Guest Blog Post

Connected audiences – How to start joining up your marketing into a single customer journey

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Connected audiences – How to start joining up your marketing into a single customer journey

In our latest guest post, which is part of the “Best in Digital Series”, connective3’s Paid Media Director Claire Stanley-Manock shares her top tips for creating a connected audience strategy to give performance a big boost across all paid channels.

‘Audience led’ is a phrase that’s often used by paid media departments to describe overlaying in-market and affinity audiences onto keywords into PPC. Whilst undeniably a valuable exercise, this just scratches the surface of what is possible with audiences.

Bringing teams and channels together and creating a connected audience strategy that has the customer at the heart sees a positive halo impact across all activity and ultimately the bottom line.

Start with the audience or audiences

This one is an obvious one, especially for paid media folk, but less so for those who are purely search focussed. Find out who your audience are, whether there are any sub audiences, what do they look like, where can we find them online, what do they care about. This is a good starter for ten, but you need to feed this into all channels in order to bring the strategy together.

Glean audience data from GA as a starter

If you don’t already have personas to work to, GA’s audiences will give you a steer on who they are, what they buy and what their passions are. This data can be insightful, especially if looked at from the audience pool of key pages or conversion points rather than the site as a whole. In fact, looking at the converting audiences for different products will give you key insight as to the differences between each of those customer types are. This can be useful when tailoring messaging for each product. For Strata Homes we were able to identify key age and interest differences for users enquiring about different size house models.

Use your own existing data to power enhanced performance

Something you’ll often hear me say is you’ll never find a data set as rich as your own. Use your website conversions and CRM data to plug into your key platforms to re-engage or lookalike from. Drive users through their journey to convert, change your messaging and bidding at every point to nurture users to conversion. Use key pages as well as ‘conversions’ to create lookalikes from. Use page value in GA to find key pages in the journey and use those users too, for example this might be the blog, or a delivery page. By implementing this nurture journey into our campaigns for our kitchen’s client we have increased the showroom appointments by 64% and decreased the CPA by 61% year on year even in a pandemic. Another example of this is video ad watchers. Don’t let users watch your videos and then fall into the remarketing journey only if they visit the site; reengage these watchers through Google and Facebook to connect the dots at that higher level.

Create relationships with your potential customers before trying to sell to them

Take advantage of people who are already warm to your brand thanks to more emotional pieces such as PR and organic. Create audience lists off the back of these page views and feed this into the paid media strategy as observed audiences in PPC and targeted audiences in Facebook. Through our own campaign testing for wealth management client Blacktower, we found that when people start their journey with you through content they choose to engage with, and are then targeted with paid media ads, it can reduce your paid media CPA up to 33% over and above cold prospecting. Make sure that the paid media is recognising these journeys and is being optimised to take advantage of the opportunity

Connect your channels together

Take the time to understand the full breadth of activity and what data can be used to optimise each channel. For example, when managing the search engine results pages, run testing to understand the incrementality of PPC with the fluctuations in organic rankings. Ensure PPC visibility for lower ranking SEO keywords and use your PPC search terms to feed into the organic content strategy.

Tailor messaging and journeys

Bringing the data together is only half the story. A huge proportion of performance (up to 70% according to an article by Think Google in 2017) has been found to be driven by the creative and messaging. Users have taken the time to engage with us and our content, our next message to them needs to continue the conversation, and as such the messaging must take into account what we have learnt about their intent. For example, if someone who falls into the ‘animal enthusiast’ segmentation sees our ad for safari holidays, and navigates to our site, but then spends most time reading about walking holidays, then remarket to them about walking holidays and getting in touch.

Take control of the journey

Similar to the above point about controlling messaging, make sure audiences are controlled properly and that people are negated out of targeting as they move through the journey. By taking control of Strata’s campaigns, we were able to increase the leads by 419% on Google and 42% on Facebook and decrease the CPA by 64% on Google and 32% on Facebook in the first month that we worked with them. This is something we often see in accounts, the set-up looks on the surface to be working correctly, but when you dig into it there is a lot of cross pollination occurring. Our final top tip is to take control of the platforms. Ensure keywords in PPC are properly controlled with negatives, ensure audiences across platforms are updated in as near real time as possible to avoid people seeing incorrect messages.

These steps are a starter for ten and once implemented will need to be continually developed in line with insights gained, however they are worth the time investment as the opportunity and reward will be significant performance increases across your paid media.

Related Content:

The Best in Digital Awards 2021

About the Author:

Claire Stanley-Manock, Paid Media Director, connective3

connective3’s Paid Media Director Claire Stanley-Manock has over 15 years of digital marketing experience and knows how to navigate the complex paid media landscape to deliver incremental growth for clients. Campaigns are planned with strategic creativity and delivered with personalisation to generate cut through, emotion and results.

 

 

 

 

What We Can Learn from The Brands Nailing Digital Transformation

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What We Can Learn from The Brands Nailing Digital Transformation by Andrew Machin, UX Director at LION+,MASON

Digital transformation is high on the agenda for most modern businesses. In today’s guest post, LION+MASON’s UX Director Andrew Machin shares a selection of the latest digital transformation cases, and highlights the key learnings for marketers and brands.

Regardless of how established or how large a business is, digital transformation can be a tricky process to master. Ultimately, the rapid development of new technologies presents huge opportunities for organisations across sectors.

It’s this, along with increased pressure from customers and competitors embarking on their own transformations that are spurring businesses on. The question is, where do you start? What do you need to consider? The answer is different for every organisation, but there are some lessons to be learned from the best.

Amazon

A truly successful digital transformation will allow you as a business to disrupt the marketplace you’re in. Just take a look at Amazon. Their strategy presents a masterclass for digital disrupters, but any business anywhere can learn a thing or two from the brand.

It’s their use of consumer data that really sets Amazon apart. From how people read on their Kindles, to purchasing decisions, Amazon segment and analyse data to build a clear picture of their customers, and they use that to their advantage. This, along with their powerfully marketed own brand products that sell in the tens of millions, designed around that same customer data gives them such a grip on the market that’s hard to beat.

What we’ve learned: Effective use of data and a clear vision of how your products and services answer a customer need is what will give you the competitive edge, even in the most competitive markets.

Deliveroo

Deliveroo is just one of the new age fast food businesses shaking up the sector. So, what’s the difference between something like Deliveroo and your average local business delivering to your door? The answer lies in tech of course. Intuitive interfaces and apps make things even easier for customers.

But it’s the investment that Deliveroo are ploughing into their tech talent that makes them stand out to us. They’ve added 250 new tech roles in London alone this year. This manpower will enable them to run smarter, slicker services that outstrip the competition.

What we’ve learned: Tech may be driving businesses to transform digitally, but you need the right people to harness that technology and pitch it to your customers in the right way.

StubHub

There were more than a few digital challenges for ticket retailer StubHub before they changed their strategy. With cumbersome systems trying to cope with huge influxes of ticket transactions, the need to adapt and become agiler was vital to the brand’s survival. The answer – StubHub is moving to the cloud.

That’s not all though. Data showed that 50% of people were using their mobile devices to purchase tickets. In response, StubHub has developed native apps for Android and iOS that allow people to enter events using the mobile only.

What we’ve learned: StubHub’s use of tech and a focus on the customer enabled them to create innovative products that customers love and use and cement them as a leader in their field.

DHL

It can be easy to focus on B2C businesses when it comes to digital transformation success stories, but there are more than a few B2B companies out there worth watching. One is DHL. This is a business that’s absolutely clued up on how to use tech to its advantage by getting the whole business on board.

By implementing a patents programme, they actively encourage anyone in the business to come forward with ideas. In MD Paul Richardson’s words, “We believe that digital-led innovation and innovation in general can come from anyone.” This has opened the doors to innovations like their warehouse smart glasses, and a new vehicle service that’s reduced costs by 20% and increased goods capacity in transit by 70%.

What we’ve learned: Actively encouraging staff throughout the business to engage with their digital transformation has given DHL unique opportunities to innovate and stay ultra-competitive.

Hasbro

One of the main things that can derail a digital transformation project is a lack of customer knowledge. Hasbro is a great example of a business that recognised the role of data in its transformation and used the insights gathered to change its strategy. A brave move to be sure.

Rather than marketing to kids as the brand historically did, they started to market to the purchasers – the parents. Through social media channels and advertising at the right point in the customer journey, they’ve grown sales by up to $1 billion. But that’s not all, with innovative partnerships with digital companies like Buzzfeed, they’ve brought traditional games like Monopoly onto modern gaming platforms, extending their appeal.

What we’ve learned: Another example of how data can inform strategy, Hasbro changed their target audience and used digital platforms to engage with their audiences in new ways.

In conclusion…

Digital transformation is a challenging process to tackle. This has created as many obstacles as opportunities for companies looking to revolutionise the way they connect with customers and stay competitive in their marketplace.

There are inspiring examples from businesses across sectors who have taken their digital transformation by the horns and carved out a new niche for themselves. Using data to inform strategic decisions and creating a collaborative environment for staff to actively drive the process are two common threads in each of the cases we’ve looked at.

Each also uses tech not in isolation, but as a way of meeting customer expectations with innovative solutions. Ultimately, it’s about using all the intel you have to develop hard-hitting digital products that answer a need. And that’s what each of these businesses has done with aplomb.

Author Biog:

What We Can Learn from The Brands Nailing Digital Transformation - Andrew Machin at LION+MASON

With over 17 years’ experience in UX and Digital, Andrew Machin, Founder and UX Director at LION+MASON has helped global brands such as John Lewis, Jet2, and Interflora create transformational digital experiences, from web applications to in-store retail experiences.

Through the success of such projects Andrew has received accolades that include high-profile awards that span innovation, strategy, design, and results, such as the Dadi Grand Prix Award and the Digital Impact Award for Innovation.

This experience has led to Andrew judging the Digital Experience Awards, being featured in .net magazine, lecturing at Leeds University, and speaking at seminars and conferences across the UK.

Andrew will be leading a roundtable session on UX & Online Customer Experience at our Digital Leaders Masterclass #DIGITALMANC18 in Manchester on Tuesday 6th November 2018.

 

 

Influencer marketing: Why you should give it a go

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Influencer Marketing: Why you should give it a go

In today’s guest post, theEword’s Michael Palmer takes a closer look at the rise of  influencer marketing, and why more brands are switching their focus to this channel.

A brief look at Google Trends quickly reveals that the internet’s interest in the term ‘influencer marketing’ has been steadily growing for as long as Google Trends can remember. At the same time, companies are allocating more and more of their budgets to influencers. Two thirds of marketing professionals state they are very content with their current blogger campaigns (according to a study by eMarketer). It’s no doubt then that ‘influencer marketing’ isn’t just a buzzword, but a real force to be reckoned with.

As per TapInfluence’s definition:

‘Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on using key leaders to drive your brand’s message to the larger market. Rather than marketing directly to a large group of consumers, you instead inspire / hire / pay influencers to get out the word for you.’

Eric Enge from Moz further clarifies that it is ‘the process of developing relationships with influential people that can lead to their assisting you in creating visibility for your product or service.’

So now that we’ve established what influencer marketing is (and that it’s big news), let’s talk about how it can benefit your business.

Why you should consider influencer marketing

  1. It pays off

Even if you focus on multiple KPIs, at the end of the day, it is still money that talks. And influencer marketing’s voice is pretty sweet: a recent case study by TapInfluence and Nielsen Catalina Solutions found that influencer marketing achieves 11 times more ROI than alternative digital marketing methods.

If that doesn’t impress you, wait for it –  ROI from bloggers’ endorsements grows with time, as there’s always new people finding your influencer and going through their older content. Unlike other ad types that end when the campaign ends, the returns from your influencer campaign could double after 3 months even with no new investment.

Influencer marketing: Why you should give it a go by Michael Palmer at TheEWord

  1. It fills in the gaps

All marketing methods have their perks and disadvantages. Influencer marketing allows you to look at where the other tools are lacking and fill in those gaps:

Digital Advertising

Paid banner ads and promoted social posts are a great thing but not all customers are that keen on seeing them in their browsers at all times and resort to ad-blocking software. Having a blogger promote your brand, however, makes sure that the now native content is seen by the right people, at the right time (especially if you’ve followed the steps mentioned below).

Content Marketing

Are you creating great content that unfortunately doesn’t reach its full potential? Maybe you have chosen a wrong platform, haven’t timed things correctly or focused on the wrong audience… Sometimes it is just pure bad luck. On the other hand, a social influencer will have a regular following; so it’s pretty safe to expect that your message will get the exposure that it deserves.

Traditional PR

Traditional PR approach can be highly unpredictable – the press might get your intended message wrong or simply not pick up your story.. The good news is, there are no such worries with influencer marketing.

As the influencers are not only the medium, but also the publisher, this means, providing you are working with a professional influencer, brands will enjoy a lot more control over how their messages are told.

  1. It adds authenticity

As Gabrielle Archambault, Senior Manager of eos explains:

‘Influencers not only amplify your brand reach on social, they add an element of authenticity to your message. Though consumers can love brands, they have been trained to be somewhat skeptical of them and the content/message they distribute.

‘Content and messaging created by influencers isn’t yet held to that level of scrutiny and is seen as more organic, even when ‘#ad’ or ‘#sponsored’ is included.

‘As a brand, it’s one thing to tell consumers “I’m cool”, it’s significantly more powerful to have a person that a consumer admires say that your brand is cool.’

To put some numbers to this: according to Social Media Explorer, 92% customers are more likely to trust an individual (let’s say an influencer) over a brand.

  1. It brings engagement

While having a solid ROI will make all of your company happy, influencer marketing will satisfy even more of your (marketing) needs. A successful influencer campaign will raise brand awareness, resulting in more website visits, newsletter subscriptions, social following… So you’ll see all of your stats on the incline. Tempting, right?

Furthermore (and as mentioned above), you will have earned points in the eyes of your audience, because what’s better than being endorsed by someone they follow and look up to?

Influencer marketing: Why you should give it a go by Michael Palmer at TheEWord

I like the sound of this. What do I do?

Step One: Research

As with any marketing strategy, you need to have your target audience mapped out – what they like, where do they hang out online, what content they consume.

Step Two: Choose well

Picking an influencer is not as easy as it may sound; obviously they need to match your brand, but you should also be trying to tick the following boxes:

  • Is their following big enough to effectively share your message?
  • Will they reach a big enough portion of your target audience?
  • Do they have a regular readership returning to their blogs?
  • Are they successful in attracting engagement?

If in doubt, use social tools such as Buzzsumo or Follerwonk to see where they stand.

Step Three: Make yourself seen

Influencers get a lot of emails from brands wanting to work with them. If they don’t have the time or don’t think it would be the right fit for them, they simply won’t reply.

Try impressing your chosen influencer by making them feel special before ‘the approach’ – give them attention by sharing their content, RT them, sign up for their newsletter, invite them to feature in your own content… Make sure they know of your existence so that when your proposal email finally arrives, they’re intrigued. Or alternatively, work with a digital agency that already has good relationships with a number of influencers.

Step Four: Know what counts as success

Although influencer marketing differs from other marketing methods, one thing remains the same – you need to know what you want to get out of it and what you’ll call a successful campaign. Is it brand awareness you’re after? Or are you looking to increase your web traffic and social following? Make sure to mention it all in the brief with your influencer. Only KPIs that have been set up well will be able to tell you if your campaign has been successful, or what you need to improve on in the future.

Step Five: Determine your strategy

Once you know what you’re trying to gain from the campaign, figuring out what form your content should take will be a breeze. Will a blog post do? Or would a podcast and a social competition do the trick?

Assuming you’ve already picked your influencer, you probably have an idea what sort of content they do, are good at, and you like. Now it’s time to combine your ideas with theirs. But don’t worry – that doesn’t mean you have to give up control! What we usually do is brief the influencer on our goals, how we would like the message portrayed and any other specific requirements (for example what hashtag to use) and see what they bring to the table. After all, their creative sparkle is there to make your campaign shine.

Step Six: Don’t forget about FTC

Even though it might be tempting, don’t fall down the trap of pretending you haven’t paid for an endorsement when you have. There are rules set out by the FTC and not following them could not only cause you a hefty fine, but also seriously harm your brand image.

In most cases, including #ad in the post is sufficient to demonstrate that the influencer has received a compensation in some shape or form. If it’s video we’re talking about, the influencer must mention the brand’s involvement, within a specific timeframe and also include this information in the video’s description. Although the influencer will probably know what they need to do, it’s better to always check for yourself to ensure the content doesn’t get taken down for a breach of rules. What’s more – their audience will appreciate the honesty and be actually interested in what the influencer likes and decided to endorse.

When it works, it works

It’s not all talk and no action; this recipe has been tried and tested many a time. For example, Essential Living’s ‘Love London’ 2016 campaign showcasing the benefits of living in London has smashed all KPIs across the board.

The campaign asked bloggers and social media influencers living in London what they love about the city, with their input ranging from the buzzing fashion and music scenes to the limitless opportunities London offered for their careers. Their contributions (with the nod back to the amazing apartments on offer, of course) were put in front of the eyes of those who matter – the target demographic of Essential Living.

Influencer marketing: Why you should give it a go by Michael Palmer at The EWord

So, what do you think? Could influencer marketing help you grow your own business? If you’re tempted but feel like you could use some guidance, why not give a digital agency a ring? TheEword are a lifestyle and leisure agency based in Manchester specialising in content marketing. The ‘Love London’ campaign is one of their many success stories; could the next one be yours?

Related Editorial: Digital Content Leaders Masterclass, Manchester (2018)

Author Biog:

Influencer marketing: Why you should give it a go by Michael Palmer at theEword

Michael Palmer is Head of Marketing at theEword – a lifestyle and leisure agency that connects brands with the right audience for their products or services through integrated marketing campaigns.

 

Why The Way You Track Conversions Could Be Damaging Your Campaigns

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Why The Way You Track Conversions Could Be Damaging Your Campaigns - Arianne Donoghue, Epiphany

As part of our build-up to next week’s Paid & Biddable Leaders Masterclass in Leeds, Epiphany’s Arianne Donoghue examines the area of campaign tracking, and how marketers can use cross-channel data to maximise their results.

One of the biggest challenges in marketing in recent years has been around tracking the value and efficacy of our campaigns. I believe that our focus on last-click conversions could be significantly damaging our marketing, but not in the way you think. This isn’t about attribution, after all.

As someone who’s worked in paid media for over a decade, I know that one of its biggest attractions is measurability – the way we know exactly what return we generate and can optimise to further increase it. However, one of the biggest flaws is the focus on last-click – which we know can lead to more of a focus on bottom-of-the-funnel activity, rather than looking at the top of the funnel and the initial interactions that customers make. We see this at a basic level in the performance of brand vs non-brand keywords and the sometimes poorly perceived value of Display campaigns.

While last-click and attribution are definitely part of the problem here, I’d like to suggest that our quest for ROI can also make things worse in some instances. Let me explain.

The Wrong KPIs

Let’s say that you’re running a Display Prospecting campaign. That sits pretty squarely in the top of the marketing funnel – most likely in the Awareness/Research stages.

Why The Way You Track Conversions Could Be Damaging Your Campaigns - Arianne Donoghue, Epiphany

Ultimately, what is the goal of a prospecting campaign? Eventually, we want it to drive sales/revenue, but this can take a long time – sometimes well beyond the scope of a regular 30 or 90-day cookie window. This is complicated further by the need for robust impression tracking in Analytics to understand when a sale has been driven.

However, if we really think about it, the goal of the campaign, particularly in the short to medium-term, is to find new users who are unfamiliar with your brand and bring them to the website for the very first time. Once this is done, you could argue that prospecting has done its job and it’s now over to Retargeting and Paid Search to get that user to the point of conversion. Yet, rather than assess this campaign’s success on how many new visitors it drove, we use the KPI of our end-goal conversion.

Not Enough Conversions

Another instance where the approach can cause problems is in optimising Paid Search campaigns. Often, marketers may be trying to optimise their paid search campaigns without enough conversion data to make reliable bidding decisions.

This issue is more prevalent with non-brand keywords, which are less likely to drive last-click sales anyway. It doesn’t mean the keywords are adding no value – in fact, we know that if we paused these terms, we’d probably be losing conversions further down the line.

The Solution

How do we fix this? I believe the solution is to have a greater focus on micro conversions when it’s appropriate to do so.

What are micro conversions?

“Micro conversions are activities that users frequently engage in before purchasing. Sites commonly have several kinds of micro conversions, e.g. email sign-up, created account, PDF download, extensive site browsing”

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2665210?hl=en

The value of micro conversions is also something Avinash Kaushik wrote about extensively almost ten years ago – I highly recommend reading this blog post he wrote on the subject.

Avinash believes, as do I, that looking at micro conversions in addition to macro ones allows us to better understand the behaviour of the distinct personas who use your site; it forces you to look at more of the multi-channel picture. When we ignore them, we’re saying that we don’t value the users who spend significant time on our websites, or those who signed up to receive emails, or even those who went to the trouble of creating an account. Just because they’re not ready to buy right now, it doesn’t mean they never will and we should look after and value these users.

Of course, with some of our marketing efforts we can create remarketing lists that specifically target these users to help bring them to the point of finally converting. But the credit for those macro conversions would go to the later activity – as it arguably should do, as the job of those channels is to drive conversion. But we would still be undervaluing the activity that drove the micro conversions because we just don’t value them as highly.

Attribution

I know I said this post wasn’t about attribution and it’s not – mostly. Thankfully the increased use of attribution and data-driven models, in particular, is helping to address this issue. Data-driven attribution looks at all of the micro conversions and assigns macro conversion value based on the part that every interaction played across the whole journey.

Still a challenge, however, is the fact that few businesses are set up to use data-driven attribution to help shape their use of channels and budgets. Analytics and Attribution solutions that offer impression tracking can be expensive and not all solutions offer a data-driven model to work with. What can you do if that’s the case?

Firstly, ensure you have goals set up to track your micro conversions and assign a value to these. Report on them as well as your macro conversions and consider using traffic and brand awareness increase as KPIs for certain types of Display and other upper-funnel activities. In the vast majority of businesses, most customers won’t convert on their very first interaction with a new brand – so our measurement and reporting should reflect that.

With more and more businesses understanding the need to look at the whole customer journey, I believe this approach enables us to better judge the success of our marketing campaigns, and the impact they have, at the right point of the customer journey in the right way.

*Feature image source: digitalmarketinginstitute.com

Author Biog: 

Arianne Donoghue, Epiphany - Official Chair at Paid & Biddable Leaders Masterclass, Leeds

Having started off her digital career client side over a decade ago, Arianne has worked for both agencies and brands in-house, specialising in search. She is now back agency side supporting on biddable media digital strategy. A regular on the conference scene, she’s also an editor and contributor at popular site State of Digital.

Arianne Donoghue is the Paid Media Development Manager at Epiphany, and will be leading a session on ‘Using Cross Channel Data to Help Your Campaigns Work Harder’ at next week’s Paid & Biddable Leaders Masterclass in Leeds.

 

Using Data To Knit Together a Single Customer View

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Using data to knit together a single customer view - Wojciech Bednarz at Greenlight Digital

In today’s guest post, Greenlight Digital’s Wojciech Bednarz, examines the key challenges facing marketers, as they strive to harness multi-channel data in an effort to develop a single customer view.

One of marketing’s greatest hurdles is fragmentation; customers are becoming increasingly difficult to define, and as brands are looking to improve segmentation and targeting more and more, it’s key for marketers to marry their data to create a single customer view.

But where to start when it comes to breaking down all this data to truly understand who their current and new customer is? Data management services are fast becoming the solution, combining interaction, descriptive and behavioural data to help brands understand what makes their customer tick. And with such valuable data comes great responsibility for marketers – they need to ensure that it’s used to improve customer experience and truly tap into their needs. Through this customer-centric approach, marketers can then impact brand perception and brand value as a means to support business growth in the long-term.

Making sense of all the data

Tapping into rich data resources which hold first-party data sounds like a no brainer, but surprisingly there are few marketers who capitalise on this resource. The reality is that many brands don’t know how to make sense of the data available on their audiences nor can they merge cross-channel data, making it difficult to create meaningful insights on how to optimise processes. This ultimately leads to a disjointed experience as well as inconsistent reports due to data coming from multiple channels.

There are many reasons for this, such as the technologies in play which are often siloed across separate departments. These include search, display, social media and more, which effectively results in fragmented insights on audiences and their behaviour. When it comes to reporting, Facebook Audiences differs from AdWords, as does Twitter from Display, so aligning data is inevitably overwhelming and incredibly difficult. And that’s not even the end of it – there’s also an analytics layer of technology which reports behaviour on the site, user engagement and source to name a few.

This is all well and good, but none of the above – apart from social media channels due to their audience-driven nature – offer more insights into who the customers are, their interests or how they spend their free time.

The most reasonable thing a marketer can do is to try to get a channel and technology agnostic data management platform (DMP) which can take audience science to the next level. This opens up new possibilities, bringing customer data from all channels to unprecedented granularity and building a fuller picture of who they are, what channels they engage with and what their demographic characteristics are. The most important aspect of this technology is that marketers can immediately act on the findings and help optimise all aspects of digital marketing campaigns on the fly.

Capturing the cross-channel experience

With increasing usage of mobile devices in the last couple of years, cross-channel marketing strategy has become the holy grail for many digital marketers who are trying to figure out the best way to approach this conundrum. While more than three devices per user is already complicated, it seems 2017 will bring even more complexity to the world of multiple interfaces per user reality, as it’s not only screens marketers need to consider, but also the growing universe of IoT devices, such as smartwatches and voice-controlled devices such as Amazon Echo.

In fact, Google is predicting that in the next two years, a third of searches will be initiated by voice. On top of IoT, VR is beginning to make waves, alongside the growing capabilities of AI, all of which will drastically change how people consume media and, thus, behave on devices.

With consumer technology moving so quickly, so does the technology digital marketers can use to understand them. The data management solutions are becoming more agnostic and can pick up any signal with the ability to stitch together information from other devices based on machine learning to determine if they belong to one person or many. For example, Greenlight’s Data Management Platform allows data collection across devices and interfaces to process it all as one user ID. This has tremendous implications for ensuring that marketing efforts deliver the best possible experience for customers. Being able to identify the ownership of devices with more confidence will allow for more precise messaging, and thus more effective campaigns, leading to better CTRs, lower costs and better ROI for clients.

Data-driven marketing is here to stay, and will become a standard modus operandi in the foreseeable future, particularly with the increasing usage of AI and machine learning. This will result in a higher degree of automation of marketing activity and a greater focus on data and its interpretation, elements which will be key factors of success for brands going forward.

*If you’d like to learn more about this topic, you can catch-up with Wojciech at the Data & Insight Leaders Masterclass in Manchester, where he’ll be delivering a session on –  Joined-Up Data to Deliver a ‘Single Customer View’

Author Biog:

Wojciech Bednarz, Greenlight Digital - Data & Insight Leaders Masterclass, Manchester

Wojciech has over six years of experience in digital marketing, four of which he has served at Greenlight. During his career at Greenlight, he’s worked on various international clients such as RS Components and Nespresso alongside others. He joined as part of the Client Services team, where he was responsible for delivery of SEO, paid search and display activation campaigns.

He was particularly focused on data-driven strategies which involved advanced analytics, data modelling techniques and manipulating large data sets. In his current role as Data & Insights Senior Strategy Manager, Wojciech is responsible for advancing Greenlight’s Data Science & Audience Insights department, which involves managing the implementation of the DMP technology across the agency to deliver cutting edge audience insights, data-driven attribution models and advanced activation strategies through data analysis.

Spotlight: Optimise your Site for the Most Important Local SEO Ranking Signals

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In today’s guest post, Bubblegum Search’s Matt Cayless, shares his ‘Top Five’ SEO tips for improving Google local ranking performance.

Google search is constantly changing, but in 2016 and beyond we’re seeing some significant and challenging changes taking place for local search in particular. Is your local business prepared?

What is local SEO?
Local SEO is the process of optimising your online presence to increase visibility to local customers. For businesses that operate in specific areas only or who have bricks and mortar premises, local SEO is an incredibly valuable method for promoting their services. From restaurants and hairdressers to plumbers and lawyers, local SEO can help a huge variety of industries to tap into their local demographic.

What’s changed in local SEO ranking factors for 2016?
Until 2016, local SEO offered huge potential for businesses looking to draw in business from local search users because their sites were easily distinguishable from non-local organic listings in the SERPs. However, in 2015 Google changed the way it presents local search by reducing the number of local listings displayed.

This means that local businesses have to seriously amp up their local SEO efforts to increase the chances of being listed in the pack of top 3 local results. Although search users can click “More places” for more local results, the reality is that this extra click simply reduces visibility for businesses who haven’t made it into the local pack.

Optimise your Site for the Most Important Local SEO Ranking Signals - Matt Cayless

Not only that, but Google has also started to include ads in the “More places” results, which means that businesses relying on organic ranking have paid listings to compete with.

Our top five local SEO tips to improve Google local ranking
To maximise your chances of local SEO success, you need to pay attention to the leading ranking signals for local search – these five essential tips are a great way to get started.

1. Nail on-page signals by thinking of potential customers
Although there are some technical aspects to getting your on-page local SEO right, the most important thing you can do is craft content that provides all the information your potential customers need to choose your business. This will tell Google how relevant your website is. There are two key areas for on-page local SEO ranking signals: geography and services. You need to be clear what services you have on offer, and where you can provide them.

Aside from meta data, headers, images and quality content which are essential signals for all SEO, you should try to include the following on each of your web pages:

• Title tags which include your service, location and brand along with relevant keywords
• Google map showing your location
• NAP (name, address and phone number), preferably with Schema markup so that Google can immediately identify your contact information
• Testimonials, accreditations and external reviews to show credibility
• A site structure which makes sense, particularly if you cover multiple areas or have several offices, for example, www.domain.com/areas/county-1/

2. Create a Google My Business page
A My Business page helps you to claim your brand and address and reinforces your services and locations. It is crucial for local SEO success, so be sure to set up and verify yours ASAP. You can optimise it by:

• Keeping your NAP accurate and up to date, along with your web address.
• Choosing the right categories for your business to ensure you show up for relevant searches – try Googling local competitors to find the most appropriate category.
• Writing a compelling business description which sums up your services without worrying too much about keywords, which could be detrimental.
• Getting a minimum of five reviews, and making sure to reply (politely!) to all, even if they’re negative.

3. Build citations and be consistent
To assess your geographical relevance, Google likes to validate the information on your website and My Business page with information from around the web. The first thing to do is ensure your NAP is consistent everywhere, including on your social pages – even a little discrepancy like using a phone number with the area code in some places and without the area code in others can reduce the validity of your business information. Be sure to always use the same business name, too, so if you tend to switch between something like “Cake 4 U” and “Cake For You”, choose one and stick to it across the entire web. You should be just as consistent whenever you build new citations, too.

What is citation building? It’s the process of building a series of mentions of your business information on other websites. Note that this is very different than link building; links to your website aren’t always necessary when building citations, providing that your NAP information is correct and consistent. Citations basically help Google to validate your business name and location, so the more you can get from well-established and reputable sources, the better. Start with directories like yell.com or your local chamber of commerce, and use a local citation finder like BrightLocal to find more citation opportunities.

4. Get reviews
When you get reviews on your Google My Business page, your listing in the SERPs will be given a star rating that will definitely help you stand out amongst the competition. It’s unclear whether reviews affect the actual positioning of URLs in the SERP, or if they simply help to highlight listings and drive click-throughs; most likely it’s a combination of both. Either way, reviews are vital for local SEO success, so you need to know how to improve Google reviews and make the most of them.

First things first – get the reviews coming in. The best way to do this is to ask your customers for them. You could include a link to your My Business page in invoice emails, or display information on how to leave a review on a menu or business card. Be sure to engage with your reviewers too to prove that you’re acknowledging feedback properly. Respond to both good and bad reviews, taking time with the bad ones to apologise and deal with the customer’s complaints. Reviews showcase your customer service skills as well as endorse your business, and the way you deal with negativity says a lot about your service, so don’t panic about less than perfect ratings – just work on putting things right.

5. Use relevant geographic keywords
It’s natural that if you operate within a specific location you’ll talk about it in your web content, so be sure to include geographic keywords into your site. However, as with all types of keyword optimisation, don’t be tempted to cram them. A good strategy is to include your NAP on every web page so that your location is naturally mentioned (be sure to mark it up with Schema), then add extra mentions of the location sparingly throughout your content.

When researching your keywords, be sure to use tools that allow you to filter by location and category, like Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends both do. Look for long-tail keywords that are as relevant as possible to your business’s location and service offering, and be sure to create content around them that is genuinely relevant to the query.

If you’d like to contribute a guest post, we’d love to hear from you.

Author Biog:

Optimise your site for the most important local SEO ranking signals - Matt Cayless

Matt Cayless is the Director of Strategy at Bubblegum Search an SEO & Content Marketing Agency. He is an expert in search engine optimisation having worked on campaigns for some of the world’s biggest brands. When he’s not chasing the Google algorithms he enjoys training for marathons while remaining fearful of carbohydrates.

Keyword Clusters: Revealing Profitable SEO Opportunities

John McCambley Leave a comment
Keyword Clusters: Revealing Profitable SEO Opportunities

In today’s guest post, Blueclaw’s Digital Strategy Manager Sam Raife, outlines the need for greater focus on keyword clusters, when it comes to developing an effective SEO strategy.

All of the team from Blueclaw loved being part of last month’s Search Masterclass. It was a great venue and an event that was filled with digital marketing leaders from a whole host of different backgrounds.

However, even with all this professional diversity, one of the issues that came up time and again was the need for SEO leaders to have a greater input on strategy, and the problematic focus on individual rankings as the dominant (or only) measure of SEO success.

The problem with using rankings as a measurement KPI is that people tend to focus on the success or failure of a single ranking.

Taking a straightforward, mainstream product, let’s consider the keyword “Blinds”.

This keyword is responsible for 90,500 searches a month in the UK according to SEMrush. That is a lot of searches.

It is easy to see why anybody would get fixated with that. Move me to position 1 for this and we get more sales. So far so simple – but there’s more to the story.

Moving from Keywords, to Keyword Clusters

As an SEO professional, you know that the term “Blinds” is important, but you also know that the sum of the search volume of other related phrases such as “Roman Blinds”, “Window Blinds” and “Roller Blinds” has a combined total search volume much larger than that of just “Blinds”,

More than this, you know that more specific terms such as these are a good buying signal, and so visitors who arrive on the site from these keywords are more likely to convert.

This is a basic example, and one that most people will be able to understand, but what about when you consider FAQs, or long-tail phrases that are 5+ words that still have valuable search volume?

Making the case for looking beyond single keywords requires a change the focus and knowing you have a way of building content that will help capture a greater spread of terms and traffic.

Creating Content to Target Keywords Clusters

Planning out content to accommodate long tail keyword clusters can be done by following a straightforward process:

  1. Document the core topics, issues, queries and problems that your target customers might relate to your product or service.
  2. Compile each of these topics into grouped areas of similarity.
  3. Expand the central topics using keyword research from the tools you are most comfortable using.
  4. Use competitor research and some internal soul-searching to establish the content that you are most effective at producing for each keyword cluster.
  5. Create and write the best possible content you can, aligned to keyword clusters.

This is of course an abbreviated overview of a task that can be challenging – we all know companies often struggle to produce great content on an effective schedule for SEO or any other purpose.

Making the justification that these long tail phrases are just as if not more important as part of a genuinely strategic SEO and content plan than a main target keyword can be a challenge – but there are tools and approaches that can help.

Data-driven Strategy with The SEO’s Pro’s Friend: Excel

The number of analytical tools and platforms available to SEO professionals today is getting higher by the day but one of the best (though least pretty) is found on pretty much every desktop – Excel.

Combining analysis from tools like SEMrush and aHrefs with the long-established (though powerful) functions of Excel is a winning way to ground your keyword strategy.

Pivot tables in particular are an effective way to explore the cumulative impact of your target keywords, opening up scope to plan using clusters of keywords rather than individual ‘vanity’ keywords

To adopt this approach yourself, we have built an Excel tool that SEO professionals and marketers can use, based on a simple but powerful combination of pivot tables and a SEMrush csv.

Just follow the instructions on the spreadsheet, paste your data and hit refresh. The template will help you do the analysis detailed above, and help build the case for targeting keyword clusters – not individual keywords.

Click here to get the Keyword Cluster Tool

The fact is, small individual ranking movements don’t matter if you are making regular progress to increase the average position of these pages and the rankings associated with them across a valuable cluster of keywords

Of course, if you have any questions about SEO, how to use SEMrush or the tool, read more here or write to us at contact@blueclaw.co.uk and we’ll be happy to help. Any and all feedback appreciated!

Author Biog

Sam Raife - Blueclaw

Sam Raife heads up the ‘Offsite Strategy Team’ at Blueclaw. In his role, Sam supports and develops campaign strategies that deliver tangible uplifts in rankings, traffic and revenue for his clients.