In the marketing world Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a popular “buzz word”. If you haven’t spent much time researching AI, consider this blog your introduction to a topic you’ll be hearing more about in the future. If you are like us, you don’t want to be left behind when it comes to new technology and innovation. Thankfully

Welcome to this edition of Authentic Brand’s “virtual panel” series: a Q&A exchange with four national marketing and AI leaders.

This dynamic group of thought leaders represent the panel for the upcoming DenamiCON conference in Minneapolis on Thursday May 17th. The four-hour learning and networking event will focus on how we can become more artificially intelligent, and what AI will mean for our businesses and customer relationships in the future.

Join me in scrolling down the screen for a virtual introduction to our AI panel of experts (subsequently referred to by first name in the conversation that follows):

Q1: There is a lot of hype around Artificial Intelligence, but a general lack of clarity about what AI is and what it means for the average business. How do you define AI in your conversations with customers?

(SCOTT) When we think about AI, we think of it as “Augmented Intelligence”, the ability for machines to work with incredibly large and complex data sets and enhance the ability of a human companion to do dramatically more in a fraction of the time. We try to reflect that in our company name, Equals 3, which is all about the idea that better then the individual, better then the machine are the two together. That we are creating a 1 + 1 = 3 for our customers.

(KRISTEN) The term AI covers a wide range of tools and technologies. Many of us are familiar with Siri and Alexa: these are forms of AI. IBM’s Watson is AI. Sometimes AI is applied to things like basic marketing automation and then it can also apply to self-driving cars. For business and marketing, I focus on the functionality of AI: using it to manage large amounts of data or using that data to create better experiences.

(JOSH) AI encapsulates a very big bucket of techniques that we use to create software.  In general AI is any set of algorithms that allows a computer to make a decision.  Your thermostat is an AI, in as much as it decides to heat your house when it gets too cold.  Most people are conflating AI with machine learning right now. Machine learning is a type of AI that uses data to make predictions by trying to mathematically define the relationship between whatever data you have to the outcomes that you care about.  In the end its all about using some set of inputs (numbers, voice, imagery, etc.) to make predictions about the world (end of quarter revenue, the user said X, there is a pedestrian in front of my car, etc.).

(PAUL) Ask 10 different experts to define AI, and you’ll likely get 10 different definitions. My favorite, in part because of its simplicity, is from Demis Hassibis, Co-Founder and CEO of Google DeepMind. Hassibis defines AI as, “the science of making machines smart.” These machines, in turn, enhance human knowledge and capabilities. Basically, artificial intelligence is the umbrella term for the algorithms, technologies and techniques that make machines smarter, and give them superhuman capabilities.

From a marketing perspective, it’s easiest to understand by looking at specific challenges and use cases of marketing automation. Humans are unable to conceive of the optimal set of instructions to guide the machine on how to personalize experiences at this scale. This is where artificial intelligence excels. It takes data-driven, complex tasks and makes them look easy.  But, artificial intelligence doesn’t stop at setting up the initial rules to maximize performance, it uses machine learning to constantly evolve its actions. In other words, it learns, it gets smarter, and it creates its own algorithms. Now, imagine the potential if all the time-intensive tasks you complete and the data-driven decisions you make every day as a marketer were intelligently automated.

Q2: With any new technology or innovation, there is always the risk of buying into the big promise and vision, without clarity on how ROI will be measured or proven. How do you suggest that organizations evaluate AI and begin to build a business case? In other words, what key questions should business leaders ask and answer before moving ahead with AI?

(KRISTEN) It’s not about using AI for the sake of AI. As with most new tools and technologies, the first step is to determine what business problem you are trying to solve or what challenge you are trying to address. If you have mass amounts of data – in all different formats and locations – there is probably a good AI solution to help with that. If you are looking to automate systems or make these systems move faster, AI may be able to help. You most likely won’t get a lot of return on an effort that is dedicated to AI just because it’s AI. Figure out the business need first.

(SCOTT) Early on, we were so enamored with the technology we created that we thought it was just obvious that anyone and everyone would want this. But coming back to reality, no matter how interesting or cool a technology is, it’s only worth paying for it if it can solve real world problems. And more than that, the problems solved need to be worth far more then the cost of implementation and acquisition of the technology. So the question to ask yourself is: Do I have data problems that need solving? Do I have processes that are inefficient that can be automated? And finally: Is the pain great enough to require investment to resolve?

(PAUL) What do you struggle with daily? What strategic priorities are important for the next couple quarters? What are your performance goals (New leads? Visits? Higher sales?). What activities take you away from the work you should be doing? Make a list of these. Then begin your research by searching for these terms or problems and including the term “AI.” Start experimenting with available tools and talk to vendors about what’s possible. Most are ready and willing to talk about your individual use cases. Don’t be afraid to look at your existing tech, either. Lots of platforms are incorporating AI, and a tool you already use may have it or have it on the roadmap. From there, you’ll be able to better gauge how AI can solve your organization’s challenges.

(JOSH)  When talking to businesses about how they should think about AI, I always start with one thing: Have you already identified some quantity/concept/thing which – if you could predict it with better accuracy – would improve your business?  If so, then great. Let’s start figuring out whether AI can help. If not, then focus on your business. Figure out what actually moves the needle for you, where you have uncertainty, and start there. I really don’t talk a lot about AI initially because if you aren’t prepared to take action on the output of an algorithm’s decisions, then you won’t get any value from it. I am very skeptical of pitches where AI is going to help people solve “problems they didn’t know they had.” Almost all of the successful use cases I’ve seen solve very specific (narrow) problems where the business knows how to take action on the output.

Q3: What kinds of businesses are showing up as early adopters of AI, and what are some of the primary challenges they are addressing through these solutions?

(JOSH) There are really three main areas where I see this happening. The first is using AI to create or improve experiences for consumers via new interfaces. For example, Alexa with voice or the Kinect for motion. Second, there are businesses that have relied on prediction in the past and are just doing it better with AI (like banks, natural resource discovery, etc.). Finally, we see new types of businesses being built that harness previously unusable data sources. This third group represents a lot of what we are doing with Rambl and voice.

(PAUL) Enterprises are definitely poised to be early adopters of AI, since they have the budgets and the volumes of data required to make some AI solutions work. For instance, an AI-powered tool called Phrasee can write email subject lines automatically, but it needs 100,000+ emails to be able to write these subject lines. Firms with a lot of the right data are probably going to get the most value from AI first.

(SCOTT) Our view is skewed toward the types of clients we work with, which have been Fortune 1000 marketers and the agencies that serve them. That market has made sense for us, as they have a lot of data and plenty of data challenges that go with it. Within that framework of Fortune 1000 and large agencies, we are seeing the pursuit of AI across almost all verticals, at least by those companies that are interested in innovation and who are not technology laggards.

(KRISTEN) One of my favorite early versions of AI is the experience on North Face. They are using Watson and data from over 55,000 users of their product to help customers find what is right for them. It’s a simple interface with a lot of power behind it. There are so many possibilities in retail and for any company looking to improve customer experience.

Q4: How are today’s AI solutions already enhancing the end customer experience? On the flip side, how might AI disrupt or negatively affect the customer experience? (And what advice would you offer to business leaders to protect against these risks?)

(PAUL) AI provides marketers with the ability to plan, produce, personalize, promote, and perform better than ever before. This is good for marketers. AI can be even better for customers. Marketing can better deliver the products, services and experiences that consumers crave in a very personal way. In terms of potential negative ramifications to the customer experience, AI in marketing is at a preschool level right now. It’s not always going to work how it’s intended and may be a little bumpy for consumers along the way. Consider Apple’s Siri, as an example. Being able to ask your phone anything at any time without having to type is pretty awesome, except most people would probably agree that Siri’s capabilities and accuracy are still a bit limited.

(JOSH) This is happening in three main ways for consumers. You have new user interfaces like Alexa, you have automation like Tesla’s self driving cars and you have improved customization (e.g. Netflix or Facebook). In all cases I think the trap is similar: Don’t pretend that AI can do things that it isn’t capable of, because it can lead consumers to draw incorrect conclusions or make wrong decisions. You can see this in the failure of early self-driving cars or people relying on Facebook as their primary news source.

(SCOTT) Since AI is best for solving big data problems, from our perspective this falls into a few major areas for marketers.  Research and knowledge management: Can I efficiently find and use all of the the data that I own and license? Audience insights: Can I use data to gain a better understanding of my most important audiences? Media: How do I better understand past media performance to optimize my future allocations? As for impact, new technology typically brings about a level of organizational change. For example, when a process that used to take one full day now takes five minutes, you find you have more people resources available. There is also a change that takes place when data that used to take a day to get is now immediately available.

(KRISTEN) I’m a big fan of Alexa – she does everything from finding what I want on my streaming service to ordering my dog food. It’s important to note that I have given her my data to make that happen because I like the ease of use. I am trading data about me and my habits for that convenience. That is, of course, the big issue. Companies have a responsibility to be careful with this data to keep my trust. I think it’s important to keep the customer in focus: her needs, expectations, and respect for that relationship. Use this to help define experience, set standards for data, and innovate.

Q5: Along with the hype around AI, there is also an undercurrent of uncertainty and fear: How will AI impact human jobs? Will the “robots” replace us? Will we need to develop all-new skills in order to remain relevant? How would you respond to these questions?

(JOSH) From my perspective, this fear is very, very overblown. People will have to develop new skills — because they always do. Email, mobile phones and the internet all caused people to develop new skills. In the near-term, AI will augment humans and hopefully make our jobs easier. I am skeptical that most white collar jobs will be at risk in the near future.

(KRISTEN) AI is going to change the way we work, but there will still be plenty of work to do. It’s important to remember that AI has to be taught. When I ask Alexa to order my bag of dog food, she can do that because she has learned how to look into my previous orders and identify the dog food. That is a series of checkpoints that have been “trained” into the system. The same idea applies to the use of AI to manage large amounts of data. Any system has to be taught/trained how to manage the data – what to look for when answering questions. This process requires someone who understands the data and what the overall objectives are for that data. Most importantly, something still has to happen with the data: Actions must be taken. Marketers will be able to spend less time tracking down data and more time using it.

(SCOTT) I believe the fears are both warranted and unwarranted. Unwarranted in that AI today is nowhere near having the ability to simply do the job done by an individual.  We aren’t going to lose Marketing Managers, Creative Directors, Account Managers etc., to AI systems that can somehow magically do those jobs. The state of AI is far, far, far away from that. But, automation brought about by technology is always disruptive. Roles will change, expectations about individual performance or client service will change. Our view is generally one that is positive. Those who embrace AI earlier will receive similar benefits to what we’ve seen with other waves of marketing technology. Those early to embrace the web, eCommerce, Content Management, Marketing Automation, Programmatic Media, etc. In each of these examples, there was a phase of early adopters who gained competitive advantage, and also laggards who waited to see if the latest innovation with real, and then fell behind.

Q6: Imagine our workplaces five years from now. What has changed because of AI?

(SCOTT) Increasingly, individuals will spend less time on the minutia and drudgery of working with data. Their AI assistants will give them command of all of the data of the organization and with that, no longer will data be locked up in silos of systems or exclusively with the experts (i.e. everyone will have access to media spend data, web analytics, performance of campaigns, latest industry research and more).  Demands for performance will go up, and marketers’ AI companions will allow them to keep up with it.

(KRISTEN) We will probably have a different way of doing things. AI will handle some of the busy work we all manage. Research that now takes a few days will only take a few hours. We will still need talented people to apply that knowledge and make it work to achieve business goals. In fact, with more data available more quickly, we will need even more focus on what is going to drive results. We will also have to stay focused on the customer experience. For example, I think there are some great possibilities for retail to apply AI. If Alexa can keep track of what I’ve ordered before – why can’t my favorite store at the mall know what I may have just purchased online and use that info to make my in-store experience better? Consumer expectations are going to keep moving higher as more AI functionality becomes part of our daily experiences. We’ll all have to work hard to meet those needs.

(PAUL) In five years, a lot of what marketers do today will be done by machines. But that doesn’t mean the marketers who do those jobs will necessarily become obsolete. AI excels at doing certain very narrowly defined tasks really well and at scale, all automatically. Marketers should take an inventory of the tasks they do. With each one, asking: “Is this something a machine could do better and quicker?” If so, do some research, find a similar use case, and try using AI for that task. If those tasks constitute a large part of your job, you may need to consider how to evolve in the coming age of AI. For example, if you A/B test landing pages for a living, you’ll want to start looking for an alternate career path. But if these tasks are all taking you away from the stuff that really needs to get done, AI could be a serious competitive advantage in your career. In either case, marketers that take the time to understand and embrace AI now will have a huge competitive advantage in the years to come.

(JOSH) I honestly think that for the vast majority of people reading this, very few will see substantial change. We may be able to target ads a little better. We may have better diagnosis for cancer. But we will still be showing up and doing the work that we do today in mostly the same way.

How to Implement AI

Now that we’ve achieved an understanding of AI and its capabilities, it’s important to look at how it can help your marketing and sales efforts in 2018 and beyond. Whether it’s simply using AI to sort through data or engaging with prospects via chat, defining these areas of need will be key in using this powerful tool to help you reach your business goals.

Do you review your website’s metrics on a regular basis?

Are you struggling to figure out how you can better use the data?

To know which of your marketing efforts are most successful, you need to look beyond the numbers. Explore what they mean and figure out what parts of your strategy need to be adjusted to increase your reach.

Here are five ways metrics can improve your social media marketing.

#1: Determine Which Stats Matter

Before you enter into any metrics analysis, decide what you need to track and how you’ll track it. Google Analytics is clearly the go-to, although there are other analytics sites. Most social channels have their own insights, as well

The article asks this important question: “What are you hoping to get from your social media marketing?” What you track will be different for each answer, whether you want to optimize for sharing, click-throughs, signups or even just visits.

Lee delves into the types of metrics to track, key tools, metrics definitions and conversions. Plus he goes into detail in a variety of scenarios—engagement vs. reach, retweets vs. clicks, traffic/day vs. traffic/post, page views vs. attention and more.

This resource has plenty of information to help you prioritize your metrics.

#2: Analyze Your Content Strategy

In all social strategy, content is key. Find which content gets the best response so you can create more of it.

“At the heart of any content marketing strategy is the editorial calendar” 

Ben suggests creating a table with your blog’s content data, and then track key performance indicators like site visits and conversions (per Google Analytics), as well as engagement.

Once you create a chart for your own original content, see what data you can compile from competitors, guest posts and even your social media posts.

With everything laid out by the numbers, look at what content gets the best performance and strategize accordingly. This will improve traffic and generate more engagement, conversions and customers.

“Taking a data-led approach to your content marketing not only gives you a stronger strategy,” Ben explains, “but also allows you to identify new opportunities from your competitors’ activity and your audiences’ preferences.”

#3: Track Post Performance

There is immense value in building and maintaining your online community. Equally as important to looking at what content is most popular is looking at what content converts best so you can create more of it to get more leads.

• Conversions from guest posting: Guest posts can result in immediate and ongoing traffic. However, you must engage with your new audience to see which sites convert best, and also add value so the new visitors return. Check All Referrals in Google Analytics to see which sites give you the best traffic.
• Conversions from your own blog content: While some blog content converts well, some may not do as well. To see your content conversions, go to Google Analytics. Be sure to set up the goal in the Admin screen beforehand. Select Behavior > Site Content, > Landing Pages to see the conversion rate of your blog posts. Analyze what influenced the higher conversions.
• Conversions from social media campaigns: What social sites are most beneficial to your brand? Check Network Referrals under Social in Google Analytics to see which ones your readers are coming from.
• Tracking specific shared campaigns: To do comparisons when you share the same content on different social channels, use custom URL builders. This is also helpful when you want to compare results for advertised links vs. organic shares.

Tracking the value of awareness and engagement: Track where your leads come from, whether you use the social channel’s insights or an outside app. Ian recommends using a tool like LeadSocial to do this kind of research.

Technology makes it easy to see where activity comes from. Replicate the actions that have the most conversions so you can get the most benefits.

#4: Measure Marketing Success

Leads are great. Sales are even better. Use metrics to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns so you can assess and alter them for future marketing efforts.

• Counting things. At minimum, Heidi says, track numbers for the following: sales (gross sales, returns and net sales), purchasers (contacts, prospects, customers and advocates), costs (variable and fixed) and items (broken down by type and category, depending on your business).
• Developing rates. To understand marketing effectiveness, you need to examine certain items in relation to one another, such as people’s response and conversion rates, and items’ order rates and size of orders. In terms of sales, track sales per customer, average sale and value. For costs, look at costs per media viewer reached, costs per buyer and costs per contact.
• Assessing things over time. Analyze items over various periods of time, ranging from hours and days through months, years or marketing campaigns. Choose times based on your business so you can track trends, and also see what works best at what times for your business.

Heidi shares a simple framework that can be scaled down to suit smaller businesses or expanded for larger ones, based on need. The key is to keep these numbers in mind for future business so you can develop it and increase sales over time.

#5: Review Website Traffic

If people can’t find your site, what’s the point of having one? Make sure your site is getting consistent and growing traffic. If it isn’t, find out why.

• Audience: Go to Google Analytics and look at new vs. returning visitors in Audience reports. If new users are declining, it usually means you have an acquisition problem. A decline in returning users could mean a content problem. If it’s both, it could be a structure problem. Christopher was having challenges with both.
• Acquisition: If you’re losing traffic, it’s important to locate the disconnect. Lost traffic from returning users means people have lost bookmarks, forgotten to type in the domain or don’t look for your site via search. For new visitor decline, organic and search are the culprits.
• Behavior: To look into the problem, Christopher went over to Google’s Webmaster Tools. Turns out his sitemap panel wasn’t indexing all of his pages. It was actually reporting one of every five URLs. So he resubmitted his sitemap, which should make all the difference.

To solve audience problems, start by looking at the numbers. Once you identify the problem, you can fix it. And ideally get back to growth for both new and returning visitors.

Conclusion

Performance of your website, content and social media all impact your bottom line, whether it’s your sales, customer acquisition or any other business goal.

Monitor your metrics regularly and alter your strategy accordingly to get the most return on your social media time and effort. Metrics may pose a challenge; however, once you make the numbers work for you, it could mean more customers, business and sales.

As part of any digital marketing strategy, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is integral to driving customers to your business via online platforms. Effective marketing demands it.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

SEO is a collection of tools and best practices that help your website rank higher in search engine results, thereby driving more traffic to your site and potentially more business.

However, although SEO once involved adding keywords to your site for search engines to find, SEO in 2018 is far more complex and involves a much broader scope of considerations.

Nowadays SEO is a full-time job for small businesses and many are turning to website design and marketing experts such as Pronto for support.

How to Create an SEO strategy

Forget what you think you know about SEO and start thinking about it as an ever-evolving field. As users’ behaviors and search engines’ capabilities develop over time, standards come and go in the blink of an eye.

Assuming you can skip SEO and just ‘wing-it’ might keep you from reaching your full business potential.

It’s not just the online marketing industry that’s evolving; your business’s industry is also maturing. So when it comes to SEO, you really can’t “set it and forget it.” You need to be monitoring and tracking how well everything is working so you’re always one step ahead of the competition.

Here are a few points you need to consider when working out an SEO strategy:

• Who is in your target market? – SEO today is not about just grabbing as much traffic as possible, but instead attracting high-value visitors interested in what you offer. In terms of demographics, what is your market searching for? How are they performing web searches? Where are they located? The more specific your answers, the more valuable your investments in SEO become. Google Analytics is a good place to start your investigations!
• Most people search on mobile devices – You don’t need statistics to show you that in the past few years the online mobile market has exploded, overtaking desktops years ago. Optimizing websites for mobile browsers is critical if you want to rank well in search engine results pages. If you’re unsure how your website measures up, enter your site’s URL in Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
• Search engines are expanding – When someone mentions search engines, do you automatically assume they’re talking about Google? The tech giant has such a big share of the market that ‘Googling’ has become a verb. However, a significant portion of searches take place on alternative sites, such as Microsoft’s Bing. Make a point to search for your site on Google alternatives to see where you rank. Just improving social media engagement and adding meta tags might be all it takes to boost you a couple ranks on Bing.
• What’s your audience searching for? – Just a few years ago, the average user didn’t trust search engines to understand conversational questions. They were searching with clunky phrases like “flower delivery new york.” Now people feel comfortable typing in things like “who delivers roses near me?” Changes in searcher habits are usually subtle, but will affect which keywords will be most valuable for your site. Instead of focusing on keywords that get you more traffic, focus on those that translate into conversions, revenue and profits.
• • Simple navigation reigns and quality content is king – A user-friendly website, with interesting and easy-to-find information is what will boost your traffic. Each page needs to be built around keyword themes, with unique content, so search engines can easily index yours and rank you higher. Positive behaviors from site visitors is your best bet for a better ranking, so keep the content natural and focused; avoid jargon and keyword stuffing to keep users from leaving the site unhappy and hurting its ranking.
  • Links to your site are extremely valuable – When another website links to yours, search engines consider that an indicator that your site contains valuable content. Not so long ago, getting dozens of links from low-quality sites was all it took to boost your ranking. Today, the value of a link to your site depends on the quality of the site that linked to you. Just a few links to your business from high-traffic sites will do wonders for your ranking!
  • Social media has a pivotal role – Last but not least, social media is an evolving platform that has changed from a basic communication platform to a highly profitable marketing channel. Many users start their searches on social media and make their way to a business’s site. Sharing up-to-date, engaging, and personalized content will attract more people to your profile, and eventually to your website.
  • Analysis is the key to SEO – Monitoring your ranking on search engines is key to getting better results. Start by tracking the most important website metrics to set a baseline for your performance. Make small content changes and see if you notice a boost in your site traffic or rankings. Avoid making several unrelated changes simultaneously so you can always keep track of what was responsible for improved performance.

  We’ve discussed some of the core components of a successful SEO campaign. Beyond that, there are a number of marketing strategies that can indirectly affect how your site ranks, such as Pay Per Click advertising and email marketing.

  This means you really can’t afford to approach each campaign individually. The most successful brands integrate all their campaigns that ensures there’s always something pushing their leads one step closer to converting into a customer.

A lot of marketers have written off Google Adwords as a means of collecting leads. This is often due to the fact that Google is a lot stricter in terms of the landing pages it approves.

You can’t get away with a ‘thin’ landing page that would probably work on Facebook, for example.

And, if you try to – Google will disapprove your ads and eventually ban your account if you keep making the same mistake.

Google isn’t opposed to people collecting leads, however, and the platform still has the capacity to send affordable leads your way. In light of this, we’re going to explore, in this post, how you can go about collecting leads using AdWords.

All of the strategies that we’re going to cover will center around methods that are sustainable and in line with Google’s policies.

Of course, nothing is guaranteed – you should always check current Google policies for yourself.

Still, what we’re going to cover in this post should set you on the right course if you want to collect leads using AdWords.

A few basics before we start.

If you’ve been using AdWords for some time, you’re probably familiar with the language that’s tossed around in discussions about the platform. If not, here’s a primer for this post and others you might read:

Your ‘quality score’ has a big impact on your CPC and ad rankings. For a more thorough definition and why your quality score matters, go here.

CTR, as you should know, refers to your click-through rate–another component that affects your quality score.

‘Lead gen’ is short for lead generation- that is, the process of capturing a consumer’s interest for the purpose of building a sales pipeline.

With that out of the way, let’s begin.

Setting up a Google-friendly landing page

As I mentioned in the introduction, Google has some pretty strict requirements when it comes to setting up a landing page.

In 2015 alone, Google reported that they disabled 780 million ads, due to policy violations.

Now, all of those bans might not have been brought down by poor landing pages, but that figure is indicative of Google’s willingness to crack down on advertisers who don’t meet their standard.

So, what can you do to create a Google Friendly Landing Page?

There are two key issues that you need to pay attention to, when advertising with Google.

1. The ‘landing page experience’
2. Google’s site policies

Both of these factors need to be taken care of if you want Google to approve your landing page.

Landing page experience refers to a landing page that is easy for a visitor to use and that doesn’t mislead the user in any way.

Here is Google’s view on landing page experience –

‘Point 1,’ is essentially telling you that you need to make sure that you clearly explain what is offered and why you’re offering it.

You can’t just provide a few bullet points and be done with it. You need bullet points and, ideally, a short description/paragraph, explaining your offer.

Point 2 is pretty self explanatory. In terms of making it easy for people to contact you, make sure that you display an email address, and even a phone number, on your landing page.

In relation to point 3, make sure that you don’t have ‘exit pop-ups’ or anything of the sort.

You also need to make sure that a navigation bar is present and easily accessible and that links to your Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy pages are highly visible, too.

Page loading time also matters a lot. Thankfully, Google provides a tool, called PageSpeed Insights, that allows for you to quickly work out how you can speed up your site.

Read through their Policies page and you’ll quickly find out if you’re doing anything wrong.

A good rule of thumb is to be truthful and transparent.  Don’t advertise anything you’d be ashamed to tell other people you’re promoting.

Note: Apart from the obvious topics of gambling and adult content, Google will also frown upon Health/Fitness Ads and BizOpp Ads.

That’s a little bit of the obvious stuff that you need to be aware of.

But, here are some other things that you’ll also want to pay attention to.

These two points essentially mean that you can’t set up a website that is solely a landing page.

Your landing page needs to be a part of a larger website that provides value.

Below are some other key issues that you also need to focus on.

We’ve already covered some of these. However, the new points, such as using ‘redirects,’ and not having anything at the root of your domain, are equally important.

So, hopefully, that clears up a lot of the confusion that comes with creating a Google AdWords-friendly landing page.

If you’re looking for a pre-designed template, Leadpages provides a landing page template that is Google-friendly.

Provided that you use their template and stick to the rules mentioned, your landing page should get approved.

Advertising your landing page

The great thing about AdWords is that it allows you to advertise on YouTube, the Google Display Network and the Google Search network.

This presents a lot of opportunity, in terms of how you can target your campaigns so that they get in front of the right people.

Odds are, one network is going to work better than the others for your campaign – and, when you find the right one, you’ll likely experience great results, since 64% of people click on Google Ads when they’re ready to buy.

However, you won’t know which network works best until you actually run some ads on each one and then compare results – you never know what results you might achieve on a different network if you guessed and only focused on one option.

How to improve performance over time

We’ve covered the essentials of what needs to be done when trying to collect leads, using Adwords.

But, what can you do, in the long term, to ensure that your ads are going to perform as well as they should?

After all, it shouldn’t be a case of you setting up your ads and then experiencing a gradual decline in results over time.

Rather, it should be the other way around.  You should see better results, the longer a campaign runs for.

In general, there are two things that you’ll want to work on, if you want to improve long term performance– your ads and your landing pages.

In relation to your ads, we’ve already covered some of what you can do.

For example, we spoke of how you can try different networks on Google AdWords, so that you can find the best way to reach your audience.

As you saw, each network has it’s own particular type of targeting mechanism.

Once you begin to see results with one form of targeting, try experimenting with another, simultaneously, to see if you can achieve even better results.

So, if you’re using ‘Keyword’ targeting for your Display campaigns, why not see what happens when you try targeting by ‘Topics’ or even ‘Interests?’

It’s also a good idea to always split test your ads.

Doing so ensures that you’re constantly making an effort to create the best variation of any ad that you’re currently running.

Even the smallest changes can make the difference.  Perry Marshall once found that the inclusion of a comma resulted in a 0.28% higher CTR.

Not much in the short term, but it adds up over time.

It’s worth mentioning that you should always double down on a campaign that is delivering results.

The world of online advertising can sometimes be fickle and you can never be sure how long an effective ad campaign is going to last.

It helps, therefore, to increase spending, should you find that you’re generating a positive ROI with a particular ad or platform.

With your landing page, you’ll again want to run some split tests on a regular basis.

In doing so, you’ll continue collecting more leads without having to increase your ad spend.

As you go about running split tests for your landing page, don’t be afraid to make some dramatic changes.

Dramatic changes can often reveal some surprising insights into how you can improve your landing page conversions.

When you’re making changes to your landing page, however, always ensure that the changes made are within the guidelines provided by Google.

Conclusion

With there being so much hype around Facebook Ads at the moment, you might’ve forgotten about the opportunity presented by Google AdWords.

A lot of marketers are worried about using Google AdWords to collect leads, because the platform has a reputation for being strict about the landing pages that it approves.

Yet, this often just means more opportunity for those who are willing to do the groundwork needed to make a AdWords-friendly landing page.

After reading this post, you should now have a keen sense of how you can collect leads, using AdWords, and boost your rate through this platform.

Put the tips I’ve mentioned into action and see for yourself how well AdWords can work, when done properly.

NAPLES, FLA—September 5, 2017—On the eve of the third anniversary of the launch of Apple Pay, mobile wallet adoption is on the rise globally and consumers in the U.S. and Europe are catching up with those in fast-growing economies in Asia and Latin America where mobile wallets have already become the dominant payment platform, according to new benchmark data from the Global Consumer Survey: Consumer Trust and Security Perceptions published by ACI Worldwide and Aite.*

The research shows that 17 percent of U.S. consumers now regularly use their smartphone to pay, up from 6 percent in 2014 when the survey was last conducted. In Europe, Spanish consumers are the most active users of mobile wallets, with 25 percent using them regularly, followed by Italy (24%), Sweden (23%) and the U.K. (14%).

“Mobile wallets really started to grow in popularity after the launch of Apple Pay almost three years ago,” said Mark Ranta, head of digital banking solutions, ACI Worldwide. “What we are seeing is a tipping point regarding adoption, which can be attributed to consumers worldwide now almost exclusively using payment-enabled devices, as older models have cycled out, with a few exceptions.”

Key findings:

• Mobile wallet adoption: India tops the list of countries surveyed, with 56 percent of consumers saying they pay with a smartphone regularly, followed by Thailand (51%) and Indonesia (47%). According to the research, these markets are leap-frogging traditional card infrastructures and usage patterns and are very mobile-oriented, as most consumer’s internet connections are through a mobile device rather than a desktop or laptop.

• Mobile wallet security: Consumer confidence regarding mobile wallet security remains high. In the U.K., 37 percent of respondents said they trust their bank to protect their personal information when paying via smartphone; in France, 40 percent; and in Holland, 28 percent.

• Mobile wallet fraud: The report warns that as more consumers adopt mobile wallets, they may also become a bigger target for criminals—exposed to fraud when using their mobile wallets. Compared to previous years, confidence rates regarding mobile wallet security have dropped in some countries, a sentiment that may be influenced by increasing reports of new mobile wallet fraud and scams.

“Another important factor in the U.S. is the ubiquity of mobile wallet acceptance,” continued Ranta. “With the EMV rollout behind us, most stores are NFC-enabled and the acceptance of mobile wallets is now almost guaranteed by most larger retailers and even many smaller ones.

“And there is of course China, one of the world’s fastest growing markets and trendsetters when it comes to mobile payments. The Chinese market is dominated by two players – Alipay and WeChat Pay. Both schemes use optical scanning ‘QR-code’ techniques at the point of sale instead of the plastic card industry standards like NFC (Near Field Communication). QR-code techniques have grown dramatically in popularity over the last 5 years, on the back of smart phone adoption and the ubiquitous use of social media and digital platforms. These new Chinese payments services are expected to drive new payment behaviors across Asia and globally.

“The roll out of immediate payments schemes worldwide, combined with new regulation in Europe coming into effect in early 2018, will only increase the importance of mobile payments. This will open the door for a range of new players in the payments market and we may see mobile becoming the new plastic sooner than we thought.”

Methodology and Demographics:

Data from Global Consumer Survey: Consumer Trust and Security Perceptions. ACI Worldwide conducted online quantitative market research in April 2016 and surveyed 6,035 consumers. The study was conducted in a total of 20 countries in the following regions:

• The Americas: Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and the United States
• EMEA: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom
• APAC region: Australia, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Singapore. China, Russia, and Poland were removed compared to 2014, and Spain, Thailand, and Hungary were added for 2016.

In total, 6,035 consumers participated in the research—approximately 300 consumers in each of the twenty counties, divided equally between men and women. Of the total, 5,861 own one or more type of payment card—credit card, debit card, or prepaid card. This is the fourth time that ACI has fielded this type of survey, and some comparative results are included from 2012 and 2014. In each country, the data has a margin of error of approximately five points. Statistical tests of significance, where shown, were conducted at the 95 percent level of confidence.

Every effort you invest into the design and promotion of your website has to do with the goal of generating more sales. This isn’t a goal you can achieve by manipulations and lies. You need to make your website pleasing to the eye, informative for the customers and optimized for the search engines.

In other words, you need to find the balance between the strategies that put you at the top of Google’s results and the marketing messages that motivate people to turn into customers. Here are some tips to do just that!

1. Give Them What They Want

Before you can start developing a conversion-worthy website, you need to explore what your potential customers need. They are mostly interested to know how your products or services can benefit them. You don’t want to make your customers believe they want your product by manipulating them with false claims. This is how it works: first you understand what they want and need, and then you develop or adjust your offer to meet their preferences.

Here are some tools that will help you understand your target audience:

• SurveyMonkey– an online tool for creating powerful surveys that give you the answers you need.
• Woopra– a tool that gives you access to a comprehensive profile of the users of your website. You can track their activity and use the analytics to improve your products and services.
• Social media – that’s where your audience is. Track their Facebook comments, tweets, and Instagram photos to figure out their likes and dislikes. Don’t limit these activities to your own profiles. Track your customers’ comments and likes on the profiles of your competitors, so you will know how to deliver something better.

Remember: conversions have to do with user psychology. When you understand what your target audience needs, use that information to develop elements of your site. The design, content, images, messages, prices… every aspect of the website will fit into their standards.

2. Develop A Connection

Your website has a theme, which is not only created through proper use of color and great images. It’s the content that creates an impression on your visitors. Don’t write generic descriptions on your products and services. Talk to each and every customer and make them feel appreciated line individuals.

When someone spends time browsing through a website, they want to imagine themselves wearing the clothes, using the gadgets, reading the books, tasting the meals, or whatever else the seller’s products and services are related to. Thus, you create a website that offers all these features for your customer.

Here is a simple example: instead of writing “X.com offers high-quality brands and impeccable customer service,” you can instead write “We deliver top-quality brands to your doorstep.” Do you notice the difference? The second version makes the customers feel like you’re personally addressing them. You’re not talking about your brand; you’re explaining what your business does for them.

3. Include A Blog

What makes you attractive to your users? – Great, informative content. What makes you attractive to the search engines? – Great, informative content. You see the connection. Including a blog section is a win-win situation.

How exactly will a blog convince the visitors to convert? First of all, it will bring more visitors to your website thanks to the SEO strategies you implement. You’ll infuse all the right keywords in the text, so your target audience will easily discover them when they search Google for the things they need. When visitors land at your blog, they will see awesome articles that show how your products can meet their needs.

Moreover, a blog shows you care about the customers. You won’t write solely about the things you sell; you will also offer solutions for the problems your audience faces.

A blog gives you a chance to tell stories and connect with your audience on a deeper level. You can take things further by inviting the users to write about their own experiences. Don’t forget to offer useful tips and relevant news from the industry to keep your audience happy.

River Pools and Spas is a great example of an eCommerce website that uses blog posts for attracting more customers and developing a connection with them. The blog teaches how people can choose the perfect pool for their backyards, what materials they should opt for, how they can take a loan to build a pool, and many other useful things they need to know.

4. Be Confident in What You Offer. Ask Them to Buy It

Some people are afraid of sounding too aggressive when trying to promote a certain product or service. They were not born to be marketers! A successful marketer, on the other hand, has enough confidence to emphasize the strengths of the offer, convince the potential users it’s the best choice they have, and ask them to buy it without any hesitation.

You need clear calls to action; otherwise, people won’t know what to do after they read your blog posts. Invite them to take a look at your offer, convince them it’s the best, and make them believe they need it right away.

The calls to action shouldn’t be generic. Don’t go for the same old “buy yours today.” Think of a more enticing call that will get people’s attention and stick within their minds after they leave the website. If for example, you’re selling cosmetics, you can write something like “reveal your true beauty.”

If you take a look at the website of OnTrees, an app that makes budgeting simple, you’ll notice that most of the content is written in the form of calls to action. “Your money. Your choices.” That’s an inspiring way to convince people to start using the tool since it tells them what they will get from it.

5. On-page Search Engine Optimization

The blog will get you some visits when you strategically include keywords throughout the content, but remember: not all blog visitors will visit the home page. That’s why on-page SEO is important as well.

Everything you write on your website plays a role in your efforts to rank on Google. If you’re maintaining a website, chances are you’re already concerned about on-page SEO and you’ve implemented some strategies that give you a stronger online presence. However, you should pay attention to another aspect: the search engine optimization has to be related to your goal to generate more sales.

Remember: you’re not just trying to make yourself appealing to Google; you’re mostly trying to convince your customers to make the purchase. One way to do that is by implementing keywords into calls to actions throughout the content at the homepage. Here are few other places where you can combine the keywords with invitations for the readers to try a product/service:

• The description tag – it should describe what your website sells (that’s for the search engine), but it should also show you’re the best (that’s for the actual Google users).
• The title tag – use long-phrase keywords that will give more meaning to the title tag. Keep it shorter than 70 characters and make it all about your brand.
• The headings – you should optimize them for the search engines, but you also need to make sure they promote your business in the best possible way. When you’re featuring a longer piece of text at the homepage, most people will see only the headings. You need to include a call to action right there.
  Dropbox is a nice example for smart use of headings. “Take your docs anywhere. Send videos quickly. Work on slides together. Keep your photos safe…” All these phrases explain what the product does, but they also invite the users to try it.

Conclusion

Although it seems like a lot of effort, it’s not that difficult to make the right changes that boost your website’s conversion rates. You’ve had enough theory, so start implementing these practices today!

IMPORTANCE OF WEBSITE NAVIGATION

The importance of website navigation is critical when it comes to distinguishing your brand. An organised and transparent navigation system acts as a roadmap to direct visitors to various pages and information on your site. It is fundamental in encouraging visitors to stay, peruse your content and have a positive user experience, which subsequently leads to more sales and brand loyalty for your business.

In contrast, a confusing, hard to follow navigation system will only result in frustrated visitors. This is far from advantageous in today’s competitive business environment, where every single detail contributes to your success and popularity.

Clear, well-structured navigation on the other hand establishes trust and credibility, allowing visitors to easily find the information and content they’re looking for.

Website users typically want to know 3 things during their visit to your site: ‘Where am I?’, ‘Where have I been?’ and ‘Where else can I go?’. By visibly demonstrating these answers within your navigational structure, there is a higher chance visitors will remain on your site for longer, reinforcing the likelihood of a valuable sale.

WHAT SHOULD BE INCLUDED IN YOUR NAVIGATION?

With so many website pages, it can be difficult to identify where items should appear and whereabouts they fall in level of importance. According to Orbit Media, seven navigation items are the optimum number to ensure search engine optimisation (SEO) is aligned and usability best practices are met.

Nevertheless, when deciding what makes the navigation cut, different opinions will inevitably unfold among stakeholders about the best choice. However, the answer essentially lies with your website visitors and their use of your site.

Take a look at the below methods which should help you in your decision-making process:

• Conversion Assists Report
  Permitting your marketing software features, a ‘Conversion Assists Report’ is a great source to help determine the best items to be included in website navigation. It helps identify the most popular pages viewed by those visitors who converted into sales.  Pages that tend to be viewed most by these customers include product/service pages, case studies and pricing.

• Google Analytics Visitors Flow
  If you don’t have access to conversion assist reports, you can use the Google Analytics ‘Visitor’s Flow Report’ to help inform your decisions. The difference between the two, is that this report doesn’t separate traffic into standard visitors and customers. However, it can graphically demonstrate how people use your site including the path they follow from the original source to each page they visit until they exit. This feature can be found under the content menu in your Google Analytics reporting account.

Now we’ve established the importance of website navigation and the methods to help you decide on navigation items, let’s look at website navigation best practices to ensure a positive browsing experience for your customers.

 

1. ENSURE NAVIGATION IS EASILY FOUND

Website users tend to be impatient and have little tolerance for a site whose usability is complicated and unclear. Visitors are usually there for a purpose, like finding information on your product or service or to read your content and case studies. Position the navigation bar where users expect it, horizontally along the top, or vertically to the left or right of your homepage.

2. CONSISTENCY IS KEY

Make sure navigation is placed in the same location on every page of your site. Consistent use of colours, design and font will help visitors become familiar and feel at ease when browsing. If navigation was to change in position or style on each page, users will be left confused and be more inclined to search elsewhere where the layout is more transparent.

3. GET THE ORDER CORRECT

Psychology studies state that people tend to be more receptive to the first and last items in a list. Known as the ‘Serial Position Effect’, the human brain retains information based on the order it appears, which is the first and last item in a list. Relating this data to navigation structure, place the most important items at the beginning and end of the list, with everything else in between. Your ‘Contact’ tab should be kept last.

4. BE SPECIFIC

Try to steer clear of using overly generic wording in your navigation structure. Words like ‘Resources’ or ‘Tools’ often aren’t clear for the user and require multiple clicks to determine what content is enclosed. Using more precise names such as ‘Blogs’, ‘News’ or ‘Case Studies’ take visitors directly to that page, avoiding any unnecessary confusion.

Note: Strong website navigation plays an integral part in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). If you want to rank highly on search engines like Google, be specific!

5. MINIMIZE NAVIGATION LINKS

Imagine how frustrating it is to land on a website to be faced with multiple choices and uncertainty over where to click. Which page should you go to first? This sort of confusion will only encourage your visitors to exit your site.

As previously mentioned, seven has been found to be the magic number when it comes to navigation items. This is based on studies that state a person’s short term memory can only recall seven items. Take the exact number out of it and the key takeaway here is less is more.

6. RECOMMEND NEXT STEPS

When visitors complete an action on your site, they often don’t know what to do next. Instead of allowing them to exit, why not suggest a few follow up options to complete their user experience.

Did they read a blog? Suggest similar topic guides or videos they might enjoy. Offering next steps is especially valuable for users who are new to your site, who tend to be unsure of what they’re looking for.

Similarly, adopting the ‘Next Post’ or ‘Next Product’ feature works well for companies who share multiple content posts or have numerous products. Users can easily click through until they find exactly what they’re searching for.

Conclusion

Common sense reinforces that well-structured navigation is essential to provide your visitors with the best browsing experience possible. However, by applying some of the methods mentioned above, you can encourage better engagement and higher conversion rates on your website by using navigation best practices to enhance your overall user experience.

Marketing emails are a great way for leads to visit your website again and make their way down your sales funnel. It’s simple, just include an offer, hit send, and BOOM tons of people download it, right?… not so much.

You may already be sending out marketing emails to leads, but have you been receiving the responses you’d hoped for? If not, we’ve put together a list of elements your Emails should contain to nurture those important leads down the sales funnel.

5 Critical Email Marketing Elements

1. The Offer/Promotion

Here’s the bottom line: even if your email is appealing to the eye, the offer is the essential factor that attracts a lead to click through. All your graphics work could be wasted if your offer isn’t solid. Think about what your lead wants to read and how they want to read it.

Here are a couple points to consider before starting to write your offer:

• Topic– What will your lead be interested in? Decide depending on what they already know and read.
• Length– How much does the lead want to know about the topic before downloading? What length is appropriate to describe the offer?
• Quality– Make sure the offer in your Email text has the same level of quality information that the following product has.
• Subject Line– Make sure the recipient will know exactly what they are being contacted about- but keep it interesting, or else your hard work gets deleted.

2. The Landing Page

Your lead likes reading about your offer and clicks through, awesome start! But the appeal must translate through to the next step- the landing page. Be sure that your email offer links to the correct landing page.

A couple other things to consider about your landing pages are:

• Description/ length– The description should let the reader know exactly what they will receive in the ebook, webinar etc. It’s up to you to decide how much text will entice the reader without giving it all away, or boring them.
• Layout– Decide where your picture will go (left,right). Keep all important information above the fold- including the title, picture, and form field.
• Form field/ length– What do you want to know about a lead? If an existing lead comes to a landing page, program your settings to remember them to prevent question repetitiveness.
• Submit button– This seems like a minor detail, but the text inside your “submit” button might matter.

3. Your Audience

So you’ve changed your offer and landing page, and you know leads will like the offer and click through. Seems like it will work, right? There may be a problem with who you’re sending it to. All your hard work could be misdirected to leads that don’t need the information.

How to decide who to send offers to:

• Interests– What other offers are similar to the offer you are sending? Have some leads already read this offer? Figure out who needs this information, and send it to them.
• Engagement status– How often has a certain lead visited your website? or downloaded offers? Chances are, the leads that interact with you more frequently and recently will actually enjoy your offer.
• Life Cycle stage– If leads are at the top of the sales funnel, they may not want information about consultations. The same goes for leads at the bottom of the sales funnel- introductory information will not interest them. Decide who will actually want your offer.

4. Format

The format of your Email has the ability to drive more traffic to the landing page in a couple different ways:

• Text– The majority of your text depends on your offer. A conversational tone as well as personalization may interest the lead more.
• Images– Being able to look at the product while reading it tends to keep people more interested rather than text alone. Create a cover for your ebook, and it will attract more attention.
• CTA– A great looking CTA will attract a click-through, as well as make your email look more professional.

5. Timing and Frequency

Building off of all these other elements, timing and frequency is yet another factor to consider. Choose what will work best for your company. There are, of course, some general things to consider when deciding timing and frequency.

Some questions to ask yourself before hitting send:

• What day?- Try sending emails on different days and see which offers attract more attention.
• What time?- Figure out when your leads are most likely to read your information.
• How soon after?- If you’ve decided upon an automatic progression of offers depending on what the lead has downloaded, how long do you wait to send the next offer? Choose what is best for you situation.
• How often?- Too little and they’ll forget you, too much and you’ll annoy them. Find the right balance.

Without one of these, your email marketing campaign could be suffering. Decide which combinations you think would work best, then test the differences to see which one actually does. By combining all 5 critical email marketing elements, your company will nurture leads through the sales funnel more effectively.

What is information architecture?

As per Wikipedia, it’s “the art and science of organizing and labelling data including: websites, intranets, online communities, software, books and other mediums of information, to support usability”. We could simplify it to “the art and science of organizing websites” (we’re only talking about it in the context of websites in this article).

Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville (information architecture gurus, you should read their book) defined the ‘three circles of information architecture’ as content, users and context of use:

It’s about organizing the content and flow of a website based on research and planning. The end goal of information architects is to come up with a structure / design that balances the users’ desires with the business’s needs.

Users have four fundamental questions when they arrive at a website: Am I in the right place? Do they have what I am looking for? Do they have anything better (if this isn’t what I want)? What do I do now? One of your key tasks is to make sure you do a good job at answering these questions – on every page of your site.

This means that you have to

• Assure visitor’s they’re in the right place (always make it clear where they are).
• Make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for (clear navigation, search etc).
• Make sure visitors know what their options are (links like “See also”, “Related products”).
• Let them take various kinds of action (clear CTAs).

What’s the end deliverable?

The final goal is essentially to come up the architecture of the site. The end deliverable might be things site maps, site-flow diagrams, and wireframes to convey how the site will work from a practical perspective.

It should determine the big picture – organizing the content on the site to support the tasks that users want to perform. Information architecture should also include little things like deciding that products on a search page should be ordered by price rather than by name.

And all of it should be based on actual research and data. Not much room for opinions here.

There are multiple ways to approach getting the website information architecture right. Here’s the method that has worked for me over the years.

Five steps to putting information architecture together

You achieve your business goals when you help people achieve their goals. You can only do that when you fully understand your user’s goals, problems, and aspirations.

Step #1: Gather data about the users

It’s critical that we get inside the user’s head. Before you embark on working on the information architecture, you need to know answers to these questions: What problem are we solving? Who needs it? What’s this site for? The earlier the purpose and goals are clearly defined (and written down!), the more easily problems are identified and solved, the easier it is to stay focused, and the better the end result.

Talk to your users. In person interviews and phone calls are best, but online surveys are also great. Here’s a post I wrote about conducting user research.

The end goal here is to really understand what your users want and why they want it. There will be probably different intents and use cases, and that’s to be expected.

Step #2: Create customer personas and write user stories

Your website should be designed for somebody, not everybody. This is where customer personas come in.

Personas are fact-based (derived from user research) fictional representations of your users. They represent the goals, motivations, characteristics and behaviors of the most important groups of your users.

Here’s a sample persona (attaching a photo to a persona helps us imagine a real person we’re building the site for):

Next step is connecting use cases with personas. Use cases provide a simple means to decide and describe the purpose of a project. Use cases have 2 components: actors and goals.

Actors are people using the website. You only want to focus on the most prominent groups – the user personas. Goals are what one, some, or all of the personas want to achieve. Every use case must have a specific goal and the actors that will perform tasks to achieve that goal.

Goals might be things like read a blog post, check account balance, book an appointment, download software, take a test and so on. Use cases define goals and purpose: the problems we are trying to solve. (this is the first step to improving customer lifetime value too)

When you approach your website organization thinking about personas and what they wish to achieve, you will work with greater confidence, clarity.

Step #3: Metadata, scenarios, pages.

Once you have an understanding of the users – their intent, the why behind it and how they’d like to achieve their goal – you can begin to figure out how to present your content in a way that will make sense to your users.

There are several good methods to do this, but here’s one that I like to use:

Figure out the metadata

Metadata is information about information. It’s what helps users find the content they’re looking for. Let’s say you want to buy a coffee grinder, and go to a website that you know that sells those. If you browse around and can’t find it, it’s a sign of bad metadata. If you get your metadata right, you’ve already cleared the first hurdle of effective site design.

You have to determine what kind of information to store about stuff that people care about – life coffee grinders. Maybe they’d like to search by blade size? Color? Brand? Knowing what are all the different parameters and variables you need to store in your system is crucial for excellent search results.

The metadata for a book could be title, description, author, release date, ISBN, comments, cover image. Plan for it!

Step #4: Create user flows

Now that you’ve figured out the kinds of pages you need on your site, map out the optimal user flows (I’ve written about creating user flows here).

When designing flows, it’s also important to know the four modes of searching information. There’s an excellent article by Donna Spencer on this very topic. According to her, the four types are:

• Known-item search. Often, when people know exactly what they are looking for and what it’s called, they’ll mostly use search. But some prefer navigation, so it has to work with search to get people where they know they want to go.
• Exploratory seeking. This happens when users may have a need, but aren’t certain what will fulfill it. They might be looking for a re-marketing solution or a new laptop. People will recognize an answer to their question, but won’t know if they’ve actually found the right answer (doesn’t know if there’s a more suited option out there).
• Don’t know what I need to know. Sometimes people don’t know what they need to know. Somebody looking to buy gemstone jewelry will realize that she has to figure out precious metals, treatments, gemstone clarity, hardness and many other things. They’re looking for one thing, but discover they really need to know about something else.
• Re-finding. People may want to go back to things they discovered in the past. If they saw something they liked on your site during their previous visit, make it easy to find it again (change the color of visited links, use permanent shopping carts etc).

Each information-seeking behavior relies on specific navigational tools to succeed.

Step #5: Create sitemaps, wireframes – and gather feedback

You’re only 1 person, and you need fresh sets of eyes and brains to challenge your thinking. Maybe you missed something, maybe you misunderstood the importance of something. This is why you need go through it all with your team mates (or other peers).

You can use sketches, diagrams, site maps or wireframes to communicate your findings and proposals for going forward.

Gather feedback, iterate, and move on to planning your site structure.

Conclusion

People can only buy what they can find. There are a number of studies that show websites are losing money because the navigation system has failed and user can’t find the product they are interested in. I’ve seen the claim “up to 50% of sales lost due to bad navigation” being thrown around, but I haven’t found the actual study confirming this. Nevertheless, good navigation is critical.

Information architecture works hand in hand with usability and conversions. If your information architecture is good, but your usability sucks, your visitors will be able to find what they are looking for, but will struggle to complete the purchase flow – resulting in poor conversions. However your web site information architecture is bad (even if your usability is good), most of your web site visitors won’t even be able to find what they are looking for, and thus will leave your site even before entering the sales funnel.

Getting the information architecture of your site right will ensure a great user experience, which in turn leads to higher retention rate and improved conversions.

We are a big believer that every good content marketing strategy begins with a comprehensive audit of the website’s current performance. The simple reason is that you cannot plan ahead if you do not already have a great understanding of where you currently are.

In this blog article, We will show you how a content audit with six important Google Analytics reports can help you make some smart decisions about the health of your current site, what your audience wants from your content, and how you can benchmark your performance for future content marketing efforts.

The six reports include the following:

1. Channels report
2. Landing Page report
3. New vs Returning Visitor report
4. Frequency & Recency report
5. Site Search report
6. Behavior Flow report

Now, these aren’t the only reports you should use in your content audit, and you don’t need to be a Google Analytics doyen to gather insights from these reports, you just need to know what you’re looking for.

For the above-mentioned reports, we will aim to answer the following questions about content on your website:

• How is my audience finding my content? (Channels report)
• Which content piece is performing the best in terms of traffic, engagement, and conversion? (Landing Page report)
• What should my content performance benchmarks be? (Landing Page report)
• Do I need to prioritize building an audience; or should I nurture my existing audience? (New vs. Returning report)
• How many pieces of content do I need to create a month? (Frequency & Recency report)
• What are the topics I should be talking about, but are not? (Site Search report)
• Is my content successful at driving business transactional goals? (Behavior Flow report)
• What is the value of my content? (Behavior Flow report)

Okay then, Lets start with the six reports.

1. Channels report

Where is it?

ACQUISITION > ALL TRAFFIC > CHANNELS

Questions it will answer:

How is my audience finding my content?

Which channels are creating the most leads?

This report is useful for understanding where your visitors are coming from and which channels are the most effective sources for your content.

Using your “Converter” Advanced Segment, you can see which channels are driving the best quality of traffic and conversions to your website. This can help you identify where you need to improve your content marketing.

Two key things to look out for in the Channels report are:

1. Which channels are delivering the most traffic to your site?
2. Which channels are delivering the best quality traffic to your site?

There is a difference. For quantity, look at the Acquisition metrics; for quality, consider the Behavior metrics and the “Goal Conversion Rate.”

For example, if you are pushing your content out on your social media channels and are seeing high bounce rates and a low Average Session Duration, this could mean your social media audience is not finding the content they want. Or, it could also mean that the content they see on your site does not properly represent what your social media snippets are promising.

Alternatively, it could indicate that your content may not be displaying well on mobile devices (where most social media traffic tends to come from), and is giving users a bad mobile experience. All of these insights can help you better optimize your content distribution strategy.

2. Landing Pages report

Where is it?

BEHAVIOR > SITE CONTENT > LANDING PAGES

Questions it will answer:

What is the most popular content (in terms of performance)?

What type of content to create for your audience?

What benchmarks should you set for future content efforts?

The Landing Page report allows you to see some real performance results around the content currently on the website. If, for example, all your blog content is housed under the same sub-folder (“/blog/”), then a quick way to check the top-performing content is to use the search bar in the report and paste in that section of the URL (for example, ‘/blog/). Using this search bar will only show you URLs that contain ‘/blog/’ on the site.

Those who have a tidy content management system (CMS) might be able to view this directly in the “Content Drilldown” report instead.

3. New vs. returning visitors report

Where is it?

AUDIENCE > BEHAVIOR > NEW vs RETURNING

Questions it will answer:

Depending on your marketing goals, this report shows you how successful your content is at building brand awareness (new visitors) or nurturing an existing audience (Returning visitors).

The New vs. Returning report is vital if you’re looking to understand which type of content marketing strategy to pursue; especially for content marketing goals that revolve around audience growth (e.g., brand awareness, email signups, and engagement).

This report is not so much focused on leads and sales as it is on giving insights related to building and nurturing an audience higher up the conversion funnel. It’s an important report because it reveals whether your current content is doing a good job at introducing your brand to potential customers.

To start, I like to make this report simple to read by clicking the pie-shaped symbol so I can see the split.

4. Frequency & Recency report

Where is it?

AUDIENCE > BEHAVIOR > FREQUENCY & RECENCY

Questions it will answer:

What is the optimal amount of content I need to create each month?

The Frequency and Recency report simply shows you how often your audience returns to your website in two ways:

1. The average amount of times (sessions) a visitor has on your site
2. The average amount of days between these sessions

When you first open this report, you will see that the first row of the ‘Count of Session’ table will have by far the most traffic. This is because it also includes all New visitors to your site. You will want to filter these out. You really only want to see the behavior of Returning Visitors. You will need to create a “Returning Visitor” Advanced Segment.

5. Site Search report

Where is it?

BEHAVIOR > SITE SEARCH > SEARCH TERMS

Questions it will answer:

Identify what your audience wants from your content

What they are struggling to find on your website

What content topics are missing

 

The Site Search report looks at what visitors to your website type into the search bar within your website. It is a good indicator of what your audience wants to do on your site or what they are struggling to find.

Most websites are built with audience intent in mind, which means the results in the Site Search report only reflect a fraction of the visitors to your site. As a result, what you find in this report should not dictate your content marketing topics but it is worth looking at how many times people are typing a common word or phrase into the search bar.

An example is a client of mine, which is a university: When we looked at the Site Search report, we saw regular searches for words like “unit guide,” “Handbook,” and “unit guides,” which told us that people researching what the university offers were finding it difficult to find content about their courses and potential study paths.

Our solution was to make the university course handbook available to download on the homepage. Searches for the handbook plummeted. Likewise, audiences searched for “important dates,” “timetable,” and “calendar.”

Again, what this told us was that people wanted to see what events were ongoing for a particular month at the University, but they could not find where this content was housed. Thus, we created a widget on the site that allowed visitors to find events and exam times.

Think of the Site Search report as a visitor “feedback” section of your site. It allows you to identify gaps in your current content strategy or user-experience problems with the website.

6. Behavior Flow report

Where is it?

BEHAVIOR > BEHAVIOR FLOW

Questions it will answer:

Where is your audience going after they have landed on your blog page?

Has the content been successful in driving people to the next stage of the funnel?

We, as content marketers, often put so much time and effort into driving traffic to our content that we don’t put much thought into what happens after they’ve consumed it. I’ve been guilty of this many times and when it comes to assessing content performance, I would use Behavior metrics such as Bounce Rate or Avg. Session Duration and make assessments on content performance from there.

While these metrics are important, your assessment of the content performance is only half done, simply because as such metrics don’t really give you any insight into one of the most important questions content marketers need to be answering: How is content contributing to the success of my business? This is where the Behavior Flow report can be useful.

All content marketing campaigns need to have goals attached to them. By goals, I mean what is it that you want the content to do for your site and business? They could be to drive leads, email subscriptions, or whitepaper downloads. One of those goals could even just be traffic going to a specific page.

Ask yourself, which pages on your website would you consider a “conversion” page? These are pages where, if someone lands on them, they have shown ‘customer intent’ and are a potential lead.

Conclusion

In order to get better results from your Google Analytics data, we highly recommend you look into some more advanced content metrics such as setting up Events and Goals that align with your business, as well as creating specific UTM cookie campaigns to enable successful A/B testing of things like headlines and social snippets.

We’ve had great success using the plan detailed above. I’m certain you can do the same.