Live Blogs - Rocks Digital 2017 Archives – Rocks Digital https://www.rocksdigital.com/category/rocks-digital-2017-news/live-blogs-rocks-digital-2017/ We ROCK Digital Marketing Mon, 23 Oct 2023 17:50:51 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.rocksdigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Fav-icon-150x150.png Live Blogs - Rocks Digital 2017 Archives – Rocks Digital https://www.rocksdigital.com/category/rocks-digital-2017-news/live-blogs-rocks-digital-2017/ 32 32 And That’s a Wrap: Live Bloggers Last Word from Rocks Digital 2017 https://www.rocksdigital.com/rocks-digital-2017-last-word/ Wed, 19 Jul 2017 14:20:19 +0000 https://www.rocksdigital.com/?p=14929 Another Rocks Digital Marketing Conference is now in the record books and as usual, I learned so many new things that will help me be even better able to serve my clients. I always wish that I could clone myself for the day – then I could attend ALL of the break-out sessions. Each year conference organizers […]

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]]> Rocks Digital Marketing Conference 2017 AttendeesAnother Rocks Digital Marketing Conference is now in the record books and as usual, I learned so many new things that will help me be even better able to serve my clients. I always wish that I could clone myself for the day – then I could attend ALL of the break-out sessions.

Each year conference organizers Lissa Duty and Bernadette Coleman bring together the brightest minds in digital marketing to educate attendees on the latest and greatest in local, social and mobile – and Rocks Digital 2017 certainly continued the tradition!

This Live Blogger’s 5 Takeaways from Rocks Digital 2017

This is year 4 for me to live blog for this annual conference and write the final wrap-up post for you to read. Here are just a few of the highlights from the 27 presentations that attendees enjoyed at this two-day conference.

1. From Digital Mapping to BLE Beacons and More

If you are a business that does work with local clients, there were a number of really good speakers who covered everything from Digital Mapping and Geo-Targeting to BLE Beacons (and I didn’t know Beacons existed until I read Edgar’s live-blog about it)!

So, what’s this live-blogger’s last word this year? Actually I have two words: goals and tools. In his Rocks Talk, Dean Lindsay talked about Big Phat Goals right out of the gate. This theme recurred throughout the conference: The importance of goal-setting and the importance of being able to measure progress.

2. Your Goals? Write Them Down

I’m sure most of us have heard that people who write down their goals achieve them more consistently. Part of that is because writing them out helps you get clear about what you want to accomplish. Another part of it is having something to go back to and measure your success. Katy Katz talked quite a bit about social media goals, metrics and measuring in her session.

3. Understand the Importance of Tools

The way to measure your success? Utilize tools! I know that so many times, small business owners can feel like they can’t get what they need without spending a lot of money. But as Beth Kahlich pointed out in her workshop, one of the key reasons to use Google Analytics is because it’s FREE.

While it can be great to get a pro’s advice, sometimes you can find some interim measures until your business grows to the point of being able to afford to hire a professional. John Nosal talked about a number of digital marketing audit tools, and I’m already putting them to use and gaining some really valuable insights.

4. Start with Free and Go from There

Many tools have a free version, and you can use that to start with. It will help you determine how important it is for you to have the paid, premium features. And often, if you search a bit, you can find a free version of another tool that does something similar, so stay alert for options. Bill Hartzer shares a few tools to check out for on-page and off-page SEO.

And sometimes, even when you pay for a tool you can do so in a budget-conscious fashion. For instance, Joe Youngblood talked about how to dominate on Facebook for less than $100 a month.

5. The Most-Key Takeaway …

So, this live-blogger’s real last word is this, and this is from the heart – you’re missing out if you don’t attend the Rocks Digital Marketing Conference. If you can’t make it live, please be sure to read all the live blogs. While I only mentioned a few in this post, there are a total of 19 you should read. (Here’s the link to access all the Rocks Digital 2017 live blogs!)

This isn’t a matter of self-promotion on my part; I sincerely believe there’s so much to be learned from the speakers that the Rocks Digital Marketing Conference brings together every year because I’ve experienced it! I’m truly honored to be asked to live-blog every year, and am looking forward to live blogging in year 5 (for me) in 2018!

Here’s What a Few Others Shared About Rocks Digital

With 250+ in attendance, I’m not the only one with takeaways! Others have already published about theirs, and here are the links: Atomic DC, Bill Hartzer and Navads.

Live Bloggers Last Word from #RocksDigital 2017 by @LauraDarkstar #DigitalMarketing #SEO #Mobile
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Have you attended Rocks Digital before? Comment below and share some of your takeaways!

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]]> Dan Thies on Essential PPC Strategies for 2017 https://www.rocksdigital.com/ppc-strategies-rocks-digital-2017/ Wed, 19 Jul 2017 14:09:01 +0000 https://www.rocksdigital.com/?p=15087 You’ll easily find Dan Thies in Google search results detailing his credentials in the PPC marketing world. For his workshop at Rocks Digital 2017, Dan focused on Google Adwords. Please take note, many of these same PPC strategies can be used on Bing. The Best PPC Strategies for Your Business Here’s the focus of today’s post: How Adwords […]

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]]> Dan Thies, PPC Strategies for 2017You’ll easily find Dan Thies in Google search results detailing his credentials in the PPC marketing world. For his workshop at Rocks Digital 2017, Dan focused on Google Adwords. Please take note, many of these same PPC strategies can be used on Bing.

The Best PPC Strategies for Your Business

Here’s the focus of today’s post:

  1. How Adwords Actually Works
  2. Keyword Strategy and Budgeting
  3. Local Targeting & Weird Dimensions
  4. Google Shopping Campaigns

Dan says: This is not a beginner show, as it’s AKA “Around the world in 90 minutes,” so let’s go!

How Adwords Actually Works

Well, users put words in the box and search, that’s obvious. Then Google matches those words to bids. But in reality, Google Adwords works somewhat weirder than you might think, particularly for negative keywords. And you have to be exactly right, or Google will not be nice about that.

There is an auction for Google Adwords. Winners are picked via a live Vickrey auction. Note: They are not simply auctioning off clicks – your bid per click is being translated into something else, and this is way more important than you think!

In the search results, ads are shown and the searcher responds. Here are the match types:

  • Exact and Phrase Match
  • Modified Broad Match
  • Broad Match
  • Negative Keywords and Embedded Match

The Adwords auction is for impressions and not clicks. Every impression is auctioned off live. You pay for clicks, but you get impressions (they used to run this off stored data). There’s a downside to this. When you see “low search volume” keywords, that means there’s not enough data to run the auction. And it especially affects local stuff!

Auctioning

Every advertiser’s CPC bid gets translated into an estimated CPM bid. This is a forecast of how much Google is likely to make if they show your ad at the top spot. You must win the bid in order to win that top spot. But wait, it gets weirder after that.

Estimated / Effective CPM

Bid x Quality Score – but it’s not the score that relates to your actual landing page, but the one for the ad itself. To simplify this, think “Bid x CTR” where the maximum CPC bid is set by you.

The Click Through Rate (CTR) is measured or predicted by keyword. Here’s an example: $1.00 x 10% CTR x 1000 = $100.00.

Every advertiser’s bid is different, and every advertiser’s (ad) CTR is different.

The Second Price Vickrey Auction is designed to get every bidder to bid their full maximum value at all times. The winner pays the loser’s price. See these example bids:

  • #1 $20.00 eCPM bid
  • #2 $16.00 eCPM bid
  • #3 $12.00 eCPM bid

#1 wins, and pays equivalent to $16.00 eCPM; #2 pays equivalent to $12.00 eCPM. Translating that into your actual cost per click is the same math in reverse.

$1 CPC x 10% CTR = $100

$1 CPC x 20 % CTR = $200

So, your eCPM Bid is doubled.

Using the data in #1, #2, and #3 above, at the #1 position doubling your CTR will result in twice as many clicks at half the cost per click, because you are bidding for impressions, not clicks. Your total cost doesn’t change. This is almost a fact – increases in CTR are free. You get more traffic at the same cost.

Keyword Strategy and Budgeting

Let’s look at the Google Adwords account structure. A campaign contains ad groups that control geography, ad schedule, bid strategy, distribution and so on… just a bunch of stuff. Today it controls more than it used to.

  • Controls budget (testing vs. working)
  • Ad groups
  • Contains keywords (match type) and ads

Keywords – Don’t Use More Than You Need

Dan’s keyword strategy starts with exact match keywords if you can, but this is not always possible. Local businesses and niche businesses want to use long tail keyword targeting. Whatever you do, be as precise as you can.

Look for auctions with WEAK ads. Look for what you like – and what you don’t like – about these ads, figure out what you can improve or beat, and then work to knock them out of the running. For instance, you wouldn’t charge someone for a mortgage quote, but if people normally did charge for that, you could stand out by making yours for free.

A further example: The word nursing means more than one thing, so “nursing apparel” can get you various types of results depending on whether you mean the medical profession, or nursing a baby.

With Adwords, you can take the re-marketing words, and target the people that have been to your website. In the case of Dan selling gluten-free grape soda, the CTR went up because he let people know the grape soda was gluten-free!

Single Keyword Ad (SKA) Groups

Dan has been teaching this since 2003, but now it’s “a new thing.” Every keyword in an ad group is going to use the same ads. If you test two ads against 100 keywords, every test will hurt some and help others.

SKAs are essential at high volume, but semi-useless at very low volume. For Black Friday, we will split out the campaigns due to the volume.

Pick Some Priorities and Go

If your budget doesn’t cover 100 clicks a month at the market price, well, that’s not enough budget. (Dan is not saying don’t run it, but that’s really not enough budget to do a satisfactory campaign.)

The more clicks you can buy, the faster you can complete ad tests. And the faster you complete ad tests, the faster you get to the top spot with the lowest CPC.

You can’t test faster than 7 days. Since there are some ads that run better on some days than other days, you need to compare an ad running on all 7 days of the week. Plus, some ads are good to run for 2 days, others better to run for 4, and so on.

Example: The same ad on one day IS NOT NECESSARILY the same ad on another day. For instance, the ad on Wednesday may not be the top ad to run on a Friday!

It is best to pay the maximum you can to break even because you will end up not paying that much.

NBA tickets is a VERY competitive auction and the competition really knows their stuff. Sometimes you can’t beat the top spot, so you have to see what you can do with the next spots. Dan made a distinction – for example, instead of people picking up tickets at will call, the person could print them out online.

It’s best to start a client on shopping ads because that’s a very easy place to start and be successful.

Figure out the conversion rate from a product page. Do shopping first, because the results will tell you if you want to run a search ad. Know the results of conversions if someone goes to a shopping page. This will help you get the numbers you need to convince your clients on running the campaigns.

Start with Google’s bids, then do the math again with the actual CPCs. You can also start with half of what Google tells you and still be competitive.

PPC Ad Testing Tips

  • Use the SEGMENT menu in Adwords for day of week, hour of day, (keyword).
  • Does your “winner” win all seven days?
  • 95% confidence means… done?
  • Mine your historical data – if it exists.
  • And ALWAYS test with equal rotation.

If you have a good control ad, make copies to give fewer impressions to new (test) variations.

Look at add to cart and buy now. On Monday, buy now may lead greatly, but then at the end of the week, they became even.

What’s the reason? Well, on Monday when anyone is buying something online they want to go ahead and get it done. By the weekend, the consumer has more time to literally take their time. But in Dan’s ad tests, they also noticed that on the weekend, a number of items in the cart were higher.

Here’s another example. In Seattle, if the weather forecast was 3 days clear, the bids shot up for a carpet cleaning business. However, the client wanted the phone to ring on the rainy days. Since Dan did not think he could do that, the client’s money was returned, and the campaigns were ended.

Google has so many bad defaults, you should always test with equal ad rotation for this very reason.

You can make as many copies of your control as you like. That way, you can run several control copy ads against your test ad.

Let’s Check Your Settings

What you can do with the organic listing is not the same as you can do with the paid listing. That’s why you may want to still consider bidding on your brand name – even if your brand name is # 1 in the organic listings.

In the Adwords menu, there’s an option for campaign type. Turn on All Features (all the features and options available for search). Note that this is not a default and has to be chosen.

In the case of networks, if you choose network partners, make sure it’s a conscious decision. That can work if you’re trying to get leads for cheap.

Mobile Devices

They aren’t forcing you to bid for mobile traffic, they’re forcing you to bid on desktop/tablet traffic! This could be a problem if your market is VERY likely to use a mobile phone to look up a keyword. For instance, no one pulls out their laptop to find a tow truck company when they really need one.

Locations/Geographic Performance

Google is self-serving in their favor, which is bad for you, but you can run quick reports to learn where your users are.

Lie # 1: Location Settings

DO NOT CHOOSE “People in, searching for, or viewing pages about my targeted location” – and this is a recommended setting with Google AdWords, so pay attention. Instead, choose “People in my targeted location.”

Bid Strategy

Settings to use: Focus on clicks (Dan will manually set his bids for clicks).

Settings to consider: Enable Enhanced CPC. Focus on conversions (Conversion Optimizer).

Delivery Method: Choose Accelerated. Do not optimize delivery of ads, because you’ll go through your spending budget more quickly.

Note: If you’re running on a limited budget, you may have to use Standard delivery.

Lie # 2: Ad Rotation

DO NOT USE “Optimize for clicks.” Choose “Rotate Indefinitely.”

Truth be told, you should do some ad tests to know which one would be better, but rotate indefinitely is the best way to go.

Hour and Day Report (24×7 = 168)

Example: If conversions are 487, then 487/168 would mean your average = 3 per hour. It’s worth a periodic look once you get some numbers piled up.

Shopping Campaigns – How They Work

With Google shopping campaigns you have better control of the keywords than you do in search ads due to low search volume. Here’s how shopping campaigns work in brief:

  • Online retailers and some local retailers provide a data feed to Google Merchant Center.
  • The Merchant Center connects to Adwords.
  • You set up ad groups and campaigns in Adwords.
  • Google shows ads on queries with shopping intent (they’re very aggressive about that).

Once you get how this works, you will NEVER go back.

One Big Catch-All

Using one bid for EVERY product or service is not an optimal way to do things!

Shopping – Level 2

This is working with ad groups and product groups. Splitting that one campaign up into a bunch of campaigns doesn’t help. And yes, some queries are more valuable than others.

Example: engraved, engravable, personalized, for sale – these terms would let you know the person is DEFINITELY looking to buy a watch. Also, people looking for a specific brand name is a buying trigger.

Shopping – Level 3

Let’s break this into high vs. medium priority:

High Priority

  • Reduce bids
  • Negative keywords

Medium Priority

  • Increase bids
  • Global negatives

What’s the net effect here? The budget shifts to higher value search queries and more ROI. You can now use keyword lists to structure things in all sorts of ways.

Robots that do bids don’t shift their bidding structure, which means you can beat the robots with this strategy.

Take the High ROI, Leave the Junk

For “Big Brand” robot bidding systems, what you just did will LOWER their ROI and cause them to drop bids.

On Black Friday, Dan did really well against the big brands for snowboards, but it didn’t happen in the first few hours of the day. For any keywords that were specific Dan bid high enough to own the keyword, which caused the robots to lower their bids. Once that happened, then only Dan’s client’s ads were at the top! After that happens you can change the bid, and it is all about controlling the bids. You bid high to get rid of the competition and once they are gone, you can lower your bid.

Check out this primer for #PPC Strategies according to @danthies of @mrktrbraintrust #RocksDigital
Click To Tweet

What tips can you share about your PPC strategy?

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]]> Rocking Tweets from Rocks Digital 2017 https://www.rocksdigital.com/rocking-tweets-from-rocks-digital-2017/ Tue, 18 Jul 2017 15:45:10 +0000 https://www.rocksdigital.com/?p=14999 You can’t have a digital marketing conference without social media. And we can’t wrap up the conference without highlighting some of the fun tweets that went out. Here’s a few of the tweets that tell the story of fun and learning at #Rocks Digital 2017! Tweets Highlighting Rocks Digital 2017 Hey, @LissaDuty! We’re ready to #RocksDigital! pic.twitter.com/KvT68evS09 — Cam […]

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]]> You can’t have a digital marketing conference without social media. And we can’t wrap up the conference without highlighting some of the fun tweets that went out. Here’s a few of the tweets that tell the story of fun and learning at #Rocks Digital 2017!

Tweets Highlighting Rocks Digital 2017

One of the first tweets kicking off the 2017 conference naturally had to include a photo of me asking attendees my favorite question – Are you ready to ROCK digital?!

Our live tweeters were in the house and ready to bring the highlights to the web!

Even our speakers were tweeting about what they are learning from other speakers. Now that is quite the conference.


One of the keynote speakers, Lex ten Veen, brought a game and a prize to the conference! Sorry Cam that you didn’t win. I did – and he brought me a package of the treats too.

Throwing down the “I’m going to ROCK” gauntlet!


Dean Lindsay challenges you to meet your clients’ needs!

We really do know how to pack a house!


One of our Rocks Talk speakers reveals a secret about himself!


Does this fact surprise you?


Dave Carberry brought some humor to his talk with this slide on mobile.

Did you interview with SyncLab while at Rocks Digital? Follow their series Digital Marketing today for some takeaways from Rocks Digital expert speakers. Subscribe to this YouTube playlist to get notified.


Storytelling comes in all forms!


Lance Bachmann’s session on mobile got attendees ready to create an app!


While we heat things up, we manage to keep all you cool people cool!


Casey Markee presented about beacons, not bacon at #RocksDigital 2017, even though he loves both!


Katy Katz slayed both dragons and social media metrics at Rocks Digital 2017!


Did you know one of our break-out speakers traveled all the way form Pakistan to speak? This is Moosa Hemani and his team!


Attendee replies were crafty this year!


UX really is a big part of web design, and consumers-first is a must!

We gotta give VIP love to long-time attendees and supporter of Rocks Digital, Timothy Honeycutt and the Dallas-Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association.


It seems we really missed some good stuff in this break-out session! Maybe we can talk Karen into writing a blog post for us about it.

Michelle Stinson Ross of the Gruen Agency presented on the SEO Undead and dropped some knowledge bombs about how to do SEO in the future.


Even our emcee Tony Wright had kind things to say about the Rocks Digital 2017 speakers.


Some mobile stats to get you thinking about web design!


We aren’t all business at #RocksDigital! Here’s a pic taken during the networking break.


Here is what the Yelp keynote speaker has to say about soliciting reviews! Do you agree?


Janet says it pretty well with this statement!


The Local Search Day Expert Panel had attendees sitting on the edge of their seats!


Dan Tyre’s keynote was a hit!


It’s always great to know that attendees loved what we did!


Can you really celebrate Local Search Day and Social Media Day without a celebration? Well we couldn’t, so Sir Earl Toon of Kool & the Gang performed live on June 29th at the after-event to end the day!


Day 2 continued the trend as sponsors kicked off the day busy at their tables!


It seems we need to amp up the H3’s on #RocksDigital too.


Attendees learned how to amplify their content from Vertical Measures!


This is one happy cat to be ROCKING at Rocks Digital!


Even the ugliest of websites need SEO help!

J Schuh’s workshop was full of inspiration and creative exercises!


I couldn’t have said this better myself!


Beth mystified attendees while demystifying Google Analytics in her workshop.


I didn’t get to catch this workshop, so reading the live blog is on my to-do list!


We even had a special guest attend with AJ Wood! Thanks for bringing Sydney with you.


This was such an awesome compliment! I love helping others feed search engines and social media E-A-T content!


Everyone loves Joe Youngblood!


While the Digital Marketing Clinic was small in attendance, the one-on-one attention attendees gained was invaluable. Here is just one group that huddled together during this workshop.


We’re looking forward to seeing a follow-up on their results. Maybe they’ll guest blog for us.


Who doesn’t love a GIF? And this one makes me want to hug each of the 31 speakers that ROCKED Rocks Digital 2017.


Even after the conference Advice Local seemed to have attendees stumped by a swag bag insert. BTW… this is a camera cover for cell phones and laptops. It seems that blocking those pesky built-in camera lenses is a new thing for the security conscious.

We ROCKED Social Media

The 2017 Rocks Digital Marketing Conference ROCKED social media this year! We’re so glad you joined us on this journey. You can check out the hashtag stream on Twitter and Facebook for those tweets we didn’t include!

Rocking Tweets from #RocksDigital 2017 according to @LissaDuty #SMDay #LocalSearchDay
Click To Tweet

Did you have a favorite moment at Rocks Digital you would like to share? Please do share along with the #RocksDigital hashtag on your favorite social media account!

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]]> Erik Solan on Crafting A Digital Conversation for Content Amplification https://www.rocksdigital.com/content-amplification-rocks-digital-2017/ Tue, 18 Jul 2017 14:00:26 +0000 https://www.rocksdigital.com/?p=15074 To successfully amplify content you need to start with the end in mind! What’s your goal for the content? Do you want someone to complete a form? Download an eBook? What about schedule a demo? Today we share the highlights from Erik Solan of Vertical Measures in his presentation on content amplification. Note: We highly […]

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]]> Vertical Measures - Content AmplificationTo successfully amplify content you need to start with the end in mind! What’s your goal for the content? Do you want someone to complete a form? Download an eBook? What about schedule a demo?

Today we share the highlights from Erik Solan of Vertical Measures in his presentation on content amplification.

Note: We highly recommend you download the workbook for this presentation at https://bit.ly/rocksdigitaldallas to go along with this live blog.

Content Amplification – Begin with the End in Mind

This concept is very relevant to this strategy. Ask what are you looking to amplify. If you don’t know, determine that.

Question from the floor: Isn’t awareness and traffic a byproduct of conversion?

What is most commonly done – in search for example – is that there are people who ask for your products. When you go higher up the funnel, then there are fewer indicators. People may only be just looking, but could still be a very good match for you. Awareness is putting your product in front of the audience for the first time. After that, your mission is to help them want to get your product.

Here’s an example. Let’s say someone walks up to you, and you tell them “We have 0% APR.” That’s great, but if that person is not looking for a car, then that may not mean anything at all to them.

It’s like having a billboard. For every 1,000 people who buy after seeing your general billboard you pay $20, versus having a specially designed billboard that can read what people are in the car, the number of kids, etc., and then you decide whether or not you want to show your billboard! That would be much more cost-effective.

How to Budget Time and $$$

How much you choose to spend on a marketing campaign is a balance-of-budget issue. Erik pays a premium because there are 45 audiences they can choose from when they run their marketing campaigns, which is useful to the type of marketing campaigns that he runs. Otherwise you don’t have to get that specific, which means you can spend less money on your marketing campaign.

Here’s some info from the presentation worksheet:

AMP Strategy – What is success? Write down your objective and how you can measure it.

Example: I want to increase brand awareness. I will measure social following, brand mentions and social channel referral traffic.

Review the Website Analytics and Answer These Questions

  1. Where is my traffic coming from?
  2. Are these audiences engaging?
  3. Which audiences are converting?

You need to understand how that information looks on those channels to figure out your amplification strategy.

What’s a direct organic referral? The consumer came to the site, and a referral site convinced him or her to come back and convert.

Looking at Content by Channel

When looking at traffic by channel you are looking at behavior by channel. Some clients only look at the end results, but you want to look at how you got that conversion (via email, ad, and so on). It’s important to know where conversions are coming from!

Identify Promotion Gaps

You can see that traffic is coming in, but the conversions are low.

Question from the floor: How long should you go with a strategy before you decide it is not working for you?

Erik usually goes with 90 days. Also, different times of year must be taken into account.

Question from the floor: If your bounce rate is high, what causes that?

Look at how long it takes the page to load. Also, look if your page is relevant. Sometimes the page will have great content and information but will be too cluttered. In that case the person gets frustrated and leaves. The audience looking at your page may be used to a more focused design where getting the information they need is simple and easy.

Question from the floor: Is there a reliable online tool to test your website speed?

Absolutely – Google Developer tools.

And let’s clearly define a “bounce” – that’s when someone comes to a webpage, and they leave without engaging with the page AT ALL, regardless of the amount of time.

Content Types: What’s in the Digital Toolbox?

Infographics. People like them, and they are really great to put out on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Other tools include:

  • Interviews
  • How-to’s
  • Lists
  • Podcasts
  • Step-by-steps
  • Newsletters
  • Case studies

What Do You Have to Work With?

Let’s say you want to promote your best video content, but it’s all at least two years old and a minimum of 5 minutes long. Well, then it’s definitely time for a re-shoot and heavy edits.

What if you need more content to play with? This is a great time to re-purpose your content.

For instance, we just made a huge pitch to Brand X. Here we could re-purpose multiple slides explaining our current capabilities.

If we are participating in a Memorial Day volunteer event, let’s re-purpose our traditional media material into social or email content.

Sponsored Social – Influencer Marketing Lead Nurture

Why amplify on social channels? Exactly because of stats like these:

  • There are 500M tweets per day
  • Every minute there are 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube, believe it!
  • On Facebook, there’s a 2% chance of followers seeing your organic post

In short, there’s a very slim chance of people seeing your content if you don’t choose to get your content in front of your audience.

Sponsored Social – Platforms

These include Facebook, Google, Pinterest, and so on. If you are looking to send your process across numerous channels, objectives will be Awareness, Traffic, and Conversion. Decide which you want to focus on!

With Awareness, you want people to know your post is there.

Traffic aims to get as many people to your post as possible.

And for those who check out your post, with Conversion as a focus you want them to convert.

Audience

1st Party – can re-target the consumer and can look at expanding your audience. Use what you know about existing profiles to understand what to do with that information later.

  • Behavioral
  • Interests

Too little volume will give false positives. But go too big, and you won’t get usable data.

The Importance of Content

You must grab your audience’s attention; be eye-catching! Also be aware that most people are going to see your content on a mobile phone. Be sure to test your video! Many Calls To Action are often eye catching, but they are not always entirely clear on what the ad wants the viewer to do. Be very clear on what you want your audience to do.

Optimize – Engagement, Segment, Test

Are there different concepts or sections that work better? You may have to see what is working for you, and understand what is not working.

Question from the floor: How long do you usually run your paid ads?

It depends on the budget. For the top budgets, we can leave them on for awhile, but if the budget is smaller, we must be more specific with what we want to get the ad-viewer to do. When working with a client we have to figure out things including how long it takes for a client to make a decision. That will influence whether or not they want to run a paid ad. You have to figure out when it makes sense to start, and also when to shut things off.

Know Your Audience

You have to test your content. While 15 seconds may test well with one segment, the 5-minute video might test better with a different segment. Remember this: Be aware and try not to use your own preferences when working to figure out the right audience for your ad.

Sponsored Social – Testing

Multi-Variable Creative

  • Graphics
  • Video length
  • Post headlines & copy
  • CTA buttons
  • Layout

To make it easier to know what is making the difference, only change one variable at a time. Plus, make a very clear call to action.

Landing and Placement

  • Landing Page
  • Custom URL tagging
  • Channel placement
  • Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet

Driving Audience to Your Content

Grab tasty snippets from blog posts and experiment with promotion on Twitter. Build summary cards to improve CTR.

Twittercards / overview

Turn existing instructional content into how-to’s, guides or video tutorials. Promote on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn.

Consider Nationwide Insurance – they have content on their website, but they also have a YouTube channel, and the videos there are shared on various websites.

Sharing Strategies to Drive an Audience to Your Content

  1. Re-target email lists to inform current visitors of new offerings.
  2. Re-target specific landing page contacts to amplify next-step content appropriate for their stage in the funnel.
  3. Target Look-a-Like audiences created from your best performing audience groups to increase impression volume and reach.
  4. Create custom audiences based on browsing habits.

Sponsored Social – Influencer Marketing

Why influencers? With a $6.85 ROI for every $1 invested, influencers are a must. 71% of consumers are more likely to purchase based on social media references, leading to a 37% higher retention rate.

Let’s define an influencer. This is someone who already has a channel, and people are paying attention to them. Influencers are usually not biased, and not paid.

Comment from the floor: Focus on getting influencers that cost less. Don’t go for the influencer that has 10,000 followers, but the ones with 5,000 followers – and see if they will post your content. If you have the budget for it, you could fly those people to events.

To find influencers, utilize content indexing tools to research them, the audience they have, and the content they like to share.

Example sites: BuzzSumo, EpicBeat, SocialAnimal.io, Twitter Search Tool, Pinterest Search Tool.

Become a fan, and start following the influencer(s). It makes contacting them later much easier, and much more personal as well. Look for influencers with a good following that you yourself could follow.

Here’s an example. Let’s look at Jacksfilms (the project of John Patrick “Jack” Douglass). Lynda.com did a collaboration at lynda.com/jack. That landing page says “Welcome, fans of Jack’s Films!”

Tips for Working with Influencers

  • Do your Research – is the influencer a good fit for your brand?
  • Be a Fan – follow, comment, share, engage
  • Build Relationships – use a personal customized approach
  • Set Expectations – compensation, ROI, goals
  • Content Collaboration – let them speak
  • Cultivate – send thank you’s, follow-up metrics, and build future opportunities

Keep in good contact with your influencers so if you need something pushed out quickly, you can easily contact them back.

Why does this work? The reason influencers work is because you’re using the authentic qualities of the influencer. If you try to put the content in your own voice, it is going to show. YouTube celeb Casey Neistat is a good example of this. Samsung will give him money to make videos with a Samsung phone, plus he is given complete creative control.

Lead Nurture

Let’s look at some stats:

  • 23% shorter sales cycle than traditional email blasts
  • 47% larger AOV than non-nurtured leads
  • 50% more leads 33% lower cost per lead (CPL)

While email marketing pushes out information to everyone in a contact list, Lead Nurture personalizes a sequence of emails that are specific to that person, depending upon what they’ve been looking at on your site. There are multiple steps to this, and there are tactics to increase the open rate, and the interaction rate.

Lead Nurture – Process

  • First, know your audience, then segment by interests, segment by activities, and segment by audience details.
  • Content should be specific to the segment, based off the demographics of the audience. It should also be specific to the stage in the funnel; it depends on how often they open an email, or visit the site.
  • Plan to optimize the following: Workflow content, landing page forms, and audience segments.
  • To obtain more information surveys can be done after an event. That way, people who buy the products can become advocates of the product.

Lead Nurture – Segments

What is the status of the customer? Did they open the email, etc. These are examples of things that need to be thought about when working on lead nurture.

Look at Autopilot to engage customers at the right time. It’s a cool tool to use.

Lead Nurture Tip

  • Forms – Be sure to create necessary forms and fields
  • Scores – score your leads and integrate marketing and sales
  • Personalize – segmenting lists allows you to speak directly to audience
  • Expectations – 7: that’s the average number of contacts to get a response

And of course, testing is involved! Test workflow touch points, email content, CTA, and amplified content.

Did you know that leads contacted within 5 minutes of submissions are 21 times more likely to convert? (Source: HubSpot, 2016.)

Channel Selection

In selecting channels, determine what channels present the best opportunities for success.

The User Journey – Awareness

Use awareness to spark interest in your products or services with your highest-engaging audience. Tools to spark awareness include sponsored social programmatic, press releases, and so on.

Again, use influencer marketing on the user journey while measuring impressions and traffic, click through rate (CTR), and engagement metrics.

Content Rate

Use top-of-funnel content. You want to answer common questions, plus emphasize key benefits and comparisons. Build confidence in your audience, create urgency and validation, and deliver promotional benefits.

Your goal is to educate your audience and become a reliable resource that is easy to find.

Use tools such as sponsored social, paid search, lead nurture, and programmatic. Measure click through rate (CTR), engagement metrics and micro conversions.

.sk for share .sk for share

The Decision

Help your audience make a buying decision they are comfortable with. Tools to use include social re-targeting, paid search, programmatic, and lead nurture. To measure this, look at conversion rate, transactions, revenue and of course ROI.

Advocacy

Advocacy assists with marketing efforts and further establishes the brand as a trusted source. All businesses and brands should enlist the customer to advocate for the brand. Advocacy tools include lead nurture, social media measurement – open rate, satisfaction rate, social shares and reviews.

You will want to solicit feedback, so ask for input and yes, ask for shares.

#Content Amplification by @VerticalMeasure #RocksDigital #ContentMarketing
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Don’t forget to download the workbook at the link shared above!

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]]> The Inbound Revolution is Here and Dan Tyre Shares How to Win https://www.rocksdigital.com/inbound-revolution-dan-tyre-shares/ Fri, 14 Jul 2017 15:00:24 +0000 https://www.rocksdigital.com/?p=14687 Traditionally, sales professionals are told to follow the ABC model, but this model is broken. Dan Tyre shares why at the 2017 Rocks Digital Marketing Conference, and today we’re bringing you the highlights from his keynote. Dan knows how to help a business succeed. He has worked with five start-ups since 1983, and he is employee […]

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]]> Dan Tyre, Hubspot, Inbound RevolutionTraditionally, sales professionals are told to follow the ABC model, but this model is broken. Dan Tyre shares why at the 2017 Rocks Digital Marketing Conference, and today we’re bringing you the highlights from his keynote.

Dan knows how to help a business succeed. He has worked with five start-ups since 1983, and he is employee #6 at HubSpot. His motto is “Trying to do the most good for The Universe.” (He actually borrowed that from his son.)

The Inbound Revolution is Here – Are You Ready?

It’s a great time to be a marketer. Historically, marketers have been in the doghouse. You either don’t generate enough leads or you bring in more leads than a business knows what to do with, so either way, marketing ends up in the doghouse.

Let’s Talk Trust

Turns out, as a whole, we haven’t done a great job yet. When we went out and asked people about trust and relationship-building, we found that salespeople and marketers are trusted by 1% and 0% of people, respectively. Ouch!

Honestly, we found that people trust their barista more than a marketer or salesperson. They’re buying a $5 coffee from their barista, but they’re likely purchasing a much higher ticketed item from their marketer or salesperson, yet they trust their barista more. (Interesting note: The most trusted profession in America today? Firefighter.)

The Future is Now

There’s a huge difference over the last 10 years. It’s harder today. There’s much more competition and the future is happening now. Back in the day, starting the company was the hardest part. We had offices, we used to work 9-to-5. Now we look at our phones about 200 times a day.

The key for businesses today: You want to formulate deep relationships. Build up trust. It’s not a transactional relationship anymore.

Outbound is sales-oriented, not personalized. And conversion is about 2%.

Outbound Marketing Strategies

  • Cold calling
  • Cold emails
  • Interruptive ads
  • Seller-centric

Inbound Marketing Strategies

  • Helpful, relevant content
  • SEO
  • Free tools
  • Buyer-centric

There’s more competition now because it’s much less expensive to start a business today. And consumers are less tolerant now and they have less patience. The human race, in general, just has an all-time low supply of patience – which means that the jobs of salespeople and marketers are harder than ever before.

Inbound Methodology – The Best Way to Turn Strangers into Customers

Inbound Marketing Hubspot

Stages of Buying (Decision-Making)

  • Awareness – first learning about the product
  • Consideration – after research and creating a shortlist
  • Decision – after reviewing the shortlist = READY TO BUY

Buyers want to connect with sales during the consideration phase. (Only 2% buy the first time they come to your website.) But at it’s core, inbound is about building relationships with your audience by providing them with value way before they are ready to purchase your products/services.

Still using ABC? Today Use ABH!!

The Always Be Closing marketing/sales model is dead. It has been replaced by Always Be HELPING.

Inbound Sales Methodology

Inbound Sales Methodology – Transforms Selling to Match the Way People Buy

  • Start with your goals
  • Learn the basics
  • Sales is a PROCESS
  • Measure every step
  • Sell to people who want to buy

When we asked buyers what makes an exceptional experience:

  • 69% said just listen to my needs – In other words, hear me out and understand what I’m trying to achieve. It’s inexcusable not to listen in 2017.
  • 61% said share relevant information – In other words, I don’t need to hear about all the things, just the things I’m concerned about.
  • 51% said respond to me in a timely manner – In other words, don’t leave me hanging, let me get to an answer quickly.
  • 49% said provide a range of options for me – In other words, help me understand all the ways I could tackle this challenge in front of me. Don’t decide for me what I need, show me a few options and let me decide.

So really, the Inbound Revolution involves Sales + Marketing = SMARKETING.

Remember, Inbound is not limited to Marketing – it touches all parts of the company, so keep that in mind as you encounter prospective customers.

The Inbound Revolution is #Sales + #Marketing = SMarketing says @dantyre #RocksDigital #Business
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]]> John Nosal Educates on Completing a Digital Marketing Audit https://www.rocksdigital.com/john-nosal-digital-marketing-audit-rocks-digital-2017/ https://www.rocksdigital.com/john-nosal-digital-marketing-audit-rocks-digital-2017/#comments Fri, 14 Jul 2017 14:40:59 +0000 https://www.rocksdigital.com/?p=14585 Giving the first, best impression to consumers and search engines alike is a must to compete in this ever-changing digital world. John Nosal, the CEO of SEO and owner of NosalCentral LLC, walks Rocks Digital workshop attendees through completing a digital marketing audit – and we have the highlights here for you. How to Perform […]

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]]> John Nosal, CEO of SEO on Digital Marketing Audits, Rocks Digital 2017Giving the first, best impression to consumers and search engines alike is a must to compete in this ever-changing digital world. John Nosal, the CEO of SEO and owner of NosalCentral LLC, walks Rocks Digital workshop attendees through completing a digital marketing audit – and we have the highlights here for you.

How to Perform a Digital Marketing Audit

What does a digital marketing audit consist of? Let’s examine the components.

  • First Impressions
  • Analytics
  • Grading the Site
  • Social Media
  • Site Inventory
  • On-page SEO
  • Blogging
  • Search Traffic

You’ve got about 5 seconds to convey what your product or service is, so your site needs to load quickly and you need to say what you do at the top of the site. It really needs to be obvious right away.

  • Is the site mobile-friendly? You need to pay attention to how things look on mobile as well. One of the best ways to do this is to use the Inspect feature in your browser to see what it looks like on mobile. (Right-click on the page and then click “Inspect.”)
  • Cross-browser checking sites are usually OK, but using the inspect feature is more reliable. Inspect is usually a more accurate view of what it really looks like.
  • Pay attention to what’s “above the fold” on your site, and make sure that key information is indeed above the fold. Also, when you look at the site on mobile, look at what is visible first.

Use Helpful SEO Audit Tools

Screaming Frog evaluated the index of a site. It crawls a website’s links, images, CSS, script, and apps to evaluate onsite SEO.

  • Find broken links, audit redirects, and discover duplicated content.
  • Find any errors on the site, and then you can go in and correct them.
  • Pay attention to the names of your images. Use your image alt-text to help your images have SEO value.
  • Your site should absolutely have a meta-description, even though it’s not really “search food.”

SEOquake allows you to conduct on-page SEO audits very quickly. You can examine internal and external links and compare domains and URLs in real-time. SEOquake works with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

Website Grader is a free online tool that grades your site against key metrics like performance, mobile readiness, SEO, and security.

Always Protect Your Brand

  • Is your branding consistent on your site and social media?
  • Are you using the same fonts and colors across platforms?
  • Is there a consistent look and feel across sites?

Fix any inconsistencies you find right away. Remember, the first impression can’t be redone.

Google Search Console will reveal a wealth of information on your site. It will give you an idea of what people were searching for when they found you.

Best-Practice Tip: The content on your website is currently 80% of Google’s algorithm, so post content on your website first, and then repurpose it on social media.

Tips for Performing a #DigitalMarketing Audit by @JNosal #RocksDigital #SEO
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