Category: marketing strategy

Best SEO Tips in 2021 Featuring Steve Wiideman

I interviewed Steve Wiideman for the Best SEO tips in 2021 and he delivered some incredible content I'm happy to share with you.

(Be sure to read my blog The Reason Why More People Aren’t Entrepreneurs here).

At A Glance

∎ Learn the magic of SEO after Google's Hummingbird Update

∎ 3 principle-based factors on using Google to increase your sales

∎ BONUS: Get access to a $599 SEO course for FREE

Best SEO Tips in 2021

Trevor: I'd like to hear your thoughts on SEO, with some specific questions I have there. I've SEO'd my LinkedIn profile. It has gotten me a lot of business doing that.

Because people search LinkedIn for stuff and people don't realize, uh I guess I should say business owners don't realize how valuable SEO is on all platforms. Whether it's LinkedIn, or their website, or their YouTube videos or whatnot.

If you could share, maybe top 3 tips for folks that are doing SEO themselves or maybe what they should look for if they want to hire someone that does SEO for them.

Optimize LinkedIn & Identify What Search Results You're Pulling

Steve: Sure you make a great point with LinkedIn. Optimizing your LinkedIn profile is fantastic. But when you optimize all of your social media profiles it can help you with your online reputation management as well.

So when someone does a name search your social profiles are there not just on page but off page getting some links to those profiles pages so google feels that’s the results are the most relevant searches for your name.

Do a google search with your name in quotes and see what appears for your name. Figure out which of those things you own and control and optimize the heck out of them.

Drive links to them from blogs, your friends blogs.

Isolate those things you don’t want to appear so you can get those removed or buried and then isolate things that are neutral that you don’t control. So you know in the mix of things here’s what I control.

Here’s what I can’t and that’s ok and here’s what I want to keep an eye on to go away.

Google SEO Tip #1: Solving for the intent of the user

Do I have the most relevant page to solve what people are looking for?

Steve: This for Organic SEO - a principle based approach:Not just the key words - key words died in the Hummingbird update from Google in 2013

It's about solving for the intent of the user now.

What is it they really want?

They searched for title tag principles because they are trying to get their click-thru-rates up in search results. But what do they want?

Higher CTR? Or Higher keyword rankings?

So when you solve for what they are actually looking for...If someone is searching for cheap flights...ask:

What is it that they really want to do?

They want to save money, they don’t want to pay baggage fees right? They want value.

When you answer what your users really want thru survey:

Through customer support, intake calls whatever you need to do so that your page really solves what your customer wants this takes it to the next level.

Rank Brain - the other big update that sits on top of Humming Bird is trying to understand the meaning of words.

You do need to emphasize search terms that have high search volume when you launch a new page because Google is going to crawl that page, identify those phrases and test you in the search results for them.

Long term it’s how users interact with your listing. So you can hack your way to the top with key words but if other pages are doing a better job of solving what users are looking for and provide more of a delightful experience, long term your rankings will go away.

So that’s #1 looking at your on page, being the most relevant and doing a search for the keyword you want to appear for.

• Study the top pages

• Study the on page

• Study what links are coming into those pages

• Study how many people have curated or quoted from the 1st paragraph on that page

• Use this data to inform on how to optimize your page

Google SEO Tip #2: Optimize Your Off Page Results for Google

Steve: Google in particular started with an algo Larry Page coined as Page Rank. It isn’t where you rank on the page but the algorithm that crawls thru the net looking for info to understand what pages have what meaning and are a good match for a phrase someone searches for in the search results.

They are crawling thru links to get to pages and those links count like votes. Like a sign above the door that says what’s behind the door, so before you walk thru it you read the sign and go oh, this room must be about kitchen.

So google reads the text in the link, then read the page and says oh this page being linked to must be about this topic.

Then they crawl analyze the page for titles, headings, the URL the page name.

They look at all these hidden factors and based on the on page and off page this page might be a good match for this search term.

I’m [Google is] going to test it and 1 out of 100,000 times people are searching for this term if it does good I’ll show it twice for every 100K then every 50K.

Then more often you can see this in Google Search Console

It all stems from how often they hit your page and how many other websites are linking and mentioning your website and your content.

This is just organic results, not Google maps, not video search, we’re talking about specifically Google web search (Google depending on your industry having about 80-90% market share is the search engine we want to pay the most attention to).

So those 2 are 2 of 3 principle-based factors.

1. Am i improving the relevancy and helpfulness of my page over time?

2. Am I improving the visibility and mentions of my page over time?

Google SEO Tip #3: Search Appearance & User Behavior Signals

Steve: And the 3rd thing is search appearance and user behavior signals - how users actually interact with your listing.

And in many cases you can almost eliminate everything on page and off page if you’re already ranking in top results If your page is the most helpful - it will stick there at the top.

It’s really around the user signals that tells Google and other search engines that this listing is the most helpful so I’m going to leave it there on the top until they start choosing another listing more often and staying on that listing.

So our goal is to provide a really click enticing, helpful, maybe really rich result by using some of the different technology available maybe using some reviews to the page so you get stars in the search results.

Maybe having some FAQs section at the bottom of the page that will show up in the search results if you use that FAQ market.

Maybe it’s putting some mark up around your video or images so they shows it as a thumbnail in the mobile search results.

It’s making your listing really stand out so it’s not just 1 of 10 listings that have just a title, description and a URL but instead you have some really rich content in the search results.

Trevor: So it’s using these tools to appear more valuable at a glance.

This speaks to value based marketing,versus hard pitches, deliver value first to engender reciprocity to be viewed as more helpful and enhance word of mouth digitally.

Steve: Now we’re talking about attribution and the whole buyer's journey and you’re right there are some biz owners that get myopic of driving people to just sales content:

"I want to make sure my sales pages are #1 don’t waste your time with all this fluff marketing content just get my personal injury or car accident lawyer page #1 that’s all I want."

But the reality is you can’t make that happen without some of the marketing content because that marketing content attracts links and it helps your wholistic SEO and builds authority if your short summary of the page, that long form:

• How to

• Where to

• Why

• What is

• Strategy

• Tips

• Advice

• Checklist type content...

When it’s out there and it gets linked to that can support that sales page that you want to perform that you want to rank.

So it’s hard sometimes convincing the leadership team that we need to create a really strong content marketing strategy around what our customers are looking for before they are ready to hire us.

Maybe even doing some industry content where we get other sites in the industry to reference some data some case studies some research we did that isn’t already available online.

So I think you’re right I think it’s understanding that buyer journey and addressing each phase of it when the user isn’t at the point of making a purchase or ready to make a decision yet.

Trevor: This would align with influencer marketing and getting shoutouts from people that are already established and things like that.

But I mean this is why you have a blog - you develop an audience you provide all this valuable content.

And it serves a secondary function:

So when you’re giving away information and there’s not a sales pitch there maybe there’s a link where hey if you want to find out more feel free to enter the funnel, essentially, without saying those words.

What also helps with that [content marketing] is: it’s a pre-qualifier.

You don’t have to get low quality leads because people are coming here they are attracted here by the content.

Instead of someone that just saw “hey this is for free” let me click on this. It’s a free deal! And then you get everyone that wants the freebies instead of the people that are more invested for a longer CTV for the lifetime journey of the customer.

Steve: It can be a huge win.

With Meineke car care centers, we did this thing where we didn’t necessarily want our best evergreen content on the blog but that’s where they put it.

The blog for me is about industry news, having a voice in conversations that are happening right now what’s new with the company.

It’s really time sensitive and will get buried in RSS feeds over time.

I like to nest up the content that’s more evergreen that will be just as helpful 3-5 years from now under its appropriate silo.

So I can get those really competitive pages to rank well so I’ll nest them in a URL that’s a sub page of that main page and I might use the blog to link to it so those sites that do take RSS feeds and publish that.

If they consume HTML you might get a link back from it. So it’s still worthwhile to mention in a blog.

So with Meineke they did use the blog. We did one every Tuesday we came up with a list using Conductor Searchlight keyword.

We came up with a list of all the different keywords we thought people were looking for.

Every Tuesday we launched a How-to.

• How-to jumpstart your car battery
• How-to check your engine oil
• What’s the difference between standard and synthetic oil

We did this every single Tuesday.

Every post was optimized to rank with unique pictures we took on sight, sometimes videos, a step-by-step it was a really strong campaign and a lot of that content is still up if you want to look at it.

After 5 months we attracted over 500,000 visits.

I think the most visits we had was was during Coachella which was when people were looking for how to jump start your car battery which I thought was really funny.

So anyway in doing that, what was neat about that campaign wasn’t that we drove that much traffic and earned 200 links to the site in the process.

But because everyone needs an oil change and they did at the time every 90 days they were able to use re-marketing.

So for everyone who visited the website we were able to remarket to them with ads you know $14.99 oil change coupon or something.

So not only did we did we attract links, drive traffic to the site, build brand awareness get a lot of those featured answers that now appear in voice searches since Google Assistant will use featured answers in 70% of its results.

We were also able to drive some of that traffic back to the website using retargeting from Facebook, from Google, from Bing and from there continue to build our list.

We were able to almost quadruple the volume of visitors that are coming to the website just by creating that value that you were just talking about.

Trevor: It sounds like you have enough in your brain to build a course. Do you have a course in SEO?

Steve: Yes

Trevor: Where can people go to find out more information?

Steve: I’d like to give everyone free access to it if you want?

Trevor: Sure!

Steve: It’s at academyofsearch.com

What I decided to do 3 years ago which is actually one of my own personal dreams is to teach. I started teaching at Cal State Fullerton, UC San Diego and Fullerton Community College.

At Cal State Fullerton I was teaching a class on strategic SEO.

I took a lot of that course content that inspired an SEO course we have at Academy of Search - like a 6 week program - it’s a $599 course but your listeners can access it for free.

Just use SEOSTEVE and they can get free access.

Trevor: Is there anywhere else people can go to find out more about you and your services that you’d like to give a shout out to?

Steve: Sure I’m actually all over social. My handle is SEO Steve. But if I’m not responding quick enough our team - we have a team of 9 other search geeks like me, no sales people we just love to help. Especially small businesses, we don’t work with a lot of small businesses.

So any help you need as a small business is all free and something we do to try to help the business community.

Just use the handle the Wiideman pretty much anywhere.

Instagram, Facebook all over the web. If there’s anything we can do to help to solve for a problem, a page isn’t ranking, a competitor is doing something spammy you know whatever it and you’d like us to take a look please do that we like to help wherever we can and hopefully build some great relationships.

Who knows maybe one day you’ll be the next digital marketing manager at the next Sketchers and you’ll remember us.

Trevor: That’s such an awesome thing you’re doing for small businesses there.

Steve: Thank you.

Have you used SEO before? What were the results? Comment below!

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How Elon Musk Uses The Power of 1st Principle Thinking

Credit: Tech Insider/Recode/NASA

While Amazon & eBay are killing it in the ecom sphere, Elon Musk is crushing it in a real life Tony Stark way.

Musk co-founded PayPal, created and owns Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company that's working on hyperloop trains to go from New York to Washington in 29 minutes.

So how does a private citizen compete with NASA and launch his own rocket into space?

It starts with rejecting everything you've ever learned. Doubting the conclusions about everything concerning a problem you're trying to solve until all you're left with is the distilled truth.

Most companies in the beginning have experimental phases, where intrinsic motivation and curiosity drives most of their innovation.

But what happens over time? Processes form and management becomes to afraid to mess with an existing system, and so that system stagnates.

Breaking even becomes the benchmark instead of pioneering or breaking ground in a new field.

Elon Musk turned the space industry on its head by applying first principle thinking, instead of getting stuck thinking about things in the same way.

Are you familiar with invisible rules?

While that sounds a bit abstract invisible rules affect us every day.

These are the habits and behaviors that are so ingrained they exist as almost an invisible constitution or charter we unconsciously follow in business and in personal endeavors.

When something challenges habitual ways of thinking about an established mode of acting many get defensive and stand up for...their own limitations.

First principle thinking is one of the best ways to undo these invisible rules that limit our ability to innovate.

First principle thinking reverse-engineers complex problems and frees our minds to creative possibility. Sometimes called “reasoning from first principles,” the concept is to break down complex problems into simple elements and then reassemble them from the ground up.

It’s one of the best ways to learn how to think for yourself and unlock your own creative potential, and move from linear to non-linear results exponentially as Elon Musk has done.

In early 2002, Musk founded the company that would be known as Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, with over a $100 million of the money received from the PayPal sale. Musk's goal was to make spaceflight cheaper by a factor of 10.

SpaceX's end goal is to bring economies to scale for colonizing Mars. Musk said that SpaceX won't file for an initial public offering until the "Mars Colonial Transporter" is flying regularly.

When PayPal was sold to eBay, Musk went to the beach in Rio de Janeiro but he wasn't just there for the scenery; he was reading Fundamentals of Rocket Propulsion.

Elon Musk spotted the trend that despite everything else getting smaller and cheaper like computers and smart phones, rockets get more expensive without improving.

Musk went to Russia to see if he could get rockets any cheaper than the American ones which were a stunning $130,000,000 dollars.

He met with many Russian officials, drank lots of vodka but even trying to grab a decommissioned intercontinental ballistic missile (missiles de-armed of weapons) the cheapest he could find was $20 million.

It was also pretty slim pickings if you're looking for a venture capitalist to fund your trip to Mars so the real life inspiration for Marvel's Iron Man had to regroup.

By the way, the Iron Man filmmaker Jon Favreau inspired Elon Musk to make tech that was only in a comic book to become a reality:

"I think it's important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy," Musk said in an interview with Kevin Rose.

"The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy," he said. "[With analogy] we are doing this because it's like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths … and then reason up from there."

Elon used first principle thinking to overcome the road block that progress creates, meaning processes are created by definition to look backwards and not be questioned.

After failing to get affordable rockets from Russia, on the way back to America, Elon Musk told the aerospace consultant who accompanied him there that,"I think we can build a rocket ourselves."

Elon Musk decided to ignore everything he knew and that the public knows about the process of sending a rocket into space (via NASA).

Rather than tackle this from a 30,000 view, Musk went microscopic and broke apart the physics involved in sending a rocket into space.

Tesla's founder examined what rockets are made out of:

Titanium, copper, carbon fibers and aerospace-grade aluminum alloys.

Then, still using first principle thinking he researched what the cost of these materials is on a commodity market and discovered that the materials of a rocket costs around 2% of the selling price.

This was due in large part to the outsourcing within the space industry for all the work in building the individual parts for cutting the metal and shaping the atoms.

Musk decided to set up shop with vertical integration owning the entire process of manufacturing and launching rockets.

SpaceX manufactures around 80% of their own rocket components and does some pretty innovative sourcing for their raw materials.

One SpaceX employee bought theodolite, which is used to track and align rockets, for $25,000 on eBay after finding out the new version cost too much.

This type of first principle thinking was used across the board for SpaceX.

Instead of using expensive materials for handles of hatches, they used spare parts from bathroom stall latches.

SpaceX avoided paying through the nose for astronaut custom-built harnesses and used race-car safety belts.

They swapped out specialty onboard computers that range in price up to $1 million dollars with the same type of computer that you're using in an ATM for only $5,000.

The way of thinking by analogy, following old established-process-based routines would have you think, well if NASA can't use the same rocket twice, I doubt anyone else can.

Musk turned this whole fallacy on its head.

This approach of first principle thinking truly reached the pinnacle of rocket science innovation when Elon Musk's SpaceX designed rockets to be re-usable.

And did so successfully not just theoretically.

Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage rocket designed and manufactured by SpaceX for the reliable and safe transport of people and payloads into Earth orbit and beyond. Falcon 9 is the world's first orbital class reusable rocket.

[Source:SpaceX.com]

Today's blog isn't about hero-worshipping Elon Musk - it's a tale told about how to learn from what's already working but in a way that even defies this sentence.

When you talk about reverse engineering a sales funnel or an existing business model, and making improvements on it, or the poster boy formula in blogging or YouTube it's a way of learning from what's already working without really learning.

Shifting to first principle thinking means taking apart a process, forgetting what you already know about it and seeing if there is a non-linear way to make the leap to new ideas.

Even our keyboards are flawed, if you look at the top row of keys you'll see it's designed to spell out "typewriter" to sell more typewriters not for an ergonomic method of typing the alphabet into words efficiently.

But it's a process, it's just "the way things are" so we accept it.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Elon Musk didn't. And his results speak for themselves.

Musk cherry-picked the best, brightest avionics engineers -many formerly at NASA- and gave them the freedom to build rockets instead of push paper, get stuck in procedure and never see their dreams materialize.

Musk hosts a regular Friday lunch where anyone can ask questions about where SpaceX is going.

So the next time you're faced with a wall you can't seem to break down to either solve a problem, innovate a product, design a new marketing strategy or invent a solution - try first principle thinking.

You may just find a winner.

What something you're trying to solve for right now?

Comment below!

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Direct Mail Makes A Comeback in 2020

Direct Mail is making a comeback! When was the last time you got a hand written letter from a friend or family member? Probably a while. But you still get those oil change coupons right?

You don't need a mindset changing Haiku to see the facts told by data:

US Postal Service reports that around 77 billion pieces of mail are made and sent each year. The result? 28 percent higher sales for companies who send mailers like catalogs and offers.

Ever get an Ikea catalogue in the mail with colorful pictures and designs? Even I can't resist looking through it.

USPS held another study which surprisingly found that while mobile marketers are spending $247 billion by the end of 2020, direct mail marketing offers a higher return for a much much smaller investment.

What are the numbers?

Well, direct mail campaigns expect on average $2,095 in sales for every $167 spent. For those not great at math, that's a return of 1,300 %!!

That's a bit more than just, "Will this ad double my ROI?"

There are some important deets to consider here. One is that direct mail isn't just about emotions, although that’s an important element of branding.

It's about taking action, reaching your audience, directly in a way that convinces them to act. Really, when you consider the big picture, direct mail is just another aspect of content marketing.

Online ads often get skipped over, it's much harder to ignore physical mail.People open mail faster - as soon as they get it often - than other mediums so there's that benefit.

The Millennial factor - as a Millennial I can speak to this as well, we love the 90s, and much of that old school feel. There is something about direct mail that inspires nostalgia.

With COVID city wide shut downs globally, people are just at home more anyways. And they are looking for new things to do. Direct mail is making old new again.

These days there is a lot more customization so using cookie data and more, direct mail campaigns can be segmented just like you would an ad on Facebook, and offer a more personalized experience to convert even higher.

Also there are very few advertisers using this method to reach customers - it isn't at all saturated, so there's that as well.

For more tips read Neil Patel's blog post on direct mail here.

What was the last letter you remember receiving? Or mailed ad that you liked? How will you use this strategy for your business?

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The Art of Guerrilla Marketing

Credit: Diana Parkhouse

Guerrilla Marketing is the ability to turn heads without an extremely large budget. According to Lexico Guerrilla Marketing is defined as:

Innovative, unconventional, and low-cost marketing techniques aimed at obtaining maximum exposure for a product.

It isn't what you'll learn about in a class on marketing from your community college or four year university. The key word here is unconventional.

PayPal Got Played By We Pay @ Their Own Conference

Have you ever heard of PayPal freezing a business's money randomly?

It happens. A lot. CNN Business descriptively states:

While it's supposed to be a measure to protect users against fraud, more often than not it has hurt businesses finances a lot. One person was raising money for cancer treatment when PayPal froze his account. Do a simple google search for 'PayPal froze my money' and you'll find thousands of results:

Pay processors and the drama they sometimes cause for entrepreneurs deserves a whole blog unto itself, but going back to Guerrilla Marketing, there are new competitors to PayPal every year. One refused to stay quiet.

One of my favorite examples of Guerrilla Marketing is when the payment processor We Pay dropped a 600 pound block of ice, with hundreds of dollars in it at PayPal's developer conference, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The message was clear:

“PayPal freezes your accounts” and that you should “unfreeze your money”… by switching to WePay.

Credit: https://techcrunch.com/2010/10/26/wepay-ice-paypal/

According to Hubspot this increased revenue for We Pay significantly:

• Conversions on landing page 3x higher
• 300% increase in weekly traffic
• 225% increase in signups

But Guerrilla Marketing isn't just pulling pranks it's being prepared for increased traffic and having a framework set up ahead of time to benefit from it. We Pay's achieved this by having a dedicated landing page for its stunt.

The WePay team had prepared in advance for a peak in engagement. They were ready for more emails, calls, and tweets than normal. And they had fun with it, documenting everything with pictures.

Carrie Remake Telekinesis in NYC Coffee Shop Stunt

In 2013, a marketing stunt to promote the remake of Carrie, a horror film from the Steven King book of the same name, pushed Guerrilla Marketing to a new level. A crazy telekinesis stunt was pulled on unsuspecting New Yorkers just trying to get a cup of coffee:

Needless to say, it was effective in getting the word out about the upcoming October 2013 film. While it could be argued that this ploy didn't perfectly fit the definition of being cost-effective

-I mean staging a telekinetic action scene in real life is rather elaborate-

I say it still counts as Guerrilla Marketing. Guerrilla Marketing stunts are risqué, highly visible, and attention-grabbing - all of which the Carrie NYC coffee shop captured. Hard to top that!

Carrie Foursquare's SXSW Tactic Added 100K New Users

On the balling-on-a-budget level, the company Foursquare, which popularized the concept of real-time location-sharing and checking-in, played an actual game of Four Square at SXSW in Austin, Texas in front of the convention hall.

Credit: https://www.zdnet.com/article/playing-four-square-with-foursquare-at-sxsw-2010/

The game drew 1000s of walk-up participants, said Dennis Crowley, CEO of the firm. While the company co-hosted a party Monday night, Crowley said, its SXSW presence didn’t include other bells and whistles like signage or a booth in the hall. It largely hinged on “a box of chalk and two rubber balls,” he said.

“We played all day long, and there was always a waiting line,” Crowley said. “We were handing out tee shirts, buttons, and stickers. Anytime someone didn’t know what Foursquare was, we helped them find it on their phone. We helped get them up and running and using it.”

Foursquare benefited from an additional 100,000 checkins that Saturday they played the four square game at SXSW on. Ever wonder why you see an ad for a store after walking by the store?

Since 2014, Foursquare launched Pilgrim, a piece of code that passively tracks where your phone goes using Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, and GSM to identify the coffee shop or park or Thai restaurant you’re visiting, then feeds that data to its partner apps to send you a 10 percent off coupon if you leave a review for the restaurant.

Today, Pilgrim and the company’s Places API are an integral part of tens of thousands of apps, sites, and interfaces. As Foursquare’s website says, “If it tells you where, it's probably built on Foursquare.”

While there are privacy concerns using Foursquare and it's technology, that game of four square they played was a great example of low cost Guerrilla Marketing.

If you want to use Guerrilla Marketing for your business here are a few tips:

• Keep your strategy fun, simple, and witty.
• Physically travel to the influencers in your target communities.
• Engage influential bloggers through mutual plugging.
• Flatter your audience. Always make them look good.
• Make social phenomena the core of your campaign.
• Be outrageous.
• Dare your audience to test your services
• Create a viral video that is humorous and pokes fun at yourself.
• Leverage existing communities, events and platforms.
• Impress people who can grow your business thru their audience.
• Create controversy by challenging your competitors. Credit.

How can you use this strategy in your business? Have you seen Guerrilla Marketing happen in real life, or have a favorite example yourself? Comment below!

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How to Use SEO to Drive More Sales

One of the pain points small to medium sized businesses have (& even Fortune 500s in some industries) is not understanding what SEO is, and feeling it’s too technical.

Search Engine Optimization is in essence, how to get your website to rank on google searches when your prospects are searching for your product or service.

BUT there are even more benefits to keyword research that will be revealed below.

Keyword Optimization in a Nutshell

Let’s first get clear on the specifics of what SEO is:

Search Engine Optimization discovers which specific terms potential customers search google with to find a service or product.

How money is made through search terms is by including these same search terms on your website. This gets your website ranking higher on Google search results.

But – you need to know the exact phrases as well as words, and that’s just the beginning.

Beyond SEO

Finding those keyword terms is absolutely necessary to get your website content to rank higher on search engine ranking pages (SERPs). Also, you’ll want to be on page 1 of Google for search term search results because people rarely look beyond page one.

Yet, there is a level deeper you’ll want to go for maximum benefits:

Customer intentions when googling. When you know why your prospects are searching for things as part of the customer experience you expand your opportunity for upsells & downsells as well as where and how to build out new products and services.

For more info on how to improve your business by understanding the customer experience read this metrics blog here.

Making keyword research a regular habit you do for your business helps understand how your audience views the world, which enables your messaging to be more on point with better customization and personalization. This generates better trust in your business too!

Have you ever made a content map? I linked a nice Hubspot article to the words ‘content map’ to peep, it’s great to map out your blog content & social media posts ahead of time.

Integrating SEO into how you map out your content calendar will boost your business presence online and up your game by a whole bunch, as more of your audience will read your blog and consume your content when it is already planned with SEO in mind.

Bullet Point Your Search Terms

Step One: Brainstorm Likely Terms Your Audience Searches For
Just start thinking up the type of terms your audience may search for when looking to hire your type of service or buy your type of products, when Google searching.

It can be helpful to role play what you would do if you were a customer, or what you already do personally, when googling for a product. Write down those search terms. If you have a team, get their thoughts too. Think of how your customers may phrase things.

Step 2: Validate Search Terms With Reality
Go on Quora, google your keyword term plus forum or blog or articles and you’ll find where online conversations are happening about your topic. This will get you the exact words your customers are using.

For example, if you run a podcast or marketing firm search “podcast+board” or “marketing+forum” or vice versa, and you’ll find forums and bulletin boards where folks go to find more info. It’s a great place to get your finger on the pulse of current trends.

Pro-tip: Look at Wikipedia, enter your search terms, and look at the table of contents on articles that pull up. This will get you some new search terms that be even more clutch.

Step 3: Google Autofill Hack
This is a nice little hack even millionaires I work with in eCommerce didn’t know about until I taught them! Go to Google.com and enter in the first word of a keyterm — don’t type in the full phrase though let Google autofill the rest.

This is the genius of it, Google will suggest the most popular search term combos that people search for. This will advance your search term list with real results you aren’t guessing on but have in specifics.

Bonus: Google Search Console
Stroll over to the Google Search Console to see the keywords your website already ranks for. Google will also give you the heads up if you have broken pages and/or links on your site, or anything that prevents them from properly indexing your webpage on search engines.

The Genius of Long-tail Search Terms

At this point, if you’re following the steps outlined in today’s blog, you’ll have quite a few search terms written down from:

√ Your brainstorming
√ Role playing as the customer
√ Your teams ideas on search terms
√ What you find on forums and boards in your industry and
√Google auto fill suggestions

To be effective you’ll want to have four to six baseline key phrases.

Ex: Marketing, marketing strategy, marketing plan and eight to twelve long-tail phrases.

Ex: Marketing plan template, Marketing help for small businesses, Marketing ideas during covid.

Baseline search term phrases are just that, your baseline. Start with these, put them on your landing pages, even in About pages if you can.

Use one phrase for your home page and the other phrases should have landing pages or whole sections of your website dedicated to these terms.

This empowers you to earn rankings on search results on Google. But make sure when choosing baseline key words to include relational search phrases in addition to the main one.

What I mean is this, remember when we talked about intention and the customer experience? The plain picture search term of say “marketing” will have higher competition than a less-than-obvious search term that denotes the experience your customer has on the customer journey.

An example of a key word phrase that reflects intent would be “get leads for my business” instead of just “marketing.” It’s a more specific intention which separates the people who may also be marketers from your customer base, that you actually want to reach.

As you may have noticed, the second phrase is a long-tail search term.

The long-tail search terms are fantastic on clarifying the customer’s intention, like the “getting leads for my business” above. You can even make certain weeks in the month themed for specific long-tail search terms you want to split test for SEO generated traffic on your site.

Sounds pretty dang useful right?

There are a few tools SEO experts recommend using I’ll mention as well.

SEO Tools Experts Use

√ Google Keyword Planner

Try and use your twelve to fifteen search terms in the planner’s keyword suggestion tool, and peep the ad groups Google suggests to piece out and label what you see.

You can find terms related to the ad groups, and view the estimated search volume for each term and the suggested bid — keep in mind it’s an AdWords tool made mainly to sell more ads.

Keep your perspective balanced here, as search volume is just one metric. Search terms with a lot of traffic don’t always help, but when you marry this to the bid price, you’ll notice high bid price means higher conversion values.

It isn’t a hard fast rule, but you’ll begin to see that bid price fluctuations are a vital sign when diving in to the research. Ideally, you want to mark and edit your search phrase with a combo of search volume and bid price. Try to find the mid point.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed right now – it’s understandable. You can stick with all the advice given before the Tools section here and still come out on top, better than before.

Here are a couple of other tools SEO experts recommend:

Yoast Suggest
Google Trends

TLDR Cliff Notes Version: Yoast is a free WordPress plugin (with advanced options on the paid plan), it alphabetically lists related search terms from Google, and Google Trends is gold for seeing a timeline of the popularity of a search term.

Google Trends is key if you plan on running Amazon or Shopify eCommerce businesses, as you can see spikes, dips and plateaus for search terms ( = buying habits) of a product you’re evaluating for adding to your shop.

What are your favorite key takeaways from today’s blog on SEO? Comment below, thanks.

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Available for freelance writing and guest posting on your blog: [email protected]

The Power of Tribes

Credit: Joel Mott

We live in challenging times right now. Police brutality has led to business closures from storefronts near protest marches, COVID19 panic buying has led to food and toilet paper shortages and many college graduates, like myself, were stripped of the gift that walking across college stages in grad regalia gives our hearts and souls.

Would be memories never created due to the bizarre pausing of normal life, as we all wait, breathless, for the next thing to happen, hoping paradoxically for things to return to normal.

Business right now is also juxtaposed with innovation opportunities but strained to maintain existing product lines above margin.

Steve Jobs' iconic slogan for Apple, "Think Different," really applies to all verticals still attempting to run a company in these challenging times.

How to Challenge the Status Quo Correctly

Companies that defeat the status quo often succeed where many fail. Whenever the state of affairs is changing, it gives one a chance to be remarkable.

However, many grains of sand make up a beach. Microinfluencers are forgotten by heads of marketing as they push out more cold audience targeted ads.

When you challenge the status quo and can follow through with incredible products or services so unlike what's already out there you start to build a cult following & the story of your business changes.

This following is what makes the difference when you actually are

"Thinking Different."

Quality always beats out quantity. A highly engaged group of followers will recruit more people to join your tribe. They'll take the lead creating micro leaders to step up to the plate and push the envelope.

Nature Abhors A Vacuum

The problem is, there is such a large amount of people that have convinced themselves that it's best to do nothing. That's part of the reason why we see Black Lives Matter protests striking a chord globally. The sleeping masses have woken up and see doing nothing isn't enough now.

To build a business, you need to build a brand. To build a brand you need to build a following. To build a following you need to think differently than the other millions of brands out there saying,

"Buy my stuff, buy my stuff."

Nature abhors a vacuum. A vacuum exists when many who think alike, share pain points your product or service can solve but see no leadership to guide them forward.

Leaders find out how to enter these vacuums and generate momentum. They create the ripple effects the world feels later, after critical mass is reached.

This type of movement generates another type of momentum: the speed of shared trust, the pace of belonging, the transformation of individuals into a tribe.

Be Congruent Inside & Out

Distinguishing your customers from other brands and their clients takes some work. You need to develop your own rituals unique to your company's vision.

Don't be afraid to be a little eccentric. As long as it isn't forced. Jobs was probably very socially awkward but with a genius for aesthetic design.

The funkiness of having all MacBooks after a certain period, come with Garageband, a program to create music, really helped solidify Apple's tribe from competitors.

When you're feeling stuck, think about rituals you enjoy. Contemplate how to integrate these with your tribe. What are things you enjoy, hobbies-wise?

Take a moment to see if you can repurpose some of these activities into a ritual for your company. You may see there are areas you can still rise to challenge the status quo and become remarkable.

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Available for freelance writing and guest posting on your blog: [email protected]

Where Reverse Engineering Fails & Stories Win

Credit: Math

Just like a good cup of coffee, feeling like you are beating the competition in your business's market is a feeling you want to savor. But what are you competing against?

The typical response is binary. Apple competes against Microsoft. General Motors competes against Toyota. Netflix competes against Hulu.

However, when customers are using your product or service to solve a pain point they are doing so to satisfy a complex set of emotions, moods and attitudes.

There are times when a customer may decide to purchase from you because they want to meet a goal. The steps towards reaching this goal have sub-steps that have to be achieved before reaching the purchase point.

The 3D Sphere Model of Competition

Credit: jgvdthree

Just the belief that things can get better is a foundation for moving forward. If consumers don't believe that anything can improve it will be a lot harder of a sell. How does what you sell help your clients make progress in their lives?

The way someone makes progress towards completing a goal is a path that offers many moments for you to solve their pain points. If you have an Ecommerce store selling coffee it would make sense to sell coffee mugs as well right?

Amazon's suggestions of similar products customer bought after buying what you're purchasing is responsible for millions of dollars in sales.

But the only way you will be able to even get to this point is if you understand what is competing with your products. Think beyond a linear timeline. Make it more like a 3 dimensional sphere that intersects with other spheres.

If You Were Selling Coffee...

If I was selling coffee, the competition you may think is other coffee brands, and tea. However, just like last Tuesday's blog mentions another source of competition is not buying anything at all.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, talking about the competition Netflix faces said:

“Really we compete with video games. We compete with drinking a bottle of wine. That’s a particularly tough one! We compete with other video networks. Playing board games.”

Thinking outside the box of typical market research on the competition, you'll want to ask, "What do people do instead of drinking coffee?"

Crazy as it seems there are folks who use cold showers to wake up in the morning, or buy really bright lights to turn on in the morning. Workers who work the night shift have their own unique sets of alternatives to coffee which can only last so long before a tolerance is built up.

Energy drinks, Yerba matte, lemon juice and even just water are other sources of competition to coffee. Cigarettes are a replacement for coffee to stimulate the user into being more awake as well as physical exercise.

Using the sphere model of where competition exists for your product, we can see it's more than tea but also yoga mats and stationary bicycles. What circumstances are people in when they seek coffee?

Students, office workers, teachers, entrepreneurs and many more use coffee to start their day. It's a popular drink. What aren't people saying about coffee?

Power of Micro Targeting

Answering these type of questions helps you niche down to a specific market you can micro target and develop a tribe of enthusiastic buyers that will take your company to the next level.

Going with our example of coffee as a sample product you would be selling, we can definitely sub niche down to different categories like:

Social coffee drinkers - they only drink coffee in a coffee shop with friends

Daily coffee drinkers - there are subcategories here as well, the instant coffee drinkers, the pre-ground coffee drinkers, and the whole bean grinders that consider themselves coffee aficionados.

Intermittent coffee drinkers - switching between chai teas, coffee and green teas this group is constantly experimenting with a variety of caffeinated beverages.

How you speak to each member of these groups (which can be subdivided further) will be different.

The marketing messages for an instant coffee drinkers won't be the same as a coffee aficionado who might only use an Aeropress and burr grinder (this is me - I love making some of the best coffee ever created).

The experiences that each group has inside of specific circumstances will decide how you present your product. Finding out that exercise is a competitor for drinking coffee may make you want to pivot into finding ways to combine both.

Reverse Engineering Vs Story Model

There are certain brands who will never have direct competition because of the immersive experience buying their product creates for customers. Trying to reverse engineer an existing business's model can only go so far.

Creating your own story that is filled with rich details solving multiple pain points in the customer's journey is how you stand out from the competition. The truth is most companies don't go to this level of detail.

Crafting unique rituals specific to your consumer's demographics, and circumstances surrounding their decision to buy is going to put you leagues ahead in your progress towards becoming the best version of what your business is capable of.

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Available for freelance writing and guest posting on your blog: [email protected]

How To Measure Better Company Metrics

startup blog, startup blog, startup blog

Credit:Luke Chesser

It is easy to get caught up in measuring metrics at a company as a way to gauge success but the data is often not organized in a manner that allows a business to consistently forecast which tactics will be successful.

When you start up a new business, it's exciting to have data that you can parse to see which split test is successful, whether this is in advertising creatives, ad copy or product designs.

But, it's often taken for granted just how complex and layered this process is because it isn't just about delivering a satisfying product but a complete experience that makes buying from your company stand out from the competition.

Distinguishing Your Company From Others

Even the limitations of your product or service can be used as part of the unique selling mechanism. Take for example Twitter's 280 characters limit for tweets & calling a post a "tweet." (See last week's blog on the war between Trump and Twitter)

There are so many levels of a pain point your product or service solves, that it takes a very nuanced approach to address the gap filled. This means that just basing definitions of success on quantitative data will miss the elephant in the room, the customer's:

Credit: Sarah Kilian

Why a person buys your product or service is not always something so granular that it can be put on a spread sheet. This why can change at different times of the day, year or with a set of personal experiences of infinite variety.

Facebook's Metrics Fail to Measure Actual Data

When I worked at Facebook in the ads department we had scores that rated us on how effective we were at our jobs. The number one score was Customer Sat, for Customer satisfaction. The C-Sat scores determined the stability of vendor contractors that staffed for Facebook as well.

However, there was a huge hole in universally rating everyone, for every type of customer, based on one, very black and white metric. The amount of money a person had to spend on ads often was a big trigger on whether or not they were satisfied with the support from the ads department.

If you were too broke to spend enough money to both A/B test and retarget (or even understood what retargeting is) then it didn't matter how many help center articles you read --you'd be unhappy. It wasn't an accurate measure of job performance.

We didn't have conversations with management on understanding why customers chose Facebook over other social media platforms to advertise on.Or how Facebook products or services helped make progress in people's lives & which circumstances they were trying to make progress in.

How to Discover Multileveled Pain Points

Many organizations completely miss defining what the real reason is that customers hire them, and easily fall into the common trap of a one-size-fits-all solution that never solves the problem.

Diving deeper than the surface level metrics opens up new possibilities for growth hacking and innovating company structure, both B2B and B2C.

Taking the time to investigate a customer's multileveled why for consuming your business's offering helps uncover the real reason they buy. Before Volvo messed up their brand image, people didn't buy Volvos to get from A to B or for a flashy look. They bought Volvos to feel safe.

The Secret to True Innovation

One thing you'll discover when going beyond quantitative metrics is the reason why your customer does not purchase. This is often an even more important area to focus on.

If there isn't a product or service that fits a customer's needs, they'll choose not to buy anything rather than settle for a less-than-perfect solution.

Customizing a product or service to fill this need is where many entrepreneurs have made billions of dollars. If you've looked at a niche and felt like you don't have any room to compete because it's over saturated that's a big sign that you probably haven't defined your client avatar's Why well enough.

It's a whole range of experiences that create the need that you're solving. This goes far beyond the basic demographic information of age, gender, location and interests.

When you captivate the story of every day consumers in that split second of struggling to move forward and being stopped by not having what they need - this is the real gold.

Workarounds Offer Insight Into Product Development

Finding out what things your customer base is substituting for what they really want is another opportunity to growth hack. If they have a work around that's pretty "meh" because what they want isn't available you can become very successful by solving that trade off.

Start paying closer attention to the workarounds you use in your own life to get things done, digitally and physically. Being both the consumer and the entrepreneur at the same time can yield new insights because of the way you can think outside the box than just quietly suffering wishing for something better.

Take note of both your own circumstances, and social-emotional depths when faced with something you can't solve perfectly. Observe other people's buying habits and workarounds and discover if consumers are repurposing something it isn't intended for.

This will signal a new gap your product or service can fill. It's a story that mere metrics won't tell you about. This type of market research reveals the nature of pain points in a way that offers you a chance to stand out in solving them.

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Available for freelance writing and guest posting on your blog: [email protected]

5 Steps On How To Overcome Sales Objections

Every business has to overcome sales objections, spoken and unspoken, to grow and prosper.

Whether your company is B2C or B2B, the sales process of client acquisition will always involve initial objections before purchase.

There are certain tactics that work across the board, in most verticals, so today we'll go over how to overcome sales objections to get the sale.

Anticipate Objections

It sounds simple, and isn't impossible to do, yet it isn't always common to hear a company be the first to say your objections. It's incredible effective when you do this, saying something like:

"I know you're probably thinking, this is way too expensive, but honestly can you put a price on happiness?"

By calling attention to a topic that many customers want to avoid, which is their reason to object to buying, you start to overcome objections before they happen.

Anticipating objections means taking the initiative, and calling out objections as you sense them. There are the standard objections, and also new ones specific to your prospect and this particular selling circumstance.

How can you sense which objections are hidden beneath the surface but aren't being aired out? By changing the nature of how you're listening to your prospect.

Always Active Listen

Many people, regardless of trying to make a sale, will listen only to wait for their turn to talk. This won't get you the sale. Listen with the intent of understanding. This builds trust with your potential client, and allows you to hear the 2nd reason behind a no.

The first reason is the surface level 'no' which doesn't have the emotional triggers that the real reason for the no has. The real objections are rooted in emotion, and association.

When truly listening to understand, there is more data to draw from. You start to get the feel for what isn't being said, as well as what is being said.

This creates an opportunity to anticipate their objections and have a solution ready to go in your response.

Respond

Your response should validate the type of concern that the prospect has, even if it’s that your competitor offers a better deal.

Even if it’s the latter by using curiosity, not defensiveness, you’ll be able to fully explore what is that the prospect likes better about the competition.

Many times it’s just a matter of sticking with what they already know and not wanting to risk an unknown.

In other cases, by asking questions with a true active listening approach, you’ll find that the customer isn’t as sure about their decision to go with the competitor.

You’ll unearth new pain points about the business they currently use, and can position your reply to show your company
connects those gaps.

And if it doesn’t, you’ll also be in a great position to use this as market research and tweak your own business model to offer what your competitors don’t offer but your customers / their customers want.

This is a high leverage position to be in.

With my clients, who are tired of getting Facebook ads disapproved without a solid answer from Facebook as to what part of their ad triggered the disapproval - I offer something no other competitor can offer:

Insight into why Facebook makes certain decisions, and the exact words, copy, in ads and landing pages, that caused the ad to get flagged as well as what ad copy would be approved instead.

This enables me to acknowledge gaps in the market, identify objections, and overcome them ahead of time by offering a solution Facebook doesn't offer - a clear explanation of what caused an ad to be disapproved and guidance on getting it approved.

(Does your agency need a FB Policy Expert? Schedule a free discovery call here)

Confirm - Check for Understanding

After discussing their objections, and how your company overcomes them, touch base to make sure you’re on the same page.

In schools, this is called a “Check for understanding” where a teacher double checks the class understands the material thus far, before moving on to new topics.

This is very similar, you’re the teacher, with the secret knowledge, and your prospect is the student, yearning to learn, even if they don’t know what is possible to learn.

Look for the confirmation, by paraphrasing their objections, summarizing your response and defeating of the objections, and ask if that sounds right.

Budget concerns - If they are objecting due to you haven’t built enough value first. It means you need to build more value.

I need to talk to my husband - We’ve all heard this one, or a version of it. Make sure that you aren’t playing a game of telephone and get the decision maker (DM) on the phone, or in the meeting before going for the close.

I’m too busy right now - Emphasize the fear of missing out, either a quantity scarcity, or a special price scarcity as the price will go up after tomorrow, or for a mastermind group, there are only a few spots left approach works well.

I need to think about it - This is a question of credibility, trust, and the value that’s been built (or hasn’t been built) about the product or service.

Price

If a prospective customer says your service is too much, it’s to your advantage to know what the competition is offering.

The difference in cost can be overcome with the unique selling mechanism your company has, that’s part of the brand slogan, ideally.

“You get what you pay for, and you look like someone who appreciates a quality product.”

This approach shifts from “It’s too expensive” to “Am I really giving myself the [royal] treatment I deserve?”

Conclusion - Know Your S#%t

Ultimately the better you know a product the better you can sell it.

The real secret is not only knowing your product, but also being well versed in:

▶ Your product/service's unique selling mechanism
▶ The market your business is in
▶ Your competition

The more you can speak on why your product or service specifically stands out - the more this confidence and expertise effortlessly translates to the customer who will mirror your energy.

If you’ve done the research and speak confidently based on knowledge, statistics, and results this will motivate your prospects to buy from you more than anything else.

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Is Facebook not explaining why the disapproved an ad?
I worked at FB for years and offer FB Policy Consulting here
Available for freelance writing and guest posting on your blog: [email protected]