the messaging in BGM is more highly targeted to buying group members, it’s important to team up and work through your air-cover narratives and carefully orchestrate them. The focus should be consistent messaging that is on-target for every successive stage of the funnel with the end goal of generating value for the buying team member. 4. Align your platform structure Synergy across sales and marketing starts with your systems. The platforms that you choose to use for BGM, whether a CRM, marketing automation or sales engagement tool, should be engineered to share data, processes, messaging, goals and metrics. 5. Communicate continually To execute a BGM strategy well, you will need to design a feedback loop between the sales and marketing organizations for regular communications regarding pain points and successes and for developing mechanisms to test and learn. Content is king, but context is everything because your data is shared. There should be an open communication loop to adjust campaigns for the context of the prospect along the way. How a BGM approach helped a B2B industrial workforce platform close more dealsOne B2B platform whose business is to digitize the industrial workforce took a Buying Group Marketing approach, using top-of-the-funnel advertising to close more deals. This organization had a highly specialized audience that was particularly difficult to reach. While marketing did bring in some viable leads, the organization’s existing solution (that was based upon reverse IP look-up) was insufficient to produce high-quality leads. The result was nearly non-existent lead follow up by the sales team. The lack of follow up led to a strained relationship between sales and marketing. There needed to be better alignment within the two teams and a more granular approach to marketing efforts. To do this, the marketing team used sales’ data to create highly customized advertising campaigns using Influ2. Sales were delighted with the results, receiving immediate notifications about engagement on the ads from the contacts they had been trying to reach. They were also appreciative of the context-driven insights and lead prioritization that marketing was now able to deliver. And what started as a pilot was expanded globally. Taking this approach helped the marketing and sales teams better collaborate. They defined the processes, determined the appropriate infrastructure, orchestrated their messaging, and openly communicated with each other to improve the pipe and close more deals. A meaningful competitive advantage with BGMAccording to Forrester, “Many organizations have already evolved or are evolving processes and technologies to account for buying groups; those organizations have a meaningful competitive advantage over those who do not.” Buying Group Marketing is here to stay. While there are many components involved in building an effective BGM strategy, marketing and sales alignment is among the most important. These five steps will help you get started with your BGM marketing-sales alignment. Remember: not stepping on each other’s toes is great. But you can do much more. Learn to dance with your sales team and help your prospects achieve their lift! This sponsored article was written by Nirosha Methananda, VP of marketing, Influ2. The post Lessons in Buying Group Marketing – Learning to dance with your sales team appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/ENDvwHZ Marketers, SEOs, employers, prospects, and even content strategists all have been taken in by content strategy myths they’ve heard or read and now believe. Some people think that it’s all about coming up with new ideas for content. Others believe that it’s a one-time task. But there’s a big difference between creating content for the sake of creating it and developing a content strategy that will help you achieve your short- and long-term business goals. This article will debunk 15 content strategy myths that are flat wrong. 1. Content strategy means content marketingMany people believe that content marketing and content strategy are the same. The term “content strategy” is often used interchangeably with content marketing. Content strategy is about creating a plan for how you will produce and distribute content across your website and other channels. But while the two fields share some common goals and tactics, there are important distinctions between them. While content marketing is essential, it’s only one part of a successful content strategy. In short, content strategy is a plan, while content marketing is a part of that plan. 2. Content strategy is about topics and keywordsThis is one of the biggest misconceptions. A prospect questioned our content strategy services. Why? They believe content strategy is only a list of topics and keywords and don’t need any service provider. And we lost the lead. Coming up with a list of topics and keywords is just one small part of creating a successful content strategy. A content strategy would include (depending on the goals and targeted platform),
A sample of what a content strategy’s first part would include apart from topics and keywords So if you meet anyone saying the content strategy is about topics and keywords, show them this list and help them debunk their myth around content strategy. 3. You need content strategy only for blogsThis is another big misconception about content strategy most SEOs have, and I had that too, which got busted after a few years. I used to create a content calendar to support SEO, which used to work well for my employer and clients. So I started believing that content strategy means a blog calendar. This is how most SEOs or marketers manage blog calendars, including me (obviously in the past). Eventually, when I started working on lead magnets to drive MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) and SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads), I had to plan everything from the different types of content to the amount of content we needed to plan, create, promote and track. When it became about combining my content marketing efforts with content planning and using them across all the marketing channels, I realized content strategy is for blogs and every type of content we wish to push out for marketing purposes. Your content strategy should include planning for every type of content – be it a blog, video, infographic or another content type or format. 4. Content strategy can only help in SEOMost of the time, people thinking of content strategies are SEOs. Why? Because no content strategy is complete without a list of keywords. Each piece of content we plan has at least some audiences searching for them on the search engines, branded or non-branded keywords. For example, I wrote a Twitter thread on what you should write instead of “conclusion,” “wrapping up,” etc., in a blog. And because it got viral, I’m writing a blog on it. Why? Because someone asked on Twitter about where she could find it. Though today, people would not be searching for this kind of topic. Tomorrow, it might have excellent search volume. That’s why it’s easy to get into the trap of thinking content strategy is for SEO. But, it’s not limited to SEO. Let’s look at how it can be for every marketing platform and not just for SEO. Content calendar for email marketing segmented from overall content strategy Similarly, here is the email content planner segmented from the overall content strategy I’m not showcasing the social media content strategy because that’s what I’m going to cover in the below point. 5. Content strategy = social media content strategyNo. Content strategy is not equal to social media content strategy. We have met and seen some marketers and business owners have this misconception, especially in the e-commerce domain, as they largely depend on social media for business. When you talk about content strategy, it’s an overall plan that includes auditing, researching, planning, developing, executing, managing, distributing content and measuring its performance to achieve business and marketing goals. A social media content strategy is a segmented part of the content strategy. Once you know what needs to be promoted on social media, why and how, you can prepare a social media content strategy to achieve what you’ve set for social media. For one of our clients, we created a calendar targeting different audiences for different platforms because they have the targets to achieve for both audiences. While creating their social media content strategy, we separated the messaging, timings, designs, and goals, considering the audiences active on the respective platforms. One part of the calendar targeted the Talent audience on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, who would sign up on their platform to seek remote jobs. Another part of the social media calendar targeted the Companies as the audience on LinkedIn who would sign up on their platform to seek remote talent. For such detailed social media content strategy creation, you need social media strategists or marketers who would take care of this. But, you cannot have social media strategists create the overall content strategy targeting holistic marketing goals. If you still have this myth around content strategy, you would hire the wrong talent, ultimately impacting your ROI. 6. The content strategy emphasizes creationContent strategy is not content marketing; it’s certainly not content creation. While working as a consultant, whenever I used to ask the marketing teams to develop a content strategy, they would share with me a list of topics to be written and all information around it. Honestly, it’s also about content distribution. Here is what your content strategy’s content marketing/distribution section should look like, Content creation is a part of the content strategy. But if the emphasis of your content strategy is only on creation, you’re missing out on generating content ROI. 7. Content strategy is not for my businessI discovered this content strategy myth while conversing with e-commerce and SaaS founders. During the discovery calls with SaaS prospects, we go through a detailed understanding of their audience, product, and business model. They don’t know what their product should be called most of the time. Let me tell you why. They could be startups trying to solve a problem. If they are solving a unique problem, their product would also be unique and even challenging to be attached with an existing keyword having a decent search volume. For example:
So they don’t feel the need for a content strategy as they want to create content only for the bottom funnel of the customer journey. Well, even if you target conversions, you need a content strategy. If you create conversion-focused content without the proper distribution process, creating that content is a wasted effort. Some niche e-commerce businesses wrongly think investing in content strategy is a waste of money. It isn’t. But you’re wasting money if you’re creating content without direction. The content strategy gives direction to what you want to achieve – why, when and how. The more niche you go, the more you need a content strategy as you need detailed research on how you’re going to bring your audience into the customer journey and convert. 8. Content strategy is one-and-doneAny successful website is the result of a content strategy. This is especially true for sites looking to rank well in search engines or generate leads and sales through any marketing channel. Your site will likely struggle to attract visitors and achieve its goals without planning what kind of content to create and how to promote it. Unfortunately, too many businesses treat content strategy as a one-time task. They develop a plan, implement it, and then move on to other things. I would call it not just the myth but even the mistake you make around content strategy. If you want your site to continue performing well, you need to keep your content strategy going indefinitely. If you lose track, you might have to invest more to achieve marketing goals, resulting in low profits. 9. Content strategy is only about the short-termYes, a content strategy involves thinking about the short-term. But that’s not all it’s about. A good content strategy is also about understanding what your audience needs, taking into account the whole customer journey, from first contact to post-purchase follow-up and then giving it to them in a way that’s engaging and easy to consume. By thinking about your content in this way, you can create a more holistic and practical approach that will benefit your business in the short and long term. It’s clear why so many people are confused about content strategy. I have met employers and prospects who think – “what’s in a content strategy? I don’t need someone specialized for that.” 10. Content strategy? SEO can handle itSEOs are the perfect people because they understand how search engines work and what users are looking for. SEOs are uniquely qualified to handle both tasks simultaneously. But SEOs also have more complex things to look at, such as,
Honestly, creating a content strategy is a huge task because the one who creates it has to consider business goals, marketing goals, and segmented marketing goals to be achieved through the power of content at the right time, right place with the right marketing message. Miss this and you’re wasting resources on content strategy and marketing. 11. Content strategists only create calendarsThat’s a big misconception business owners have for content strategists. They are often thought of as just calendar planners. While that is a significant part of the job, there is so much more to what they do. In reality, their role extends far beyond simply putting dates on a calendar and making sure things get published on time. Content strategists help brands create a plan for their content that aligns with their overall business goals and establishes a strategy for achieving them. They think about the audience they are trying to reach and develop formats and topics that will resonate with them. They also ensure that all of their content is aligned with the overall marketing strategy, helping to drive traffic, leads, and sales. This may include auditing the existing content, creating or sourcing content, ensuring it is designed per the expectations, optimizing it for search engines and social media, tracking how well it performs, and making notes for the next planning round. 12. The content strategist must be in-houseSome businesses have said this to me and came back to me when I launched my agency. Content strategists can be in-house but don’t necessarily have to be. Whether to have them in-house or outsource them, you need to think of the following,
The answer to the above questions would help you understand when to hire a content strategist in-house or outsource it. 13. Content writers should build content strategies“Can you come up with content topics as well?” I’m sure most freelance content writers often receive this kind of requirement, as I also used to get it before my agency. The thought of a content writer coming up with a content strategy may sound like a good idea, but it’s not. Here’s why: A content writer writes articles, blog posts, web copy, etc. A content strategist is responsible for planning, creating, and managing all types of content (text, visual, audio, etc.) to meet the specific needs of their company or client. Content writers are great at creating interesting and informative pieces that help businesses achieve their goals, but that’s usually where their skill set ends unless they are content strategists already. A true content strategist has a deep understanding of the bigger picture of marketing and how each piece of content fits into the puzzle. So, stop having this myth that content writers can create content strategies and stop asking them to do so. It will impact your business. 14. You can automate content strategy creationWHAT? HOW? I mean, today, everyone in marketing thinks of automation. But content strategy? Certainly not. Some tools and techniques automate a lot of content strategy activities to streamline your efforts, such as:
But, you still cannot automate some tasks while creating a content strategy, and they are:
Content is at the heart of any effective marketing campaign and requires a human touch to create and optimize effectively. So, you cannot automate content strategy creation. Stay away from such a myth. 15. Measuring content strategy performance is impossible“It’s easy to track the performance of the content but not of its strategy. How would we know if we have hired the right content strategist with no performance tracking?” Business owners looking to hire content strategists for the first time always think they cannot track the performance of the content strategy and hence, don’t know if their content strategists would do any good. And that’s another big content strategy myth. If your content is driving results, your content strategy is working. After all, the content strategy had the content topics, goals, marketing message, platforms, timing, and distribution process that made it drive results. So, if you want to measure the performance of the content strategy, think of comparing the results of your content with the previous period and see how you’re progressing. Don’t let your myths around content strategy affect your marketing ROIThe purpose behind highlighting these myths is to create awareness around content strategy, which it lacks. We all know that content is king, but you need the right approach, strategy, and talent to make your content king. And these myths are the roadblocks to content coronation. Hopefully, now that these content strategy myths have been debunked, you now have clarity about content strategy. The post 15 content strategy myths debunked appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/WjPL5Ty The post 202200329 SEL Brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/MPgo5ea Google’s Smart Bidding system is one of many automated ad bidding strategies that use machine learning to help optimize ad copy for conversions. It makes it easier for marketers to increase sales, leads, and profits by deploying the most effective ads at scale. However, this advanced advertising technology doesn’t negate marketers’ responsibility for crafting rich, engaging ad copy. In fact, Smart Bidding requires even more input from qualified professionals. “I still feel that there’s a degree of autonomy that requires us to make those choices,” said Ashley Fletcher, VP of marketing at Adthena, in a recent webinar. “AI is at its best when it gives you those choices.” “The world of search marketing is built around AI,” he added, and marketers need to know how to write ad copy that gives the Smart Bidding system the best options to choose from. Here are five tips Fletcher says can help marketers create ad copy that converts in a Smart Bidding system. Use a variety of ad copy options with Smart Bidding“[Smart bidding] is very much an ecosystem that’s affecting many digital marketers these days,” said Fletcher. “But we have to go on this journey of adoption.” He describes Smart Bidding adoption as a progression of strategies marketers use to fine-tune their advertising. The stages are as follows:
Fletcher says noting the trade-off — and finding a balance — between automated ad copy management and manual ad creation can make this process more seamless: “You don’t have to be all-in on all of these, but make sure you’re seeing both sides of the coin.” Benchmark ad copy performance alongside competitors“While it’s best practice to benchmark [against competitors], be wary that embracing Performance Max diminishes any CTR benchmarks you have in each segment,” Fletcher said. Despite the AI capabilities of Smart Bidding, it’s still important for marketers to keep a close eye on their competitors’ strategies. Yet, as Fletcher noted, it’s difficult to benchmark your ad copy performance while racing to beat the competition in bidding battles. Marketers using Performance Max campaigns must find a way to balance insight gathering efforts (benchmarking) with campaign velocity. Fletcher used the tortoise and the hare tale as an analogy for balancing benchmarketing with campaign momentum. He highlights how marketers often choose either a high-speed approach (the hare) or a slower, more methodical strategy (the tortoise), noting how the former is less effective in the long run. “If you’re the hare in this instance, then you’re going to be out of the gate pretty quickly — you’re going to be checking all those boxes pretty quickly,” he said. “But, if you’re the tortoise — asking yourself how this is going to affect your strategy — you’ll want to segment and look for clearer data.” He added, “If you’re heads-down — [like] the hare — you’ll likely miss nuances in your landscape.” Choose the proper messaging for each segmentAnalyzing which types of messages resonate best with each audience segment is key to succeeding with Smart Bidding. Fletcher used his own brand’s platform as an example of a tool that can consolidate these ad messages and the segments they resonate with. “If you’re firing DSAs, RSAs — whatever it might be — and you’re not sure which is converting, then this [dashboard] gives you full clarity,” he said. This is an area where AI and ad messaging work together well. AI bidding dashboards can pull out keywords and phrases that resonate well with audiences, then provide data on how they correlated with ad clicks, impressions, and conversions. Evaluate ad copy for local markets“User behavior is becoming far more localized as people move away from cities, which is a natural change in habits,” Fletcher said. “Google is putting more effort into SMBs — better maps and business listings — and many auctions are happening away from city hubs.” Local market ad auctions look much different than those in their more populated counterparts. So, marketers need to adjust how their ad copy resonates with these smaller groups. Evaluating local market dashboards (shown below) can show variances based on region and help inform bidding strategies. “[Local] dashboards can guide whole teams on search marketing strategies — not just the search teams, but the branding to the SEO as well — to see where rankings and click-share can be improved by these terms,” said Fletcher. Write ad copy with Share of Search in mind“Search is seen as the ‘holy grail,’ as far as conversions,” said Fletcher. “It’s going drive through clicks to your brand; how people interpret your brand in the SERP is key.” “Ad copy plays a big part in Share of Search,” he added. Share of Search is a metric first formulated by Les Binet, head of effectiveness at adam&eveDDB, that measures what percentage of market share a brand maintains in the search results. Fletcher says paying attention to this data can help marketers see what ad copy is resonating best on the SERPs. “It’s about predicting better outcomes using [search] data as the key data point,” said Fletcher. Leveraging Share of Search data has the potential to better guide your brand through the Smart Bidding landscape. It can help marketers predict which ad types will resonate with specific audiences, improve channel confidence, and better align stakeholders. “This will drive synergies across your entire digital business,” Fletcher said. “It’ll force you to understand how and why ad copy is performing well.” Watch this webinar presentation at Digital Marketing Depot. The post How to write compelling ad copy in a Smart Bidding landscape appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/DPkcGYS |
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