#here's what it taught me about B2B sales

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I started a 225k~ fanfic. Here's what it taught me about B2B sales.

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A Step-by-Step Technique for B2B Pillar Pages

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/a-step-by-step-strategy-for-b2b-pillar-pages/

A Step-by-Step Technique for B2B Pillar Pages

The writer’s views are solely his or her personal (excluding the unlikely occasion of hypnosis) and should not all the time mirror the views of Moz.

B2B corporations are actually centered on the center of the gross sales funnel. They have nice e-books, a lot of good knowledge printed, however they have a tendency to neglect the top-of-the-funnel content material. That kind of content material is definitely essential to B2B success, because it permits your potential clients to be taught extra about your model. 

An effective way for B2B corporations to fill this hole is by creating pillar pages. To assist get you began, in immediately’s Whiteboard Friday, visitor host Carly Schoonhoven of Obility walks you thru a easy technique for using pillar pages in your web site. Take pleasure in! 

Click on on the whiteboard picture above to open a bigger model in a brand new tab!

Video Transcription

Good day and welcome to a different version of Whiteboard Friday. My identify is Carly Schoonhoven, and I am a senior search engine marketing supervisor right here at Obility. We’re a digital marketing company centered on B2B in stunning Portland, Oregon.

Now one of many largest struggles I discover that B2B corporations have, when engaged on a content material technique, is easy methods to create content material that is capable of successfully rank for these top-of-funnel, increased search quantity, extra conversational queries. Numerous instances B2B corporations are actually centered on mid-funnel. They have nice e-books, a lot of good knowledge content material, however they have a tendency to neglect the top-of-the-funnel content material.

Nevertheless, that kind of content material is so necessary as a result of it permits in your potential clients to carry out self-discovery and actually be taught extra about your model, be taught extra concerning the trade you are in earlier than they’re able to take a extra significant step, like filling out a kind or requesting a demo. So one nice content material technique for a B2B firm is making a pillar web page.

What are pillar pages? 

Pillar pages, you might need heard them known as hub and spoke content material or umbrella content material, however no matter you wish to name it, it is basically the identical factor. So the concept is that you simply begin together with your pillar web page. So that is one massive piece of content material that is actually optimized for one very broad subject that is actually related to your enterprise.

Then it internally hyperlinks out to your cluster pages, that are focused at these longer tail, secondary key phrases and actually well-optimized to reply the questions that your clients could have. It is so necessary that you simply’re linking again from the cluster pages to the pillar web page and from the pillar web page out to your clusters.

Once more, this has a number of advantages. One which your clients are capable of navigate to this content material and get their questions answered themselves. Then, on the identical time, it is nice for search engine marketing as a result of it is really easy for Google to inform what this content material is about because it’s all internally linked to one another and it is all centered on one particular subject. So if this feels like one thing for you, I will stroll you thru step-by-step easy methods to go about making a pillar content material technique.

1. Choose a subject

So Step 1, in fact, is it’s important to choose a subject. So there are a pair belongings you need to bear in mind if you’re doing this, one in all which is that you really want it to be broad however not too broad. So clearly it needs to be considerably broad since you want to have the ability to discover sufficient secondary key phrases that even have search quantity that it is price your time placing the work in.

But when it is too broad, it should be actually tough to create one piece of content material that covers every thing it’s essential cowl on this content material. So, for instance, a pillar web page about search engine marketing as a complete, that may be somewhat bit too broad. There’s lots of stuff you are going to must cowl, and it should be actually tough to rank for lots of these key phrases. However one thing like search engine marketing content material technique, that is somewhat bit extra centered, there’s nonetheless lots of potential there.

You may speak about ideating content material for B2B. You may speak about on-site optimization. So one thing that’s undoubtedly broad, has a lot of key phrases, however not so broad you are biting off greater than you may chew. 

2. Key phrase analysis

So talking of key phrases, clearly it’s important to do key phrase analysis. That is search engine marketing.

It is so necessary. So you can begin with that one subject, however then you really want to broaden your record of key phrases to search out all of these secondary key phrases that you simply wish to embrace. Moz’s Key phrase Explorer is a superb instrument for this since you’re capable of put in your subject after which it can generate all of these associated key phrases for you, together with issues like search quantity and key phrase problem. I additionally love that you may filter down to only the key phrases which can be questions, as a result of once more it is so necessary to just remember to’re answering your potential clients’ questions in your content material. 

three. Take a look at your present content material

So you have obtained your record, you have obtained your key phrases, however do not forget to have a look at your present content material as nicely. So you are going to be placing lots of work in. Discover methods it can save you your self time. Possibly you may have some content material buried in your weblog or buried in your useful resource part that you may repurpose and embrace as a part of this technique. Positively be sure you’re not neglecting content material that you have already got. 

four. Plan URL construction

Up subsequent, planning your construction. So you are going to be creating an ideal new piece of content material. You’ll want to know the place you are going to put it. You may simply hyperlink to it in your high navigation, or perhaps you simply wish to characteristic it in your sources part. However one factor to bear in mind is that you simply wish to be sure that your cluster pages are in a subfolder of your pillar web page.

5. Begin writing (clusters first)

All proper, Step 5, begin writing. You truly get to begin placing these items collectively. So finally, what would you like them to appear to be? Now ideally, in your major pillar web page, what you need is to have type of simply an introductory part speaking concerning the subject space as a complete, however actually this web page serves as that hub that hyperlinks out to all your different secondary pages.

So that you wish to make it very easy to navigate. You wish to be sure you’re together with a lot of mid-funnel CTAs inside that content material, as a result of finally that is that hub piece of content material the place everybody goes to navigate to from these cluster pages. So begin together with your intro after which have a pleasant desk of contents after which somewhat header for every of your cluster pages with somewhat little bit of a abstract, however then that finally hyperlinks out to these cluster pages so that somebody can go to that web page in the event that they actually wish to be taught extra and get extra in depth into that subject.

So far as your cluster pages, that is the place you actually wish to get in depth, spend lots of time placing your content material collectively and be sure you’re masking it. I believe that the question-and-answer format is a very good method for such a content material as a result of it actually helps you optimize for featured snippets or for the individuals additionally ask characteristic. So that you wish to just remember to’re placing your query within the header, after which summarize the reply to that query in about 40 to 50 phrases should you’re optimizing for a snippet.

6. Promotion

All proper. Quantity 6 is promotion. So you have created your content material. You’ve got discovered the place to place it. You’ve got printed it. You probably did all of this work. You wish to make certain individuals see it.

So put it on the market internally. Ensure you’re sharing it in your social media. Share it together with your workforce. However then additionally flex your hyperlink constructing expertise and attain out to anybody in your trade who you assume would profit from this content material or be keen to share it as nicely. 

7. Measure every thing

Quantity 7 is measure. So, in fact, you set all this work in and also you wish to see how does it do. Did it carry out nicely?

So you could have your record of key phrases, so use Moz to trace your key phrase rankings. Have a look to see if there are new key phrases you were not anticipating to rank for. Clearly, key phrases are tremendous necessary. Additionally, have a look at Google Analytics. Try your touchdown web page report. Are you getting natural site visitors? Are individuals truly changing?

See what you may be taught from that, if it’s essential make tweaks, swap out your CTAs. Simply be sure you’re measuring and you do not let this content material go to waste. You are bringing on this new site visitors. Ensure you’re changing these individuals. 

eight. Repeat

Step eight, repeat. So upon getting the method down, do it once more. Discover different matters which can be actually related to your trade you may create a pillar web page about.

If you do, inform me about it. I actually hope that this was useful for you, and I hope you go on the market and create some pillar content material. So thanks a lot.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

 Tweet your questions and feedback about pillar pages utilizing #MozBlog!

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paper writer

About me

27 Best Freelance White Paper Writers For Hire In September 2020

27 Best Freelance White Paper Writers For Hire In September 2020 Get all the essential components throughout that you would be placing in your own CV when you were seeking to get employed for a high-worth position. Ok, so I mentioned this above, but issues this essential are value repeating. Most importantly, and to reiterate above, be honest and clear. Investors can inform if you’re hiding behind false statements and overselling through hyperbole. In order to augment sales leads, you have to consider out-of-the-box concepts. It is better to decide on a mix of assorted methods and see what works on your specific model. Myriad content material is out there on the internet, but what makes your content stand out among the many sea of information is a catchy title. This is people buying into people, so make them learn like folks. Think of this part as micro resumes for every member of the project and write it as such. Since Ripple and Ethereum ran profitable ICO campaigns back in 2013 and 2014 respectively, ICOs have turn out to be the de facto fundraising mechanism for Blockchain firms. Unfortunately, there isn’t a clearly stated or protected process for what Blockchain companies ought to do with their ICO income, resulting in an trade of fraudulent ICOs. The most recent case of this wasthe arrest of Centra’s two founders. Jeremy spent 20 years as a B2B writer, creating publications concentrating on the personal equity and fast development business sectors before launching Equinet Media in 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material with out categorical and written permission from this weblog’s author and/or proprietor is strictly prohibited. Striking this stability is necessary, and in some circumstances blockchain startups favor to create two documents to accommodate the technicalities and legal requirements. More recently there was a movement away from ICOs to TGEs – Token Generation Events. This has coincided with a transfer away from pure utility token utilization to the inclusion of safety tokens which can confer rights to the holder, similar to voting rights or operate similar to firm shares. As against a coin ‘offering’, these coins are generated with a selected purpose and their worth is derived from a tradable asset. Subsequently, this does imply that safety tokens are liable to the SEC in the US, and different monetary governmental agencies around the world. Excerpts and hyperlinks could also be used, offered that full and clear credit is given to EOS Surfaces and EOScu Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the unique content. Either to assist them do their job better, to help them perceive a classy know-how or to help them solve a difficult problem. In turn, this helps set up your company as a trusted adviser and reputable provider of your specific services or products. It is essentially the most seen part of your content material and the first thing to be noticed by the reader. The content material produced at Writing Metier will only be shared with the one that hired us for our providers. Under no circumstances will your content material be used wherever else. Synthesis of the results and transition towards the business plan. The 7th and final step is the synthesis of all the information gathered, a transition phase that will permit you to get began on your financial plan and the drafting of your business plan . Our team determines what sort of emails get opened the most depending on the wording, graphics, timing and even color scheme. We educate our complete staff on new concepts and take time to train them on updates, helping them to maneuver in the best course. The distribution strategy holds equal importance to that of high quality content material. Through the course of the document, the reader is taught to understand a difficulty and remedy an recognized drawback via the lens and opinion of your brand or enterprise. You will also wish to beautify the paper, creating graphics that may spotlight the copy and do the content justice. A high tip is to pick key quote and figures, and pull them out from the textual content to be highlighted. The reader’s eyes might be drawn right here and these points will take advantage of enduring impact on them. Here is the place you should define your marketing plans, what shall be invested in this area and what you hope to achieve with it. Transparency and slightly bit of earnest are extremely necessary in getting folks on your side. Well, in case your readers can’t see the necessity for your answer within the first place, everything else in your document is an absolute waste of time. If the documentation is too closely technical you run the risk of alienating your audience, and if it’s not technical sufficient, it will really feel flimsy and as if there’s not sufficient meat to support the skeleton. Operating from a spot of selling & sales alignment wherein marketing takes over the responsibility of nurturing of leads before passing them on to the sales group helps in optimizing the conversions. Marketing & sales endeavors must be aligned & shouldn’t be operating in silos.

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professional writing services

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Only Professional Writers For You On Supremedissertations Com

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professional writing service

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Creative Writer

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30 Lessons After 30 Million SEO Visitors

As you can see from the screenshot above, I’ve driven 30 million visitors to my website from SEO.

Technically it’s more, but who’s counting.

What’s funny, though, is I barely look at my traffic, even as Google continually rolls out algorithm updates.

I know that sounds contradictory because if you are an SEO, why wouldn’t you obsess about traffic, right?

Well, it’s because I’ve learned some hard lessons over the year… mainly because I’ve made a lot of mistakes.

So today, I wanted to share them with you so that you can learn from my mistakes… so here goes:

Lesson #1: Don’t obsess over rankings, obsess over conversions

I used to check my rankings every single day. Literally.

On top of that, I would log into Google Analytics 4 to 5 times a day and continually check my traffic.

That’s all I cared about back in the day… boosting my organic traffic.

But here is the thing: As my rankings and traffic went up over the years, my revenue didn’t go up proportionally.

For example, during one quarter in 2017, my SEO traffic went up 39.52%, but my revenue from SEO went up only 4.29%.

I quickly learned that traffic isn’t everything. If you can’t convert the traffic into revenue it doesn’t matter.

That taught me that you need to focus on the right keywords that drive conversions and continually optimize your site for conversions.

An easy first step for you to take is to install Crazy Egg and run a heatmap to see where people click so you adjust your design and copy to get more sales.

Lesson #2: The easiest way to grow your SEO traffic is international expansion

You already know that I get a lot of SEO traffic, but do you know what country drives most of my traffic?

If you guessed United States, you are wrong.

Brazil is my most popular region, followed by India.

International SEO is the easiest way to expand and grow your traffic. Here are a few posts that you should read before you expand your SEO globally:

How to create a global SEO strategy

Fundamentals of international SEO

How to correctly setup your site for international SEO

How to profitably expand your SEO globally

Lesson #3: Keywords are very, very, very, very important

When I used to write my content, I didn’t obsess about the keywords when I should have.

My team actually proved me wrong on this.

I used to focus on writing content for humans and didn’t worry about search engines. My team, on the other hand, obsesses about keywords.

Just look at the growth of our traffic in Brazil because of our obsession with the right keywords.

One simple thing I do before writing that has really helped is I head over to Ubersuggest and type in a few of the keywords that I want to go after.

Once it loads, you’ll see a report like the one above. I want you to then click on “Keyword Ideas” in the left-hand navigation.

You’ll see a report that contains a list of keywords that you could potentially be targeting.

Make sure you click on the “Related” tab, as well as “Questions” and “Comparisons” … scroll through the list. You’ll see hundreds of keywords. Pick all of the ones that are relevant and ideally have a high cost per click (CPC). These are the keywords that’ll not only drive traffic but revenue as well.

Whenever I write a blog post, I go through this step. Every single time.

Lesson #4: AMP pages can drive more SEO traffic

AMP pages load faster on mobile devices than non-AMP pages.

If you aren’t familiar with the AMP framework, read this.

What most people won’t tell you about AMP pages is that:

In regions like the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, countries with decent Internet infrastructure, you won’t see much of an increase in traffic.

In regions with poor Internet infrastructure, like Brazil, you’ll see a 10 to 15% lift in mobile SEO traffic by having AMP pages.

AMP pages don’t convert visitors into customers as well as normal responsive web design. So, you’ll have to work on testing your AMP pages so you can boost your conversion rates.

Lesson #5: SEO will never convert as well as paid ads

When I started off with SEO, I would run projections on how much the traffic would make me.

But the numbers were always off, even if I was able to get the rankings.

Here’s the main reason: If you are bidding on terms like auto insurance through ads, you can drive people to a landing page that looks like this:

But if you want to rank organically, you’ll have to do it through content. So, your page that ranks well will look more like this and convert less…

It doesn’t mean SEO is bad. In reality, it’s much cheaper in the long run than paid ads and will produce a better ROI. But don’t just assume that if you get 100 visitors from paid ads and 3 purchases that you’ll have the same conversion rate with your SEO traffic.

Chances are it will be significantly lower by maybe 2 or 3x, but because SEO is cheaper, it will be much more profitable.

Lesson #6: Remarketing is one of the best ways to generate an ROI from SEO

If you get a ton of traffic from SEO, there is a simple strategy you can implement to boost your conversions.

Remarket everyone on Facebook, Google, and YouTube.

That way people come to your site, read your content, and build trust with you and your brand.

Then you remarket them throughout the web with ads that prompt your products or services and send them to a landing page that will drive sales.

I’ve been doing this for years, just look at my old remarketing ad…

For the regions I use remarketing in, it is responsible for 46% of my leads.

Lesson #7: Don’t forget to update your old content

I publish one new blog post a week. I’m working on increasing this as I get more time, but for now, it is one a week.

Can you guess how many blog posts I update on a daily basis? Technically it is 0 (me at least), but my team focuses on updating at least 3 old blog posts per day. That’s roughly 90 a month.

Once you have a few hundred pages, make sure you focus on updating your old content or else your traffic will quickly drop.

You can use this content decay tool to see which posts you should update first.

This will help you continually grow your SEO traffic instead of hitting plateaus or seeing your traffic take massive drops.

Lesson #8: Don’t forget to optimize your title tags

One of the easiest ways to grow your rankings is to optimize your title tags.

If you can write persuasive copy and get more clicks, you’ll quickly move up on Google.

In Brazil, we spend more time doing this than we do in the United States.

We get a similar amount of impressions in Brazil, but we have more people focusing on improving our title tags and testing. Hence, we get 95% more SEO traffic in Brazil.

If you want tips on boosting your clicks, check out this article.

Another simple hack is to use the “Content Ideas” report in Ubersuggest.

On the right side of that report, you can see social share counts from Facebook and Pinterest. And on the left side, you see titles of articles.

Typically, if people like a title they share it more. So, look for titles that have a lot of shares as it will give you ideas on what you can use on your website to get more clicks and boost your rankings.

Lesson #9: Don’t put dates in your URL

I used to put dates in my URLs like:

Neilpatel.com/2017/12/title-of-post/

This causes search engines to assume that your content is related to a specific date. And after that date gets old, search engines assume your content is irrelevant and outdated.

The moment I removed the date from my URLs, I grew my SEO traffic by 58% in 30 days.

If you have dates in your URL, make sure you 301 redirect your old URLs to your new ones once you make that change, or else your rankings will drop.

Lesson #10: Don’t be afraid to use popups

Don’t you hate popups? Well, who doesn’t?

But people use them because they work.

The majority of your pages that will rank are blog-related content. And blog posts tend to drive fewer direct conversions because people are on your site to read the content.

In order to maximize your conversions from SEO, you should consider using exit popups so you can convert more of those visitors into customers as they leave.

When you leave this site in most cases, you’ll see a popup that looks like:

And it drives you to this quiz, which allows me to convert SEO visitors into customers.

You can easily copy me by using Hello Bar. It works for all industries including B2B and ecommerce and even lead generation sites.

Lesson #11: Brand queries affect rankings

Everyone talks about how you need links to boost rankings.

But very few people talk about brand queries.

As Google’s ex-CEO and ex-head of web spam both emphasized how brands are important.

One of the big reasons for my growth in SEO traffic is the growth in my brand. I’ve seen a direct correlation in which the more people who find me from my name, the more SEO traffic I get.

Just look at my brand growth over time:

I’ve received over 1.9 million visitors over the last 16 months from people typing in variations of my name in Google.

Lesson #12: Don’t waste your money on paid links

I’ve been doing SEO since I was 16 years old. That’s a long time…

When I started off as a kid, I dabbled in paid links and I used to dominate Google for terms like online casino, online poker, web hosting, auto insurance, and even credit cards.

And I was making a killing off of affiliate income from these sites.

But it was all short lived.

Why?

Because I bought links. And eventually Google penalized all of those sites.

If I never purchased links, those sites would have taken longer to rank, but they would have been around today, and I would have generated more income overall.

Don’t buy links, it’s bad and shortsighted.

Lesson #13: Guest post to build a brand, not to build links

I already covered the importance of branding above.

A great way to build your brand and indirectly boost your SEO traffic is through guest posting.

But don’t use guest posting to build links.

Most sites that offer guest posts, nofollow them (which they should), and Google is smart enough to know what a guest post is, hence they ignore guest post links from sites like Forbes.

It’s pretty easy to spot a guest post for both a human and algorithm…

But if you are using it to build a brand, great. Focus on the content quality and not links.

Lesson #14: Don’t forget to interlink

Do you know what some of my highest ranked pages are?

The ones that are interlinked.

It takes anywhere from 6 months to a year for many of the interlinks to kick in, but it is still effective none-the-less.

Every time I wrote content, I used to make sure I link out to my older pieces of content when it made sense. But I made a big mistake… I wasn’t going into my older pieces of content and then adding links to my newer pieces of content.

That one change was game-changing for me. It took time to see the results but it worked exceptionally well.

It’s how I rank high for terms like “email marketing”.

Lesson #15: Google isn’t the only game in town

Although Google is the most popular search engine, it isn’t the only one you need to focus on.

Did you know that YouTube is the second most popular search engine?

Even Bing gets a lot of traffic.

If you want to rank high on Bing, follow this.

Or if you prefer video, watch this:

As for YouTube, this guide will teach you YouTube SEO. It works really well, just look at my YouTube SEO traffic:

Over the last 28 days, I received 429,501 video views through YouTube SEO.

Lesson #16: Speed is everything

The faster your server and the more optimized your site, the more traffic you’ll get.

Years ago, my friend Otis added more servers to his site GoodReads.

Within a month, his SEO traffic went up over 20%.

Speed is part of Google’s algorithm, so optimize it for both web and mobile.

A quick way to see your site’s speed is to enter your URL here.

You’ll see a report that breaks down your mobile and desktop load times as well as what you can do to improve them.

Lesson #17: Quality over quantity

SEO used to be a game of quantity over quality.

That isn’t the case anymore. With over a billion blogs, Google has its fair share of sites to choose from.

Just look at About.com. Eventually they renamed it Dotdash and changed their strategy.

They took all of their About.com content and moved it over to 6 vertical based sites and deleted 900,000 pages of junk content.

This grew their traffic and revenue by a whopping 140%.

Focus on writing high-quality content. It’s why I blog less and try to make my content amazing.

Lesson #18: Tools are better than content marketing

I used to focus all of my energy on content marketing because it drove a lot of links and SEO traffic.

But over time, I realized that creating free tools builds more natural links than anything else I have ever tested.

Just look at Ubersuggest. I spent years creating it and look at how many links it has generated…

30,603 backlinks! That’s a lot of links.

If you don’t have the resources to build a custom tool like me, you can always start with buying a white label tool from Code Canyon for $10 or $20. They literally have tools for almost all industries.

Lesson #19: Don’t rely only on SEO

When I first got started in SEO, all I could think about was SEO.

To me, it was the best marketing channel out there because it allowed me to compete with large companies.

Even to this day, I still love SEO more than any other channel.

But it doesn’t stop me from leveraging other marketing channels.

See, years ago you could build a business off of one marketing channel.

Yelp was built through SEO. Dropbox through social media referrals. Facebook through email invites…

Those days don’t exist anymore. You can’t just build your traffic from one channel.

Although you should do SEO, you should also try paid ads, social media marketing, email marketing, push notifications, and anything else that comes out.

Diversify your traffic sources and don’t just rely solely on SEO.

Lesson #20: People love linking to data

Spending money and time to gather your own unique data is an easy way to build links.

Check out my posts on content marketing trends and social media trends.

I’ve added tons of unique data, stats, and charts to each of those posts.

The end result? Extra backlinks. 🙂

The content marketing trends post received 447 backlinks.

If you don’t have the time to gather custom data you can always find someone on Upwork to help you out.

Lesson #21: Don’t forget about Infographics

One of my favorite SEO strategies that still works well today is infographics.

I have tons of them on the NeilPatel.com blog.

I didn’t start off with infographics here… I used to do them on my old blog Quick Sprout and KISSmetrics.

Here’s an interesting stat for you when I used to crank out infographics on KISSmetrics.

Within a two-year period, from 2010 to 2012, 47 infographics generated 2,512,596 visitors and 41,142 backlinks from 3,741 unique domains. They also generated 41,359 tweets and 20,859 likes.

If you don’t have money to hire a designer, you can use Infogram or Canva to create one on your own.

Lesson #22: Google doesn’t penalize for duplicate content

You don’t want to post tons of duplicate content on your site as it’s not the best user experience, but keep in mind that Google doesn’t penalize you for duplication.

They may not just rank the duplicate content as well.

So, if you spend all of this time producing amazing, unique content, why not publish it FIRST on your own website.

Then after a few hours or days if you want to be safe, take that exact content and publish it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and anywhere else that will accept your content.

Literally, take all of the words and paste them onto those social channels.

It will get you extra awareness and branding. Plus, the content should already be indexed on your site, so Google knows it came from your first… and I doubt you care if the duplicated version on LinkedIn ranks. That’s still great branding.

In other words, don’t be afraid to repurpose your content even if it causes duplication.

Just look at this post, for example. I’m also repurposing it into a 4-part podcast series.

Lesson #23: Don’t recreate the wheel

I used to spend hours a week doing keyword research trying to figure out what new terms to rank for.

Eventually, I figured out an easier and better way to find new content topics and keywords to go after.

Go to Ubersuggest, type in your competitor’s domain name and hit search.

In the left-hand navigation click on Top Pages.

You’ll see a report that shows you all of the popular pages on your competition’s website. This will give you ideas for the type of pages you should create on your website.

Then I want you to click “View All” under Est. Visits (estimated visits). This will show you all of the keywords that drive traffic to that page.

You now have a list of topics and keywords for each topic to go after.

Lesson #24: Don’t pick a generic domain name

Remember how in Lesson 11 I talked about brand queries and how they helped rankings?

After I learned that, I decided to go buy exact match domain names where the domain name was the keyword.

That way I would get lots of brand queries without trying.

Well, there’s an issue… even if you rank high, what you’ll find is you will have a low click-through rate in most cases.

If you have a low click-through rate, it tells Google your brand isn’t strong and people don’t prefer it, which can hurt your ranking.

So instead of focusing on exact match domains, unless you have millions to spend on branding like Hotels.com, focus on building a memorable brand.

Pick something that is unique, easy to spell, and easy to remember.

Lesson #25: Learn from blackhat SEOs, but don’t go over to the dark side

Blackhat SEOs come up with some interesting data and experiments.

Many of them don’t work for long, but they are interesting none-the-less.

Although I don’t recommend practicing blackhat SEO, I do recommend following them.

The easiest way you can learn from them is by reading Blackhat World.

People there share some interesting insights, especially every time there is a major Google algorithm update.

Again, I don’t recommend practicing blackhat SEO, but following them may help you uncover “white hat” techniques that can increase your rankings. Not everything they do is bad… many of them use legitimate tactics as well.

Lesson #26: Short URLs rank better than long ones

My URLs used to be the title of my blog post.

For example, with this post I would have used this URL in the past…

Neilpatel.com/blog/30-lessons-after-30-million-seo-visitors/

Eventually I switched to short URLs.

Google just prefers them. And I’ve seen it firsthand. That’s why I use short ones now.

URLs at position #1 are on average 9.2 characters shorter than URLs that rank in position #10. So, keep them short.

Lesson #27: The power’s in the list

If you want your content to rank high on Google, you need more people to see it.

Whether it is from social shares, or from push notifications or email blasts… the more people that see your content, the more engagement it will get, and the more people that will link to it.

I used to do a ton of manual outreach every time I published a new blog post and I would email people asking them to link to me.

And it works, it’s just time consuming and a pain.

These days, I have a better strategy… send out an email blast every time I publish a new post.

I can now get anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 clicks per email I send out.

Now of course you won’t get that from day one as it took me years to build up my email list.

But you can start today by collecting emails. You can easily do that through Hello Bar.

And as your list grows, so will the clicks to your blog and the number of links you get, which in turn will increase your rankings.

Lesson #28: Don’t let your foot off the peddle

This was one of the hardest lessons I learned.

It’s exhausting to continually blog and do your own SEO. Sometimes you just want a break.

With my old blog, Quick Sprout, I used to publish 12 blog posts a month and I did that consistently for 3 years.

One day I decided that I wanted to stop for a month. So, I took a 30-day break.

Guess what happened to my traffic?

It tanked by 32%.

So, then I started blogging again. And guessed what happened to my traffic after I started blogging?

It didn’t come right back.

It took me 3 months to get back to where I was.

When things are working for you, don’t slow down. Keep pushing harder, even if you are exhausted. Because the moment you stop, you’ll drop, and it is a lot of work to get back to where you were.

Lesson #29: The best SEO advice comes from conferences

The best SEO advice I have ever learned over the years has come from conferences.

And no, I don’t mean by sitting in on the sessions, although you can learn from those too.

The best SEO secrets and advice I learned came from networking. When you go to these conferences, hundreds if not thousands of other SEOs are there. And when you go to the bar after hours and mingle with people, you’ll quickly pick stuff up.

You’ll be shocked at what people tell you. It’s how I learned a lot of the good tactics that I still use today.

Lesson #30: Never stop learning

This one may sound obvious but when things are going well, people get complacent.

Google makes on average 3,234 updates per year and that count has been increasing over time.

Just think about that for a bit… that’s roughly 9 algorithm updates per day.

Because they are changing so quickly, you won’t survive if you don’t stay up to date.

Yes, the ideal strategy is to do what’s best for your users or visitors as in the long run, Google wants to promote those sites, but it doesn’t mean that you can ignore the changes happening in the industry.

Read all of the SEO blogs out there, attend conferences as I mentioned above… experiment on test sites… push yourself to be better.

That drive of always improving and always wanting to learn more has helped me tremendously. It’s one of the reasons for my growth in rankings over the years.

Conclusion

There are a lot of lessons that you will learn as your rankings grow and as you spend more time on SEO.

But hopefully, you don’t have to waste time and go through the same mistakes I made. You don’t want to learn these lessons the hard way.

That’s why I decided to share them. I want to save you the time and help you achieve your traffic goals faster.

Which SEO lessons have you learned?

The post 30 Lessons After 30 Million SEO Visitors appeared first on Neil Patel.

30 Lessons After 30 Million SEO Visitors Publicado primeiro em https://neilpatel.com

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30 Lessons After 30 Million SEO Visitors

As you can see from the screenshot above, I’ve driven 30 million visitors to my website from SEO.

Technically it’s more, but who’s counting.

What’s funny, though, is I barely look at my traffic, even as Google continually rolls out algorithm updates.

I know that sounds contradictory because if you are an SEO, why wouldn’t you obsess about traffic, right?

Well, it’s because I’ve learned some hard lessons over the year… mainly because I’ve made a lot of mistakes.

So today, I wanted to share them with you so that you can learn from my mistakes… so here goes:

Lesson #1: Don’t obsess over rankings, obsess over conversions

I used to check my rankings every single day. Literally.

On top of that, I would log into Google Analytics 4 to 5 times a day and continually check my traffic.

That’s all I cared about back in the day… boosting my organic traffic.

But here is the thing: As my rankings and traffic went up over the years, my revenue didn’t go up proportionally.

For example, during one quarter in 2017, my SEO traffic went up 39.52%, but my revenue from SEO went up only 4.29%.

I quickly learned that traffic isn’t everything. If you can’t convert the traffic into revenue it doesn’t matter.

That taught me that you need to focus on the right keywords that drive conversions and continually optimize your site for conversions.

An easy first step for you to take is to install Crazy Egg and run a heatmap to see where people click so you adjust your design and copy to get more sales.

Lesson #2: The easiest way to grow your SEO traffic is international expansion

You already know that I get a lot of SEO traffic, but do you know what country drives most of my traffic?

If you guessed United States, you are wrong.

Brazil is my most popular region, followed by India.

International SEO is the easiest way to expand and grow your traffic. Here are a few posts that you should read before you expand your SEO globally:

How to create a global SEO strategy

Fundamentals of international SEO

How to correctly setup your site for international SEO

How to profitably expand your SEO globally

Lesson #3: Keywords are very, very, very, very important

When I used to write my content, I didn’t obsess about the keywords when I should have.

My team actually proved me wrong on this.

I used to focus on writing content for humans and didn’t worry about search engines. My team, on the other hand, obsesses about keywords.

Just look at the growth of our traffic in Brazil because of our obsession with the right keywords.

One simple thing I do before writing that has really helped is I head over to Ubersuggest and type in a few of the keywords that I want to go after.

Once it loads, you’ll see a report like the one above. I want you to then click on “Keyword Ideas” in the left-hand navigation.

You’ll see a report that contains a list of keywords that you could potentially be targeting.

Make sure you click on the “Related” tab, as well as “Questions” and “Comparisons” … scroll through the list. You’ll see hundreds of keywords. Pick all of the ones that are relevant and ideally have a high cost per click (CPC). These are the keywords that’ll not only drive traffic but revenue as well.

Whenever I write a blog post, I go through this step. Every single time.

Lesson #4: AMP pages can drive more SEO traffic

AMP pages load faster on mobile devices than non-AMP pages.

If you aren’t familiar with the AMP framework, read this.

What most people won’t tell you about AMP pages is that:

In regions like the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, countries with decent Internet infrastructure, you won’t see much of an increase in traffic.

In regions with poor Internet infrastructure, like Brazil, you’ll see a 10 to 15% lift in mobile SEO traffic by having AMP pages.

AMP pages don’t convert visitors into customers as well as normal responsive web design. So, you’ll have to work on testing your AMP pages so you can boost your conversion rates.

Lesson #5: SEO will never convert as well as paid ads

When I started off with SEO, I would run projections on how much the traffic would make me.

But the numbers were always off, even if I was able to get the rankings.

Here’s the main reason: If you are bidding on terms like auto insurance through ads, you can drive people to a landing page that looks like this:

But if you want to rank organically, you’ll have to do it through content. So, your page that ranks well will look more like this and convert less…

It doesn’t mean SEO is bad. In reality, it’s much cheaper in the long run than paid ads and will produce a better ROI. But don’t just assume that if you get 100 visitors from paid ads and 3 purchases that you’ll have the same conversion rate with your SEO traffic.

Chances are it will be significantly lower by maybe 2 or 3x, but because SEO is cheaper, it will be much more profitable.

Lesson #6: Remarketing is one of the best ways to generate an ROI from SEO

If you get a ton of traffic from SEO, there is a simple strategy you can implement to boost your conversions.

Remarket everyone on Facebook, Google, and YouTube.

That way people come to your site, read your content, and build trust with you and your brand.

Then you remarket them throughout the web with ads that prompt your products or services and send them to a landing page that will drive sales.

I’ve been doing this for years, just look at my old remarketing ad…

For the regions I use remarketing in, it is responsible for 46% of my leads.

Lesson #7: Don’t forget to update your old content

I publish one new blog post a week. I’m working on increasing this as I get more time, but for now, it is one a week.

Can you guess how many blog posts I update on a daily basis? Technically it is 0 (me at least), but my team focuses on updating at least 3 old blog posts per day. That’s roughly 90 a month.

Once you have a few hundred pages, make sure you focus on updating your old content or else your traffic will quickly drop.

You can use this content decay tool to see which posts you should update first.

This will help you continually grow your SEO traffic instead of hitting plateaus or seeing your traffic take massive drops.

Lesson #8: Don’t forget to optimize your title tags

One of the easiest ways to grow your rankings is to optimize your title tags.

If you can write persuasive copy and get more clicks, you’ll quickly move up on Google.

In Brazil, we spend more time doing this than we do in the United States.

We get a similar amount of impressions in Brazil, but we have more people focusing on improving our title tags and testing. Hence, we get 95% more SEO traffic in Brazil.

If you want tips on boosting your clicks, check out this article.

Another simple hack is to use the “Content Ideas” report in Ubersuggest.

On the right side of that report, you can see social share counts from Facebook and Pinterest. And on the left side, you see titles of articles.

Typically, if people like a title they share it more. So, look for titles that have a lot of shares as it will give you ideas on what you can use on your website to get more clicks and boost your rankings.

Lesson #9: Don’t put dates in your URL

I used to put dates in my URLs like:

Neilpatel.com/2017/12/title-of-post/

This causes search engines to assume that your content is related to a specific date. And after that date gets old, search engines assume your content is irrelevant and outdated.

The moment I removed the date from my URLs, I grew my SEO traffic by 58% in 30 days.

If you have dates in your URL, make sure you 301 redirect your old URLs to your new ones once you make that change, or else your rankings will drop.

Lesson #10: Don’t be afraid to use popups

Don’t you hate popups? Well, who doesn’t?

But people use them because they work.

The majority of your pages that will rank are blog-related content. And blog posts tend to drive fewer direct conversions because people are on your site to read the content.

In order to maximize your conversions from SEO, you should consider using exit popups so you can convert more of those visitors into customers as they leave.

When you leave this site in most cases, you’ll see a popup that looks like:

And it drives you to this quiz, which allows me to convert SEO visitors into customers.

You can easily copy me by using Hello Bar. It works for all industries including B2B and ecommerce and even lead generation sites.

Lesson #11: Brand queries affect rankings

Everyone talks about how you need links to boost rankings.

But very few people talk about brand queries.

As Google’s ex-CEO and ex-head of web spam both emphasized how brands are important.

One of the big reasons for my growth in SEO traffic is the growth in my brand. I’ve seen a direct correlation in which the more people who find me from my name, the more SEO traffic I get.

Just look at my brand growth over time:

I’ve received over 1.9 million visitors over the last 16 months from people typing in variations of my name in Google.

Lesson #12: Don’t waste your money on paid links

I’ve been doing SEO since I was 16 years old. That’s a long time…

When I started off as a kid, I dabbled in paid links and I used to dominate Google for terms like online casino, online poker, web hosting, auto insurance, and even credit cards.

And I was making a killing off of affiliate income from these sites.

But it was all short lived.

Why?

Because I bought links. And eventually Google penalized all of those sites.

If I never purchased links, those sites would have taken longer to rank, but they would have been around today, and I would have generated more income overall.

Don’t buy links, it’s bad and shortsighted.

Lesson #13: Guest post to build a brand, not to build links

I already covered the importance of branding above.

A great way to build your brand and indirectly boost your SEO traffic is through guest posting.

But don’t use guest posting to build links.

Most sites that offer guest posts, nofollow them (which they should), and Google is smart enough to know what a guest post is, hence they ignore guest post links from sites like Forbes.

It’s pretty easy to spot a guest post for both a human and algorithm…

But if you are using it to build a brand, great. Focus on the content quality and not links.

Lesson #14: Don’t forget to interlink

Do you know what some of my highest ranked pages are?

The ones that are interlinked.

It takes anywhere from 6 months to a year for many of the interlinks to kick in, but it is still effective none-the-less.

Every time I wrote content, I used to make sure I link out to my older pieces of content when it made sense. But I made a big mistake… I wasn’t going into my older pieces of content and then adding links to my newer pieces of content.

That one change was game-changing for me. It took time to see the results but it worked exceptionally well.

It’s how I rank high for terms like “email marketing”.

Lesson #15: Google isn’t the only game in town

Although Google is the most popular search engine, it isn’t the only one you need to focus on.

Did you know that YouTube is the second most popular search engine?

Even Bing gets a lot of traffic.

If you want to rank high on Bing, follow this.

Or if you prefer video, watch this:

As for YouTube, this guide will teach you YouTube SEO. It works really well, just look at my YouTube SEO traffic:

Over the last 28 days, I received 429,501 video views through YouTube SEO.

Lesson #16: Speed is everything

The faster your server and the more optimized your site, the more traffic you’ll get.

Years ago, my friend Otis added more servers to his site GoodReads.

Within a month, his SEO traffic went up over 20%.

Speed is part of Google’s algorithm, so optimize it for both web and mobile.

A quick way to see your site’s speed is to enter your URL here.

You’ll see a report that breaks down your mobile and desktop load times as well as what you can do to improve them.

Lesson #17: Quality over quantity

SEO used to be a game of quantity over quality.

That isn’t the case anymore. With over a billion blogs, Google has its fair share of sites to choose from.

Just look at About.com. Eventually they renamed it Dotdash and changed their strategy.

They took all of their About.com content and moved it over to 6 vertical based sites and deleted 900,000 pages of junk content.

This grew their traffic and revenue by a whopping 140%.

Focus on writing high-quality content. It’s why I blog less and try to make my content amazing.

Lesson #18: Tools are better than content marketing

I used to focus all of my energy on content marketing because it drove a lot of links and SEO traffic.

But over time, I realized that creating free tools builds more natural links than anything else I have ever tested.

Just look at Ubersuggest. I spent years creating it and look at how many links it has generated…

30,603 backlinks! That’s a lot of links.

If you don’t have the resources to build a custom tool like me, you can always start with buying a white label tool from Code Canyon for $10 or $20. They literally have tools for almost all industries.

Lesson #19: Don’t rely only on SEO

When I first got started in SEO, all I could think about was SEO.

To me, it was the best marketing channel out there because it allowed me to compete with large companies.

Even to this day, I still love SEO more than any other channel.

But it doesn’t stop me from leveraging other marketing channels.

See, years ago you could build a business off of one marketing channel.

Yelp was built through SEO. Dropbox through social media referrals. Facebook through email invites…

Those days don’t exist anymore. You can’t just build your traffic from one channel.

Although you should do SEO, you should also try paid ads, social media marketing, email marketing, push notifications, and anything else that comes out.

Diversify your traffic sources and don’t just rely solely on SEO.

Lesson #20: People love linking to data

Spending money and time to gather your own unique data is an easy way to build links.

Check out my posts on content marketing trends and social media trends.

I’ve added tons of unique data, stats, and charts to each of those posts.

The end result? Extra backlinks. ?

The content marketing trends post received 447 backlinks.

If you don’t have the time to gather custom data you can always find someone on Upwork to help you out.

Lesson #21: Don’t forget about Infographics

One of my favorite SEO strategies that still works well today is infographics.

I have tons of them on the NeilPatel.com blog.

I didn’t start off with infographics here… I used to do them on my old blog Quick Sprout and KISSmetrics.

Here’s an interesting stat for you when I used to crank out infographics on KISSmetrics.

Within a two-year period, from 2010 to 2012, 47 infographics generated 2,512,596 visitors and 41,142 backlinks from 3,741 unique domains. They also generated 41,359 tweets and 20,859 likes.

If you don’t have money to hire a designer, you can use Infogram or Canva to create one on your own.

Lesson #22: Google doesn’t penalize for duplicate content

You don’t want to post tons of duplicate content on your site as it’s not the best user experience, but keep in mind that Google doesn’t penalize you for duplication.

They may not just rank the duplicate content as well.

So, if you spend all of this time producing amazing, unique content, why not publish it FIRST on your own website.

Then after a few hours or days if you want to be safe, take that exact content and publish it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and anywhere else that will accept your content.

Literally, take all of the words and paste them onto those social channels.

It will get you extra awareness and branding. Plus, the content should already be indexed on your site, so Google knows it came from your first… and I doubt you care if the duplicated version on LinkedIn ranks. That’s still great branding.

In other words, don’t be afraid to repurpose your content even if it causes duplication.

Just look at this post, for example. I’m also repurposing it into a 4-part podcast series.

Lesson #23: Don’t recreate the wheel

I used to spend hours a week doing keyword research trying to figure out what new terms to rank for.

Eventually, I figured out an easier and better way to find new content topics and keywords to go after.

Go to Ubersuggest, type in your competitor’s domain name and hit search.

In the left-hand navigation click on Top Pages.

You’ll see a report that shows you all of the popular pages on your competition’s website. This will give you ideas for the type of pages you should create on your website.

Then I want you to click “View All” under Est. Visits (estimated visits). This will show you all of the keywords that drive traffic to that page.

You now have a list of topics and keywords for each topic to go after.

Lesson #24: Don’t pick a generic domain name

Remember how in Lesson 11 I talked about brand queries and how they helped rankings?

After I learned that, I decided to go buy exact match domain names where the domain name was the keyword.

That way I would get lots of brand queries without trying.

Well, there’s an issue… even if you rank high, what you’ll find is you will have a low click-through rate in most cases.

If you have a low click-through rate, it tells Google your brand isn’t strong and people don’t prefer it, which can hurt your ranking.

So instead of focusing on exact match domains, unless you have millions to spend on branding like Hotels.com, focus on building a memorable brand.

Pick something that is unique, easy to spell, and easy to remember.

Lesson #25: Learn from blackhat SEOs, but don’t go over to the dark side

Blackhat SEOs come up with some interesting data and experiments.

Many of them don’t work for long, but they are interesting none-the-less.

Although I don’t recommend practicing blackhat SEO, I do recommend following them.

The easiest way you can learn from them is by reading Blackhat World.

People there share some interesting insights, especially every time there is a major Google algorithm update.

Again, I don’t recommend practicing blackhat SEO, but following them may help you uncover “white hat” techniques that can increase your rankings. Not everything they do is bad… many of them use legitimate tactics as well.

Lesson #26: Short URLs rank better than long ones

My URLs used to be the title of my blog post.

For example, with this post I would have used this URL in the past…

Neilpatel.com/blog/30-lessons-after-30-million-seo-visitors/

Eventually I switched to short URLs.

Google just prefers them. And I’ve seen it firsthand. That’s why I use short ones now.

URLs at position #1 are on average 9.2 characters shorter than URLs that rank in position #10. So, keep them short.

Lesson #27: The power’s in the list

If you want your content to rank high on Google, you need more people to see it.

Whether it is from social shares, or from push notifications or email blasts… the more people that see your content, the more engagement it will get, and the more people that will link to it.

I used to do a ton of manual outreach every time I published a new blog post and I would email people asking them to link to me.

And it works, it’s just time consuming and a pain.

These days, I have a better strategy… send out an email blast every time I publish a new post.

I can now get anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 clicks per email I send out.

Now of course you won’t get that from day one as it took me years to build up my email list.

But you can start today by collecting emails. You can easily do that through Hello Bar.

And as your list grows, so will the clicks to your blog and the number of links you get, which in turn will increase your rankings.

Lesson #28: Don’t let your foot off the peddle

This was one of the hardest lessons I learned.

It’s exhausting to continually blog and do your own SEO. Sometimes you just want a break.

With my old blog, Quick Sprout, I used to publish 12 blog posts a month and I did that consistently for 3 years.

One day I decided that I wanted to stop for a month. So, I took a 30-day break.

Guess what happened to my traffic?

It tanked by 32%.

So, then I started blogging again. And guessed what happened to my traffic after I started blogging?

It didn’t come right back.

It took me 3 months to get back to where I was.

When things are working for you, don’t slow down. Keep pushing harder, even if you are exhausted. Because the moment you stop, you’ll drop, and it is a lot of work to get back to where you were.

Lesson #29: The best SEO advice comes from conferences

The best SEO advice I have ever learned over the years has come from conferences.

And no, I don’t mean by sitting in on the sessions, although you can learn from those too.

The best SEO secrets and advice I learned came from networking. When you go to these conferences, hundreds if not thousands of other SEOs are there. And when you go to the bar after hours and mingle with people, you’ll quickly pick stuff up.

You’ll be shocked at what people tell you. It’s how I learned a lot of the good tactics that I still use today.

Lesson #30: Never stop learning

This one may sound obvious but when things are going well, people get complacent.

Google makes on average 3,234 updates per year and that count has been increasing over time.

Just think about that for a bit… that’s roughly 9 algorithm updates per day.

Because they are changing so quickly, you won’t survive if you don’t stay up to date.

Yes, the ideal strategy is to do what’s best for your users or visitors as in the long run, Google wants to promote those sites, but it doesn’t mean that you can ignore the changes happening in the industry.

Read all of the SEO blogs out there, attend conferences as I mentioned above… experiment on test sites… push yourself to be better.

That drive of always improving and always wanting to learn more has helped me tremendously. It’s one of the reasons for my growth in rankings over the years.

Conclusion

There are a lot of lessons that you will learn as your rankings grow and as you spend more time on SEO.

But hopefully, you don’t have to waste time and go through the same mistakes I made. You don’t want to learn these lessons the hard way.

That’s why I decided to share them. I want to save you the time and help you achieve your traffic goals faster.

Which SEO lessons have you learned?

The post 30 Lessons After 30 Million SEO Visitors appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/seo-visitors/ via https://neilpatel.com

See the original post, 30 Lessons After 30 Million SEO Visitors that is shared from https://imtrainingparadise.weebly.com/home/30-lessons-after-30-million-seo-visitors via https://imtrainingparadise.weebly.com/home

[jjpocketbook]

30 Lessons After 30 Million SEO Visitors

As you can see from the screenshot above, I’ve driven 30 million visitors to my website from SEO.

Technically it’s more, but who’s counting.

What’s funny, though, is I barely look at my traffic, even as Google continually rolls out algorithm updates.

I know that sounds contradictory because if you are an SEO, why wouldn’t you obsess about traffic, right?

Well, it’s because I’ve learned some hard lessons over the year… mainly because I’ve made a lot of mistakes.

So today, I wanted to share them with you so that you can learn from my mistakes… so here goes:

Lesson #1: Don’t obsess over rankings, obsess over conversions

I used to check my rankings every single day. Literally.

On top of that, I would log into Google Analytics 4 to 5 times a day and continually check my traffic.

That’s all I cared about back in the day… boosting my organic traffic.

But here is the thing: As my rankings and traffic went up over the years, my revenue didn’t go up proportionally.

For example, during one quarter in 2017, my SEO traffic went up 39.52%, but my revenue from SEO went up only 4.29%.

I quickly learned that traffic isn’t everything. If you can’t convert the traffic into revenue it doesn’t matter.

That taught me that you need to focus on the right keywords that drive conversions and continually optimize your site for conversions.

An easy first step for you to take is to install Crazy Egg and run a heatmap to see where people click so you adjust your design and copy to get more sales.

Lesson #2: The easiest way to grow your SEO traffic is international expansion

You already know that I get a lot of SEO traffic, but do you know what country drives most of my traffic?

If you guessed United States, you are wrong.

Brazil is my most popular region, followed by India.

International SEO is the easiest way to expand and grow your traffic. Here are a few posts that you should read before you expand your SEO globally:

How to create a global SEO strategy

Fundamentals of international SEO

How to correctly setup your site for international SEO

How to profitably expand your SEO globally

Lesson #3: Keywords are very, very, very, very important

When I used to write my content, I didn’t obsess about the keywords when I should have.

My team actually proved me wrong on this.

I used to focus on writing content for humans and didn’t worry about search engines. My team, on the other hand, obsesses about keywords.

Just look at the growth of our traffic in Brazil because of our obsession with the right keywords.

One simple thing I do before writing that has really helped is I head over to Ubersuggest and type in a few of the keywords that I want to go after.

Once it loads, you’ll see a report like the one above. I want you to then click on “Keyword Ideas” in the left-hand navigation.

You’ll see a report that contains a list of keywords that you could potentially be targeting.

Make sure you click on the “Related” tab, as well as “Questions” and “Comparisons” … scroll through the list. You’ll see hundreds of keywords. Pick all of the ones that are relevant and ideally have a high cost per click (CPC). These are the keywords that’ll not only drive traffic but revenue as well.

Whenever I write a blog post, I go through this step. Every single time.

Lesson #4: AMP pages can drive more SEO traffic

AMP pages load faster on mobile devices than non-AMP pages.

If you aren’t familiar with the AMP framework, read this.

What most people won’t tell you about AMP pages is that:

In regions like the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, countries with decent Internet infrastructure, you won’t see much of an increase in traffic.

In regions with poor Internet infrastructure, like Brazil, you’ll see a 10 to 15% lift in mobile SEO traffic by having AMP pages.

AMP pages don’t convert visitors into customers as well as normal responsive web design. So, you’ll have to work on testing your AMP pages so you can boost your conversion rates.

Lesson #5: SEO will never convert as well as paid ads

When I started off with SEO, I would run projections on how much the traffic would make me.

But the numbers were always off, even if I was able to get the rankings.

Here’s the main reason: If you are bidding on terms like auto insurance through ads, you can drive people to a landing page that looks like this:

But if you want to rank organically, you’ll have to do it through content. So, your page that ranks well will look more like this and convert less…

It doesn’t mean SEO is bad. In reality, it’s much cheaper in the long run than paid ads and will produce a better ROI. But don’t just assume that if you get 100 visitors from paid ads and 3 purchases that you’ll have the same conversion rate with your SEO traffic.

Chances are it will be significantly lower by maybe 2 or 3x, but because SEO is cheaper, it will be much more profitable.

Lesson #6: Remarketing is one of the best ways to generate an ROI from SEO

If you get a ton of traffic from SEO, there is a simple strategy you can implement to boost your conversions.

Remarket everyone on Facebook, Google, and YouTube.

That way people come to your site, read your content, and build trust with you and your brand.

Then you remarket them throughout the web with ads that prompt your products or services and send them to a landing page that will drive sales.

I’ve been doing this for years, just look at my old remarketing ad…

For the regions I use remarketing in, it is responsible for 46% of my leads.

Lesson #7: Don’t forget to update your old content

I publish one new blog post a week. I’m working on increasing this as I get more time, but for now, it is one a week.

Can you guess how many blog posts I update on a daily basis? Technically it is 0 (me at least), but my team focuses on updating at least 3 old blog posts per day. That’s roughly 90 a month.

Once you have a few hundred pages, make sure you focus on updating your old content or else your traffic will quickly drop.

You can use this content decay tool to see which posts you should update first.

This will help you continually grow your SEO traffic instead of hitting plateaus or seeing your traffic take massive drops.

Lesson #8: Don’t forget to optimize your title tags

One of the easiest ways to grow your rankings is to optimize your title tags.

If you can write persuasive copy and get more clicks, you’ll quickly move up on Google.

In Brazil, we spend more time doing this than we do in the United States.

We get a similar amount of impressions in Brazil, but we have more people focusing on improving our title tags and testing. Hence, we get 95% more SEO traffic in Brazil.

If you want tips on boosting your clicks, check out this article.

Another simple hack is to use the “Content Ideas” report in Ubersuggest.

On the right side of that report, you can see social share counts from Facebook and Pinterest. And on the left side, you see titles of articles.

Typically, if people like a title they share it more. So, look for titles that have a lot of shares as it will give you ideas on what you can use on your website to get more clicks and boost your rankings.

Lesson #9: Don’t put dates in your URL

I used to put dates in my URLs like:

Neilpatel.com/2017/12/title-of-post/

This causes search engines to assume that your content is related to a specific date. And after that date gets old, search engines assume your content is irrelevant and outdated.

The moment I removed the date from my URLs, I grew my SEO traffic by 58% in 30 days.

If you have dates in your URL, make sure you 301 redirect your old URLs to your new ones once you make that change, or else your rankings will drop.

Lesson #10: Don’t be afraid to use popups

Don’t you hate popups? Well, who doesn’t?

But people use them because they work.

The majority of your pages that will rank are blog-related content. And blog posts tend to drive fewer direct conversions because people are on your site to read the content.

In order to maximize your conversions from SEO, you should consider using exit popups so you can convert more of those visitors into customers as they leave.

When you leave this site in most cases, you’ll see a popup that looks like:

And it drives you to this quiz, which allows me to convert SEO visitors into customers.

You can easily copy me by using Hello Bar. It works for all industries including B2B and ecommerce and even lead generation sites.

Lesson #11: Brand queries affect rankings

Everyone talks about how you need links to boost rankings.

But very few people talk about brand queries.

As Google’s ex-CEO and ex-head of web spam both emphasized how brands are important.

One of the big reasons for my growth in SEO traffic is the growth in my brand. I’ve seen a direct correlation in which the more people who find me from my name, the more SEO traffic I get.

Just look at my brand growth over time:

I’ve received over 1.9 million visitors over the last 16 months from people typing in variations of my name in Google.

Lesson #12: Don’t waste your money on paid links

I’ve been doing SEO since I was 16 years old. That’s a long time…

When I started off as a kid, I dabbled in paid links and I used to dominate Google for terms like online casino, online poker, web hosting, auto insurance, and even credit cards.

And I was making a killing off of affiliate income from these sites.

But it was all short lived.

Why?

Because I bought links. And eventually Google penalized all of those sites.

If I never purchased links, those sites would have taken longer to rank, but they would have been around today, and I would have generated more income overall.

Don’t buy links, it’s bad and shortsighted.

Lesson #13: Guest post to build a brand, not to build links

I already covered the importance of branding above.

A great way to build your brand and indirectly boost your SEO traffic is through guest posting.

But don’t use guest posting to build links.

Most sites that offer guest posts, nofollow them (which they should), and Google is smart enough to know what a guest post is, hence they ignore guest post links from sites like Forbes.

It’s pretty easy to spot a guest post for both a human and algorithm…

But if you are using it to build a brand, great. Focus on the content quality and not links.

Lesson #14: Don’t forget to interlink

Do you know what some of my highest ranked pages are?

The ones that are interlinked.

It takes anywhere from 6 months to a year for many of the interlinks to kick in, but it is still effective none-the-less.

Every time I wrote content, I used to make sure I link out to my older pieces of content when it made sense. But I made a big mistake… I wasn’t going into my older pieces of content and then adding links to my newer pieces of content.

That one change was game-changing for me. It took time to see the results but it worked exceptionally well.

It’s how I rank high for terms like “email marketing”.

Lesson #15: Google isn’t the only game in town

Although Google is the most popular search engine, it isn’t the only one you need to focus on.

Did you know that YouTube is the second most popular search engine?

Even Bing gets a lot of traffic.

If you want to rank high on Bing, follow this.

Or if you prefer video, watch this:

As for YouTube, this guide will teach you YouTube SEO. It works really well, just look at my YouTube SEO traffic:

Over the last 28 days, I received 429,501 video views through YouTube SEO.

Lesson #16: Speed is everything

The faster your server and the more optimized your site, the more traffic you’ll get.

Years ago, my friend Otis added more servers to his site GoodReads.

Within a month, his SEO traffic went up over 20%.

Speed is part of Google’s algorithm, so optimize it for both web and mobile.

A quick way to see your site’s speed is to enter your URL here.

You’ll see a report that breaks down your mobile and desktop load times as well as what you can do to improve them.

Lesson #17: Quality over quantity

SEO used to be a game of quantity over quality.

That isn’t the case anymore. With over a billion blogs, Google has its fair share of sites to choose from.

Just look at About.com. Eventually they renamed it Dotdash and changed their strategy.

They took all of their About.com content and moved it over to 6 vertical based sites and deleted 900,000 pages of junk content.

This grew their traffic and revenue by a whopping 140%.

Focus on writing high-quality content. It’s why I blog less and try to make my content amazing.

Lesson #18: Tools are better than content marketing

I used to focus all of my energy on content marketing because it drove a lot of links and SEO traffic.

But over time, I realized that creating free tools builds more natural links than anything else I have ever tested.

Just look at Ubersuggest. I spent years creating it and look at how many links it has generated…

30,603 backlinks! That’s a lot of links.

If you don’t have the resources to build a custom tool like me, you can always start with buying a white label tool from Code Canyon for $10 or $20. They literally have tools for almost all industries.

Lesson #19: Don’t rely only on SEO

When I first got started in SEO, all I could think about was SEO.

To me, it was the best marketing channel out there because it allowed me to compete with large companies.

Even to this day, I still love SEO more than any other channel.

But it doesn’t stop me from leveraging other marketing channels.

See, years ago you could build a business off of one marketing channel.

Yelp was built through SEO. Dropbox through social media referrals. Facebook through email invites…

Those days don’t exist anymore. You can’t just build your traffic from one channel.

Although you should do SEO, you should also try paid ads, social media marketing, email marketing, push notifications, and anything else that comes out.

Diversify your traffic sources and don’t just rely solely on SEO.

Lesson #20: People love linking to data

Spending money and time to gather your own unique data is an easy way to build links.

Check out my posts on content marketing trends and social media trends.

I’ve added tons of unique data, stats, and charts to each of those posts.

The end result? Extra backlinks.

The content marketing trends post received 447 backlinks.

If you don’t have the time to gather custom data you can always find someone on Upwork to help you out.

Lesson #21: Don’t forget about Infographics

One of my favorite SEO strategies that still works well today is infographics.

I have tons of them on the NeilPatel.com blog.

I didn’t start off with infographics here… I used to do them on my old blog Quick Sprout and KISSmetrics.

Here’s an interesting stat for you when I used to crank out infographics on KISSmetrics.

Within a two-year period, from 2010 to 2012, 47 infographics generated 2,512,596 visitors and 41,142 backlinks from 3,741 unique domains. They also generated 41,359 tweets and 20,859 likes.

If you don’t have money to hire a designer, you can use Infogram or Canva to create one on your own.

Lesson #22: Google doesn’t penalize for duplicate content

You don’t want to post tons of duplicate content on your site as it’s not the best user experience, but keep in mind that Google doesn’t penalize you for duplication.

They may not just rank the duplicate content as well.

So, if you spend all of this time producing amazing, unique content, why not publish it FIRST on your own website.

Then after a few hours or days if you want to be safe, take that exact content and publish it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and anywhere else that will accept your content.

Literally, take all of the words and paste them onto those social channels.

It will get you extra awareness and branding. Plus, the content should already be indexed on your site, so Google knows it came from your first… and I doubt you care if the duplicated version on LinkedIn ranks. That’s still great branding.

In other words, don’t be afraid to repurpose your content even if it causes duplication.

Just look at this post, for example. I’m also repurposing it into a 4-part podcast series.

Lesson #23: Don’t recreate the wheel

I used to spend hours a week doing keyword research trying to figure out what new terms to rank for.

Eventually, I figured out an easier and better way to find new content topics and keywords to go after.

Go to Ubersuggest, type in your competitor’s domain name and hit search.

In the left-hand navigation click on Top Pages.

You’ll see a report that shows you all of the popular pages on your competition’s website. This will give you ideas for the type of pages you should create on your website.

Then I want you to click “View All” under Est. Visits (estimated visits). This will show you all of the keywords that drive traffic to that page.

You now have a list of topics and keywords for each topic to go after.

Lesson #24: Don’t pick a generic domain name

Remember how in Lesson 11 I talked about brand queries and how they helped rankings?

After I learned that, I decided to go buy exact match domain names where the domain name was the keyword.

That way I would get lots of brand queries without trying.

Well, there’s an issue… even if you rank high, what you’ll find is you will have a low click-through rate in most cases.

If you have a low click-through rate, it tells Google your brand isn’t strong and people don’t prefer it, which can hurt your ranking.

So instead of focusing on exact match domains, unless you have millions to spend on branding like Hotels.com, focus on building a memorable brand.

Pick something that is unique, easy to spell, and easy to remember.

Lesson #25: Learn from blackhat SEOs, but don’t go over to the dark side

Blackhat SEOs come up with some interesting data and experiments.

Many of them don’t work for long, but they are interesting none-the-less.

Although I don’t recommend practicing blackhat SEO, I do recommend following them.

The easiest way you can learn from them is by reading Blackhat World.

People there share some interesting insights, especially every time there is a major Google algorithm update.

Again, I don’t recommend practicing blackhat SEO, but following them may help you uncover “white hat” techniques that can increase your rankings. Not everything they do is bad… many of them use legitimate tactics as well.

Lesson #26: Short URLs rank better than long ones

My URLs used to be the title of my blog post.

For example, with this post I would have used this URL in the past…

Neilpatel.com/blog/30-lessons-after-30-million-seo-visitors/

Eventually I switched to short URLs.

Google just prefers them. And I’ve seen it firsthand. That’s why I use short ones now.

URLs at position #1 are on average 9.2 characters shorter than URLs that rank in position #10. So, keep them short.

Lesson #27: The power’s in the list

If you want your content to rank high on Google, you need more people to see it.

Whether it is from social shares, or from push notifications or email blasts… the more people that see your content, the more engagement it will get, and the more people that will link to it.

I used to do a ton of manual outreach every time I published a new blog post and I would email people asking them to link to me.

And it works, it’s just time consuming and a pain.

These days, I have a better strategy… send out an email blast every time I publish a new post.

I can now get anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 clicks per email I send out.

Now of course you won’t get that from day one as it took me years to build up my email list.

But you can start today by collecting emails. You can easily do that through Hello Bar.

And as your list grows, so will the clicks to your blog and the number of links you get, which in turn will increase your rankings.

Lesson #28: Don’t let your foot off the peddle

This was one of the hardest lessons I learned.

It’s exhausting to continually blog and do your own SEO. Sometimes you just want a break.

With my old blog, Quick Sprout, I used to publish 12 blog posts a month and I did that consistently for 3 years.

One day I decided that I wanted to stop for a month. So, I took a 30-day break.

Guess what happened to my traffic?

It tanked by 32%.

So, then I started blogging again. And guessed what happened to my traffic after I started blogging?

It didn’t come right back.

It took me 3 months to get back to where I was.

When things are working for you, don’t slow down. Keep pushing harder, even if you are exhausted. Because the moment you stop, you’ll drop, and it is a lot of work to get back to where you were.

Lesson #29: The best SEO advice comes from conferences

The best SEO advice I have ever learned over the years has come from conferences.

And no, I don’t mean by sitting in on the sessions, although you can learn from those too.

The best SEO secrets and advice I learned came from networking. When you go to these conferences, hundreds if not thousands of other SEOs are there. And when you go to the bar after hours and mingle with people, you’ll quickly pick stuff up.

You’ll be shocked at what people tell you. It’s how I learned a lot of the good tactics that I still use today.

Lesson #30: Never stop learning

This one may sound obvious but when things are going well, people get complacent.

Google makes on average 3,234 updates per year and that count has been increasing over time.

Just think about that for a bit… that’s roughly 9 algorithm updates per day.

Because they are changing so quickly, you won’t survive if you don’t stay up to date.

Yes, the ideal strategy is to do what’s best for your users or visitors as in the long run, Google wants to promote those sites, but it doesn’t mean that you can ignore the changes happening in the industry.

Read all of the SEO blogs out there, attend conferences as I mentioned above… experiment on test sites… push yourself to be better.

That drive of always improving and always wanting to learn more has helped me tremendously. It’s one of the reasons for my growth in rankings over the years.

Conclusion

There are a lot of lessons that you will learn as your rankings grow and as you spend more time on SEO.

But hopefully, you don’t have to waste time and go through the same mistakes I made. You don’t want to learn these lessons the hard way.

That’s why I decided to share them. I want to save you the time and help you achieve your traffic goals faster.

Which SEO lessons have you learned?

The post 30 Lessons After 30 Million SEO Visitors appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/seo-visitors/ via https://neilpatel.com

The original post, 30 Lessons After 30 Million SEO Visitors, has been shared from https://imtrainingparadise.wordpress.com/2020/05/19/30-lessons-after-30-million-seo-visitors/ via https://imtrainingparadise.wordpress.com

[jimmyjohnsmnm]

30 Lessons After 30 Million SEO Visitors

As you can see from the screenshot above, I’ve driven 30 million visitors to my website from SEO.

Technically it’s more, but who’s counting.

What’s funny, though, is I barely look at my traffic, even as Google continually rolls out algorithm updates.

I know that sounds contradictory because if you are an SEO, why wouldn’t you obsess about traffic, right?

Well, it’s because I’ve learned some hard lessons over the year… mainly because I’ve made a lot of mistakes.

So today, I wanted to share them with you so that you can learn from my mistakes… so here goes:

Lesson #1: Don’t obsess over rankings, obsess over conversions

I used to check my rankings every single day. Literally.

On top of that, I would log into Google Analytics 4 to 5 times a day and continually check my traffic.

That’s all I cared about back in the day… boosting my organic traffic.

But here is the thing: As my rankings and traffic went up over the years, my revenue didn’t go up proportionally.

For example, during one quarter in 2017, my SEO traffic went up 39.52%, but my revenue from SEO went up only 4.29%.

I quickly learned that traffic isn’t everything. If you can’t convert the traffic into revenue it doesn’t matter.

That taught me that you need to focus on the right keywords that drive conversions and continually optimize your site for conversions.

An easy first step for you to take is to install Crazy Egg and run a heatmap to see where people click so you adjust your design and copy to get more sales.

Lesson #2: The easiest way to grow your SEO traffic is international expansion

You already know that I get a lot of SEO traffic, but do you know what country drives most of my traffic?

If you guessed United States, you are wrong.

Brazil is my most popular region, followed by India.

International SEO is the easiest way to expand and grow your traffic. Here are a few posts that you should read before you expand your SEO globally:

How to create a global SEO strategy

Fundamentals of international SEO

How to correctly setup your site for international SEO

How to profitably expand your SEO globally

Lesson #3: Keywords are very, very, very, very important

When I used to write my content, I didn’t obsess about the keywords when I should have.

My team actually proved me wrong on this.

I used to focus on writing content for humans and didn’t worry about search engines. My team, on the other hand, obsesses about keywords.

Just look at the growth of our traffic in Brazil because of our obsession with the right keywords.

One simple thing I do before writing that has really helped is I head over to Ubersuggest and type in a few of the keywords that I want to go after.

Once it loads, you’ll see a report like the one above. I want you to then click on “Keyword Ideas” in the left-hand navigation.

You’ll see a report that contains a list of keywords that you could potentially be targeting.

Make sure you click on the “Related” tab, as well as “Questions” and “Comparisons” … scroll through the list. You’ll see hundreds of keywords. Pick all of the ones that are relevant and ideally have a high cost per click (CPC). These are the keywords that’ll not only drive traffic but revenue as well.

Whenever I write a blog post, I go through this step. Every single time.

Lesson #4: AMP pages can drive more SEO traffic

AMP pages load faster on mobile devices than non-AMP pages.

If you aren’t familiar with the AMP framework, read this.

What most people won’t tell you about AMP pages is that:

In regions like the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, countries with decent Internet infrastructure, you won’t see much of an increase in traffic.

In regions with poor Internet infrastructure, like Brazil, you’ll see a 10 to 15% lift in mobile SEO traffic by having AMP pages.

AMP pages don’t convert visitors into customers as well as normal responsive web design. So, you’ll have to work on testing your AMP pages so you can boost your conversion rates.

Lesson #5: SEO will never convert as well as paid ads

When I started off with SEO, I would run projections on how much the traffic would make me.

But the numbers were always off, even if I was able to get the rankings.

Here’s the main reason: If you are bidding on terms like auto insurance through ads, you can drive people to a landing page that looks like this:

But if you want to rank organically, you’ll have to do it through content. So, your page that ranks well will look more like this and convert less…

It doesn’t mean SEO is bad. In reality, it’s much cheaper in the long run than paid ads and will produce a better ROI. But don’t just assume that if you get 100 visitors from paid ads and 3 purchases that you’ll have the same conversion rate with your SEO traffic.

Chances are it will be significantly lower by maybe 2 or 3x, but because SEO is cheaper, it will be much more profitable.

Lesson #6: Remarketing is one of the best ways to generate an ROI from SEO

If you get a ton of traffic from SEO, there is a simple strategy you can implement to boost your conversions.

Remarket everyone on Facebook, Google, and YouTube.

That way people come to your site, read your content, and build trust with you and your brand.

Then you remarket them throughout the web with ads that prompt your products or services and send them to a landing page that will drive sales.

I’ve been doing this for years, just look at my old remarketing ad…

For the regions I use remarketing in, it is responsible for 46% of my leads.

Lesson #7: Don’t forget to update your old content

I publish one new blog post a week. I’m working on increasing this as I get more time, but for now, it is one a week.

Can you guess how many blog posts I update on a daily basis? Technically it is 0 (me at least), but my team focuses on updating at least 3 old blog posts per day. That’s roughly 90 a month.

Once you have a few hundred pages, make sure you focus on updating your old content or else your traffic will quickly drop.

You can use this content decay tool to see which posts you should update first.

This will help you continually grow your SEO traffic instead of hitting plateaus or seeing your traffic take massive drops.

Lesson #8: Don’t forget to optimize your title tags

One of the easiest ways to grow your rankings is to optimize your title tags.

If you can write persuasive copy and get more clicks, you’ll quickly move up on Google.

In Brazil, we spend more time doing this than we do in the United States.

We get a similar amount of impressions in Brazil, but we have more people focusing on improving our title tags and testing. Hence, we get 95% more SEO traffic in Brazil.

If you want tips on boosting your clicks, check out this article.

Another simple hack is to use the “Content Ideas” report in Ubersuggest.

On the right side of that report, you can see social share counts from Facebook and Pinterest. And on the left side, you see titles of articles.

Typically, if people like a title they share it more. So, look for titles that have a lot of shares as it will give you ideas on what you can use on your website to get more clicks and boost your rankings.

Lesson #9: Don’t put dates in your URL

I used to put dates in my URLs like:

Neilpatel.com/2017/12/title-of-post/

This causes search engines to assume that your content is related to a specific date. And after that date gets old, search engines assume your content is irrelevant and outdated.

The moment I removed the date from my URLs, I grew my SEO traffic by 58% in 30 days.

If you have dates in your URL, make sure you 301 redirect your old URLs to your new ones once you make that change, or else your rankings will drop.

Lesson #10: Don’t be afraid to use popups

Don’t you hate popups? Well, who doesn’t?

But people use them because they work.

The majority of your pages that will rank are blog-related content. And blog posts tend to drive fewer direct conversions because people are on your site to read the content.

In order to maximize your conversions from SEO, you should consider using exit popups so you can convert more of those visitors into customers as they leave.

When you leave this site in most cases, you’ll see a popup that looks like:

And it drives you to this quiz, which allows me to convert SEO visitors into customers.

You can easily copy me by using Hello Bar. It works for all industries including B2B and ecommerce and even lead generation sites.

Lesson #11: Brand queries affect rankings

Everyone talks about how you need links to boost rankings.

But very few people talk about brand queries.

As Google’s ex-CEO and ex-head of web spam both emphasized how brands are important.

One of the big reasons for my growth in SEO traffic is the growth in my brand. I’ve seen a direct correlation in which the more people who find me from my name, the more SEO traffic I get.

Just look at my brand growth over time:

I’ve received over 1.9 million visitors over the last 16 months from people typing in variations of my name in Google.

Lesson #12: Don’t waste your money on paid links

I’ve been doing SEO since I was 16 years old. That’s a long time…

When I started off as a kid, I dabbled in paid links and I used to dominate Google for terms like online casino, online poker, web hosting, auto insurance, and even credit cards.

And I was making a killing off of affiliate income from these sites.

But it was all short lived.

Why?

Because I bought links. And eventually Google penalized all of those sites.

If I never purchased links, those sites would have taken longer to rank, but they would have been around today, and I would have generated more income overall.

Don’t buy links, it’s bad and shortsighted.

Lesson #13: Guest post to build a brand, not to build links

I already covered the importance of branding above.

A great way to build your brand and indirectly boost your SEO traffic is through guest posting.

But don’t use guest posting to build links.

Most sites that offer guest posts, nofollow them (which they should), and Google is smart enough to know what a guest post is, hence they ignore guest post links from sites like Forbes.

It’s pretty easy to spot a guest post for both a human and algorithm…

But if you are using it to build a brand, great. Focus on the content quality and not links.

Lesson #14: Don’t forget to interlink

Do you know what some of my highest ranked pages are?

The ones that are interlinked.

It takes anywhere from 6 months to a year for many of the interlinks to kick in, but it is still effective none-the-less.

Every time I wrote content, I used to make sure I link out to my older pieces of content when it made sense. But I made a big mistake… I wasn’t going into my older pieces of content and then adding links to my newer pieces of content.

That one change was game-changing for me. It took time to see the results but it worked exceptionally well.

It’s how I rank high for terms like “email marketing”.

Lesson #15: Google isn’t the only game in town

Although Google is the most popular search engine, it isn’t the only one you need to focus on.

Did you know that YouTube is the second most popular search engine?

Even Bing gets a lot of traffic.

If you want to rank high on Bing, follow this.

Or if you prefer video, watch this:

As for YouTube, this guide will teach you YouTube SEO. It works really well, just look at my YouTube SEO traffic:

Over the last 28 days, I received 429,501 video views through YouTube SEO.

Lesson #16: Speed is everything

The faster your server and the more optimized your site, the more traffic you’ll get.

Years ago, my friend Otis added more servers to his site GoodReads.

Within a month, his SEO traffic went up over 20%.

Speed is part of Google’s algorithm, so optimize it for both web and mobile.

A quick way to see your site’s speed is to enter your URL here.

You’ll see a report that breaks down your mobile and desktop load times as well as what you can do to improve them.

Lesson #17: Quality over quantity

SEO used to be a game of quantity over quality.

That isn’t the case anymore. With over a billion blogs, Google has its fair share of sites to choose from.

Just look at About.com. Eventually they renamed it Dotdash and changed their strategy.

They took all of their About.com content and moved it over to 6 vertical based sites and deleted 900,000 pages of junk content.

This grew their traffic and revenue by a whopping 140%.

Focus on writing high-quality content. It’s why I blog less and try to make my content amazing.

Lesson #18: Tools are better than content marketing

I used to focus all of my energy on content marketing because it drove a lot of links and SEO traffic.

But over time, I realized that creating free tools builds more natural links than anything else I have ever tested.

Just look at Ubersuggest. I spent years creating it and look at how many links it has generated…

30,603 backlinks! That’s a lot of links.

If you don’t have the resources to build a custom tool like me, you can always start with buying a white label tool from Code Canyon for $10 or $20. They literally have tools for almost all industries.

Lesson #19: Don’t rely only on SEO

When I first got started in SEO, all I could think about was SEO.

To me, it was the best marketing channel out there because it allowed me to compete with large companies.

Even to this day, I still love SEO more than any other channel.

But it doesn’t stop me from leveraging other marketing channels.

See, years ago you could build a business off of one marketing channel.

Yelp was built through SEO. Dropbox through social media referrals. Facebook through email invites…

Those days don’t exist anymore. You can’t just build your traffic from one channel.

Although you should do SEO, you should also try paid ads, social media marketing, email marketing, push notifications, and anything else that comes out.

Diversify your traffic sources and don’t just rely solely on SEO.

Lesson #20: People love linking to data

Spending money and time to gather your own unique data is an easy way to build links.

Check out my posts on content marketing trends and social media trends.

I’ve added tons of unique data, stats, and charts to each of those posts.

The end result? Extra backlinks. 🙂

The content marketing trends post received 447 backlinks.

If you don’t have the time to gather custom data you can always find someone on Upwork to help you out.

Lesson #21: Don’t forget about Infographics

One of my favorite SEO strategies that still works well today is infographics.

I have tons of them on the NeilPatel.com blog.

I didn’t start off with infographics here… I used to do them on my old blog Quick Sprout and KISSmetrics.

Here’s an interesting stat for you when I used to crank out infographics on KISSmetrics.

Within a two-year period, from 2010 to 2012, 47 infographics generated 2,512,596 visitors and 41,142 backlinks from 3,741 unique domains. They also generated 41,359 tweets and 20,859 likes.

If you don’t have money to hire a designer, you can use Infogram or Canva to create one on your own.

Lesson #22: Google doesn’t penalize for duplicate content

You don’t want to post tons of duplicate content on your site as it’s not the best user experience, but keep in mind that Google doesn’t penalize you for duplication.

They may not just rank the duplicate content as well.

So, if you spend all of this time producing amazing, unique content, why not publish it FIRST on your own website.

Then after a few hours or days if you want to be safe, take that exact content and publish it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and anywhere else that will accept your content.

Literally, take all of the words and paste them onto those social channels.

It will get you extra awareness and branding. Plus, the content should already be indexed on your site, so Google knows it came from your first… and I doubt you care if the duplicated version on LinkedIn ranks. That’s still great branding.

In other words, don’t be afraid to repurpose your content even if it causes duplication.

Just look at this post, for example. I’m also repurposing it into a 4-part podcast series.

Lesson #23: Don’t recreate the wheel

I used to spend hours a week doing keyword research trying to figure out what new terms to rank for.

Eventually, I figured out an easier and better way to find new content topics and keywords to go after.

Go to Ubersuggest, type in your competitor’s domain name and hit search.

In the left-hand navigation click on Top Pages.

You’ll see a report that shows you all of the popular pages on your competition’s website. This will give you ideas for the type of pages you should create on your website.

Then I want you to click “View All” under Est. Visits (estimated visits). This will show you all of the keywords that drive traffic to that page.

You now have a list of topics and keywords for each topic to go after.

Lesson #24: Don’t pick a generic domain name

Remember how in Lesson 11 I talked about brand queries and how they helped rankings?

After I learned that, I decided to go buy exact match domain names where the domain name was the keyword.

That way I would get lots of brand queries without trying.

Well, there’s an issue… even if you rank high, what you’ll find is you will have a low click-through rate in most cases.

If you have a low click-through rate, it tells Google your brand isn’t strong and people don’t prefer it, which can hurt your ranking.

So instead of focusing on exact match domains, unless you have millions to spend on branding like Hotels.com, focus on building a memorable brand.

Pick something that is unique, easy to spell, and easy to remember.

Lesson #25: Learn from blackhat SEOs, but don’t go over to the dark side

Blackhat SEOs come up with some interesting data and experiments.

Many of them don’t work for long, but they are interesting none-the-less.

Although I don’t recommend practicing blackhat SEO, I do recommend following them.

The easiest way you can learn from them is by reading Blackhat World.

People there share some interesting insights, especially every time there is a major Google algorithm update.

Again, I don’t recommend practicing blackhat SEO, but following them may help you uncover “white hat” techniques that can increase your rankings. Not everything they do is bad… many of them use legitimate tactics as well.

Lesson #26: Short URLs rank better than long ones

My URLs used to be the title of my blog post.

For example, with this post I would have used this URL in the past…

Neilpatel.com/blog/30-lessons-after-30-million-seo-visitors/

Eventually I switched to short URLs.

Google just prefers them. And I’ve seen it firsthand. That’s why I use short ones now.

URLs at position #1 are on average 9.2 characters shorter than URLs that rank in position #10. So, keep them short.

Lesson #27: The power’s in the list

If you want your content to rank high on Google, you need more people to see it.

Whether it is from social shares, or from push notifications or email blasts… the more people that see your content, the more engagement it will get, and the more people that will link to it.

I used to do a ton of manual outreach every time I published a new blog post and I would email people asking them to link to me.

And it works, it’s just time consuming and a pain.

These days, I have a better strategy… send out an email blast every time I publish a new post.

I can now get anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 clicks per email I send out.

Now of course you won’t get that from day one as it took me years to build up my email list.

But you can start today by collecting emails. You can easily do that through Hello Bar.

And as your list grows, so will the clicks to your blog and the number of links you get, which in turn will increase your rankings.

Lesson #28: Don’t let your foot off the peddle

This was one of the hardest lessons I learned.

It’s exhausting to continually blog and do your own SEO. Sometimes you just want a break.

With my old blog, Quick Sprout, I used to publish 12 blog posts a month and I did that consistently for 3 years.

One day I decided that I wanted to stop for a month. So, I took a 30-day break.

Guess what happened to my traffic?

It tanked by 32%.

So, then I started blogging again. And guessed what happened to my traffic after I started blogging?

It didn’t come right back.

It took me 3 months to get back to where I was.

When things are working for you, don’t slow down. Keep pushing harder, even if you are exhausted. Because the moment you stop, you’ll drop, and it is a lot of work to get back to where you were.

Lesson #29: The best SEO advice comes from conferences

The best SEO advice I have ever learned over the years has come from conferences.

And no, I don’t mean by sitting in on the sessions, although you can learn from those too.

The best SEO secrets and advice I learned came from networking. When you go to these conferences, hundreds if not thousands of other SEOs are there. And when you go to the bar after hours and mingle with people, you’ll quickly pick stuff up.

You’ll be shocked at what people tell you. It’s how I learned a lot of the good tactics that I still use today.

Lesson #30: Never stop learning

This one may sound obvious but when things are going well, people get complacent.

Google makes on average 3,234 updates per year and that count has been increasing over time.

Just think about that for a bit… that’s roughly 9 algorithm updates per day.

Because they are changing so quickly, you won’t survive if you don’t stay up to date.

Yes, the ideal strategy is to do what’s best for your users or visitors as in the long run, Google wants to promote those sites, but it doesn’t mean that you can ignore the changes happening in the industry.

Read all of the SEO blogs out there, attend conferences as I mentioned above… experiment on test sites… push yourself to be better.

That drive of always improving and always wanting to learn more has helped me tremendously. It’s one of the reasons for my growth in rankings over the years.

Conclusion

There are a lot of lessons that you will learn as your rankings grow and as you spend more time on SEO.

But hopefully, you don’t have to waste time and go through the same mistakes I made. You don’t want to learn these lessons the hard way.

That’s why I decided to share them. I want to save you the time and help you achieve your traffic goals faster.

Which SEO lessons have you learned?

The post 30 Lessons After 30 Million SEO Visitors appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://ift.tt/2zcTaTl via https://neilpatel.com The post, 30 Lessons After 30 Million SEO Visitors, has been shared from https://ift.tt/2WJNUQh via https://ift.tt/2r0Go64

[5llowance]

Landing a Public School/University Job in a Tier 1 City in China with Zero Professional Classroom Teaching Experience - Is it Possible? via /r/China

Landing a Public School/University Job in a Tier 1 City in China with Zero Professional Classroom Teaching Experience - Is it Possible?

What's up, everybody!

I'm reaching out because I've been thinking about making the move to China for a little while, but I only recently started getting serious about making the move. Apologies if all of this comes off long-winded, but I want to provide as much relevant background as possible (in order to, hopefully, avoid coming off like a total schmuck).

With my research on job opportunities in China, I stumbled across the inevitable TESL career path. At first, I was somewhat turned off by this, as I've been focusing my efforts heavily in a B2B sales job in IT staffing in the United States for the past few years, and I wanted to keep my career experience as relevant as possible.

However, after doing some research across various forums and websites, I came across an interesting phenomenon: I noticed that there were opportunities to teach English in public school/university in China for around 20-25 hours per week with minimal-to-no office hours. With that being said, my interest shifted: What if I worked in a teaching job like this for 2+ years and focused the majority of my remaining time in intense Mandarin learning and cultural immersion? In addition, I could focus on networking once I got on the ground in China and explore other non-teaching opportunities in my spare time (assuming I get my Mandarin skills where they need to be).

I love Asian culture, and I've been excited to continue to learn more about it. I've been studying Mandarin for a bit now, and a big goal of mine has been to develop enough fluency in Mandarin to focus my efforts on landing international sales jobs, whether that's in China full-time or in another World City in the US where I'm traveling back-and-forth to China to do B2B sales on an enterprise level. Of course, I love the idea of teaching and helping people grow in this area--not trying to come too self-centered and pompous.

Here's some context:

I'm a native English speaker from the United States

I'm 26 years old

I have a BSBA in Economics from a State University (ranked roughly 550 in the world, not 100 unfortunately lol)

I have around 3 years experience in a B2B sales/staffing role. This involves a heavy emphasis on communication, where I'm regularly client-facing, delivering presentations, mentoring junior sales people, and educating my clients in business meetings about the market vs what they perceive it to be.

My timeline to get to China is about 2 years from now, so I'll have roughly 5 years of solid business experience by then.

Outside of the above, I've taught swim lessons as a life guard and served as a teaching assistant in high school, but I have zero years of professional post-grad classroom teaching experience.

I will plan to obtain TESOL cert to help offset my lack of teaching experience.

I am around HSK 2 Mandarin proficiency. I plan to be level 3 or 4 by the time I get to China.

I'm planning to save up as much money as possible over the next couple years. I won't be dependent upon a comfortable salary of 15-25K RMB.

Here are my questions:

-Given my background, is it possible for me to get a public school or university teaching job in a Tier 1 City in China? I'd REALLY love to get to a place like Shanghai as soon as possible. I've read up on training centers quite a bit, where you're expected to work 40+ hours per week at odd hours, which is why I've been largely wanting to avoid them... The last thing I want to do is spend all my time in a classroom teaching kindergarten.

-Are there other non-teaching opportunities with 20-25 hour work weeks that exist and will allow me to obtain a Z Visa? Again, the big goal is a low hour work schedule. Money is not the biggest concern. The biggest concern is having plenty of time to immerse myself in the language, network, and enjoy China.

-My absolute #1 preference would be to teach Business English, as I think it'd be perfect for my background. Are there 20-25/hr work week opportunities that offer this on a Z Visa? Or do you have to have x amount of teaching experience to even break into these?

Moving Forward:

Truly appreciate all the help in advance. Love this community, and I've learned WAY more about how to navigate these complexities from the Reddit community than I could have ever dreamed. Please feel free to PM me anytime if you have common goals or just want to network.

Also, despite the devilish Chinese recruiters I've heard about (there's a lot of bad ones in the US, too), I, myself, am a recruiter in the United States, and I'm always happy to help anyone out who needs some career/resume advice in the US. Free of charge and solely as a favor, so please, feel free to PM me (especially if you have good advice).

Wes

WeChat: WesDogg

Submitted November 11, 2019 at 05:49PM by WesDogg54 via reddit https://ift.tt/2Ke0JLV

[creativesage]

(via The Magic That Makes Customer Experiences Stick)

By Stefan Thomke

The most memorable experiences are suffused with emotion — not extra features or value for money.

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A participant in one of my Harvard Business School executive education classes told a story about a family trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. She lost her purse in the park on the very first day: tickets, money, IDs, all gone. The highly anticipated vacation seemed all but over before it had begun. But when the family turned to a Disney employee for help, he gave them food vouchers and park tickets for the next day. And while the relieved family was enjoying the park, Disney employees searched for the purse — and found it. The executive enthused to my class: “Wow, what a company!”

Over the years I have heard hundreds of such stories in my classes. I ask students to tell them as part of an effort to develop principles that can be applied to the design of great customer experiences. This field of customer experience (CX) design — which aims to ensure that customers have positive touch points with companies while buying and consuming their products and services — has grown quickly in recent years. Research has shown that memorable experiences, and the ensuing positive word of mouth, can drive customer decisions as much as, if not more than, price and functionality.1 To that end, consultants have created thoughtful tools and frameworks such as journey mapping, service blueprinting, and problem-solving mindsets. Academics have studied customer engagement models that focus on managerial variables such as employee selection, training, rewards, and service culture. Yet recent research reports suggest that there have been few, if any, meaningful improvements in customer experience over time.2 Despite the insights gleaned about customers through advanced technologies and data analysis, something still seems to be missing for most companies.  

My classroom experience points to the missing ingredient: emotion. Years ago, when I first asked students for their most memorable experiences as customers, I was surprised by the language they chose: Made me feel special. Showed empathy. Really cared. Personalized the process. Trusted me. Didn’t argue or delay. Killed us with kindness. Owned the problem. Surprised us. Made things simple. These executives weren’t using the standard language of business. They weren’t using terms like functional value, efficiency, and cost-value analysis. Instead, they were describing emotional impact. Their feelings of surprise, delight, happiness, relief, empathy, and more defined their most memorable experiences.

The stories they shared — along with a deep dive into research on the many components of decision-making — led me to a critical insight: Customers want their choices to align as much with their feelings and senses as with their values and ethics. The rational approaches taught at most business schools — offer customers more value for money, add features, make service more efficient — are not enough. Creating memorable experiences for customers also requires a bit of emotional magic. This article explores how that can work, drawing on several company cases to illustrate. People like to think of themselves as logical, but the truth is that emotions inspire decisions.

Research on human cognition and behavior supports the idea that customer experiences should be as infused with emotion as they are with logic and rationality. “The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions,” writes neurologist Donald Calne in Within Reason: Rationality and Human Behavior. Psychologist Richard Lazarus clarifies this idea in his book Emotion and Adaptation, where he argues that cognition (thinking), emotions (feeling), and motivation (acting) work as a system, with emotions serving as the critical go-between. Lazarus says that events — and by events he means everything from experiencing an earthquake to shopping for shoes — trigger a cognitive appraisal and an emotional reaction before we come to a decision on what to do. This process helps explain the many studies described in behavioral economist Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational in which people behaved irrationally. We overpay, underestimate, procrastinate, and so on because we are emotional beings, not rational automatons.

The behaviorists’ theories and results are borne out by quantitative research. A Forrester Research study found that customer loyalty is driven more by emotional factors than by rational ones.3 Another study, by CEB Marketing Leadership Council and Google, suggests that this may also be true in B2B decisions. They surveyed 3,000 B2B buyers across 36 brands and interviewed 50 B2B marketing organizations, and found that personal value (appeal to emotions) has twice the impact of business value (appeal to logic and reason) on favorable decisions.4

The payoff can be huge. A report from Gallup suggests that organizations that optimize emotional connections outperform rivals by 26% in terms of gross margin and 85% in terms of sales growth.5 They cultivate emotionally engaged customers who are less price sensitive, less likely to buy from competitors, and three times more likely to recommend and repurchase.

Celebrate the Outliers

Ask yourself this: Is your company trying to minimize complaints or maximize customer delight? Given the research I’ve cited, you might think that every company would be trying to create dynamic, delightful customer journeys infused with emotion. You’d be wrong. Many focus almost solely on complaints. Their goal: Eliminate the customer’s pain at every point where the consumer and the company intersect. It’s a myopic strategy that leads to consistent mediocrity, because companies miss much of what the customer experiences on his or her journey.

Today’s customer journey is not just a matter of a few touch points as the consumer systematically narrows choices. Instead, most consumers take an iterative and expansive journey. They consider multiple perspectives, often through the use of social media. They interact with other people and other products and services. The journey between visiting a company’s website, say, and making an actual purchase is an emotional, cognitive, and motivational process. It’s the mix of those forces that creates feelings, memories, and stories about an organization, whether positive, negative, or ambivalent. It’s this variability that creates opportunities for companies to deliver memorable experiences. Rules and standardization can get in the way (see “Reducing Variability Can Eliminate Terrible and Great Experiences”), because sameness is forgettable.

Reducing Variability Can Eliminate Terrible and Great Experiences

When companies focus on reducing variance in customer experience, eliminating outliers, they make sure that, statistically speaking, as many customers as possible occupy the middle of a normal distribution curve. Terrible customer experiences get a lot of attention, which reinforces the strategy of standardizing operating procedures and laying down more rules. Imposing controls helps bring experiences closer to expectations. While eliminating bad experiences may reduce complaints, result in fewer angry customers, and trim costs, the unanticipated consequence of moving most customers to the middle of distributions is that it will also result in consistent mediocrity. They will have undifferentiated, average experiences, which will leave them with few, if any, memories.

For that reason, positively varied emotional journeys can have the richest payoff. They leave indelible memories, increase customer loyalty, and have multiplier effects in a world where customers are closely connected.6 For companies that embrace variability, even terrible experiences that spawn negative emotions — such as that lost purse at Disney World — are an opportunity.7 If the company surprises and delights the customer by efficiently and innovatively resolving his or her problem, the dominant emotion, the one that lasts in memory, will be positive. The managerial challenge is clear: how to infuse customer journeys with emotion.

Building Emotion Into Customer Experiences

Bringing emotion into customer journeys isn’t easy. Triggering a specific emotion at a particular touch point doesn’t guarantee anything. Instead, companies must address the customer journey holistically, understanding that people may remember emotions generated anywhere along the way. In my work over the last few years, I’ve identified five ways to do this.

1. Stimulate the senses. Sensory stimulation triggers emotions such as surprise, trust, joy, and even anticipation. Through products from cars to smartphones, clever companies use the senses to create emotional experiences.

At Ferrari, for example, automobile design is more than an exercise in efficient engineering. It’s also a process that taps into the driver’s senses to create an emotionally rich experience, from the pleasing sight of the car’s body to the exhilarating roar of the engine.8 Ferrari uses plush interior materials such as fine leather, even though this gives lighter, faster competitors a 5- to 10-kilogram advantage. The company also experiments with advanced technology, engine placement, tire dimensions, and the nuances of wheel movement to impart a feeling of control as you steer through tight corners or accelerate laterally. Compared with the fear you might feel in other sports cars as your back wheels fishtail, there’s a sense of power and achievement here, of believing that you are an exceptional driver steering the car to new heights of performance.

The story of how Ferrari struggled to get the sound right for its turbocharged 488 also illustrates how much attention it pays to emotions. For years, Ferrari worried that turbocharged engines, which can flatten intake and exhaust sounds while introducing annoying tones such as whistling, would detract from the pleasure of driving. At Ferrari, sound is a critical component of what a car buyer expects and enjoys. Indeed, there’s real evidence that customers associate sound with performance. Could Ferrari engineer turbo engines for an emotionally pleasing driving experience?

Using a proprietary sound simulator, the equivalent of three Ferrari engineers and drivers worked full time for two years on the problem. One of the team’s recommendations — increase the exhaust diameter from 63 to 70 millimeters — had extensive ripple effects for engineers and company managers. Implementation was difficult and time-consuming.

That kind of investment might seem excessive at other companies, but not at Ferrari, which places great value on the emotions behind the driving experience. The 488 has garnered praise and prizes for its sound and performance, winning the 2018 International Engine of the Year award in Stuttgart, Germany (rival Porsche’s hometown), and being hailed as Robb Report’s Car of the Year in 2016. Ferraris may not be the fastest or the most comfortable cars, but the company focuses on producing the best combination of the two, making their cars among the world’s most thrilling and luxurious.

Stimulating the senses doesn’t mean creating sensory overload. Some of the best examples of sensory appeal are ones where complexity gives way to simplicity. Apple products are known for this. From the original Mac to AirPods and iPhones, the company repeatedly hides cutting-edge technology behind a simple user interface that customers love. Few competitors have been able to achieve that. Samsung, for example, trails Apple in user experience even though, feature by feature, its products are often superior.

The power of sensory simplicity is at work at HappyOrNot (HON), a small Finnish startup that measures businesses’ customer satisfaction through polling.9 The central challenge is how to gather enough responses to support meaningful conclusions. Few customers have the time or inclination to fill out long, boring surveys.

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HON tackles this problem with radical visual and tactile simplicity. Near the exits of department stores, airports, dining halls, drugstores, supermarkets, and other establishments, HON installs a terminal with four big push buttons. The green ones have smiley faces, and the red ones have frowny faces. The shades of the most smiley and most frowny are darker than the other two. A small sign asks customers to rate their experience by pressing one of the buttons. A HON terminal can prompt thousands of reactions in a single day. In fact, with terminals in over 100 countries, HappyOrNot’s buttons have prompted well over 600 million responses from customers. That’s more than all the customer ratings posted to sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, or Amazon. The clarity of the colors is important, but the company believes that the satisfying tactile experience of pressing a button is the primary driver of this extraordinary participation.

2. Turn disappointment into delight. If your company is going to value the outliers, it must be ready to transform negative experiences into positives, as the hotel manager did in this story:

After a long transcontinental flight, my tired family arrived at a Taj Group hotel in India in the middle of the night. The front desk couldn’t find our reservation. Still, the night manager immediately took us to a room so we could go to bed right away, and even gave us an upgrade for the inconvenience (we waited less than five minutes!). He didn’t ask for a credit card or anything. When we woke up, the problem had been solved — and it wasn’t the hotel’s fault. Our booking agent had made a mistake.

I’ve heard many variations of this story (you may have, too), but the gist is always the same. By resolving a problem that he didn’t cause, the night manager delivered an experience that was remembered for years. When employees are taught to be in tune with the customer’s emotions, they can notice changes in emotional state and respond quickly. As their alacrity accelerates the shift from disappointment to delight, the intervention creates a sudden contrast that makes experiences sticky. (See “Capitalizing on Emotional Transitions.”)

Capitalizing on Emotional Transitions

By turning disappointment into delight, companies can create emotionally memorable experiences and win customers who will sing their praises.

Magicians, who constantly think about the audience experience, understand the emotional value of rapid shifts from disappointment and confusion to happy resolution. They have developed techniques to change people’s emotional states. For instance, a magician may allow members of the audience to believe that they have figured out the trick or caught him in a mistake, only to end it in a way that shows the audience had no idea what was really going on. Their momentary disappointment at their failure to “catch” the magician quickly transforms into delight in his excellence. Disappointment to delight: Magicians know that this emotional transition will wow audiences more than a constant flow of technically perfect tricks. The former creates memorable moments, while the latter may cause eyes to glaze over.

3. Plan to surprise. Good magic also upends expectations in order to engage people emotionally. For instance, the well-known magician Doug Henning developed an illusion in which an assistant would float on water, with a fountain providing cover for the support mechanism. But then magician David Copperfield, aware that audiences may have figured that out, took the trick further. Anticipating their reaction, he turned off the fountain, and the assistant remained floating — which surprised and impressed even people who knew of Henning’s show.

Like magicians, companies can thrill customers again and again through continual innovation and unexpected solutions to problems, building a loyal, delighted following for their products and services.

Creating those moments of surprise is often the result of paying attention to the smallest detail. When former Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai set out to turn around the company’s TV business in 2011, for instance, he discovered a fundamental problem.10 While the designs for Sony’s new TVs were beautiful, some customers said they found their sets ugly because the cables couldn’t be concealed. Armed with that knowledge, Hirai started responding in the same way to every new design: “I’m still seeing cables, and I don’t want to see the cables.” It took three years for the engineers to truly get the message. Hirai was teaching them that details matter to the customer, and that Sony would never develop winning products if it didn’t pay attention to the feelings its products evoked.

Sony eventually found a way of concealing the cables. As Hirai expected, customers were delighted by the surprise of not seeing the wires they had grown so accustomed to disliking and tolerating. Hirai, who recently retired as Sony’s chairman, told me: “Everything we do at Sony needs to have that ‘Wow, this is pretty cool’ element. … We don’t compete on functional specifications [anymore], but on people’s emotional experiences.”

Some companies try to inspire a desire to surprise in their employees. The Oberoi Group, a global hotel chain based in Delhi, India, gives its employees funding to surprise guests by turning problems into opportunities.11 Team members get funding to create such moments of delight; in 2013, employees logged more than 30,000 examples of this kind of problem-solving. Similarly, an equipment company has given its front-line employees a considerable budget to solve customer problems — without having to ask for approval. Company leaders call it the memorable experiences budget. Empowering employees with resources can extend your ability to surprise and delight your customers.

4. Tell compelling stories. A good story, well told and repeated often, is a powerful way to create an emotional connection between customer and company. For most of our existence, oral narratives have been a primary means of learning, socializing, and transmitting knowledge, so we are conditioned to understand, remember, and tell stories. Companies that infuse them into the customer’s brand experience can provoke an emotional response and create sticky memories.

Consider A. Lange & Söhne (Lange), a watchmaker with East German roots and a fascinating history.12 In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Walter Lange resurrected the company started by his great-grandfather, F.A. Lange, which had all but disappeared during the previous decades. Instituting a focus on innovation and craftsmanship, he propelled Lange into the ranks of the world’s finest brands with the launch of its first wristwatches in 1994.

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With products that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, Lange knows it must position itself as a paragon of innovation, excellence, and diligence. One story it tells to reinforce that image is about the assembly of its watches. Every Lange timepiece is put together by hand — twice. When the first assembly is complete, the watch is taken apart. Every part is cleaned, and the watch is then assembled anew. During the second assembly, the watchmaker can make small adjustments based on the first assembly. The tangible result may improve the watch’s accuracy by perhaps one or two seconds a day. The intangible result, arguably, is more important. Lange’s double assembly process communicates the essence of the company and its products. It tells the world that Lange cares so much about creating perfect products that it routinely does something that rivals regard as inefficient. Even though few customers can discern any difference between a watch assembled once and another assembled twice, the story is told and retold in Lange’s marketing materials, in personal interactions with customers, and, most powerfully, through word of mouth.

Storytelling techniques have played an important role in the reemergence of the mechanical watch industry more broadly, after battery-powered quartz watches made mechanical ones nearly obsolete. In a study that included 136 interviews with senior executives, watchmakers, distributors, retailers, historians, and museum curators and a review of extensive archival data, my Harvard Business School colleague Ryan Raffaelli found that the reemergence “involved a cognitive process of redefining both the meanings and values associated with the legacy technology.”13 Mechanical watchmakers used literary devices — metaphors and analogies — to distance their products from the negative perceptions most people had of cheap quartz watches. Said one executive, “We don’t sell watches. We sell dreams.” Others compared the watch to the human body, creating an empathic connection between customers and the mechanical parts of the product they were eyeing. Raffaelli writes, “Several people likened the oscillating balance wheel of the mechanical watch to a ‘beating heart,’ describing the watch’s gears as part of a ‘living organism’ that needed to be ‘fed’ with daily winding. A CEO stated, ‘A mechanical watch has a soul, it has a heart, it has life, it has something breathing inside of it.’” Described in this way, the watch essentially becomes a protagonist, which encourages customers to connect with the brand on a human level.

This kind of storytelling is yet another form of emotional magic that companies can perform. Before a trick culminates, magicians often walk an audience through the various steps just taken (“You picked a card, I turned around, you placed the card in the deck ... ”). The purpose is to focus the audience on what they should remember, omitting anything that might be inconsistent with the intended effect. The reframing becomes the new reality, shaping people’s memory of and feelings about the trick in a positive way. Good storytelling can do the same for companies, reinforcing positive emotions that cement the relationship between a customer and a brand.

5. Run controlled experiments. Even companies intent on infusing emotion into their customers’ journeys have a terribly hard time predicting which triggers will prompt customers to act. The question companies must ask is not simply “What works?” but “What works where, when, and for whom?” And more often than not, they should be prepared for dead ends in their search for answers. To give just one example, only 10% to 20% of the web experience improvements attempted by Google and Bing yield positive results.14 Scoffing at those percentages would be a mistake. Smart companies in businesses as diverse as high tech, media, retail, financial services, and travel know that controlled experiments and learning from those that don’t pan out are necessary components of designing emotionally powerful customer experiences.

Booking.com, the travel accommodations aggregator, is relentless in its focus on optimizing user experiences and in its experimentation to that end. At any point in time, Booking.com’s staff may be running more than 1,000 live tests. (About three-fourths of the company’s 1,800 core product and technology employees are involved in testing.) Most are so-called A/B tests, where the company sets up two experiences for users: A, the control, is usually the current system, and B, the treatment, is a modification — such as a new layout, a new pricing model, or new wording for a customer communication — that attempts to improve something for customers. Customers are randomly steered to one of the two experiences, and the resulting metrics are compared. The test’s winner then becomes the current system — until a future modification, tested in the same way, replaces it.

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The goal of some tests is to discover tactics that elicit emotions such as surprise and joy (from getting a terrific deal), fear (of missing out on a deal or a room), or a feeling of accomplishment (for successfully organizing a trip).15 These experiments have taught Booking.com a lot. For instance, “please book now or you will lose this reservation” and “only three rooms left” are appeals that spur more customers to make Booking.com reservations. Such messages may play on users’ fears, but the end result is that they replace the uncertainty customers feel when they log on with the satisfaction of finding a place to stay at a good price. The experiments are far from perfect — 9 out of 10 tests fail to have an impact on key performance metrics (for example, conversion rates) — but they inch the company closer to fulfilling its mission: taking the friction out of travel.

About a decade ago, magician Jason Randal was teaching a protégé, Kevin Viner, how to deliver memorable experiences. They tell me their conversation went something like this:

JR: “What are you doing at a party or show?” KV: “I am entertaining people.”

JR: “What are you really doing?” KV: “I am doing magic.”

JR: “What are you really doing?” KV: “Card tricks, rope tricks, coin tricks. …”

JR: “What are you really doing?” KV: “Now I am confused.”

JR: “When I perform at a show or a party, my goal always is to change how people feel, for the better. Magic is just a way to get me there. If I keep that goal in mind, I find that I am much more effective than if I go to a show just to do magic tricks or to make money.”

Viner, who now performs all over the world, says that this insight about changing people’s emotional state was so profound that it transformed the way he approaches performances. Like Viner, companies that go the extra mile to change how customers feel are more likely to create great experiences that will never be forgotten.

[startupguide]

Sales & Marketing Basics

)WIth a good foundation set, its now time to discuss the tactics and strategy in your Sales/Marketing process.  In the businesses, your process of identifying, qualifying, and closing, is called your funnel. Your system you use to managing your potential and current customers is your Customer Relationship Management or CRM.  Your funnel and CRM are your overall Sales and Marketing strategy.  How you engage with potential new customers, is your sales process or your tactics.

For some background, a general Sales funnel looks like this: ( Photo citiation “Sales Funnel.jpg.” Sandler Training, www.sandler.com/file/3010. )

Your strategy is important because how you located and pull potential customers through your funnel is what sales and marketing are about.  Understanding how to make your sales and marketing teams work together efficiently is key.  Your marketing team will help with your branding and getting soft leads that will help fill the top of your sales team funnel (the Lead Generation section). Casting a wide net to ensure your Lead Generation is enough to support your business will make or break you.  You cant convert everyone into a customer so you need to figure out your conversion rates as soon as possible so that you have an idea of what percentage of leads you can convert to customers on average, and then use that to forecast your numbers.  

NOTE: if your conversion rate is really low, it might be time to look into your sales process, or to get a better understanding of what expectations are being created by your marketing.

 The next steps in your funnel are heavily reliant on your sales team and the processes they use, whether its company taught or previous experience driven. Knowing this, it is usually worth the money and effort to align your sales team’s sales process.  This alignment will make sure everyone is on the same page in terms of methods and skills needed to perform and make them aware of all the tools and resources at their disposal. Having some way for your sales team to share advice and tips may also be beneficial as “tribal knowledge” often forms in sales teams and can usually help other sales teams if they have not figured that piece of advice out.

With that being said, let's get back to the funnel.  How your sales team qualifies leads and sales is varied and depend on your industry, but a good start is using the internet and existing tools like linked in and company websites.  In certain businesses, your sales qualifying will occur during the sales process, but you should always qualify leads first, and if a sales potential is not sufficient to leave! Don’t waste your time on bad leads and small sale potentials, time is limited and you want to maximize your sales teams’ time.

Finally, let’s discuss your sales process.  The importance of having a sales process cannot be stressed enough.  If your sales team doesn’t have a process, then they are operating on your buyer's process which doesn’t allow your sales team to do their job efficiently. A process will also allow your team to make sure they are qualifying effectively and not wasting their time on customers with low or no sales potential.  A great example of a sales process is the Sandler Method Sales process which looks like this: (photo citation “Sandler Sales Submarine” https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/sandler-sales-methodology)

The Sandler process is used by starting at “Bonding & Rapport” step and moving to the right till you get to the “Post-Sell” step. Based on the type of sales your team does (i.g. B2B, B2C, D2C, high-cost or low-cost sales) you will change the amount of time you spend in the Pain, Budget, and Decision steps, but the key thing here is to find out if all three of these things that the steps are named after exist.  If anyone of them does not exist, you will not be able to make a sale, so it is best to ease out of the sales process and move on to another lead. Some more info on these steps can be found here:(https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/sandler-sales-methodology)

I hope this post gives you a better understanding of how to develop and hone your sales and marketing strategies and tactics. If you would like more advice on these topics, feel free to reach out to me!

“Prospecting – find the man with the problem.” – Ben Friedman

Sources: Personal Experience, Sandler Training, “You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar” by Sandler

[davidrsmithlove]

A Magnificent Prediction for 2019: 55 Experts Share Insights for Marketing This Year

We’re sure your newsfeed is clogged with everyone’s predictions for the 2019 marketing year. So before you continue scrolling, here us out on why you should take a look at our list.

We’ve been running our mouths about content marketing for the last few years and while we may think we have all the answers, truth is, content marketing has truly picked up steam in the last few months. And it’s continuing to be the #1 topic for marketing strategies heading into the new year.

We chatted with 55 marketing experts on what they expect to see on the horizon for content marketing. Here’s to learning and growing from each other in 2019!

Ann Handley

Digital marketing & content expert, Wall Street Journal bestselling author, Keynote speaker, Writer

annhandley.com Ann’s LinkedIn

Organizers will treat their email newsletter programs like the rare and precious creatures they are, in need of regular love and attention.

“Hold up,” you’re thinking. “EMAIL? Is this 1999 or 2019? Isn’t this the age of AI and Facebook Live and video?”

Here’s why I believe in the power of email newsletters even more strongly today, as we head into 2019:

1) An email newsletter is the only place where individuals—not algorithms—are in control. So what if marketing leaned into that inherently personal space?

2) Most companies today use their email newsletter as a distribution strategy. What if we focused not on the news but on the letter?

In January I re-launched my personal newsletter as a way to converse directly to my audience. It’s taught me a lot about what works and what doesn’t in content and in marketing. Because I think the best email newsletters are also a kind of proxy for the best marketing in 2019, period.

Ted Rubin

Co-Founder Prevailing Path and MC/Host, The Rubin Organization

Tedrubin.com Ted’s Twitter

So I am not so much about predictions as I am about what should be happening. 2019, if brands are hoping to stay relevant and keep up with the content creation phenomenon, needs to be the year of Empowering Employees to Power your Brand.

It’s plain and simple—employee censorship on social channels is a disaster for brands. We can no longer control the message folks. The social framework is “bigger and stronger” than our puny frameworks. Instead of fighting it every step of the way, USE it to your advantage, or you’ll pay a steep price in diminished return. Your employees are the best way to humanize and personalize your brand… and truly the best way to scale relevant, contextual content creation

Did you know that employee created content (ECC) receives eight times more engagement than content shared from the company itself? On top of that, employee content extends brand messaging by over 500%. Crazy, right? So why aren’t more companies getting employees engaged in content creation? It’s well known that companies with engaged employees outperform their peers; involving employees in content creation can help to create a sense of common purpose.

The truth of the matter is that the social evolution is a business evolution. Only by changing our old frameworks can we possibly hope to succeed—because social has completely altered the business landscape. #ROE… Return on Employees.

Andy Crestodina

Co-founder / CMO, Orbit Media Studios

Orbitmedia.com Andy’s LinkedIn

“Original research is the most effective type of content” …I heard this over and over again in 2018. So I expect we’ll see a lot more research-based content in 2019. Look for a spike in studies and surveys and a lot of statistics in headlines.

And it works. Few bloggers publish original research, but those who do are much more likely to report strong results.

It’s a good thing for content programs, but there’s a risk that it will erode trust in our audiences unless the studies have rigorous methodologies and significantly big datasets. If research is weak and overused in 2019, we might see “Research is dead” headlines a year from now.

Gini Dietrich

Spinsucks.com Gini’s LinkedIn

My prediction is Dave will exceed all of his goals—and all of his crazy ideas will come to fruition and be plentiful and successful.

No?

So many predictions. So little time! Chatbots are going to increase in popularity. So is voice search. So is artificial intelligence. So is predictive analytics and how marketers will use it for content marketing and editorial calendar planning. I personally am going to begin to use the data in our CRM to build internal training modules using IBM Watson. So not necessarily a trend, but how to use artificial intelligence in use.

Stephanie Stahl

Contentmarketinginstitute.com Stephanie’s LinkedIn

Our heads will still be spinning by the vast amounts of content produced on a daily basis by brands, media companies, agencies, and individuals. But we’ll see a determined effort by smart marketers to figure out a cadence that’s realistic and effective. We’ll see (and celebrate) content that is creative, human, educational and entertaining whether it’s a blog, a print article, a piece of branded content, an infographic, a video, a podcast, or whatever format is used to tell a compelling story that convinces people to stop and pay attention.

Marcus Sheridan

Marcussheridan.com Marcus’s LinkedIn

In 2019, more and more companies will realize that, whether we like it or not, we’re all media companies. In other words, these companies will accept the undeniable influence that video is having on the B2B and B2C sales, marketing, and customer service process– and the fact that if they don’t start to do something about it (show, not just tell), they’ll be left behind by their competitors. Furthermore, more and more companies will hire in-house videographers as a full-time position, due to the fact that in order to truly create a “culture” of video within an organization, you must become, for the most part, self reliant.

Michael Brenner

Marketinginsidergroup.com Michael’s LinkedIn

There are 2 major trends in the marketing industry I think everyone will be talking about in 2019.

The first is AI. We will begin to realize the opportunity of an AI-driven content marketing strategy. If 60-70% of the content we create goes unused, AI will begin to force us to reconsider what we create and why.

Second is employee activation. AI will tell us what to create, but our best storytellers are our existing employees from across the business. Every company needs a strategy to activate these employees as both creators and as the most effective distribution channel to share that content.

This is the paradox of AI. The more the robots tell us what to do, the more we will need our internal experts to create and share that content.

Jon Burkhart

Tbcglobal.live Jon’s LinkedIn

I am dead-sick of spam and have been a card-carrying inbox filth fighter for years now. Brands, it’s 2019 now and you’ve got storehouses of data on me. There’s no reason brands in 2019 shouldn’t get their personalised video game on in a big way. I want my favourite brands MOO (I print my workshop game cards out using their infinity print feature), Topps (my boy & I are obsessed with Premier League soccer trading cards) and Go-Ped (I’ve been driving a kick-scooter for 7 years – eat that Bird & Lime) to give me a big fat sloppy kiss in 2019. I want that kiss to be personalised, authentic video that makes me feel frickin loved – even cuddled. I see video getting way up into the grills of folk in super-personal but not freaky/intrusive ways in 2019. I myself and upping my personalised video game so turn your spam filters up or down depending on your feelings toward me.

Julia McCoy

Expresswriters.com Julia’s LinkedIn

My first prediction for 2019? The overly sales-y marketing “funnel” (or “sales funnel”) will become obsolete. Yes, I said it. Why? It doesn’t describe the way marketing should work anymore. We are content marketers. We’re not looking to grab the attention of people who aren’t in our audience, and we don’t want to dump people at the end of a funnel. We want to take a more nurturing stance that encourages people to stay in our circle: join our community of readers, buyers, and evangelists. I think it’s time to replace the sales funnel with a marketing flowchart and lifecycle representation.

My second prediction is that trust-based content is going to be the Content Leader (King, Queen, you-name-it) in 2019. I think we’re going to see more authenticity from the brands that rise to the forefront of their industries. The true story of the founder, from failures to successes: transparency in the executive team, real-life anecdotes from customers and employees on the company blogs – those will win buyer trust in the content calendar for 2019. Today and tomorrow’s winning content is about human connection. And how better to bridge that gap than through telling real stories? Focus on your real-life successes and failures, and tell those to your human audience.

Dennis Yu

Dennis-yu.com Dennis’s LinkedIn

Facebook ads get prohibitively expensive for most businesses, as there is increasing demand against an inventory base that isn’t growing. We’ve seen the base cost of traffic nearly double each year– now being close to $8 per thousand impressions, regardless of whether they are bidding for leads, ROAS, video views, or whatever.

The antidote is 15 and 60 second vertical videos (to look like what a friend would post, not an “advertisement” a business would run) and running chatbots (like MobileMonkey, where we can promote within a consumer’s inbox, which marketers haven’t ruined yet).

Bernie Borges

Vengreso.com Bernie’s LinkedIn

The pressure on B2B marketers to prove ROI has never been more intense. The average CMO has an average tenure of 44 months, fueling the pressure to deliver results quickly.

B2B marketers who demonstrate accountability for revenue contribution in 2019 will stand a better chance of not just surviving but thriving. I see three strategies that can support the modern CMO’s “drive to the number.”

Acceleration of sales video by teaching sales teams how to create short videos and empowering them with tools that make it easy and measurable on sales cycles.

Optimizing sales rep’s LinkedIn profiles to function as mini websites that are written through the lens of the buyer, are on-brand and deliver extended reach for the brand.

Deployment of personalized microsites with relevant content for account expansion used in account based marketing strategies.

These three strategies can directly impact the marketing executive’s ability to partner with the head of sales (and the entire C-Suite) on the “path to the number.”

The marketing executive who measurably contributes to revenue is the one who will thrive in 2019 and beyond.

Allen Gannett

Skyword.com Allen’s LinkedIn

2019 will be the year creativity moves from soft skill to hard skill.

Marketers who become intentional about their creativity will have a huge advantage in 2019 as consumers start to expect more and more from brands—both in terms of value and voice. I think there will be an inherent push for teams to stretch out of their comfort zone to tackle potentially uncharted waters and keep pace with the changing social media landscape.

With social media Stories growing 15x faster than feeds and more American adults now receiving news results from social media over newspapers, it’s no secret that there’s been a fundamental shift in the way consumers are digesting news and entertainment content.

As people continue to change the way they consume content, it will open up the door for brands to become full-time publishers to win over social media audiences. Companies that not only recognize this shift, but also respond to it by creating and distributing content that addresses the informational and entertainment needs of consumers, will tap into the 970 million accounts using Stories and twenty percent of Adults using social media as their source of news (compared to just 16 percent who read newspapers).

In 2019, we’ll see a brand become a top publisher of both newsworthy and entertaining content. Companies will start to emerge as leading sources of news and valuable information while simultaneously providing engaging and compelling figures. We’ll get a clear picture of what a successful brand publisher looks like: marketing leaders who were willing to pivot as the market changed.

Shane Barker

Shanebarker.com Shane’s LinkedIn

Marketing Predictions for 2019 and Beyond The fast-paced digital marketing industry is evolving constantly to drive better results. This will lead to a significant decline in the use of traditional advertising in the coming years.

I believe that smart technologies such as big data, virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence will create many new opportunities in the digital space.

Brands and marketers will leverage these technologies to grow their businesses with highly targeted content marketing. They will also get more creative with content formats such as

videos

3600

VR

AR

ebooks

influencer-created content

The demand of consumers for personalization is also likely to increase further. Brands and marketers will have to deliver more personalized customer experiences based on their preferences, styles, and buying behaviors.

Robert Rose

Contentmarketinginstitute.com Robert’s LinkedIn

I see three primary trends in 2019.

The first is the continued rise of Artificial Intelligence within the technology stack. The push will be for marketers to jump right on the speeding AI and automation bandwagon – and much like personalization and bots, it is a topic that most marketers would be better off waiting on.

The second – and more pressing trend – will be the need for scale of content operations. Businesses will finally take owned media seriously enough to build a strategic operation around it.

And, related to this is the third, which is the continued rise of the importance of content marketing and first party data in the new era of GDPR and other privacy laws and regulations. All in all – content (and specifically building audiences) continues to be an extraordinarily important part of the new marketer’s mix.

Margaret Magnarelli

Monster.com Margaret’s LinkedIn

As someone who came into marketing via content marketing, I’m fascinated by how that discipline is changing. In the bubble times, companies bought in big, but more recently, we’ve been in what Gartner would call the “trough of disillusionment.” And over the last year, we’ve seen a shift in the way most of the vendors in the space talk about their universe of potential customers—the language is increasingly going from “content marketing” to “integrated marketing.” I think that’s good news as we develop a sustainable role for content. But it also means that content marketers will need to develop more interdisciplinary if they aim to rise within an organization.

Speaking of integration, I expect to see that become a key overall theme of 2019—integration of data, integration of tools, and integration of functions. (I’m thinking of printing bumper stickers that say “Silos are for cows, not marketers.”) Especially if the economy stutters, companies will be taking a hard look at optimizing and getting rid of overlaps. That sounds negative, but I think it will improve productivity. And personally I’m excited about a return to “technoprudence.” I think it’ll help us all approach our work with increased humanity.

Peter Loibl

Concured.com Peter’s LinkedIn

Marketers will escalate their use of Artificial Intelligence to power their Content Strategy and Analysis, and AI-powered CSPs (Content Strategy Platforms) will continue to become as integral to marketing stacks as Marketing Automation Systems were once they broke onto the scene more than a decade ago.

Performance and relevancy guesswork and time-draining content audits will continue to be replaced by data-centric, realtime AI-powered CSPs that are already revolutionizing our industry.

Matt Heinz

Heinzmarketing.com Matt’s LinkedIn

Marketing will further evolve their reporting to differentiate operational metrics from impact metrics. The highest-level marketing metrics should focus on revenue impact marketing is having on the business. If you’re showing your executive team a report focused on open rates and lead volume, they’ll assume you care more about activity than outcomes!

Christoph Trappe

Christophtrappe.com Christoph’s LinkedIn

More will use VR storytelling. Virtual reality is really an underused tool and partially that is because not all consumers have the headset. But given that you can watch virtual reality videos as 360 versions on a phone or app, and not very many events are using them yet, it’s the perfect time to jump right in and make this strategy a big differentiation for your company.

Bill Widmer

Billwidmer.com Bill’s LinkedIn

I recently published a full article for Sumo on 2019 marketing predictions. Here is the big one that I’ll be putting 90% of my attention on:

Content for Google

Content marketing is nothing new – it’s been around since magazines and direct mail. SEO is nothing new – it’s been around since Google launched in the late 90’s. So why is this a “marketing trend” in 2019?

Because, frankly, most people really suck at creating content.

They do a shotgun approach, writing content for the sake of having content, not knowing what’s performing and what isn’t. They target keywords using free keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, not really knowing how to optimize for it or if it’s even the best keyword.

This approach is a complete waste of time and money.

I would rather write one article per month that’s based on deep keyword research and an understanding of WHY people search that keyword and WHAT they’re looking for – including <b>the things people don’t even know they’re looking for when they first start their search.</b>

For example, if someone searches for “best surfboard”, they might not have any idea what makes a surfboard good or bad, or even how to surf. They might just be looking to grab one of the best boards. If they knew what made a board great, they probably wouldn’t be searching that term in the first place.

So in your content, you should tell them what the best surfboards are, based on research and use, etc. But you should also have a section that explains WHY they are the best, what to look for in a surfboard, how to get started surfing, etc.

To give you a real-world example, here’s an article I wrote on the best RV air conditioners. In this article, I reveal the very best at the top, then dive into what to consider when buying an AC (size, shape, BTUs, etc.), I answer the question of if you even need a new AC by showing you how to troubleshoot your current one if it’s not working, and I answer a bunch of FAQs like “Can I heat my RV with the air conditioning unit as well?”. This depth helped me rank on page 1 for “RV air conditioner”.

To help you figure out what people are searching for when they type in a keyword, study the current search results for that keyword. See what they talk about, what questions they answer, etc. Go on YouTube and find videos on the topic, then look at what questions people ask in the comments. Use AnswerThePublic to find all the common questions around a keyword. Use LSIgraph to find the related and semantic keywords to your main keyword.

Then incorporate all your research in your article. Make it the go-to article on a given topic. The very best on the internet. Then, and only then, will you destroy the competition, rank #1, and get all the traffic and sales from Google.

John Demato

Johndemato.com

The future of marketing will continue to shift away from transactional to relationship-based because people are tired of being sold to – they want to be nurtured and offered value every step of the way.

Michael Becker

Emarsys.com Michael’s LinkedIn

More companies will develop owned, branded publications to attract audiences. Though this avenue will remain one aspect of an integrated marketing approach, it will emerge as the most valuable if committed to fully.

Brands or entrepreneurs who treat content as a product and invest substantially in that product – as much as any other function in the business – WILL find success.

Investing in a content-first approach means prioritizing long-term audience building over lead gen. For those who stick it out AND “do it right” (by differentiating their content and avoiding the lure of infusing salesy, product messaging), great gains will be seen. For these brands, quality content will be the means to meaning, cultivating an audience who can offer value from a multitude of angles – accurate data, subscriber feedback and preferences, buying of premium content, and inspiring merchandise spin-offs. For these companies, content will change lives; and will turn a profit in-and-of-itself.

Liston Witherill

Liston.io Liston’s LinkedIn

2019 will see the continued growth of audio as a medium that rapidly expands, making podcasting more mainstream and audio search a major consideration in all marketing programs. Content will continue to dominate customer acquisition – on social, through search, with email programs, etc. – but it’ll be harder than ever to grow your audience.

Watch for social media channels to ratchet up advertising expenses and de-prioritize organic traffic. Their problems with poor quality content are pushing the networks to drive up advertising costs and de-prioritize organic content. So much for Internet as the great democratizing force, huh?

Hailey Friedman

Growthmarketingpro.com Hailey’s LinkedIn

2019 will be the year marketers get control of their data. Over the past 10 years, the marketing technology landscape has vastly expanded, meaning there are endless ways to reach our customers. This is great. However, it also means our data is lives in silos across each of these platforms. Bringing the data together has been a tedious and manual process for all of us in order to get a comprehensive view of our marketing performance. In 2019, marketers will finally put their foot down and automate this process.

I predict that having an automated system to aggregate all your marketing data will become the new standard, and anyone wasting employee time on this task will be left behind in the dust. Tools like Improvado are already helping marketers eliminate 90% of the time spent building manual reports and marketing dashboards.

Zontee Hou

Zonteehou.com Zontee’s LinkedIn

2019 will be characterized by contextual and conversational marketing. As consumers have more and more information at their fingertips year by year, they’re also more overwhelmed by choice. At the same time, businesses like Google, Amazon, and Facebook are consistently refining their personalized experiences through algorithms and question-driven tools. What this means for companies of all shapes and sizes is that they must implement marketing practices that allow them to reach audiences of one—conversational marketing—through chatbots, filtering mechanisms on websites, and automation-driven emails in order to resonate with audiences.

Doug Kessler

Velocitypartners.com Doug’s Twitter

In B2B, where we ply our trade, we’re seeing right-brain marketing starting to meet left-brain marketing.

The people who get brand and story and positioning are starting to make common cause with those who get demand gen, pipelines and data.

For the last few years, our clients have had separate silos for these things. More and more, we’re working with companies that understand how they work together.

This is where B2B marketing is headed and where it needs to head: brand, strategy, content, digital and marketing performance all working together around a single, galvanizing idea. With the plumbing in place to integrate the whole stack and the data to prove it’s working.

It’s all about accountability. Shout “Hallelujah!” (Or, if you’re in an open plan office, think it).

Ryan Dohrn

SalesTrainingWorld.com Ryan’s LinkedIn

Conversations around automation and AI in marketing and sales will increase exponentially. Data-driven marketing teams and sales teams using AI are outpacing their competitors. Companies that do not have a data-driven marketing and sales plan will be left behind. But, be warned, there are automation and AI experts and software popping up everywhere. Do your due diligence and ask detailed questions. Create a strategy and monitor progress. AI is not intended to replace marketers or salespeople. AI and automation are meant to enhance what we already do. These tools should give us improved ROI and a deeper insight into our customers and potential customers.

Nancy Harhut

Hbtmktg.com Nancy’s LinkedIn

In 2019 we’ll see data scientists really work hand in hand with behavioral scientists. Or at least in close proximity!

Marketers have so much data at our disposal. And it reveals many useful things, like who to talk to, where to find them, what to say and when to say it. But rely on that alone, and you’ll come up short. Because how that message is served up — how it’s phrased and framed — can make all the difference.

And behavioral science provides the insights to make that difference. Tapping into behavioral science, we can craft messages that are more likely to be noticed and responded to. Messages designed to appeal to the subconscious brain where a whopping 95% of decisions are actually made.

So 2019 will be the year marketers take it up a notch. We won’t just get the right message to the right person at the right time — we’ll also do it in the right way.

Jason Quey

Growthramp.io Jason’s LinkedIn

My prediction is more and more non-traditional startups will embrace the growth marketing prioritization process.

For those unfamiliar with this process, after creating a list of ideas, you score each idea on a scale of 1-10 on impact, the confidence of success, and effort to run the test.

Because this is a prioritization method, it can be applied to any field. For example, you can apply it broadly to all content marketing, or more specifically to prioritizing your promotion channels, which you can get the nitty gritty details on how to do that here.

Debra Jason

WriteDirection.com Debra’s LinkedIn

In “Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 35,” Larry D. Rosen et al reported that heavy tech use is associated with depression, anxiety, health problems, academic challenges, and relationship issues.

That said, my prediction for 2019 is that, to avoid the depression and anxiety associated with heavy teach use, the return of the human connection is vital to marketing. While technology may make certain aspects of our lives easier, they do not replace the human touch.

Devices like smartphones and tablets may provide easy access to information. However, none of them can take the place of good ‘ol fashioned human interaction – face-to-face, smile-to-smile, handshake to handshake or even a voice (not a text) on the other end of a phone that says “So good to talk to you.”

With technology constantly expanding, do you feel more connected or disconnected to those around you? And, do you think marketing in 2019 will see an increase in the “human connection?” I certainly hope so.

Priscilla McKinney

Littlebirdmarketing.com

I think one of the biggest players in 2019 will be video. We’ve watched as it has risen in popularity over the last few years, but I think in 2019 it will become more of a mainstay in content marketing. People like visual content – plain and simple – and I think we’ve finally caught on to it. Look to see marketing strategies reflect this moving forward.

James Reynolds

Seosherpa.com James LinkedIn

The role of the headline will become (even more) important for content marketers.

Here’s why:

Google’s Rank Brain algorithm was HUGE this year. And I expect it to be even more important in 2019. Rank Brain measures how users interact with search results. It promotes search results that get clicked on more often and demotes those that don’t.

Google is also populating search engine results pages with more and more search features like search ads, shopping ads, local pack results, rich answers and a myriad of featured snippets.

The result?

Traditional organic listings are being given less and less visibility.

To win organic traffic in 2019, content marketers must develop their craft in headline writing.

With better headlines, their search engine snippets can stand out amongst all the visual noise, they can win more eyeballs and clicks, and in turn, elevate their rankings too.

Chuck Hester

Chuckhester.com Chuck’s LinkedIn

While 2019 will continue to see the rise of marketing automation, brands that will win are those that emphasize loyalty and relationships over tech.

The relationships they build with customers – whether they are “influencers” or not – will be key to their success. By listening to the customer and what they want, as opposed to selling them something they believe they want, they will have a deeper market penetration in the long term.

The use of video on LinkedIn will continue to rise, and those who take advantage of this “new form of content marketing on this platform will reach a larger audience and increase their brand equity.

Jonathan Kranz

Kranzcom.com

I think the confluence of content overkill (waaaay too much stuff to too many people too often) and an economy showing signs of deceleration will put pressure on us to favor quality over quantity: LESS content altogether, but of HIGHER quality (i.e., of much greater intrinsic interest to our audiences). There will be pain, but I think all of us will benefit from a more discriminatory approach to content creation.

Josh Haynam

Tryinteract.com

2019 will be the year of empathy in marketing. What I mean is the focus will shift from “how do we sell this product?” To “how do we better understand the needs of our customers so we can serve them with our products and services?” We’ll see a fundamental shift in the way marketers think about the clients we’re trying to reach, and the ability to better understand your customers will become a huge differentiator.

Rebecca Lieb

KaleidoInsights.com Rebecca’s LinkedIn

Automated content. This is the topic of my most recent research and it’s about to get very big, not just in marketing where AI and other technologies will go far to help create and generate ultra relevant and personalized content, but also in other areas of business. HR, business intelligence, legal, media and other areas will all be impacted by machines that can read, write and even create multimedia content such as images and video at scale.

Reuben Swartz

Mimiran.com Reuben’s LinkedIn

Companies that say “I don’t invest in my website, I get all my business from referrals” will fall further behind those who invest in both online presence and real-world relationships. They are two sides of the same coin, and you need to deal with both.

Better B2B revenue attribution will give marketers more effective, efficient tools to actually bring in revenue, instead of optimizing proxies like leads or newsletter signups. This will be a game changer for organizations that take advantage, helping them funnel marketing investment into the most productive efforts.

The competition for attention will be even fiercer, so companies should make their marketing efforts a good investment of prospects’ time– teaching, helping, entertaining. “Authentic” marketing helps, if it’s real and not just a gimmick dressed up to look authentic.

Matthew Pollard

MatthewPollard.com Matthew’s LinkedIn

Cold callers will continue to see diminishing returns for their hard work, while salespeople who ONLY focus on social selling will see an even higher decline.

Tomorrow’s high performers will embrace a holistic approach to sales acquisition and understand that being everything to everyone is not the answer.

We will also see a surge of introverted sales high performers as they discover that the, so called, ‘gift of gab’ is not a barrier to entry and that, armed with a sales process, they can beat their extroverted counterparts HANDS DOWN!

Evan Schmitt

Evanschmitt.com Evan’s Twitter

Brands will get more precise with their advertising and targeting. The smarter brands will continue to gain market share over the brands that don’t adapt and innovate.

John Andrews

Photofy.com John’s LinkedIn

In 2019, marketer’s are going to be seeking solutions for digital ad saturation as response rates fall and costs rise to reach quality audiences. At Photofy, we believe collaborative content created and shared by employees, customers and partners is one solution to achieving content scale and engagement on a localized level that augments digital advertising approaches.

Jeremiah Smith

Simpletiger.com Jeremiah’s Twitter

In regards to SEO and ranking well in Google; user engagement metrics are going to continue to be more important than links as a ranking factor.

SEMrush published a comprehensive report this past year showing the importance of user engagement metrics like “dwell time”, bounce rate, page views, click interactions, etc. vs qualitative, relevant inbound links as a ranking factor for the first time in Google algorithmic history. This was sensational information that largely went unnoticed in the SEO community until further AI improvements to the core ranking algorithm at Google started hurting the rankings of sites which have stood in place for years prior.

Brian Dean even showed the recent value of a single piece of content without any inbound links that nails the searcher’s intent for a given keyword set perfectly which further substantiates that Google is using a higher method of deducing value for a page likely due to the engagement from users that page receives. Brian refers to the process of building these pieces of content as the Skyscraper 3.0 Technique.

Artificial intelligence insofar as Google is using will continue to measure the value of pieces of content to the end-user thereby reducing its dependency on old-fashioned metrics we were used to in the realm of SEO.

John Jantsch

Ducttapemarketing.com

I believe Google’s attempts at a social network will finally take hold although somewhat accidentally – Google My Business will become Google social network for local businesses with the addition of CRM like functions and the ability of customers to keep up with a business via Google My Business networks.

Alicia Lawrence

Webfx.com Alicia’s LinkedIn

Push to optimize for Amazon: With nearly half of initial product searches happening on Amazon, e-commerce is shifting to large all-inclusive ways to shop, such as Amazon, Walmart and Google Shopping.

Facebook, Instagram and YouTube ads explode: As social networks lower organic reach, companies will shift their budgets to paid. Analytics provided through the ‘pixel’ will revolutionize reporting and provide better data-driven decisions. In addition, content assets will be backed by paid ads vs. pitching. Higher competition for ads means costs will go up.

Integration of AI into reporting and prediction tools: In 2019, we’ll see a bigger push to integrate AI to create better insights. WebFX already integrated Google AI and IMB Watson to create several proprietary tools that predict and analyze content and SEO campaigns.

Azriel Ratz

RatzPackMedia.com Azriel’s LinkedIn

Over 2019, businesses will use stories and shorter length videos to their advantage.

The stories format allows businesses to create deeper more authentic relationships with their customers.

Overall, businesses will begin to shift to shorter videos to grab people’s attention and get them to take action.

Trevor Crane

Trevorcrane.com Trevor’s LinkedIn

What’s going to happen in the future?

There is no question: RISE or be INVISIBLE.

Mark my words… you will see this in EVERY profession. And in EVERY industry.

Some people (and businesses) will RISE above the noise.

And everyone else?

They will become insignificant and be ignored as if there were INVISIBLE.

What will make the difference?

You (and businesses in general) will either CREATE CONSISTENT COMPELLING CONTENT… or, go out-of-business.

People who do not grasp this FACT, and do whatever-it-takes to establish their “personal brand” and grow an audience… will become as extinct as the dinosaurs.

What’s the secret to become “in-demand?” Versus being “invisible?”

Three things:

ATTENTION! ATTRACTION! ACTION!

Here’s this advice in a “question” format, so you can see how it applies to you:

1 – ATTENTION

Does your “content” and your “messaging” (in other words, your business and your brand) get your “ideal client’s” ATTENTION?

(Most people don’t know you. You’re biggest challenge is OBSCURITY. If you don’t STAND-OUT, you’re invisible. That means, you do not exist to most of the world.)

2 – ATTRACTION

Does your message ATTRACT your “ideal clients?”

(Meaning do they “care” about what you share?)

3 – ACTION

Do you have a clear Call To ACTION in your messaging?

(A confused mind, says “no” and does “nothing.” It’s imperative that you have a clear understanding about, “what you want the to do NEXT.” If you don’t know, how in the hell will they know what to do?)

Tips to make sure you are “in-demand” vs. “invisible:

TIP #1: Become an author (not later, NOW)

TIP #2: Start a podcast (discover your VOICE)

TIP #3: Have a “Profitable Path” to monetize your mission.

Or…

You’ll go BROKE wasting your time, and confusing your audience.

In closing… You need to become an Epic Storyteller. Become a marketer who helps people, and a leader who makes a difference with their message.

Or?

Join the dinosaurs and hope you look good “stuffed” and “preserved” in a museum.

Join the dinosaurs.

Yes. I’m saying you you have to do something MASSIVELY different, or you-will-be-left-behind.

Take all the crap that used-to-work… and stuff it into a museum.

This is your hear to RISE!

Sergey Aliokhin

Ahrefs.com Sergey’s LinkedIn

I think that marketing will become more subjective than objective in 2019. To put it simply, such things as personalization, individual approach will play a key role in overall marketing strategy. The era of “cold” emails will end and each customer will start receiving super-personalized messages. However, it is gonna be harder to “impress” with your email pitch some gurus of marketing (imho).

What’s more important, the mindset of marketers should change. No more efforts to persuade customers in the uniqueness of your service because your service is nothing without the customers.

Ashley Lipman

Accuwebhosting.com

Interactive Emails are Effective- The modern consumer wants to be entertained, which is why using an interactive email is a great idea. Many companies are using the power of memes and videos to entertain their email recipients.

GDPR-Friendly Emails- Gathering and documenting consent from email recipients is at the heart of this piece of legislation. This is why you will need to get crafty when trying to get this consent.

Real-Time Email Personalization – When consumers visit your business website, you want an email sent out to them immediately to let them know you care about obtaining their business. The best way to do this is by using real-time email personalization software.

Avoid Buying an Email List – Most of the larger email service providers don’t like when businesses use these types of lists. Also, the people on these lists will have zero ideas who you are and why you are emailing them. Building your own email list from scratch may take time, but it is well worth it. You can find bulk email verification services and tools online. Once you have this information, you should have no problem optimizing the list of existing email addresses you have.

Make Sure Your Emails are Personal and Professional – In the world of small business, portraying the right image is a crucial component of having success. This is why you need to make sure that the emails you are sending to consumers are professional looking and personal. The opening line of your email needs to contain the name of the person you are sending it too. Making a person feel like they are getting a personalized email rather than a template can go a long way.

David MacLaren

Mediavalet.com David’s LinkedIn

In 2019, I believe marketing teams will become instrumental to customer success, working to enhance customer experiences, and boost adoption and retention.

Marketing will be the key to providing value to the customer across their entire lifecycle, not just in the acquisition stage. Customer experience is expected to overtake price and product as a key differentiator by 2020, so organizations need to improve their customer success practices now if they hope to remain competitive. I’m excited to see marketing spearhead this initiative.

Taylor Perras

Business.com Taylor’s LinkedIn

Our focus has been gathering user feedback to improve the community experience on Business.com. Nothing is more telling than the voice of the customer (not even Google Analytics). That’s why my prediction for 2019 is we’ll see continued drastic growth in the use of chatbots on websites to gather customer thoughts and resolve customer problems immediately. As chatbots become more and more ‘humanized’ like their counterparts Alexa and Google Home, it will be impossible to tell if you’re having a natural conversation with a helpful customer service rep or witty robot.

Anna Hrach

Convinceandconvert.com Anna’s LinkedIn

I think 2019 is going to be the year of focusing on organizational change. It’s really hard to learn from our mistakes and not fall back into the same old habits when organizations are standing in one place. We can develop as many processes and procedures and to-do lists and roadmaps as we want, but the entire organizational structure has to be on board and rally in order for all of our big ideas to work. We all have to be moving in the same direction, at the same time, to make marketing truly effective.

John Paul Aguiar

JohnPaulAguiar.com John’s LinkedIn

My first prediction is about influencer marketing and how it WILL change in 2019.

We are quickly seeing a move from large and random influencers to a small and real influencer base.

People that actually use a product or service, that share ongoing reviews and usage of said product or service.

Influencers that work side by side with said brand to share their review, participate in content creation and ads.

Second, with Alexa and Siri usage growing and becoming mainstream….Voice marketing and search will grow at a faster pace and I see more brands finding creative ways to participate.

Finally I think 2019 will be the year of creativity.

2018 was about being you and being more personal in your marketing.

In 2019 that will continue but now that everyone does that, the way to really stand out will be to bring creativity to your branding, marketing, and the content you create.

Douglas Burdett

Douglas LinkedIn

In 2019 everyone will have their own flying car, entire meals will come in pill form, and the Earth will be run by damn dirty apes.

Oh wait, those were Austin Powers’ predictions. But those will also probably happen in 2019.

In 2019 a small but growing number of marketers will come to be perceived by their management and peers as making a more direct contribution to revenue rather than as arts and crafts party planners who work in the “make it pretty” department.

Andrea Fryrear

Agilesherpas.com Andrea’s LinkedIn

I can sum up my 2019 prediction with one word: process. More and more teams are figuring out that it’s not their ideas, or their strategy, or their product that’s holding them back, it’s their process.

If you can create a more effective system for handling work, then every single piece of work that flows through that system benefits. Adopting a more Agile process is an amazing way to exponentially improve all kinds of work, from standard keep the lights on stuff to the most crucial strategy projects.

Jason Pampell

Hireinfluence.com Jason’s LinkedIn

Brands will contract more long-term partnerships with influencers that feel more genuine instead of one-off campaigns. This goes hand-in-hand with the focus from both brands and influencers to remain authentic and real with audiences; influencers will continue to work only with brands that align with their values and will push to have some creative control over content to assure it’s created with their audience in mind.

We will likely see brands continue to heavily pursue micro-influencers for their ability to carry a more authentic message, be less commercial in their presence and extend brand influencer networks and campaigns at a great value. We should also expect a bigger push from brands on data markers for potential influencers (demographics, engagement rate, view rates, etc.) to determine partnership rates.

Pamela Muldoon

Pedowitzgroup.com Pamela’s LinkedIn

Getting back to the basics to ensure a better customer experience. This past year I worked with a lot of B2B clients that still struggle with doing the foundation work of developing strong buyer personas and defining their customer journey. Yet these same companies will say they want to improve their customer experience. To move forward in 2019 means taking a step back. Companies will need to work on these foundational elements if they want to improve all areas of of their content marketing efforts.

David Reimherr

Magnificent.com David’s LinkedIn

I predict that you will see more and more videos (short & long form videos) from employees of larger and smaller companies as the movement towards humanizing your brand continues. The need for authenticity and creating relationships with your audiences is at an all time high and this starts with having faces and voices behind the logos. I also predict that growth of podcasts (audio & video podcasts) will continue as companies and brands continue to find creative ways to market themselves, speak to, and serve their audiences in deeper and deeper ways.

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A Magnificent Prediction for 2019: 55 Experts Share Insights for Marketing This Year

We’re sure your newsfeed is clogged with everyone’s predictions for the 2019 marketing year. So before you continue scrolling, here us out on why you should take a look at our list.

We’ve been running our mouths about content marketing for the last few years and while we may think we have all the answers, truth is, content marketing has truly picked up steam in the last few months. And it’s continuing to be the #1 topic for marketing strategies heading into the new year.

We chatted with 55 marketing experts on what they expect to see on the horizon for content marketing. Here’s to learning and growing from each other in 2019!

Ann Handley

Digital marketing & content expert, Wall Street Journal bestselling author, Keynote speaker, Writer

annhandley.com Ann’s LinkedIn

Organizers will treat their email newsletter programs like the rare and precious creatures they are, in need of regular love and attention. "Hold up," you're thinking. "EMAIL? Is this 1999 or 2019? Isn't this the age of AI and Facebook Live and video?" Here's why I believe in the power of email newsletters even more strongly today, as we head into 2019: 1) An email newsletter is the only place where individuals—not algorithms—are in control. So what if marketing leaned into that inherently personal space? 2) Most companies today use their email newsletter as a distribution strategy. What if we focused not on the news but on the letter? In January I re-launched my personal newsletter as a way to converse directly to my audience. It’s taught me a lot about what works and what doesn’t in content and in marketing. Because I think the best email newsletters are also a kind of proxy for the best marketing in 2019, period.

Ted Rubin

Co-Founder Prevailing Path and MC/Host, The Rubin Organization

Tedrubin.com Ted’s Twitter

So I am not so much about predictions as I am about what should be happening. 2019, if brands are hoping to stay relevant and keep up with the content creation phenomenon, needs to be the year of Empowering Employees to Power your Brand. It’s plain and simple—employee censorship on social channels is a disaster for brands. We can no longer control the message folks. The social framework is “bigger and stronger” than our puny frameworks. Instead of fighting it every step of the way, USE it to your advantage, or you’ll pay a steep price in diminished return. Your employees are the best way to humanize and personalize your brand... and truly the best way to scale relevant, contextual content creation Did you know that employee created content (ECC) receives eight times more engagement than content shared from the company itself? On top of that, employee content extends brand messaging by over 500%. Crazy, right? So why aren’t more companies getting employees engaged in content creation? It’s well known that companies with engaged employees outperform their peers; involving employees in content creation can help to create a sense of common purpose. The truth of the matter is that the social evolution is a business evolution. Only by changing our old frameworks can we possibly hope to succeed—because social has completely altered the business landscape. #ROE... Return on Employees.

Andy Crestodina

Co-founder / CMO, Orbit Media Studios

Orbitmedia.com Andy’s LinkedIn

"Original research is the most effective type of content" ...I heard this over and over again in 2018. So I expect we'll see a lot more research-based content in 2019. Look for a spike in studies and surveys and a lot of statistics in headlines. And it works. Few bloggers publish original research, but those who do are much more likely to report strong results.

It's a good thing for content programs, but there's a risk that it will erode trust in our audiences unless the studies have rigorous methodologies and significantly big datasets. If research is weak and overused in 2019, we might see "Research is dead" headlines a year from now.

Gini Dietrich

Spinsucks.com Gini’s LinkedIn

My prediction is Dave will exceed all of his goals—and all of his crazy ideas will come to fruition and be plentiful and successful. No?

So many predictions. So little time! Chatbots are going to increase in popularity. So is voice search. So is artificial intelligence. So is predictive analytics and how marketers will use it for content marketing and editorial calendar planning. I personally am going to begin to use the data in our CRM to build internal training modules using IBM Watson. So not necessarily a trend, but how to use artificial intelligence in use.

Stephanie Stahl

Contentmarketinginstitute.com Stephanie’s LinkedIn

Our heads will still be spinning by the vast amounts of content produced on a daily basis by brands, media companies, agencies, and individuals. But we'll see a determined effort by smart marketers to figure out a cadence that's realistic and effective. We'll see (and celebrate) content that is creative, human, educational and entertaining whether it's a blog, a print article, a piece of branded content, an infographic, a video, a podcast, or whatever format is used to tell a compelling story that convinces people to stop and pay attention.

Marcus Sheridan

Marcussheridan.com Marcus’s LinkedIn

In 2019, more and more companies will realize that, whether we like it or not, we're all media companies. In other words, these companies will accept the undeniable influence that video is having on the B2B and B2C sales, marketing, and customer service process-- and the fact that if they don't start to do something about it (show, not just tell), they'll be left behind by their competitors. Furthermore, more and more companies will hire in-house videographers as a full-time position, due to the fact that in order to truly create a "culture" of video within an organization, you must become, for the most part, self reliant.

Michael Brenner

Marketinginsidergroup.com Michael’s LinkedIn

There are 2 major trends in the marketing industry I think everyone will be talking about in 2019.

The first is AI. We will begin to realize the opportunity of an AI-driven content marketing strategy. If 60-70% of the content we create goes unused, AI will begin to force us to reconsider what we create and why.

Second is employee activation. AI will tell us what to create, but our best storytellers are our existing employees from across the business. Every company needs a strategy to activate these employees as both creators and as the most effective distribution channel to share that content. This is the paradox of AI. The more the robots tell us what to do, the more we will need our internal experts to create and share that content.

Jon Burkhart

Tbcglobal.live Jon’s LinkedIn

I am dead-sick of spam and have been a card-carrying inbox filth fighter for years now. Brands, it’s 2019 now and you’ve got storehouses of data on me. There’s no reason brands in 2019 shouldn’t get their personalised video game on in a big way. I want my favourite brands MOO (I print my workshop game cards out using their infinity print feature), Topps (my boy & I are obsessed with Premier League soccer trading cards) and Go-Ped (I’ve been driving a kick-scooter for 7 years - eat that Bird & Lime) to give me a big fat sloppy kiss in 2019. I want that kiss to be personalised, authentic video that makes me feel frickin loved - even cuddled. I see video getting way up into the grills of folk in super-personal but not freaky/intrusive ways in 2019. I myself and upping my personalised video game so turn your spam filters up or down depending on your feelings toward me.

Julia McCoy

Expresswriters.com Julia’s LinkedIn

My first prediction for 2019? The overly sales-y marketing "funnel" (or “sales funnel”) will become obsolete. Yes, I said it. Why? It doesn’t describe the way marketing should work anymore. We are content marketers. We’re not looking to grab the attention of people who aren’t in our audience, and we don’t want to dump people at the end of a funnel. We want to take a more nurturing stance that encourages people to stay in our circle: join our community of readers, buyers, and evangelists. I think it’s time to replace the sales funnel with a marketing flowchart and lifecycle representation. My second prediction is that trust-based content is going to be the Content Leader (King, Queen, you-name-it) in 2019. I think we’re going to see more authenticity from the brands that rise to the forefront of their industries. The true story of the founder, from failures to successes: transparency in the executive team, real-life anecdotes from customers and employees on the company blogs - those will win buyer trust in the content calendar for 2019. Today and tomorrow’s winning content is about human connection. And how better to bridge that gap than through telling real stories? Focus on your real-life successes and failures, and tell those to your human audience.

Dennis Yu

Dennis-yu.com Dennis’s LinkedIn

Facebook ads get prohibitively expensive for most businesses, as there is increasing demand against an inventory base that isn't growing. We've seen the base cost of traffic nearly double each year-- now being close to $8 per thousand impressions, regardless of whether they are bidding for leads, ROAS, video views, or whatever. The antidote is 15 and 60 second vertical videos (to look like what a friend would post, not an "advertisement" a business would run) and running chatbots (like MobileMonkey, where we can promote within a consumer's inbox, which marketers haven't ruined yet).

Bernie Borges

Vengreso.com Bernie’s LinkedIn

The pressure on B2B marketers to prove ROI has never been more intense. The average CMO has an average tenure of 44 months, fueling the pressure to deliver results quickly. B2B marketers who demonstrate accountability for revenue contribution in 2019 will stand a better chance of not just surviving but thriving. I see three strategies that can support the modern CMO’s “drive to the number.”

Acceleration of sales video by teaching sales teams how to create short videos and empowering them with tools that make it easy and measurable on sales cycles.

Optimizing sales rep’s LinkedIn profiles to function as mini websites that are written through the lens of the buyer, are on-brand and deliver extended reach for the brand.

Deployment of personalized microsites with relevant content for account expansion used in account based marketing strategies.

These three strategies can directly impact the marketing executive’s ability to partner with the head of sales (and the entire C-Suite) on the “path to the number.” The marketing executive who measurably contributes to revenue is the one who will thrive in 2019 and beyond.

Allen Gannett

Skyword.com Allen’s LinkedIn

2019 will be the year creativity moves from soft skill to hard skill. Marketers who become intentional about their creativity will have a huge advantage in 2019 as consumers start to expect more and more from brands—both in terms of value and voice. I think there will be an inherent push for teams to stretch out of their comfort zone to tackle potentially uncharted waters and keep pace with the changing social media landscape. With social media Stories growing 15x faster than feeds and more American adults now receiving news results from social media over newspapers, it’s no secret that there’s been a fundamental shift in the way consumers are digesting news and entertainment content. As people continue to change the way they consume content, it will open up the door for brands to become full-time publishers to win over social media audiences. Companies that not only recognize this shift, but also respond to it by creating and distributing content that addresses the informational and entertainment needs of consumers, will tap into the 970 million accounts using Stories and twenty percent of Adults using social media as their source of news (compared to just 16 percent who read newspapers). In 2019, we’ll see a brand become a top publisher of both newsworthy and entertaining content. Companies will start to emerge as leading sources of news and valuable information while simultaneously providing engaging and compelling figures. We’ll get a clear picture of what a successful brand publisher looks like: marketing leaders who were willing to pivot as the market changed.

Shane Barker

Shanebarker.com Shane’s LinkedIn

Marketing Predictions for 2019 and Beyond The fast-paced digital marketing industry is evolving constantly to drive better results. This will lead to a significant decline in the use of traditional advertising in the coming years. I believe that smart technologies such as big data, virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence will create many new opportunities in the digital space. Brands and marketers will leverage these technologies to grow their businesses with highly targeted content marketing. They will also get more creative with content formats such as

videos

3600

VR

AR

ebooks

influencer-created content The demand of consumers for personalization is also likely to increase further. Brands and marketers will have to deliver more personalized customer experiences based on their preferences, styles, and buying behaviors.

Robert Rose

Contentmarketinginstitute.com Robert’s LinkedIn

I see three primary trends in 2019.

The first is the continued rise of Artificial Intelligence within the technology stack. The push will be for marketers to jump right on the speeding AI and automation bandwagon – and much like personalization and bots, it is a topic that most marketers would be better off waiting on.

The second – and more pressing trend - will be the need for scale of content operations. Businesses will finally take owned media seriously enough to build a strategic operation around it.

And, related to this is the third, which is the continued rise of the importance of content marketing and first party data in the new era of GDPR and other privacy laws and regulations. All in all - content (and specifically building audiences) continues to be an extraordinarily important part of the new marketer's mix.

Margaret Magnarelli

Monster.com Margaret’s LinkedIn

As someone who came into marketing via content marketing, I’m fascinated by how that discipline is changing. In the bubble times, companies bought in big, but more recently, we’ve been in what Gartner would call the “trough of disillusionment.” And over the last year, we’ve seen a shift in the way most of the vendors in the space talk about their universe of potential customers—the language is increasingly going from “content marketing” to “integrated marketing.” I think that’s good news as we develop a sustainable role for content. But it also means that content marketers will need to develop more interdisciplinary if they aim to rise within an organization. Speaking of integration, I expect to see that become a key overall theme of 2019—integration of data, integration of tools, and integration of functions. (I’m thinking of printing bumper stickers that say “Silos are for cows, not marketers.”) Especially if the economy stutters, companies will be taking a hard look at optimizing and getting rid of overlaps. That sounds negative, but I think it will improve productivity. And personally I’m excited about a return to “technoprudence.” I think it’ll help us all approach our work with increased humanity.

Peter Loibl

Concured.com Peter’s LinkedIn

Marketers will escalate their use of Artificial Intelligence to power their Content Strategy and Analysis, and AI-powered CSPs (Content Strategy Platforms) will continue to become as integral to marketing stacks as Marketing Automation Systems were once they broke onto the scene more than a decade ago. Performance and relevancy guesswork and time-draining content audits will continue to be replaced by data-centric, realtime AI-powered CSPs that are already revolutionizing our industry.

Matt Heinz

Heinzmarketing.com Matt’s LinkedIn

Marketing will further evolve their reporting to differentiate operational metrics from impact metrics. The highest-level marketing metrics should focus on revenue impact marketing is having on the business. If you're showing your executive team a report focused on open rates and lead volume, they'll assume you care more about activity than outcomes!

Christoph Trappe

Christophtrappe.com Christoph’s LinkedIn

More will use VR storytelling. Virtual reality is really an underused tool and partially that is because not all consumers have the headset. But given that you can watch virtual reality videos as 360 versions on a phone or app, and not very many events are using them yet, it’s the perfect time to jump right in and make this strategy a big differentiation for your company.

Bill Widmer

Billwidmer.com Bill’s LinkedIn

I recently published a full article for Sumo on 2019 marketing predictions. Here is the big one that I'll be putting 90% of my attention on: Content for Google Content marketing is nothing new - it's been around since magazines and direct mail. SEO is nothing new - it's been around since Google launched in the late 90's. So why is this a "marketing trend" in 2019? Because, frankly, most people really suck at creating content. They do a shotgun approach, writing content for the sake of having content, not knowing what's performing and what isn't. They target keywords using free keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, not really knowing how to optimize for it or if it's even the best keyword. This approach is a complete waste of time and money. I would rather write one article per month that's based on deep keyword research and an understanding of WHY people search that keyword and WHAT they're looking for - including <b>the things people don't even know they're looking for when they first start their search.</b> For example, if someone searches for "best surfboard", they might not have any idea what makes a surfboard good or bad, or even how to surf. They might just be looking to grab one of the best boards. If they knew what made a board great, they probably wouldn't be searching that term in the first place. So in your content, you should tell them what the best surfboards are, based on research and use, etc. But you should also have a section that explains WHY they are the best, what to look for in a surfboard, how to get started surfing, etc. To give you a real-world example, here's an article I wrote on the best RV air conditioners. In this article, I reveal the very best at the top, then dive into what to consider when buying an AC (size, shape, BTUs, etc.), I answer the question of if you even need a new AC by showing you how to troubleshoot your current one if it's not working, and I answer a bunch of FAQs like "Can I heat my RV with the air conditioning unit as well?". This depth helped me rank on page 1 for "RV air conditioner". To help you figure out what people are searching for when they type in a keyword, study the current search results for that keyword. See what they talk about, what questions they answer, etc. Go on YouTube and find videos on the topic, then look at what questions people ask in the comments. Use AnswerThePublic to find all the common questions around a keyword. Use LSIgraph to find the related and semantic keywords to your main keyword. Then incorporate all your research in your article. Make it the go-to article on a given topic. The very best on the internet. Then, and only then, will you destroy the competition, rank #1, and get all the traffic and sales from Google.

John Demato

Johndemato.com

The future of marketing will continue to shift away from transactional to relationship-based because people are tired of being sold to - they want to be nurtured and offered value every step of the way.

Michael Becker

Emarsys.com Michael’s LinkedIn

More companies will develop owned, branded publications to attract audiences. Though this avenue will remain one aspect of an integrated marketing approach, it will emerge as the most valuable if committed to fully. Brands or entrepreneurs who treat content as a product and invest substantially in that product – as much as any other function in the business – WILL find success.

Investing in a content-first approach means prioritizing long-term audience building over lead gen. For those who stick it out AND "do it right" (by differentiating their content and avoiding the lure of infusing salesy, product messaging), great gains will be seen. For these brands, quality content will be the means to meaning, cultivating an audience who can offer value from a multitude of angles – accurate data, subscriber feedback and preferences, buying of premium content, and inspiring merchandise spin-offs. For these companies, content will change lives; and will turn a profit in-and-of-itself.

Liston Witherill

Liston.io Liston’s LinkedIn

2019 will see the continued growth of audio as a medium that rapidly expands, making podcasting more mainstream and audio search a major consideration in all marketing programs. Content will continue to dominate customer acquisition - on social, through search, with email programs, etc. - but it'll be harder than ever to grow your audience. Watch for social media channels to ratchet up advertising expenses and de-prioritize organic traffic. Their problems with poor quality content are pushing the networks to drive up advertising costs and de-prioritize organic content. So much for Internet as the great democratizing force, huh?

Hailey Friedman

Growthmarketingpro.com Hailey’s LinkedIn

2019 will be the year marketers get control of their data. Over the past 10 years, the marketing technology landscape has vastly expanded, meaning there are endless ways to reach our customers. This is great. However, it also means our data is lives in silos across each of these platforms. Bringing the data together has been a tedious and manual process for all of us in order to get a comprehensive view of our marketing performance. In 2019, marketers will finally put their foot down and automate this process. I predict that having an automated system to aggregate all your marketing data will become the new standard, and anyone wasting employee time on this task will be left behind in the dust. Tools like Improvado are already helping marketers eliminate 90% of the time spent building manual reports and marketing dashboards.

Zontee Hou

Zonteehou.com Zontee’s LinkedIn

2019 will be characterized by contextual and conversational marketing. As consumers have more and more information at their fingertips year by year, they’re also more overwhelmed by choice. At the same time, businesses like Google, Amazon, and Facebook are consistently refining their personalized experiences through algorithms and question-driven tools. What this means for companies of all shapes and sizes is that they must implement marketing practices that allow them to reach audiences of one—conversational marketing—through chatbots, filtering mechanisms on websites, and automation-driven emails in order to resonate with audiences.

Doug Kessler

Velocitypartners.com Doug’s Twitter

In B2B, where we ply our trade, we're seeing right-brain marketing starting to meet left-brain marketing. The people who get brand and story and positioning are starting to make common cause with those who get demand gen, pipelines and data. For the last few years, our clients have had separate silos for these things. More and more, we're working with companies that understand how they work together. This is where B2B marketing is headed and where it needs to head: brand, strategy, content, digital and marketing performance all working together around a single, galvanizing idea. With the plumbing in place to integrate the whole stack and the data to prove it's working. It's all about accountability. Shout "Hallelujah!" (Or, if you're in an open plan office, think it).

Ryan Dohrn

SalesTrainingWorld.com Ryan’s LinkedIn

Conversations around automation and AI in marketing and sales will increase exponentially. Data-driven marketing teams and sales teams using AI are outpacing their competitors. Companies that do not have a data-driven marketing and sales plan will be left behind. But, be warned, there are automation and AI experts and software popping up everywhere. Do your due diligence and ask detailed questions. Create a strategy and monitor progress. AI is not intended to replace marketers or salespeople. AI and automation are meant to enhance what we already do. These tools should give us improved ROI and a deeper insight into our customers and potential customers.

Nancy Harhut

Hbtmktg.com Nancy’s LinkedIn

In 2019 we'll see data scientists really work hand in hand with behavioral scientists. Or at least in close proximity! Marketers have so much data at our disposal. And it reveals many useful things, like who to talk to, where to find them, what to say and when to say it. But rely on that alone, and you'll come up short. Because how that message is served up -- how it's phrased and framed -- can make all the difference. And behavioral science provides the insights to make that difference. Tapping into behavioral science, we can craft messages that are more likely to be noticed and responded to. Messages designed to appeal to the subconscious brain where a whopping 95% of decisions are actually made. So 2019 will be the year marketers take it up a notch. We won't just get the right message to the right person at the right time -- we'll also do it in the right way.

Jason Quey

Growthramp.io Jason’s LinkedIn

My prediction is more and more non-traditional startups will embrace the growth marketing prioritization process. For those unfamiliar with this process, after creating a list of ideas, you score each idea on a scale of 1-10 on impact, the confidence of success, and effort to run the test. Because this is a prioritization method, it can be applied to any field. For example, you can apply it broadly to all content marketing, or more specifically to prioritizing your promotion channels, which you can get the nitty gritty details on how to do that here.

Debra Jason

WriteDirection.com Debra’s LinkedIn

In "Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 35," Larry D. Rosen et al reported that heavy tech use is associated with depression, anxiety, health problems, academic challenges, and relationship issues. That said, my prediction for 2019 is that, to avoid the depression and anxiety associated with heavy teach use, the return of the human connection is vital to marketing. While technology may make certain aspects of our lives easier, they do not replace the human touch. Devices like smartphones and tablets may provide easy access to information. However, none of them can take the place of good ‘ol fashioned human interaction – face-to-face, smile-to-smile, handshake to handshake or even a voice (not a text) on the other end of a phone that says “So good to talk to you.” With technology constantly expanding, do you feel more connected or disconnected to those around you? And, do you think marketing in 2019 will see an increase in the “human connection?” I certainly hope so.

Priscilla McKinney

Littlebirdmarketing.com

I think one of the biggest players in 2019 will be video. We've watched as it has risen in popularity over the last few years, but I think in 2019 it will become more of a mainstay in content marketing. People like visual content - plain and simple - and I think we’ve finally caught on to it. Look to see marketing strategies reflect this moving forward.

James Reynolds

Seosherpa.com James LinkedIn

The role of the headline will become (even more) important for content marketers. Here’s why: Google’s Rank Brain algorithm was HUGE this year. And I expect it to be even more important in 2019. Rank Brain measures how users interact with search results. It promotes search results that get clicked on more often and demotes those that don’t. Google is also populating search engine results pages with more and more search features like search ads, shopping ads, local pack results, rich answers and a myriad of featured snippets. The result? Traditional organic listings are being given less and less visibility. To win organic traffic in 2019, content marketers must develop their craft in headline writing. With better headlines, their search engine snippets can stand out amongst all the visual noise, they can win more eyeballs and clicks, and in turn, elevate their rankings too.

Chuck Hester

Chuckhester.com Chuck’s LinkedIn

While 2019 will continue to see the rise of marketing automation, brands that will win are those that emphasize loyalty and relationships over tech. The relationships they build with customers - whether they are "influencers" or not - will be key to their success. By listening to the customer and what they want, as opposed to selling them something they believe they want, they will have a deeper market penetration in the long term. The use of video on LinkedIn will continue to rise, and those who take advantage of this "new form of content marketing on this platform will reach a larger audience and increase their brand equity.

Jonathan Kranz

Kranzcom.com

I think the confluence of content overkill (waaaay too much stuff to too many people too often) and an economy showing signs of deceleration will put pressure on us to favor quality over quantity: LESS content altogether, but of HIGHER quality (i.e., of much greater intrinsic interest to our audiences). There will be pain, but I think all of us will benefit from a more discriminatory approach to content creation.

Josh Haynam

Tryinteract.com

2019 will be the year of empathy in marketing. What I mean is the focus will shift from “how do we sell this product?” To “how do we better understand the needs of our customers so we can serve them with our products and services?” We’ll see a fundamental shift in the way marketers think about the clients we’re trying to reach, and the ability to better understand your customers will become a huge differentiator.

Rebecca Lieb

KaleidoInsights.com Rebecca’s LinkedIn

Automated content. This is the topic of my most recent research and it's about to get very big, not just in marketing where AI and other technologies will go far to help create and generate ultra relevant and personalized content, but also in other areas of business. HR, business intelligence, legal, media and other areas will all be impacted by machines that can read, write and even create multimedia content such as images and video at scale.

Reuben Swartz

Mimiran.com Reuben’s LinkedIn

Companies that say "I don't invest in my website, I get all my business from referrals" will fall further behind those who invest in both online presence and real-world relationships. They are two sides of the same coin, and you need to deal with both.

Better B2B revenue attribution will give marketers more effective, efficient tools to actually bring in revenue, instead of optimizing proxies like leads or newsletter signups. This will be a game changer for organizations that take advantage, helping them funnel marketing investment into the most productive efforts.

The competition for attention will be even fiercer, so companies should make their marketing efforts a good investment of prospects' time-- teaching, helping, entertaining. "Authentic" marketing helps, if it's real and not just a gimmick dressed up to look authentic.

Matthew Pollard

MatthewPollard.com Matthew’s LinkedIn

Cold callers will continue to see diminishing returns for their hard work, while salespeople who ONLY focus on social selling will see an even higher decline. Tomorrow's high performers will embrace a holistic approach to sales acquisition and understand that being everything to everyone is not the answer. We will also see a surge of introverted sales high performers as they discover that the, so called, 'gift of gab' is not a barrier to entry and that, armed with a sales process, they can beat their extroverted counterparts HANDS DOWN!

Evan Schmitt

Evanschmitt.com Evan’s Twitter

Brands will get more precise with their advertising and targeting. The smarter brands will continue to gain market share over the brands that don’t adapt and innovate.

John Andrews

Photofy.com John’s LinkedIn

In 2019, marketer's are going to be seeking solutions for digital ad saturation as response rates fall and costs rise to reach quality audiences. At Photofy, we believe collaborative content created and shared by employees, customers and partners is one solution to achieving content scale and engagement on a localized level that augments digital advertising approaches.

Jeremiah Smith

Simpletiger.com Jeremiah’s Twitter

In regards to SEO and ranking well in Google; user engagement metrics are going to continue to be more important than links as a ranking factor. SEMrush published a comprehensive report this past year showing the importance of user engagement metrics like "dwell time", bounce rate, page views, click interactions, etc. vs qualitative, relevant inbound links as a ranking factor for the first time in Google algorithmic history. This was sensational information that largely went unnoticed in the SEO community until further AI improvements to the core ranking algorithm at Google started hurting the rankings of sites which have stood in place for years prior. Brian Dean even showed the recent value of a single piece of content without any inbound links that nails the searcher's intent for a given keyword set perfectly which further substantiates that Google is using a higher method of deducing value for a page likely due to the engagement from users that page receives. Brian refers to the process of building these pieces of content as the Skyscraper 3.0 Technique. Artificial intelligence insofar as Google is using will continue to measure the value of pieces of content to the end-user thereby reducing its dependency on old-fashioned metrics we were used to in the realm of SEO.

John Jantsch

Ducttapemarketing.com

I believe Google's attempts at a social network will finally take hold although somewhat accidentally - Google My Business will become Google social network for local businesses with the addition of CRM like functions and the ability of customers to keep up with a business via Google My Business networks.

Alicia Lawrence

Webfx.com Alicia’s LinkedIn

Push to optimize for Amazon: With nearly half of initial product searches happening on Amazon, e-commerce is shifting to large all-inclusive ways to shop, such as Amazon, Walmart and Google Shopping.

Facebook, Instagram and YouTube ads explode: As social networks lower organic reach, companies will shift their budgets to paid. Analytics provided through the ‘pixel’ will revolutionize reporting and provide better data-driven decisions. In addition, content assets will be backed by paid ads vs. pitching. Higher competition for ads means costs will go up.

Integration of AI into reporting and prediction tools: In 2019, we’ll see a bigger push to integrate AI to create better insights. WebFX already integrated Google AI and IMB Watson to create several proprietary tools that predict and analyze content and SEO campaigns.

Azriel Ratz

RatzPackMedia.com Azriel’s LinkedIn

Over 2019, businesses will use stories and shorter length videos to their advantage. The stories format allows businesses to create deeper more authentic relationships with their customers. Overall, businesses will begin to shift to shorter videos to grab people's attention and get them to take action.

Trevor Crane

Trevorcrane.com Trevor’s LinkedIn

What’s going to happen in the future? There is no question: RISE or be INVISIBLE. Mark my words… you will see this in EVERY profession. And in EVERY industry. Some people (and businesses) will RISE above the noise. And everyone else? They will become insignificant and be ignored as if there were INVISIBLE. What will make the difference? You (and businesses in general) will either CREATE CONSISTENT COMPELLING CONTENT… or, go out-of-business. People who do not grasp this FACT, and do whatever-it-takes to establish their “personal brand” and grow an audience… will become as extinct as the dinosaurs. What’s the secret to become “in-demand?” Versus being “invisible?” Three things: ATTENTION! ATTRACTION! ACTION! Here’s this advice in a “question” format, so you can see how it applies to you: 1 - ATTENTION Does your “content” and your “messaging” (in other words, your business and your brand) get your “ideal client’s” ATTENTION? (Most people don’t know you. You’re biggest challenge is OBSCURITY. If you don’t STAND-OUT, you’re invisible. That means, you do not exist to most of the world.) 2 - ATTRACTION Does your message ATTRACT your “ideal clients?” (Meaning do they “care” about what you share?) 3 - ACTION Do you have a clear Call To ACTION in your messaging? (A confused mind, says “no” and does “nothing.” It’s imperative that you have a clear understanding about, “what you want the to do NEXT.” If you don’t know, how in the hell will they know what to do?) Tips to make sure you are “in-demand” vs. “invisible: TIP #1: Become an author (not later, NOW) TIP #2: Start a podcast (discover your VOICE) TIP #3: Have a “Profitable Path” to monetize your mission. Or… You’ll go BROKE wasting your time, and confusing your audience. In closing… You need to become an Epic Storyteller. Become a marketer who helps people, and a leader who makes a difference with their message. Or? Join the dinosaurs and hope you look good “stuffed” and “preserved” in a museum. Join the dinosaurs. Yes. I’m saying you you have to do something MASSIVELY different, or you-will-be-left-behind. Take all the crap that used-to-work… and stuff it into a museum. This is your hear to RISE!

Sergey Aliokhin

Ahrefs.com Sergey’s LinkedIn

I think that marketing will become more subjective than objective in 2019. To put it simply, such things as personalization, individual approach will play a key role in overall marketing strategy. The era of "cold" emails will end and each customer will start receiving super-personalized messages. However, it is gonna be harder to "impress" with your email pitch some gurus of marketing (imho).

What's more important, the mindset of marketers should change. No more efforts to persuade customers in the uniqueness of your service because your service is nothing without the customers.

Ashley Lipman

Accuwebhosting.com

Interactive Emails are Effective- The modern consumer wants to be entertained, which is why using an interactive email is a great idea. Many companies are using the power of memes and videos to entertain their email recipients.

GDPR-Friendly Emails- Gathering and documenting consent from email recipients is at the heart of this piece of legislation. This is why you will need to get crafty when trying to get this consent.

Real-Time Email Personalization - When consumers visit your business website, you want an email sent out to them immediately to let them know you care about obtaining their business. The best way to do this is by using real-time email personalization software.

Avoid Buying an Email List - Most of the larger email service providers don’t like when businesses use these types of lists. Also, the people on these lists will have zero ideas who you are and why you are emailing them. Building your own email list from scratch may take time, but it is well worth it. You can find bulk email verification services and tools online. Once you have this information, you should have no problem optimizing the list of existing email addresses you have.

Make Sure Your Emails are Personal and Professional - In the world of small business, portraying the right image is a crucial component of having success. This is why you need to make sure that the emails you are sending to consumers are professional looking and personal. The opening line of your email needs to contain the name of the person you are sending it too. Making a person feel like they are getting a personalized email rather than a template can go a long way.

David MacLaren

Mediavalet.com David’s LinkedIn

In 2019, I believe marketing teams will become instrumental to customer success, working to enhance customer experiences, and boost adoption and retention. Marketing will be the key to providing value to the customer across their entire lifecycle, not just in the acquisition stage. Customer experience is expected to overtake price and product as a key differentiator by 2020, so organizations need to improve their customer success practices now if they hope to remain competitive. I’m excited to see marketing spearhead this initiative.

Taylor Perras

Business.com Taylor’s LinkedIn

Our focus has been gathering user feedback to improve the community experience on Business.com. Nothing is more telling than the voice of the customer (not even Google Analytics). That's why my prediction for 2019 is we'll see continued drastic growth in the use of chatbots on websites to gather customer thoughts and resolve customer problems immediately. As chatbots become more and more 'humanized' like their counterparts Alexa and Google Home, it will be impossible to tell if you're having a natural conversation with a helpful customer service rep or witty robot.

Anna Hrach

Convinceandconvert.com Anna’s LinkedIn

I think 2019 is going to be the year of focusing on organizational change. It's really hard to learn from our mistakes and not fall back into the same old habits when organizations are standing in one place. We can develop as many processes and procedures and to-do lists and roadmaps as we want, but the entire organizational structure has to be on board and rally in order for all of our big ideas to work. We all have to be moving in the same direction, at the same time, to make marketing truly effective.

John Paul Aguiar

JohnPaulAguiar.com John’s LinkedIn

My first prediction is about influencer marketing and how it WILL change in 2019. We are quickly seeing a move from large and random influencers to a small and real influencer base. People that actually use a product or service, that share ongoing reviews and usage of said product or service. Influencers that work side by side with said brand to share their review, participate in content creation and ads. Second, with Alexa and Siri usage growing and becoming mainstream....Voice marketing and search will grow at a faster pace and I see more brands finding creative ways to participate. Finally I think 2019 will be the year of creativity. 2018 was about being you and being more personal in your marketing. In 2019 that will continue but now that everyone does that, the way to really stand out will be to bring creativity to your branding, marketing, and the content you create.

Douglas Burdett

Douglas LinkedIn

In 2019 everyone will have their own flying car, entire meals will come in pill form, and the Earth will be run by damn dirty apes. Oh wait, those were Austin Powers’ predictions. But those will also probably happen in 2019. In 2019 a small but growing number of marketers will come to be perceived by their management and peers as making a more direct contribution to revenue rather than as arts and crafts party planners who work in the “make it pretty” department.

Andrea Fryrear

Agilesherpas.com Andrea’s LinkedIn

I can sum up my 2019 prediction with one word: process. More and more teams are figuring out that it’s not their ideas, or their strategy, or their product that’s holding them back, it’s their process. If you can create a more effective system for handling work, then every single piece of work that flows through that system benefits. Adopting a more Agile process is an amazing way to exponentially improve all kinds of work, from standard keep the lights on stuff to the most crucial strategy projects.

Jason Pampell

Hireinfluence.com Jason’s LinkedIn

Brands will contract more long-term partnerships with influencers that feel more genuine instead of one-off campaigns. This goes hand-in-hand with the focus from both brands and influencers to remain authentic and real with audiences; influencers will continue to work only with brands that align with their values and will push to have some creative control over content to assure it’s created with their audience in mind.

We will likely see brands continue to heavily pursue micro-influencers for their ability to carry a more authentic message, be less commercial in their presence and extend brand influencer networks and campaigns at a great value. We should also expect a bigger push from brands on data markers for potential influencers (demographics, engagement rate, view rates, etc.) to determine partnership rates.

Pamela Muldoon

Pedowitzgroup.com Pamela’s LinkedIn

Getting back to the basics to ensure a better customer experience. This past year I worked with a lot of B2B clients that still struggle with doing the foundation work of developing strong buyer personas and defining their customer journey. Yet these same companies will say they want to improve their customer experience. To move forward in 2019 means taking a step back. Companies will need to work on these foundational elements if they want to improve all areas of of their content marketing efforts.

David Reimherr

Magnificent.com David’s LinkedIn

I predict that you will see more and more videos (short & long form videos) from employees of larger and smaller companies as the movement towards humanizing your brand continues. The need for authenticity and creating relationships with your audiences is at an all time high and this starts with having faces and voices behind the logos. I also predict that growth of podcasts (audio & video podcasts) will continue as companies and brands continue to find creative ways to market themselves, speak to, and serve their audiences in deeper and deeper ways.

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Why You Need a Sales & Marketing Process Flow to Achieve Alignment

In the year that I’ve been with Marketo, I’ve gained some interesting insights into enterprise organizations’ challenges around sales and marketing alignment. My background is fairly unique for an enterprise account executive. Before joining this team, I established and grew marketing divisions for two separate organizations. I’ve also implemented multiple marketing automation systems, the last of which was Marketo. In my previous role, I simultaneously implemented Marketo and Salesforce CRM. This experience taught me a lot because It forced me to create an alignment between the sales and marketing teams, which doesn’t come naturally to most companies.

As part of that process, I found myself continually having conversations with questions like:

When will a lead get passed off to sales?

Which factors go into qualifying a lead?

What opportunity stages should we have?

What qualifies someone to move from one opportunity stage to the next?

When should we mark something as closed/lost and pass the contact back off to marketing to nurture and eventually re-qualify?

Even in the relatively short amount of time I’ve been here, I’ve learned that these same types of questions come up across most of the enterprise companies I engage with. What’s even more challenging is that most sales and marketing departments are almost entirely siloed.

In this blog, I’ll explain to you my findings and why I believe that creating a sales and marketing process flow chart will give your organization alignment.

Having learned this, the very first thing I do when engaging with a new prospect is sit down with them to understand how they make money, how they acquire and engage leads, how they pass those leads off to the sales organization, and what happens to the lead after the warm handoff. Nine times out of ten, there’s no efficient processes in place to pass those leads off to sales. And when asked what happens after the handoff, there are quite a few shoulder shrugs. I get a lot of, “You’ll have to talk to our sales team, Alex.”

In prior roles, I’ve solved this issue by creating a visualization that mapped out our sales and marketing flow. I then introduced it to each department, adjusted as needed, and scheduled a joint meeting to gain buy-in from both departments in the same room. Once this was completed, there was absolutely zero confusion as to what was supposed to happen and who was responsible for making it happen. After this was memorialized, people would approach me with questions about processes and all I had to do was ask them if they looked at the flowchart because the answer was probably there. Doing this also stopped people from incorrectly remembering what we all agreed to, which saved everyone a lot of headaches.

Now I’m in a role where I’m advising customers and prospects on how to maximize revenue through engagement.

Guess what? When your sales and marketing teams are aligned, you have the absolute best chance at maximizing revenue. Click To Tweet

This is why I choose to invest the time in visually mapping out their sales and marketing flow on their behalf. Again, I then get buy-in from both departments and we all move forward. It adds significant value 100% of the time, without exception.

Here’s a sample flow I put together for the purpose of this post. This example would be for a B2B software company.

Of course, I could get more detailed and granular, but I think this is a nice representation of what this type of exercise should result in.

Have you done this for your company? If not, why haven’t you? Do you face similar challenges when it comes to attempting to align the sales & marketing teams? Let’s keep the conversation going in the comments.

The post Why You Need a Sales & Marketing Process Flow to Achieve Alignment appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

from Marketo Marketing Blog https://blog.marketo.com/2018/03/need-sales-marketing-process-flow-achieve-alignment.html