marketing strategy

7 SEO Goals For Business: Optimization For The Right Reasons

Identifying the right SEO goals for your digital campaign

Choosing good SEO goals is a critical first step in your digital marketing campaign. As with any long-term endeavor, knowing your marketing end goals and working directly toward them saves time, money, and stress.

Good SEO cannot be done in a vacuum. It depends on business goals, the needs of the sales and customer support team, and intimate knowledge of the competitive landscape in which you work. Engage the critical stakeholders in each area of your business and work together to come up with a list of needs. You may be surprised at how SEO can help each team meet its objectives....

Read this article: 7 SEO Goals For Business: Optimization For The Right Reasons

If Your Online Presence was an Employee, What Would You Put in its Job Description?

Job descriptions are concise statements laying out the responsibilities of an employee, his or her role within your organization, standards for measuring effectiveness, and accountability expectations. An interesting tactic that marketers can use when designing a digital presence is to ask the question, “If my online presence was an employee, what would I put in its job description?”

Read this article: If Your Online Presence was an Employee, What Would You Put in its Job Description?

Podcast on Digital Content Collaboration and Project Management

In this podcast, Volacci's marketing experts Erik Wagner and Chris Gaffney discuss collaborative content creation and project management. While using the real-life example of their popular Newsletter Best Practices 2013: Email Marketing eBook, the two offer a series of tips and strategies to help marketers spread the success and responsibilities of high quality content creation among members of a marketing team.

Read this article: Podcast on Digital Content Collaboration and Project Management

10 Secrets to Leading a Successful Marketing Campaign: Part 2

Thanks for tuning back in for part two of 10 Secrets to Leading a Successful Marketing Campaign. For those of you who missed the first part of this blog series, please click here to read part one.

6. Know What a Client is Worth to Your Company

During the launch meeting of every campaign we ask our client “how much is the average client worth to your company?” When we do get an answer, we then follow up with a calculation to determine how many leads and sales need to be generated every month to ensure that the campaign is profitable.

Whether you use a marketing agency or not, as a marketer, you must know how much a new client is worth. Otherwise, you will not be able to make informed decisions on how to spend your marketing budget.

For instance, if the keyword “buy print materials” has a cost per acquisition (CPA) of $100, you may dismiss the keyword at first. However, if you’re able to establish that the average client is worth $1,000 in profit, then you would more then likely rethink spending $100 to acquire that client.

7. Leverage Great Tools

Utilizing tools can help you organize your efforts, analyze data, make you more efficient, and your marketing campaigns more effective.

Here is a list of a few of my favorites:


Project Management:

Basecamp
Evernote
Google Docs
Things


SEO:
Market Samurai
Screaming Frog
Google Webmaster Tools
SEO Site Tools Chrome Plugin
SEOMoz Chrome Plugin
Open Site Explorer


Traffic Analysis:
Google Analytics
Omniture

PPC Management Tools
:
Adwords Editor
Marin Software
SearchForce
WebTrends


Marketing Automation Tools:
ActOn!
Marketo
Pardot
Silverpop


Social Media Management Tools:
HootSuite
Radian6
TweetDeck

What are some of your favorite marketing tools?

8. Create Phenomenal Collateral

By now you know your clients and what makes them tick. Begin producing marketing collateral on a regular basis that addresses your potential client’s needs and desires.

Don’t limit yourself to producing one form of collateral. Some clients may prefer the written word, but others may prefer video blogs, webinars, or interactive demos.

If your company does not have a blog, get one. It opens doors for meaningful conversation, new relationships, and opportunities. Blogs help your company demonstrate its expertise. Blogging should not be optional, make it a mandatory company activity.

Few things are more powerful then a gleaming client testimonial. Create testimonials and case studies detailing your clients’ experiences with your company. Set aside a budget to film customers talking about their experience with your company. Not only are whitepapers fantastic link bait, they are also a great way to prove your knowledge and gather contact information.

9. Nurture Your Leads

In today’s tough economy, buyers are more fickle then they have in the past. Lead nurturing using marketing automation platforms is critical to creating relationships with potential clients.

A good lead nurturing campaign decreases the total number of man-hours needed to create a sale. They also increase your conversion rate for all of your Internet marketing efforts by continually engaging with a potential client and tracking the client’s engagement with your company.

Setting up a lead nurturing campaign can be a daunting task considering the total number of man hours, but once it is up and running smoothly, you will save your company significant amounts of time.

The success of your lead nurturing campaign relies entirely on your ability to create phenomenal collateral. Ensure that you invest enough time and effort into the creation and review process so that your potential clients are blown away by their experience. Additionally, don’t skimp on promoting your own collateral because it doesn’t do anyone any good if there isn’t any viewership.

10. Analyze Your Data and Take Action

Are you using a CRM that integrates with your Web Analytics and can report exactly how much revenue has been generated from your Pay-Per-Click, E-mail Marketing, and Search Engine Optimization campaigns? If the answer is no, then you are not tracking enough data and will not be able to make data-driven decisions.

Make sure that you are regularly reviewing and analyzing data to find trends in your data. If a particular marketing campaign is generating more revenue then another, you should try and understand why that is happening. Market frugally; do not spend money if it is not producing bottom line results.

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What commonalities have you noticed between successful marketing campaigns? Is there any particular “secret” that you have found to be most helpful for you in the past?
 

Read this article: 10 Secrets to Leading a Successful Marketing Campaign: Part 2

10 Secrets to Leading a Successful Marketing Campaign: Part 1

Having been involved on many marketing campaigns, I have found that there are commonalities between all successful marketing campaigns. While this list could be much larger, I limited it to 10 then decided to split the original blog post into two for the sake of brevity. I attempted to organize these tips in sequential order so that it is more logical. Without further ado, let’s start with number one.

1. Know Your Target Market

When I say know your target market, I don’t mean what their names are, but know what makes them tick.

What motivates your target market? Do they have an innate need for recognition and respect? Are they highly motivated and A-Type personalities? Now tie that in with their demographics. Are they 20-somethings? Are they Baby Boomers?  Technophiles? Do they have a large amount of purchasing power? Own a home? Have a family? What is important to them? What do they do to relax?

Create a document that describes your target market and distribute it amongst your co-workers. Ensure that they understand the importance of knowing the company’s target market and incorporate this knowledge into everything that they produce that is customer facing.

2. Address Your Client’s Needs

Now that you know your target market, review your product or service. Does every aspect of that product help satisfy your target market? Does every official piece of communication from your company somehow address your client’s needs and gives them a warm, fuzzy feeling?

If not, take a step back and rethink your strategy. Your client’s are your biggest piece of “marketing collateral” and if they’re not having an amazing experience, then they’re not going to refer your company to their friends and family.

3. Write a Marketing Plan

A great marketing campaign starts with a great plan, though the planning stage is frequently overlooked. If you’re not sure where to start, Volacci offers a free Internet marketing plan template.

After writing your marketing plan, make sure that you get buy-in from all parties. Ensure that they know what parts of the plan that they are responsible for. Finally, prepare for deviations to your plan. No matter how much time and effort that you put into your plan there will be changes that you could not predict.

4. Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket

The idiom holds true in marketing as well as most things in life. All too often I see companies unwilling to commit to multiple forms of marketing. Instead, they put all of their proverbial eggs in one basket and commit only to SEO or PPC, for example. That’s like saying I am going to take my life savings and invest only in General Motors. It may serve me well for awhile, but when the auto industry hits a funk, you’re up the creek without a paddle (excuse the abuse of idioms).

As important as it is to diversify your stock portfolio, it is equally important to diversify your marketing efforts. Fully commit to all of your marketing efforts, to ensure that you are giving yourself the best opportunity to create success.

5. Set Goals and Track Progress

After you have finished your marketing plan, set weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals for you and your team for every aspect of your campaign. You cannot do it alone. Make sure that your team is comprised of people you can trust and depend on. Delegate the work that needs to be done between your team based on their individual strengths. Have someone who is a whiz with PowerPoint? Put them in charge of creating the PowerPoint template for your new sales presentations.

Hold your team accountable for progress. Create 15-minute weekly standup meetings that are basically a round-robin of the progress that has been made with a particular campaign.

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Click here to read the part two of this blog.

Read this article: 10 Secrets to Leading a Successful Marketing Campaign: Part 1

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