How to migrate your WordPress website domain name

Are you looking for a guide to migrate your WordPress website domain name? If the answer is “yes”, then you’ve come to the right place.

Migrating a WordPress domain name is not an overly common occurrence. However, there are many instances where a website might be required to change its domain name.

For example, your website might be penalized heavily by Google, and you want a new domain, or you might want to rebrand your business to a new name. Everything is fine until you have a proper reason to do so.

In this article, we will focus on the tools and techniques that will allow you to migrate WordPress website domain name. Before we start, however, let’s try to understand the impact of migrating your website domain on your SEO.

What is the impact of changing domain name on SEO?

One of the most common questions that a website owner has is: what will be the impact of moving the domain name on SEO?

As you might expect, Google will not respond quickly to the change in domain, and initially your search engine traffic will be impacted. With time and effort, however, your traffic will get back to normal after the switch.

To ensure that you get your traffic back, you need to follow a few simple steps. Don’t worry – we will go through them in this article. In short, you need to not only to buy a new domain, but also carry out proper 301 redirects to ensure that your SEO doesn’t get impacted any more than you can help.

Things to do before you start

Before we start, you need to do some pre-steps. These pre-steps will ensure that you don’t lose any of your work, and will also prepare the website for migration.

For the sake of an example, we will name the old site as “www.example.com” and the new site as the “www.newexample.com.” We will use these throughout the article for reference purposes.

How to migrate your WordPress website domain name

1. Creating a full backup

The first step is to always create a backup of your website, including files and database. As you are using WordPress, you will find a lot of backup plugins to do the task. We recommend using BackupBuddy, VaultPress, BackWPup or  Duplicator. You can also use other backup plugins or services of your choice.

Last but not least, you can also back up your website using the Cpanel or use phpMyAdmin. Only try out these manual methods if you are sure what you are doing. For the most part, it’s a good idea to stick with backup plugins unless you’re 100% confident.

Once the backup is created, you can download it to your computer, or simply store it in the cloud.

2. Setting up the new site

To simplify things, we’ll use Duplicator as the example plugin for walking you through these steps.

To get started, you need to install the Duplicator plugin on your old site, www.example.com. Once done, you need to navigate to the plugin page from the WordPress side menu.

After you open the plugin, all you need to do is click on the “create” button to start the process of duplicating your website. After you provide the name of the package, it shouldn’t take more than 2-3 minutes for the backup to be complete.

Once done, you can download the package and secure it for the next step. For the sake of the tutorial, we will name the package “thekey.php”.

3. Connecting through FTP

The next step is to connect to your new site (www.newexample.com). You can use FileZilla to connect. After connection, just copy the the backup file, “thekey.php” into the root directory of the new website. You should be able to now access the website by typing the URL in your browser.

http://www.newexample.com/thekey.php

You need to change the URL and the file name accordingly for the above URL to work. Once done, you will now see a Duplicator Installer screen where it will ask for basic information such as the database.

Ensure that you check the “Table Removal” option and also ensure that the database on the new website is empty.

Next, you need to click on the “I have read all the warning and notices.” By clicking the “Run Deployment” option, the deployment process will now start.

After the initial installation process is completed, you will see another screen which is the “Update” screen. In this screen, you need to enter the old domain name and the new domain name. The plugin will try to guess the old and new URLs, but you should double-check to ensure that both values are correct.

The final step is to wait for the process to complete. After the completion, you can now log in to the WordPress admin panel using the old credentials and check if everything is working fine. The plugin also tries to prompt you to create a new backup which you should consider that you can always revert to the first instance if something goes wrong from here onwards.

You can also delete the installer file and clear your directory for any unnecessary files. You also need to re-initiate the permalinks by going to “Settings” -> “Permalinks.”

4. Final step: Implementing 301 redirects and notifying Google

With all the backups loaded into the new website, it is now time to tell Google that your new site is ready. To do so, you need to set up permanent 301 redirects using a simple .htaccess file hack. This hack is also used when switching a website from HTTP to HTTPS in WordPress.

You can find the .htaccess file in your wp-admin or wp-includes folder. It is a hidden file, and you might to search for hidden files if you are not able to locate it. After you locate the file, copy and paste the below code to make the magic happen.

#Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newexample.COM/$1 [R=301,L]

Don’t forget to replace newexample with your new domain name.

With redirection complete, it is now time to tell Google about your new domain.

You need to use Google Search Console to let Google know about the change. Go to the left-hand menu and click on “Change of Address.” You can follow this simple guide by Google for step-by-step instructions.

Conclusion

Migration a website domain name is not a simple task. You need to carry out the steps with caution and concentration.

We hope you found this guide useful. If you are not sure how to proceed with the whole process, it is always advisable to hire a professional to do it for you. Also, don’t forget to share your opinions in the comments section below.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/03/29/how-to-migrate-your-wordpress-website-domain-name/

A guide to the standard reports in Google Analytics: Audience reports

Google Analytics is a tool that can provide invaluable insights into what’s happening on your website, your levels of traffic and engagement, and the success of your campaigns.

If you’re a newcomer to Google Analytics, however, the array of different reports available to you can be a little overwhelming. Where should you begin? Where can you find the most useful data about your website?

Google Analytics standard reports are the preset reports listed down the left-hand side of your dashboard, divided into the segments Real-Time, Audience, Acquisition, Behavior and Conversions.

The information that appears in these is preset by Google Analytics, and gives an insight into the data on every part of your site, from your audience demographics to the channels through which they find your website.

In this series, we’ve set out to tackle the ambitious task of explaining each segment of Google Analytics and the standard reports they contain. Last time, we looked at Real-Time Reports and how they can be used in your marketing and SEO campaigns.

In this instalment, we’re going to look at Audience Reports: what you can learn from them, and how you can get the most out of the data that they offer.

What are Audience Reports?

As with Real-Time Reports, the secret to what these reports do is in the name: they tell you more about your audience, the people who are coming to your site.

The Audience section of Google Analytics is an extensive one, with no fewer than fifteen sub-sections sitting within it, most of those with several different reports.

We won’t cover each one in exhaustive detail in this guide, but will give a quick whistle-stop tour of the main sections and look at some ways that you can use these reports to maximum effect in your marketing campaigns.

Overview

The Overview section shows you your website’s current audience at a glance. It’s not in real-time – you need Real-Time Reports for that – but nevertheless presents a useful snapshot of the current audience metrics on your site, with information on users, unique users, sessions, page views, bounce rate and more.

The default time period is set to a week, but you can use the calendar drop-down in the top right corner to adjust it and view metrics over a longer or shorter period. You can also use the buttons just below that to view hour-by-hour, day-by-day, week-by-week or month-by-month stats (note that the last two of these will only work if the time span you’ve selected is more than a week/month).

Active Users

This report gives you an insight into the number of unique users who have visited your site over various time periods – 1 day, 7 days, 14 days and 28 days.

This report is most useful for understanding the success of a promotional campaign while it’s running. As Google’s Analytics Help text for the Active Users report advises:

“If the numbers are consistently in line with your expectations, you’ve found your sweet spot.

“If the numbers are below expectations, reevaluate your marketing efforts to see whether you’re targeting the appropriate audiences, and whether your ads are winning auctions.

“In cases where you have a lot of 1-Day Active Users but the numbers drop off for longer term users, that can signal things like problems with a new release, or that initial enthusiasm isn’t translating into long-term engagement. For example, lots of users might be downloading an app but are finding that it doesn’t really meet a need they have or that it doesn’t capture their interest.”

Lifetime Value

The Lifetime Value report for Google Analytics was first tested in the first quarter of 2016 (as reported by Search Engine Roundtable at the time) and was rolled out fully in early 2017, although as I write this, the report is still in beta.

The report is geared towards Google Analytics users who have an ecommerce website, and is only available if you have activated ecommerce tracking on Google Analytics.

The Lifetime Value report allows you to filter by the date on which a certain user was acquired, making it possible to analyze users acquired during the most recent day-long, week-long or month-long campaign. It also allows you to compare various different Lifetime Value (LTV) metrics, including:

• Appviews per user (applies only to mobile app users)
• Pageviews per user (applies only to website users)
• Goal completions per user
• Revenue per user
• Session duration per user
• Sessions per user
• Transactions per user

For a more in-depth examination of how these metrics are calculated, have a read of Optimize Smart’s ‘Measuring customers’ lifetime value in Google Analytics for mobile app and website users‘.

Cohort Analysis

A cohort of users is any group of users that is segmented based on a date. For example, a cohort could be a group of users with the same acquisition date (technically in GA this would be the Date of First Session), or a group of users who completed their first transaction during a specific time period.

To configure a cohort report, there are four main selections you need to make:

Cohort type: This is the date that you want to base your cohort on. A little frustratingly, GA currently only gives one option for this section – Acquisition Date. However, it is possible to use report segmentation to get some additional insights, such as segmenting by traffic source or campaign.

Cohort size: This is the time window that you want to use for your cohort type: e.g. by day, by week, by month.

Metric: This is the actual data you will see presented in the report. You can choose from aggregated metrics such as pageviews or revenue, or per-user metrics such as sessions per user or transactions per user.

Date range: This is the date range used to construct the cohort; you can choose from the last 7 days, last 14 days, last 21 days or last 30 days.

For a much more detailed guide to using cohorts in Google Analytics, check out ‘Understanding the Google Analytics cohort report‘ by Analytics Talk.

Audiences

To populate this report with data, you first need to define an audience within Analytics. To do that, you should enable Demographics and Interests reports, then create an audience.

You can use one of the preconfigured audiences available within Analytics, or create one from scratch. An audience might be as general as “current shoppers” (including users who have >0 product views, and excluding those who have >0 purchases) or as specific as users who have viewed the detailed page for [Product x], and then returned within 7 days to purchase.

Finally, publish your audience to Analytics by adding Analytics as a destination for that audience. The Audiences report will display data for your audience(s) from the point at which you create the report onwards – it isn’t available retroactively.

Once this is all set up, you can view Acquisition, Behavior and Conversions metrics for the audiences you have defined, and respond to their performance with actions like:

• Devoting more of your marketing budget to bidding on ads for those users
• Expanding on the hours during which you bid on ads shown to those users
• Expanding the number of sites on which you bid for ads shown to those users.

User Explorer

To populate this report with data, you need to first enable the User-ID feature in your property settings. Once set up, this report allows you to isolate and examine individual, rather than aggregate, user behavior.

For each client or user ID, you can view the following initial data:

• Sessions
• Avg. Session Duration
• Bounce Rate
• Revenue
• Transactions
• Goal Conversion Rate

Then after drilling into the ID, you can see the acquisition date and channel for that user, along with an activity log detailing which actions that user took on your site during each session. You can use the Filter by menu to add and remove data types, and expand and collapse individual sessions as necessary.

You can use the User Explorer report to more closely examine any noteworthy behavior that you spot within a particular segment, to get a more detailed understanding of what might be going on.

By examining individual session behavior, you can also see when your users fall short of completing certain goals, and remarket to those users with specific information related to their experiences. Additionally, you can personalize your customer service and offer informed guidance based on the context provided by the User Explore report. Just remember to tread the line between “helpful” and “creepy”!

Demographics

The Demographics section in Google Analytics gives an insight into the age and gender of your website audience, and how different age and gender groups behave differently on your site.

Google cautions that, “Demographics and interests data may only be available for a subset of your users, and may not represent the overall composition of your traffic” – so bear in mind that this data may not be present for the whole of your audience, depending on whether or not it can track them via a DoubleClick cookie or Device Advertising ID.

The Overview report shows you the age and gender breakdown of your audience at a glance, with age divided into 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64 and 65+ bands. In the top right corner of each graph, you can see which percentage of users on the site this data represents.

The Age report gives a breakdown of how those different groups interact with your website – their average bounce rate, pages per session, session duration, and completion rate of any goals and conversions you’ve set – and the Gender report does the same for gender.

The graph at the top of the report allows you to view how many of each type of user accessed your site on any given day – so if you’ve been executing campaigns to drive a specific demographic (e.g. women aged 18-24) to your website, you can assess how successful that has been over time.

Interests

They say psychographic data, rather than demographic data, is where it’s at these days. If so, the Interests section of GA Audience Reports is where you’ll find your most valuable information. Google uses a variety of data points taken from places like Gmail, app messages, internet browsing habits and YouTube history to make a guess at each user’s personal interests.

GA splits up interest data into three categories, each with its own report: Affinity, In-Market and Other.

Affinity Categories: Users who have a general interest in the topic in question – Google describes the interest level of these users as “Lifestyles similar to TV audiences, for example: Technophiles, Sports Fans, and Cooking Enthusiasts”.

In-Market Segments: Users who have “product-purchase interests” in the topic in question, akin to a buyer who is at the bottom of a purchase funnel and ready to convert.

Other Categories: This category provides the most granular view of your users’ interests. For example, says Google, “Affinity Categories includes Foodies, while Other Categories includes Recipes/Cuisines/East Asian”.

These reports display similar data to the Demographics reports, with users segmented by interest area instead of by age group or gender.

So what is interest data good for? If you’re an advertiser, you can use it to more effectively target ads based on specific interests. If you’re a publisher or otherwise publish content marketing to your site, you can get ideas for content topics based on what your users are most interested in.

You can also segment your report to get an insight into how these interest categories align with other demographics or behaviors. For example, below I’ve segmented the Other report by the 18-24 age group, revealing which interests are most prevalent among the youngest age group on Search Engine Watch.

Apparently SEW’s younger readers are more into Bollywood than SEO…

Geo

The Geo section contains reports on the language and location of your website visitors.

In the Language report, you can view Acquisition, Behavior and Conversions for site users who speak different languages – particularly useful if you run an international business, or have been thinking about diversifying into international markets, as you can get an idea of which language markets it would be most worthwhile expanding into.

The Location report features a virtual map of your users’ locations, which is useful for targeting search and social ads. You can zoom in on data at the city level, which allows local businesses to know if their marketing efforts are driving traffic and conversions from the right regions, and is also useful for publishers who want to create locally-focused content.

Behavior

The Behavior section allows you to break down your audience by how often they visit your site, and the duration of that visit. You can learn how many times on average a visitor comes to your website, how many days tend to elapse between sessions for repeat visitors, how long visitors remain on your site and how many pages they visit whilst there.

If you’re a publisher, this is valuable data on how ‘sticky’ your website is and how successfully you’re managing to retain visitors. If you’re aiming to create more engaging content, you can track these metrics to gauge the success of your efforts, keeping an eye out for an increase in returning visitors or the duration of an average visit.

If you’re in ecommerce or sales, you can use this data in conjunction with Goals in order to learn what visitor behavior typically leads to a conversion.

Do you score the most conversions on the user’s first visit, or on subsequent visits? If the latter, what can you do to make your visitors more likely to return and convert?

Technology

The Technology section of GA Audience reports reveals which browsers, operating systems and even network providers your audience is using to access your site.

This information can be useful if your business creates online extensions, software or applications, and you want to know which browsers and operating systems to make them compatible with.

You can also use it to work out where you should be allocating your technical resources – if only a small fraction of your audience uses Opera, for example, it’s probably not worth putting a lot of time and effort into making sure that your website is optimized for that browser.

Mobile

If you’ve been in two minds about whether to optimize for mobile (though by now we hope we’ve persuaded you that it is worthwhile!) or want the data to back up an argument for a mobile site/app, head to Google Analytics’ Audience => Mobile section.

In the Overview report you can see Acquisition, Behavior and Conversions data for desktop, mobile and tablet users – which can also allow you to learn, for example, if your bounce rate is significantly higher on mobile (which might indicate a poor mobile experience) or whether more users are completing purchases on a desktop device.

The Devices report then provides you with incredibly specific insights into the devices your audience is using to access your website, down to the make and model of the device.

If you’re developing a mobile app and are unsure about whether to produce it for Apple or Android, or want to test your mobile site using the most common devices wielded by your users, this is the report to look at.

Custom

In this section, you can create a custom Audience report using your own chosen variables, metrics and dimensions.

As the scope of this series is standard Google Analytics reports (not custom), I won’t go into detail here about how to get the most out of this report, but Econsultancy has a solid beginner’s guide to creating a custom report in Google Analytics if you want to get to grips with the basics.

Benchmarking

Benchmarking reports are only available if you have benchmarking enabled on Google Analytics, but once you do, it gives an extremely useful insight into how your website audience and performance compare with other companies in your industry.

Google allows you to get extremely granular with the industry categories, providing a list of more than 1,600 to choose from. You can further refine the data by geographic location and traffic volume, allowing you to compare like for like with other websites of the same size and location.

Users Flow

The Users Flow report is a fairly unique-looking report that doesn’t immediately resemble any of the other standard reports in Google Analytics.

As the name implies, it is useful for studying and trying to understand the “flow” of users through your website – the path that they typically take from page to page. It also highlights where users drop off – so you can isolate where exactly users might be getting stuck or losing interest, and take steps to remedy it.

A drop-down menu in the top left allows you to view user flow by location, language, browser, mobile device, and other custom data dimensions.

This view can be particularly useful for ecommerce marketers to understand the path that users typically take to conversion, as well as for publishers seeking to understand which articles bring the most users to the site, and where users typically navigate after reading them.

 

How do you make use of Google Analytics’ many different Audience Reports? Do you have any novel applications to share? Leave a comment, and stay tuned for our next instalment on Acquisition Reports!

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/03/29/a-guide-to-the-standard-reports-in-google-analytics-audience-reports/

12 tips to improve your reputation strategy

To grow and stay ahead of your competitors, you need to take a hard look at your reputation strategy.

The online reputation of your business hinges on a variety of elements. It’s an ever-evolving digital mix-up of comments, reviews, blogs, and more.

It’s time to take a proactive approach to improve your online reputation. Not sure where to start? Here are 12 tips to make your business shine under any consumer microscope.

1. Upgrade your Trustpilot account

Trustpilot continues to sway consumers, and you probably have built up a few Trustpilot reviews for your business. But are you making the most of your Trustpilot account?

By upgrading your Trustpilot account from free to paid, you get more personalized features to net more ratings and reviews.

Paid Trustpilot features include:

• Personalized email address from sender
• Customizable review invitations to your customers
• Rich snippet star rating in TrustBox
• TrustBox optimization
• Imported product reviews

Trustpilot paid features can make a big impact on your brand reputation. After all, reviews and ratings play a big role in consumer confidence to buy.

2. Get backlinks from high authority sites

A backlink from a high authority publication is a recommendation signal to consumers.

For example, people reading a Forbes article on “Best Health Apps” will assume that the Forbes journalist did his or her due diligence in finding the very best apps. This is a trust signal for consumers.

To get those high authority backlinks you can implement a link building strategy that allows you to be top of mind for journalists. Creating very shareable content on your blog or site is also a powerful way to earn those reputation building backlinks as well.

3. Have a “featured in” logo section

To amplify confidence to buy and boost your brand reputation, you can showcase the high authority publications your products or services have been featured in. This makes a Featured In section on your home page valuable, like this one from Your Doctors Online.

This reputation strategy tip is also a very easy one to implement once you have three or more high authority publications to list.

You can also use the press release strategy to develop a few high authority “Featured In” publications. Using PRNewswire iReach WebReach, you can launch a press release about your brand.

The press release will get picked up by a number of high authority publications, like Yahoo Finance. You can create a press release about a new product or service, new employee position, charity work, and more.

4. Get quoted everywhere!

Having a CEO, director, or manager quote in several publications can be another fantastic reputation strategy. This will compliment your link building strategy as well, since most quotes are accompanied by a link back to the experts business.

How do you get quoted everywhere? Well, it is actually easier than you may think. Using Help A Reporter Out (HARO) can accomplish this.

Simply sign up for a free account as a “Source,” fill in the information, and choose the industries you can add insights for.

This is a great way to boost your reputation as an authority in your industry. You will also get quality backlinks to your website, and use articles on social media to boost awareness and trust among your followers.

5. Facebook video ads

Video ads are trending in a big way for brands, and users want more videos than ever before. In fact, 90 percent of users said that videos are a big part of the decision process. Social media videos net 1,200 percent more shares than the average text social posts.

“It is indeed one of the best tactics to bring more exposure to your brand while helping you achieve your bottom-line,” Mike Templeman of Forbes explained.

Facebook video ads are among the best performers. Why video? Video is great for engagement and can also add that personal touch consumers want.

Like this video from Backlinko’s Facebook page with nearly 3,500 shares:

You can show your social audience that you are indeed real, knowledgeable, and highlight your brand’s value and benefits.

6. YouTube videos

Your social media videos will often come from YouTube, making this is another reputation strategy worth pursuing. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world and you can highlight your authority and expertise via YouTube videos quite easily.

Going back to the previous Backlinko example, Brian Dean uses YouTube videos to showcase his expertise on digital marketing in an engaging and actionable way.

If you want to increase your reputation and become a thought leader in your industry, YouTube can be valuable. You can also build up a subscriber base to remarket to.

7. Collaborate with social media influencers

There is nothing like boosting your reputation through the recommendations of influencers your customers already trust. This makes social media influencers an important asset to add to your reputation strategy.

Did you know that 74 percent of people turn to social media for help with buying decisions? And 40 percent of people have made an online purchase after seeing an influencer use a product on social media.

Where can you find social media influencers to help improve your brand reputation? There are a few online platforms like FameBit, TapInfluence, and Traackr. FameBit is a free platform that allows you to connect with influencers in a variety of industries.

Since it is free, it’s a good way to test the social media influencer waters across social channels like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

8. Get more blogger reviews

Social media is not the only place to utilize the power of influencers. If your brand sells products, getting more reviews from bloggers people follow and trust can boost your brand reputation.

To get your products reviewed by influential bloggers, you will need to send them a quick pitch. This can be via a social media message, or through their email or contact form from their website.

Here are a few pitch tips for outreach:

• Keep your pitch short and sweet
• Highlight your product’s benefits
• Explain why the blogger’s audience will like your product
• Let the blogger have your product for free
• Let them know you have an influencer marketing budget

9. Start a podcast

Another great way to improve your reputation strategy is to start a podcast. Podcasts help showcase your knowledge and can cover a lot of trending topics your customers want information about.

“If you’re not already engaging your target market with podcasts, prepare to launch your first piece of audio content,” Tyler Basu explained in an Entrepreneur article.

Podcasts are a great way to feed information to your audience. They can easily listen to your podcast while driving, at the gym, on the bus or subway, and even at work.

Your audience doesn’t need to focus all their attention on written content. Creating a podcast is also easier than spending hours developing a blog post. A few podcast types include:

• Interviews
• Solo podcasts
• Two or more hosts
• Narrative podcasts
• Or a combination of the above

You will also need a separate hosting platform for your podcasts. LibSyn and Blubrry are two hosting platforms that are affordable and easy to use.

10. List your product on Amazon

Getting your product listed on Amazon is an exceptional way to boost your online reputation. Did you know that 80 percent of Amazon users make an average of one purchase per month? Given that there are around 300 million Amazon users in total, that’s a lot of potential customers – and reviewers.

This makes Amazon a big trust builder for consumers and should be part of your reputation strategy. Amazon also has a product review and star rating. This can make a big impact on your brand’s reputation.

Amazon listing guidelines are actually not as difficult as you may think. You will need to follow the step-by-step process and you could have your product on Amazon within a few weeks.

11. Create Quality Content

One tried and true method for improving your reputation strategy is to create quality content. Those 300 word blog posts will simply not do anymore. You want your audience to be engaged and learn something from your articles.

Develop actionable blog posts that show step-by-step ways to solve issues consumers in your industry and niche may be experiencing.

For example, if you are catering content to small businesses, you can have a post about email marketing. In the post you can list the exact steps to set up an email marketing campaign and tips on how to make it successful.

This, of course, will be time-consuming. Your blog post may turn into a 2,000-word masterpiece. But long-form content is good!

Research has shown that 2,000+ word posts get more organic traffic:

Long form content also gets more social shares and linking domains:

This will increase brand reach and awareness, increase authority, and thus improve your reputation strategy.

12. Increase your Google ranking

Many consumers often begin looking for a product or service via Google search. Unfortunately, most searchers don’t go past page one of Google search results.

According to a Chitika report, only 4.8 percent of traffic will land on page two of search results.

Why? Well, one reason may be that Google is satisfying searcher intent better. But many consumers may not trust the content after Google page one. Are all page one listings reputable? Not at all, but the consumer may not know that.

A quick search for “running shoes” will return some questionable results:

Note that Nike and Reebok aren’t even in the above the fold content listed!

This makes getting the best Google rankings possible essential. Luckily, all the above reputation strategy tips will help you achieve better rankings. Page one Google ranking serves up a lot of benefits, including a powerful online reputation.

What’s your reputation strategy?

Your online reputation is essential to the growth and success of your brand. Without a reputable online presence, consumers will turn to your competitors.

The above 12 tips to improve your reputation strategy can make your brand shine when consumers start doing their due diligence before buying from you.

What is your reputation strategy?

 

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/03/28/12-tips-to-improve-your-reputation-strategy/

Google’s core algorithm update: Who benefited, who lost out, and what can we learn?

There’s been much talk recently about Google implementing a broad core algorithm update.

A couple of weeks ago, webmasters started to notice changes to their search rankings which many suspected were due to an update to Google’s core algorithm. Google subsequently confirmed this via a tweet to its Search Liaison account, manned by former Search Engine Land editor and Search Engine Watch founder Danny Sullivan.

Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our results. Some are focused around specific improvements. Some are broad changes. Last week, we released a broad core algorithm update. We do these routinely several times per year….

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) March 12, 2018

Google has suggested that this update has nothing to do with the quality of content, and instead focuses on improving the quality of the SERPs. At SMX West, Nathan Johns, a search quality analyst at Google, stated in an AMA session that the core update was designed to “reward under-rewarded sites” rather than award penalties.

At Pi Datametrics, our data on organic search rankings would tend to confirm this, as the only real losses we’ve seen – while dramatic – were generally short-lived, and occurred in the run-up to the update itself.

However, if Google wasn’t testing quality, what exactly were they testing?

I turned to the SERPs to have a look, going back in time to the period just before, during and after the recent update. I asked Google a relatively simple question, then analyzed the results to detect any rumblings or suspicious flux.

Testing the Google broad core algorithm update

Google Query: What’s the best toothpaste?

 

I’ve focused primarily on content that was visible on page 1 or 2 at the start of this year.

We can clearly see that all these pages dropped out of the top 100 then reappeared on the same day. This occurred multiple times over a five week period.

Seven websites all performed pretty well (visible on page 1 and 2), with a further two sites appearing mid-way through the shake-up, that had no previous visibility (Expertreviews [dark pink] and Clevelandclinic [dark blue]).

The obvious shake-up started on 24 January, roughly five weeks before the algorithm was said to have fully rolled out (Sunday 4th March).

What we have here is a pattern we’ve seen many times before, something that is only visible with access to daily data on the entire SERPs landscape. It looks like a period of testing pre-full rollout, which is only to be expected.

Here’s the same chart, zoomed in from 01 February:

In the chart above we can see the flux continuing from February 5 onwards. Every site involved experienced almost the exact same pattern of visibility loss.

Things finally settled down on March 8. At first glance, it looks like all sites regained their original positions.

However, on closer inspection we can see that all came out slightly worse off, by an average of just over two positions; the smallest drop being one position (which can be painful on page one) and the largest being six.

Knowing when to act and when to sit tight

If this chart says one thing, it is DON’T PANIC if you drop out of the top 100 for a term you care about!

Just keep monitoring the SERPs every day. If you’ve ruled out content cannibalization, it could well be a period of algorithm testing – as with the broad core update.

If you’ve put the searcher first and created the kind of rich content that will satisfy them, then the chances are you will recover from these testing times.

Or maybe, like the Expertreviews site above (following the injection of a long-form, socially popular and recently updated piece of content into their ecosystem), you could even move from nowhere to position three, nudging all others down a peg.

Content that matched user intent was safe

The only two websites entirely unaffected by all of this were Reviews.com and Which.co.uk, proving that the combination of first mover advantage, relevance and fantastic authority ensures high visibility and algorithmic stability:

So, the immediate questions are – who has benefited from this shake-up? What happened in the gaps between the spikes? Who’s lost out and why? Are we now seeing a SERP more aligned with the intent of the searcher?

Who benefited from the early shake-up?

It wasn’t Expertreviews or Clevelandclinic. They benefited later.

Let’s introduce some of the the momentary winners who gained visibility during the downtime of all either sites:

Wins for Business Insider, Colgate and Amazon

• Businessinsider.com benefited from the initial shake-up. It has some great content, but it’s not been updated since October 2017. It has been indexed all this time, but only really became visible when Google pushed the previously well positioned sites out. Result? It survived the shake-up and ended on page one.
• The same happened to the Colgate page. Note its /en-us/ TLD. Arguably, it shouldn’t be visible in the UK anyway. This page only provided a list of toothpaste types e.g. ‘Fluoride’ or ‘Tartar control’ etc. This didn’t answer my question or match my intent. Result? Ended up dropping back to page five after the shake-up.
• The Amazon page simply displays a list of its bestsellers in toothpaste. From a content perspective, it’s not that inspiring. Result? Ended up dropping back to page three.

So the question is – if I were searching for “What’s the best toothpaste?” which of these new pages would I prefer?

All pages are mobile friendly, but if I really wanted to know what the best toothpaste was, I’d definitely prefer to read the Businessinsider.com page – coincidentally the only page that moved up to page one following the shake-up and stayed there.

In other words, the only one to satisfy my intent was in fact the only page that remained visible post shake-up. This page, to me answers my question perfectly.

What do these insights tell us about the core update?

Based on our testing, we can deduce that this algorithm is concerned with optimizing search results to support user intent, rather than to audit quality.

Why?

1. Losses were not drastic, meaning we can rule out a penalty of any kind.
2. Of all winners, none appeared to rise as a result of content updates.
3. Some sites with strong, relevant content seemingly lost rankings in Google UK, as they were intended for the US market. This suggests that Google was auditing relevancy factors beyond just content (i.e. location / tld), to serve the best results and satisfy user intent.

In this respect, Google’s core update was concerned with the nature rather than the quality of content.

What better way to test the match of nature with intent than by shaking up the SERPs for a couple of weeks to determine user reaction?

Should you panic when your content visibility nosedives?

If your content visibility drops, it’s always necessary to carry out checks to ensure you have done everything within your power to mitigate the issue.

In the face of an algorithm update (like the recent broad core update), however, the best advice is to do nothing but monitor the SERPs closely.

If it is algorithmic testing, you most certainly won’t be the only one involved. Other sites will follow the exact same pattern down to the day. That’s a big clue that it’s algorithmic rather than isolated. Talking to others within the SEO and webmaster communities can help you to affirm that yours isn’t an isolated incident, and that you aren’t on the receiving end of a penalty from Google.

Google has confirmed that sites that experienced ranking drops as a result of the broad core update aren’t necessarily doing anything wrong. As I stated at the beginning of this article, the losses that we did observe were short-lived and not drastic.

If you want to make sure that your content is insulated against future updates of this kind, focus on creating content that puts the searcher first and will satisfy user intent. But above all: don’t panic.

A version of this article was originally published to the Pi Datametrics blog.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/03/27/googles-core-algorithm-update-who-benefited-who-lost-out-and-what-can-we-learn/

Keyword research: 5 ways to find great long-tail keywords

The SEO landscape is changing.

RankBrain, Latent Semantic Indexing and voice search have placed a heavy hand of friendly persuasion on the SEO industry, resulting in a shift towards solution-led (rather than keyword-led) content.

For years, short-tail and transactional keywords were the primary focus of SEO campaigns and, to an extent, they still tend to dominate the communication channels between agencies and clients. However, there is a clear acknowledgement on both sides of the fence with regards to the power of long-tail keywords.

Evangelism by the likes of Rand Fishkin and Neil Patel, along with the popularity of ‘content marketing’, has no doubt helped fuel this adoption.

The complexity of Google’s search algorithm means that they/it (/he/she?!) has a stronger grasp of the intent behind a search, rather than simply looking at the keyword strings that make up said search term. This has had a direct effect on how we plan our content and attract our target audience.

Does that mean that keyword research is dead? Not at all. In the ever increasingly competitive and complex world of search, it means that research is more important than ever.

But how do we adapt keyword research in relation to this focus on identifying great long-tail keywords?

First: focus on searcher intent

This should underpin all of your activities – research, creation and distribution. What is the searcher really trying to achieve and how is your content helping them reach this goal?

Ultimately, the tools listed below are there to help you speed up this process and to provide ideas, but you can’t fully rely on them to produce an outstanding long-tail keyword strategy.

Take the time to understand your target market, the length of the sales cycle or what factors influence their purchasing/conversion decisions. Subsequently, you will be able to understand the type of search terms that can be targeted to provide the most value for your users. Better yet, you can understand the intent behind relevant searches and provide solutions.

Google’s Keyword Planner

Often the first port of call for many when it comes to keyword research, albeit somewhat restricted by the necessity of a minimum AdWords spend to access more accurate data.

The Keyword Planner may have less specific data in comparison to the former ‘Keyword Tool’, but it does have some useful additions to help you with identifying valuable long-tail keywords.

The ‘Keyword ideas’ and ‘Ad group ideas’ function provides related search terms, helping you save time thinking of all the different variations. Sift through the tabs (there were 700 keyword ideas in this example) to gain data on potential long-tail keyword ideas.

Even if you don’t find the perfect match for your strategy you should be able to acquire new idea ‘streams’ which should lead to more fruitful long-tail keywords.

 

Use Google’s suggestions

Do not underestimate how useful Google’s own suggestions within the SERPs are. They are unlikely to be the central pillar in your strategy but they can certainly contribute.

When we are searching for those high value long-tail keywords, Google rather helpfully suggests related search terms according to what you are inputting into the search bar:

Once you have entered your search, Google also displays related searches to help you find the right information:

 

BuzzSumo, Answer the Public, Keywordtool.io & others

As SEOs in 2018, we are spoilt by the amount of tools available to help us draw insights into what the most effective strategy will be. Keyword research is no different. We have progressed from simply looking at average monthly search volume to being able to utilize BuzzSumo to understand what the most shared type of content is in relation to your topic.

We can use Answer the Public to be instantly displayed within a plethora of long-tail search terms in a visual ‘who, what, why, when, how’ type format.

Or use Keywordtool.io to have greater access to Google Suggest and Autocomplete, therefore accessing 750+ keywords at a time rather than the more granular method mentioned previously.

I am absolutely not doing justice to the value just these three platforms represent, but there are reasons as to why I have not dived into using the tools:

• I don’t want to spoil the surprise
• This article would become far too long!
• There are lots of really good platforms out there which have not been mentioned
• (Most importantly) these tools are there to facilitate ideas and structure. In my opinion they do not complete the job for you.

Identify the value

Uurrggghhh. Value. Please Mr. Value, come and join the throng of other overused buzzwords.

Whatever terminology you use, this is the most important point that will be made in this article.

The tools listed above will only get you so far in creating the highest performing content strategy possible. Like with any keyword research, the suggestions and data are great starting points.

However, there are other variables at play which will dictate which search terms you target and the content you produce. Some examples of which may be:

• Relevance to your product or service
• Demographic
• In house expertise and ability to create content on a specific subject
• Buyer persona’s buying processes
• Competition
• Time decay

In my opinion, it is madness not to check the SERPs before signing off on a keyword and subsequent content strategy. Not only do the SERPs give you great insights into what Google perceives as the user intent behind any one search, but they also show you how competitive each search term is.

If you are investing time and money into content creation and targeting longer tail search terms, you want to make sure that you are targeting the ones with highest ROI. That doesn’t mean the highest search volume – it means the ones that will deliver the greatest results in relation to the amount of work required.

High search volume keywords are great and if you can target them then fantastic, go ahead. Be aware, though, that there are quicker wins.

Using your keyword research, you should be able to sift through the SERPs to understand which ones have results which could be improved. Perhaps you do not feel like the searcher’s intent has been completely satisfied, or that new information has come out which makes the other results dated.

Whatever the reason, spotting these opportunities and using the SERPs to influence your content strategy is critical in a truly efficient campaign.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/03/27/keyword-research-5-ways-to-find-great-long-tail-keywords/

Why Google Shopping is dominating retail search marketing

As Google has scaled up its Shopping products in recent years, there has been a growing consensus in the retail search marketing space that Shopping ads are one of the most effective ways to win valuable consumer clicks.

This is especially true of the non-branded, broader search terms that are typical of the early stages of the customer journey.

During this phase, Google Shopping ads – commonly referred to as Product Listing Ads, or PLAs – are considered to be a key means of engaging consumers early, and boosting new customer acquisition.

If the trends that we are currently seeing continue, 2018 will be a year of increased investment in Google Shopping ad formats across product-based search.

While text ads are still the most popular advertising format in many categories, retail-specific categories tell a very different story, with spend on Google Shopping ads far outstripping text ads in retail categories.

A new study by AI-powered search intelligence platform Adthena, analyzing 40 million search ads from more than 260,000 retailers, has shed light on the extent to which Google Shopping ads have come to dominate retail search marketing.

In this piece, we will look at some of the key findings from the report, explore the causes of Google Shopping’s phenomenal expansion, and consider what retailers can do to “future-proof” their search marketing strategy against upcoming shifts in the market.

Content produced in collaboration with Adthena.

The growth of Google Shopping

The Google Shopping ad unit has evolved considerably over the past few years, with increased attention and prominence afforded to Shopping ads in the search results page. This has resulted in a rise in clicks and impressions that has fueled the growth of Google Shopping ads in retail categories.

As of Q1 2018, Google Shopping ads are driving 76.4% of retail search ad spend in the US, and 82% of retail search ad spend in the UK – an overwhelming majority in both instances.

Adthena’s research found that in the US, this 76.4% of search spend was responsible for 85.3% of all clicks on AdWords or Google Shopping ads between January and February 2018. In the UK, the 82% of retail search ad spend invested in Google Shopping ads was responsible for 87.9% of clicks.

These figures confirm that Google Shopping ads are still offering good value to retailers in terms of spend/click ratio, and suggest that the value of Google Shopping ads has not (yet) reached saturation point, with room for growth in some key areas.

Mobile is one of these: according to Adthena’s research, although shopping ads on desktop generate a slightly greater share of clicks, Google Shopping ad spend on mobile now matches that of desktop, supporting evidence that mobile search is serving as a crucial touchpoint for product purchasing decisions.

Presently, Google Shopping ads on mobile are driving 79% of device ad spend in the US, and win 87.9% of clicks. With Google shifting more and more emphasis onto mobile search, this is likely to become an increasingly important area for retailers to invest in, and we may yet see these numbers grow further.

However, how much longer can Google Shopping continue its rise before the market eventually becomes saturated? To answer that, we need to understand what has fuelled Google Shopping’s dominance of the retail search market in the first place.

What is fueling Google Shopping’s retail dominance?

Ashley Fletcher, VP of Marketing at Adthena, believes that prominence and reach are the two key factors that have driven the rise of Google Shopping ads in retail search marketing.

Google’s introduction of a carousel for desktop Shopping ads in October 2016 was the first major change which gave increased prominence to Google Shopping ads. Since then, the ad unit has only developed further, with even more different formats for advertisers to benefit from.

“The unit has evolved both in terms of prominence on the page and in terms of ad features,” says Fletcher. “It’s also very rich in content – particularly on mobile – with multiple variants of the unit available to advertisers.”

In the US and the UK, the number of ads in the desktop carousel has even doubled as of February 2018 to surface 30 paid listings. This may go some way to explaining the particular dominance of Google Shopping ads in the US and UK – as we saw from the statistics in the previous section.

Then there’s reach: as Fletcher explains, in the past year, Google Shopping Ads have begun influencing users higher up the purchase funnel through far broader terms, appearing for much more generic product searches than before.

“In the last year, Shopping ads have started to trigger on a lot of the upper-funnel, generic terms – like “red dress”, or “black dress”. This is really driving users into a brand experience around those generics: it encourages the user to start drilling into those terms, and conduct longer-tail keyword searches off the back of that.

“These are very high-volume terms, keywords with a lot of traffic – so mastering that could be a challenge for search marketers, but you now need to be present at the top of that funnel, as well.”

While these developments have spurred a huge surge of growth in Google Shopping ads over the past two years, Fletcher believes this expansion won’t continue for long.

“In 2018, we’ll get closer to saturation point,” he says. “I don’t think there’s much room for further growth.

“Then I think we’ll get into the space we were in with text ads, where advertisers will be limited on spots, margins are going to be squeezed – meaning CPCs are going to increase – and it will come down to marginal gains: how can you optimize performance, as growth slows down?”

What can retailers do to get the most out of their ad spend in that environment?

“First and foremost, being able to manage at scale is a must-have,” says Fletcher.

“Secondly, master your categories. If you are a retailer, then knowing that you’re winning in – for example – men’s board shorts, and getting down to that level of knowledge with your categories, is essential.

“If you don’t do that, then you’ll have a very blinkered view of what’s going on.

“If you’re a department store retailer, for example, and your products reach more than 200 different categories, there is a dependency on knowing how well you’re performing in each of these categories. You’re going to have different competitors in each one: the challenge is knowing that, and making sure you are still winning there.”

Adapting for the future of search marketing

The rapid uptake of Google Shopping ads as the most significant part of retail ad spend budgets reveals how quickly search marketers adapt to new formats and opportunities.

As search advertising practices continue to change and new formats are introduced, advertisers will need to maintain this agility in order to keep ahead of the game.

“Google Shopping can be quite daunting for some advertisers when they take their first steps into it,” says Fletcher. “But if you do that with enough research, and enough context about what’s going on in each of your retail categories, you’ll have a far better chance of surviving.

“If you don’t follow the trends, adopt early, and understand these channels, you will get left behind.”

Amazon Shopping, for example, is a growing force in the retail search landscape which Fletcher believes will only play a bigger role in years to come, threatening to erode the dominance that Google Shopping currently enjoys.

Even as they take steps to future-proof their search marketing campaigns in the realm of Google Shopping, search marketers should investigate the opportunities presented by Amazon, in order to ensure the longevity of their search marketing strategy going forward.

 

For more insights from Adthena’s study and analysis of 40 million search ads, click here to download Adthena’s Q1 2018 search advertising report, The Rise of Google Shopping.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/03/26/why-google-shopping-is-dominating-retail-search-marketing/

The merged approach: How combining traditional and digital brings marketing success

Digital is vital to the success of any marketing strategy. Or is it?

It’s a bold statement but one that is only true if combined with traditional marketing, to really allow brands to effectively dominate the advertising space within their market place, regularly targeting and connecting with the consumer.

Before the technology and social takeover, brands were able to gently position themselves in front of the audience using traditional techniques such as newspaper ads, TV appearances or radio mentions – all mediums that had the ability to direct customers to a brand.

However, with the growing need for immediate information, and the changing ways in which consumers access it, brands have been forced to react, needing to dominate every advertising platform possible just to remain visible.

With this comes a marketing strategy overhaul, marrying the simplicity and effectiveness of traditional techniques with the instant value brought through digital channels.

The change in the customer approach, and in turn the sales journey, has caused brands to move forcefully into the digital world, whether ready to or not.

Although digital now makes up around 60% of marketing efforts, according to oursocialtimes.com, 13% of marketers still rely heavily on traditional methods, adamant they still achieve the desired results. It is studies such as this that prove the value of merging both traditional and digital techniques, to create a well-rounded, data led approach to customer engagement and brand positioning.

While we recognize the value of introducing and focusing on digital, one brand took this idea too far, reducing all activity to create just a digital strategy.

Social only: Pepsi’s near-death experience

Pepsi, one of the most recognized brands on the planet, made the controversial decision to remove all traditional elements from their marketing, instead relying entirely on social media to engage with their customers and position themselves against their biggest rival, Coca-Cola.

Pepsi previously had a solid strategy based on television advertising, showing their commercials during prime time viewing to gain the widest appeal. After 23 years of running ads during the Super Bowl, this was pulled with the budget moved entirely into social media.

External agency relationships were severed and the brand took on all marketing in-house in order to stay closer to the brand’s message. This was a radical move that left marketers across the globe horrified and taking bets on just how long the brand would stick with this strategy before relenting.

Image by Mike Mozart, available via CC BY-2.0

They didn’t have to wait long. Within a matter of months, the repercussions became clear as a large proportion of their audience were no longer targeted with the brand relying on a heavy social following to continue to market themselves. This one-dimensional strategy was short lived, and Pepsi quickly made a reappearance on television screens.

Despite the upset that stemmed from the now infamous Kendall Jenner advert, the brand is once again back in front of the target consumer.

As Pepsi struggled with the conflict between digital and traditional marketing methods, its biggest rival, Coca-Cola, was instead leading the way in a combined marketing strategy successfully launching a campaign that covered online and offline channels.

Showing them how it’s done

In 2013, Coca-Cola launched their ‘Share a Coke’ campaign that was a perfect blend of traditional and digital techniques designed to increase brand engagement and product sales.

Offline, customers were able to purchase personalized bottles, with more names available online, encouraging users to visit the website. The campaign was a success from the very beginning with consumers determined to collect every bottle they saw that had their name on it.

The campaign was consistently shared across social channels and social engagement resulted in 998m Twitter impressions and 235,000 tweets containing the hashtag, ‘Share a Coke’.

It is vital to nail your marketing strategy or you quite simply put your brand in jeopardy. The biggest lesson to learn from both Pepsi and Coca-Cola is that knowing your audience is key, something that Pepsi clearly didn’t, while Coca-Cola adopted multiple ways to actively address and engage with key members of their demographic.

Whatever your approach may be, you need to clearly identify what is going to work for your consumer, not just for you.

Digital is at the forefront of marketing right now as brands really see it as a way to directly target members of their audience, in so many different ways.

Owning the influencer game

Taking the digital approach that one step further, brands like Daniel Wellington and ASOS are focusing their efforts on using key players in the world of fashion and celebrity to help build their brand identity and to ultimately, drive sales.

The tactic is simple. Identify the influencers that speak directly to the audience, asking them to post regularly across social channels (predominantly Instagram) about a number of products. Sit back and wait for the demographic to build brand recognition and loyalty causing the orders to roll in.

Influencers have a lot of control over their followers, as the ordinary person becomes focused on attempting to emulate everything from what they wear, the places they visit, even adopting their views in some extreme cases. The passion that followers have for their ‘influencers’ of choice is at the heart of this marketing approach and the very reason for its success.

Daniel Wellington is now a key player within the watch market and has developed its brand identity through the use of carefully selected influencers, establishing themselves in the marketplace as a high-end watch designer favoured in celebrity circles.

As part of the brand’s approach, influencers and ‘celebrities’ such as the cast of Love Island and TOWIE, are paid to deliver regular Instagram posts about the watches, while offering followers money-off discounts with individual codes (a great way for the brand’s marketing team to identify which celebrity is most successful at turning followers into customers).

Instagram posts by Kendall Jenner and Carissa Smart, a fashion, lifestyle and flat lay photographer

Although this strategy may seem simple, there are still pitfalls. Are you sure you know your audience? Is Instagram really where they are? Are you using the right influencers/celebrities?

A lot of consumer research and data needed to take place before the strategy was implemented, to make sure that Daniel Wellington, a relatively new brand, was catapulted into the limelight for all the right reasons.

The approach has certainly paid off, however, with 1.3 million Instagram posts now using #danielwellington while the brand’s own account now has over 3 million followers. They also recently opened their first flagship store.

ASOS have followed suit, throwing themselves into the influencer game, having recently created ‘ASOS Insider’. A small number of fashion influencers are offered their own ASOS Instagram accounts, enabling them to regularly post ‘outfit of the day’ pictures, tagging the brands to allow followers to recreate their looks.

Cleverly, the post will also include links back to the ASOS website, serving as another gentle push for consumers to purchase the products.

ASOS use influencers that already have a strong following to grow a natural audience around the brand, easily growing the brand’s reach.

Both brands have executed the influencer approach perfectly and are now reaping the rewards for doing so, but this is not a one size fits all approach and it can be a difficult strategy to implement.

Before reaching out to the likes of the Kardashians or other reality TV heavyweights, however, you need to consider the following:

1. Identify your audience and be where they are

Identifying who your audience is, not just who you want them to be, is at the centre of the influencer strategy. How can you talk to them if you don’t know who they are and importantly, where they are?

2. Use influencers who will perfectly represent your brand and be able to speak directly to your demographic

Don’t just use high profile influencers or celebrities in the hope of gaining attention if they are not an advocate of your brand principles, or do not have the ability to speak directly to your targeted demographic.

3. Love and share user-generated content

Consumers like to feel valued, and recognized, by their favourite brands and the best way to do this is to encourage them to create their own content and recognize it across branded social platforms. This is something Daniel Wellington does well with its ‘pick of the day’ campaign.

4. Convert followers into customers – track use of discount codes, promotions, time of posts versus time of orders

Be sure to regularly track the performance of the campaign to really know if it is working. Influencer marketing can be pricey and you want to make sure you are getting a good ROI and importantly improving the performance of your business.

The type of marketing approach you take very much depends on who your demographic is, which will affect how they can be reached and encouraged to respond.

While more and more brands are becoming affiliated with digital marketing campaigns, there are still instances where traditional marketing is the only way to target the consumer – as Argos found out.

Taking it back to the old-school

Argos are a unique case in terms of the form of marketing they adopt. Typically, it is the brand that decides how they position themselves in their market place, taking either a traditional or digital approach to really get the attention of the target customer. This is not the case for the retail giant.

Argos are known for their catalogs: the physical database of the enormous number of products they sell, something that is really aligned with more traditional marketing techniques alongside all  printed paraphernalia.

In 2012, Argos made the decision to stop their catalogs, instead encouraging customers to visit the website which naturally serves as an online version of the long-adored catalog. The customer base quickly revolted and Argos were forced to backtrack.

In late 2017, the brand began a second attempt at entering the digital space and started to test consumer demand in relation to the catalogs – as expected, this wasn’t very well received.

Save the Argos catalogue! #argoscatalogue #savetheargoscatalogue https://t.co/ClL5SV9isZ

— Maddie Parnell (@maddieparnell1) September 7, 2017

For Argos, the voice of their consumer was so loud that they were forced to sit up and take note. The consumer had a direct impact on the brand’s business model and the way in which they engaged with new and existing customers.

There will always be room for traditional techniques within modern marketing, and any savvy marketer will be aware of this. But what are the best ways to incorporate traditional within any strategy, in a modern, digital focused world?

1. Decide what works based on who you’re targeting

Whether it’s print-based adverts, press releases, or events, if it works for your demographic and can deliver your brand message, then don’t rule it out.

2. Don’t be afraid to give your brand a face

Networking is one of the oldest tactics, but also one of the most successful. Getting out there and meeting and greeting people can raise brand awareness and give your business a personality – ultimately gaining consumer trust.

3. Think about ROI

Traditional marketing can deliver a suitable ROI at a faster rate than digital, which is a big consideration for some brands, particularly start-ups and those with slightly smaller budgets.

Below are some examples of traditional techniques that still work!

• Press releases
• Networking/Speaking engagements
• Cold calling
• Print ads
• Event marketing
• Direct mail
• Business cards

As much as Argos wanted to fully immerse themselves in the digital space, they were unable to. Which begs the question, do consumers prefer the valued traditional methods?

While the answer isn’t as simple as just a straight yes or no, it’s clear that consumers still appreciate the traditional approach. This suggests that while brands need to be considerate of digital, they must be able to straddle both principles in order to really fulfil the purpose of marketing; targeting and appealing to the consumer to ultimately make for a successful business.

The golden child of marketing

In 2013, 02 brought us the ‘Be more dog’ campaign, a prime example of how to combine traditional and digital techniques to really deliver a message. The campaign meant the brand fought off strong competition from competitors, saw it win countless awards and most importantly, got people talking for all the right reasons.

Although there was little relevance between the campaign idea and mobile phones (in fact, there was no real connection) it was the unique angle that made it stand out and promote perfectly the relaunch of the brand’s new priority app.

There was no escape from this campaign – adverts ran across televisions and in cinemas, while users were targeted through geo-located mobile phone ads and YouTube and MSN had their homepages overtaken by a Ginger Cat attempting to ‘be more dog’. Its success was in its simplicity and the clever ways in which every possible consumer was targeted.

What can we learn from 02, and how can this approach be adopted within every business’ marketing plan?

1. Don’t be afraid to stand out

A big campaign can seem overwhelming, and the results are not always guaranteed, despite the weeks and months of planning that goes into them.

But, if done right, the rewards can be more than worth it. 02 chose a campaign idea that had little to do with mobile phones or indeed apps, but they executed something that got attention and the rest fell into place.

2. Think big – make it shareable

Content needs to be unique, shareable, something that will allow people to see your brand and understand the message trying to be delivered.

In this case, 02 wanted to be cool, edgy and vibrant, all of which were achieved within a matter of hours of the campaign launching – generating almost half a million YouTube views in the first 48 hours.

3. Again, where are your consumers?

02 understand that their consumers, both new and old, are everywhere and they needed to make sure that ‘be more dog’ was visible to them all. To do this, they cleverly combined both traditional and digital tactics to make sure no one was missed.

4. Look beyond the usual channels

Your current marketing strategy may be hugely successful, but at the same time, it might not be working.

It is easy to get stuck in a rut with either outcome, so don’t be afraid to consider all channels, and as recommended, merge the two disciplines to give your brand a broader platform when attempting to speak to the demographic.

Summing up

We’ve moved into an era where traditional and digital marketing methods have the ability to complement each other, allowing brands to increase the ways in which they reach the consumer.

However, it is so important to pick an approach that works for the consumer, rather than one that fits in with an ideal. Marketing’s very purpose is to allow brands to position themselves in front of the target demographic and if they are unreachable, or switched off to certain platforms, the marketing strategy becomes pointless.

We have seen some big brand names either get it absolutely right or spectacularly wrong, and each offers valuable lessons for those looking to dominate their marketplace.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/03/26/the-merged-approach-how-combining-traditional-and-digital-brings-marketing-success/