Let’s explore the mad, mad, MAD future of local search, and certain breakthroughs in the epidemic of local search.

• Local search is about “ready to buy” intent and online to offline purchase behavior.
• The internet has escaped its desktop prison.
• More complex path to purchase.
• Increasing visibility re offline consumer actions (location analytics).
• Increasing sophistication of technology (search -> assistant).
• Blurring of offline and online worlds (for consumers and producers).

“All mobile queries are potentially local.”
~ Chandu Thota, Google Director of Engineering

Most search queries that carry buying intent are ultimately local because they will likely be fulfilled in a store, dealership or by an offline service provider. Ultimately, people are not going to buy a car or fridge online.

Google may be more inclined to treat the same query as local.

The Purchase Path

• Via an app – 19.6%
• On mobile web – 52.8%
• Via desktop/laptop – 48.3%

Awareness | Interest | Decision | Action

Mobile is KING

More than 50% of Google’s queries come from mobile devices on a global basis.

70% of Yelp searches come from mobile.

New Search Experiences

• Billions of mobile devices/new hardware
• New UI/UX experiences
• Improved voice recognition and NLP
• Machine learning/AI
• Metaphor of the virtual assistant replacing search

Using Voice Search By Age

• 71% of 18-29
• 59% of 30-43
• 39% of 44-53
• 38% of 54+

“The assistant is conversational – an ongoing two-way dialogue between you and Google that understands your world and helps you get things done. It makes it easy to buy movie tickets on the go, to find that perfect restaurant for your family to grab a quick bite before the movie starts, and then help you navigate to the theater. It’s a Google for you, by you.” – Google, May 2016

Marketer Challenges

Buyers are harder to reach, and figuring out how to bridge the gap between so many tools and dashboards. The top 5 challenges for large businesses today are the following.

1. 52% – Identifying and engaging our most valuable customers
2. 51% – Differentiating brand and experiences against competitors
3. 39% – Implementing strategies that help drive traffic to stores
4. 37% – Exceeding direct competitors and online pure-plays from a sales perspective
5. 36% – Keeping up with customer demands for more seamless brand experiences

People want more functionality, so they don’t need to use so many apps. Mobile consumers want to complete tasks. Users want personalization and relevance. Location is very forward but beware of being too personal.

84% of consumers think advertising interruptions while watching digital content are too frequent.
92% of consumers get frustrated with interruptions in videos because of poor internet connection.
63.2% never want to get notifications from brands.

Millennials are blocking ads!

Small Business Issues

• Average number of media types/channels used by SMBs to market: 7.8 in 2016.
• It’s strategic, competitors are doing it.
• Most small businesses do it themselves.
• Measure ROI – 74% not using tools to measure ROI.
• Trust issues – only 1 in 5 of small businesses (18%) trust their employees.

New Kinds of SEO

• LBO – location base optimization
• Audience targeting and validation
• Offline to online retargeting – figure out your marketing opportunities

Challenges/Opportunities

• Meeting consumer expectations (existential issue)
• Embracing predictive and conversational search
• Making search more “transactional”
• Optimizing and distributing content across the ecosystem to multiple consumer touchpoints
• Not alienating customers with bad ads/marketing

The most important thing to remember, though, is to put the customer at the center of the whole process. Most organizations don’t really care about their customers, and it’s all about being customer-centered. Offer your consumers helpful information, and be genuinely concerned and interested in them.

Exploring the mad, mad, MAD future of #LocalSearch w/@GSterling #RocksDigital 2016 – Live Blog
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Speaker Information:

Click for PDF of slides.
@LocalSearchSSN
@GSterling
Greg@theLSA.org
TheLSA.org
415.886.7276

The post The Mad, Mad, Mad Future of Local Search with Greg Sterling – Rocks Digital 2016 Live Blog appeared first on Rocks Digital.

Consider moving to a not .com for Your Website

Keywords and semantic meaning

Ability to precisely match key terms to a domain name, for products, services, and corporate identity

No loss of Google and search engine love

Lack of available domains

Google Adwords Case Study

• Keywords the same for all ads
• Bids the same (1.00 per click bid)
• Same landing page, same content
• Only difference was the domain named used:
• 3caratdiamonds.com
• 3carat.diamonds

Results for .DIAMONDS

$.77
35% conversion rate

New TLD Stats – ntldstats.com/tld – All the TLD options (800+)

Check Calzone.org for when new domain endings will come out

.CHURCH
.DENTIST
.PLUMBING
.CLUB
.REALTOR
.PHOTOGRAPHY
.FEEDBACK / .REVIEWS
.LAWYER
.ATTORNEY, and more!

Consider moving to a Not .com. Tks @bhartzer #RocksDigital 2016 #Website #SEO
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Things to Know

• Don’t take moving to another domain lightly
• Problems can be avoided with proper planning
• Moving to a new gTLD can be done successfully
• Notify Google you’ve moved to a new domain name thru Google Search Console

Senior VP – Agency Services, Advice Interactive
bhartzer@adviceinteractive.com
214-236-4378

The post Moving to Not .COMs with Bill Hartzer – Rocks Digital Live Blog appeared first on Rocks Digital.

Eric Enge is the founder of CEO of Stone Temple Consulting. He’s a prominent SEO and digital marketing leader, and the author of The Art of SEO, as well as a professional speaker.

Uprising in Mobile:

1. Mobile Searches > Desktop Search
2. Voice Search Will Become Primary Interface
3. More Time Spent in Smartphone Apps
4. Facebook Rising
5. Demand for Speed is Greater than Ever
6. Featured Snippets

Mobile –

• Mobile As a Ranking Factor: Mobile first means when designing a website, make the mobile version first. Mobile became a ranking factor in April of 2015. Non-mobile friendly pages had a 46.6% loss on the first update, and 36.3% loss on the 2nd update (May 2016). Google wants to keep us on the mobile web rather than on apps.
• The Need for Speed: Since Google has announced their next mobile update, page speed will be a large ranking factor. Facebook Instant Articles have an increased organic reach when compared to traditional posts. On FIA, Facebook can sell ads for you, with a 30% cut, but you make more since Facebook does a better job. Facebook rules news sites, and is the #1 way people get news.
• Limited HTML/JS Elements Allowed: What Google is doing is giving you HTML as it was 10 years ago and simplifying code to make it smaller, simpler, and faster using AMP. With AMP, there is a 71% reduction in page size, so it’s a lot faster. Anybody participating in the AMP program can cache pages in your own cache network, which can almost double the speed. Faster pages really are a big deal, and the demand will increase. And, if you don’t do it, your competitor will.

Apps –

• 44% of all digital media time is in a smartphone app. That’s an awful lot of time, so you need to have an app strategy. The number one installed app is Facebook, and 48% of those people consider it the most important app they have.
• Should you build your own app? You can gain a captive audience and push messaging ability, but, does it make sense for your business?
• App Store Optimization: Tweak your app store ranks to increase downloads and installs. 60% of people discover apps through the app store. Manage the direct factors you can set up like Titles and Keywords, and manage other areas of influence, like the Icon, Screen Shots, Category
• Test and Refine your app – There is no such thing as putting up a perfect app store listing the first time.
• When you get a featured snippet, it doubles the traffic on your page. Try submitting your post in Google Search Console.

What content marketing works?

• Opinion Forming Journalism works – data-driven research gives you credibility when you tell it in an authoritative way. Be remarkable – be worth remarking on. Stand out somehow, be the purple cow that others can see.
• Explore vertical opportunities – leverage a mega-brand and partner with them, invest specifically in one channel, find a way to be unique, work hard (focus, do something that others won’t, leverage date, put in the hours).
• Be an expert, add value, help people with their problems, solve group problems. What do you know that your consumer doesn’t?
• Publish content on 3rd party sites. Guest posts help you build your audience.
• Social media sharing drives links. Use the right content.

To summarize:

1. Get Mobile First/Embrace Mobile
2. Facebook Instant Articles/AMP
3. Apps (ASO/Deep Linking/Facebook Marketing)
4. Featured Snippets
5. Opinion Forming Journalism/Data Driven Research
6. Influencer Targeted Content and Holistic Marketing

stonetemple.com

eenge@stonetemple.com

@StoneTemple

508-962-8474

Opportunism and Being Holistic: Win in #DigitalMarketing with @StoneTemple – #RocksDigital 2016 Live Blog
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Let’s get geeking! We have Robin Moss, John Nosal, and Jeff Whitfield on today’s Geek Chat with A.J. Wood as the moderator. These 3 techies are super talented and had a lot of knowledge to share. First of all, let’s do a quick introduction for each of them.

• Robin Moss is the founder of Ribit, a digital marketing agency. She’s been building websites, and dealing with search, social media, graphic design, mobile, and everything in between since 1994.
• John Nosal is the director of web development for Advice Local. He is a WordPress enthusiast (YAY!), and built his first website in 1995 with AOL.
• Jeff Whitfield is “saving the world from bad web design” as TheJeffWhitfield. He calls himself a web architect, and he holds a local group called Refresh Dallas.

Give us your ideas and feedback as far as Platform VS. Mobile VS. App, and thinking about your community?

John: It’s interesting watching that whole transition. Everyone wanted to develop an app, and it’s doing a huge circle, and everyone now wants to build a strong, mobile friendly site. It’s a really unique transition how it’s going through the transition of mobile app to website. Also, everyone is getting on the rewards program band-wagon.

Robin: It takes a lot of code knowledge to develop these things and it depends on who you are and what you are doing. Spending thousands of dollars on an app that works everywhere depends on who you are. It makes more sense to spend the little bit of money to build a website than to spend it on many apps, if that’s what works for you.

Jeff: There is a User-Experience perspective to these types of things. People are building apps, but you have to really know your audience and ask yourself if it makes sense. When we design websites, sometimes you think you can download a template and that’s it, but it takes a lot of time and energy to design these things right. The context can change, and we have to build around those problems.

Even UBER took it upon themselves to do a better desktop experience and Adobe has made a desktop user experience because some people aren’t on mobile. It is important to decide whether you’re going to do app, website, or platform. You have to look at your audience.

Jeff: I think having access inside of a desktop web page to a QR code or coupon is huge, because that means that if someone doesn”t want to have it on app they can have the alternative option on desktop.

John: Instagram and Pinterest started out as exclusively apps, and it stopped me essentially from using it because I didn’t want to have to use only my phone for it. But, eventually, they bettered the experience.

Robin: Certain things show on the desktop and certain things show on mobile. That can sometimes be a problem.

A Responsive website design VS. Adaptive?
John: Taking it one step further, if you’re on more than one location, the landing page on mobile can be your address and phone number because that is why they are going to your website. So if you have the landing page as the address, and then it goes to your main website, it would still be responsive.

Jeff: It always starts with understanding who your audience is and if your audience is going to be more desktop or mobile users. Even if it’s responsive, it’s not gonna solve all your problems. Responsive means it can go from one screen to another and respond, and adaptive means that you can change and adapt it to fit in that context, so there are some differences.

Duplicate content with A/B split testing. How can you do duplicate content with A/B split testing on ads without being penalized?
John: A/B testing is a very complex thing to do. I reuse landing pages and set up a 301 redirect several fake links to the same landing page, and then track how many people used those fake links. Google doesn’t penalize these things because they know it’s a link screen.

Robin: While you have the same information, part of it is that you’re saying it differently. Google notes that it’s said differently and organized differently.

Jeff: Something you can do is add a URL screen and put it as part of the ad so you can have the same ad but feeding it different info to determine where it came from.

Do you see websites changing with e-commerce and the rise of social media?
Robin: The demise of websites is premature, just like the demise of email. You can’t ignore shopping on Facebook or Amazon, or using other platforms. You can’t ignore Snapchat, Instagram, and even websites.

Jeff: It’s a matter of context and using the right thing because it makes sense for your business. There are many restaurants who don’t have websites, and that doesn’t affect them at all. If it makes sense for your business, do it. If it doesn’t, and it won’t kill your business, don’t do it.

John: Watch, try stuff, see where it’s going! It’s going to be really interesting to see what’s happening with Smart Watches, and everyone is using them. Next year we’ll probably have a track on using them to communicate our message.

It was really powerful when Robin was talking about the cost of a website:

“I have people who come and ask ‘How much does a website cost?’ and I ask, ‘What does a home cost?’ It really depends on what you want. What are your goals and objectives?  And what do you want to do with your website?”

Focus on your goals and your dreams with web and social, and you’ll go far!

Geek Chat Live Blog from #RocksDigital 2016!
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Amy Kinnaird, public speaker and founder of Uncommon Sense Marketing, presented us with some highly valuable marketing tips to achieve success and get the career you love.

Start with a plan – We write business and marketing plans, but boil it down and refocus. Put a revenue model together, figure out how to get there. Sales is no good without marketing.

Put together a Marketing calendar. Decide what you want to do that is marketing related (holidays, speaking, etc.)

What works for one business doesn’t always work for another business @AmyKinnaird
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1.  Spend 15 minutes a week on LinkedIn building your connections. You have to be a connector and build relationships. Be known for helping people get what they want, and others will help you get what you want.
2.  People know you do something, but not exactly what you do. Do a “Warm Letter,” write a letter to companies, individuals, saying what you do, what clients you’re looking for, and offer a phone call. Whenever something in your business changes, people want to help you, but they need to know how they can help.
3.  Know everything about your competition and how you stand out. Even though we always have a roller coaster journey with business, have something that is always consistent.
4.  Consider redoing your website. Refresh it and add to it constantly. Re-brand if necessary.
5.  Be awesome at what you do.
6.  Get testimonials on your website, or a recommendation on LinkedIn.
7.  Follow-up.
8.  Optimize your high resolution images and large files.
9.  Video testimonials. Gather them as soon as clients start working with you and loving your services.
10.  Write a book. It’s a great marketing tool.
11.  Be a guest on someone’s podcast or radio show, or start your own. Give the illusion of being everywhere, and use different mediums to get seen in different forms.
12.  Write articles for local magazines or trade journals. Re-purpose other articles you have.
13.  Write better headlines for your newsletters, blog posts, etc. Use coschedule.com/Headline-Analyzer. Take the original name, and change it 25 times.
14.  Have a call to action on your voice message, email, on everything.
15.  Curate other peoples’ content.
16.  Pick up the phone. Call people without an agenda, and build a relationship.
17.  USPS Every-Door Direct – Get bulk mailing rates without having to be a large company.
18.  Have a sale or a party for your best clients.
19.  Accountability partners. Get a partner to hold you accountable and help you when you
20.  Birthday cards, holiday (Thanksgiving, Christmas, off holidays like Groundhog Day, etc.) cards, thank you cards, even to people who don’t buy from you.
21.  Get a branded name tag.
22.  Local networking. Go to events, network, look for people who are near you who need you. You can keep a business with the people.
23.  Do marketing every single day – 30 minutes to an hour a day.

@AmyKinnaird

318-795-0520

#Marketing Tips to Achieve #Success at #RocksDigital 2016 – Live Blog
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How to Turn Marketing into Sales

Judy Hoberman, author of Selling in A Skirt – The Secrets Women Don’t Know They Know About Sales (And What Men Should Know, Too), her company, Selling in A Skirt, helps women become successful in business and the gender differences in sales.

Women want to be treated equally, not identically @SellingInASkirt
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Five Steps to Accomplishing Your Goals:

Visualize It: Seeing a goal is more powerful than simply setting a mental image. Post photos, quotes, and stories to keep you inspired.

Inform Others: Share your goals with friends and family. It helps you hold yourself accountable and overcome potential setbacks.

Put it on the Calendar: Put a date and your goal on the calendar.

Sales and Marketing are different activities.

Marketing includes:

• Consumer research
• Product Development
• Advertising

Sales Includes:

• “JUST” Converting prospects into paying customers

Marketing Funnel:

• Live Leads
• Active Leads
• Sales Ready Leads

Sales Funnel:

• Sales Ready Leads
• Opportunity
• Sales

Marketing + Sales = Success

For optimal results, both need to work together. You need marketing in sales and sales in marketing. If you don’t do any marketing, no one is going to show up.

Why do people not like to sell? Why do you not like to sell?

Everybody is a sales person. You’re selling the idea of a project, dinner to your family, opportunities to do better.

Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, Refer.

If you really want to build a relationship with someone, ask them questions. When you ask prospects questions, they feel as if you are actually interested in them.

For Men, asking questions means:

• Gathering Information
• Facts & Figures

For Women, this means:

• Building Relationships
• The Entire Story

“He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.” – Chinese Proverb

5 Types of Questions:

• Close Ended questions – Gathering information (Who, What, Where, How).
• Open Ended questions – Asking the WHY.
• Clarifying – Make sure you really know what they’re saying.
• Leading – Repeat what they said in different words.

Sales is nothing more than relationship marketing – If you don’t have a relationship with someone, they are more likely to trust someone they Know, Like, and Trust.

Find Customers!

Do you know your target? It cannot be everyone. Concerns, solutions, etc. A niche market is a group of people with specific needs or interests. When you identify your niche market, your sales will soar, because you become the expert in your field, and everyone will gravitate towards you.

• A smaller group has very specific and unique needs and wants.
• You will get more referrals.
• You can find business allies.
• You will be laser focused on your target.
• You are seen as the expert in your field

How is already in your space that complements you and you are not competing against? Strategic partners can work with you.

Listen to what your customers really want instead of trying to figure out what they want. Listen with the intent to listen, and not the intent to speak. Actively listen. Be present where you are.

TRUST is the number one rule in sales. It’s what relationships depend upon. Trust is not something you can buy, you have to earn it. Once you have a network of people who trust you, the possibilities are endless.

If you don’t follow up, no one will do business with you.

• 48% of sales people never follow up.
• 25% of sales people make a second contact and stop.
• 12% of sales people only make three contacts and stop.
• Only 10% of sales people make more than three contacts.
• 2% of sales are made on the first contact.
• 3% of sales are made on the second contact.
• 5% of sales are made on the third contact.
• 10% of sales are made on the fourth contact.
• 80%of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact.

As we go on through our journey,

• we all have dreams
• we all have goals
• we all have challenges

In 24 months, I am ….

In 12 months, I am ….

In 6 months, I am ….

Describe it in detail, so that if someone else read these statements, they could almost see it, feel, smell, touch, etc.

• Priorities – Until you know your priorities, you will not know the difference between opportunity and distraction.
• Leverage – Not only on Social Media, but off of it, as well.
• Access – When you show up, you get access.
• Network – Have the right people in your circle of connection.
• Service – When you serve others, magic can happen.

Contact Judy:
sellingaskirt.com
judy@sellinginaskirt.com
203.605.3635

#Marketing Gets You Known, #Sales Gets You Paid! Live Blog from #RocksDigital 2016
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