Authority Marketing and Internet Marketing Advice

Marketing tips based on 20 years of experience, working with hundreds of businesses, by McDougall Interactive.

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Weekly digital marketing tips and news: Rankbrain, New Google patent, Blab

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Rank Brain
photo credit: Thirller via photopin (license)

I can hardly contain myself this cool Halloween morning as I filter the week’s news and tips. It’s scary how much great new stuff is happening in the word of online marketing. Below are some tricks and treats that will hopefully keep you on the edge of your seat like an 11 year old at a horror flick double feature.

Google Artificial Intelligence is here

Google RankBrain is used for vague or unique questions Google has not previously seen.

“According to Google, brand new queries make up to 15% of all searches a day and as Search Engine Land pointed out, Google processes 3bn searches per day, which means that 450m per day are entirely unique in nature.” Says Christopher Ratcliff of Search Engine Watch

Is this Skynet from the Terminator for search or a natural progression of using data and machine learning to improve our lives?

Google Embraces Podcasting

The Google Play Store will soon have a podcast portal. Podcasting is booming and is here to stay. Using transcripts of your podcasts can be a great way to add Google Hummingbird friendly text content to your site.

Interviewing experts helps you be seen as an expert yourself and generate links. Doing a weekly show and promoting it via social media, email and paid social ads, as a well as encouraging subscribers and reviews, can help your podcast go from good to great.

Penguin Real-Time

Looks like Google is continuing to say Penguin Real-Time updates will happen by the end of the year. If you are stuck in Penguin purgatory from bad links, this is great news.

2015 trends in digital marketing

Check out this cool infographic about the trends in digital marketing.

Mobile and video are considered “the future of marketing” and Facebook ad spends dwarfs others.

Rank Brain Future Trends

Facebook is supposedly a waste of time yet dominates social ad spend

Copyblogger ditched their Facebook page since it didn’t do enough for them compared to the effort to manage it and this article shows how Facebook marketing could be a waste of time.

While our agency is less Facebook obsessed than many internet marketing experts, I do concede it’s the first place we go – along with LinkedIn – to buy sponsored posts. What do you think, given the infographic above shows Facebook raining supreme and articles like this, show how other networks may give you better engagement and ROI with certain demographics?

Another cool source of weekly marketing news

I love weekly roundups and here is another roundup of online marketing news from Social Media Examiner.

Google Patent: Google Authoritative Rank

Bill Slawski of SEO by the Sea wrote a great post recently about a new Google Authoritative Rank patent and quoted the following excerpt.

“An authoritative user is a user of one or more computer-implemented services (e.g., a social networking service) that has been determined to be authoritative (e.g., an expert) on one or more topics that can be associated with one or more queries”

The patent is titled: Showing prominent users for information retrieval requests

Bill gave an example of a phrase being tied to an author, which is essentially what this patent does. When we think of “Green eggs and ham” we think of Dr Suess or the author Ted Geisel.

Maybe we need a SeussRank to identify the silliest people?

This patent no longer makes Google+ a necessary part of their process of identifying authors, which is an interesting change.

Clearly we have not seen the end of Google tracking authors as a major part of why pages rank.

Cool digital marketing tools

Blab

By definition, to Blab is to “reveal secrets by indiscreet talk”. That sorta makes this new tool even more sexy. Mashable says Blab video chat app is like Periscope for groups of friends.

I found a nice Blab chat with Bill Slawski of SEO by the sea to get me started researching the usefulness of the tool and I was pleasantly surprised.

Bulk web page word count checker

If you had not heard, search metrics in their ranking factors study says that the length of the average ranking inner page of a website went from just over 900 words in 2014 to 1,140 words in 2015.

Here is a nifty bulk web page word count checker. Throw in the top ten ranking pages for one of your most desired search terms and see how long the pages are that do well and test emulating that, instead of merely listening to a committee say how long your pages should be. That is if rankings are important to you…

BuzzSumo Content Alerts

Set up alerts for keywords, authors and domains using BuzzSumo Content Alerts and keep on top of new and trending content.

Entrepreneurs take note: Dell XPS 12/13/15 laptops

I have been looking for the last year for the ultimate Ultrabook.  I found what I want and just need to decide on either the XPS 13 with 16 GB of ram or the tablet / convertible style XPS 12 with a max of 8 GB ram.

Conclusion

Keeping up with the fast pace of online marketing can be scary but the rewards are great. The tools and news above can help save you time and get right down to business with what is important.

No amount of digital fairy dust can save you in a world where you need to keep it real and show off expertise. Rely on ghastly black hat techniques and your marketing will be as empty as a picture of ghosts eating marshmallows in a snowstorm.

Dissecting Bad Copy: 5 Types of Copy that Kill Conversion and Sales

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You spent a day writing copy for your website, sales letter, or landing page. You scrutinized everything from the headline, down to every single word on that page.

But after it went live… visitors are bouncing. No one’s clicking the links! They’re ignoring the strategically placed CTAs (call to action) in your copy. You didn’t get the sales you assumed, or the leads you were waiting for.

What happened?

You’re confused and disappointed. What just happened?

Is it possible that your copywriting is that bad?

Fancy Words and Clever Lines aren’t Enough

Terrible copy destroys a website’s authority and potential for profit. No matter how catchy it sounds to you, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Either you tweak it, or trash the whole thing and start over.

But before that, you need to know what went wrong in the first place. So here’s a list of common copywriting mistakes and how to improve them.

  1. Too many Adjectives and Adverbs
Bad Copy - Too Many Adjectives
(From Exclusiveniches.com)

“Get Ready To Discover Killer Copywriting Secrets To Supercharge Your Marketing And Multiply Your Profits In a Flash, Guaranteed”

That’s one lengthy headline packed with two claims, one guarantee, two descriptive phrases, and one superlative adjective.  And that’s just the main headline. Don’t even get me started on the introduction and subheads.

There’s nothing wrong with adjectives and adverbs per se. They help readers imagine what you’re trying to say. But that’s only true for some descriptors. Some paint pictures, others are just meaningless, feel-good words.

Consider the phrase “Great Copywriting will Multiply Your Profits,” what does ‘great’ mean in that sentence, exactly? With the advent of online marketing and online businesses, words like great, breakthrough, amazing, innovative, supercharge, unique, have lost their meaning.

You know what I’m talking about, right? A few years ago, people were intrigued when they read about an ‘innovative” product. Now? All you get is an eye-roll coupled with an “I’ve seen that before” expression.

Copywriting Solution:

  • If the adjective doesn’t change or improve the meaning of a sentence, cut it.
  • Choose sensory adjectives. For instance, ‘foul’ and ‘stinky’ convey a clearer meaning than ‘bad’ or ‘terrible.’
  • Omit ‘very’ and other superlatives, especially if it’s used in conjunction with another adjective already in its superlative (highest or lowest) form. For instance, “one of a kind unique dress” is redundant. It’s either unique or one of a kind, not both.
  • Kill the “ly” family whenever possible (adorably, helpfully, convincingly, amazingly)
  • Every time you’re tempted to write empty descriptors like ‘high quality’ or ‘top notch,’ replace it with relevant descriptors for your product or industry. For example, instead of “high quality vaults,” use “burglar proof vaults” or “military grade vaults.”

Below is an example of adjective usage done well from Green and Black’s Organic. Note their use of sensory adjectives like ‘zesty’ and ‘tang’.

Writing for the Web Adjectives That Work
(From Green and Black’s Organic)
  1. Me, Me, Me Web Copy
Bad Website Writing Company Centric Copy
(From Canadian Retail Solutions)

The headline “POS Software Systems for Canadian Retailers” only identifies their target market, not much else. The follow up “Our Solutions. Your Success.” is too vague. After that, the first bullet point is wasted on an empty brag, “Industry Leading POS technology.” 

Here’s another example. When you go to Continuumfinancial.net, you’re immediately directed to a landing page that reads more like about us page copy. Yes, they want you to get in touch with them (see sidebar), but the copy doesn’t give you enough reason to.

Bad Website Copy Company Centric

 

 

I know you’re passionate about your cause, team, and the exciting things happening in your business. But that doesn’t mean other people are.

When someone visits your website or reads your sales letter, they’re not interested in you specifically. They care about what you can do for them.  Can you help them lose weight, earn more money, or find their soul mate?

Can you help solve their annoying problems? Can you fulfill their deepest desires? That’s what they want to know.

Copywriting Solution:

Leave off the company history ‘til you explain what’s in it for them, and why they should choose you in the first place. Keep the ‘about me’ part short.

Build credibility instead through testimonials, certificates, awards or press mentions. At least those things don’t read like empty brags.

  1. Lame Call to Action (CTA)
Writing For The Web Bad CTA
(From Rareloop)

Really, “Get to know us”? Now why would I want to do that? They haven’t given me enough reason to find out more.

The words ‘expert,’ ‘bespoke,’ and ‘passionate’ didn’t convey their message. These are all fluffy adjectives that don’t convey any value or meaning to the reader. What kind of apps do they make? Do they make ecommerce sites, membership sites, or author websites?

Unfortunately, the CTA in many web and sales copy are weak. It’s as if the copywriter got tired of writing and went with the first CTA that came to mind.

Solution:

In copywriting, the triggers are your CTAs, while structure is the hierarchy, in case you have more than one CTA. In the example above, the first CTA is “Get to know us” followed by a subtle ‘call us’ (implied through their phone number) and ‘email us.’

Don’t assume people will do what you want them to after reading the copy. No, our brains are programmed to look for structure and prompts. So after writing the copy, your next job is to select which CTA to prioritize then tie it to the correct part of the copy. Your priority CTA depends on your goal, whether that’s to get a lead, an email subscriber, a purchase or even  simply to view your services page.

Adding a subhead or even just a few extra words to the CTA boosts its conversion power:

  • “Order now and get free 2-day shipping”
  • “Get a free quote in 24-hours”
  • “Learn how Six-Figure Copywriters Get Clients”
  • “60-day Money-Back Guarantee, No Questions Asked”
  • “The Pre-launch 30% Discount Expires in 72 Hours”
  1. “Ummm… What?” Copy (Ambiguous Copy Posing More Questions than Answers)
Bad Website Text Vague Scammy
(From Ultimate Capture Pages)

You can’t see it right now but I’m scratching my head trying to understand the webpage shown above.  Not to be picky, but everything in this page is confusing:

  • What ‘massive new market’ are they referring to?
  • What do they mean by ‘no end in sight’?
  • Does ‘entertainment market’ refer to funny cat videos, audio books, podcasts, or something else entirely?
  • How can it save me money?
  • What exactly are they showing me in the ‘tour’? Is this software, membership site, or a buy & sell marketplace?

Sometimes, you read something ‘til the end and still don’t know what in the world is happening. This kind of copywriting is easy to spot because they all have one thing in common — they’re vague, confusing and a tad scammy looking.

Copywriting Solution:

Have someone unfamiliar with your business read the copy. If something isn’t clear to them, revise it. If it’s still ambiguous after the revision, explain it to someone else and have them repeat it back to you in their own words. Use their version as inspiration for revising that tricky part.

  1. Asking for Money Too Soon
Bad Copy Purchase Too Soon Welcome Mat
(From Best Bonus)

Yes, the screenshot above is a welcome mat already presenting a ‘limited time offer!’ The giddy ‘buy me now’ excitement in this copy is too strong for my taste.

Granted, the website where I found this copy compiles different courses, tools, software, and other offers for web marketers, so it’s possible they just compiled the marketing copy from the product’s creator.

Immediately after the welcome mat, there’s a short description comprised of a credibility statement (“4+ years and 14k marketers worth of feedback”) and an explanation of the offer (“lifetime access’ plus 15% off”), then it’s off to the payment options.

Bad Copy Purchase Too Soon Payment Options

Here’s another example from a different website. After a 3-sentence paragraph with nothing but claims and a video, the first CTA you’ll see is to call them.

Bad Copy Purchase Too Soon CTA Immediately

Immediately after that, you’ll see the generic ‘Greetings’ then it’s off to ‘you know you want this’ greed busting copy, and another CTA. So far, they’ve asked me to call and ‘Get Started’ but I’m still not sure who they are and how their product works. And I watched the video!

Bad Copy Purchase Too Soon 1 CTA After Another

Copywriting Solution:

Clearly, a lot of people have heard of this plugin. But because of the 40K+ plugins in WordPress, I think it’s dangerous to assume that everyone already knows what this plugin does too early in the copy.

Yes, there’s a demo video but it’s below the payment options. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Better yet, shouldn’t the payment option be further down the copy, after the guarantees and testimonials? Without testing, perhaps we will never know but starting with some trust building is a good place to begin.

Review Your Website and Sales Copy Now 

Editing and critiquing your own work is hard. It’s hard to accept that the words you struggled to write need to be revised, I know.  But revisions and split tests are a crucial part of writing effective copy.  It gets easier with more practice though.

Now it’s your turn. Check your landing page or one of your sales letters for any of these copywriting blunders.

 

How an Editorial Calendar Builds Your Reputation as a Thought Leader

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According to Content Marketing Institute’s study of B2B firms, “60% of B2Bs with a documented content marketing strategy consider their organization to be effective.”

While an editorial calendar is hardly a ‘strategy,’ it is an essential part of one. It’s the preferred documented roadmap of many publications that rely on content for their marketing and lead-generation.

Joel Kurtzman, previous editor of Harvard Business Review, is known for using an editorial calendar to establish thought leadership in organizations he’s worked with.

But how can you, an SMB owner, benefit from an editorial calendar? You might think it’s only useful for major magazines and Fortune 500 companies with big budgets, but it’s hardly the case.

Here’s How Your Reputation and Business will Benefit from Having an Editorial Calendar:

  1. Strategic Approach

Whether you’re new in content marketing, or have been running your blog for a few years, you’ve probably created audience personas and categories for your blog. You use this information in determining what to publish on your site.

Be honest though, have you ever deviated — or forgotten — these guidelines? How often have you written something, only to realize later on that it doesn’t serve your target audience?

Do you sometimes find yourself rambling, writing one random ‘good idea’ after another without an obvious theme or story arc?

Editorial calendars keep you in line with your content marketing strategy, ensuring you publish different pieces that serve your target personas, not just one of them.  For example, one of Darren Rowse’s personas for his photography blog is “Grace” an imaginary mom who uses her camera mostly to take pictures of her children. With that persona as a guide, he has several posts catered to that audience.

Strategic Approach

  1. A Bird’s Eye View of Your Website’s Blogging Efforts

Editorial calendars spanning a month or a quarter gives you a big picture look at your blog’s content schedule, so you can easily adjust it to fit your business’s goals and other relevant events.

Editorial calendars can be used for:

  • Planning recurring features, such as TED’s summer reading list that started in 2013.

    Planning Recurring Features
    (Photo from TED)
  • Plan a series of articles on a specific theme, such as Tuts+ series on Buying and Running a Successful Franchise
  • Brainstorm story ideas in advance to take advantage of press opportunities during popular industry related events, annual conferences, event, or holidays.
  • Plan promotional and educational content for product launches, seasonal sales, promotions, and other corporate milestones. Marking these days ahead of time allows you to create content in advance.
Ramit Sethi’s Delicious account
(Screenshot from Ramit Sethi’s Delicious account, showing an article tagged for future use in his newsletter)
  1. Maximize Promotion Opportunities through Content Repurposing

Editorial calendars aren’t just for planning and organizing topic ideas. It’s also a gold mine of ideas and digital assets for content repurposing.  Doing this squeezes more mileage from your content, while extending your reach via new platforms.

Here’s how other bloggers take advantage of already published content:

  • Promote old blog posts in your social media feed, again.
  • Buffer’s Post on 27 Copywriting Formulas turned into a Slideshare with The 10 Best Copywriting Formulas. They didn’t convert everything into slides, but its evident the content came from the first blog post.
    Blog Post
    (blog post)

    Slideshare
    (Slideshare)

As you can see from the stats, the added reach of the Slideshare isn’t too shabby for a repurposed article.

Slideshare Stats

  1. More Blog Posts = More Traffic and Leads

According to Hubspot’s new benchmark data, out of 13,500 customers surveyed, those that published 16 or more blog posts get about 3.5x more traffic than other companies that only published up to 4 times a month.

And it’s not just traffic, those publishing 16 or more blog posts a month get 4.5x more leads compared to others that only publish about 4 posts a month.

Hubspot Chart
(Photo from Hubspot)

If you don’t have a big team of writers, or you’re the sole writer for your website, 16 blog posts a month will be a challenge without an editorial calendar. It’s easy to fall of schedule without a definite plan showing you exactly what to write about and when it’s due for publishing.

  1. More Time to Focus on Research and Quality Writing

How often have you searched for relevant information right before you start writing? How often have you relied on topic generators because you can’t come up with something fresh?

An editorial calendar filled with broad categories and rough story ideas in advance gives you the freedom to dedicate more time into researching and writing each article. Instead of frantically thinking about what to write, you can spend time finding relevant statistics, case studies, examples and doing interviews.

Check out this post on How Attorneys can Use Infographics for Legal Marketing with more than 10 infographic examples — all specific to the target audience, law firms and legal service providers. You’ll have a hard time coming up with spot-on examples like the one in that post without ample research time.

  1. Editorial Calendars Make Managing Multiple Contributors a Breeze

Many business blogs have multiple contributors. Often, the CEO is a thought leader in the business’s market, the CMO writes about the company’s marketing efforts, and individual staff members write about the goings on in their department.  Even if everyone writes on a different beat, there’s still a chance for two contributors to write on very similar topics. An editorial calendar prevents this.

Aside from that, an editorial calendar ensures that content is published in a well-spaced timeline, instead of chunked in certain days with glaring gaps of inactivity on busy weeks.

But Plans can Change

Of course they can! Yes, editorial calendars can be a huge waste of time if you end up not using it because of a scrapped product idea, business model changes, or even a change in your job description. But that doesn’t mean you have to trash the whole plan. You can always adjust it to reflect the changes in your goals and plans.

Anticipate Changes

Having a well-planned editorial calendar will help you establish a reputation as a thought leader in your industry. But only if you actually take the time to dive deep into your website’s analytics to see which topics are worth focusing on in your next editorial calendars. You can’t expect to write about the same themes over and over, right?

Lead your brand. Prepare to re-evaluate your blog’s general focus, topics and keywords as your market dictates it.

Weekly favorite digital marketing tips: Real-Time Penguin, Content ROI, Authority Summit

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It has been a fast moving start to the fall and we are seeing a lot of new business activity and excitement for content focused campaigns. Fixing technical SEO and conversion issues are also keeping us busy. Here are a few recent favorite finds / trends.

  1. Google to update its Penguin algorithm to perform in real time

This means that instead of waiting every six months or a year for your disavow link cleanup to work, you should now be able to see results perhaps instantaneously. This is HUGE news for people suffering from Penguin penalties.

Real Time Goole Penguin

  1. How Content Marketing Impacts Your Bottom Line [Infographic]

Content marketing can increase top of the funnel traffic, build trust, and generate leads. Hubspot shares tips on making content work harder to improve your bottom line, such as prioritizing both on-site and off-site content as well as being patient.

Content Marketing Infographic Hubspot

  1. 5 Million Active Advertisers on Facebook and TV-Like Ad Buying

Facebook’s move to be more pay to play is apparently working.  Lots of new ad formats to check out. Our agency is doing more and more with paid content promotion with Facebook, LinkedIn and more. I expect this trend to continue and the cost to rise, perhaps a little bit like Google paid ads did.

  1. Twitter Cuts 336 Jobs and Jack Dorsey is back as CEO

Twitter is going through growing pains and it will be interesting to see what founder Jack Dorsey can do to bring it into its second act. @realdonaltrump  gained 160k followers during the rival democratic debate recently, showing how engrained Twitter is in the media and politics but it’s not for everyone. Let’s hope things turn out well and that it can balance organic and pay to play.

  1. Authority Marketing Summit November 11-12 – Charleston SC

Dan Kennedy and Adam Witty of Advantage Media Group are hosting what sounds like an amazing conference called the Authority Marketing Summit.

Topics include:

  • Advanced Strategies for Speaking to Influence and Speaking to Sell
  • Advanced Strategies for Writing and Publishing
  • Book Marketing Blueprint

Conclusion

I had a great time speaking at the Fuel Lines ad agency new business conference last week and learned so much from the many amazing speakers and marketing experts there. Website and content marketing are going through big changes and as an authority, it’s critical to keep on top of the trends.

9 ways marketing experts position and promote their agencies

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Marketing Experts

Inspiration from the Fuel Lines ad agency new business conference in Nashville

They say that plumbers don’t always fix their own leaky pipes and the same is often true for marketing companies.

A few years ago I hired Michael Gass of Fuel Lines to help us further refine our positioning as a digital marketing agency and to help us stop the leaks in our own marketing.

He flew up from Alabama and brought his Southern charm and buckets full of wisdom with him.

After a long successful career in business development, Michael started his own business specializing in helping advertising agencies get more leads and sales. He has worked with over 200 agencies worldwide and I just spoke at his insightful ad agency conference in Nashville.

If you have ever wondered if specializing in a niche or focusing on highly specific target markets could help your services business succeed, then you’re in for a real treat via the takeaways from this positioning and inbound marketing conference.

How to create a line out the door for your business

 

  1. Positioning and picking a niche and/or target market

If I had a dollar for every time I heard the words “Focus on a highly specific target market and you will have clients flocking to you and paying higher prices”, I could buy a 30 foot sport fishing boat.

Some people at the conference debated whether or not you should focus just on one target market versus having several segments but this was one of the main themes throughout the conference.

Advertising agencies certainly can have more than one target market but having more than three and/or not having specialized people to handle each of them can cause a problem for small to mid-size companies.

Mark Schneider of RSW/US at the recent HubSpot inbound marketing conference said that clients don’t expect you to work only in their industry but they do like to see about 30% or more of your team focusing on one vertical.

Lee McKnight Jr. of RSW/US at the Fuel Lines conference said that even if you don’t focus on a client’s target market, they say it’s critical you at least “own” something you are well known for.

Numerous speakers joked about how advertising agencies claim they are different by saying they are more creative, strategic and/or are better partners than their competition.

This was looked down upon as a weak value proposition across the board and is not enough to make you stand out in a very competitive field.

Owning your target market and/or niche has also been proven to consistently lead businesses and their “visible experts” to be called upon by the media for their specific expertise.

Everything gets easier when you narrow your focus.

  1. Blogging and developing consistent content for building authority

The other major high-level theme of the conference was that agencies should develop blogs either on their own website or on a separate very specific domain name, relating to just one industry or niche topic.

Michael’s philosophy is that its best if this blog is largely centered around one individual person as opposed to a brand or group effort.

Having a content driven website and blog focused on industry related keywords will help you quickly become the go to person in that category.

By putting the blog on a separate URL, you can experiment with this type of targeting without having to completely rebrand your main website.

One example is the Millennial Marketing blog by Jeff Fromm

Millennial Marketing blog

Another niche blog example is the Sheconony, written by Stephani Holland

Marketing to Women Blog

Jami Oetting from HubSpot, who writes The Agency Post, countered this in some ways because she likes to have all of the content on one website. Given HubSpot starts at $800 a month for the pro version, I only have it on my main agency site, so I have also felt the practical implications of this from a tracking and tool cost perspective.

Jami recently moved agencypost.com into the main HubSpot website and now has a better feel for tracking and leads coming from this content but it’s worth exploring both scenarios as you map out your strategy.

Just be careful not to have too many websites and blogs because I can tell you from experience it can be a real challenge to manage the process on numerous sites at once.

With that said, exploring, experimenting and even failing, is going to help you succeed in the long run. Doing nothing is definitely worse.

How often should I blog?

From a tactical perspective, Jami mentioned some recent HubSpot stats that show when companies blog 16+ times a month they get a significant increase in traffic.

Impact of Monthly Blog Post

In a 2015 post titled How Often Should Companies Blog?, Lindsay Kolowich of HubSpot explains the research in more detail:

“Companies that published 16+ blog posts per month got about 4.5X more leads than companies that published between 0 – 4 monthly posts.”

How long will it take for my blog to succeed?

Certainly starting with one blog post a month is better than nothing and it all depends on how quickly you want to see success.

One blog post a month will be enough to share this niche content with your target audience and can deeply improve your sales process but won’t be enough for a serious SEO effort.

400 blog posts was cited as a threshold where blogs reach a significant inflection point and several people discussed how it took one or two years for their blogs to take off.

In my presentation, I shared this analytics graphic from the wife of famous “SEO expert” Rand Fishkin, who only saw her blog have deep ranking success after two years of hard work.

Rand Fishkin Wife Blog

Should I write shorter blog posts or longer more in depth posts?

Michael Gass likes short posts and has gotten over a million views on 500 words posts but Jami from HubSpot says they do far better with 2,500 word posts. Searchmetrics, in their 2015 ranking factors study, recently revealed that the length of content that ranks well continues to increase – to over 1,100 words on average.

Check out more from Ginny Soskey / HubSpot on Quality vs. Quantity: A 6-Month Analysis of the Age-Old Blogging Debate.

In the end it will depend on your audience and goals but the trend for SEO and sharing is longer posts. Ideally include lots of detailed research, bullet points, images and or video while at the same time making it easy to read.

With over 150 million blogs out there, blogging for the sake of just having one is completely dead.

  1. Email marketing still dominates

Lee McKnight of RSW says that 57% of marketers find agencies via email.

Prospecting to potential new customers via email can be more productive than you would think given people’s saturated inboxes.

Capturing emails by using top of the funnel calls to action such as e-books was one of the top ways mentioned to build a quality list.

Another person mentioned using Datanyze to capture emails of people you find on LinkedIn.

Michael Gass prefers that the agencies he worked with use as simple a strategy as possible when starting an email Campaign.

Rather than crafting new content for your email marketing every month, he recommends simply putting the four most recent blog posts as snippets into an email with links to the full posts. This way you can get your monthly emails out consistently.

Check out the post on Copyblogger that compares the effectiveness of a fully crafted monthly email newsletter to what they call content notifications.

  1. Cold calling is dead but warm calling is not

While having an amazing blog that generates an overabundance of leads is the ideal, you may need to do some calling while you are building up to being a 100% inbound lead driven agency.

Lee McKnight from RSW/US said that a call is never the first step in the process.

The first step is preferably to send some thought leadership content such as an e-book or link to a blog post that you have created to the client. You can email them or mail them survey results, an info-graphic or whatever you think will inspire them to want to talk to you when you follow up with a phone call.

Nobody likes to get cold calls and it’s not exactly the favorite tactic of marketers at this conference but in reality most people still use this tactic, including HubSpot and Google!

If you are going to put cold calling into your mix while ramping up your blog, make sure to connect it to helpful industry specific content, so you’re not just annoying people.

  1. Social media marketing for amplifying your message

Social media doesn’t usually convert into leads like other tactics but it can be a great way to spread your content, position yourself as a thought leader and engage customers.

Michael Gass has over 100,000 Twitter followers across 2 Twitter accounts (personal and business) and says that it drives a ton of traffic to his website.

Paul Roetzer from PR 20/20 showed a survey slide, where the number one thing marketers were focused on was social. He mused at it and said that, as you can see, clients basically don’t know what works and or exactly what they want.

Social media marketing should not be the very first thing that most customers of an agency focus on unless they are in a very specific industry where social is dominant.

With that said, given the fact that so many marketing directors fixate on social media, it doesn’t position you well if your own social media stinks.

And while search engine optimization does not directly improve because of social media, most top ranking websites according to Searchmetrics also have considerable social activity.

Promoting your blog and content is next to impossible without the use of social media, so this category stands in reasonably high regard with the agency crowd.

Numerous people also mentioned how journalists take your Twitter and social activity very seriously.

Everybody agrees that Facebook is the big dog in general and that it’s great to put somewhat touchy-feely stuff on there to show the charitable and soft side of your agency but if you want leads as a services firm, then go to LinkedIn.

LinkedIn promoted content and using an advanced tool like LinkedIn Navigator can be great ways to enhance your LinkedIn strategy.

Both Michael Gass and Jami from HubSpot went into some detail about publishing on LinkedIn Pulse as a way to greatly expand the reach of your blog. They both appeared to take the approach of not worrying about duplicating content as long as you link back to your blog post after copying and pasting it into LinkedIn Pulse.

I have heard some other SEO expert’s saying that the preferred method is to put a few hundred word synopsis of your blog post into LinkedIn Pulse, so the content is original. There is certainly some debate about this and I would love to hear other people’s experiences.

  1. Clear calls to action

A common theme that Michael Gass sees with many of his ad agency clients is a lack of clear and simple calls to action.

At McDougall Interactive we have been guilty of having too many calls to action at times and other agencies don’t even have a top of the funnel call to action yet.

I know the feeling, as I am still working on our first e-book for Authority Marketing.

Michael and other speakers discussed the idea of adjusting calls to action on a regular basis to improve conversions.

Having relevant e-books at the end of a blog post can help significantly for lead generation.

  1. Sales psychology

One of my favorite takeaways was the idea of playing a bit of a chess game in the sales process.

Peter Levitan, author of  Buy This Book. Win More Advertising Pitches, made a very strong point around how agencies focus so much on solving the clients problem that they don’t bond around the problem itself. By doing this you might take down a pawn but lose the king.

Companies are much more focused on their own issue than they are on listening to you spout off ideas. It builds a better relationship to huddle around the problem first and empathize.

Bob Sanders of Sanders Consulting Group gave an amazing presentation which included his phenomenal system for creating chemistry through personality profiling.

Bob breaks human people types into four categories and helps you identify which type of people your prospects are. This helps you to mirror their activities and style, as well as create a better bond with them.

Which personality type are you?

Sales Psychology

Numerous people discussed the idea of building personas and understanding your customers in detail before going into a pitch. Private detective type of work to understand a prospect may sound creepy but it helps you bond with a prospect more quickly. LinkedIn is a great place to start this type of research.

Another consensus was around the idea of “stirring the hurt” or bringing the problem the customer is having to the forefront, in a way that creates a serious sense of urgency.

Customers can be so slow to get on board with getting things done that you need to make them painfully aware that their problem could get worse if they don’t work on the solution immediately.

  1. Improving your systems and processes along with deepening consistency

One thing that struck me very deeply after going to several conferences in the last month is just how smart so many marketers are and how organized they are about their systems.

Lee from RSW/US has an amazing template on their new business outreach system as well as sales email templates.

sales outreach roadmapPaul from PR 2020 has incredible spreadsheets such as the following goal tracking worksheet.

KPI Goals

Jeff Fromm the millennial marketing guy said to create a spreadsheet with 100% of all your prospects and give each of them a percentage score in terms of the likelihood of them signing up and a monetary value. And then he said to basically throw out anything with under a 50% score.

Michael Gass spoke in depth about creating a system of creating content and outlined the process for creating a blog posts, the different styles of posts you should create each month and systematic ways of promoting them.

HubSpot is famous for helping agencies to define the sales process and has numerous onboarding workflow charts and spreadsheets.

Another speaker mentioned having a one page brand strategy document or manifesto to keep all of your messaging consistent.

Michael Gass joked about how few agencies have a marketing plan for the own companies.

If you ever want to sell your company someday, having workflows and highly developed systems in place, not only makes your company function better but makes it more of a target to be purchased. In the meantime it helps you and your team to be happier and more successful.

Pier Levitan talked about creating a highly organized methodology for responding to RFPs and how you put your pitches together.

If you’re the kind of company that doesn’t spend the time to organize your systems, then it’s time to take a page out of these marketing experts playbook.

  1. Digital marketing tools and martech

Paul from PR 2020 mentioned the famous info-graphic by Scott Brickler on marketing technology tools and just how much software marketers need to work with these days.

Digital Marketing Tools

He discussed how chief marketing officers are now spending more money on technology than chief information officers!

Marketing is getting more complicated and if you are not aware of the tools that can help you save time, you’re behind the curve. Here are just a few of the tools that were mentioned:

HubSpot
SocialOomph
HootSuite
Datanyze
Automated Insights
The List

Conclusion

Whether you’re an advertising agency or any type of services company, specialization in terms of the tactics you employ and/or the target markets that you focus on are essential in today’s competitive climate.

Michael Gass in his closing keynote said that “there’s one thing that is consistent with experts and that is experts write.”

By specializing in having a blog that you can turn into e-books and an eventual book, you will be positioning yourself in a way that will allow you to have a red velvet rope policy and to only work with clients that you enjoy working with.

Are you working with only your ideal clients?

“McDougall Interactive puts on highly informative seminars which have helped us to not only learn internet marketing best practices, but also receive marketing awards and recognition by industry peers including best in show and a gold for deposit growth.” – John Cooke, BankFive

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