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Facing increased pressure from new, deep-pocketed competitors in the U.S., Netflix is looking abroad for more growth opportunities as it faces a continued slowdown of domestic subscriber increases. In the fourth quarter, Netflix added 42,000 new subscribers in the U.S. (55,000 including Canada)–to just over 61 million in total–and acknowledged it is facing increased subscriber…
At AWeber, our mission is to help small businesses succeed with powerfully-simple marketing tools and the support you need to use them.
That’s why we regularly host free summits and webinars about marketing. It’s why we write a blog focused on email marketing, and we send our weekly newsletter FWD: Thinking. And it’s also why we offer 24/7 customer solutions.
Now, I’m proud to introduce our latest free marketing education for small businesses — the FWD: Thinking Show. The FWD: Thinking Show is a free, monthly live show where you’ll get marketing and business strategy from the smartest marketers in the world.
Get-rich-quick marketing schemes don’t work. Top-secret formulas that cost thousands don’t guarantee results. Outdated marketing tactics don’t produce revenue anymore.
Marketing that delivers real business growth takes effort, a bit of risk, and planning. This is the kind of marketing strategy you’ll get from the FWD: Thinking Show.
And episode 1 of FWD: Thinking launches LIVE next week! Join me at 2:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, January 22 as I interview Lee Odden, the CEO of TopRank Marketing.
The show is like a webinar, podcast, and keynote speech combined! Each episode of the FWD: Thinking Show will follow this agenda:
Liz Willits, the host of the FWD: Thinking Show, will ask the guest questions about their career, their best marketing and business advice, and more.
The guest speaker will share one innovative business or marketing strategy to accelerate your growth.
This is your chance to ask the smartest marketers in the world anything and get tailored advice.
Lee Odden is a lightly bearded B2B marketing strategist, author, international speaker and CEO of the fine team at TopRank Marketing. His work integrating search, social, content, and influencer marketing for B2B brands has been recognized by numerous publications including the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Forbes.
Yours truly. I’m a professional speaker and marketing expert. I help run content strategy at AWeber. And I’ve taught hundreds of thousands of small business owners and entrepreneurs how to successfully grow their businesses online.
It’s free! You can get your ticket here, and access the show on Wednesday, June 22 at 2:00 p.m. ET.
For the best experience, I recommend attending the live show. But if you can’t clear your schedule, claim your ticket to get an on-demand video of the live episode. I’ll email
the on-demand video within 24 hours of the live show.
The post AWeber’s Live Video Show Is about to Launch — and It’s Unlike Anything You’ve Ever Seen appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.
Do you manage social media for other businesses? Wondering how to request the assets and information you need to do your job? In this article, you’ll discover a checklist for onboarding new clients so you have what you need to manage their social media marketing effectively. Why a Social Media Marketing Onboarding Process Is Important […]
The post How to Onboard Social Media Marketing Clients: A Checklist for Consultants appeared first on Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner.
If you’re someone who relies more on your intuition than your reason, this episode is for you. I spoke with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, author of a new book called, Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters. We talked about one of my favorite topics, mental blindspots and cognitive biases, especially as they relate to creativity in business.
If you like what you hear, write a review, subscribe on Apple Podcasts and, one more thing, be sure to sign up for my Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.
If you’re someone who relies more on your intuition than your reason, this episode is for you. I spoke with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, author of a new book called, Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters. We talked about one of my favorite topics, mental blindspots and cognitive biases, especially as they relate to creativity in business.
If you like what you hear, write a review, subscribe on Apple Podcasts and, one more thing, be sure to sign up for my Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.
Brands need to monitor and respond to reviews to improve their online experience because customers will vote with their search behavior.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
SEO has been changing drastically over the years.
In 2010, Google made 516 algorithm changes. That number increased to 1,653 in 2016 and to 3,234 in 2018. We don’t have data for the last couple of years, but still, you can bet that the number is continually going up.
With over 9 algorithm changes a day, it’s safe to say that it is no longer easy to manipulate or game Google.
So, is SEO dead?
Well, let’s look at the data and from there I’ll show you
what you should do.
Do you know how many searches take place on Google each day?
Roughly
5.6 billion searches per day.
That’s roughly 2 trillion searches each year.
Although that’s a lot of searches, there is also a lot of
content being created.
There are roughly a billion blogs on the web.
There are so many blogs that you can find an excessive amount of content on most topics out there.
For example, if you look at the long-tail phrase, “what is digital marketing”, there are only 11,300 global searches a month but a whopping 665,000 pieces of content trying to answer that question.
In other words, the supply is much greater than the demand.
You’ll see even more of this for head terms. Just look at
the phrase “banana”:
640,300 global searches seem like a high number but there are 880,000,000 million results. Sure, some of those results may not be on the food, banana, but still, that’s a lot of content compared to the search volume.
You can still find search phrases where there is more search volume than content but the trend is continually increasing in which content production is exceeding search demand.
On top of that, Google is turning into an answer engine in which they are answering people’s questions without them having to go to a website.
According to Dejan SEO,
they saw CTRs drastically decrease once Google started answering questions.
Just look at this weather search query:
Their clicks from weather-related queries went from 46% all the way down to 7%.
This trend has become so common that the percentage of traffic that Google drives to organic listings (SEO results) has been decreasing over time.
So, does this mean SEO is dead?
It’s actually the opposite.
With all of the data, how can that be the case?
First off, all marketing channels become statured over time. It’s just a question of when.
You can say the same thing about Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter, and even email marketing.
Heck, just look at the image below. It was the first banner ad on the Internet.
Can you guess what company created that banner ad? It was
ATT.
Of the people who saw it, 44% of them clicked on it. Now banner ads generate an average click-through rate of 0.5%.
That’s an enormous drop.
And, as I mentioned above, it’s with all channels. Just look at Instagram engagement rates:
It doesn’t matter if it is a sponsored post or an organic post, the trend on Instagram is that engagement is going down.
That’s why you are seeing people like Gary Vaynerchuk and Grant Cardone promoting their phone numbers all over Instagram.
That way they can communicate with their fans directly
without having to deal with algorithms or platforms decreasing their engagement.
But even with those decreasing numbers, you are seeing sponsored posts on Instagram surging by 150%.
In other words, people are still spending money because they
are seeing an ROI or generating enough value in their eyes.
And the same is happening with digital
ad spending.
The numbers are on the rise because companies are generating
an ROI.
As I explained above, just because the metrics aren’t going in your favor doesn’t mean that a channel is dead.
Just look at my search traffic on NeilPatel.com.
Not only do I have to deal with Google’s algorithm like you, but my competition includes other marketers who know what I know… yet I am still able to grow my search traffic even with Google’s decreasing CTRs.
When you look at search as a whole (and I am not only talking about on Bing and Google as people also search on other sites and platforms as well) Google still dominates market share with a whopping 94%.
People still use Google and prefer them as their method of search. But what’s changed is how Google is being used.
It used to be where you would use platforms like Instagram
for discovery and Google for commerce (purchasing).
The trend has switched over the years in which Instagram is
being heavily used for commerce and Google is mainly used as a discovery engine.
Just look at this case study by Olay.
Olay sells products related to skincare. One of their products happens to reduce darkness under your eyes.
So, they used to push heavily on ads that sold their
products directly.
But the moment they changed their ads to focus on education by teaching people how to reduce dark circles under their eyes instead of forcing people to buy their products, their ROI went through the roof.
By sending people to educational-based content first (and then selling through the content), they were able to increase click-throughs by 87%, decrease their cost per click by 30%, and increase conversions by 100%.
This is a prime example of how more people are using Google as a discovery engine first instead of a commerce engine.
Now that you know that Google is shifting to a discovery
engine (for both paid and organic listings), there are a few other things you
need to know if you want to dominate the organic listings.
Their algorithm core focus isn’t backlinks or keyword density, or a specific SEO metric… the focus is on the user experience.
If a site has millions of backlinks but users hate it, the site won’t rank well in the long run.
Look at this case study of the “best grilled steaks.”
Rand Fishkin had all of his social followers do the
following:
Within 70 minutes, the listing jumped to the top spot.
This is what I mean by user signals. You, the end-user, control how Google adjusts rankings.
Google knows you spend hours a day on your mobile device and hours on other sites and applications that aren’t controlled or owned by Google.
So, when they are figuring out what to rank and where to
rank it, they aren’t just looking at their own dataset.
They crawl things like social media and use social signals
to help them better improve their results.
For example, here is a case study on how Google is using social media for search discovery.
Even if you hate the social web, you need to use it more. Not only can it help with your site’s indexing but it can also help with brand building, which indirectly will help boost your rankings as well.
Here are some articles to follow to help boost your social
media presence:
If you don’t believe me, just look at these quotes from Google’s ex-CEO and ex-head of webspam.
They both believe
in brands.
As your brand grows, you’ll find that your rankings will climb as well.
You saw my search traffic stats earlier in the post, but
here’s a breakdown of how many people found my site by searching for my name in
the last 7 days.
And that number doesn’t even include the misspellings. You would be shocked at how many people spell my name as “niel” instead of “neil.”
Google loves brands. Heck, when you type in “men’s running shoes,” they even have Nike, Adidas, and Asics there.
Branded search volume is more correlated with rankings than links or domain authority.
If you want to build a brand, focus on the social media
articles I linked to above and follow the brand building articles below:
If you are still struggling to build a brand, talk to one of my team members about our Digital PR.
Do you remember the old-school site About.com?
Over time, About.com tanked in terms of their Google rankings and the business was dying. There were a few reasons why:
They decided to rebrand as Dotdash and start niching down. So they took the content on About.com and split it into six specific vertical sites.
When doing this they found that a lot of the content didn’t fit into those 6 verticals or wasn’t up to their new quality standard. This caused them them delete roughly 900,000 articles.
From the data, you can see that they got much more traffic by splitting up their content into niched-down sites.
It was so successful that they took one of their new vertical sites and broke it down further into three niche sites. Here were the results:
This helped them grow their revenue by 140%.
If you want to do well in today’s world of SEO, focus on one niche. Google prefers topic-specific sites because that’s what you and everyone else loves.
Just think of it this way… would you rather read medical advice from About.com or WebMD?
WebMD of course.
Have you noticed that when you search on Google the results you see are different than the results of your friends?
It’s because Google is trying to personalize the results to
you.
Not just on Google search but anywhere you use a Google device… from a smartphone to Google Home to even their autonomous cars.
With all of the data they are gathering, they are better
suited to understand your preferences and then modify the results to that.
Just think of it this way: Every time you visit a place and you are carrying your mobile phone (especially if it is an Android device), Google may be able to potentially use that information to tailor results to you.
With your website, don’t try and show everyone the same message. If you personalize your experience to each and every user, you will be able to rank better in the long run as it will improve your user metrics.
A good example of this is on my blog.
Right when you land there, I let you pick the type of content you want to see and then the page adapts to your interest.
It’s actually the most clicked area on the blog, believe it
or not.
SEO is not dead, it’s just changing.
Sure, click-through rates are going down and Google keeps adjusting its algorithm but that’s to be expected.
Google has made it so you can easily target your ideal customer through SEO or paid ads.
It used to be much more difficult before they came along. That’s why they are able to generate over 100 billion dollars a year in advertising revenue.
Don’t worry about things that aren’t in your control. Instead, start adapting or your traffic and business will be dead.
What do you think about the changing SEO landscape?
The post Is SEO Dead? (A Data-Driven Answer) appeared first on Neil Patel.
In a new, 6-second teaser for Pringles’ Super Bowl 2020 ad, a bunch of Morty robots with Julius Pringles heads for eyes sit in a classroom learning about “flavor stacking”–sandwiching several different flavors of Pringles on top of one another to make new combos–from one teacher Morty robot. In Morty’s signature screech, the teacher robot…
If you’re someone who relies more on your intuition than your reason, this episode is for you. I spoke with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, author of a new book called, Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters. We talked about one of my favorite topics, mental blindspots and cognitive biases, especially as they relate to creativity in business.
If you like what you hear, write a review, subscribe on Apple Podcasts and, one more thing, be sure to sign up for my Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.
Did you know:
Pinterest is such a key part of the buying journey for its users that over 90 percent of weekly active Pinners use Pinterest to make purchasing decisions.
Talk about buying power!
Not only are Pinterest users making purchase decisions on the platform, 83 percent say they are making purchases specifically based on the content they’ve seen from brands on Pinterest.
Pinterest is no longer simply a place to save ideas and build dream boards. Instead, Pinterest has turned into the world’s largest visual discovery platform.
And there are a lot of opportunities for brands.
We had a chance to chat with the team over at Pinterest about some of their best practices for brands looking to increase sales. We’re excited to share those lessons with you!
Here’s what we learned…
According to one survey, “47 percent of social media users saw Pinterest as the platform for discovering and shopping for products—more than three times higher than those who cited Facebook or Instagram.”
Seventy-seven percent of weekly Pinners have also discovered a new brand or product on Pinterest, and according to Pinterest, “people actually want to see content from brands while they’re on the platform–78 percent say it’s useful.”
Pinterest might not immediately come to mind as a platform to invest in for many brands, but it should.
Pinterest lives in a unique space on the internet where users are discovering content related to themselves and their aspirations rather than focusing on others, and this has turned it into a powerful platform for users to make purchasing decisions and discover new brands and products.
Clearly, Pinterest is not one to be ignored when it comes to your marketing strategy. Here’s how you can use the platform to drive sales.
There are some really simple ways that you can start leveraging Pinterest to reach new audiences and optimize your pins and profile for sales. Some of these tips might be easy to implement immediately while others might play into later strategies, let’s dive in!
A whopping 97 percent of top searches on Pinterest are unbranded, according to the Pinterest team. For brands, this presents an opportunity to stand out and gain brand recognition through the platform.
Pinterest recommends adding a small logo in one of the four corners of your pin, this can be done really easily in a tool like Canva. You can play around with the design, of course, and add your logo wherever it feels best. In this example from Quip, they went with top centered to fit with the rest of the text on their image.
As with most sites, mobile is extremely important on Pinterest. Eighty-five percent of Pinners are using the mobile app, so it’s important that your content appeals to them while they’re on their phones and appears properly in their feeds. If you’re linking back to your own content, it’s also important that the page that you’re sending users to is mobile friendly as well.
A tip from Pinterest here is to tailor your font size to phone rendering to make sure your fonts are legible on small screens and to design for a vertical aspect ratio. The ideal dimensions are 600 pixels x 900 pixels.
Have you ever clicked on a beautiful image on Pinterest only to be taken to a website that looks nothing like the pin? I have, and it left me really confused.
According to Pinterest, the best practice is to make sure your pins and your website have a similar look and feel, and that doing this pays off. In an analysis from Pinterest, they found that “Pins that went to landing pages with similar imagery had a 13 percent higher online sales lift.”
This example from Ettitude is really great. The pin they are sharing fits seamlessly in a lot of home decor and design tags on Pinterest.
And although their website uses different photos, it still has a similar feel to the pin.
A big element to social media marketing and campaigns is timing. When are people online and when are people talking about the things you want to talk about?
Luckily in the case of Pinterest, they release annual ‘Seasonal Insights,’ which helps take away some of the guesswork. A report that contains more than a dozen specific moments that take place throughout the year.
For example, their 2019 report shared that users start sharing holiday content in June all the way through December and that content related to the Summer starts getting pinned at the beginning of February.
They also have monthly trends reports. Here’s their latest for December 2019 trends on Pinterest, it shares specific trends like the search term ‘peach green tea’ is up 320 percent YoY!
These are great free resources that you can leverage to start timing seasonal campaigns around when people are starting to make specific seasonal purchasing decisions. I would never have thought that people start looking at holiday content in June but that’s super-specific information that can go a long way to help with timely campaigns.
One of the main ways for Pinterest to help generate sales is for the products you are selling to be easily available through Pinterest. Luckily, the platform makes this really easy for brands to set up and feature prominently on their profiles.
Every Business profile on Pinterest has the ability for users to create a “shop” tab.
The shop tab is just what it sounds like, a place where users can go to see all of the products your brand is selling. On the flip side, brands can leverage that tab to share pins that link directly to their sales pages for the specific product.
Pinterest makes this whole process quite easy, they even have a method for importing new products through Pinterest Catalogs. All you have to do is have your data source approved and then as you add new products to your website, they get automagically added to Pinterest as well.
We hope this guide helps you get started with or double down on your efforts with Pinterest. Let us know about your experience with Pinterest in the comments!
If you want even more Pinterest resources, the Pinterest team has created a free Pinterest Academy with tons of lessons in there.