Black History

Did you know that the open rate for SMS is nearly 98%?

Because SMS can offer such incredible open rates, it can be one of the best ways to reach your target audience. But if you want to use SMS to market your business, you may have doubts about where to begin.

You might be unsure of how to get the phone numbers for your campaigns. You may also worry about the kind of messages you should send people, once you have their phone number.

his post aims to provide you with some clarity on how SMS marketing works. Once you’ve read this post, you’ll be able to comfortably answer the question “What is SMS marketing?”



Let’s begin!

What Is SMS marketing?

SMS marketing is a means of marketing that’s based on you sending text messages to people. SMS (short message service) is just another way to describe a text message, and the two terms are interchangeable.

This method of marketing works well, as people carry phones with them everywhere they go. This then makes it easy for you to reach your target audience, no matter where they are.

Additionally, a text message often demands more attention than an email. This is usually down to the fact that not many other companies are using SMS marketing to contact customers.

It’s also worth noting that the notification for a text message often differs to the notification for an email.

SMS notifications are often more audible and can cause the phone to vibrate, whereas emails might not allow for this to happen. Following this, SMS marketing can produce better levels of engagement. That’s because people will quickly check their phone, upon receiving a promotional text message.

Have you read sales pages that scream, “You don’t need to know SEO! Our software does it all!”

Solving your SEO writing woes with software sounds so easy. You wouldn’t have to worry about keyphrase usage, penning the perfect title length, or structuring links. Just feed in your copy and poof! instant optimization help! In fact, the sales copy for one SEO plug-in even says, “We walk you through every step: no need to hire or be an SEO expert.”

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Here’s the question: do you even need to know SEO if a plug-in can do it all? In other words—can you trust SEO writing tools, or do writers still need to know SEO? Here’s how to think about it.



Machines can’t replace humans (yet!)

SEO tools are extremely helpful and save marketers time. We rely on them every day. But their recommendations are just that: recommendations. The writer (or SEO) makes the final optimization call. Sometimes, it makes sense to follow the recommendations, and sometimes, it doesn’t.

For instance, I’ve received emails from my writing students asking, “The Yoast SEO for WordPress plug-in is telling me to [fill in the blank]. Should I do it even if it doesn’t quite work with the page?” The plug-in was telling them one thing, while their writing experience was telling them another.

Please know that I love and highly recommend Yoast’s SEO for WordPress plug-in and many other SEO experts do too. It’s a nice plug-in that handles a lot of the geeky SEO stuff behind-the-scenes. Plus, it allows you to preview the title and description, check your readability, and more. Heck, I use it on my own site!

But other than a quick check, I don’t follow Yoast’s checklist recommendations as gospel. Why? Sometimes, following the recommendations would mess with the copywriting flow. There may be a reason that I’m not using the focus keyword in the title or that I don’t include the focus keyword in the first paragraph. Or I choose to link a certain way.

I may not follow every recommendation, but I know the page’s SEO strategy is still sound.

At the end of the day, good SEO writing connects with the reader and converts. It’s not because it ticks off various “here’s how to optimize everything perfectly” boxes. Even Yoast admits it’s “nearly impossible” to get a “green bullet” for every checklist item.

Plus, some tools still use keyword density as a scoring item. This means writers are still matching the keyphrase exactly multiple times in order to satisfy a mythical keyword density. They don’t know any better. They’re just doing what the tool tells them to do.

Considering more than  90% of online purchases start with a search engine, and nearly 60% of B2B marketers say organic search generates more leads than any other marketing tactics, your number one digital marketing goal should be getting your site onto the front page of search engines.

7 tips for hiring an SEO consultant people should be able to find your blog or website with just a few clicks. Search engine optimization (SEO) practices have changed significantly over the years, but remain at the core of digital strategy.

Between Google’s history of algorithm updates and increased competition, running an SEO campaign by yourself can be harder than you think. That’s why many people seek the help of an SEO expert. But finding an SEO specialist with the right mix of writing ability, technical skill, and industry knowledge to get your website on the front page may not be easy.



You have to make sure you are on the same page (so to speak) and share the same view. Marketing agencies bring a diverse mix of talent, though they can end up charging a small fortune. If you run or manage marketing for a small to midisized business, an SEO freelancer might be the best answer for you.

But with the abundance of freelancers on the market, how can you make sure you find the right fit? Here are seven tips that can help you make the right decision.

Be Specific with Your Requests and Deadlines

Before beginning your search for the perfect SEO match, get as specific as possible about what you are looking for. Coming up with a description for your project will help the freelancer build a proposal for discussion.

Most freelance websites that connect employers with specialists allow you to put together a description of the project and let freelancers submit proposals you can choose from. A description should give information about your business, expectations, and deadline. Drawing up a clear description of your request will ease the communication between you and the freelancer and help you find the best match.

Get to Know the Person You Will Be Working With

Working with a person you just met online can be frightening, especially in today’s world. Giving access to your website can expose you to all sorts of issues. The online world sadly includes scams and frauds as well as legitimate service providers.

A reputable SEO expert should be able to answer your questions in a simple, straightforward manner. If you have any suspicions, you can conduct a background check to find more about the person, before sealing the deal. Some red flags might include asking for payment before the work is completed, not delivering original content or— if you contracted them through a platform—asking for money offsite.

Ask for References from Past Clients

An experienced SEO specialist should have no problem giving you a short list of clients they’ve worked with. Do a Google search on those clients, with specific keywords, and see if they show up on the first page. Don’t hesitate to contact them and ask for a reference.

Want more leads? Maybe… but probably what you really want is better leads. It’s 2019, after all – B2B marketers have evolved past “lead gen 101”. They need leads that contribute to pipeline. Leads that become closed deals and real revenue.

Plenty of research backs this up. But here’s just one example: 58% of marketers said their top priority was lead quality.

Only 46% said it was lead quantity.

Getting higher-quality leads is a great goal, but it means you have to think more strategically about your ppc lead generation advertising. You have to think beyond the first click – way beyond it. So while many of the tools we’ve listed here are expressly for ppc, a couple are for optimizing what happens after the click.



Some of these ppc tools may be brand new to you, some will be familiar. Some you may already use. We’ve also included a handful of tools that aren’t primarily known as pay per click tools – but if you know how to use them, they can really help B2B lead generation campaigns.

PPC Lead Generation Competitive Analysis Tools

SpyFu.

SpyFu can show you detailed information about your competitors’ SEO and pay per click campaigns, including keywords, estimated spend, estimated traffic, and even the ads they’ve run. It will give you suggestions for negative keywords, tell you who their top organic and paid competitors are, and more. SpyFu’s new tool, Nacho Analytics, even promises to basically show you your competitors’ analytics reports.



Ahrefs is another tool that has similar functionality to SpyFu. They’re primarily known for SEO, but because SEO and PPC are so complementary, you could easily find ways to optimize your ppc accounts with this tool. Same goes for Moz, which is also a terrific SEO analysis tool.

SEMRush.

SEMRush is another competitive analysis tool that can be used for both SEO and PPC. It can help you:

analyze your ppc strategy and your competitors’ strategies
organize your keywords into ad groups more effectively
find negative keywords (more on that below)
research your competitors’ keywords and ads

Great SEO can get sites to the top of organic search rankings, provide valuable traffic from long-tail or high-traffic keywords and play a crucial role in driving growth to your company. However, there is one pitfall to all the hard work that goes into ranking at the top organically. That pitfall is paid search. With pretty minimal effort and investment, competitors can start driving traffic from the same keywords you spent months attempting to rank for. That’s why the best digital marketers supplement SEO tactics with targeted PPC to yield top results.

How to make SEO and PPC efforts work together it's always important to remember that no matter how good your rankings, the top 2 or 3 or even 4 results are likely to be search or shopping ads. They will inevitably cut into the click-through rates of top-ranking pages.



SEO and PPC Work Best Together — Here’s Why

SEO strategies are often thought of as long-term and sustainable approaches to digital marketing. Fast advancements in rankings and increases in traffic are hard to come by. Strategies take months and often years of commitment in order to yield results. PPC management efforts, in contrast, can yield results almost immediately—but are costly in the long term. Balancing both long-term and short-term strategies is ideal.

Stopping the Competition:

No matter your ranking, it is likely that paid ads appear above your organic results. If you want to fully capitalize on search results, it is a good idea to supplement keywords of value with targeted PPC ads.

In addition, some companies love to implement “conquest” campaigns in which you pay for keywords that include your competitor’s brand in them. These can be costly, but potentially quite effective. Thankfully, protecting your own brand with PPC is relatively inexpensive, but then again, you’re spending extra money on something you probably rank for.

Actionable Tip: If you’re on a tight budget, or you have a client concerned with branded campaigns, drop the maximum cost-per-click significantly lower. AdWords likely won’t tell you how low you can go, and will suggest much higher, but because this is your brand and there is likely a much higher relevance to your ads and landing pages, you can significantly reduce costs without losing your position. Make sure to test this out to find the right balance and determine your optimal standing.



Keyword Research/Testing:

Use PPC results to determine the best opportunities for organic, long-term approach (this includes PPC tests for headlines, ad copy, landing pages and keyword optimization).

PPC campaigns can be a great way to test the potential value of creating content that can organically rank for the same keywords. Maybe there is significant volume, but if no one converts, PPC can help determine that.

If competitors are paying for keywords, it is likely that they have determined that those keywords have value. Checking competitors’ campaigns can give great insight into new keywords to target, as well as language that best converts.

High-quality photos are critical to an effective marketing strategy. Did you know that the inclusion of quality photographs generates a 30 percent increase in Twitter engagement?

This means that social media users, or prospective clients, are more likely to like, retweet, or comment on your post. Ultimately, quality imagery yields lead that your team can convert to sales.

Read on to learn why you should invest in high-quality digital marketing images. Explore why imagery is so important in marketing and how to take your game to the next level.



Photos Do Not Lie

The truth is that consumers trust photos more than any other type of sales pitch. Take a technical description as the perfect example.

Shoppers know that companies talk up their products and write about them in the most favorable way. On the other hand, a photograph says 1000 words. It gives consumers a baseline to set expectations and determine if they like it.

The product description and characteristics are still important. However, a high-quality photograph sets a great first impression and makes the shopper want to learn more.



Quality Is Important

Every business plays lip service to producing quality products or service. Some of the best companies go to great lengths to deliver the highest quality in their industry.

Either way, using low-quality photographs to market a product or service is detrimental. What kind of message do you think a low-quality picture gives to shoppers?

It tells them that management is willing to overlook quality. Perhaps most important is that it inserts doubt into the shopper’s mind about quality assurance.

Images Affect a Shopper’s Mood

There is clinical proof that imagery affects a person’s mood. Depending on the tone of the picture, an image can make a person angry or sad.

When trying to sell a product or service, the goal is to generate a positive mood. Simply put, a happy or motivated shopper is more likely to make a purchasing decision than an angry one.

B2B companies are doubling down on social media and it’s paying off. Many social media marketers feel like social media is an important part of their overall marketing strategy, and they’re employing the latest trends and available options. After all, Content Marketing Institute reported that 61 percent of B2B marketers increased their use social media for content marketing purposes compared with one year ago.

Decision-makers are using social media for business and for personal use, and it’s important to reach them whenever they’re online. When sharing a relevant message, they’re more likely to pay attention and consider your brands products and services.

Below are some examples of actual B2B companies on social media and what they’re doing right to connect with their audience and leverage social media in the right way.



B2B companies are doubling down on social media and it’s paying off. Many social media marketers feel like social media is an important part of their overall marketing strategy, and they’re employing the latest trends and available options. After all, Content Marketing Institute reported that 61 percent of B2B marketers increased their use social media for content marketing purposes compared with one year ago.

Decision-makers are using social media for business and for personal use, and it’s important to reach them whenever they’re online. When sharing a relevant message, they’re more likely to pay attention and consider your brands products and services.

Below are some examples of actual B2B companies on social media and what they’re doing right to connect with their audience and leverage social media in the right way.

Custom Images

TripAdvisor has a Twitter account that’s just for their hotel partners that have listings on their site. Not only do they do a great job serving the community of hotel owners and managers that want to connect with them, but they also have a very visually appealing Twitter profile. Almost all of the images they share or retweet are branded with their logo and “Certificate of Excellence” that reminds anyone viewing their feed that they represent the B2B side of TripAdvisor.

Oftentimes, these types of images aren’t difficult to create.

TripAdvisor created images for the winners using a photo from their hotel and then placed their logo and a few graphic elements that match their brand colors on top of it. This cohesive feel leads to a more professional appearance and also plays into the idea that they represent the highest quality hotels around the world.

As a hotel owner, it would be difficult to turn down the opportunity to be listed on TripAdvisor. The brand aesthetic (with actual photos from hotels on TripAdvisor) represents hotel quality and professionalism, something that any hotel owner or manager would be proud to be known for.

Have you heard of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) management? If so, do you know how it works? Did you know that PPC can help your company’s advertising initiatives?

In 2017, about 7 million advertisers invested in PPC management. The investment hit a staggering total of $10.1 billion. But these numbers should not be enough to entice.

You need to understand what PPC really is and how you benefit from it. Why should you invest in it, after all, instead of sticking solely to SEO?




What Is PPC?

Before we discuss PPC management, let us first define what PPC is. PPC is a type of internet marketing model. It involves advertisers that pay a certain fee every time their ads get a click from online users.

In essence, PPC does not help companies earn organic visits. PPC buys those visits for your website.

One of the most popular forms of PPC is search engine advertising. Through this method, advertisers can bid for ad placements. These placements are in links that 

search engines sponsor.

For example, your company offers handbags; so you bid on the keywords “quality handbags.” Through PPC, your ad may show up on the top spot of Google’s results page.

Whenever a person clicks on your ad, PPC directs him to your website. In turn, you need to pay a minimal fee to the search engine.

If you are wondering if paying for $4 click is worth it, the answer really depends on the PPC campaign’s effectiveness. Even if a click costs you $4, it becomes insignificant once you sell a bag that’s worth $200.

PPC Management: How Does It Work?

Now that you have an idea on what PPC means, let’s discuss what PPC management is. It basically involves a team of marketers that will oversee your company’s PPC strategy. Their management team’s goal is to ensure an effective PPC strategy in relation to the budget that you have.

Nowadays, many businesses leverage search engine optimization (SEO) to boost their credibility, visibility and trustworthiness online. With the online market being so highly competitive and oversaturated, it’s important for companies to have a reliable way to stand out and become more visible. One of the best ways to do that is through SEO. That being said, one of the major activities for SEO is link building. Efficient link building helps you build relevancy as an industry expert.

It also helps you expand your reach on the market and gives potency to your content. Not only that, but high-quality backlinks share the first place with content as the most important factor for rankings on search engines, such as Google. That being said, creating high-quality backlinks requires a good link building strategy and the right approach that will yield value to your business. Here are a few tips for creating such a successful link building strategy.



1.Know your target audience well

Understanding your target audience is the key to having a successful link building strategy. The main reason is that you must craft links and content that is in accordance with your audiences’ preferences and likings. Otherwise, you’re simply wasting time on building irrelevant links that won’t yield any interest or drive more traffic to your website for that matter.

Therefore, you should conduct some thorough market research and find out as much as you can about your audience. For instance, who they are, what their interests are, what their needs and expectations are, as well as what their core demographics are. That will tell you more about what type of content to create for both your audience and for your link building campaign.

2.Seek out relevant sources for your links

When creating quality backlinks, it’s important to do so on credible and reputable sources. The main reason is that the more credibility and domain authority your sources have, the more credibility you gain in return. Not only that, but you must also target sources, such as websites and blogs your target audience visits or follows.

That way, the links you build on those sources will be more efficient and will engage your audience and help you build awareness. A good way to start would be to identify good guest posting sources. By becoming a contributor on relevant blogs, you ensure that your audience notices and shows interest in you. In addition, you’re positioning yourself as an expert, which will help you build trust with your audience.

lf Sales and Marketing were a manufacturing operation starting with raw materials — leads — and ending up with 5% to 20% in a deliverable product — won sales — it would soon be shut down to determine what is wrong.

However, companies continue to spend untold dollars on lead generation efforts ultimately doomed to fail.

Lack of lead management impacts lead conversion and ROI

I think the major cause for poor lead conversion and ROI is the lack of lead management, also known

 as passing unqualified leads, or marketing qualified leads (MQLs), directly to sales reps.



Lack of lead management impacts lead conversion and ROI

I think the major cause for poor lead conversion and ROI is the lack of lead management, also known as passing unqualified leads, or marketing qualified leads (MQLs), directly to sales reps.

MarketingSherpa captured some of the key lead management issues in the B2B Marketing Benchmark Report. Of the 1,745 marketers surveyed, the research showed the following:

b2b lead management, Introduction to Lead Management68% of study participants have not identified their Sales and Marketing Funnel

61% send all leads directly to Sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified

79% have not established lead scoring

65% have not established lead nurturing

In my own experience working with companies, I’ve found the top issues include:

Marketing qualified leads (MQLs aka inquiries) have been sent to salespeople without qualifying them first or sending leads to Sales based on lead scoring alone.

A lead nurturing program has not been implemented.

Sales has not been given the means to hand leads back to marketing to re-engage for further work or nurturing on their behalf.

One of the things we’re really proud of at KoMarketing is the length of our client relationships. While we have clients who have only been with us for a year or two, we have others who have been with us for over 12 years. In the digital era where things change on a dime, that’s pretty amazing!

The thing is, we view our programs as real partnerships. At the end of the day, we are only successful if our clients are successful.

Now, you might be thinking, “Casie, I thought this was a blog post, not a sales pitch?”. Bear with me. See, one of the reasons we’ve had these long-lasting relationships is because our clients help us deliver results. They ensure we have the right information, the right tools, and the support we need.



And that’s the key.

For businesses that are currently working with a B2B digital marketing agency or looking to work with one in the future, there are a few things you can do to create a successful partnership. Let’s take a look.


Communicate Expectations

The majority of programs fail because there is a breakdown in communication, specifically when it comes to expectations. Be clear in what you are looking to get out of the program and how you expect the program to run.

For example, if you have a certain number of leads you need to acquire in a quarter, make sure your agency knows what that number is. This will determine the type of tactics they use and how aggressive they need to be. It can also dictate budgets.

Here’s another example – If you want content written in a certain voice, be clear in what that voice is. Provide your agency with brand guidelines, examples of existing content, and don’t hesitate to connect them with the communications team or SMEs who can provide more insights into how things should be written.

The more clear and direct everyone is in their expectations, the better off everyone will be. Our most successful programs stem from having clear expectations set at the beginning of the program and reiterated and adjusted as needed. Don’t hesitate to speak up.

Optimization is the process of serving unique experiences to each individual in your digital space by tailoring content and design to their specific needs and preferences. According to Forrester, continuous optimization is “an analytics-driven approach that seeks to leverage every customer interaction to evolve the understanding of the customer, which is in turn used to evolve and optimize current and future customer experiences.” In today's age, optimizing your digital presence to meet the needs of consumers is vital in promoting new sales, customer loyalty, and business growth.

Why Is It So Difficult to Achieve?

Often times, while some members of an organization may wish to start moving toward optimization, there are factors that actually prohibit their ability to achieve it. Common challenges that businesses are faced with include lack of data available and the misconception that all visitors are the same. It’s important to understand that every user is unique, and not everyone will engage with content or experiences in the same way across digital channels (think email, website, and mobile apps). Without an ample amount of data, decisions tend to be based upon opinions and hypotheses rather than factual evidence.



So, Why Should Your Business Care About Optimization?
By utilizing a testing strategy to reach optimization, businesses are able to use data as evidence in deciding what content, designs, and experiences will resonate with people most in order to create better-performing user experiences across the board. There are a plethora of reasons as to why businesses should adopt an optimization strategy, but here are a few of the most common reasons:

1) An optimized UX on your website or app shortens the path to conversion for your visitors.

Consumers are constantly looking for the quickest and easiest ways to accomplish tasks, and optimizing the user experience is vital in helping users accomplish this. By testing and collecting data to determine exactly how users interact across digital platforms, organizations are armed with the facts around how to convert visitors quickly, easily, and seamlessly without a conscious thought from the user.

2) Gathering actionable insights allows your business to keep up in an ever-changing marketplace.

Gathering actionable insights is where data collection becomes a true game changer. Monitoring users on a website allows a great deal of information to be gathered, and based on user behavior, areas of opportunity and areas of strength can be identified extremely quickly. This allows business to turn data into knowledge and power, to eliminate the guesswork when planning for future designs and experiences.

3) Cross-channel enablement enhances your ability to foster brand equity.

By testing, collecting data, and gathering actionable insights, business are able to start moving toward a cross-channel approach. Serving users consistent experiences across digital channels not only helps increase brand awareness, but it fosters the idea of brand loyalty and the ability for visitors to remain connect and engaged with specific products or brands that are of interest.

My clients often ask me to write posts for their industrial blogs. This requires me to work very closely with engineers and technical SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) on a daily basis for creating content. I have learned some important lessons about blogging that are specific to this technical and industrial audience.

Editorial calendar: This may sound like content marketing 101 but let me tell you why it is so important for industrial blogs. At a recent discovery meeting, I received little to no response when I asked a group of engineers about their customers’ challenges that we could blog about. I was expected to do the industry research and come back with a list of topics. Ideas for blog posts just flowed after I presented my findings. I kid you not; I now have weekly blogging topics lined up until the second week of November for this manufacturing client.



SME Interviews: I have found it a lot easier to write technical blog posts if I start by interviewing SMEs. I have to do my homework and come prepared with a list of intelligent questions to ask. Engineers can spot a novice quickly and they are not particularly patient with people trying to interview them about a topic that the interviewer knows very little about.

Be a ruthless editor: Writing copy based on interviews is one thing but the skill that I find most useful is editing. It takes time and understanding of the subject matter to publish blog posts that are compelling stories that educate and engage readers. One caveat I have discovered is that there is a fine balance between being a marketer and a technical content editor. What may sound geeky to a marketer may be just the right content for a technical audience.
Become an SEO expert: You’ve got to learn most everything there is to know about keyword research, on-page SEO and internal linking with keyword-rich anchor text. There is no point in publishing a bunch of unoptimized blog posts that your target audience will never find in search engines. SEO and social marketing skills are what separate a content marketing expert from a copywriter.

Add a touch of humor: This one is a myth buster. Contrary to popular belief, engineers do have a sense of humor and appreciate wit. Just don’t go overboard and try to be too clever and cutesy. Clever wordsmithing will only take you so far if your content lacks technical accuracy and substance.
For more on this topic, you may want to read my earlier post, “How to Coax Content Out of Engineers.”

As a Mechanical Engineer myself, I find it easier to interact with technical SMEs but I still have to go in there prepared to get my job done. I know I couldn’t just wing it after all these years and having written hundreds of industrial blog posts.

Creating a publicity campaign could never be easier now thanks to social media. Gone are the days of printing out thousands, if not millions, of flyers. No more buying up space in your local newspaper and plastering your logo on billboards. Digital marketing can spread your brand to users all over the globe. Or can it?

Let’s be honest about something. Even though pop-up ads have become less of a nuisance, you still don’t dare turn off your ad-blocker. You may be a small business promoting your brand online, but every click you get is a glittering buoy in a sea of apathy. Perhaps digital advertising could learn a thing or two from print ads.

Different marketing styles need to stick together when the going gets rough. So, here are ways print and social media can integrate for a better yield.



Business Cards

Whether you’re a freelance artist or a realtor in North Carolina, business cards are as professional as a LinkedIn page. Cards are great for handing out at events or meetings. In addition to your occupation and company, be sure to include social media and website addresses. A sleek, eye catching design goes a long way, too.

Catalogs

In 2016, catalog mailings were still sent 9.8 billion times despite the presence of online retail. This is because catalogs keep the buyer immersed in a brand while away from a computer.

Make catalogs available upon request to returning customers and new ones. Treat your catalog like a specialized magazine that showcases your products to prospective buyers. Sweeten the deal for them by adding exclusive coupon codes and giveaways that can be redeemed by mail-in or online.

Crowdfunding

Remember those PBS telethons where you donate money to support their programming and get a free tote bag? Crowdfunding is like that, but better.

Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Patreon are social media platforms that connect producers with their consumer base. They provide a clubhouse aesthetic wherein patrons commit a subscription fee to the supplier. In return, they get bonus rewards on top of new and improved product. These rewards vary based on the amount. They can be personalized mailings of postcards, artwork, t-shirts, or any other published materials.

“Growth hacking” is one of those buzzwords that’s started popping up in digital marketing circles over the last few years. But what exactly is growth hacking and how can you use it to benefit your content marketing efforts?

The clue is in the name – growth hacking is all about growing your business rapidly with a limited budget. The term came about from start-ups who needed to grow their fledgling businesses as quickly as possible with limited resources. These start-ups typically achieve this growth by taking advantage of low-cost alternatives to traditional marketing that can be extremely effective when done well.

A growth hacker is essentially a marketer who might use a combination of techniques including social media, viral marketing, and SEO to increase brand awareness and conversion rates as quickly as possible.

Your business may not be in the start-up stage, but you can still use growth hacking techniques to grow your business.

When you apply these techniques or “hacks” to your content marketing, you end up doing something that’s come to be known as “content hacking”. A content hacker is someone who achieves massive growth through content.



Quick Takeaways

Content hacking can help boost your marketing efforts in a short time, with a limited budget.
Good content hackers are data-driven, innovative, and constantly optimizing their content.
Analyzing your own successful content and that of your competitors is a great start for driving content growth.

Content Hacking Basics

So how do you become a content hacker? The key is to think outside of the box and look for little content marketing tricks that you can take advantage of to attract more social shares, drive more traffic to your site, and boost your conversion rate.

These days, nearly everyone is using content marketing, and for a very good reason – it’s more effective than many other marketing channels, and yet, you can get started on a shoestring budget.

Some of the things you must consider to growth hack your content marketing include:

SEO – Google’s algorithm is always changing. Successful content hackers stay up to date with these changes and know how to craft their content in order to use them for their own benefit.

Data analysis and optimization – successful content hacking strategies are almost always data-driven. By carefully analyzing the data you have available, you can look for optimization opportunities and tweak your content strategy for growth.

Recognizing opportunities – a good content hacker will always be on the lookout for the next opportunity. Something like being the first to publish a breaking news story in your industry could be your key to achieving explosive success.

Understanding virality – viral content is one of the cornerstones of content hacking. There’s no sure-fire way of ensuring a piece of content goes viral, but content hackers will do their best to maximize the chances of this happening.

Originality – content hacking is all about finding your own unique path and not copying what everyone else is doing. Only those who experiment and think outside of the box can become true content hackers.

Google has released a flurry of algorithm updates in the first half of 2018, which has made it difficult for SEO professionals to work out exactly which tactics are working to help sites rank at the top of organic search results. Whether a website has been practicing white hat, grey hat, or even black hat SEO, the entire industry has been affected by the recent updates.

How to rank better in 2018To make things more challenging, Google hasn’t provided any indication of what factors may be contributing to SEO improvement or deterioration. SEO pros know there have been algorithm changes. They just can’t identify exactly how they have been affected.


Despite the uncertainty, there are still certain practices that stand the test of time with SEO. So, if you want to virtually guarantee an improvement in your website’s organic search position, here are a few ideas you should implement in addition to on-page optimization.



Ensure that all of your site’s 301 redirects are going to the right URLs.

It’s likely your website has permanent (301) redirects pointing to the wrong URLs or even broken links that are sending 404 error messages to search engine crawlers. Your URLs have a certain amount of PageRank associated with them. If you want a percentage of the PageRank from these web pages passed onto your new URLs so the authority passes throughout the website, you need to correctly implement 301 redirects.

You can view your redirects either by running a crawler on your website, analysing the server logs, or viewing the list in your redirection plugin (if you have one installed).

Analyse your server logs.

The server logs will unearth the most valuable technical data for your site’s SEO campaign. They will show the exact timings and navigation path that search engine crawlers take on your website. It’s essential that you analyse the URL paths, redirections, loading success, or errors flagged in the server logs.

Additionally, you will need to identify how many URLs the search engine crawler is visiting each time it’s on your website. This way, you can optimise your “crawl budget” to ensure the search engine crawler finds and indexes the URLs and the content that you want it to access on your website.

Add a responsive mobile design to your website.

Google continues to put more emphasis on mobile-friendly websites. The easiest solution is to add a mobile-responsive design for smartphones, tablets and other portable devices. If your site is also configured to a mobile application, Google provides developer guidelines to allow users searching from mobile devices to open the app directly from the organic search result.

Add AMP to your site’s content pages.
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If your website hosts informative articles, blog posts or news articles, you’ll want to incorporate accelerated mobile pages (AMP) on your site. This will allow you to serve content more quickly on mobile devices. Google tends to look favourably on sites that incorporate AMP.

Automate SEO activities with Sheer SEO

Minimize your web page size to improve the loading speed.
Web page loading time is important because the search engine crawler will attempt to download as many pages as it can to crawl and index the web content. If a web page size is too large, it will slow down the crawling process and may force the crawler to leave the website prematurely.

Aim to limit the size of your web pages to 1MB or less. This should allow the crawler to download and crawl more pages, thus improving the organic search visibility of the website.

Every discussion I’ve had with manufacturers and industrial companies starts with “we need more leads” or ends with “we need results.” I understand and accept the fact that the main goal of industrial marketing is to generate leads. I have no issues with that but do these companies know what a qualified lead is?

That may sound like a dumb question to ask in industrial lead generation but in reality, you would be surprised by how fundamental and serious that question is. I’m not making this up or trying to be clever here.

Let me explain with three excerpts from conversations I have had in just the past few months.


Problems in industrial lead generation

Conversation #1: The US Sales Manager of a manufacturer of level controllers and control vales said to me, “We don’t talk to leads until we receive an RFQ/RFP.”

Problem: The buyer is already at the end of their buying decision by the time an RFQ/RFP is issued. He wants to compare bids from vendors based on price and lead-time. The manufacturer doesn’t want to sell on price because their strength is in providing engineered solutions. It is too late for the manufacture to start talking about their expertise at this stage because they have to conform to the exact bid specifications in order to provide a price and a delivery time.

Conversation #2: The President at a distributor of natural gas and compressed air dehydrators said, “My sales team can tell if a lead is qualified or not within two minutes of talking to someone.”

Problem: The sales team isn’t receiving enough calls or able to get in front of enough prospects to make that quick determination. As a result, sales are down and they need more leads.

Started in 2008 as the world’s first open source video player, JW Player pioneered video on the Web and today has customers in 193 countries, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to individual bloggers. The company’s flagship product, JW Player, is live on more than 2 million sites with more than 1.3 billion unique monthly views.

JW Player LogoIn 2015, JW Player piloted a small-scale, in-house SEM program on Google AdWords to gauge the potential efficacy of using search advertising to drive qualified leads for its enterprise video platform. Though that pilot campaign didn’t yield any conversions, the company felt reasonably confident that, with the proper guidance and management, SEM could be a viable demand generation engine for the enterprise business.

JW Player contacted Spear Marketing Group, a leading B2B demand generation agency, for help. The company chose Spear for the firm’s experience with other B2B technology clients, and also for their unique, holistic approach to SEM, one that focused not just on driving clicks and click volume, but rather qualified sales leads at the lowest possible cost.



Spear’s engagement began with an audit and assessment of the pilot campaign, to gauge what learnings could be gleaned from the experiment, and also to help provide baseline data on which to project Cost Per Click (CPC) and potential ROI. The audit recommended some fundamental changes in strategy and application of SEM best practices across the board, including:

• Tighter ad groups to improve ad relevance and therefore quality score (decreasing CPC)
• Increasing the number of negative keywords to reduce consumer impressions and unqualified clicks
• Aggressive testing of ad copy
• Landing page improvements focused on promoting a specific, tangible offer to drive conversions

“Almost all our SEM engagements begin with some kind of audit and assessment,” commented Howard J. Sewell, Spear President. “Not only does it provide us data to help guide the new campaign and set realistic performance goals, but it also gives the client a clear picture of where we see the most opportunity for improvement. Often we’re pinpointing areas that haven’t even been considered, particularly in areas like landing page optimization and offer strategy.”

Given the modern data environment, improving your PPC results will increasingly rely on processing quality data. Going from good to great PPC performance involves collecting and processing bigger data sets and using machine learning to find and select the best bids. But, despite what you may fear, humans are an integral part of this process as well. Machines can’t do it alone.

You’re a talented search marketer, but you want to constantly improve, grow, and stay sharp on the latest techniques in digital marketing. Whether you’re the hands-on owner of a SEM program day-to-day, or you’ve stepped away to think more broadly about your digital acquisition strategy, the goal is still the same: turn your PPC channel into an efficient and predictable revenue driver. 

But, once you’ve started hitting the ceiling, it’s time to put more of your data to work.




Collecting More Data from PPC

I’m going to assume you’re a pretty advanced search marketer, so you’ve got your ducks in a row regarding your program structure. This means you probably have strong campaign build-out, highly relevant ad groups matched with ad copy and keywords that are tested, kept clean, and aligned with a good landing page experience.

You’re also probably driving some significant volume. If PPC is a truly pivotal channel–generating forty, sixty, or eighty percent of your revenue–you’re willing to spend a lot with search engines. Lots of dollars leading to lots of clicks and revenue.

When you’re spending tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of budget dollars on search engine marketing, you earn a valuable byproduct: data.

This data is a gold mine! Every click results in some set of actions on your website and some get further down the path towards revenue than others. Beyond that, every click is not only attributed to the keyword, ad, ad group, and campaign, but also to all sorts of attributes and dimensions that provide details about demographics, geographies, and habits.

The intricate customer journeys of the modern era make a “Conversion” in Google Ads worth less – and your own ability to track the path to revenue so much more meaningful. Your data tells a better story, you just need to capture it, unify it, and process it.