Archives for January 2017
Common eCommerce Mistakes | Lack of Strategy, Goals or Action Plan – Part #2
Ecommerce has become a $2.0 trillion dollar platform, with expectations for it to double in 2020. While digital commerce experiences massive growth it is still less than 10% of all retail sales. With this massive growth comes a set of unique problems. With all the technology at play the gurus are still dealing with an imperfect platform. This is evidenced by a recent research report that shows shopping cart abandonment averaging 69%. Armed with that information you should know that your ecommerce platform is critical to your survival.
We know that people love to shop, they love to buy – they do not like to be sold. Shopping and browsing online attribut greatly to shopping cart abandonment. Pricing pressure and competition attribute heavily to this consumer trait. To some degree this is  beyond your control unless you have unlimited purse strings.
What can you control when it comes to an ecommerce site? You can focus on the most common mistakes businesses make with their ecommerce web site.
In this article we are going to focus on one that we see with our new clients almost every time. The lack of strategy, goals or action plan.
Lack of Marketing Strategy
Most venture capitalists, when surveyed on what they see wrong with most entrepreneurs, is the lack of a detailed marketing strategy. Entrepreneurs and small business founders fall in love with their product and themselves. They have a very difficult time understanding the process of getting someone to part with their money. It is estimated that nearly 50% of all business are doing digital marketing without any clearly and written defined strategy.
Marketing is not simply defining the competitive landscape and then advertising against it. It means defining what target market would have a need that you can economically satisfy with your offer, creating advertising problems that speak to that need and audience and managing that process with competitive analysis and solid conversion metrics.
A marketing strategy is the written plan that generates awareness and brokers attention for the products and services you intend to offer. Marketing strategy encompasses surveying your target audience and learning the demographics they share. Assessing the pains, problems and needs they have which may be satisfied with your core offer – then listing those so that quality content can be created which will draw traffic to your offer. Marketing strategy requires a deep look in the mirror. This is where you define your business's strengths, weaknesses, economic external opportunities and outside threats (SWOT).
The lack of a marketing plan does not mean a business cannot experience great results. It means that a company cannot measure or manage what it does not document.
Any company managing their marketing without a rigid set of goals or a written strategic plan is clearly missing opportunities to improve the performance of their marketing team.
Where do you start?
- Take a complete assessment of your processes, systems and capabilities that are within your budget.
- Assemble the key performance indicators that you track that can be directly tied to your marketing efforts.
- Gain the buy-in of ownership and key management. They must become champions and invest appropriately.
- Rank and grade your team's core competencies and skills.
- Determine how well your marketing and customer order process are integrated.
- Survey your customers to gain a clear understanding of their experience with your online order process.
- Study your analytics so that you understand the cross-channel journeys and the impact they have on your digital investments.
After decades of experience analyzing hundreds of digital marketing plans for companies of all sizes, sectors and scopes we have learned exactly how to create a clear digital marketing strategy. The process is not difficult and you more than likely have it in your head. What you are most likely missing is a methodical way to execute on your plan so that others can learn it too.
What should your marketing plan contain?
Once you have thoroughly vetted your current or planned customers and identified their common demographics and needs, now you can begin the strategic approach to digital marketing. Your marketing plan should contain:
- A written list of segmentation targeting so that branded content can speak about your online value proposition. How else can you be “found”? This content needs to make the prospective consumer feel like you get them. Your content will help build authority, aid your SEO and enable you to repurpose it across multiple marketing channels. Assign writers who can speak to your targeted audience and never stop writing.
- A schedule to publish your content on your web site in the form of blogs, sales pages and more. Promote your content on search engines, social media networks and other complimentary industry sites. At this stage make sure you are tracking the number of followers, fans, visitors and links to your content.
- A consistent plan to create lead generation pieces from your published content and make sure your published content is laid out in such a way that is accomodates lead generation forms or pixled pages.
- Funds for advertising, retargeting, marketing automation and copywriters.
- A team of people who seek the permission of thrilled customers to publish their experience with your products and services.
Make sure your marketing plans define your opportunity as you see it and that those opportunities are backed by economic research. Your digital marketing goals will be more believable if your goals and objectives align with the lifecycle of your best customer. Inbound marketing can require a heavy financial investment and we are certain those dollars were not easy to come by. Be smart with your plan, set your goals and take action to achieve them. Your ecommerce site will perform better when you start with a well crafted marketing plan before you set prices, source the product or even choose your site layout.
In our next article about common ecommerce mistakes we are going to drill down deeper into a planning content used in marketing.
Copyright 2017 Viral Solutions LLC
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant and a Google Partner – Certified in AdWords.
Common eCommerce Mistakes | Lack of Strategy, Goals or Action Plan – Part #2
Ecommerce has become a $2.0 trillion dollar platform, with expectations for it to double in 2020. While digital commerce experiences massive growth it is still less than 10% of all retail sales. With this massive growth comes a set of unique problems. With all the technology at play the gurus are still dealing with an imperfect platform. This is evidenced by a recent research report that shows shopping cart abandonment averaging 69%. Armed with that information you should know that your ecommerce platform is critical to your survival.
We know that people love to shop, they love to buy – they do not like to be sold. Shopping and browsing online attribut greatly to shopping cart abandonment. Pricing pressure and competition attribute heavily to this consumer trait. To some degree this is  beyond your control unless you have unlimited purse strings.
What can you control when it comes to an ecommerce site? You can focus on the most common mistakes businesses make with their ecommerce web site.
In this article we are going to focus on one that we see with our new clients almost every time. The lack of strategy, goals or action plan.
Lack of Marketing Strategy
Most venture capitalists, when surveyed on what they see wrong with most entrepreneurs, is the lack of a detailed marketing strategy. Entrepreneurs and small business founders fall in love with their product and themselves. They have a very difficult time understanding the process of getting someone to part with their money. It is estimated that nearly 50% of all business are doing digital marketing without any clearly and written defined strategy.
Marketing is not simply defining the competitive landscape and then advertising against it. It means defining what target market would have a need that you can economically satisfy with your offer, creating advertising problems that speak to that need and audience and managing that process with competitive analysis and solid conversion metrics.
A marketing strategy is the written plan that generates awareness and brokers attention for the products and services you intend to offer. Marketing strategy encompasses surveying your target audience and learning the demographics they share. Assessing the pains, problems and needs they have which may be satisfied with your core offer – then listing those so that quality content can be created which will draw traffic to your offer. Marketing strategy requires a deep look in the mirror. This is where you define your business's strengths, weaknesses, economic external opportunities and outside threats (SWOT).
The lack of a marketing plan does not mean a business cannot experience great results. It means that a company cannot measure or manage what it does not document.
Any company managing their marketing without a rigid set of goals or a written strategic plan is clearly missing opportunities to improve the performance of their marketing team.
Where do you start?
- Take a complete assessment of your processes, systems and capabilities that are within your budget.
- Assemble the key performance indicators that you track that can be directly tied to your marketing efforts.
- Gain the buy-in of ownership and key management. They must become champions and invest appropriately.
- Rank and grade your team's core competencies and skills.
- Determine how well your marketing and customer order process are integrated.
- Survey your customers to gain a clear understanding of their experience with your online order process.
- Study your analytics so that you understand the cross-channel journeys and the impact they have on your digital investments.
After decades of experience analyzing hundreds of digital marketing plans for companies of all sizes, sectors and scopes we have learned exactly how to create a clear digital marketing strategy. The process is not difficult and you more than likely have it in your head. What you are most likely missing is a methodical way to execute on your plan so that others can learn it too.
What should your marketing plan contain?
Once you have thoroughly vetted your current or planned customers and identified their common demographics and needs, now you can begin the strategic approach to digital marketing. Your marketing plan should contain:
- A written list of segmentation targeting so that branded content can speak about your online value proposition. How else can you be “found”? This content needs to make the prospective consumer feel like you get them. Your content will help build authority, aid your SEO and enable you to repurpose it across multiple marketing channels. Assign writers who can speak to your targeted audience and never stop writing.
- A schedule to publish your content on your web site in the form of blogs, sales pages and more. Promote your content on search engines, social media networks and other complimentary industry sites. At this stage make sure you are tracking the number of followers, fans, visitors and links to your content.
- A consistent plan to create lead generation pieces from your published content and make sure your published content is laid out in such a way that is accomodates lead generation forms or pixled pages.
- Funds for advertising, retargeting, marketing automation and copywriters.
- A team of people who seek the permission of thrilled customers to publish their experience with your products and services.
Make sure your marketing plans define your opportunity as you see it and that those opportunities are backed by economic research. Your digital marketing goals will be more believable if your goals and objectives align with the lifecycle of your best customer. Inbound marketing can require a heavy financial investment and we are certain those dollars were not easy to come by. Be smart with your plan, set your goals and take action to achieve them. Your ecommerce site will perform better when you start with a well crafted marketing plan before you set prices, source the product or even choose your site layout.
In our next article about common ecommerce mistakes we are going to drill down deeper into a planning content used in marketing.
Copyright 2017 Viral Solutions LLC
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant and a Google Partner – Certified in AdWords.
Google Penalizing Pop-Ups | "intrusive interstitials"
Google restated in an article that was recently updated (Google Webmaster Central Blog January 10, 2017) that their goal was to drive their search customer to pages that provide the best answers the quickest, regardless of device. Google ranks sites that best match the intent of the search query with relevant content that is easily accessible on transition from search to page. Furthermore, with this revised article, Google is adding another opinion into their ranking process and that is that popups block content and inhibit viewers access.
That means Google is entering another factor, one of hundreds, into the ranking equation by penalizing sites that block content with popups.
Several years ago Google added a mobile friendly label to assist their search audience with finding pages that did not have to have the user zoom in and out to read the text. Part of the motive behind recent changes is to remove that label and have mobile responsive site, AMP pages and mobile friendly pages as a standard – not the exception as it may have been only two years ago. That is because Google has found that 85% of all pages now conform to the mobile search criteria. You webmasters out there have been busy!
Google has now found that these same pages show “intrusive interstitials” which they believe downgrades the user experience. Therefore Google states, “To improve the mobile search experience, after January 10, 2017, pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as highly.”
Important To Understand
This ranking rule modification only affects those pages that utilize and immediate popup (intrusive interstitials) and not on pages that do not feature an immediate popup or those that delay the popup or await a user response such as a page exit.
Are there exceptions to the rule?
Yes, there are and this will most likely cause developers and webmasters to formulate alternatives since the need to maximize the ROI of a site will always outweigh such rulings.
Here are examples of techniques Google feels are responsible use of intrusive interstitials:
- Interstitials that appear to be in response to a legal obligation, such as for cookie usage or for age verification.
- Login dialogs on sites where content is not publicly indexable. For example, this would include private content such as email or unindexable content that is behind a paywall.
- Banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space and are easily dismissible. For example, the app install banners provided by Safari and Chrome are examples of banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space.
Why?
As we all no doubt know, the massive shift to website viewers on a mobile device could not be ignored, either by major search engines or the website owner. Search engines have no choice but to accommodate that viewer with pages that maximize the mobile user experience. Google is making a non-stop push to improve the mobile experience and they suggest that popups provide a poor experience by covering content the user searched for. This opinion is held by many users.
What do you do about it?
Many ecommerce platforms utilize the popup for lead generation as they have proven to be highly effective albeit annoying. So are roadside billboards! Website business owners, chief marketing officers and ecommerce websites will need to either eliminate popups, conform their pop-ups so they do not cover substantial content on mobile or revise the popup offer so that it delivers value relevant to the search, with the latter being the majority of immediate changes. Modifying the popup offer with increased value could mean the website owner delivers immediate discounts, digital coupons, more personalized service and so forth rather than e-books and the like. Lastly, and this is worth repeating, this ranking rule modification only affects those pages that utilize and immediate popup (intrusive interstitials) and not on pages that do not feature an immediate popup or those that delay the popup or await a user response such as a page exit.
It will be interesting to see how this shift impacts websites that need to convert visitors to customers through education, nurturing and follow-up. There is no doubt that Google is driving the evolution of the website user experience by throwing their influence into the mix. How website business owners balance this policy shift with the largest organic traffic source versus their need to follow standard conversion rate optimization best practices will be interesting to say the least.
Copyright 2017 Viral Solutions LLC
Prior to joining Viral Solutions, Christine held executive leadership roles at some of the largest small business consulting firms in the USA. Her experience includes leading direct reports of over 130 remote sales agents who generated $38mm in annual revenue. She obtained her Marketing degree from British Columbia Institute of Technology. Bring her C-Suite experience to your small business. Although our company is virtual, and we can work with you wherever you are located, she is located in Denver, Colorado and owns a second home in Vancouver, BC Canada.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner and an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant.
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves, so business can be fun again.
Google Penalizing Pop-Ups | "intrusive interstitials"
Google restated in an article that was recently updated (Google Webmaster Central Blog January 10, 2017) that their goal was to drive their search customer to pages that provide the best answers the quickest, regardless of device. Google ranks sites that best match the intent of the search query with relevant content that is easily accessible on transition from search to page. Furthermore, with this revised article, Google is adding another opinion into their ranking process and that is that popups block content and inhibit viewers access.
That means Google is entering another factor, one of hundreds, into the ranking equation by penalizing sites that block content with popups.
Several years ago Google added a mobile friendly label to assist their search audience with finding pages that did not have to have the user zoom in and out to read the text. Part of the motive behind recent changes is to remove that label and have mobile responsive site, AMP pages and mobile friendly pages as a standard – not the exception as it may have been only two years ago. That is because Google has found that 85% of all pages now conform to the mobile search criteria. You webmasters out there have been busy!
Google has now found that these same pages show “intrusive interstitials” which they believe downgrades the user experience. Therefore Google states, “To improve the mobile search experience, after January 10, 2017, pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as highly.”
Important To Understand
This ranking rule modification only affects those pages that utilize and immediate popup (intrusive interstitials) and not on pages that do not feature an immediate popup or those that delay the popup or await a user response such as a page exit.
Are there exceptions to the rule?
Yes, there are and this will most likely cause developers and webmasters to formulate alternatives since the need to maximize the ROI of a site will always outweigh such rulings.
Here are examples of techniques Google feels are responsible use of intrusive interstitials:
- Interstitials that appear to be in response to a legal obligation, such as for cookie usage or for age verification.
- Login dialogs on sites where content is not publicly indexable. For example, this would include private content such as email or unindexable content that is behind a paywall.
- Banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space and are easily dismissible. For example, the app install banners provided by Safari and Chrome are examples of banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space.
Why?
As we all no doubt know, the massive shift to website viewers on a mobile device could not be ignored, either by major search engines or the website owner. Search engines have no choice but to accommodate that viewer with pages that maximize the mobile user experience. Google is making a non-stop push to improve the mobile experience and they suggest that popups provide a poor experience by covering content the user searched for. This opinion is held by many users.
What do you do about it?
Many ecommerce platforms utilize the popup for lead generation as they have proven to be highly effective albeit annoying. So are roadside billboards! Website business owners, chief marketing officers and ecommerce websites will need to either eliminate popups, conform their pop-ups so they do not cover substantial content on mobile or revise the popup offer so that it delivers value relevant to the search, with the latter being the majority of immediate changes. Modifying the popup offer with increased value could mean the website owner delivers immediate discounts, digital coupons, more personalized service and so forth rather than e-books and the like. Lastly, and this is worth repeating, this ranking rule modification only affects those pages that utilize and immediate popup (intrusive interstitials) and not on pages that do not feature an immediate popup or those that delay the popup or await a user response such as a page exit.
It will be interesting to see how this shift impacts websites that need to convert visitors to customers through education, nurturing and follow-up. There is no doubt that Google is driving the evolution of the website user experience by throwing their influence into the mix. How website business owners balance this policy shift with the largest organic traffic source versus their need to follow standard conversion rate optimization best practices will be interesting to say the least.
Copyright 2017 Viral Solutions LLC
Prior to joining Viral Solutions, Christine held executive leadership roles at some of the largest small business consulting firms in the USA. Her experience includes leading direct reports of over 130 remote sales agents who generated $38mm in annual revenue. She obtained her Marketing degree from British Columbia Institute of Technology. Bring her C-Suite experience to your small business. Although our company is virtual, and we can work with you wherever you are located, she is located in Denver, Colorado and owns a second home in Vancouver, BC Canada.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner and an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant.
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves, so business can be fun again.
Authority Content Series: How to Write High-Quality Content
Welcome back to our ongoing series about creating authority content for your business. Last week we discussed what exactly authority content is, and how it has become one of the most important digital marketing trends for businesses in all industries. Today we discuss the first step to developing authority through content, which is by creating high-quality content.
The need to develop high-quality written copy might seem obvious, but it is far easier said than done, which you may know first hand already if you have attempted to write your businessâs copy.
The content you create is your opportunity to not only display your knowledge about your field, but also to create a stronger connection between your brand and your readers/potential customers. It is imperative you take advantage of this opportunity by developing high-quality content.
Here are some tips to help you accomplish this.
Steps to take before you begin writing
Itâs tempting to sit down in front of your computer and just begin typing, but developing high-quality content begins before you actually sit in front of your computer. If your goal with your content is for people to read and share it, you need to first make sure you are actually writing content geared toward your audience.
Finding your audience shouldnât be too difficult if you have already identified your target buyer personas. You can send out surveys, ask for reader feedback, meet your target audience in person at conferences or events and simply track the kinds of content people in your target audience tend to share
If you already know your target audience, ask yourself what information they want or need, what topics they would like to see covered and what is most likely to influence them. The answers to these questions should influence the kind of content you develop.
Next, make sure you do plenty of research before you actually start writing. There should be no doubts about the accuracy of any information you include in your articles or white papers. Simply identify the topics you wish to write about, review the information that is currently available, and identify gaps in that information; the best content is going to provide something new that existing content on the subject is missing.
Build a content marketing planner
Connect with  your marketing team or agency on at least a quarterly basis for a half-day session during which you will brainstorm about your upcoming content needs. Most content falls into one or more of several categories.
You should be using each and every content style and delivery mechanism mentioned below.
- Entertainment. This is content that has an emotional connection and builds awareness. The content should come in many forms, including but not limited to quizzes, competitions, games, branded videos and content that may inspire viral sharing. Coca-Cola sells a commoditized product and they are experts at using the emotional play with their content to build brand loyalty. âAdvertising is getting less effective as technology gives consumers more ways to avoid it. And, media savvy people are comfortable getting information and entertainment from brands. What Coke really understands is the need to embrace their role as a lifestyle brand and create lasting emotional connections with consumers. They are using content, entertainment, video and storytelling to engage customers.â ~ KingFish Media This is where video plays a major role in content distribution as the human viewer connects with the visual cues of the presenter.
- Inspiration. âSimply slapping a call-to-action at the end isnât enough. Chances are your past content successes contained many, if not all, of the same attributes.â ~ MOZ. Be inspirational! A great singing voice can be found on stage in any local restaurant or tavern. They can also command an audience of thousands. Whatâs the difference? The difference is the person who can inspire an audience, move them to action and entice them to follow their performance. Anyone who says âyou can lead a horse to water, but you canât make it drinkâ is probably not a marketer. Here is where your content needs a social community of supporters, product reviews and endorsements by authority figures in an industry. People love it when they are inspired by other people who have enjoyed doing business with you. Include such inspirational content loaded with legitimate reviews and ratings in your content marketing planner.
- Convince to Convert. While it is said that 80% of prospects become customers based upon emotion the remaining audience buys based upon fact. Your marketing content planner needs to account for this audience. People who buy on fact tend to be professionals that are analytical by nature (Accountants, Engineers, Doctors, Lawyers, etc). To convince this audience to convert your ecommerce platform will need content that details a product or services features, provides case studies, grants free demos in video format, supplies checklists, schedules webinars, creates calculators and price guides. These pieces will contain such information that fuels the rational thinker over the emotional thinker.
- Educate. Building awareness through education is the most common form of content that appeals to the rational thought process. Educating your audience helps fuel your authority over time. The tools and tactics of content that educates includes such formats as quick guides, press releases, trend reports, infographics e-books and basic blog articles. Your content marketing planner needs to account for the audience that is not entirely sure what it is you do, offer or believe. Educational content will help you with that audience.
Your content marketing options should also contain facts and figures about your customer journey, purchase habits and decision styles. This information is best obtained from those who are in regular contact with your customer as well as Google Analytics.
What are your goals for the content you produce? Traffic? Awareness? Attention? Opt-in conversions? Authority? Each of the content styles above, especially when methodically produced using all facets, styles and deliver mechanisms can and will achieve all of those goals over time. Your job is to be committed, consistent and persistent.
Tips to consider during the writing process
Once itâs finally time to start writing, there are several things you should keep in mind.
First, understand that writing for the internet is much different than academic writing or fiction writing. This is true from the tone you use with your content to the way you structure it; if you have not written web copy, blog posts or web articles before, it might take some time to get used to the various best practices associated with content marketing. Use bullet points and sub headers to help break up the content; this makes it less intimidating for people who land on a page with your content who might not be willing to spend the time working through a wall of text. You can also maintain a more conversational style; using personal pronouns, for example, makes your content more personal and informal which can help create a stronger bond with your readers.
Establishing credibility
You should also be focused on establishing credibility, which is not something you typically need to worry about as much with academic writing. Online readers are much less likely to trust the content you create simply because you are writing under the umbrella of a brand.
To work around this challenge, you must create unbiased, non-promotional content with the intention of helping people, not selling to them. Web users are extremely sensitive to advertising, as weâve seen with the meteoric rise of ad blockers over the last several years. Your content can establish a lot of credibility simply by genuinely seeking to provide information rather than an advertising opportunity.
You can also provide a boost to your credibility by mentioning your experience or expertise in your particular area, citing sources for all facts or statistics you provide, linking (or getting linked by) other experts in the industry, and maintaining a consistently high level of quality with your content.
Make your content useful
Great content should not only be unique and credible â it should also be useful. People are on the lookout for actionable, practical content, so the more practical tips you can provide, the better. Ask yourself what the reader wants to think or do, and convert those specific points into tips or calls to action in your content.
There should always be clear takeaways from what you write. Readers should come away with a good idea of what they can do to improve themselves or solve their problem.
High-quality content is not always easy to create, but it is an essential building block for content marketing success. You cannot become a content authority without putting an emphasis on developing high-quality written copy.
Stay tuned next week as we focus on the next essential step in creating authority content.
Queen of the Machine for Viral Solutions LLC
“If a brand genuinely wants to make a social contribution, it should start with who they are, not what they do. For only when a brand has defined itself and its core values can it identify causes or social responsibility initiatives that are in alignment with its authentic brand story.” ~ Simon Mainwaring
