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cybersecurityict · 2 months ago

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Audience Analytics Market Size, Share, Analysis, and Strategic Growth Forecast by 2032

TheAudience Analytics Market Size was valued at USD 5.40 Billion in 2023 and is expected to reach USD 15.01 Billion by 2032 and grow at a CAGR of 12.1% over the forecast period 2024-2032.

The Audience Analytics Market is rapidly transforming how organizations understand and engage with their target audiences. By harnessing advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data, businesses can now capture deeper behavioral, demographic, and psychographic insights. This evolution in audience tracking is enabling more personalized content, effective marketing strategies, and real-time decision-making across industries including media, retail, entertainment, and sports.

The Audience Analytics Market is swiftly emerging as a game-changer in customer experience and strategic planning. Organizations are integrating audience intelligence solutions to decode consumer patterns and preferences, helping brands to tailor their offerings, optimize campaign effectiveness, and enhance overall ROI. The ability to gather and interpret granular data from digital touchpoints is setting new benchmarks in competitive advantage.

Get Sample Copy of This Report: https://www.snsinsider.com/sample-request/5904

Market Keyplayers:

Adobe (Adobe Experience Cloud, Adobe Analytics)

Oracle Corporation (Oracle CX Analytics, Oracle Data Cloud)

IBM Corporation (IBM Watson Marketing, IBM Customer Experience Analytics)

SAS Institute Inc. (SAS Customer Intelligence 360, SAS Visual Analytics)

Google LLC (Google Analytics, Google Ads Data Hub)

Audiense (Audiense Insights, Audiense Connect)

Comscore, Inc. (Comscore Digital Audience Measurement, Comscore Campaign Ratings)

Sightcorp (DeepSight Toolkit, DeepSight Face API)

Unifi Software (Unifi Data Platform, Unifi AI-Driven Analytics)

Telmar (Audience Targeting Solutions, Telmar Planning Tools)

Quividi (Quividi Audience Measurement Platform, Quividi Data Enrichment)

AnalyticsOwl (Real-Time Web Analytics, Audience Engagement Tracker)

Akamai Technologies (Akamai Identity Cloud, Akamai DataStream)

NetBase Solutions (NetBase Quid Consumer Analytics, NetBase Social Listening)

JCDecaux Group (JCDecaux Data Solutions, VIOOH Programmatic Advertising)

Market Analysis

The market is witnessing a growing demand for analytics platforms that offer seamless integration with existing CRM, advertising, and digital systems. As companies strive to deliver hyper-personalized experiences, audience analytics tools are becoming essential in uncovering hidden patterns and delivering actionable insights. The increased penetration of mobile devices and internet connectivity is accelerating data generation, which in turn is fueling the demand for intelligent analytics solutions. A surge in video content consumption and OTT platforms is also creating new avenues for audience behavior analysis.

Additionally, organizations are recognizing the value of sentiment analysis and emotion recognition to gauge customer feedback and drive product innovation. The competitive landscape is marked by frequent strategic collaborations, product enhancements, and acquisitions aimed at offering comprehensive and scalable analytics solutions.

Market Trends

Rising integration of AI-driven audience segmentation and profiling tools

Increasing adoption of real-time analytics for marketing optimization

Surge in demand for audience intelligence in streaming and digital media platforms

Growing use of predictive analytics to forecast consumer behavior

Expansion of cloud-based analytics services enabling flexible deployments

Enhanced focus on data privacy and compliance amid growing regulations

Market Scope

The scope of the audience analytics market extends across a diverse range of sectors, from advertising and entertainment to education and healthcare. Businesses are increasingly leveraging audience insights to drive digital transformation and elevate customer engagement. These analytics platforms are capable of aggregating data from multiple sources such as social media, mobile apps, smart TVs, and in-store interactions, providing a unified view of audience behavior.

With solutions tailored for small businesses as well as large enterprises, the market caters to varied requirements—be it optimizing media planning, evaluating campaign performance, or improving customer journeys. As user experiences become a focal point for brands, the scope for audience analytics is only expected to widen, driven by the constant need to innovate and remain consumer-centric.

Market Forecast

The audience analytics market is poised for substantial growth, propelled by advancements in technology and heightened emphasis on consumer-centric business strategies. As digital transformation continues to reshape industries, analytics tools will be central to crafting personalized, real-time customer interactions. Market players are expected to focus on enhancing data visualization, incorporating AI capabilities, and expanding into emerging economies with untapped potential.

Innovation in hardware and software, combined with the proliferation of data-generating platforms, will create new growth frontiers. Companies that invest in agile, scalable, and intuitive audience analytics systems will not only stay ahead of the curve but will also redefine customer value and engagement models in the digital age.

Access Complete Report: https://www.snsinsider.com/reports/audience-analytics-market-5904

Conclusion

The Audience Analytics Market is not just an evolution—it’s a revolution in understanding human behavior. As brands compete to capture attention in a cluttered digital landscape, audience intelligence is becoming their sharpest tool.

About Us:

SNS Insider is one of the leading market research and consulting agencies that dominates the market research industry globally. Our company's aim is to give clients the knowledge they require in order to function in changing circumstances. In order to give you current, accurate market data, consumer insights, and opinions so that you can make decisions with confidence, we employ a variety of techniques, including surveys, video talks, and focus groups around the world.

Jagney Dave - Vice President of Client Engagement

Phone: +1-315 636 4242 (US) | +44- 20 3290 5010 (UK)

#Audience Analytics Market #Audience Analytics Market Scope #Audience Analytics Market Trends

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talhajatt · 1 year ago

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Digital Marketing Metrics That Are Important for Big Growth Opportunities

Every day, the average amount spent on digital marketing by firms increases. Marketers in the UAE alone are investing heavily in digital marketing to capitalize on the opportunity. But are those marketing dollars bringing in the appropriate return on investment (ROI) for your company? We've got you covered with our top digital marketing indicators, or KPIs, that are most important for marketing spending.

1. New or returning visitors

New consumers are vital, and many digital companies in the UAE and marketers require statistics based on them. This, for them, is proof that the marketing initiatives are effective. However, how many marketers require the number of repeat visitors to their website? This is a truth that many marketers fail to recognize. As a result, we urge that businesses and companies in the UAE maintain a careful eye on their returning customers. Remember, these have the potential to be devoted customers, and you must engage with them in every manner possible. The high percentage of returning consumers compared to the previous month demonstrates the effectiveness of marketing content in driving traffic.

2. The telephone

In today's mobile-friendly world, users conduct searches on smart devices, which is the most convenient option. But do you know what comes next? They look for a point of contact for the business. To the marketer's astonishment, 75% of consumers still believe that phone calls are the fastest way to get a response from a firm. Here comes the one-of-a-kind combination of technology and personalization. While the target customers use technology to identify their points of interest, they still prefer to speak with a customer representative. In these situations, the telephone is an ideal tool to rapidly connect and engage with customers across several touchpoints. In analytics, we use the visitor-level call tracking concept, which tracks the origin of visits across various channels or touchpoints. This is a phone call that relates to your business. Employing efficient customer service agents on a phone call can increase conversions if the data is effectively collected.

3. User exit rate

The exit rate is the percentage of visitors who depart your website from a certain page. When a user visits a website or a landing page, they normally begin navigating through the various pages. This is not the same as the bounce rate, which is the percentage of visitors who leave a website without going past the landing page. The causes of exit rates in a sales-oriented campaign should raise red flags for any marketer. When this KPI is detected, the initial goal is to correct the problem and work toward the ideal user experience. If a product demo page that lists its merits has one of the highest exit rates, it is most likely that this page is not properly interacting with clients. E-commerce businesses suffer from high exit rates when shipping prices are mentioned after the cart checkout. To reduce that exit rate, such marketers should ideally provide delivery charges on the product description page. Seamless transactions designed with a progress tracker can also reduce high departure rates. Many e-commerce businesses mark each step of the checkout process to facilitate data collection and goal planning. Step-by-step allocation of the shipping address, delivery method, billing address, and payment information decreases the likelihood of high exit rates. So, these are the few key digital marketing KPIs that are most important these days for significant growth prospects. This, if followed correctly, can help us realize the benefits of digital marketing and incorporate it into our future marketing plans. Would you agree? If you have any questions or would like to voice a concern, please leave them in the comments section. Stay in contact with BM Marketing, a digital marketing company in Dubai, to stay informed about new concerns in the digital sector. If you have any questions, need assistance, or are looking for a digital marketing agency in Dubai, please contact us immediately. For further updates, please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

#digital marketing #web design #seo services

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lucashawro · 6 years ago

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How to get Facebook & Google Pixel Ad Tracking using PixelMe

It's important that you understand, how people move around your website. The business intelligence you gather, compile and make sense of provides a big picture of your company direction. Online tracking or pixel ad tracking is a fundamental instrument in your marketing automation tool-kit.

Whether you like it or not, savvy-marketeers and modern businesses use pixel ad tracking to tailor their products and services to sell more, serve better and grow faster. It is then not surprising that several companies built entire businesses to serve just this single purpose – tracking you. Web analytics are a must these days and tracking user behaviour cannot be guesswork if you want to optimise your ads.

Marketing Analytics – the Key to Your Company Success

Nowadays, you can find many tracking and marketing automation tools to provide an almost infinite amount of data to track users and user behaviour. Most heard of (or used) is Google Analytics and their pixel tracking– a staple among online marketing communities. And Google’s Secret Weapon used to dominate the Digital World (ever asked yourself why such a sophisticated marketing tool is… free?). Some even go as far as to say it ruined the marketing.

Whatever your opinion is, Analytics is a powerful piece of marketing software for conversion tracking that you shouldn’t underestimate. But does it end there? Certainly not!

Google Analytics – The Easiest Most Difficult Marketing Tool to Implement

One of the Analytics problems is its interface and complexity. Or its ‘sandboxiness’. Google indeed puts all the effort to make it super-easy for virtually everyone to plaster their tool on their websites. But once it’s there and you enter Analytics, it kind of leaves you hanging. It takes a lot of time and knowledge to understand the jargon, the mechanics of the tool, and how to set things up like tracking pixel or conversion tracking for yourself – not only on your website but also on the overview dashboard. We’ve seen many business owners withdraw to just tracking… traffic instead of tracking user behaviour. Or whatever the default GA dashboard shows. With many not even understanding what “Bounce Rate” is.

I once had someone ask me why their website "got only 43% of the "bouncy score" – thinking it's Google's "coolness" metric of some sort… indeed, the "bouncy score" should be the next big (bouncy) thing in internet marketing.

PixelMe – Going Beyond Google Analytics

No wonder many marketers took their expertise in data analysis to and decided to build a tool that gave their own spin around Pixel Ad tracking and business intelligence. One of those tools is PixelMe.

Folks at PixelMe looked at all that GA-sandbox confusion and decided to just cut to the chase. "What do marketers and website owners need to really know from people visiting their websites?". They created a tool that is 100x easier to understand, navigate around, and implement than Google Analytics ever has been. And it’s great!

How does a pixel tracker work?

To better understand Pixel ad tracking, first, you need to understand what a tracking pixel is. In a majority of cases, it is a code snippet that is triggered when a visitor lands on your website, clicks on a link or opens an email. The pixel script communicates with the source server, which registers a user-triggered action. Meanwhile, the user is “tagged” with a unique ID, and the entire website session gets recorded in “a browser cookie” file.

It is worth noting that the Internet browsers refer back to cookie files every time users come back to websites. And, as you already suspect, the pixel server is then getting informed as well.

For example, every click made by the user can be captured and tracked so you can adjust your conversion actions. In other words, tracking pixel allows you to gather data to improve your digital ad and marketing strategy. All that is based on the user behaviour tracking data that is provided by a pixel code. By collecting all that data about user behaviour, you can optimise your ads, content and improve retargeting.

Here are Top 5 things to set up in PixelMe to effectively utilise Pixel ad tracking tool:

Retargeting (re-marketing) via Short-Links – you can develop super-effective retargeting audience groups from any link you share. PixelMe starts as a web-link shortener but then allows you to incorporate them with advertisement retargeting pixels, attributions and various marketing automation hacks.

Assign Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) – with the ability to include UTM tags to all your web links you will know where every website conversion comes from. When used in your marketing campaigns, you can further evaluate and also enhance your financial investments through the first touch, multi-touch, or last touch attribution versions.

Serve as your All-in-One Marketing Platform – PixelMe automatically combines data from multiple platforms in one convenient dashboard. Within few minutes, you can plug most of your ads’ systems (Facebook, Google, etc.), many CRM platforms, as well as various analytics platforms (like Segment or Google Tag Manager).

Test and decide what works for you – test and see which of your marketing channel brings the highest ROI and which should you abandon. Because PixelMe allows you to measure the influence of any kind of paid or natural network, you no longer have to guess if a given investment is worth throwing money at it.

Map your customer journeys – all that data means nothing if you can’t test your assumed touchpoints and paths to conversion. PixelMe allows you to look at each customer touchpoint and help you to understand its contribution in making or breaking the sale.

Business Analysis, Marketing Attribution And Tracking – Making It All Count

The one thing shared among many business marketers (and especially social media influencers) is the obsession with data hoarding. Everyone seems to obsess around clicks, likes, followers, subscribers… But not many take it to the next level and ask a question – “what it all really means to my business?!“. Because so many of those “stats” are just completely arbitrary. We call them the “Vanity Metrics” for a reason. But thanks to marketing tools like PixelMe, we can look at the pixel ad tracking data and the real-world examples that it provides. And then take an information-based action. If you dig deep enough, you may even find your own “Bouncy Score”.

Using Divi Theme with PixelMe together

See here how you can track every click via the Event Tracker on your website!

Check our YouTube Channel for more Divi Tips & Trick and Marketing Tutorials:

Colorpeak YouTube Channel

This article was originally posted on: https://colorpeak.co.uk/how-to-facebook-google-pixel-ad-tracking/

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joybrayden · 5 years ago

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9 key understanding classifications in the customer revelation process

Utilizing various bits of knowledge instruments to manufacture comprehension of the open doors for an office to make an incentive for a customer client knowledge discoveryIn a past article, I characterized and clarified the requirement for advertising organizations and experts to build up a vigorous Discovery process when they begin working with new customers or on new market pitches or tasks.

In the second piece of the article, I've separated them the revelation procedure into nine particular exercises covering various experiences sources, concentrating on those required for a computerized or multichannel advertising venture. Precisely who attempts these will rely upon your office or group size, singular experience and ranges of abilities. You should make an approach both the profundity and broadness of disclosure attempted relying upon the size of the chance/potential effect on the customer business over the long haul as referenced in the past article.

Office pitching introduction formats

When you have built up your revelation and knowledge procedures to comprehend the open doors a customer presents, you have to try out your plans to them viably so they become tied up with the work you propose. Utilize our pitching formats to make significant introductions that will assist you with handling your next huge venture!

Access the Agency pitching introduction layouts

However, you aren't the one in particular who ought to find. You make an incentive for your customers by helping them find things as well. Anthony Iannarino takes note of that another advantage of disclosure is that the customer explains their image's situation in the commercial center as well. He says:

"… you aren't the one in particular who ought to find. You make an incentive for your customers by helping them find things as well. You likewise help your customer find what they truly need. In a great deal of cases, we accept our fantasy customers definitely recognize what they need, yet in more cases, you can make an incentive for them through the business procedure by helping them find additional opportunities, better approaches to show signs of improvement results, and new chances. You can assist them with getting things done in another manner".

Here are the nine territories of knowledge I suggest for a revelation venture.

1. Characterize customer objectives and targets

Here you hope to comprehend the customer business or brand's particular targets and KPIs? You ought to likewise keep an eye on any more extensive vital business objectives and activities in addition to business contemplations with which the promoting action ought to adjust (for example is the customer taking a gander at geographic extension). Check additionally for general difficulties inside the business and potential boundaries to usage of the task. In the event that the customer has put a Digital Marketing Companies in Detroit financial limit or timescale forward, survey whether it is sensible when cross-checked with the targets and KPIs? Experience is an incredible guide and right now is an ideal opportunity to yell before focusing on something you realize will be unachievable.

2. Audit advertise attributes and patterns

You should assemble and survey interior information (for example brand/hierarchical) and outside information (for example outsider overviews, white papers, reports) information on customer or business patterns, markets, partners, contenders and so forth. This is possibly a tedious territory of revelation so set conclusive timescales for culmination and use individuals in the group who have indicated inclination as 'tracker gatherers' in any past work area explore work out. You can likewise registration important data or more extensive issues utilizing a commercial center rundown - see our disclosure format for more data. There won't be one conclusive wellspring of research information here, it will differ by market or industry part however a decent wellspring of research data can be exchange affiliations who regularly distribute reports. What's more, obviously, Google is a decent beginning stage!

3. Advanced examination information including site investigation

Attempt a site examination audit and take a gander at any current value-based information, either by means of customer the board reports or utilizing the crude, source information to search for your own bits of knowledge. Check whether past investigations have been made or if custom dashboards are accessible. You should hope to audit the adequacy and productivity of various work area and versatile destinations in imparting over the whole RACE touchpoints, recognizing any shortcomings.

See the Smart Insights Google Analytics review for subtleties in case you're utilizing GA. See the Smart Insights Ecommerce site investigation survey for how to structure such an audit over the RACE system for a value-based site.

4. Content review

Evaluate every single accessible datum sources including any current internet based life profiles/accounts set up by the customer. You'll take a gander at a progressively point by point content review, whenever required, when the undertaking begins yet until further notice consider: List the substance on the customer site by means of a site outline likewise note some other substance stores for example pdfs, disconnected/print materials, video resources, and so forth.

Where is the customer/brand content accessible? (Paid, Owned or Earned media)

In what groups?

What has functioned admirably, or to be sure inadequately, until this point in time? (demand any outcomes information the customer may as of now have)

Detail which components give off an impression of being on-brand and which not

Recognize various types of Content advertising at various focuses in the promoting channel – see the overseeing content showcasing guide by James Carson which remembers an area for finishing a substance promoting review for how to audit distinctive substance types. The Smart Insights Content Marketing review framework gives another method for looking into content. Do the messages on both the site and in online life seem to meet the destinations that have been at first expressed previously? Content reviews inside a more extensive substance promoting structure nitty gritty in the substance advertising toolbox which additionally incorporates a manual for ROI Evaluation for content showcasing.

5. Contender review

Approach the customer for their essential rivals and note how their online conduct contrasts including:

How they utilize their sites to change the showcasing blend

Which informal organizations do they use and how (for example do they have all the earmarks of being effectively captivating others), note the volume and recurrence of updates and what measurements (for example quantities of fans/likes and so on.) are accessible Utilization of different interchanges to clarify their recommendation for example AdWords, Display advertisements

How would they utilize (content sorts/groups/where put)

The Smart Insights contender benchmarking format will assist you with this.

6. Client/Stakeholder review

Here we are taking a gander at our client needs or needs and where they go online to meet those: embrace a crowds audit (by means of customer information or outsider sources/instruments): Statistical surveying/TGI/center gathering/survey or study data as suitable for example Socioeconomics/ technographics Watchword look into investigation utilizing devices, for example, the Google Keyword Planner Audit of social notices/notion and item/administration surveys if accessible. See the Smart Insights manual for Social media Listening

Disconnected/leave reviews, any video or sound, vox pops and so on.

Meetings with the customer association senior administration, deals and/or client care groups: what understanding do they have on circumstances, obstructions, and so on for the customer brand in the commercial center?

Survey/audit any current Personas

7. Influencers in the market

What do we are aware of the key Bloggers or potentially Twitter clients right now? How does the customer section influencers

How might we reach and connect with influencers? For instance, does the customer have insight developed by means of instruments, for example, Followerwonk, Traackr or Blogdash? In the event that not, at that point consider running a social listening exercise yourselves at this phase to recognize what these influencers are discussing and sharing and in what positions.

8. Explicit media and connection reviews

A PPC review or web-based social networking publicizing review if inside the extent of the short/venture. A backlink review utilizing apparatuses, for example, Moz Open Site Explorer or Majestic SEO

A specialized on-page review

Read Also:- Indian social media users may lose their privacy soon!

9. Extra research

In the event that there are despite everything holes in our comprehension after the phases above, you may need to 'commission' look into (by means of outside or inside help). This might be investigated by means of surveys (for example Polldaddy) or studies (for example SurveyMonkey or Toluna studies) or could mean becoming tied up with industry-explicit white papers or inside and out research. Talk about this with the customer first concerning spending speculation from them.

What next?

The end-point for the disclosure arrange is a lot of bits of knowledge that incorporate with a system improvement record or framework proposition for the customer. The report ordinarily covers:

A synopsis of what the revelation stage let us know (for example X % of existing clients think this, the key personas are W and Y, prescribed hunt term are A, B and C, and so on.). The key understanding/s, written in plain English, that set the heading of the resulting expert briefs (for example content, UX, usefulness. An underlying evaluation of organization assets/time and along these lines costs that will be required to Digital Marketing Companies in San Jose encourage the procedure see a manual for cost making arrangements for customer advanced tasks I wrote. The organization will at that point look for input from the customer, which is then fused into itemized briefs (as fitting) for inventive advancement, content advertising, site UX and usefulness, and so on. In this way, that is the manner by which I see it. I'm intrigued to know about how you differ the revelation procedure or knowledge sources contrasted with this review?

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onlinemarketingcourses · 6 years ago

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The new rules to win in search and content marketing Search Engine Watch

Almost two-thirds of marketers now admit that digital content strategy powers their entire digital plan and yet the majority of those that use it struggle to create a mix of content ‘good enough’ to win.

That is the main finding from the second annual State of Content Marketing Survey, an annual temperature check of the UK’s top digital marketers.

In it we discover that not only is the game getting harder to win, but skill and resource shortages are holding many of you back from the results you demand.

And with an average of 23% of overall marketing budget now being attributed to content marketing it has to work.

Marketers also made clear that a very significant gap still exists between being able to create a strategy that resonates with audiences but also delivers measurable ROI. Only one in five of those that took part can confidently claim to know how to tie those two things together and more than half claim to struggle in terms of creating the type of content that will actually work.

You can dive deeper into the full survey, but this post is designed not just to share that top-level view of opinions, but instead go some way to offering a solution for those key challenges.

Overall the takeaways from the study tell us that there is a single, overriding question to fix the challenges of producing content that delivers ROI – ‘How do we create a content strategy that aligns with search growth, consistently?’

This post is designed to answer the ‘how’ element with an appreciation that designing such a digital content strategy has never been more complex and nuanced.

Where do we start?

With multiple touchpoints and a plethora of different journeys through to your product or service, there is no shame in feeling like you have no idea where to start.

And that’s a problem.

It’s an issue because of the emphasis, and rewards, now placed on the overall content experience.

It’s a challenge I’ve spent thousands of hours contemplating and the result of that thinking is captured in this post. A process focused not on content ideas, or keywords, but on the audience. I call it ‘Conversation Mapping’.

It’s a concept that borrows from the world of user experience and is designed to focus on the shift towards ‘conversational search’ and Google’s quest to solve the entire journey and follow the intent.

So, rather than thinking of the traditional ‘keyword research’ approach to designing a content strategy around what people are searching for we instead use the brainstorming process to develop and capture a number of theoretical conversations being had around our products and services.

That process can, and should, be backed by data of course.

Here’s how it works in detail…

Start with people. Always.

All marketing must start and end with people. It’s a statement I’ve made many times before in my Moz posts and it’s central to this strategic approach.

As a marketer, you’ll probably already be sick to death of posts explaining how to extract and turn data into useful personas so I’m not going to go into full detail on that again. You can always read a previous post on that process, or take a look at this one for some great tips.

And the best way to bring the conversation mapping process to life is to walk through it end to end with an example. In this case, we’re going to choose the PC components market.

This critical initial work will leave us with two to four personas such as in the example below:

With these in place, we can then use a tool such as the Global Web Index to understand things like internet use motivations for each of our personas – against the overall audience profile (Grey) (Blue = Gary, Purple = Tim, Turquoise = Imogen).

For details of how to build this yourself follow this brilliant guide by the GWI team if you’re interested in giving it a go for yourself.

This kind of data mash-up helps shape the more detailed picture that we can capture from qualitative research sessions and bigger data crunching.

With a clear picture of who it is that is likely to be interacting with the products or services, it means you can more accurately map that conversation and the corresponding conversation map (more on what this looks like a little later!) because there is clear understanding about the likes and dislikes of the intended audience. It becomes much easier to imagine their conversations with this picture in your head!

Mapping the conversation with data

With the personas clearly outlined, the next phase is to gather all the data insight you can to better inform the understanding of the key questions Tim is asking around your product or service.

In this example, Tim is in the market for a new gaming PC and we want to understand what his journey is at present and where he is obtaining his information. Do this and then build a super-targeted content plan around it.

What else do you need to know?

Before we start diving into the data it is important to remind ourselves of what we are trying to achieve here. We know from the state of content marketing research that marketers are struggling to align results’ delivery to content planning and need to upskill and resource to deliver that.

Delivering it means focusing and prioritizing on the opportunity closest to the ‘cash register’ – and that almost always means the search channel comes first.

By diving into organic search engine traffic, we are most likely to be able to tap into buying intent – therefore impacting traffic, conversions, and revenue fastest.

The upside to this approach is that search really is aligned now to the wider audience picture anyway, so in building out a search-focused content plan first you are working on solving the biggest pain points that your customers have and helping them in the process.

In doing so you stay front of mind and add value, meaning that you’ll be the first port of call when they do decide it’s time to buy.

Keyword research

The obvious place to start then is by digging into the keyword opportunity for your market.

That doesn’t mean having to trawl through every opportunity in your niche but instead, we want to focus on the informational and functional content opportunities.

Informational content

By far the most important area from a content strategy perspective is the informational piece – as it is here that we can create assets that answer three of the four key micro-moments that your customer will experience.

As a reminder here are the four key moments that an audience will work through as they search for answers to key questions.

Informational content focuses on the ‘I Want to Know’, ‘I Want to Do’ and ‘I Want to Go’ moments and this taps into a huge pool of traffic opportunity.

To give you a feel of what that looks like I have included a visual here showing the size of the prize from a selected keyword set of 4,502 phrases in the PC component niche.

Let’s look then at the process for pulling that data into useful formats to aid the content planning process.

The objective now is to establish where to focus effort in content creation to ensure you have the assets necessary to cover the entire user journey, which you can join together later.

To kickstart the process, I’ve used a tool that Zazzle Media built specifically for this task called the KIT (Keyword Identification Tool) but here’s how it basically works:

The ‘KIT’ process

We begin by extracting a large set of both functional and informational keywords using a mix of competitor keyword research and keyword explorer research. To maximize the size of the set, you can opt for multiple sources and then de-dupe using tools like Ahrefs, Moz and SEMrush.

Once you have the keyword set you are going to be working from, it is best to get ranking data, so you can see where your site is ranking for this content already. This will help later when creating your content strategy, as being able to see where you currently rank for a keyword lets you know whether you need to optimize an existing page or create a new one.

We have our own in-house tools to gather this position data in bulk, there are however third-party tools you could also use, for example:

Whatever rank tracker you decide to use, after it has scraped your position data you will need to export a CSV then use VLOOKUP to pull that information into the ‘Keyword Research’ tab in this free Google sheet tool we’ve created to help pull it all together easily.

There is more detail about the different ways to then categorize that data in this blog post by Zazzle Media’s Sam Underwood, and below you can see a couple of my personal favorites:

Incremental informational keyword opportunity by category

Incremental traffic by an operator

This is useful as it helps us to understand where the persona ‘Tim’ is looking for information and across which product categories. This is the gateway from which you can dive deeper into specific areas to prioritize where to focus next.

To get further value, you could also combine the category information you already have with the most frequently used search operators. From this, you are able to not only work out where Tim is searching, but also how – allowing you to shape and prioritize what questions and pain points you write content for first.

In this example, it might make sense to prioritize ‘motherboards’ for instance and look to create content around ‘best’ and ‘reviews’.

Content auditing

Next up we need to take a closer look at the quality of what is already out there to understand the level at which we must compete to win.

‘To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.’ Sun Tzu

To do that, you need to look both at what you already have and also what is currently out there and working.

This subject is enough to fill a post all of its own so I’m not going to dive into both elements of that here. Instead, for the content auditing part, I implore you to read this recent post by Everett Sizemore, which does a brilliant job of walking you through the perfect process. A lot of this focuses on the technical elements of content auditing but this is still an important element as to maximize ROI (the key fix here) we must also ensure that the platforms from where we publish are ‘fit for purpose’.

However, we need to focus more on the other half of this, by diving into the wider picture and answering the question, “what is working now?”.

To do that you can jump into Buzzsumo or Ahrefs’ content explorer. There are already excellent guides on using Buzzsumo for content research, such as this one so we won’t go over information that has already been covered in-depth.

The output from content research should really be some solid data on what kind of content we know people like related to a specific industry and niche. You should be able to explain the following things:

The types of content that work

Which social networks you should be promoting on

What the ideal word count is

Any topics that work well

For this piece of work, some other beneficial things to gather are below:

Most popular content types

It’s incredibly clear that for Tim, articles work best and videos where in-depth ‘how’ questions are asked and that’s hugely powerful for shaping your overall content strategy.

In scenarios where we know that written content is key, the next important step is to get a better understanding of how to go about creating it – and the biggest variable is word count. Here we can look at organic traffic by word count and therefore understand the most visited (and visible) content length as well as the most shared content through social (second chart).

This data is not to be viewed as a suggestion that word count affects rankings, or indeed has any effect on the SERPs; instead, we are using it to understand content consumption patterns – and the takeaway here is that Tim likes more in-depth content, as is more willing to share it.

Conversation mapping

The challenge, of course, is bringing all this to life in the context of the user/visitor and this is where our ‘Conversation Mapping’ concept comes into play. To bring that to life let’s follow our current example journey for Tim.

The idea here is to use the usual ‘brainstorming’ meeting to work through every possible conversation around the purchase journey for your product or service.

Instead of looking for individual content ideas, we instead think about the buying process and journey Tim might take through our fictional PC component site.

Clearly, this can be a lengthy process that will spit out multiple examples. For the sake of this story, however, we will look at one – the motherboards opportunity.

And to do so it requires a second voice, not just a list of questions that Tim may ask, and as a result this is where we can also start to think about the emerging voice search opportunity and know more about where Google is taking search following the logical user journey from beginning to end around intent.

Not following what I mean? Let’s look at an example:

This theoretical ‘conversation’ is one of the many Tim will be having around this product and the idea is to take the ‘motherboard’ concept and sit in a room to brainstorm the potential conversation variations that may exist around the product.

You may find there are only one or two – or it may be there are dozens, in which case distill them down to a core of the most important ones post brainstorm, to make it easier to then think about designing the content plan around it.

Content planning around the conversation

The next phase is to then map content opportunity against that conversation, as in the below example:

So, what we have done here is to think about all of the opportunities there are along that conversation to create content to help make Tim a smarter consumer.

Turbocharging the opportunity

With your informational and functional plan in place and your conversation mapping exercises complete you’re already looking good for returning a greater ROI when it comes to measuring impact at year end. But there’s also another reason to focus on this approach – and it’s all to do with future market share.

Featured snippets

Unless you’ve had your head under a rock these last few months you’ll have been bombarded by news about the importance of featured snippets. For those that don’t know what they are, snippets are the SERP feature that pulls out and highlights content designed to answer the question being asked by the searcher.

An example of one that Tim may come across in his search for his PC components can be seen below for clarity.

Claiming a snippet requires you to create the best answers to those specific informational queries and doing so better than anyone else.

Google and Bing both do a lot of testing of contenders for these slots to ensure they have the best of the best by measuring bounce rate, dwell time and other factors, and that gives you a really good opportunity to use your content prowess to claim them.

And don’t expect the format to go away anytime soon. Google has been very open in its end game plan to produce a ‘Star Trek’ computer with one answer for everything, as those answers will be triggered by snippet results. It’s something I’ve written about recently here and how the plan will push voice search to the forefront of our planning within the next couple of years as a result.

Given then that such features will only grow in prevalence and importance in the coming months and years then it pays to ensure you have a very solid snippet plan as part of your ROI-focused content planning process.

To do that we can dive back into the data to understand the current snippet share and also where the opportunity still lies ahead of you.

Snippet market share

Before we dive into the planning process it is important to benchmark. To do this we dive into an internal tool called ORT, but it is possible to use a manual process utilizing data from a tool such as Ahrefs or Moz that allow you to extract snippet information and to then use VLOOKUP to push it into separate tabs that show you pieces of insight such as:

Overall snippet market share:

Featured snippet opportunity by category

Featured snippet opportunity by an operator

And while this level of traffic is clearly a welcome opportunity it is all critical to understand what it means for the future as well.

We’ve already discussed how snippets will play a key part in the move to voice interfaces, as they provide the ‘direct answers’ given by voice assistants such as Google Home. With 50% of all search queries expected to be delivered by voice by 2020, that key SERP has never been more important as part of a rounded strategy.

Claiming them

Snippets themselves are important as Google is building SERP ‘real estate’ around them simply because they are part of its growing conversational search strategy. As we move towards voice-led searches the phrases we use naturally become longer and contain much more natural language.

Google wants to incentivize the building of more useful, conversational content to fuel its voice plans and snippets are therefore precisely that – a reward for creating such content and are, as a result, the perfect way in which to test your own voice strategy. Snippets serve as the perfect signposting to a great ‘conversation mapping’ plan.

To give yourself the best possible opportunity of claiming snippets the key factor is a focus on content quality and structure. Numerous recent studies like this and this have pointed at the importance of precisely structuring pages to separate paragraphs into bite-sized 40-50 word direct answers and make the use of bulleted list and tables to present information.

Other useful insights include:

Create lists if your users are predominantly mobile-first

Write succinct headers that exactly describe the answer being given

Use strong external links to trusted sources

Use HTTPS

Make sure your site is mobile friendly and fast

Use multiple images

Use tables where appropriate

To make it really easy you can download a really simple guide to page and content structure for snippets here.

Summary

In short, the key to getting over this clear disconnect between content strategy, production, marketing and a return on growing investments is to double down on data and make search the key focus for activity.

Of course, by becoming successful, content has the unique power to positively affect many other key indicators as it never works in a silo.

And with search engines now much better at rewarding people-based marketing efforts with more traffic, rather than keyword focused strategies, a content-led approach is the only way to attack.

Data plays a critical part of that as the days of subjectivity are behind us. By leveraging search data, we can truly understand what our audiences are looking for, what pain points they have and how we can make their journeys more informed and easier to navigate.

The process for doing that starts with the insight piece, defining key persona groups within your target audience and then in understanding their ‘I want to go’, ‘I want to do’, and ‘I want to know’ moments through the informational content research process.

In short, we need to be using data to help us map conversations and not ‘keyword opportunity.’ Do that and you’ll ensure that you deliver positive ROI from your owned and earned marketing activity.

And if you missed the wider findings from the state of content marketing survey then here’s that link again.

Simon Penson is the founder and Managing Director of Zazzle Media. He can be found on Twitter at @simonpenson.

Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?

Get top insights and news from our search experts.

Most popular content types

Traffic by word count

It’s incredibly clear that for Tim, articles work best and videos where in-depth ‘how’ questions are asked and that’s hugely powerful for shaping your overall content strategy.

Conversation mapping

The idea here is to use the usual ‘brainstorming’ meeting to work through every possible conversation around the purchase journey for your product or service.

Instead of looking for individual content ideas, we instead think about the buying process and journey Tim might take through our fictional PC component site.

Clearly, this can be a lengthy process that will spit out multiple examples. For the sake of this story, however, we will look at one – the motherboards opportunity.

Not following what I mean? Let’s look at an example:

Content planning around the conversation

The next phase is to then map content opportunity against that conversation, as in the below example:

So, what we have done here is to think about all of the opportunities there are along that conversation to create content to help make Tim a smarter consumer.

Turbocharging the opportunity

Featured snippets

An example of one that Tim may come across in his search for his PC components can be seen below for clarity.

Claiming a snippet requires you to create the best answers to those specific informational queries and doing so better than anyone else.

To do that we can dive back into the data to understand the current snippet share and also where the opportunity still lies ahead of you.

Snippet market share

Overall snippet market share:

Featured snippet opportunity by category

Featured snippet opportunity by an operator

And while this level of traffic is clearly a welcome opportunity it is all critical to understand what it means for the future as well.

Claiming them

Other useful insights include:

Create lists if your users are predominantly mobile-first

Write succinct headers that exactly describe the answer being given

Use strong external links to trusted sources

Use HTTPS

Make sure your site is mobile friendly and fast

Use multiple images

Use tables where appropriate

To make it really easy you can download a really simple guide to page and content structure for snippets here.

Summary

Of course, by becoming successful, content has the unique power to positively affect many other key indicators as it never works in a silo.

And with search engines now much better at rewarding people-based marketing efforts with more traffic, rather than keyword focused strategies, a content-led approach is the only way to attack.

And if you missed the wider findings from the state of content marketing survey then here’s that link again.

Simon Penson is the founder and Managing Director of Zazzle Media. He can be found on Twitter at @simonpenson.

The post Conversation mapping: The new rules to win in search and content marketing appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/26/conversation-mapping-the-new-rules-to-win-in-search-content-marketing/ from Rising Phoenix SEO http://risingphoenixseo.blogspot.com/2019/02/conversation-mapping-new-rules-to-win.html

0 notes

alanajacksontx · 6 years ago

Text

Conversation mapping: The new rules to win in search and content marketing

That is the main finding from the second annual State of Content Marketing Survey, an annual temperature check of the UK’s top digital marketers.

In it we discover that not only is the game getting harder to win, but skill and resource shortages are holding many of you back from the results you demand.

And with an average of 23% of overall marketing budget now being attributed to content marketing it has to work.

You can dive deeper into the full survey, but this post is designed not just to share that top-level view of opinions, but instead go some way to offering a solution for those key challenges.

This post is designed to answer the ‘how’ element with an appreciation that designing such a digital content strategy has never been more complex and nuanced.

Where do we start?

With multiple touchpoints and a plethora of different journeys through to your product or service, there is no shame in feeling like you have no idea where to start.

And that’s a problem.

It’s an issue because of the emphasis, and rewards, now placed on the overall content experience.

That process can, and should, be backed by data of course.

Here’s how it works in detail…

Start with people. Always.

All marketing must start and end with people. It’s a statement I’ve made many times before in my Moz posts and it’s central to this strategic approach.

And the best way to bring the conversation mapping process to life is to walk through it end to end with an example. In this case, we’re going to choose the PC components market.

This critical initial work will leave us with two to four personas such as in the example below:

For details of how to build this yourself follow this brilliant guide by the GWI team if you’re interested in giving it a go for yourself.

This kind of data mash-up helps shape the more detailed picture that we can capture from qualitative research sessions and bigger data crunching.

Mapping the conversation with data

With the personas clearly outlined, the next phase is to gather all the data insight you can to better inform the understanding of the key questions Tim is asking around your product or service.

What else do you need to know?

Delivering it means focusing and prioritizing on the opportunity closest to the ‘cash register’ – and that almost always means the search channel comes first.

By diving into organic search engine traffic, we are most likely to be able to tap into buying intent – therefore impacting traffic, conversions, and revenue fastest.

In doing so you stay front of mind and add value, meaning that you’ll be the first port of call when they do decide it’s time to buy.

Keyword research

The obvious place to start then is by digging into the keyword opportunity for your market.

That doesn’t mean having to trawl through every opportunity in your niche but instead, we want to focus on the informational and functional content opportunities.

Informational content

As a reminder here are the four key moments that an audience will work through as they search for answers to key questions.

Informational content focuses on the ‘I Want to Know’, ‘I Want to Do’ and ‘I Want to Go’ moments and this taps into a huge pool of traffic opportunity.

To give you a feel of what that looks like I have included a visual here showing the size of the prize from a selected keyword set of 4,502 phrases in the PC component niche.

Let’s look then at the process for pulling that data into useful formats to aid the content planning process.

The objective now is to establish where to focus effort in content creation to ensure you have the assets necessary to cover the entire user journey, which you can join together later.

To kickstart the process, I’ve used a tool that Zazzle Media built specifically for this task called the KIT (Keyword Identification Tool) but here’s how it basically works:

The ‘KIT’ process

We have our own in-house tools to gather this position data in bulk, there are however third-party tools you could also use, for example:

Simple SERP Scraper – You will more than likely need to purchase proxies before using this.

Serplab

AccuRanker

There is more detail about the different ways to then categorize that data in this blog post by Zazzle Media’s Sam Underwood, and below you can see a couple of my personal favorites:

Incremental informational keyword opportunity by category

Incremental traffic by an operator

In this example, it might make sense to prioritize ‘motherboards’ for instance and look to create content around ‘best’ and ‘reviews’.

Content auditing

Next up we need to take a closer look at the quality of what is already out there to understand the level at which we must compete to win.

‘To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.’ Sun Tzu

To do that, you need to look both at what you already have and also what is currently out there and working.

However, we need to focus more on the other half of this, by diving into the wider picture and answering the question, “what is working now?”.

The types of content that work

Which social networks you should be promoting on

What the ideal word count is

Any topics that work well

For this piece of work, some other beneficial things to gather are below:

Most popular content types

Traffic by word count

It’s incredibly clear that for Tim, articles work best and videos where in-depth ‘how’ questions are asked and that’s hugely powerful for shaping your overall content strategy.

Conversation mapping

The idea here is to use the usual ‘brainstorming’ meeting to work through every possible conversation around the purchase journey for your product or service.

Instead of looking for individual content ideas, we instead think about the buying process and journey Tim might take through our fictional PC component site.

Clearly, this can be a lengthy process that will spit out multiple examples. For the sake of this story, however, we will look at one – the motherboards opportunity.

Not following what I mean? Let’s look at an example:

Content planning around the conversation

The next phase is to then map content opportunity against that conversation, as in the below example:

So, what we have done here is to think about all of the opportunities there are along that conversation to create content to help make Tim a smarter consumer.

Turbocharging the opportunity

Featured snippets

An example of one that Tim may come across in his search for his PC components can be seen below for clarity.

Claiming a snippet requires you to create the best answers to those specific informational queries and doing so better than anyone else.

To do that we can dive back into the data to understand the current snippet share and also where the opportunity still lies ahead of you.

Snippet market share

Overall snippet market share:

Featured snippet opportunity by category

Featured snippet opportunity by an operator

And while this level of traffic is clearly a welcome opportunity it is all critical to understand what it means for the future as well.

Claiming them

Other useful insights include:

Create lists if your users are predominantly mobile-first

Write succinct headers that exactly describe the answer being given

Use strong external links to trusted sources

Use HTTPS

Make sure your site is mobile friendly and fast

Use multiple images

Use tables where appropriate

To make it really easy you can download a really simple guide to page and content structure for snippets here.

Summary

Of course, by becoming successful, content has the unique power to positively affect many other key indicators as it never works in a silo.

And with search engines now much better at rewarding people-based marketing efforts with more traffic, rather than keyword focused strategies, a content-led approach is the only way to attack.

And if you missed the wider findings from the state of content marketing survey then here’s that link again.

Simon Penson is the founder and Managing Director of Zazzle Media. He can be found on Twitter at @simonpenson.

The post Conversation mapping: The new rules to win in search and content marketing appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from IM Tips And Tricks https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/26/conversation-mapping-the-new-rules-to-win-in-search-content-marketing/ from Rising Phoenix SEO https://risingphxseo.tumblr.com/post/183082055390

0 notes

sheilalmartinia · 6 years ago

Text

Conversation mapping: The new rules to win in search and content marketing

That is the main finding from the second annual State of Content Marketing Survey, an annual temperature check of the UK’s top digital marketers.

In it we discover that not only is the game getting harder to win, but skill and resource shortages are holding many of you back from the results you demand.

And with an average of 23% of overall marketing budget now being attributed to content marketing it has to work.

You can dive deeper into the full survey, but this post is designed not just to share that top-level view of opinions, but instead go some way to offering a solution for those key challenges.

This post is designed to answer the ‘how’ element with an appreciation that designing such a digital content strategy has never been more complex and nuanced.

Where do we start?

With multiple touchpoints and a plethora of different journeys through to your product or service, there is no shame in feeling like you have no idea where to start.

And that’s a problem.

It’s an issue because of the emphasis, and rewards, now placed on the overall content experience.

That process can, and should, be backed by data of course.

Here’s how it works in detail…

Start with people. Always.

All marketing must start and end with people. It’s a statement I’ve made many times before in my Moz posts and it’s central to this strategic approach.

And the best way to bring the conversation mapping process to life is to walk through it end to end with an example. In this case, we’re going to choose the PC components market.

This critical initial work will leave us with two to four personas such as in the example below:

For details of how to build this yourself follow this brilliant guide by the GWI team if you’re interested in giving it a go for yourself.

This kind of data mash-up helps shape the more detailed picture that we can capture from qualitative research sessions and bigger data crunching.

Mapping the conversation with data

With the personas clearly outlined, the next phase is to gather all the data insight you can to better inform the understanding of the key questions Tim is asking around your product or service.

What else do you need to know?

Delivering it means focusing and prioritizing on the opportunity closest to the ‘cash register’ – and that almost always means the search channel comes first.

By diving into organic search engine traffic, we are most likely to be able to tap into buying intent – therefore impacting traffic, conversions, and revenue fastest.

In doing so you stay front of mind and add value, meaning that you’ll be the first port of call when they do decide it’s time to buy.

Keyword research

The obvious place to start then is by digging into the keyword opportunity for your market.

That doesn’t mean having to trawl through every opportunity in your niche but instead, we want to focus on the informational and functional content opportunities.

Informational content

As a reminder here are the four key moments that an audience will work through as they search for answers to key questions.

Informational content focuses on the ‘I Want to Know’, ‘I Want to Do’ and ‘I Want to Go’ moments and this taps into a huge pool of traffic opportunity.

To give you a feel of what that looks like I have included a visual here showing the size of the prize from a selected keyword set of 4,502 phrases in the PC component niche.

Let’s look then at the process for pulling that data into useful formats to aid the content planning process.

The objective now is to establish where to focus effort in content creation to ensure you have the assets necessary to cover the entire user journey, which you can join together later.

To kickstart the process, I’ve used a tool that Zazzle Media built specifically for this task called the KIT (Keyword Identification Tool) but here’s how it basically works:

The ‘KIT’ process

We have our own in-house tools to gather this position data in bulk, there are however third-party tools you could also use, for example:

Simple SERP Scraper – You will more than likely need to purchase proxies before using this.

Serplab

AccuRanker

There is more detail about the different ways to then categorize that data in this blog post by Zazzle Media’s Sam Underwood, and below you can see a couple of my personal favorites:

Incremental informational keyword opportunity by category

Incremental traffic by an operator

In this example, it might make sense to prioritize ‘motherboards’ for instance and look to create content around ‘best’ and ‘reviews’.

Content auditing

Next up we need to take a closer look at the quality of what is already out there to understand the level at which we must compete to win.

‘To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.’ Sun Tzu

To do that, you need to look both at what you already have and also what is currently out there and working.

However, we need to focus more on the other half of this, by diving into the wider picture and answering the question, “what is working now?”.

The types of content that work

Which social networks you should be promoting on

What the ideal word count is

Any topics that work well

For this piece of work, some other beneficial things to gather are below:

Most popular content types

Traffic by word count

It’s incredibly clear that for Tim, articles work best and videos where in-depth ‘how’ questions are asked and that’s hugely powerful for shaping your overall content strategy.

Conversation mapping

The idea here is to use the usual ‘brainstorming’ meeting to work through every possible conversation around the purchase journey for your product or service.

Instead of looking for individual content ideas, we instead think about the buying process and journey Tim might take through our fictional PC component site.

Clearly, this can be a lengthy process that will spit out multiple examples. For the sake of this story, however, we will look at one – the motherboards opportunity.

Not following what I mean? Let’s look at an example:

Content planning around the conversation

The next phase is to then map content opportunity against that conversation, as in the below example:

So, what we have done here is to think about all of the opportunities there are along that conversation to create content to help make Tim a smarter consumer.

Turbocharging the opportunity

Featured snippets

An example of one that Tim may come across in his search for his PC components can be seen below for clarity.

Claiming a snippet requires you to create the best answers to those specific informational queries and doing so better than anyone else.

To do that we can dive back into the data to understand the current snippet share and also where the opportunity still lies ahead of you.

Snippet market share

Overall snippet market share:

Featured snippet opportunity by category

Featured snippet opportunity by an operator

And while this level of traffic is clearly a welcome opportunity it is all critical to understand what it means for the future as well.

Claiming them

Other useful insights include:

Create lists if your users are predominantly mobile-first

Write succinct headers that exactly describe the answer being given

Use strong external links to trusted sources

Use HTTPS

Make sure your site is mobile friendly and fast

Use multiple images

Use tables where appropriate

To make it really easy you can download a really simple guide to page and content structure for snippets here.

Summary

Of course, by becoming successful, content has the unique power to positively affect many other key indicators as it never works in a silo.

And with search engines now much better at rewarding people-based marketing efforts with more traffic, rather than keyword focused strategies, a content-led approach is the only way to attack.

And if you missed the wider findings from the state of content marketing survey then here’s that link again.

Simon Penson is the founder and Managing Director of Zazzle Media. He can be found on Twitter at @simonpenson.

The post Conversation mapping: The new rules to win in search and content marketing appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Search Engine Watch https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/26/conversation-mapping-the-new-rules-to-win-in-search-content-marketing/

0 notes

evaaguilaus · 6 years ago

Text

Conversation mapping: The new rules to win in search and content marketing

That is the main finding from the second annual State of Content Marketing Survey, an annual temperature check of the UK’s top digital marketers.

In it we discover that not only is the game getting harder to win, but skill and resource shortages are holding many of you back from the results you demand.

And with an average of 23% of overall marketing budget now being attributed to content marketing it has to work.

You can dive deeper into the full survey, but this post is designed not just to share that top-level view of opinions, but instead go some way to offering a solution for those key challenges.

This post is designed to answer the ‘how’ element with an appreciation that designing such a digital content strategy has never been more complex and nuanced.

Where do we start?

With multiple touchpoints and a plethora of different journeys through to your product or service, there is no shame in feeling like you have no idea where to start.

And that’s a problem.

It’s an issue because of the emphasis, and rewards, now placed on the overall content experience.

That process can, and should, be backed by data of course.

Here’s how it works in detail…

Start with people. Always.

All marketing must start and end with people. It’s a statement I’ve made many times before in my Moz posts and it’s central to this strategic approach.

And the best way to bring the conversation mapping process to life is to walk through it end to end with an example. In this case, we’re going to choose the PC components market.

This critical initial work will leave us with two to four personas such as in the example below:

For details of how to build this yourself follow this brilliant guide by the GWI team if you’re interested in giving it a go for yourself.

This kind of data mash-up helps shape the more detailed picture that we can capture from qualitative research sessions and bigger data crunching.

Mapping the conversation with data

With the personas clearly outlined, the next phase is to gather all the data insight you can to better inform the understanding of the key questions Tim is asking around your product or service.

What else do you need to know?

Delivering it means focusing and prioritizing on the opportunity closest to the ‘cash register’ – and that almost always means the search channel comes first.

By diving into organic search engine traffic, we are most likely to be able to tap into buying intent – therefore impacting traffic, conversions, and revenue fastest.

In doing so you stay front of mind and add value, meaning that you’ll be the first port of call when they do decide it’s time to buy.

Keyword research

The obvious place to start then is by digging into the keyword opportunity for your market.

That doesn’t mean having to trawl through every opportunity in your niche but instead, we want to focus on the informational and functional content opportunities.

Informational content

As a reminder here are the four key moments that an audience will work through as they search for answers to key questions.

Informational content focuses on the ‘I Want to Know’, ‘I Want to Do’ and ‘I Want to Go’ moments and this taps into a huge pool of traffic opportunity.

To give you a feel of what that looks like I have included a visual here showing the size of the prize from a selected keyword set of 4,502 phrases in the PC component niche.

Let’s look then at the process for pulling that data into useful formats to aid the content planning process.

The objective now is to establish where to focus effort in content creation to ensure you have the assets necessary to cover the entire user journey, which you can join together later.

To kickstart the process, I’ve used a tool that Zazzle Media built specifically for this task called the KIT (Keyword Identification Tool) but here’s how it basically works:

The ‘KIT’ process

We have our own in-house tools to gather this position data in bulk, there are however third-party tools you could also use, for example:

Simple SERP Scraper – You will more than likely need to purchase proxies before using this.

Serplab

AccuRanker

There is more detail about the different ways to then categorize that data in this blog post by Zazzle Media’s Sam Underwood, and below you can see a couple of my personal favorites:

Incremental informational keyword opportunity by category

Incremental traffic by an operator

In this example, it might make sense to prioritize ‘motherboards’ for instance and look to create content around ‘best’ and ‘reviews’.

Content auditing

Next up we need to take a closer look at the quality of what is already out there to understand the level at which we must compete to win.

‘To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.’ Sun Tzu

To do that, you need to look both at what you already have and also what is currently out there and working.

However, we need to focus more on the other half of this, by diving into the wider picture and answering the question, “what is working now?”.

The types of content that work

Which social networks you should be promoting on

What the ideal word count is

Any topics that work well

For this piece of work, some other beneficial things to gather are below:

Most popular content types

Traffic by word count

It’s incredibly clear that for Tim, articles work best and videos where in-depth ‘how’ questions are asked and that’s hugely powerful for shaping your overall content strategy.

Conversation mapping

The idea here is to use the usual ‘brainstorming’ meeting to work through every possible conversation around the purchase journey for your product or service.

Instead of looking for individual content ideas, we instead think about the buying process and journey Tim might take through our fictional PC component site.

Clearly, this can be a lengthy process that will spit out multiple examples. For the sake of this story, however, we will look at one – the motherboards opportunity.

Not following what I mean? Let’s look at an example:

Content planning around the conversation

The next phase is to then map content opportunity against that conversation, as in the below example:

So, what we have done here is to think about all of the opportunities there are along that conversation to create content to help make Tim a smarter consumer.

Turbocharging the opportunity

Featured snippets

An example of one that Tim may come across in his search for his PC components can be seen below for clarity.

Claiming a snippet requires you to create the best answers to those specific informational queries and doing so better than anyone else.

To do that we can dive back into the data to understand the current snippet share and also where the opportunity still lies ahead of you.

Snippet market share

Overall snippet market share:

Featured snippet opportunity by category

Featured snippet opportunity by an operator

And while this level of traffic is clearly a welcome opportunity it is all critical to understand what it means for the future as well.

Claiming them

Other useful insights include:

Create lists if your users are predominantly mobile-first

Write succinct headers that exactly describe the answer being given

Use strong external links to trusted sources

Use HTTPS

Make sure your site is mobile friendly and fast

Use multiple images

Use tables where appropriate

To make it really easy you can download a really simple guide to page and content structure for snippets here.

Summary

Of course, by becoming successful, content has the unique power to positively affect many other key indicators as it never works in a silo.

And with search engines now much better at rewarding people-based marketing efforts with more traffic, rather than keyword focused strategies, a content-led approach is the only way to attack.

And if you missed the wider findings from the state of content marketing survey then here’s that link again.

Simon Penson is the founder and Managing Director of Zazzle Media. He can be found on Twitter at @simonpenson.

The post Conversation mapping: The new rules to win in search and content marketing appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digtal Marketing News https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/26/conversation-mapping-the-new-rules-to-win-in-search-content-marketing/

0 notes

oscarkruegerus · 6 years ago

Text

Conversation mapping: The new rules to win in search and content marketing

That is the main finding from the second annual State of Content Marketing Survey, an annual temperature check of the UK’s top digital marketers.

In it we discover that not only is the game getting harder to win, but skill and resource shortages are holding many of you back from the results you demand.

And with an average of 23% of overall marketing budget now being attributed to content marketing it has to work.

You can dive deeper into the full survey, but this post is designed not just to share that top-level view of opinions, but instead go some way to offering a solution for those key challenges.

This post is designed to answer the ‘how’ element with an appreciation that designing such a digital content strategy has never been more complex and nuanced.

Where do we start?

With multiple touchpoints and a plethora of different journeys through to your product or service, there is no shame in feeling like you have no idea where to start.

And that’s a problem.

It’s an issue because of the emphasis, and rewards, now placed on the overall content experience.

That process can, and should, be backed by data of course.

Here’s how it works in detail…

Start with people. Always.

All marketing must start and end with people. It’s a statement I’ve made many times before in my Moz posts and it’s central to this strategic approach.

And the best way to bring the conversation mapping process to life is to walk through it end to end with an example. In this case, we’re going to choose the PC components market.

This critical initial work will leave us with two to four personas such as in the example below:

For details of how to build this yourself follow this brilliant guide by the GWI team if you’re interested in giving it a go for yourself.

This kind of data mash-up helps shape the more detailed picture that we can capture from qualitative research sessions and bigger data crunching.

Mapping the conversation with data

With the personas clearly outlined, the next phase is to gather all the data insight you can to better inform the understanding of the key questions Tim is asking around your product or service.

What else do you need to know?

Delivering it means focusing and prioritizing on the opportunity closest to the ‘cash register’ – and that almost always means the search channel comes first.

By diving into organic search engine traffic, we are most likely to be able to tap into buying intent – therefore impacting traffic, conversions, and revenue fastest.

In doing so you stay front of mind and add value, meaning that you’ll be the first port of call when they do decide it’s time to buy.

Keyword research

The obvious place to start then is by digging into the keyword opportunity for your market.

That doesn’t mean having to trawl through every opportunity in your niche but instead, we want to focus on the informational and functional content opportunities.

Informational content

As a reminder here are the four key moments that an audience will work through as they search for answers to key questions.

Informational content focuses on the ‘I Want to Know’, ‘I Want to Do’ and ‘I Want to Go’ moments and this taps into a huge pool of traffic opportunity.

To give you a feel of what that looks like I have included a visual here showing the size of the prize from a selected keyword set of 4,502 phrases in the PC component niche.

Let’s look then at the process for pulling that data into useful formats to aid the content planning process.

The objective now is to establish where to focus effort in content creation to ensure you have the assets necessary to cover the entire user journey, which you can join together later.

To kickstart the process, I’ve used a tool that Zazzle Media built specifically for this task called the KIT (Keyword Identification Tool) but here’s how it basically works:

The ‘KIT’ process

We have our own in-house tools to gather this position data in bulk, there are however third-party tools you could also use, for example:

Simple SERP Scraper – You will more than likely need to purchase proxies before using this.

Serplab

AccuRanker

There is more detail about the different ways to then categorize that data in this blog post by Zazzle Media’s Sam Underwood, and below you can see a couple of my personal favorites:

Incremental informational keyword opportunity by category

Incremental traffic by an operator

In this example, it might make sense to prioritize ‘motherboards’ for instance and look to create content around ‘best’ and ‘reviews’.

Content auditing

Next up we need to take a closer look at the quality of what is already out there to understand the level at which we must compete to win.

‘To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.’ Sun Tzu

To do that, you need to look both at what you already have and also what is currently out there and working.

However, we need to focus more on the other half of this, by diving into the wider picture and answering the question, “what is working now?”.

The types of content that work

Which social networks you should be promoting on

What the ideal word count is

Any topics that work well

For this piece of work, some other beneficial things to gather are below:

Most popular content types

Traffic by word count

It’s incredibly clear that for Tim, articles work best and videos where in-depth ‘how’ questions are asked and that’s hugely powerful for shaping your overall content strategy.

Conversation mapping

The idea here is to use the usual ‘brainstorming’ meeting to work through every possible conversation around the purchase journey for your product or service.

Instead of looking for individual content ideas, we instead think about the buying process and journey Tim might take through our fictional PC component site.

Clearly, this can be a lengthy process that will spit out multiple examples. For the sake of this story, however, we will look at one – the motherboards opportunity.

Not following what I mean? Let’s look at an example:

Content planning around the conversation

The next phase is to then map content opportunity against that conversation, as in the below example:

So, what we have done here is to think about all of the opportunities there are along that conversation to create content to help make Tim a smarter consumer.

Turbocharging the opportunity

Featured snippets

An example of one that Tim may come across in his search for his PC components can be seen below for clarity.

Claiming a snippet requires you to create the best answers to those specific informational queries and doing so better than anyone else.

To do that we can dive back into the data to understand the current snippet share and also where the opportunity still lies ahead of you.

Snippet market share

Overall snippet market share:

Featured snippet opportunity by category

Featured snippet opportunity by an operator

And while this level of traffic is clearly a welcome opportunity it is all critical to understand what it means for the future as well.

Claiming them

Other useful insights include:

Create lists if your users are predominantly mobile-first

Write succinct headers that exactly describe the answer being given

Use strong external links to trusted sources

Use HTTPS

Make sure your site is mobile friendly and fast

Use multiple images

Use tables where appropriate

To make it really easy you can download a really simple guide to page and content structure for snippets here.

Summary

Of course, by becoming successful, content has the unique power to positively affect many other key indicators as it never works in a silo.

And with search engines now much better at rewarding people-based marketing efforts with more traffic, rather than keyword focused strategies, a content-led approach is the only way to attack.

And if you missed the wider findings from the state of content marketing survey then here’s that link again.

Simon Penson is the founder and Managing Director of Zazzle Media. He can be found on Twitter at @simonpenson.

The post Conversation mapping: The new rules to win in search and content marketing appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digtal Marketing News https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/26/conversation-mapping-the-new-rules-to-win-in-search-content-marketing/

0 notes

srasamua · 6 years ago

Text

Conversation mapping: The new rules to win in search and content marketing

That is the main finding from the second annual State of Content Marketing Survey, an annual temperature check of the UK’s top digital marketers.

In it we discover that not only is the game getting harder to win, but skill and resource shortages are holding many of you back from the results you demand.

And with an average of 23% of overall marketing budget now being attributed to content marketing it has to work.

You can dive deeper into the full survey, but this post is designed not just to share that top-level view of opinions, but instead go some way to offering a solution for those key challenges.

This post is designed to answer the ‘how’ element with an appreciation that designing such a digital content strategy has never been more complex and nuanced.

Where do we start?

With multiple touchpoints and a plethora of different journeys through to your product or service, there is no shame in feeling like you have no idea where to start.

And that’s a problem.

It’s an issue because of the emphasis, and rewards, now placed on the overall content experience.

That process can, and should, be backed by data of course.

Here’s how it works in detail…

Start with people. Always.

All marketing must start and end with people. It’s a statement I’ve made many times before in my Moz posts and it’s central to this strategic approach.

And the best way to bring the conversation mapping process to life is to walk through it end to end with an example. In this case, we’re going to choose the PC components market.

This critical initial work will leave us with two to four personas such as in the example below:

For details of how to build this yourself follow this brilliant guide by the GWI team if you’re interested in giving it a go for yourself.

This kind of data mash-up helps shape the more detailed picture that we can capture from qualitative research sessions and bigger data crunching.

Mapping the conversation with data

With the personas clearly outlined, the next phase is to gather all the data insight you can to better inform the understanding of the key questions Tim is asking around your product or service.

What else do you need to know?

Delivering it means focusing and prioritizing on the opportunity closest to the ‘cash register’ – and that almost always means the search channel comes first.

By diving into organic search engine traffic, we are most likely to be able to tap into buying intent – therefore impacting traffic, conversions, and revenue fastest.

In doing so you stay front of mind and add value, meaning that you’ll be the first port of call when they do decide it’s time to buy.

Keyword research

The obvious place to start then is by digging into the keyword opportunity for your market.

That doesn’t mean having to trawl through every opportunity in your niche but instead, we want to focus on the informational and functional content opportunities.

Informational content

As a reminder here are the four key moments that an audience will work through as they search for answers to key questions.

Informational content focuses on the ‘I Want to Know’, ‘I Want to Do’ and ‘I Want to Go’ moments and this taps into a huge pool of traffic opportunity.

To give you a feel of what that looks like I have included a visual here showing the size of the prize from a selected keyword set of 4,502 phrases in the PC component niche.

Let’s look then at the process for pulling that data into useful formats to aid the content planning process.

The objective now is to establish where to focus effort in content creation to ensure you have the assets necessary to cover the entire user journey, which you can join together later.

To kickstart the process, I’ve used a tool that Zazzle Media built specifically for this task called the KIT (Keyword Identification Tool) but here’s how it basically works:

The ‘KIT’ process

We have our own in-house tools to gather this position data in bulk, there are however third-party tools you could also use, for example:

Simple SERP Scraper – You will more than likely need to purchase proxies before using this.

Serplab

AccuRanker

There is more detail about the different ways to then categorize that data in this blog post by Zazzle Media’s Sam Underwood, and below you can see a couple of my personal favorites:

Incremental informational keyword opportunity by category

Incremental traffic by an operator

In this example, it might make sense to prioritize ‘motherboards’ for instance and look to create content around ‘best’ and ‘reviews’.

Content auditing

Next up we need to take a closer look at the quality of what is already out there to understand the level at which we must compete to win.

‘To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.’ Sun Tzu

To do that, you need to look both at what you already have and also what is currently out there and working.

However, we need to focus more on the other half of this, by diving into the wider picture and answering the question, “what is working now?”.

The types of content that work

Which social networks you should be promoting on

What the ideal word count is

Any topics that work well

For this piece of work, some other beneficial things to gather are below:

Most popular content types

Traffic by word count

It’s incredibly clear that for Tim, articles work best and videos where in-depth ‘how’ questions are asked and that’s hugely powerful for shaping your overall content strategy.

Conversation mapping

The idea here is to use the usual ‘brainstorming’ meeting to work through every possible conversation around the purchase journey for your product or service.

Instead of looking for individual content ideas, we instead think about the buying process and journey Tim might take through our fictional PC component site.

Clearly, this can be a lengthy process that will spit out multiple examples. For the sake of this story, however, we will look at one – the motherboards opportunity.

Not following what I mean? Let’s look at an example:

Content planning around the conversation

The next phase is to then map content opportunity against that conversation, as in the below example:

So, what we have done here is to think about all of the opportunities there are along that conversation to create content to help make Tim a smarter consumer.

Turbocharging the opportunity

Featured snippets

An example of one that Tim may come across in his search for his PC components can be seen below for clarity.

Claiming a snippet requires you to create the best answers to those specific informational queries and doing so better than anyone else.

To do that we can dive back into the data to understand the current snippet share and also where the opportunity still lies ahead of you.

Snippet market share

Overall snippet market share:

Featured snippet opportunity by category

Featured snippet opportunity by an operator

And while this level of traffic is clearly a welcome opportunity it is all critical to understand what it means for the future as well.

Claiming them

Other useful insights include:

Create lists if your users are predominantly mobile-first

Write succinct headers that exactly describe the answer being given

Use strong external links to trusted sources

Use HTTPS

Make sure your site is mobile friendly and fast

Use multiple images

Use tables where appropriate

To make it really easy you can download a really simple guide to page and content structure for snippets here.

Summary

Of course, by becoming successful, content has the unique power to positively affect many other key indicators as it never works in a silo.

And with search engines now much better at rewarding people-based marketing efforts with more traffic, rather than keyword focused strategies, a content-led approach is the only way to attack.

And if you missed the wider findings from the state of content marketing survey then here’s that link again.

Simon Penson is the founder and Managing Director of Zazzle Media. He can be found on Twitter at @simonpenson.

The post Conversation mapping: The new rules to win in search and content marketing appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digtal Marketing News https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/26/conversation-mapping-the-new-rules-to-win-in-search-content-marketing/

0 notes

bambiguertinus · 6 years ago

Text

Conversation mapping: The new rules to win in search and content marketing

That is the main finding from the second annual State of Content Marketing Survey, an annual temperature check of the UK’s top digital marketers.

In it we discover that not only is the game getting harder to win, but skill and resource shortages are holding many of you back from the results you demand.

And with an average of 23% of overall marketing budget now being attributed to content marketing it has to work.

You can dive deeper into the full survey, but this post is designed not just to share that top-level view of opinions, but instead go some way to offering a solution for those key challenges.

This post is designed to answer the ‘how’ element with an appreciation that designing such a digital content strategy has never been more complex and nuanced.

Where do we start?

With multiple touchpoints and a plethora of different journeys through to your product or service, there is no shame in feeling like you have no idea where to start.

And that’s a problem.

It’s an issue because of the emphasis, and rewards, now placed on the overall content experience.

That process can, and should, be backed by data of course.

Here’s how it works in detail…

Start with people. Always.

All marketing must start and end with people. It’s a statement I’ve made many times before in my Moz posts and it’s central to this strategic approach.

And the best way to bring the conversation mapping process to life is to walk through it end to end with an example. In this case, we’re going to choose the PC components market.

This critical initial work will leave us with two to four personas such as in the example below:

For details of how to build this yourself follow this brilliant guide by the GWI team if you’re interested in giving it a go for yourself.

This kind of data mash-up helps shape the more detailed picture that we can capture from qualitative research sessions and bigger data crunching.

Mapping the conversation with data

With the personas clearly outlined, the next phase is to gather all the data insight you can to better inform the understanding of the key questions Tim is asking around your product or service.

What else do you need to know?

Delivering it means focusing and prioritizing on the opportunity closest to the ‘cash register’ – and that almost always means the search channel comes first.

By diving into organic search engine traffic, we are most likely to be able to tap into buying intent – therefore impacting traffic, conversions, and revenue fastest.

In doing so you stay front of mind and add value, meaning that you’ll be the first port of call when they do decide it’s time to buy.

Keyword research

The obvious place to start then is by digging into the keyword opportunity for your market.

That doesn’t mean having to trawl through every opportunity in your niche but instead, we want to focus on the informational and functional content opportunities.

Informational content

As a reminder here are the four key moments that an audience will work through as they search for answers to key questions.

Informational content focuses on the ‘I Want to Know’, ‘I Want to Do’ and ‘I Want to Go’ moments and this taps into a huge pool of traffic opportunity.

To give you a feel of what that looks like I have included a visual here showing the size of the prize from a selected keyword set of 4,502 phrases in the PC component niche.

Let’s look then at the process for pulling that data into useful formats to aid the content planning process.

The objective now is to establish where to focus effort in content creation to ensure you have the assets necessary to cover the entire user journey, which you can join together later.

To kickstart the process, I’ve used a tool that Zazzle Media built specifically for this task called the KIT (Keyword Identification Tool) but here’s how it basically works:

The ‘KIT’ process

We have our own in-house tools to gather this position data in bulk, there are however third-party tools you could also use, for example:

Simple SERP Scraper – You will more than likely need to purchase proxies before using this.

Serplab

AccuRanker

There is more detail about the different ways to then categorize that data in this blog post by Zazzle Media’s Sam Underwood, and below you can see a couple of my personal favorites:

Incremental informational keyword opportunity by category

Incremental traffic by an operator

In this example, it might make sense to prioritize ‘motherboards’ for instance and look to create content around ‘best’ and ‘reviews’.

Content auditing

Next up we need to take a closer look at the quality of what is already out there to understand the level at which we must compete to win.

‘To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.’ Sun Tzu

To do that, you need to look both at what you already have and also what is currently out there and working.

However, we need to focus more on the other half of this, by diving into the wider picture and answering the question, “what is working now?”.

The types of content that work

Which social networks you should be promoting on

What the ideal word count is

Any topics that work well

For this piece of work, some other beneficial things to gather are below:

Most popular content types

Traffic by word count

It’s incredibly clear that for Tim, articles work best and videos where in-depth ‘how’ questions are asked and that’s hugely powerful for shaping your overall content strategy.

Conversation mapping

The idea here is to use the usual ‘brainstorming’ meeting to work through every possible conversation around the purchase journey for your product or service.

Instead of looking for individual content ideas, we instead think about the buying process and journey Tim might take through our fictional PC component site.

Clearly, this can be a lengthy process that will spit out multiple examples. For the sake of this story, however, we will look at one – the motherboards opportunity.

Not following what I mean? Let’s look at an example:

Content planning around the conversation

The next phase is to then map content opportunity against that conversation, as in the below example:

So, what we have done here is to think about all of the opportunities there are along that conversation to create content to help make Tim a smarter consumer.

Turbocharging the opportunity

Featured snippets

An example of one that Tim may come across in his search for his PC components can be seen below for clarity.

Claiming a snippet requires you to create the best answers to those specific informational queries and doing so better than anyone else.

To do that we can dive back into the data to understand the current snippet share and also where the opportunity still lies ahead of you.

Snippet market share

Overall snippet market share:

Featured snippet opportunity by category

Featured snippet opportunity by an operator

And while this level of traffic is clearly a welcome opportunity it is all critical to understand what it means for the future as well.

Claiming them

Other useful insights include:

Create lists if your users are predominantly mobile-first

Write succinct headers that exactly describe the answer being given

Use strong external links to trusted sources

Use HTTPS

Make sure your site is mobile friendly and fast

Use multiple images

Use tables where appropriate

To make it really easy you can download a really simple guide to page and content structure for snippets here.

Summary

Of course, by becoming successful, content has the unique power to positively affect many other key indicators as it never works in a silo.

And with search engines now much better at rewarding people-based marketing efforts with more traffic, rather than keyword focused strategies, a content-led approach is the only way to attack.

And if you missed the wider findings from the state of content marketing survey then here’s that link again.

Simon Penson is the founder and Managing Director of Zazzle Media. He can be found on Twitter at @simonpenson.

The post Conversation mapping: The new rules to win in search and content marketing appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digtal Marketing News https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/26/conversation-mapping-the-new-rules-to-win-in-search-content-marketing/

0 notes

nixeka-blog · 10 years ago

Text

Frank Harrison about the media value of packaging

Is the packaging better than print or TV advertising?

The answer to the question is “yes” and “no”. “Yes” because, on a per exposure basis, packaging has greater influence on brand choice than TV overall, but “no” because packaging reaches fewer people than TV and is mainly seen (repetitively, which is good) by existing buyers of the brand. Packaging is less effective than TV amongst non-buyers of the brand (who tend to pay little attention to the brands that they don’t buy). Packaging works best when there is good use of distinctive assets (eg. colours, logos, shapes) that are consistently used on TV/print and packaging.

Frank Harrison, Strategic Resources Director ZenithOptimedia Worldwide

Everything depends on what the marketing objective is for the brand. TV advertising is better than packaging for maximising mental availability of a brand amongst non-buyers – it is better for reaching more people faster (both buyers and non-buyers) and is better at driving buyer acquisition. Packaging has a higher buyer multiplier (the ratio of buyer v non-buyer Brand Association) so it tends to reach many more buyers than non-buyers – it is better for retaining existing buyers. Shoppers (online and instore) spend very little time selecting packaged goods – and they tend to notice and buy the brands that they are already existing buyers of – so it is vital to use mass paid media to build brand memories, associations, recognition and saliency amongst non-buyers as well as buyers.

Do Marketers actually see the carton packaging as an advertising medium? Marketers see packaging as a powerful marketing channel but it is not normally part of the advertising budget. Packaging mostly reaches, and is most effective for marketing to, existing buyers of the brand. Because of this big brands have an unfair advantage versus small brands: because they have more buyers and therefore more marketing exposures through their owned packaging channel. This means that big brands can afford a lower mass media SOV:MS ratio compared to small brands – they have more people in the category (their own buyers) who are exposed to their packaging than smaller brands. Big brands benefit hugely also from repetitive exposure to their packaging in the homes of their buyers – through the consumption of their products. Bottom line – big brands need lower frequency of exposure on TV than small brands because they have more frequency of exposure through their packaging. Small brands need to “shout above their weight” in paid mass media while big brands don’t need to. On-pack promotions work mainly amongst existing buyers – there is little “trial” amongst non-buyers.

Do you think the FFI Association is right when they compare media value of packaging and TV or print? Yes, I think It is a good thing to compare the communication value of all forms of contact that brands have with consumers – this is the purpose of ZenithOptimedia’s “Touchpoints ROI Tracker”. However, it is important to understand how each contact point works, when it works, who it works most effectively amongst, how it can be used in combination with other brand contacts.

What role does the folding carton packaging play in the purchase process? It has a big role. Packaging is a crucial contact point at the moment of purchase. It is vital to use it to build and reinforce distinctive assets. Packaging is a critical heuristic memory cue for busy shoppers – most people look for the packaging that they recognise from the brands that they are familiar with (mainly those that they are buying). It can be dangerous to significantly change packaging – existing buyers might not recognise the brand after the change and then fail to buy it because they don’t see their familiar brand on the shelf any more.

What trends, experts with regard to the design do you see for packaging? How can it be used as an advertising medium, where are boundaries? Packaging is a big and powerful “owned” marketing channel that is a vital form of communication amongst existing buyers of the brand. It is less effective amongst non-buyers. It works best for customer retention and does not work as well for customer acquisition (TV is better at this). Perhaps the greatest purpose of advertising is to create publicity for a brand amongst people who do not know it very well – the non-buyers. This makes TV the most effective advertising channel – because it delivers fast and high reach publicity for a brand amongst non-buyers. So packaging is not so much an “advertising” medium as a communication channel for existing buyers. Packaging works best when it is tightly integrated with TV advertising to build and reinforce specific memory cues (eg. distinctive assets) for brands so that they become recognisable to consumers. Packaging needs to reinforce a brand’s distinctive assets, needs to be consistent (unchanging) over time, and needs to be visible. Packaging plays a big role to help maximise the physical availability of a brand to consumers – it needs to be distinctive and prompt instant brand recognition.

If you use the packaging as an advertising medium, then what has to be considered in the design? Packaging design needs to be distinctive and prompt instant brand recognition.

Some of Frank’s answers were first published in the article “Der Reiz der Verhüllung” page 40-43 in “W&V”, March 30th, 2015.

#zenithoptimedia #Touchpoints ROI Tracker #Advertising #Packaging #Media Value #marketing #Frank Harrison

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euro3plast-fr · 8 years ago

Text

Email marketing trends 2018

6 emerging email and marketing automation trends to help inform your 2018 email marketing communications strategy

Email marketing continues to be a vital communications channel with the DMAs latest Email tracker showing that email receives 30 times return on investment on average. 95% of respondents rated it as 'important' or 'very important' to their organization.

Yet competition in the inbox for attention from email subscribers remains fierce as social media remains important and competitors optimise their approach.

So, it's important to review the success factors to improving email ROI, which we summarise in this article with the help of the email specialists who kindly contributed their views and predictions on the trends which will be important in 2018. While some of these are not 'new' techniques, they are increasing in adoption since they are vital to keeping up with your competition and engaging your audience further in the customer lifecycle.

Our lifecycle marketing model shows you the potential customer touchpoints and how email marketing aids in increasing relevance and response of communications. Marketing activities such as personalization, loyalty programs, and re-engagement email programs are vital to your email marketing strategy. Whilst SEO, PPC, social media, and advertising may contribute to getting your customer into the top of your sales funnel, it is essentially your email marketers that keep them there, increase repeat purchase and increase customer-brand engagement.

For a broader overview of the biggest digital trends, including the integration of customer journeys into your engagement strategy, check our Dr Dave Chaffey's 10 marketing trends to act on in 2018.

With the end of 2017 drawing near, the trends in this article reflect on our free resource, Email Trends 2017 - a visual guide, (soon to be updated) to see if our predictions matched up to what the landscape of email looked like this past year.

Which techniques are already part of current email marketing activities?

The Email Marketing Industry Census 2017, by Econsultancy in association with Adestra, shows that segmentation (80%) remains the highest priority and technique used in email marketing campaigns in 2017. However, this is only a 1% increase from 2016 showing very little businesses are adopting this technique further than what they were in 2016.

Optimizing emails for mobile had the highest increase (9%) showing adoption of this technique is becoming increasingly popular and important for retention, UX and engagement on on-the-go devices for quicker and more convenient consumption of content. Other techniques with an increase in importance were:

Encouraging social sharing (2% increase)

Transactional Emails (2% increase)

Location-based emails (4% increase)

Dynamic content and dynamic social feeds (4% and 3% increase)

I will be addressing the importance of mobile-responsive emails, amongst other important trending features:

Respecting personal data will change your email marketing strategy

Mailable 'Microsites' are adopted by more companies to increase customer research, engagement, and retention

Conversion tones are adopted to increase genuine human interaction with customers

Rending is addressed to improve UX across email clients

Personalization and segmentation remain a priority to share dynamic content

However, it is interesting to note that personalization is a technique that has decreased in popularity by 4% (beyond adding in the user's name). Whereas this was a rising email trend a couple of years ago, it is hard to show how it has progressed further. More is needed than customizing the email to include the users' names. This has become the standard practice and is no longer considered 'personal', users now expect to see their name, anything less is offputting and risks low engagement.

Whilst email competes with organic (SEO) and paid search (PPC), it can drive a higher volume of sales than other channels and is important for customer acquisition, engagement, and retention. In our Essential Digital Marketing Tools framework, we outline the insight and management tools to help you engage users via marketing automation and optimization tools.

Expert prediction

Jordie van Rijn - Email Marketing and eCRM Consultant, Author, and Founder of Email Vendors Selection

Instead of trying to employ email at every twist and turn of the customer journey, it is often more effective to focus on the well performing campaigns. We need to learn to “Carpe Conversion”, tune to their mindset and deepen the personalized contact at those moments that matter.

One way that is up and coming in 2018, will be the combination of email and on-site interactions. Interactions with chatbots, guided tours, and next best action slide-ins. You know the little dialog boxes and circles bottom-right to click on? We will see a shift, as companies are starting to use them to guide the customer into (opt-in) and from (after click through) email and continue the flow on the site.

Improving landing page conversions and lead-to-deal ratio is also important.

Trend 1. Respecting personal data will change your email marketing strategy

This isn't a 'trend' as such that marketers are voluntarily adopting but instead enforced by the European Commission May 25, 2018. It's vital to comply with or risk hefty fines.

The way data is collected, stored and used for email campaigns has previously and continuously had a bad reputation due to the negative handling of personal data - often viewed as spam by the recipient. However, as GDPR comes into effect, we will see other counties tightening their data handling procedures, including America's CAN-SPAM.

We recently asked our members 'Is your company GDPR ready?' and found that the majority (94%) were 'aware but haven't started' preparations or didn't know what GDPR is!

General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) changes will be enforced in 6 months, affecting all businesses that market to customers in all 28 European counties. This is the biggest change happening that affects email marketing strategies in 2018. For many years obtaining email addresses, phone numbers and other personal contact details via competitions and promotion of free whitepapers has been a technique to increase contact databases, used afterward for email re-engagement campaigns that the user had not originally and explicitly consented to. Reconsent needs to be given to store and use personal data.

With this change, we will see companies tightening up their use of personal data. This change will hopefully decrease the negative stigma that has built up around company email campaigns and the amount of spam users receive.

Our email marketing manager has produced a practical guide, with checklists, to help inform you about GDPR, what needs to be done and how / if this affects you.

Download Premium Resource – GDPR briefing guide

Our round-up of the best guidance on the latest European Union data protection and privacy legislation and how it affects you and your business Are you ready for the GDPR? The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) comes into force in all 28 countries in Europe on 25th May 2018. It has been agreed by the EU in this directive and how it must be implemented to remain compliant differs according to interpretation in different countries.

Access the GDPR briefing

What do marketers need to do in 2018 to comply with GDPR changes?

Processing of data is done lawfully and fairly,

data is collected for explicit legitimate purposes

making sure the data is adequate, accurate, and

retained for only as long as necessary.

processed in a manner that maintains the integrity and confidentiality of the personal data.

In conclusion, GDPR is all about transparency and individual rights - use of personal data will be handled with more respect and this will have a positive effect on email campaigns.

Expert prediction

Tim Watson, Email Marketing consultant at Zettasphere

For email and just about any other marketing the big thing in 2018 is GDPR in May. This is going to be very disruptive if not terminal for email 3rd party data. For continued strong first party list growth new persuasive methods for opt-in consent are going to be needed. There could be more innovation in list growth this year than for the last 14 years; since the introduction of PECR regulation in 2003, when the pre-ticked box became just about universal.

Joolz Joseph - Strategic Email Marketing Consultant - The Virtual Marketeer

Data wise it’ll be about leaner, cleaner lists as emailers respond to GDPR by removing non-compliant data and tightening opt-in procedures. There will likely be a rush of repermissioning emails end of Q1 around this as reality starts to hit.

Process-wise, the continuing rise of automation for all email marketers right down to microbusinesses. It is now available with even the lowest cost services and working with smaller businesses those marketers are looking to drive timely, relevant communications more than ever and have finally woken up to automation.

Creatively, interactivity in emails whether it’s eye-catching image carousels or the ability for recipients to act from within the email using integrated surveys or forms.

Trend 2. Mailable 'Microsites' are adopted by more companies to increase customer research, engagement, and retention

A mailable 'microsite' is an interactive email, which allows the user to interact with the email interface within the inbox. The adoption of this technique will help retain customers and give a more engaging approach to content. Interactive emails keep the inbox interesting and unique.

Features of an interactive email may include, but not limited to:

Integrated forms and surveys: done 'in the inbox' without directing them to a separate online landing page

Social sharing: this makes it easier for your user to share content on their social platforms

Gifs, videos, and animations: this can engage users, but can sometimes lead to inconsistent experiences across email clients (large files will mean a slower download)

Search in email

Menu options / navigation bars: integrating these into your emails can increase clicks leading to higher conversions

Rotational banners / carousels: this encourages interaction with the content, increasing the chances of positive engagement and conversion

Countdowns: adding in a countdown clock for sales and promotions will alert the recipient of the urgency to take action - this can help give the audience a little nudge to convert, rather than the standard 'offer ends soon' text

Interactive email essentially hands your audience everything they need on a plate - with minimal effort form them. They do not need to divert out of the inbox to view content, interact with video or complete surveys - making it more likely they will interact due to less effort needed to complete a task.

It surprises me that this technique isn't already dominating users' inboxes from the already dull, boring and flat static emails that are sent in surplus. However, until some email clients such as Outlook support these features, it will be hard to fully adopt this technique.

Check out this email sent by Feel Unique, who used gifs in their emails to showcase their new app, how to use it and entice the user to download it.

Collecting data from your customers is important in constructing an accurate and detailed customer persona. Asking your audience to fill out surveys and questionnaires is the best way to find out. However, this can be time-consuming to your audience as CTAs direct them to an online landing page to fill out surveys and forms.

But integrated survey and forms will help increase engagement, as users can fill out the form without leaving their inbox. Applications of email surveys include asking your customers to fill out a review of your product or service, what your customers currently like or is trending to personalize content to their needs, promotional emails after purchase to gain consented subscribers etc.

For this to be fully adopted by more companies, email clients will have to have full compatibility with this type of technology. Clients like mobile third-party email apps like Gmail and yahoo) have fallback support. Plus, some email clients are still not compatible with integrated email forms and surveys and still have a long way to go.

Email Monks built their first ever horror email, influenced by the film Annabelle: Creation (view online). However, it was not built for Outlook as Outlook does not support certain interactive features.

Creating interactive mailable microsites is the future of email marketing. I do believe that when email clients support the use of interactive features, companies that start adopting this technique will see a higher rate of engagement. But for now, it is important to use the technology already available to engage to make sure all your customers receive a professionally created, designed and written email.

Expert prediction

Jaymin Bhuptani - Director, Email Monks

Interactivity in email is all set to continue its winning spree in 2018. This is evident from the promising trend identified from the steady surge in demand for interactive emails we built for our clients in 2017 – approx. 50% rise than the previous year.

Noticeably, we have seen a major rise of just less than 200% in the use of drop-down navigation in email design.

Moreover, as the need for relevant, personalized content becomes stronger than ever, expect campaigns to become more data-driven. Machine learning will thus play a vital role in the creation of email campaigns in 2018.

Constantine Rozenshtraus-Makarov, Co-Founder and CEO of SendPulse

2018 of emails will be about interaction, gamification, and AI.

In 2018 interactive content based on gamification principles will incentivize users to click and become more involved with the brands. Static emails are no longer enough to catch the eye of the ones who want to play, and so marketers will offer them play.

Email automation AI will not conquer the human race yet, but will continue its expansion to creating attractive subject lines for better open rates and will learn from users' behaviour when is the best time to send emails to them. Follow up to unopened emails will be taken off the human shoulders too.

Growing customer-centric approach in marketing will inspire email marketers to take a deeper dive into user-generated content and to use any data (big data) they possess about customers for generating personalized email content.

Trend 3. Conversational tone is adopted for more personal interaction with audience

The tone you chose to use in your emails affects the way your customers will respond. A conversational tone may not be the best tone to use across all sectors, but it does give a more personal and genuine interaction between the customer and brand.

A conversational tone will ask your users questions, get them thinking and then give them the answer they need - through your CTA directing them to your content that helps / educates them.

Whereas a more formal approach may be better for B2B sectors, asking questions and starting a conversation with your audience is important for engagement. It will feel more personal show that the content you have produced has had them in mind, feeding their needs for answers, content, products etc.

Trend 4. More businesses push for mobile-friendly design

As shown in the Econsultancy chart, 73% of respondents are prioritizing optimizing email for mobile devices, a 95% increase from 2017 and the biggest for any email trend in the last year. This is only going to increase as the year progresses into 2018.

We now live in a mobile-first society, where content is consumed on the go, in the early morning or late at night via mobile. I myself, check my social notifications and emails on a morning to catch up on the day ahead. It is now more important than ever to make your emails mobile-friendly, after all, why should this medium of marketing be neglected from other mobile-optimized content?

Mobile optimized sites increase loading time, and this counts as an important ranking factor on SEPRs and gives an overall excellent UX for your audience. This is also true for email - slow loading emails that aren't optimized risk low engagement rates and poor clickthroughs, especially if the CTAs have been cut off from the mobile design.

A recent report by Litmus shows what 2017 has taught us about the use of email clients in the past year. Whilst there is a rise in webmail, mainly driven by Gmail, mobile has consistently had the highest market share (50% an over).

However, it is important to know how, when and where your target audience consumes their information. Knowing whether your audience prefers desktop experience or a mobile experience is vital!

For instance, in a recent research study published by Global Web Index, mobile and desktop both engage 16-24-year-olds with the same amount of time spent online. However, as the age of users increases the time spent on mobile decreases. But, don't forget, as time progresses more and more people will adopt a mobile-first approach, and soon it will be a huge competitor for desktop consumed content as millennials start aging through different age boundaries.

Take a look at Smart Insights' member enewsletter sent out bi-weekly on desktop and how this is optimized for mobile.

For mobile:

The design is responsive to space it has to fill, easy to read and more importantly easy to scan for those busy marketers on the go.

Trend 5. Testing and deliverability need addressing further

Ultimately, this comes down to the background work your email marketers do to make sure the emails are opened with the correct design and delivered to the correct email folder. Without doing the background work, all the extra effort for design and copy are lost and your customer engagement rate decreases.

Rendering your emails is important to make sure your emails are viewable across all email clients. Taking the time to create a great design and engaging copy is a wasted time when your customer cannot see your amazing work. Rending gives your customer a customized experience, regardless of the email client they use.

Test your emails to make sure the design is perfective, the images load and the copy is exactly where you want / need it for engagement.

For a long time, deliverability of emails has also been important - going into 2018, our expert commentator, Chad White explains the importance of deliverability in the upcoming year.

Expert prediction

Chad White - Research Director at Litmus and Author of Email Marketing Rules

The new thing for email marketing in 2018 will be an old thing: email authentication. The standards for SPF and DKIM authentication are more than a decade old, while DMARC is newer. Despite boosting brands’ deliverability and protecting brands from being accessories to phishing attempts, all three standards see relatively low adoption. Only 69.4% of marketers have adopted SPF; 66.6% DKIM; and 46.5% DMARC, according to Litmus’ State of Email Deliverability report.

Adoption of authentication will surge in 2018 because of the emerging Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) standard, which will display brand logos next to properly authenticated messages. The carrot of that additional branding in the inbox will spur more brands to finally adopt SPF, DKIM, and DMARC—and reap the other benefits of authentication in the process.

Trend 6. Personalization and segmentation remain a high priority to continue sharing dynamic and engaging content

Dynamic content remains important year-on-year, to create a personalized experience for your customer with more relevant communications. Dynamic content refers to the HTML within your content which changes based on the recipient. This goes hand in hand with segmentation (list / location based emails). Together they provide the user with an email that is customized to them.

This is important creating a unique experience which makes the user feel valued by the company. The most basic and widely used form of personalization is inserting the name of the user into the email, rather than a standard 'dear customer' or a simple 'hi'. But this is no longer enough.

Our machine learning customer lifecycle shows the importance of dynamic content email - it contributes to engagement with loyal customers and lapsed customers. Without dynamic content, you aren't telling your customers why they need to come back or keep buying / interacting with your brand.

One rising trend we notice email specialists are excited about is the rise in using machine learning to achieve the highest level of personalization for the customer.

Expert Prediction

Kath Pay, CEO - Holistic Email Marketing

I believe that achieving personalization using machine learning/AI will achieve an uptake in 2018. Email Marketers have struggled for years with manually segmenting lists – mainly because of the time it took, the inaccuracy of doing so (only achieving a one-to-many result) and the ROI being diminished for their efforts the more granular (and therefore the more personalized) they segmented. Likewise, dynamic content never really took off because of the effort required to set it up. Enter machine learning personalization. By using a third-party system, such as Jetlore and other similar solutions which plug into their existing ESP, that are capable of reading, and using web-based descriptions, marketers will not only be able to provide a 1:1 experience for their customers, but also gain valuable insights and predictions of their customer’s behaviour. For a small investment, significant increased conversions can be gained and a superior customer experience can be provided, contributing to increased CLTV.

Lee Davies - Online Marketing Manager, Pure360 (email marketing software)

For me, the key trend in 2018 will around personalization. Not simply ‘Hi {FirstName}’, that doesn’t cut it anymore. Consumers are becoming more clued up with the emails they receive and the content contained within them.

While the classic first name personalization in the subject line or opening line of an email was once a delighter, it’s now become commonplace, and expected, to the point where if you’re not addressing the recipient by their name they may lose trust.

Consumers know that as a brand you’re sending out tens, if not hundreds of thousands of emails in a campaign, but they are also aware that you should now know enough about them to ensure that the content you’re including is relative to them.

If you’re able to recommend products to them based on their purchase history, use social proof to back up suggested purchases, or send them a discount code for their birthday, that’s where you’ll begin to see increased engagement and reap the benefits.

The likely challenges around this that brands will encounter is not having enough information to provide these hyper-personalized email campaigns, but having the means to make sense of that data and ensure that with each campaign, every email is timely, relevant, and above all, useful to the recipient.

Guy Hanson, Senior Director, Professional Services Internation - Return Path

Chairman of the DMA Email Council

Email thinking in 2018 is going to be all about optimization—incremental program improvements to boost subscriber engagement and program revenue. In the short term, marketers will continue to remain highly focused on getting better at personalization and relevance—with 52 percent of marketers believing that improving email personalization is the most important goal of an email marketing strategy. However, it’s also an email tactic that is easy to get wrong and subscribers can respond very negatively when their names are misspelled, offer fails to match interest/season/location, the product has already been purchased, etc.

Other short-term areas of focus include marketing automation, better integration with CRM, better integration with other channels, and increased use of live/dynamic content.

In the longer term the big focus will be on machine learning/artificial intelligence—creating email programs that learn from past events, and then automatically adapt their approach to apply new strategies that are optimized to best serve customer needs.

Alice Mullen, Director of customer-first Marketing - Selligent

AI will become more prominent in 2018 for email marketing.

Just as what’s contained within a message is dynamic, the journey will begin to develop a dynamic path based on an individual consumer’s needs. Journeys won’t be a mapped and static experience with pathing. It’s analogous to building the sidewalk where the beaten down path has developed. Following the consumer and delivering on what s/he needs will begin to be possible as a result of AI.

Jen Capstraw - Consultant and strategist, Adobe, and President and Co-Founder, Women of Email

Email marketing is the fine wine of digital channels: It’s been around for ages, and its complexity evolves with time. The most sophisticated email technologies can be likened to your grand reserves—a limited selection of enterprise solutions that enable the most mature marketing strategies. Until recently, those without ample budgets have been getting the job done with the technology equivalent of Wild Irish Rose. But now some players in the ESP and cross-channel space are offering up very cool personalization and campaign orchestration options at affordable price points. And that’s a real game-changer for smaller companies with champagne tastes on a beer budget.

from Blog – Smart Insights http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/email-communications-strategy/email-marketing-trends-2018/

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