For many, visualizing and executing the logical steps of any operation comes intuitively. They know from experience that the bread will take 2 minutes and 23 seconds to toast while the omelet will take 3 minutes to make. They also know that they will need to holler out to their kids at least 2 times before they get seated for breakfast.

And for these people, breakfast is a smooth, well-oiled morning routine where everybody gets to butter a hot toast and eat it with an omelet still warm from the pan.

My husband on the other hand will call in the kids first, make them wait while he starts on breaking eggs for the omelet and THEN puts bread in the toaster while the omelet cools on their plates. (If we are lucky, he remembers to take and thaw out the rock hard butter from the fridge so we can spread it otherwise we do without.)

the Why am I telling you this?

Strategy is simply the act of visualizing and orchestrating the complete plan from inception to execution.

To know the many steps needed so that not only can you prioritize and multitask when needed but also know the weakest links in the chain that have the highest probability of breaking down. Either in your mind or/ and on a document that you can share and processize within a team.

Content Strategy very simply is knowing who you are writing for, why it would be relevant in their lives, the format and channels they prefer as well as what we want them to do after they read it. Going in without a strategy could means breaking a dozen eggs without a pan to cook them in or worse, cooking eggs for vegetarians.

PROTip: It also looks great on your resume (Content Strategist, anyone?)

What happens if you do without( A content Strategy)?

Aha…If you ignore investing time in having a clear idea of what you need your content or life to do, it will do…NOTHING. Yes, Absolutely NOTHING.

You will spend hours writing and proofreading the humor, inserting the necessary keywords and hashtags, hell, you even promote it on the 3 biggest platforms. But you do not get a single squeak.

Why? How should i know why…. it could be the funny smelling organic eggs, the unplugged toaster or simply the kids ( it’s probably the kids!)…A content strategy not only improves chances of success; it’s a great starting point to find what what may have gone wrong.

Also, when you write content that does not get seen or worse, gets seen but not appreciated, it sends User Behavior signals to Google that down ranks your content link as a result.

Plus guess what, there is no prize for hitting 3 inches left of the bulls eye unless you have a strategy document that says THAT was the goal.

So what are the key steps to creating a sustainable content strategy?

The following are what have worked for me. (Customize as needed .. And hey.. share your tips so I can update this article)

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Step 1 : Even if they give you no time to do it, Do your Research

Knowing what people are interested in, what they will find relevant enough to act on takes time and plenty of it. As a local dentist you need to know what will trigger that phone call - is it whiter teeth for a date or a graphic image of what could be going on under that neglected cavity!

But while time is what you need, time is not always what you have and I suggest you consider starting with my 3 favorite hacks given below:

• Content Audit: Take stock of what you have …white papers, any internal speech, the partially ready media kit or whatever website content or collateral that you may already have…this saves you tons of effort, provides triggers and gets you some involved parties from day 1. (Trust me… Nobody wants to die in oblivion)
• What’s working: I start with the top landing pages on GA as well as look at the articles / blogs or pages that got the maximum love be it views, conversions, likes or shares. Was it the keyword content or the medium or just a fat promotion budget?
• Learn from the competition: Dig out what the others have been up to and don’t be afraid to re-use. If you think about it…No idea is really ever new. Use a tool like SEMRush or Ahref and this should take you a few hours at most.

Step 2: No plan survives enemy contact but still, have a plan

• Business Goals: You have to know what is expected of you / your department. Content Marketing is a huuuuge field and it is important to drill down to the reason for your existence. Is it better social engagement? Is it to drive conversions to a specific landing page? Or is it just to run photocopies and get coffee… best to know!
• Roles and Success Metrics: While the set goal should ideally feed into your responsibilities (and appraisal metrics), that is often not the case. You could be tasked with jobs that are NOT the best way to meet the goals that you will be evaluated on.
• User Persona and channels: Okay assuming all else is in order, you want to zero in on the action you want user A to take. For this, you want to first spend time studying A so you can figure out how best to be the cheese to their mac-aroni. Or the answer to their existential crisis.

PRO tip : The above may appear to be a rhetorical exercise but Marketing is a minefield today.. more and more marketeers are expected to deliver on tasks and goals that don’t feed into each other. So if you find yourself tasked with maintaining unique content on 3 new social profiles but measured on leads pipeline, you may want to rethink if social is the best content strategy for lead generation or would you be just better off, redesigning the landing page.

Step 3 : Everything else you do from this is point comes under execution

• Calendar: Please don’t fight me on this. You NEED a calendar like the desert needs the rain... Build flexibility to include trending news pieces, time bound updates as well last-minute requests from the sales team. It should NOT be set in stone but serve as a guideline to plan around. And when everything goes to hell and you have nothing left but this calendar, you WILL thank me!
• Budget & Promotion Strategy: Yes. You need to PAY people to read the Shakespearean prose you stayed up 5 nights to write. And also pay the powers that put it into their FB feed. You could try incentivizing the reader with discount coupons, freebies or an opportunity to model Ralph Lauren (Yes, that still works). Just know that your life’s best work WILL NOT organically rise to the top.
• Measurement: Fortunately (or unfortunately for some of us) digital channels allow accurate measurement of both progress and failure - You can really track more details than you will have time for in this lifetime. Track your biggest success metrics closely from the start of every new campaign. Benchmark performance against previous campaigns. Track better or worse and why? Fix it early before the damage spreads.

PRO Tip: How to make the content work harder: Try and recycle or repurpose performing content. Why re-invent the wheel? Quote people smarter than you or simply aggregate and repost things that you found valuable and interesting when you don’t have anything new to say. Make sure to cross link between related content.

And now… the Worst 5 mistakes that I made in my first year in content marketing.

1. I mistook content marketing for marketing. I tried to be smart about it but content written for the purpose of selling something reads and feels different from content that is written purely for relevance and engagement. Think about it.. how many times do you send out or receive an email with no agenda to sell stuff or click a link that sells stuff? Just put yourself in the shoes of your user and try and imagine your response to your marketing.

2. I spent too much time on my favorite part. Or rather the part that came easy to me. I would spend hours writing and rewriting a long format article or fine tuning a 10 word post without a commensurate effort in the content promotion strategy or action needed. This compromised the time that I had left for the other equally relevant parts of my strategy often dooming the project to failure.

3. I confused the metrics with the goal. With a review around a corner and a daily tracker submission, it is easy to lose sight of what your job is and focus in-stead of the numbers that will bring you garlands and glory.

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Whatever you do.. do not break the hard-earned trust of users.

4. Educate your internal customers: I guarantee that you will not find this point in any content strategy guide but it can make or break your content marketing career. More often than not, people can be unusually optimistic about new channels and expect results faster than you can deliver. If you do not take the time to manage expectation, you will fall prey to internal pressure and skip essential steps crucial to your success.

5. I took it too seriously : In the final analysis, content marketing is not new. Neither is having a content strategy. We cannot afford to put it on a pedestal simply because of it’s stated exalted goals. It is a means to an end and that end is still sales revenue.

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It’s a bit of a dilemma.. but hey.. isn’t everything ?

As an add on 6th point , I must confess that I was simply not ready to create much less deliver on a content strategy in my first year in content marketing. Simple as it may have been in retrospect, building a content strategy often requires accepting that you cannot do it alone. In most cases it actually depends on learning that can only come through making the kind of mistakes I made.

If you think you are ready to make your own, you could also read : 3 Steps to create a Killer Content marketing Strategy

The post A To Z Of Creating A Content Strategy appeared first on RELEVANCE.

While the video “Humans need not apply” really brings home the impact of technology on economy and employment, there has been a lot of debate around it. Academicians like Jerry Kaplan have argued that while increased productivity made possible through tools reduces the “ absolute number of people” required and therefore existing job prospects in the short term, the increased prosperity creates new jobs and opportunities for gainful employment in the times to come.

To put it simply - Expert opinion is that technology will ultimately supplement and NOT substitute human effort. We will continue to need less people working fewer hours to do the same job and while that will cause people to lose jobs for a while - That very leisure that technology creates also provides new job opportunities…. think amusement parks, flower shops, restaurants and yes, spaceships to Mars!!

Great. So it WILL work out in the end. I mean, somebody has to be around to buy all the cheap food and stuff these machines are going to help make so that does kind of intuitively make sense, doesn’t it?

But what about those of us caught in the middle?

But a time lag there will be and let’s take a moment to think of the people at the BRINK of the transition who are out-skilled by a machine in a job that they had prepared for their ENTIRE life. Think doctors, software engineers, classroom teachers, recruiters AND MARKETERS !!! And hey, it’s not just about the bricklayers, link builders and drivers anymore. Even if only 30% of your job tasks that can be automated, there will be a significant impact anyway as companies will need to hire fewer people to do the same job. 

30% less marketers anyone?

We study / practice for hours, take out loans to pay tuition at colleges and then rack up years of experience in one niche field so that our promotion or raises can outpace inflation. What happens if this entire learning curve becomes redundant at age 46?

Source : MIT Technology Review

And even if you do find out that the jobs in the social media copywriting field are booming, how many of us really want to or are even capable of starting again from the very bottom? Because that will the logical entry point for a new profession. right?

There is an alternative.

It’s called planning ahead. 

As we all know, the least differentiated and most routine jobs are impacted first  across industries and functions so lets’s start by looking at some of the skills necessary for our junior digital marketing executives at the very bottom of the food chain.

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Competitive analysis, on page analysis, keyword ranking data, directory submissions and report creation are the ones that come to mind.And  almost all of these can be accomplished by one person team armed with a subscription to SEMRush, Ahref, MOZ and a hundred others. BETTER and FASTER. So yes, this is definitely not something you want to continue trying to get better and /or faster at.

There are also several social media dashboards, posting tools as well as apps that once employed can increase productivity massively so take a good hard look at what you do and see what technology exists to do it better.

Advanced Research

In addition to the competitive and other user information that toolkits can pull out in a click, he likes of  Lucy by Equal3 are capable of processing massive amounts of data. Cost appears to be the only constraint and once made affordable, it seems likely that this task will be automated further.

Not looking too promising either!

Content Creation

Simple summaries, fact based reports and already being produced routinely by AI tools as are short copy for social media, headlines and email responders. Even advanced content is being generated by programs like Wordsmith, Articoolo and Quill.

I would suggest that you monitor and compare the quality and type of content being generated by these tools and even if you see a comfortable gap today, it is important to know that technology grows exponentially faster than your ability to improve  so evaluate your risk accordingly.

User In-sighting and journey mapping

It is a fact that software is better able to analyze user behavior, purchase trends and deep learning to create more granular user personas and journey cycles that it can then adjust in real time basis ongoing behavior. Humans simply DO NOT have the processing power to make the necessary cross connections between millions of users across multiple platforms and the resulting permutations of opportunities and their prioritization by ROI.

But this level of data and insights never existed in the past and the opportunity it presents is immense. Companies will need people to analyze this output, connect the dots and come up with strategic insights! Seems like to be a good place to be.

Lead Generation

Given the number of channels and sub -strategies ( SEO, SEM, EMAIL, Affiliates..etc.) at our disposal, cross leveraging and optimizing the many lead campaigns is often no more than a tangled web tripping up the best of us. I really think we NEED Martech to give us a helping hand here.

I truly believe that Marketing Automation tools like Hubspot, Adobe and Marketo will supplement more than substitute human skills.  Let’s be honest, aren’t we all struggling?

Campaign Management

Marketing automation tools from Adobe, Salesforce, Oracle and Hubspot allow you to deeply examine customer data, past trends to create user relevant personalized campaigns that you can measure progress for in real time. It is a fact that “ inside sales” has changed the way companies engage thanks to a ever strong pipeline of leads created by digital marketing.

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So again, I’m seeing more jobs than before! ( Maybe some at the cost of sales personnel though)

Ok.. enough about the possible losses..lets look at some of opportunities.

1. Data Analytics

Faster and better the tool, the more data it churns out and data can paralyze without due analysis. In the future we will continue to need people who can make sense of Big Data, draw actionable insights and even identify needs for future data requirements.

2. Content Strategy

Next, even if you have reams of data AND analysis which is both accurate and fast, it is fair to assume that you WILL have more time for creative and adaptive strategy - another skill that will be a default expectation from marketing professionals in times to come.

3. Martech Specialists

Given that all this human labour is being replaced by smart tools, marketing will continue to need and invest in people who can understand and leverage these MARTECH tools optimally to get traction on point 1 and 2.

4. Cross Functional Marketing

With most companies understanding the value of “ experience management” and “ human centric processes” the need for a marketing mindset will cut across functional silos. Companies will need market their brand for the best talent, investors in addition to prospective customers. We will need marketing capability across functions.

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Which are all great opportunities for us. Especially marketing jobs that involve social, emotional, technological and higher cognitive skills as against physical, manual and/ or only basic cognitive skills.

Or in other words, more the uncertainty / unpredictability of the role like emotional counseling or managing a team of people or visualizing a new way to colonize Mars, safer you are.

Repetitive, monotonous problems like posting the same message across multiple media, creating directory listings with the same information or checking keyword position or backlinks authority - all jobs that an algorithm can predict solutions to, will and should be automated, leaving us time to do the cooler stuff!!

Source : https://www.skynettoday.com/editorials/ai-automation-job-loss

To summarize, I believe that marketing as a role and function is going to become even more important and on the whole jobs will multiply many times over. But there are some niches within that set which look better positioned than the others. But given the break neck evolution that we are seeing of the role itself it’s rather pointless to get boxed in using current designations as a reference point for future opportunities. The role of SEO executive will still exist but it may require understanding and operating a tool more than manual effort.

Also, in a commoditized market of marketing technology tools cheap enough to be at everyone’s disposal, it will be ultimately be their application through  human creativity and skill that will be the biggest differentiator.

We should therefore focus on specific marketing skills that we want to build and the problems they can solve for better clarity.

In fact the biggest winners will be those than can quickly understand the fast changing landscape of user expectations, starter strategies to leverage digital technology within a given environment as well as educating internal and external customers on the need for using digital content across functions for better stakeholder engagement. 

The post Skills You Need If You Want To Keep Your Marketing Job In 2022 appeared first on RELEVANCE.

In this article let's examine the pros and cons that you may want to consider before handing off one of your most strategic marketing weapons to a seo agency.

Pros of outsourcing SEO

Focus

Entrusting a crucial part of your marketing to a specialist agency allows you to focus on the things that you do best. These could be sales, leadership or even other marketing channels. In trying to do everything at once by yourself, you may not reach critical mass in any. 

Good SEO will also need staying abreast of algorithm updates, advanced SERP features as well as constant monitoring of ranking progress which requires time and dedication, something only a specialist can provide.

Source : https://bathrin.wordpress.com/2016/06/21/google-algorithm-timeline-2016/ 

Efficiencies

Agencies have the benefit of volumes and therefore assembly line processes that allow them to research, identify and create content assets and link networks more efficiently. 

Running an online survey for one brand on one platform requires almost as much time as running it for several brands given that the time investment is mostly in understanding parameters and setting up the campaign. The same logic is true for creating social profiles or directory submissions. Agencies give you volumes that internal teams cannot. 

Navigating troubled waters

Partnering with agencies also provides access to multiple tool insights ( subsidized over several clients).  Experienced industry experts can provide advice that can really save the day when traffic nosedives for no apparent reason.

If only to hear “ It is completely normal for keyword ranks to fluctuate by x%”, it is great to have an expert on call when you are unsure of what is happening. Truer still when the discipline lacks any real body of data that you can refer to in times of crisis.

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Those were the pros..Now for the Cons of outsourcing SEO

Weak cross channel integration / leverages

SEO, SMO, SEM, Email marketing, Lead generation, Inside sales…etc. are NOT watertight silos that function independent of each other. They need a common strategy and feed off each other’s wins and failures. In a fast changing ecosystem where agility is paramount, it can be suicidal to delay inputs from or worse cut off the SEO feed entirely.

Again, some risks can be mitigated by continuing to monitor search analytics or frequent updates and meetings but the advantages of having all digital teams in one workspace, sharing inputs and planning campaigns together is invaluable to the success of a campaign. 

Source : https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/seo 

Weaker domain/customer insights

The foundation stone of any successful SEO program is based on target search strings which comes from a deep understanding of the customer segments. External consultants, however senior do not live and breathe a brand like an employee. They may lack the intuitive insights available to an internal team. 

You could circumvent this risk by spending time and effort in the quality of your brief and transactions but it’s never the same. An external agency may know SEO better but will never understand the brand better than an employee. The tradeoff is real! 

Agency bias in progress updates

Or what I like to call the “ The agency dilemma”. Agencies work on a retainer. This means that they NEED to show progress month on month regardless of the very real constraints posed by the algorithmic updates, competitive spends, last minute keyword modifications or delayed approvals. At the very least, they have to package and sell the information as a win. This often translates to short term hacks, misinformation and in cases, damage to long term SEO prospects.

There is no real workaround to this except being conscious and aware of the nature of the partnership and the underlying risks. There is no motivation for an agency to hurt a brand unless it is to protect one’s own. Be cognizant of that reality and tread accordingly. 

So while you can outsource your security, your payrolls and definitely your catering, agencies are not always the best solution for achieving SEO success.

Even as evaluate the factors in your unique scenario, I would suggest the below regardless of your final choice.

1. Invest in a marketing toolkit

SEMrush, MOZ, Ahref and even the humble Google Analytics provide insights and bubble up issues keeping you abreast of progress on key success metrics. In addition you can pull out keywords rankings , competitive performance as well as stay aware of any major fluctuations in traffic performance. This gives you first hand access to your brand performance.

2. An owner for your SEO in-house

Till the point you decide to outsource this person can manage basic optimization, escalate issues as well as run and analyze reports from the tool that you have invested in. Once you do bring in an agency, this same person can liase with them to provide inputs as well as ensure that efforts are integrated across channels. There is no reason why the same person cannot be responsible for social or PPC given the scope of activities planned.

3. Common marketing goals

SEO is just one pointy tool in the box to help you achieve traffic, conversions or brand visibility. Ensure that all teams - in-house or outsourced are aware and understand your bigger marketing goals. These could be the event that you have to fill seats for or the PR needed for the CEO’s visit. This ensures that all efforts are cross leveraged and amplified for maximum efficiency.

We would love to hear your experience with “ To outsource or not” in the comments below.

The post Are You Confusing Your Requirement For A $99 Tool With A $999 SEO Agency? appeared first on RELEVANCE.

And while there are clear differences and similarities between each, the lines are often blurred, complicated by interpretations.

Let’s examine these further.

WHAT WE ALL AGREE ON

All three terms seek to leverage digital innovation and other technological advancements to meet business goals.

These include creating better interfaces, reducing costs and generally better efficiencies and human experiences all around!!

But to what degree and to what intent?

The key difference between the 3 terms lies in their scope or ambition.

• The most ambitious is Digital Transformation which seeks to challenge the complete business model re-imagining the product / service, the associated experiences and supporting processes from scratch. It has far reaching, long term consequences and is critical from the perspective of an organization’s ability to survive amongst digital natives that are re-thinking your business from the ground up.

Some of the best examples of this ongoing transformation  ( also called  disruption given the extent of the upheaval caused) can be very well explained by what is now a very popular slide by Sandy Carter (@sandy_carter)

• Next is Digital Strategy which while similar in intent is far narrower in scope concentrating its focus on redesigning one particular user segment ( employees, customers, investors) or business function ( HR, Marketing, Finance). These involve comparatively shorter term objectives for less ambitious goals.

I couldn’t find a great slide to sum up some of the most groundbreaking digital strategies so I’m just going to deep dive into one case study to clarify the concept. The “ largest pizza company in the world” Dominos based on global retail sales figures from Worry Free Labs.

Recognizing that the internet would be critical to their business as far back as 2008, Dominos was the first to introduce digital ordering which has since then developed further features like real time tracking & easy order profiles across a host of devices & platforms enhancing the complete order experience.  Also on the back of their social media crisis, they launched the Pizza Turnaround campaign which further won them goodwill and loyalty.

Now while they are investing in upgrading their delivery and other processes via technology, these early wins are on account of their focusing on “ customers” as a specific target segment.

There is no earth shattering reinvention of the pizza as a product or the delivery experience…it’s simply been improved using digital technology making this a great example of Digital Strategy.

• Last on our list is Digital Marketing which is just one type of digital strategy that focuses on using digital technology to attract, engage and convert customers online. It is tactical and operational in nature.

Instead of using a different example to explain Digital Marketing, let’s just go back to Dominos. While the online ordering or tracking cannot technically fall into “ digital marketing”, one of the strategies used was the use of social media to share the “Pizza Turnaround” campaign which is a great example of digital marketing.

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Then why do we confuse them?

To answer this we have to embrace the fact that most companies dabble with digital strategy rather than executive a full on digital transformation. This could be because marketing enables leveraging the biggest customer touchpoint not to mention a direct revenue impact!

The confusion between digital strategy and digital marketing  may also be due to the fact that companies are increasingly offering co-adjacent digital strategies like payment gateways or chat support to install an item already purchased. Is installing software the job of marketing or sales? Or IT.

It’s hard to say.

If you see marketing and service as the stage area that customers can see and supporting functions like IT or HR as the back stage processes that help execute the performance, it becomes obvious that the goals are the same. And ultimately you need the same amount of transformation in your backstage as you want seen on-stage.

But not only are the lines between product, service and marketing increasingly blurred, companies logically start by wanting to digitalize all customer facing transactions of which marketing is a big part. But it isn’t the only one.

Let me share some popular infographics that (with some variation) explain these points really well.

(I love people who can just distill all the wisdom and wordy ideation into a few circles and boxes..they really do have exceptional clarity)

Created by Alex Mari, an AI in Marketing Researcher at University of Zurich, the image below is the easiest way to understand the difference between the 3 terms under discussion. But do note that instead of going with 3 concentric circles, he has added some new dimensions which further comment on the difference and similarities between the 3.

The next  image is courtesy Richard Morecroft who is a Senior Partner, Strategy and Leadership at Digital Works Group. This to my mind helps understand the progression of digital that is common to most organizations.

This clearly shows how marketing is a common starter strategy for organizations looking to embrace digital. It is what we call the proverbial “ low hanging fruit”.

This  next infographic from Compact demystifies the topic further shedding new light on why digital marketing is a minefield today, confused routinely with digital transformation.

What I understood from this is that while digital marketing is about “ attracting’ customers, starter digital strategies are “ customer focused” which means that they need to reinvent the complete product / service experience from consideration to post purchase of which marketing is just one part. This is termed “ Digital customer engagement” and while routinely confused with “ digital marketing” includes components like delivery, service and payment among others that have traditionally not been within the purview of marketing. A throwback to one of the points we discussed above.

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The Evolution of Marketing

Now, let's take a step back here. Business functions were designed and also defined basis the logical cross leverages and goals within each. But digital channels ( and all technology) cuts across functions - they are as relevant to HR “marketing” a position to get the best talent as they are to IT “ marketing” a new platform for better information flow.

And we have to ask if it still makes sense to have a sales team, a marketing team and a recruiting team use LinkedIn individually or do we need a social media expert projecting a more cohesive brand message by managing the sales, HR and recruiting requirements for LinkedIn.

I don’t know the answer but if usage is any indicator, the lines between product, marketing, sales and service are no longer straightforward. The ultimate goal appears to be  “ experience management” via the best in class solutions available and the channels WILL overlap given the complexity of fast colliding journey cycles.

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The changing scope ( and role ) of marketing is explained beautifully in this infographic from Chief Martec.

Truth is that in the digital era, the expectations from “ digital content” go beyond just marketing. The aesthetic design of the website that indicates quality, the 360 degree product angles that facilitate exploration, the 10  field information form required to purchase as well as the chat support to help install… These are all part of the consumer journey cycle or user experience and marketing is currently the default owner!

I came across a few more terms while doing research that I wanted to include since semantics is what led us here.

• Linear Digital Transformation : This appears to be another name for digital strategy in that the “ transformation” it causes is mostly linear or standard.
• Exponential Digital Transformation : The use of the word “exponential” indicates that the transformation is huge and this is probably what most people mean when they use the term digital transformation.
• Digital Innovation : This could be applied to both strategy and transformation but seems to lend itself better to Digital Transformation as that is where organizations innovate more.

Please do share your comments and any other words in circulation that relate to Digital Transformation, Digital Strategy and yes, Digital marketing.

The post Still Confusing Digital Transformation with Digital Marketing? appeared first on RELEVANCE.

The Martech Landscape is spread out over 6 categories (Ads& Promotions, Content & Experience, Social & Relationships, Commerce & Sales, Data & Management) and 70 subcategories across platforms and processes designed to give you the unmatched power and capabilities of technology.

To save you precious time. To empower you with insights. To tell you what’s working or not working and why… all crucial in what is an increasingly complex marketplace with fickle customers whose last great experience is their benchmark for the next.

It’s no surprise then that this trend continues to ride an ambitiously upwards curve fueled by digital media proliferation, AI, machine learning and a host of other technological innovations.

Seems like the Golden Age of Marketing, right? It definitely does on the surface as you skim through these amazing facts and figures.

But dig a little deeper and it’s closer to the adolescence of marketing as Tom Fishburne puts it!

Despite the promises of this veritable information “nirvana”, marketers  everywhere continue to be frustrated, perplexed, and ultimately overwhelmed by this valuable but mismanaged bounty. They are either confused by the sheer volume of technologies in play or simply unable to reconcile the disparate data streams that are often hard to integrate.

As per a widely quoted study (Ref below) 59% users claim inability to fully utilize what they have while 91% claim that they do not have either the tools that they need or the ability to utilize them effectively.

Not so pretty anymore, right?

And even if one were to believe the 9% who claim to “have all the tools we need and fully utilize what we have”, our very understanding of the word “utilization” may be completely flawed. What is utilization ultimately and is it really the metric that we should be measuring to understand Martech Deployment?

Scott Brinker gives a rather interesting perspective in his article Martech stack utilization is a misguided metric.

He explains it rather brilliantly with a venn diagram as reproduced below.

The 3 circles represent features (of the tool) available, skills (to deploy them) and value (business returns achieved).

He says that “ In a perfect world, these circles would overlap entirely. In practice, they don’t”.

So as he explains, the best case scenario for efficient utilization would be to invest in only those x features, for which we have ready capabilities as well as existing requirements in order to see commensurate value in real time. The Bigger the overlap, the bigger the value that we see from Martech.

Alas, that is almost never the case. For their own internal efficiencies vendors have to create mostly standardized, one-size-fits all tools which only offer upgrades as the customization options. Ever met a vendor who gave you a price off for NOT using 4 features? Not yet.

Therefore “utilization” is less a commentary on the effectiveness of MARTECH and more representative of market dynamics.

Therefore, instead of thinking in terms of the utilization of any given tool (in terms of features used vs features available) the more relevant metric to evaluate them would simply be the overall ROI achieved post installation.

As long as that is positive, it makes sense. If not, it is time to reconsider.

Scott Brinker goes on to posit the Martec’s law where he shows that organizational change lags behind technological changes thereby creating an expectation or inefficiency gap.

And It appears that our ability to mine data has grown exponentially faster than our ability to leverage that data for actionable insights.

A fascinating concept, it suggests a more realistic adoption of technology regardless of the technological gastronomy on offer. We need to consume a diet that we can digest and use effectively - be it food or technology.

So as counter intuitive as it may seem at first glance, more tools and more data has not necessarily made us better marketers... at least not as a general rule.

One could argue however that we are stumped by the complexity of our own technology simply because we don’t spend enough time understanding or optimizing our existing marketing stack. Pressured with deadlines, short on resources, we chase every new shiny object in the hope that it will do what the previous x shiny objects were unable to do... Do our marketing for us!

So in theory, if we were to take the time to understand our own business requirements as well as take the time to evaluate existing systems, we may be able to better integrate and leverage newer technology faster. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

But for the sake of argument let’s also take a look at the Gartner’s Digital Marketing Transition Map as below that maps operational areas, applications, technologies, and vendors — and how they relate.

Designed to help navigate the rather complicated marketing ecosystem, this map provides a bird’s eye view of a marketer’s task in 2019

And to quote Scott Brinker again (hey.. I can’t help it... I know what I know because I do such a good job of reading everything he writes!)

“Looking at this map, you cannot help but be awestruck by the breadth and depth of digital marketing. I mean, holy cats, I work in this space for a living and write this blog as my hobby — I know, I don’t get out much — and I don’t even know some of these stations. Many of them I have only a passing familiarity with”.

Now imagine being a marketer tasked with first prioritizing and then optimizing these many tracks, channels, and sub strategies to build a cohesive strategy and campaign aligned to one’s business goals.

There is simply no technology that I know of that can seamlessly integrate and feed off the individual data requirements and spit them out in a clean dashboard. It requires extraction of insights from multiple tools only to be held hostage by contradictory outcomes.

And the pain doesn’t stop there. If you didn’t notice the 7040 vendors on the first page, let me bring them up again. Every day of his life, a marketer remains answerable for the new technology or tool they chose NOT to deploy in favor of the one they did.

Is it any wonder then that the biggest challenges for vendors are surmounting team resistance & apprehensions rather than outperforming competitive pitches?

The spending breakdown below gives us some further idea of why this might be. Garner’s CMO Spend Survey 2017-2018 reveals a 9% YOY increase in Martech mostly at the expense of sidelining human talent or labor, which fell from 27 to 24 per cent.

When all is said and done, it’s important to understand that digital marketing and transformation have together created a very confusing and fragmented landscape of technologies and providers. Piecemeal purchases have further compounded the problem by creating silos that do not relate to each other or at the very least need a lot of additional technological and manual support to do so.

The struggle is real.

As per the above study from Clickz, data complexity is one of the foremost challengers for marketers. While solutions include acquiring the tools and talent necessary for better analysis, there is still a big shortage of trained data analytic professionals.

But Hey - Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater

When all is said and done, it’s important to understand that however daunting, technology is simply an enabler and a logical response to the need for faster automation in an increasingly agile marketplace. Without it, you simply cannot compete. With it, you’re still in the game.

We desperately need to find a way to optimize our Martech and data quality so that it provides us with the agility and momentum that we so desperately need.

One place to start is to accept poor choices made in the past, before unraveling decades of legacy software, outdated skill sets and mismatched expectations. This exercise will be the logical starting point of understanding what the business of today really needs, what you have (and can leverage) and finally, what you need.

Final words..… on the feeling of missing out

The cost of onboarding a new tool is not just the upfront set up, training and product cost but also the opportunity cost of NOT having bought something else… something better that your competitors may be deploying right about now as you ruminate on the MARTECH landscape.

Looking back at the 7040 tool infographic, once the initial feeling of surprise settles down, what we have is a feeling of worry... of having missed out on a better solution or hack.

And that my friends is the crux of the MARTECH problem.

The post Is Martech Secretly Killing Your Marketing? appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Source: https://www.webconfs.com/seo-tutorial/seo-and-keywords.php

What are keywords?

Keywords are search strings users are likely to type when they are searching for your service / product category. Not only are they indicative of customer intent (exploration vs.purchase), they also shed light on the possible customer segments a brand has the potential to attract . Sugar-free bran muffins vs. Gooey chocolate chip cake indicate 2 very distinct consumer categories.

It is important to understand that Google reads the “intent” of the search string types against an exact word match. So synonyms, phrases describing and approximating the content are also deemed as relevant and included by default. 

Why is keyword strategy relevant outside SEO?

Today a customer interacts with a brand through a complex maze of  interconnected journey cycles across both online and offline platforms. Brands need to deliver a consistent and cohesive brand experience across touch points  for which we need a common content and therefore keyword strategy. Think about it… if 62% of your search traffic comes from “ 10 minute recipes for healthy school snacks”, you want to try and leverage that  learning in your emails or social posts as well.

It’s smart AND it’s efficient

And frankly, it’s got only 2 key steps.

1. Identify & protect all performing keywords

Include them in all communication. Cross link between them. Be creative in finding similar phrases and words that mean the same thing. Dig deep into what each phrase could also mean or be interpreted as.

2. Identify and prioritize keywords with potential to perform

Most people cannot realistically rank for “Best cheeseburger or best marketer” and even if they did, 99% of the traffic generated by such a keyword would be a waste. Why, you ask? Read on.

What are performing keywords?

Performing keywords are keywords that your website is already ranking on search engines for ( Usually rank between 1-15 for different permutations) and therefore keywords that are bringing you your existing customers and are the current bread and butter of your business. A proven customer base and your lifeline.

How do I find performing keywords? 

To get this list, I suggest opting for almost any SEO toolkit from Ahrefs, MOZ, SEMrush, etc. that gives you a complete list along with traffic (absolute and percentage of whole) for your own and any other website/competition that you would like to find this information for. Start with your own and compare with close competition.

5 KEY STEPS TO KEYWORD RESEARCH

Step 1: Aggregation of the obvious choices

1. Competitive keywords: Pick out what is relevant to you from the list you pulled out earlier from your toolkit.
2. Brand Led: Include brand, sub brands, taglines, or commonly used phrases or combination of words to describe a service.
3. Category Descriptors: So if this is a restaurant then these would be food, desserts, main course, menu, appetizers…etc.
4. Service/Product Descriptors: Taking the same restaurant example, these would be pasta, pizza, cold coffee, Mediterranean food, Italian food, anything and everything that could describe what you do.
5. Landing page mapping: Go back and review every single one of your goal/conversion pages and make sure that you have keyword(s) that correspond to them. 

Step 2: Include ideas for new opportunities

Keywords or search strings are used by customers are every step of their journey cycle - be it exploration of a related service or comparison of prices between shortlisted services and finally for problem resolution / support once a purchase has been made. Ideally a brand should be visible at every single step of this cycle though keywords closest to the purchase naturally have the highest possibility of conversion.

I would recommend inviting your complete team including senior management in a room and identifying the highest high value touch points and the underlying customer intent /segments (and the search strings / keywords that best map into them). You can then run these ideas through a tool like Adwords planner or even any of the toolkits that you have subscribed to like SEMrush, Moz, Ahrefs and feed in the combinations aggregated above. You will get many more ideas along with their traffic, competition and other valuable details.

Step 3 : Make the trade offs

You cannot rank for every single keyword that you want. If a page is strong for a certain keyword, it may not be as strong for another. Attempting to be relevant to every viable customer segment ( and therefore rank for every possible keyword) is one of the most common mistakes marketers make.

To make the final selection consider the following.

1. Current rank: If the keyword is between pages 2-3, then there is a good chance that you can bring it up in the next few months with some effort. These are low hanging fruit and need immediate focus and words that you are already a good match for.

2. Relevancy: Apply filters of expected ROI (some services are more profitable), urgency (an event or launch in a few months) or simply strategic importance (CEO’s pet project) to prune down the list further.

3. User intent: You want to make sure there is enough specificity to ensure desirable intent against a generic information search. “Cheapest flights” is far more likely to convert as compared to “best destinations in June”. And it is also why “best cheese burger” is not a really good keyword from a conversion perspective. 

Step 4 : Track the finalists

It’s important to understand that most people review SEO performance in terms of organic traffic growth and keyword rank performance so keeping that in mind I suggest the creation of 3 separate lists.

Immediate Wins ( 3-6 months) These are keywords for which you already have a reasonably high position and which are likely to move up in a short period of time. It is important to understand that progress on these will automatically give a boost to others which are not on this list as well. Plus it will give you a meaningful inflection in traffic which is good for morale (and increased budgets if needed for more creative activities).

Strategic focus( 6-12 months) These are keywords that you may not be ranking for at this time (due to lack of sufficient content or sub optimal tagging or focus) but are closely aligned to the core business and therefore words you think you deserve to rank for. In making a separate list with a different timeline, you manage expectations better.

Aspirational (12 or more months)  These are typically keywords that while relevant, are TOO generic or highly competitive. These require substantially greater effort and are best parked while you build smaller wins on the ones which are more achievable. Having these in a list allows you yo use them when possible for content without necessarily needing to show ranking progress on them as part of your SEO project.

Final Step 5: Landing page content

Once you have found the keywords that you want to rank (better) for, the next step is to ensure that you have a keyword-relevant, goal aligned page to bring home the visitors to.

It’s important to understand that Google will factor session time/bounce from the page to decide your rank for that keyword the next time it shows up. So it is NOT enough to bring a person to a page through keyword stuffing or some other SEO hack, you need to be able to KEEP the visitor on the page long enough to signal relevance and protect the rank you have worked so hard to achieve.  Side benefit: this relevance will also feed into your quality score and boost PPC efforts.

Designing a great landing page is somewhat outside the scope of this article but you should check out Rand Fishkin’s video on “Should My Landing Page Be SEO-Focused, Conversion-Focused, or Both? - Whiteboard Friday”. It’s a great resource to clarify your concepts.

Lastly these are some tips that you may want to keep in mind as part of your SEO and content strategy.

1. Even if you manage to hit the first rank for any keyword, the decision to click will depend on the meta tags and descriptions that describe your page and service. To my mind, these are even more important than the actual landing page copy as they are the gateway to the website.

2. Every keyword on your list should have a landing page that addresses the query in the best manner possible. Take a moment to analyze pages ranking above yours to see how their content is better or different. It is not necessary to use the keywords is a particular density or order. Your goal should be to genuinely try and be the best possible answer or solution to the keywords you want to rank for.

3. Finally, remember to maintain your keyword list as a reference document for all content creation, whether that’s emailers, blogs, social posts, or even speeches that will ultimately help amplify your brand authority for those keywords. You don’t need to include MISSPELT words, grammatically INCORRECT phrases and IlLOGICAL constructions. Search algorithms search for content on the basis of perceived “user intent” as opposed to an exact keyword match.

( Note : This does NOT apply to brand / proper noun related misspellings )

I hope that this guide helps you get started on researching identifying the right keywords for your business. You can also read our TOP 10 ADVANCED SERP FEATURES on more insights on ranking.

The post Step by Step Guide to Keyword Research appeared first on RELEVANCE.

We were required to research not just their SEO performance but their complete communication approach which included content, PR, social media, and advertising. What wasn’t working so well?? What could we add to our own arsenal? Or in short, what were the digital opportunities that we could leverage given our own strengths and weaknesses?

Our brief was two part. First we needed to do a complete analysis of the existing competitive landscape and basis for our findings. We needed to draw up data driven strategies that would help us outperform the competition.

We considered only 2 other tools before we finalized with SEMrush. These were MOZ and Ahref and while they are both really strong tools in their own right, we felt that SEMrush was better given our very specific goals.

Getting started: The Bird’s Eye View

We had experimented in the past rather successfully with SEMrush’s free trial option so we had some idea of the tool features and leverage points. Our first stop was the domain overview and the traffic analytics which allowed us a bird’s eye view to identify areas that merit further/in-depth exploration.

While both traffic analytics and domain overview tools seem to provide a snapshot of a website, they have different data sources and should be used for different goals. Domain Analytics makes estimations based solely on keyword position, so the traffic shown is only an estimation of what ranking basis the website could get. It does not reflect non-search traffic like social, referral, or direct traffic and is therefore not as accurate a measure of traffic as is Traffic Analytics which is based on clickstream data.

If this sounds confusing just have a look at the dashboards below and see what data you can expect to get in each.

Traffic Analytics

Traffic analytics is ideal for benchmarking your own traffic performance. Broken down by sources/location/device as well as all the other data cuts you would expect to see on the Google Analytics screen for your own website.

Domain Analytics

Domain Analytics on the other hand is best suited for comparing search performance and helps you create a more complete picture of the competitive backlinks, display ads, and organic and paid keywords.

Next steps: getting more specific

A small heads-up, the tool can be very overwhelming given the amount of data, sub filters, and cuts that it can show you. I would suggest you spend some time on the big picture presented by the two tools above to get a better idea of what areas you want to drill into further and in what priority.

For example, you may see that the bulk of traffic is organic, in which case you may want to know more about backlinks and performing keywords. On the other hand, it could be paid in which case you may want to pursue a completely different set of metrics.

There are basically 4 heads under which you can analyze the competition.  Each then has several tools under them depending on what information adds up to (what I believe is) a very exhaustive view of what your competition is up to. Each section has provided FAQs and user manuals that can give you a lot of detail on the how and why.

1. SEO
2. Advertising
3. Content and PR
4. Social

Now that you have an overview of where they fit in the grand scheme of things, let me explain each of these superpowers in some detail. I’m going to try not  into too many details as these are pretty powerful tools and it can get pretty tedious if you try and do everything at once.

A. SEO

A.1. Organic Research

This is great for understanding the keywords that the competition is ranking for, the traffic they are sending their way, as well as to identify new competition that you may not have known even existed. You can also map changes in keyword rankings over time -  wins and losses that could be indicative of current weak spots or recent campaigns.

A.2. Keyword Gap (Available for both organic and paid competitors)

This is a keyword focused feature that allows you to compare performance for money keywords across both paid and organic competitors. Placed side by side, you can clearly see competitive strongholds and devise specific strategies to improve.

A.3. Backlink Analytics

Given that both the quantity and quality of backlinks are still such an important factor in Google’s ranking algorithm, it makes sense to track and monitor one’s own, as well as competitive links. You can map performance of pages against their backlinks as well as identify toxic links that may be hurting you.

A.4. Backlink Gap

Similar in concept to keyword gap, this allows you to compare your backlink profile with up to 5 competitors side by side, letting you visualize opportunities in a single frame.

B. Advertising

B.1. Advertising Research

For categories with high amounts of money spent this can be an incredibly powerful tool to unearth several insights that would be hard to find otherwise. You can analyze keywords by cost-per-click, competitive density as well as actual ad copies going back to 2012.

B.2. Display & PLA ( Product Listing Ads) Research

As the name suggests, this section unveils your competition’s display network and shopping campaign strategy in 46 countries. Not only are ads a great fodder for developing your own campaigns and pricing, you also get valuable intel on the keywords that triggered them.

C. Content and PR

C.1. Brand Monitoring

Not only does this track online mentions of the brand that you specify (much like Google alerts), it gives you a lot of detail that makes the insight more actionable. You can see details like total mentions, positive mentions, mentions with backlink, specific domains giving you love, and so much more for the specified campaign and date range.

C.2. Topic Research

Frankly this is a great tool to find websites that cover the same topics as you or get an in-depth idea of competitive content. You can also generate ideas, headlines, questions, and a neatly laid out mind map to help you come up with your own content ideas.

C.3. Post Tracking

This feature is useful to track the success (or failure) of your own and your competitor’s third-party content efforts. You can see the keywords that it’s ranking for, shares, backlinks, referral traffic, and estimated reach of individual content assets within any campaign.

D. Social

D.1. Social Media Tracker

Last, but not least, the SEMrush competitive toolkit lets you monitor and track performing content for your competitors across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

In summary, the real power of an SEO toolkit  does not lie solely in its ability to give us hard metrics against our own performance, but the ability to give us metrics for the complete brand ecosystem. Focusing only on one’s own progress is taking a very uni-dimensional view that misses out on the complete picture.

You may also want to view the video below for additional information.

You can opt for a 7 day free trial today and get going. We look forward to hearing about your experience with competitive analysis tools or any questions that you may have in the comments below.

The post Get A Ringside View To Competitive Strategies With Your Semrush Marketing Toolkit appeared first on RELEVANCE.

After all, same is lame. We are psychologically conditioned to discuss what is different and ignore the average. A lot more than 19% of purchases are influenced by word of mouth, even if consumers don’t fully realize or recognize it (the same way that people unwittingly hum Katy Perry songs in the shower).

The timing of this book could not have been better. Every brand is trying to use content to engage and influence. “Talk Triggers” strikes a fatal blow to the value of store bought influence.

Despite knowing the inherent drawbacks of branded content vs. honest word of mouth, companies continue to pour millions of dollars into content that is almost never taken at face value. Why is that?  Because buying media is neat and manageable. Trying to get people to say what you want is exactly the opposite:

Unwieldy and fraught with risk.

The book’s biggest strength lies in its ability to dissect and address the biggest constraints of triggering “talk” even it puts forth a framework to overcome and work around them.

But part of the problem is that “being different” is often thought to require no care or feeding. Most companies are content to let word of mouth just happen, expecting that randomly generated referrals will occur with sufficient volume and amplitude to sustain them. The businesses profiled in “Talk Triggers” take the exact opposite approach. They engage in word of mouth with intention. They have a plan and a purpose.

The objective of a talk trigger is for that communication to be more consistent and compelling than it would be organically. Talk triggers make word of mouth powerful and purposeful instead of circumstantial and uncertain.

Now despite our intuitive understanding of the value of sparkling honest conversations, as marketers, we are driven by a need to deliver clear and measurable results - preferably within the quarter! The book recognizes that in its stated vision for providing structure and scaffolding to give a clear, linear, understandable, and achievable system for what otherwise happens only by accident. With that context in mind, the book has both a theory and a practical side like every good course. It also takes the time to clarify overlapping and related concepts, such as social media marketing. The key difference as explained in the book is in our deeper motivations which skew towards “social signaling” as against honesty in larger groups, which makes social media analysis a critical but small part of the bigger story.

On social media, everyone’s like is curated, like a museum of the mundane. Offline, we still feel capable of showing our real selves and our real feelings about brands and experiences. It says something about me when I post something on social media.

Which would then beg the question as regards the statistical value and potential ROI of these conversations, even if there was a way to measure it. But even as it offers actionable frameworks, at its very heart, the book is more about illuminating patterns in an otherwise crooked path as against offering a 5 point one size fits all checklist. Like all good books, I might add.

The book goes on to clarify the four essential qualifications for a talk trigger using case facts and examples.

I cannot stress enough that while at first glance the concepts appear intuitive; this is NOT an exercise in the mundane. Like, within “be remarkable,” the book drives home the potential risk of losing out on one segment in trying to be special to another. Sometimes a differentiator is like a neck tattoo, it definitely stands out, but it’s not universally appreciated. A conundrum we are all too familiar with… as companies AND as people.

And yet we continue to prefer the risk of being ordinary to everybody. Instead, we can face the risk of being more desirable to a smaller set.

Things that take time to grow inherently invite skeptics. It is not unlike making Thanksgiving dinner using ingredients you planted during the summer. Slowly and carefully throughout the months,  you picked out weeds and warded off pests intent on their own premature feast until the time was just right to fetch the fruits from the trees and the vegetables from their vines. It is slow and methodical, but it leaves a lasting impression.

The book draws upon examples that strike a chord even as they present what is a contrarian point of view. From not wanting to be the “cheapskate dad who buys one large drink for the whole family to share” or trying to find the “habitable Goldilocks zone where the temperature is just right,” the book is an easy and enjoyable read till the last page. It is also peppered with some really great quotes from others, “It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.” Also, at the end of each of the four sections, the reader is invited to reach out and share what they are thinking or ask any questions that they may have at that point, a few lines that provide a sense of intimacy and guidance.

The problem with surprise and delight is that it’s a surprise. It happens one time, to one person, in one scenario. That’s not an operational choice that creates conversation day after day after day. A talk trigger should be offered to EVERY customer, EVERY time. The impact of that differentiator is far greater in total because it is achievable by us all.

Before I end, I am going to simply use a line that Ted Wright used in the foreword that I think sums up my feelings on the book. “What we need is someone who can break down the true word-of-mouth process into its basic components and explain it in terms that everyone can grasp.”

The book does that, and much more. In addition to providing useful triggers for great ideas, real life examples, and a ready framework to develop your own ‘Talk Trigger’, readers are also invited to join an exclusive online community to develop their understanding of the subject further.

About the authors

Jay Baer

Jay Baer, CSP, CPAE, has spent 25 years in digital marketing and customer experience, consulting for more than 700 companies, including 34 of the FORTUNE 500. His current firm – Convince & Convert – provides word of mouth, digital marketing, and customer experience advice and counsel to some of the world’s most important brands.

In addition to his latest book, Talk Triggers, Jay has also authored Hug Your Haters and Youtility. Jay’s Convince & Convert blog was named the world’s #1 content marketing blog by the Content Marketing Institute, and is visited by more than 250,000 marketers each month. Jay also hosts and produces the Social Pros podcast, which is downloaded 65,000 times monthly and was named 2015’s best marketing podcast by the Content Marketing Awards.

Befitting his roots in Arizona, Jay is a tequila collector. He maintains his allegiance to the teams of his alma mater, the University of Arizona. Jay lives in the idyllic college town of Bloomington, Indiana, with his wife and children. Oftentimes, he travels from Indianapolis to speaking opportunities worldwide.

Daniel Lemin

Daniel is a startup co-founder, trusted advisor, and bestselling author on reputation management, digital marketing, and social media customer service. As an early member of Google’s global communications team, Daniel led the product launch in North America and Asia Pacific. Additionally, he edited the Google Zeitgeist Weekly Research Report featured in over 40 markets worldwide.

He is the CMO and Co-founder of Selectivor, a food intelligence startup that helps people stay healthy through personalized eating.

Daniel regularly provides expert commentary on TV and in high-profile publications. He speaks and leads workshops across the nation. He writes for the world’s most popular content-marketing blog, which appears on the Convince & Convert website. In 2015, he released his first book, Manipurated.

A native of Ohio, Daniel earned his MA in communications and leadership from Gonzaga University. He lives in Los Angeles with his cocker spaniel, Truman, by his side. Daniel often enjoys the simple joys of gin martinis, jazz, and eating his way around the world; he’ll try nearly anything as long as it doesn’t bite back.

The post Advertising Is a Tax Paid By Unremarkable Businesses appeared first on RELEVANCE.

He started his career as a naval aviator, and has an MBA from Harvard, a Master of Liberal Arts from St. John’s College and a bachelor’s degree from the U.S. Naval Academy. He's on the board of Guidant Financial in Seattle and an adviser to RallyPoint. He also serves on the advisory board for Parature Inc, Pathwise Leadership & Advising,

You mentioned in a blog post that “Percolate is in an entirely new category, which we’re still in the process of defining." Could you elaborate more on what you mean by that? How is Percolate different from other content marketing platforms ( CMPs)? What's its unique superpower if we may ask?

As the leader in the CMP space, we strive to create systems that transform how marketing organizations work. However, the Content Marketing “Category” is actually relatively new. For example, Gartner just released its first Magic Quadrant in Spring of 2018. More importantly, when we talk to marketers today, many don’t say explicitly that they are looking for a content marketing platform. Instead they describe a set of problems that we would say are solved by a CMP.  This is why we spent so much time when I first started in January 2018 writing an ebook about the Content Bottleneck. We wanted to help marketers better understand and articulate the problem that they all face — realizing the promise of personalization.

I have been in this business for nearly 20 years and every marketer I talk to wants to create more personalized experiences for their customers and prospects. At the same time, 90% of them say they are UNHAPPY with their ability to deliver on this promise. Since the founding of Percolate in 2011, the company has been focused on building a platform to help brands create content at scale. What we have seen is that many of the largest enterprises recognize a CMP can be an essential system for marketing operations. As a result, we are setting a new standard for CMPs to transform the way customers plan and execute their marketing in 2018 and beyond. We’re the only CMP purpose-build to help contributors, management and executives alike navigate high-complexity and high-volume initiatives across the enterprise. 

“I fundamentally think that the marketing funnel is broken – it’s not that you jump in at the top, go all the way to the bottom, and buy. You have this ‘web touch’ of experiences,” Given the increasing complexity of creating performing content (consistently) and the marketers dependence on tools like Percolate to do so, do you think the divide between bigger and smaller brands is set to get larger?

I think the challenges are less about being an SMB versus an ENT Brand and more about how they are going to market — whether they are B2B, B2C, B2B2C, or direct to consumer. For example, take a look at some of the recent phenomenal successes of direct to consumer brands, such as: Harry’s, Dollar Shaving club, Warby Parker, Glossier, Casper, Bonobos and BarkBox. All these companies started out small and are now challenging well established B2C brands (e.g., Gillette). So how did they all achieve immense successful growth? They did the following three things especially well:

1. Creating a great digital-first experience (UI)

2. Making seamless e-commerce transaction tied to annuity revenue (subscription) versus transaction

3. Using content to create a narrative and tell stories.

So while a SMB may not be ready for an ENT platform such as Percolate, they still need to think differently about how they build and deploy content to support a unique narrative. 

In the context of the buzz around these terms, do you see the real value of "Content marketing" and "Storytelling" as a guiding philosophy for ALL marketing content (including sales collateral / spec sheets) or do you see it's role as more supplemental / optional piece of the marketing puzzle?

Going forward, content marketing will be how brands communicate their responsiveness to changing expectations. And because consumers demand more involvement and choices in their decision-making, their appetite for information to inform those decisions will only continue to increase along with the growing desire and expectation for personalized experiences -- and martech will play a huge role in creating these personalized experiences.  One way to create a deeper engagement with consumers is to align your brand with a mission or cause. In 2016, a study found that 76% of millennials consider a company’s social and environmental commitments before deciding where to work.

As marketers, we need to focus on creating meaningful and relevant brand experiences focused on a shared passion. Those marketers who understand the value of experience are 96.3x more likely to beat their direct competition. For those reasons, I think delivering exceptional customer experiences coupled with content will become the most important parts of the marketing mix. 

Even as some studies are calling content a bottleneck, others are talking about content shock or even a content trap. Now given the investment of time and resources that is required to audit, identify and repeat performing content from a statistically valid (therefore large enough) sample of historic content, do you think content marketing is viable as a default marketing strategy?

Absolutely. Gartner predicts, “By 2021, the term ‘content marketing’ will be defunct as all marketing content rises to the high-quality expectations of attention-limited audiences.” Thus the term “content marketing” will be interchangeable with “marketing.”

Percolate co-founder and CTO Noah Brier recently wrote a rebuttal around the word "content" when it comes to marketing and why it's the best descriptor we have. He states: "Brands today produce many more pieces of communication than before, each with a shorter life span than in the past, and each distributable through many more channels than ever before." As we’ve gotten more fine-grained control over when and where we communicate and as we have learned more about what makes marketing work, the function of marketing has shifted.

What we do know, as that the demand for content will only continue to increase. We argue that this demand is exponential and, as such, has already greatly outstripped the capacity of marketing teams’ budgets and resources to keep up as there has, historically, been relatively little or linear growth in these investments.

In this world, the perceived value of compelling content could become marketing’s biggest and safest opportunity. But if your content marketing solution is not designed to anticipate future demand, you may be forced to sacrifice quality and accuracy in the interest of speed and simplicity. This is the crux of the content bottleneck that we talk about in the e-book. Gartner states that 90% of brands will practice at least one form of marketing personalization, but content, not data, will be the bottleneck and primary cause of failure. If we take as the starting point, that the only content that counts, is the content that works, we find that most content marketers suffer their content bottleneck in one of three forms:

1. Quantity: “We need more content.”
2. Quality: “We need better content.”
3. Coordination: “We need to take better advantage of the content we already have.”

Percolate has the only system that is purpose-built to address these problems and is now the only company recognized as a leader in the CMP category by the top three analysts: Gartner, Forrester and SiriusDecisions.

When reading one of your interviews on personalization and goal of 1:1 marketing, I was reminded of the time when Target used a “pregnancy prediction score" to identify and target pregnant women. Now with the kind of advances being made possible in personalized marketing through AI, what do you see as the ethical boundaries in a future where advertisers are able to use demographics, past behaviors, motivations to elevate what was so far persuasion into what could be a form of behavior control? I mean would you say should be the guidelines for balancing privacy and personalization?

I love that story because of what ended up happening — specifically the following outcomes:

1. There was a father who complained to Target about sending materials to his teenage daughter and felt they were encouraging her to get pregnant. However, he ended up apologizing because his daughter was, in fact, pregnant — just never told him.
2. As a result of negative backlash, Target changed the direct marketing aspect of the campaign to also include other household goods so it did not seem as if they were solely targeting pregnant women.
3. They found their sales continued to rise without the rage from consumers because they were able to subtly target people on items they probably needed without an overly invasive message.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about the ethical responsibilities of the internet. Just as in many other industries, we’re settling into a market where a handful of large players dominate — for better or worse. Major platforms and channels are under the microscope as consumers and lawmakers become more sensitive to individual privacy, while the rest of the MarTech/AdTech industry casts an anti-trustful eye at their market dominance. However, from the consumer’s perspective, there are some good reasons to have a smaller, more accountable cast of characters in the world of advertising.

Consumers are increasingly demanding more privacy and better experiences online, and advertisers won’t stop demanding accountability, brand safety and more value for their dollar.  While it remains to be seen whether GDPR-like legislation will be adopted globally, the threat of greater regulation will undoubtedly create stronger incentives for the ad tech ecosystem to reckon with its complexity, its impact on the consumer experience, its value to publishers, and its use of tracking and personal data in targeting.

But in the bigger picture, where advertising is just one part of the broader marketing mix – the opportunities are actually growing. Most of the new frontiers for marketing — from AI chatbots to the Internet of Things — lie well outside the blast radius of targeted online ads.

In particular, content marketing is ascendant as a way for marketers to reach customers directly and build a relationship based not on interruption, but instead on the power of ideas and conversations. Even the best ads don’t make it past the ad blocker, but great content is welcomed, savored and shared. You can use content to reach customers in that last mile, in those moments where you can forge a lasting connection — and in doing so, respect their time and intellect. 

In one of your interviews, you mentioned that you maintained what you referred to as a "leadership" notebook - Are there any examples that you could share with our readers?

When I was a young Ensign in the Navy, I had an Admiral tell me to keep a “leadership notebook” and to jot down examples of leaders’ behavior that I admired and wanted to aspire to AND examples of leaders’ behaviors I found off putting and would want to avoid. Throughout my career I have continued to watch and learn from both the positive and negative examples as I have continued to develop my own leadership muscle.  One example would be called the classic “praise in public and criticize in private”. Most people get this intuitively, but I find it fascinating to see how leaders are able to respond to surprises or unfortunate news under stress. If they are able to manage their cool and provide the appropriate correction in a private office, it shows the entire team that a leader is able to lead when it matters — under stress. 

Is there any question about upcoming campaigns / launches / other that we should have asked and missed? Please share.

As we previously discussed, the “Content Bottleneck” is projected to be one of marketing’s biggest challenges by 2020 — it is also one of the drivers behind a renaissance of the discipline of Marketing Operations in recent years. We would suggest that ALL companies need to take a broader systems view of the challenges they are facing and, as such, develop an org strategy that includes a formal marketing operations and leader.  Appointing someone who sits between IT and marketing can result in a 15-25% improvement in marketing effectiveness, and 42% of CMOs intend to expand their marketing operations team in the near term.

We recently released a marketing operations white paper that reveals where and how marketing operations fits into management of the full lifecycle of your marketing technology. Download it here. 

You can follow Mr. Wootton on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The post “The Function of Marketing has Shifted” In Conversation with Randy Wootton, CEO of Percolate appeared first on RELEVANCE.

To be honest, I was a little late to the content marketing party.

Six years late to be exact.

And even as I grappled with the fundamentals, I remember having a moment of insane clarity when I came across “Why Content Marketing Is Not A Sustainable Strategy” written by (who I now know to be) the globally-recognized keynote speaker, educator, business consultant and author, Mark Schaefer.

Unfortunately, the very lively debate on the more sensational aspects of the term he coined, “Content Shock” somehow obfuscated the desperate need for change that he predicted as far back as 2014.

And today as our strategies to engage fail to keep pace with our strategies to produce, it seemed like the perfect time to go back to him to better understand the road ahead.

Interview

Is the "content marketing overload" playing out like you expected or is it different from the time you wrote the original piece?  

The primary predictions I had made in the original post were that it would be harder and more expensive to compete, that social sharing would decline, and that content marketing would not be viable for some companies due to the increasing cost to compete. This has been documented as happening. Almost all of the people who originally thought I was nuts have apologized!  

Ironically, I never regarded Content Shock as a controversial post. Really, it's common sense.  

If I had to do the article over, I would probably add that Content Shock is a wave, not a trend. It has actually occurred with every media type in the past and it will continue moving forward, so we can use this for our strategies as we consider where we are in the cycle.

“Creating great content is not the finish line. It’s the starting line. Business results on the web don’t come from content; they come from content that moves. Even if your content is great, there’s no guarantee it will rise to the top in an increasingly competitive world.”

― Mark Schaefer,

The Content Code: Six essential strategies to ignite your content, your marketing, and your business

How do you think Artificial Intelligence and our ability to exploit it will impact content marketing and, of course, marketing in general? 

I’m an optimist in that certainly this is going to make everything we do smarter, more personalized, and more relevant. However, I also know that where corruption can occur, corruption will occur and people are going to abuse it.

We are in a time where marketers are probably abusing technology in their hunt for a marketing easy button. We are willing to spam and annoy thousands of people in the hope that one will click. That just has to stop. But overall, AI will make our jobs easier, and hopefully more meaningful to consumers.

“Being known is really the only sustainable competitive advantage a person can have today.” 

— Mark Schaefer

What is the most overrated/misapplied tactic in content marketing/marketing? 

I would say content marketing in general is being misapplied today. Most people are working off of a 2013 playbook and blogging or podcasting their hearts out when the world has changed. Content does not work like it used to, primarily due to Content Shock issues. The fundamental philosophy of inbound marketing is broken and the world of content is now largely pay to play. That's fine. We just need to adjust, as we have always done, as we always will do.

“Nobody is born a thought leader. It’s something you need to earn in the mind of your audience, slowly over time. You should approach the process of becoming known with humility and respect to those who came before you.”

― Mark Schaefer

KNOWN: The Handbook for Building and Unleashing Your Personal Brand in the Digital Age

How do you see/define/measure content quality today? Has it even been anything close to a constant?

Content quality has to be defined in the context of the competitive situation. If you are in an un-saturated content niche, then your content simply has to be "Google-sufficient" in the short-term. As the competition increases, then the quality of the content (and generally the cost) has to increase -- which is why some companies will have to drop out. If you look at the most crowded niches like fashion and retail, these companies are making mini-movies starring celebrities in order to stand out.

ALSO READ: The Creative Curve: An Interview with Allen Gannett

Where does content marketing fit into, well, marketing? I mean - Is it an umbrella philosophy or approach that ensures relevance within ALL marketing or a silo campaign/buzzword/tactic that can contribute for some but not all? Is it optional or mandatory?

Content marketing in some form is close to mandatory because that is what is driving SEO for the most part today. So, if SEO is important, and it generally is for most businesses, content probably plays some role. The trick is finding the right content to match your true market need and competitive situation. You just can't go out and do whatever everybody else is doing. You have to determine your own option to maneuver.

"You don’t have to have fire-breathing dragons and a Hollywood production staff to win. You don’t have to be Game of Thrones. You just have to be the Game of Thrones — relevant and superior — in your niche."

Mark Schaefer 

About Mark W. Schaefer 

Mark W. Schaefer is a globally-recognized author, speaker, podcaster, and business consultant who blogs at {grow} — one of the top five marketing blogs of the world. He teaches graduate marketing classes at Rutgers University and has written six best-selling books, including The Tao of Twitter (the best-selling book on Twitter in the world) and The Content Code, named by INC magazine as one of the Top five marketing books of the year, and his new book KNOWN: The handbook for building and unleashing your personal brand in the digital age.

Mark also wrote the classic first book on influence marketing, Return On Influence. His many global clients include Pfizer, Cisco, Dell, Adidas, and the US Air Force. He has been a keynote speaker at prestigious events all over the world, including SXSW, Marketing Summit Tokyo, and the Institute for International and European Affairs. He has appeared as a guest on media channels such as CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and CBS News.

Follow Mark Schaefer on Twitter

Connect with him on LinkedIn

The post Mark Schaefer Talks Content Shock, Marketing, and Clarifies the Path Ahead appeared first on RELEVANCE.