Your Business Needs a Digital Marketing Agency

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Marketing your business on the internet is different than any other type of marketing. There are dozens of concepts, technologies, terminologies, and rules to learn before you even get started. What’s more, the types of advertisements available to you are new and foreign to some that hasn’t been in the business for a hundred years.

A digital marketing agency that offers a full suite of services is the best way to go if you want to make sure you get the results you expect from your online marketing efforts. And if you don’t believe me, just wait.

Product Knowledge

Many digital marketing agencies specialize in only one product: delivering results for businesses. The tools, metrics, technologies, and terminologies that are so perplexing to you are the life blood of our business. They work to help you identify and then meet your performance goals, including leads, sales, customer acquisition, traffic, and customers.

These are the elements that help you define success for your business and they have deep product knowledge about how to achieve them on behalf of your business.

Unique Business Structure

If you can find a company that offers customers the benefit of their own programmatic buying platform, you will be on your way to a success. This means that in addition to creating a strategy to help you achieve your goals, you will also enjoy the implementation of that strategy and the actual purchasing of advertisement views via our real time bidding platform.

In other words, a unique business structure will allow you to experience results oriented traffic generation, sales conversions, and more.

How Digital Marketing Helps Your Startup

The Internet is constantly evolving. That’s a great thing for businesses that operate on the cutting edge of these new technologies. When you use a platform for purchasing display advertising, you also have the ability to immediately change bids, adjust strategies, split test, and adjust ad buys on the go – in real time. This gives you the distinct advantage of seeing what is and isn’t working as you go and changing your ad buys to more effective advertisements that are reaching your target audience. It gives you a very real advantage of competitors who have not yet embraced this technology.

Simply put, a digital marketing agency helps you get bigger, better, and faster results from your advertising dollars. They do this by sharing the value of their expertise, the ease of their system, and the technology that brings these things together for even more effective marketing.

Who We Are

We are a Chicago based Digital Marketing & Consulting firm. Our digital marketing strategies increase your online reach, strengthen your brand equity, help achieve stronger business results and generate greater profitability.

Our approach is based around working with your company on an ongoing basis to adapt and stay ahead of your competition in an ever-changing digital marketplace. We combine experienced talent with world-class technologies to efficiently create digital marketing programs that truly perform.

Digital Marketing across multiple platforms allows us to create visibility for your company in the places your customers are searching, interacting and engaging on the internet.

Onimod Global is an official Google Partner. The Google Partner badge means that Google trusts our agency. It also shows our clients are happy and that we follow Google best practices.

What We Do

Digital Synergy is about having visibility in the places your consumer needs you. Every search request is an opportunity; each action on a social site is an opportunity. Having the correct brand, product or service positioning is essential.

Our cross-channel digital marketing expertise, data analysis, precise construction and execution of successful digital marketing campaigns make sure your brand meets the consumer when and where they need them.

Every company has a myriad of unique factors; yours included. Learning a company’s core attributes, processes and initiatives allows us to create dynamic data driven digital marketing solutions that offer marked returns. Contact us today to find out more.

SEO, SEM, Social, Email, Website, User Behavior, Analysis, Testing, Programming, Reporting. Synergy. Onimod Global.

Search Marketing Company

Ref: TechCo

 

Industry News: Apple Launches Swift Playgrounds for iPad to Teach Kids to Code

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Apple today announced Swift Playgrounds for the iPad, a new project that aims to teach kids to code in Swift.

When you first open it, Swift Playground presents you with a number of basic coding lessons, as well as challenges. The interface looks somewhat akin to Codecademy, but it’s far more graphical and playful, which makes sense, given that the target audience is kids. Most of the projects seem to involve games and fun little animations to keep kids motivated.

To make coding on the iPad a bit easier, Apple is using a special keyboard with a number of shortcuts and other features that will make it easier to enter code.

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With Swift, Apple introduced a new programming language (which is now open source) and hence needs to get people to learn it — and the earlier they get comfortable with Swift, the better for Apple. Swift Playground clearly isn’t meant for experienced programmers who want to learn Swift but instead is meant for kids who want to learn some of the basics of coding. In the end, these kind of lesson-based services can provide some useful introductions to a language, but in the end, a project-based approach typically works far better than working your way through lessons.

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Swift Playground, by the way, was a project that also aimed to teach kids to code. It was started by Stefan Mischook back in 2014 when Apple first announced Swift. As far as I can see, the two projects are not related, though, but it is interesting that Apple essentially used the same name as this project.

The developer preview of Swift Playgrounds is launching today and the final version will ship with iOS 10 in the Fall. The app will be available for free.

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H/T: Tech Crunch. Ref: SwiftPlayground.

The #1 Reason Why Position #1 Doesn’t Matter

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That’s right — position #1, the elusive goal for so many SEOs, may not matter so much anymore. Crazy statement, right? Trust me… follow me for just a minute.

The screen shot below shows what Google refers to as a featured snippet, also known as a direct answer. (It’s also one I searched recently when baking, realizing I forgot to buy self-rising flour and hoping I wouldn’t have to go back to the store. Anyway, moving on… )

http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2016/04/self-rising_flour_direct_answer.png

As you can see, the direct answer information is displaying above the initial search result. I don’t even have to click on the link to find the answer I need. I’m able to see that if I pull the baking powder and salt out of the cupboard, I can save myself a trip to the store.

While this is great for the end user, it means that MyRecipes.com provided me the information I needed, but I never visited their site. In many instances, however, the consumer is still going to visit the website because they need more information than what’s displayed in the direct answer.

So why does position #1 not matter as much? While the direct answer shown above does come from the #1-ranked website for the search query, it doesn’t always work this way. The direct answer is pulled from the site with the best answer, and Google doesn’t seem to care how it’s ranked.

In the example below, the featured snippet has been pulled from the #3-ranked result. (Not that I’ve ever searched this particular query in a sleep-deprived moment during the past year… )

http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2016/04/when-will-baby-sleep-direct-answer.png

Can you imagine the difference in traffic for the #3 result with the direct answer vs. the #1 result without? Normally, the top organic ranking would have the highest click-through rate; however, the direct answer is likely taking traffic from the top result here (if not getting the majority of the clicks).

It’s important to optimize the content on all of your properties, not just your website. Yes, you really do need to include full content descriptions on your social profiles, because you never know what Google’s going to deem the best candidate for a direct answer.

In the example below, Google has chosen a featured snippet from a video on Pottery Barn’s YouTube channel for the search query, “how to hang drapes.” A page from Pottery Barn’s website that contains tips and how-tos for hanging drapes is #1 in the SERP — but because they’ve optimized their YouTube video description, it’s been selected as the direct answer. This benefits Pottery Barn in the long run, because now they have more real estate above the fold.

 

The video is embedded in their website, along with additional supporting content on hanging drapes. Pottery Barn’s how-to guides provide a great information resource for customers, and that’s likely why Google’s rewarding them with both the featured snippet and the #1 position in the SERP.

http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2016/04/how-to-hang-drapes-direct-answer_1.png

The featured snippet is pulled from the video description on YouTube:

http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2016/04/how-to-hang-drapes-direct-answer.png

So, what does all of this have to do with your SEO content strategy? When you provide useful information that’s easy to follow and understand, it could be used as a featured snippet in Google search results. If that happens, you will likely see a boost in traffic to your site — perhaps even more than the top organic result.

If you have optimized your site and your social channels, you can potentially gain a bigger portion of the SERP landscape through the featured snippet and position #1 ranking. However, even without #1, if you have the featured snippet, you are essentially the new #1.

Now that you understand the reward, you need to determine how to go after the direct answers. Start by searching Google for some of your target keywords (especially long-tail variations that take the form of a question) and find out if these queries trigger a featured snippet.

If these searches do produce direct answers, look at the sites that are obtaining them and evaluate what they’re doing differently. If you have the right information on your site to answer the query, double-check your setup. Do you have a dedicated page for each question with comprehensive, high-quality content? Or do you answer the question as part of a larger FAQ page? You may need to make some changes in order to win the featured snippet placement.

Direct answers are still relatively new, and they’re not on all queries. You may find that they’re starting to add them for queries related to your vertical, but the number of questions being answered is limited. Remember, even if a particular query doesn’t trigger a direct answer now, it may in the future — so you can always start creating content with that in mind.

Keep in mind that featured snippets are more commonly found on informational queries rather than transactional ones, so optimizing your content for direct answers will primarily be for the purpose of capturing searchers at the top of the funnel. In other words, plan your content accordingly; don’t try to use product pages to obtain featured snippets unless it’s appropriate to do so.

Position #1 isn’t as important as being the direct answer. Focus on creating great content that’s useful to your audience, and target the queries that would send someone to your site. While simple answers such as “what is a substitute for self-rising flour” may not drive tons of traffic, queries like “how to hang drapes” will likely drive traffic and quite possibly revenue in time.

http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2014/08/seo-blocks-ss-19201-800x450.jpg

H/T: Search Engine Land.

Is Your Brand Prepared For Voice Search? 3 Steps to Get The Conversation Started

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Whether you work in SEO or PPC, you’ve likely noticed a new trend emerging in your search reports: a rise in longer-tail searches and question-based search phrases. The likely culprit? Voice input.

Voice search is easier than text input; we all know this. We can speak something much more naturally than we can type it. Most of us are looking for a fast fix or a way to make multi-tasking more efficient, and conversational user interfaces fit that bill perfectly.

Whether we want to ask Alexa to clarify a recipe while cooking, ask Siri for directions while driving or run quick searches during the commercial breaks when second-screening, we’re all getting increasingly comfortable using voice search and digital personal assistants.

Take a look at the rapid adoption rates that Search Engine Land reported on back in December:

http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2016/04/MindMeldStudy-600x304.png

The vast majority of folks reported adopting conversational search just within the last several months, showing how dramatically it is growing.

Why does this matter?

There’s an obstacle that brands face when adjusting to voice input for search. The obstacle is that we will turn this easy input into a complicated problem because we haven’t adjusted for it.

Here are three simple steps you can take today to prepare.

1. Rethink how you’re showing up for branded searches

Do you follow the comedian John Oliver? I love how good he is at skewering companies or people who are doing things they shouldn’t. Recently, he did a report on the problem of mistaken identity in credit reporting with the three big credit reporting companies.

John Oliver’s investigation revealed that as many as 10 million people in the United States have major errors on their credit reports as a result of mistaken identity, but the major credit reporting companies (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) have no system in place for fixing these errors which cause a lot of havoc in people’s lives.

Here’s what he did:

http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2016/04/Equifacks-600x300.png

He suggested his viewers visit parody sites his team created at equifacks.com, experianne.com and tramsonion.com. Because, as he said, “It would clearly be a horrible thing if these actual companies were mistaken for these fake companies. But don’t worry – 95 percent of the time, that won’t happen. And apparently that’s good enough, right?”

While this is a hilarious parody, we do need to take into account variations in pronunciation when it comes to voice search, since the margin of error here can be quite vast.

I could search for these brand names and still come across the parody sites, like here:

http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2016/04/TramsOnion_Screenshot-337x600.png

As you can see, this is not ideal for the credit company’s brand.

I’m going to walk you through a true example, and this is your cautionary tale.

I did a voice search on Cortana on my desktop for Bobbi Brown makeup. I noticed that Cortana spelled “Bobbi Brown” differently from the brand name:

http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2016/04/BobbyBrown-800x306.png

Here’s what the SERPs looked like:

http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2016/04/Bbrown_SERPs-800x393.png

Great job on the shopping ads here, and the organic results were on point, too. In this case, misspellings had been accounted for within the search strategy.

But what about brands that are not in English?

Let’s take Yves Saint Laurent as an example. I searched for “show me Yves Saint Laurent bags” using both Siri and Cortana:

http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2016/04/Siri_YSL-585x600.png

http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2016/04/CortanaYSL.png

Cortana did much better here than Siri did, but the variability in pronunciation means that we can’t count on voice search getting it right every time — at least not for a while.

Advertisers need to anticipate these issues and commit some time to resolving the voice search picture for their brands.

What can you do?

  • Research misspellings that can result from common mispronunciations of brand name, product name or key search terms.
  • Add them as a test to your keyword optimization strategy, though be careful to add in relevant negative keywords, as well.

2. Adjust for natural language

Natural language shows intent more strongly.

When you type a search, you use computer language — “Bahamas vacation deals,” for example. When you speak a search, you use your own language: “What are some Bahamas vacation deals for June?” or “How much does it cost to fly to the Bahamas?”

The advantage of this is the degree of specificity. That’s also where brands can stumble.

If your listing in the SERPs for one of these specific queries is a generic page, chances are you’ll lose the click. To boost your chances of winning, make sure you offer search results that can answer the query most closely.

For example, here are three of the ads that showed up for a conversational search for “What are some Bahamas vacation deals for June?” Which one would you have clicked on?

http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2016/04/Atlantis.png

The third ad mentioning the “summer sale” has a very high level of relevancy, and it is the only one that factored in the specific timeline mentioned by the searcher. That’s the one I would have picked!

What can you do?

  • Optimize your landing pages and ad copy to account for high-value natural language searches.
  • Since broad match may not always account for natural language queries, consider adding these high-value natural language queries as keywords within your PPC campaigns.
  • Select keywords based on the degree of intent the searches reveal. For example, I may not want to bid on “Who lives in the Bahamas?”
  • Adjust bids based on degree of intent. For example, I would want to ensure I raised my bids for relevant queries such as “What are the best vacation packages for the Bahamas?”

3. Adapt for top of funnel

Of course, you’re showing up for branded searches or transactional searches directly asking for your product. But what about being helpful to your customers by answering their questions with information you have to share?

As you know, content marketing helps brands build loyalty. When it comes to conversational search, it also helps you show up for long-tail queries, which is another aspect of voice search that is becoming more critical.

Since voice search queries have been shown to frequently contain question words, marketers could benefit from informational creative that addresses top-of-funnel queries, as well.

While they may not immediately be transactional, this content could help build your brand’s goodwill and engagement levels.

For example:

http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2016/04/Whitenteeth-612x600.png

What can you do?

  • Research a list of FAQs relevant to your products, and try optimizing those pages for the natural language query version of the questions.
  • Monitor additional KPIs, such as assisted conversions for PPC, as well as micro-conversions, such as form fills or content interaction.

In summary

Think of the last few searches you did using voice. How often are you using it? This is a great time to get a jump on voice search and voice inputs, as we all try to figure it out together as an industry.

The early adopter gets the advantage, so why not get the conversation started at your company?

http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2015/03/voice-search-app-ss-1920-800x450.jpg

Article H/T: Search Engine Land. Image: Alexander Supertramp / Shutterstock.com

9 Interesting Digital Marketing Stats From the Past Week

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The last several days were full of intriguing and surprising data points from the world of digital marketing.

Below appear 9 numbers that caught our eye:

1. Quietly killing it on Facebook
Whisper, which has nearly 2.3 million fans on Facebook, regularly garners between 10,000 likes and 40,000 likes for posts on the social site, a rep for the anonymity app said. For instance, click here to see how one of its confessional-styled memes got big engagement on Thursday.

The company, located in Venice, Calif., doesn’t buy ads to get such results—all the action is organic. Look for an upcoming Adweek story about how Whisper’s tech team has mastered Facebook’s algorithm.

2. Messenger added 100 million users in last three months
Facebook Messenger now has 900 million monthly users, up from 800 million in January, according to Facebook.

3. Kendall’s social kingdom
Influencer.DB, an Instagram analytics firm, said that reality TV star and social media juggernaut Kendall Jenner gains nearly 100,000 followers a day on Instagram. Interestingly, she does best in Germany, which is home to 21 percent of her followers, Influencer.DB said. Meanwhile, the tech vendor also stated that just 7 percent of Jenner’s Instagram followers are in the United States.

4. Insta-hot rod
Mercedes-Benz has been kicking its Instagram game into fifth gear in recent months. For instance, the post below—seen on the car brand’s global account—on Thursday attracted 74,000 likes in its first three hours. And that’s relatively normal for the marketer.

ScreenShot

5. A social commerce close-up
In the last three months, e-commerce vendor Custora crunched data about $100 billion in sales among 500 million shoppers and found that only 1.5 percent of retailers’ last-click e-commerce transactions came via social media. Within that sliver of activity, Facebook dominated 81 percent of sales, while shopping-centric Pinterest generated 10.8 percent and Instagram, YouTube and Twitter collectively yielded 5.2 percent.

6. Ad fraud problems
DataXu’s new report said that the rate of fraudulent digital ads fall anywhere in between 17 percent and 30 percent on networks and exchanges. That declaration follows up a joint study by the Association of National Advertisers and White Ops in January that predicted digital ad fraud would cost the industry $7.2 billion this year.

7. Marketers signal confidence
The Economist Intelligence Unit, a research division for The Economist, and software giant Marketo teamed for a new study, which revealed that 86 percent of marketers believe they will own the end-to-end customer experience by 2020.

8. Email laziness
According to a study by digital marketing company Adestra, 80 percent of consumers unsubscribe from emails they no longer want to get. Here’s another way of looking at it: A good chunk of folks (20 percent) are too lazy—or busy, to be fair—to take themselves off a list.

9. The search for March Madness
Per tech company HookLogic, basketball-based online searches via its network of e-commerce websites, including Walmart, Target, Sears and Kohl’s, jumped 35 percent during the heart of March Madness this year, compared to the days before the NCAA tourney began.

Bonus stat: Taylor-made power
On April 1, pop songstress Taylor Swift posted a funny spot for Apple on her social accounts, showing her working out. Last weekend, iTunes sales of the song featured in the ad, Drake’s “Jumpman,” skyrocketed 431 percent globally. On Instagram alone, the 1-minute clip has received 1.4 million likes and 153,000 comments.

H/T: Adweek. Getty Images.

Search Drives 10X More Traffic to Shopping Sites Than Social Media

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SimilarWeb data argue that search remains the dominant source of traffic to desktop sites. Read more

Why Digital Marketing Trends May Require You To Hire A Digital Marketing Agency

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The digital marketing world is ever fluid, always dynamic and never dull, especially to the ever growing need to grow that CMO constantly faces. This is in part due to the emergence of new trends that are fundamentally changing the way marketers and brands reach out to potential customers. This changing landscape is essentially urging all players to step outside their comfort zone in order to attract high quality leads.

Outside of their comfort zone, traditional digital marketers are faced with a series of challenging tasks. From understanding the need to market across cross-platform devices and channels, to running customer-segmentation based messaging campaigns, these and other digital marketing trends are defining the future of marketing.

While there are plenty of growth hacking techniques available to CMOs and other marketing leaders, it might make sense to rely on an occasional helping hand.

Indeed, to help make sense of marketing trends and to capitalize on what they may mean for your business, consider hiring a third-party digital marketing agency to meet the demands and deadlines of your digital marketing to-do list.

But why would a CMO need to use an external digital marketing agency? The following points should give you some insights.

1. Stay Industry-Relevant

For starters, digital marketing agencies must follow the latest developments across digital marketing trends on a regular basis. It is part of their job description. If certain agencies fail to grasp what is happening, changing or unfolding in their industry, they will cease to be relevant. This is especially important, as current digital trends indicate that effective marketing requires brands to reach their target audience while adopting advanced omnichannel strategies. While your eye is understandably on your company and the product, digital marketing agencies are committed to keeping you abreast of all the latest developments in marketing.

2. Better Industry Storytellers

While your marketing team may be working really hard to promote your product offering, digital marketing agencies are made up of experienced professionals that can provide tangible value in defining and spreading your brand’s appeal across leading industry players. This focus can help bring about real results that can be very beneficial to your company. For instance, if your chosen agency succeeds in creatively generating positive PR about your brand’s ability to meet trend-related demands, this will improve your company’s image and naturally, help you capitalize on many marketing opportunities.

Unless you have a massive overhead budget, it’s almost impossible to hire effectively the skillsets needed to capitalize on many digital marketing opportunities. The capable talent to execute the digital strategies is an inherent part of agency culture, one that needs to be stimulated by daily deep, creative exercises. Also, today in the competitive digital landscape, brands need to limit risk, reduce human resource efforts, and purchase results by an accountable agency.

Learn more about who we are and what our Digital Marketing experts can do for you today.

digital marketing consulting

H/T Forbes.

Seven Ways to Jump-Start Your SEO Before a Site Launch

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You’re about to launch your new website. You have a fantastic idea/product and a great team. You understand the basics of SEO. But you think you cannot do SEO without a live site. It is impossible, right?

Actually… no!

It is more than possible. In fact, it is critical.

Way too often, website owners fail to do pre-launch SEO. This results in a poor index of their site. So instead of jumping up in the rankings, their site is ignored by Google and the other search engines and buried deep in the results. They then are stuck with a long climb, even, in many cases, for their branded terms.

Following are seven smart ways to jump-start your SEO before your site launch, and I’m going to show you exactly how to implement each one.

1. Create a “coming soon” page and optimize the basics

Creating a strong, optimized “coming soon” page should be one of the very first things you do as you contemplate your new site. There are lots of reasons why this is important:

  1. Search engines give older sites more authority. Remember, it takes time to get ranked by the search engines, so start doing it with your “coming soon” page to cut some wait time after your launch. Robots don’t care if there’s a “coming soon” message on the page; they care about the content, keywords and user experience.
  2. Your coming soon page is a source of leads. Include a strong call to action here and entice visitors to fill out a lead form, perhaps by giving them something like a PDF guide, a video, an entry in a giveaway or detailed infographic in exchange. Keep adding to this leads list and nurture these leads throughout the process of getting the site done.
  3. This page can help build your brand. Express all of the information on your page in your brand’s voice. Use high-quality images on the page. Make sure all messaging is on point.
  4. You can begin to connect with users, even without a full site. Connect your “coming soon” page to your social media presence. Use your growing social media circle to create buzz about the new site and your content. Engage with people to entice them to visit the site as soon as it’s launched. Let everyone know that something big is coming soon.
  5. You can showcase press mentions and make it easier for press to contact you. Include a media kit on your “coming soon” page. Your media kit should be attractive, colorful and easy to access. It should include all of the basics about your business and website, and this is yet another chance for you to optimize content on this page with rich, descriptive content. In your press kit, include:
    • logos that media contacts can download and use;
    • all contact information for you and the business;
    • your mission statement and company overview;
    • a FAQ section, bios for you and your core staff; and
    • a summary of media coverage to date.

    Update the kit frequently. Not only will this ensure that it is more complete, but it’ll lead search engines to see fresh content here regularly. Make sure to do the kit on standard web pages so that it can be linked to and ranked.

If you’re still not convinced, remember: Google has advised webmasters to use a “coming soon” page in the past.

2. Build out all your social media profiles

It is absolutely critical to start building your social media community before your site launches. You want to make sure that you already have a loyal following who is invested in your business when the launch happens.

By engaging your audience on relevant social media platforms and sharing great content, you are fostering trust in your brand and business and furthering your reputation as an authority.

Make sure you have complete profiles on all of the biggies (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+) and any of the other platforms that specifically speak to your target audience.

Connect each profile with your “coming soon” page, and make it simple for people to follow your social media presence and get updates about the launch by just clicking a button.

3. Get (at least) 10 blog posts ready

Well-optimized, actionable content will bring tons of organic traffic to your site even when it’s still very new. There is no shortcut here; you need your content to be high-quality. And while you need to keep that content coming long after the site has launched, you should already have a healthy content reserve in place at launch.

This is because the web crawlers will be visiting your site to index it right away, and you want them to have plenty of information-rich content to index from day one. Long-form content, in particular,  is going to provide a depth to your brand-new site that can’t be replaced, and it simply ranks higher in search results.

Also, in some cases, it is a good idea to start a blog pre-launch. This will allow you to do pre-launch announcements, add continual fresh content and build up a little SEO authority and buzz.

Hopefully, you will also be able to attract some links. In addition, when you start doing press releases, you will have your blog ready so that news sources and consumers can refer to it for more information.

4. Create all your pages, and make sure they are optimized

Along these same lines, you need multiple pages within your site, and each must be optimized. Include long-form, high-authority content that your target visitors will use on each page. Don’t reinvent the wheel from page to page; instead, make sure each page is focused and useful.

Remember to use keywords, long-tail keywords in particular (Your site will not rank for large terms right away), on every page and in page titles. Put your keyword database for your site to work on every page. You want to make sure you’ve created a fantastic, optimized page for every possible aspect of the business before the launch happens.

Then, when you go live, search engines will index the pages properly and (hopefully) give you some initial rankings.

5. Guest blog to build links to your domain

When I bring up guest blogging to build links to your domain, I’m not talking about spammy self-promotion. I’m talking about producing some of your best work to share with the audiences of sites you admire.

When done properly, guest blogging is a fast, powerful way to generate traffic to your site and leads for your email list. It also allows you to build your credibility and eventually become an influencer.

Search for the best guest blogging opportunities by checking the sites in your niche and finding out what kinds of guest posts they’d like to see. You can also search out the keywords and phrases that you want to be associated with to see where people read and write about those topics.

Finally, you can simply search for “guest blogging opportunities” or “write for us,” along with your niche keyword or phrase.

6. Put your site in key, niche directories

This step is critical before your launch. A directory simply lists sites and businesses and breaks them down using categories and sub-categories.

By getting your website listed in the right ones before launch, you will have built authority to your “coming soon” page that will be transferred to the rest of your pages when they go live.

If the directory is well-known and widely used in your area of business, it will be worthwhile. But don’t pay for just any directory. Make sure you know the directory is a real powerhouse in your field before paying.

7. Sign up for core sites

These core sites include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Google +
  • Yelp
  • Best of the Web
  • Bing Places

There is a great service called KnowEm, which can help you do this more quickly.

The Checklist

There are a lot of things you can do prior to launch; I have not added every idea under the sun here. But this is generally a good checklist to build upon:

  • Create a “coming soon” page.
  • Create a media kit.
  • Get 10 blog posts ready, or just start blogging one to five times a week pre-launch.
  • Create and optimize all your pages on the back end before you launch.
  • Guest blog (shoot for one to four posts a month for the three months leading up to launch).
  • Sign up for niche directories.
  • Site up for core websites.
  • Do a series of press releases (product or company updates, benchmarks and so on).
  • Create YouTube videos if relevant.
  • Send products to bloggers to review before launch.
  • Pay for pre-launch advertorials, if possible.
  • Start building an email newsletter and send out updates.
  • Get in the press. (Craft your story and pitch it to editors. Respond to Help a Reporter Out requests and promote your product.)

Post-launch bonus: Remember to use metrics to monitor your results

The time immediately following your launch is crucial to your success. This is the time you must monitor your traffic, assess your results with metrics and test/tweak your strategy. Don’t lose time here. Stay on top of it.

Watch for red flags like these:

  • unusual dips and gaps in traffic, as well as general trends;
  • losses in keyword ranking;
  • spikes of 404s which signal crawl errors; and
  • unusually slow pages on the site that may be getting missed in the indexing process.

Also, make sure you have a great launch strategy. This will be the time to really hustle.

A little more wisdom…

One of the worst things you can do is launch an unoptimized site. Ask yourself this: How many websites do you think are launched a year?

You want to stand out, and to do it right, you need to have an optimized site. And not just optimized a little, you need to really put in the time. If you are new to the online space, make sure you work with someone with experience, so you have an optimized site and a great pre-launch SEO strategy.

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R/T: Search Engine Land

7 Intriguing Digital Marketing Stats From the Past Week

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It’s been a notable week for digital marketing stats, with new studies, developing news and industry trends. Here are the seven items that caught our eye:

1. Apple is winning against the FBI in the court of public opinion 
The Apple-FBI dustup this week has struck a nerve with many people because it represents an unusual confluence of a popular consumer brand, privacy and terrorism. Apple CEO Tim Cook rejected a court order to disable the iPhone’s auto-erase function, which removes all data from the device after 10 failed attempts to break into it. The feds’ demand was related to a phone belonging to Syed Rizwan Farook, the San Bernardino, Calif., shooter who gunned down 14 people on Dec. 2.

Some saw it as a risky branding move on the part of Cook and Apple, but when Vrge Analytics surveyed 600 people on Feb. 18 and 19, it found that 65 percent don’t believe Apple should be forced to unlock the shooter’s iPhone.

2. Advertisers are still lukewarm on podcasts
Advertisers are expected to spend $35.1 million on podcasts this year, says media agency ZenithOptimedia in The Wall Street Journal. Even though the format has exploded since Serial took off a little over a year ago, that figure represents just a 2 percent year-over-year increase.

3. City of the future
CityBridge plans to install at least 7,500 of its LinkNYC smart kiosks (and possibly as many as 10,000) around New York in the next few years, making Gotham one of the largest digital out-of-home networks in the world. Brands will be able to leverage the network with ads and interactive bells and whistles.

4. Is Periscope the key to your next gig?
Tim Menko and Ingmar Larsen are 30-year-old ad creatives in Amsterdam looking for full-time gigs in their adopted hometown as well as freelance work around the world. So earlier this week, they turned to livestreaming app Periscope to drum up interest in their talents. They reached their target audience—according to the duo, more than 100 people tuned in to the live presentation on their Periscope account (@MenkoLarsen) during the 35-minute presentation, with another 20 watching the replay during the 24 hours Periscope leaves clips online after the fact.

“It went really well,” said Menko “We got some great responses and are visiting three agencies in Amsterdam. Plus, a recruiter in London says he has got something for us, and we have scheduled in a Skype meeting [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][with him]. There was even an agency in Cape Town that would like to collaborate with us.”

5. Mobile commerce continues to soar
Bizrate, a division of Connexity, asked 9,142 online buyers in the U.S. and Canada about their device habits and learned that 73 percent use their smartphones to shop and that 21 percent use them to shop when they’re actually inside brick-and-mortar stores.

6. Latinos shop more on their smartphones
Hispanic shoppers are 36 percent more likely than non-Hispanics to use mobile devices to access digital shopping tools, per Epsilon’s recent survey of 2,500 consumers.

7. Danica reps Lyft
Lyft had Nascar star Danica Patrick pose as a driver for the ride-sharing service in a prank-style video, and it’s turned out to be a nice win for the brand. The clip, which you can watch below, has nearly 467,000 views in the past 30 hours on YouTube and Facebook.

H/T: Adweek

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Why Email Is Key To Maximizing Owned Media (And Assets) In Digital Marketing

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Every company has digital marketing challenges that are unique to their industry, their selling model (direct to consumer/wholesale/hybrid), their technology stack and their organizational structure. But acquiring first-party data to create a true model of customer journey is a struggle that persists across the board.

This post will focus on a topic that I believe is at the heart of a successful addressable marketing strategy: growing email and SMS lists.

More touches generally mean more responses, which is ultimately what we’re after. To be effective, you need to maximize data collection on your owned media.

An email address is the foundational digital currency that allows you to market to individuals, not just in email, but on social networks and through addressable display. It is, therefore, the most important permission to get.

As such, the number one rule is to ask for an email address at every direct customer touch point across all your owned media — point of sale, customer service, website and so on.

A Typical Scenario

If you look at most companies, you will find:

• Fewer than 5% of site visitors transact.

• A passive “signup for email” link exists somewhere on the home page. Some are more prominent than others, but they are often buried, especially if the company is not a retailer or publisher. In the best cases, there is a Lightbox that asks a user to sign up for email, but it usually doesn’t include any real value statement.

• Customer service doesn’t ask for an email address or verify the one on file if they already have it, unless completing a transaction (think travel).

• Point-of-sale systems will be somewhat dependent upon industry, but many companies don’t ask for any information at the point of sale.

• Many use remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) and retargeting cookies, which are great. But they’re still missing a huge opportunity to collect an email address, tie it to their web analytics package for analysis and later use it for segmentation.

The Resulting Potential Drawbacks

These methods can create a number of problems:

• You are not capturing as many email addresses as you could be by making some minor changes. This not only impacts your email program directly, but it also stifles your ability to create true addressability in other channels.

• You’re not rounding out your data set with other information, such as SMS, which means that you are limiting your ability to create a multi-channel journey for your prospects and customers. If you only have an email address or a cookie, then it is difficult to create an experience across multiple channels.

• You are not optimizing your search bidding if you’re not factoring in that extra value created when people provide their email address.

What To Do

Here’s what you should be doing:

• Actively ask for a mobile number (for SMS) and an email address when visitors come to your site, and clearly state the benefits of providing them. Don’t wait for them to find your link or text box somewhere on the page. (Tip: Make it easy for them to get out of the Lightbox on desktop and mobile. Test this yourself.)

As with many tactics, there are ways to do this well. Immediately hitting someone upon entrance with a value-less signup message and no easy way to get out of the Lightbox will likely drive up your bounce rate.

But if you can improve the Lightbox timing (test delays) and the relevancy of the signup value statement based on information gathered when the person enters the site (e.g., search term), you should see good results and little to no impact on your bounce rate.

• Ask again differently if they dismiss the first Lightbox. Let people browse before asking again, but leverage technologies that incorporate browsing behavior into the message.

So if a visitor is looking at product A, product A can be featured in the Lightbox with a customized message that asks for email to learn more about that product. This tactic can easily help you double your email signup rates.

• Create a simple web application for your customer service agents to enter emails if your current system doesn’t make it easy. When customers and prospects call in, there is a capability to capture an email address and what they called about.

Almost every email service provider (ESP) can be integrated into something like this. It may not be perfect compared with a full platform, but at least you are capturing email addresses.

• Constantly ensure your customer data is current. Leverage the post-login experience to get updated email addresses and SMS information. When people log in to your site, check to see if you have an email address for that person, if it’s valid and if people are responding.

When a person logs in, ask for an updated email address or SMS number if he or she isn’t responding to email, you don’t have one on file, the one you have has been deemed invalid or the person has unsubscribed.

Your ESP has this data. The question is whether or not you can leverage it fast enough. But the rewards are that you have more complete information on your best customers — the ones who are using your site.

Final Thoughts

When people come to your site, a retargeting cookie is vital but it’s critical to create addressability and, if possible, connect your known and anonymous data for greater segmentation and personalization.

It’s important to ask for an email address, at the very least, if not SMS permission. Once you have these, you have the ability to connect with key people and segments across multiple media.

This gives you the ability to leverage most marketing clouds to the fullest. But incorporate the information visitors give you in a smooth way, not in a creepy, in-your-face way. Stay classy!

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H/T: Marketing Land.