Where do I personally look for inspiration on efficiency?


MozCon 2014 - 11 - Stacey MacNaught - Scaling Creativity: Making Content Marketing More Efficient

Germany.


Land of fast cars, quick slick integrated transport, more


rules than anybody ever needs, and the most efficient beer


servers in the whole world.


It seems like everybody in Munich can do this.


I tried.


I can't do this.


But when you go back to Germany's advertising industry


in the 60s and 70s, we come across an ad exec called


Bernd Rohrbach.


And in the late 60s, he wrote for a sales magazine about a


method that he called the 635 method of brain writing.


And he claimed that this could generate 108


ideas in 30 minutes.


That sounds like pretty good economy to me.


So we had a go.


And I love this for stage one ideas generation.


So I want to tell you how that works.


Everyone involved needs a worksheet.


There's a link to one there.


Again, I'll tweet afterwards.


But frankly, you could make your own in about 10 seconds.


You need six people.


They don't have to be in the marketing team or in friends.


They just have to understand what you're trying to achieve.


And you need half an hour.


30 minutes, six people.


For those of you agency side, that's three hours


of chargeable time.


Yeah, we all count.


We all count.


So you start with a problem statement, as Rohrbach called


it, in the context of content marketing,


I'd probably call it a brief or a goal.


Then round one starts.


And you've got six people sitting around a table


with a worksheet working in silence.


And the first time you do this, they're


going to be cursing you for making them try it.


And they've got five minutes to write down three ideas that


meet this brief.


And everyone's got to write something.


The first time we tried this, the idea was related.


It was like a finance session.


And one of our guys just wrote sharks


because he went out of time.


That only happened once.


At the end of the round, everybody


passes their sheet to the person on my left.


So now everyone's got a sheet with three ideas


written by somebody else on.


The principle here is that those three ideas


act as some sort of trigger for you to write three more.


And we repeat this.


So we've done six rounds.


And you're left with six worksheets with 18 ideas


on each.


So 108 ideas in 30 minutes.


You do get a bit of overlap.


Typically, we get about 80 to 100 ideas


that are unique enough to warrant standing on their own.


And this took us from complaining and whining


that we didn't have enough ideas right the way


to complaining and whining that we had too many ideas.


You'd be forgiven for thinking that we're just hard to please.


However, having too many ideas can be a real efficiency drain.


It's too easy to spend too much time and energy


developing substandard ideas.


So the next challenge for us was taking this big list


and narrowing it down to some more ideas


that we'd further develop.


And we've adopted a process called NUF testing.


And how this works is you get all your ideas on a spreadsheet


and you mark them all out of 10 against three criteria.


N, how new is the idea?


Let's not get into the ethics of whether there's any such thing


as a new idea.


It's like in the context of your current content


market and landscape, how new is the idea?


How original is it?


How useful is the idea?


How likely is it that this is going


to be the idea that hits your brief?


And how feasible?


How likely, with time constraints and budget


constraints, is it that you're actually


going to be able to achieve this?


Then you're left with a score out of 30.


We typically cull anything less than 20,


unless it's been a really bad day and someone's written sharks.


Then we let 18 slide through.


I want to talk about a few of the tools


that we're using as well.


So scimitator.com's Twitter generator


lets you generate an image that looks like a tweet


from anybody.


And I do have a more productive use for this


than sending myself fictional dreamy tweets from Mark


Wahlberg.


But I do view that quite a lot.


So if we're trying to decide between ideas,


we'll ask ourselves as a group, in the ideal world,


this idea goes live.


The content is absolutely amazing.


Who tweets the first tweet about it, and what do they write?


And we generate those tweets, and we put six, seven, or eight


of them on a single image.


And we upload that image to fivesecondtest.com.


Anyone who's not heard of fivesecondtest.com,


it's a crowd-sourced user testing site.


It's really good.


But one of the tests there is called a click test.


And that lets you upload an image


and ask users a question where the answer is in the form


of them clicking somewhere.


So we upload our image with six, seven, or eight tweets on,


and ask, which one of these would you share?


Which would you click on?


It's pretty good.


Now, you can't demographically segment the audience


that takes part in these tests.


So it's not particularly scientific.


It's a sanity checking mechanism.


Realtimeboard.com, awesome for collaborative online


whiteboarding.


Mindnode.com, my preferred mind mapping tool for Mac.


Coggle.it, free equivalents.


We use them all regularly in the ideas generation part


of what we do.


And I'm going to move quickly on to some of the lessons


that we've learned in asset generation


when it actually comes to producing the content


that you've developed the concept for.


Don't produce anything yet.


We've started stopping, effectively.


At the end of the concept development process,


we go back and ask ourselves about 100 questions about it.


Have we really sanity checked this?


Because everybody's still scarred


by that first infographic.


And even when the process starts,


test everything as early as you can.


Think back to that first infographic,


and we basically just threw it out there


at the end of the first draft.


It's like, yeah, whatever.


It's just content.


I'm a big fan of headline split testing for WordPress,


title split testing for WordPress, I think it's called.


It's a plug-in for WordPress that


lets you publish an article with several different headline


variants, and it will give you the best click-through results.


So you can publish an article related to this content


you're doing, get a good feel for what


might work as a headline before you've even


finished generating your assets.


I'm coming back to fivesecondtest.com again,


because the main five-second test


involves uploading an image.


A user's got five seconds to look at it,


and then you can ask them a series of questions about it.


This is great for gauging opinion, first impressions


of your content.


So we do this.


If it's a visual piece of content,


we do it at the point at which it's wire framed.


We do it after the first draft.


We do it after tiny little tweaks.


And another way to get honest feedback about visual content


is by uploading the images to Imgur and posting on Reddit.


You will get some painfully honest feedback from Redditors.


They're not afraid to tell you what they think.


Hat tip to Neoman for that tip in Manchester.


Don't be led by format.


So if I think back to that infographic


that you'd now be forgiven for thinking


I've got an issue about, I have.


We decided we were doing an infographic before we decided


what it was about.


That's stupid.


You don't always need bells and whistles.


You don't always need to put bells and whistles on things.


And I know the temptation is there


because there's so much awesome content out there now,


as well as all the crap as well, let's be honest.


But there's so many projects that


are so creative and interactive and just absolutely


mind blowing that sometimes you look at your blog post


and think, wow, there's an inferiority complex.


But you don't always have to have bells and whistles.


A good example is this piece of content we published in 2011.


So we went back through our analytics data


going back to 2009, and we analyzed the trend in mobile.


We produced two pieces of content over six months.


And it worked pretty well for us.


Our objective wasn't link building.


We did very little outreach.


We wanted to build credibility in mobile.


We wanted to be able to justify to our clients


why when only 5% of their traffic was mobile,


we were telling them to invest in a mobile site.


But it did generate links across the two URLs and the PDF


and the home page, about 100 plus, probably closer to 150.


But more to the point is the type of links.


Big travel brands in the UK, despite the fact


that we're working with their competitors, link into us.


Our competitors link into us.


Our industry press, and it went.


I like to field test a story before I add bells and whistles.


If I'm going to make it all singing and all dancing,


I want to know that it's going to be worth it.


A recent example of this, we worked with another travel


client called Holiday Gems.


And we recently surveyed 2,000 people in the UK.


We asked them 19 questions about their holiday habits


and whether it's the guy or the girl in the relationship who


gives up what they really want and cries for two weeks.


What we found out is that British men are more concerned


with tanning than women, so our survey said.


And we thought we had quite an interesting story there.


And with 19 questions and 2,000 people, you start to think,


yeah, this does warrant some visual format.


It does warrant making this easy to understand and explain.


But that's expensive.


We're thinking interactives.


It's going to be pricey.


So I wanted to field test the story.


So we wrote it as a news release.


And it got picked up in the mail online.


I wouldn't call that a good publication,


but it's a national publication, national press.


And then it got picked up in print,


in the Express, another national, Times,


another national, and The Sun, one


that we generally don't talk about


and I would never share ordinarily.


But I'm happy now that there's a story there.


So now we'll invest in the bells and whistles.


Obviously, if you're going to go out and contact journalists


and things like that, I would go back to Lexi's deck


from yesterday, first of all.


In terms of finding contacts, some of the places that we go,


presspass.me, it's pretty cool, muckrack.com, journalistid.com,


all really good for finding journalists


who are writing in certain areas about certain topics.


I would recommend you read this book, the PR Masterclass


by Alex Singleton.


It's not sort of a PR book for people who are in PR.


It's like common sense, actionable things


that you can do before you start contacting people


to picture content or idea.


And finally, think multi-screen, especially


if one of your primary promotion vehicles


is going to be social media.


Social media is going to be a very important part of your


social media experience.


Social media is really mobile.


I love this website.


It's nothing to do with us.


But this website is set up to allow people of Bristol


in England to get a feel for the kind of schemes


that they're thinking about employing to make Bristol


low carbon by 2050.


It's pretty cool, quite interactive.


People can upvote and downvote.


They really want you to share it.


And I first came across this on social media.


In the UK, it's mobile.


And it's not too dissimilar in the US.


But when I opened this on my smartphone, this is what I got.


To explore Bristol's future, please


visit this website on a bigger device.


So apparently, Bristol's future is not mobile.


Really.


And not naive, it's not always possible within the time


constraints or budget to replicate every feature


from an interactive on a smartphone device.


But you can put a static version out there,


some content that's consumable.


Promoting your content on social media that


is so predominantly mobile, and then when people get there,


basically telling them to piss off and come back on a desktop,


it's not good practice.


So we'll sum up.


Facebook Graph Search, absolute gift for content marketers.


It's the only reason that I like Mark Zuckerberg.


635 Brain Writing, I would really


encourage you to give this a go.


And more to the point, if you do, get in touch with me


and let me know how it went.


I'm really interested to find out


whether other agencies are finding


this as effective as we are.


Let goals lead the format.


And don't apply the bells and whistles


until you've proven you've got a purpose or a story


or some point to what you're doing.


And content marketing is no longer just


about catering to your audience's interest or needs.


It's about catering to the screens that they're using


as well.


And now I'm going to stop waffling.


Thank you.


First of all, I'm just going to say,


they have a calendar, and the calendar rules everything,


and it seems like it's more about frequency


and just getting it out there.


And you can show that to your boss.


We did some work.


How important, in your mind, is maybe de-emphasizing frequency


and putting quality first?


I do think frequency matters.


Yeah, big content projects might take months,


but you can't just expect your audience


to sit around twiddling their thumbs while you


do a big project.


If that's the case, they're going


to be cheating on you eating somebody else's content.


So I quite like a process of big content, little content.


Quite a lot of regular features that maybe


don't have quite the same process as the big ones,


and accompanying that with less frequent, bigger projects.


So let's say you talked about Facebook Graph Search, which


anybody can use as long as it's available, right?


It's not just for your users.


Nope.


No, anyone can use it.


So when you're doing that process,


you're researching, let's say you work for a travel site,


and you're researching bars at users who like this.


How important is it to stay on target with travel


versus stretching into those all other categories?


When do you go too far, or can you go too far?


That depends on your client.


So some of our clients are pretty lenient.


I think you've always got to try and tie it back into your niche,


but travel, there's so many parts of travel,


you can go into the food associated


with certain countries.


You can go into the culture and the pop culture.


So I think you can be quite loose.


I think you've got to do quite a lot of lateral thinking


and just be prepared to be a bit more flexible.


Rand.


Hey.


Yeah, so Stacey, I enjoyed your talk tremendously.


I loved Dr. Pete's set up, and then I


felt like you were just this great epilogue in terms


of how to do this work.


But I'm curious about the tactical part


of content promotion.


So one of the things that you mentioned,


which I'm a big believer in, is producing content


that's not just for your customers,


but for an influential audience who


might amplify that message and help you reach your customers.


I know how to reach these people.


They're my customers.


They're already in my community.


How do you go out and reach these people?


I saw the Facebook Graph search, like how to know who they are.


How do you get to them?


Interest-based, generally.


So we'll say with travel bag, we know


that these are travel bag's customers.


But travel bag have also got a lot of data


about the demographics of their customers.


So you can even get with Graph search,


you can even get into like women over 30


who live in Basingstoke and like this TV show.


So travel bag can help us, and we use their social metrics


to find other demographics.


Once you identify those people via Graph search, then what?


Paid Facebook advertising works for content promotion.


So that's quite good.


So you guys are doing a lot of paid


to get content in front of folks.


Yeah, we do a lot of paid content discovery


through Facebook, Twitter, some of the content discovery


platforms like Zomanta.


Have you used Outbrain or Taboola?


I've tried Outbrain, never tried Taboola.


Any thoughts on Outbrain?


Outbrain, yeah.


I really like Outbrain.


I can't decide between Outbrain and Zomanta.


And I guess the problem is like with anything,


you can't necessarily read too much into your results


because there's so much difference between the pieces


of content you do.


So we try and stick with, if we're


trying multiple platforms, we try and do one for all travel.


One for all finance to try and work out what might work best.


I found Outbrain does work better in travel and retail.


I think it's a bit more consumer-y.


And how much are you spending, if you don't mind me asking?


No, not at all.


On average?


Not at all.


So for a big client, like our travel clients


are pretty big clients, we might spend like 1,500 pounds


promoting a big one on a single platform.


So $2,500 to $3,000, there or thereabouts.


So you'll spend $3,000 promoting a piece of content


and then with the hope that that eventually leads to brand


recognition, traction, sign-ups.


How do you calculate ROI on that?


How do you convince a client to do ROI on that?


Set goals first.


So we set targets with a client and say, for this project,


we want x number of social shares, x amount of links,


whatever, tie it back into the overall thing.


And we usually tell our clients targets


that are actually lower than our internal targets.


But don't tell them.


So we take targets like that and then we've hit tangible,


deliverable objectives.


And it's our job just to make sure that hitting those


does tie into the overall objective.


So our clients are pretty good like that


as long as they've got here is what we will deliver.


That's very impressive.


Thank you.


Under promise, over deliver.


OK, exactly.


Last question.


I have a question about the 635 format.


What if you have a team that is around the world?


Because I do knowledge content creation for the knowledge


management space and they're all around the world.


Is there a way to do that where they wouldn't all


be in the same room?


You probably could.


You could maybe use some live video streaming


with an online whiteboarding tool for sharing the ideas.


Maybe Google Hangouts or something where


you can do sticky notes while you're on the Hangout.


I think it does need some sort of video collaboration.


But I've never tried it remotely.


So if you do, let me know how it goes.


Stacey, thank you so much for coming.


Thank you.


Cheers.


Keyword Research - The One-Hour Guide to SEO, Part 2

Howdy, Moz fans.


Welcome to another portion of our special edition Whiteboard Friday, the one-hour guide


to SEO.


This is part two, keyword research.


So hopefully you've already seen our SEO strategy session from last week.


And what we want to do in keyword research is talk about why keyword research is required.


Why do I have to do this task prior to doing any SEO work?


The answer is fairly simple.


If you don't know which words and phrases people type into Google or YouTube or Amazon


or Bing, whatever search engine you're optimizing for, you're not going to be able to know how


to structure your content.


You won't be able to get into the searcher's brain, into their head, to imagine and empathize


with them what they actually want from your content.


And you probably won't do correct targeting, which will mean your competitors who are doing


keyword research are choosing wise search phrases, right?


Wise words and terms, terms and phrases that searchers are actually looking for, and you


might be unfortunately optimizing for words and phrases that no one is actually looking


for or not as many people are looking for or that are much more difficult than what


you can actually rank for.


So let's talk about some of the big goals, big picture goals of keyword research.


First off, we are trying to understand the search demand landscape so we can craft better


SEO strategies.


Let me just paint a picture for you.


I was helping a startup here in Seattle, Washington a number of years ago, this was probably a


couple of years ago, called Crowd Cow.


Crowd Cow is an awesome company.


They basically will deliver beef from small ranchers, small farms, straight to your doorstep.


I personally am a big fan of steak and I don't really love the quality of the stuff that


I can get from the store.


I don't love the mass-produced sort of industry around beef.


I think there's a lot of Americans who feel that way.


And so working with small ranchers directly where they're sending it straight from their


farms is kind of an awesome thing.


But when we looked at the SEO picture for Crowd Cow, for this company, what we saw was


that there was more search demand for competitors of theirs, people like Omaha Steaks, which


you might have heard of, there was more search demand for them than there was for buy steak


online, buy beef online, buy ribeye online, even things like just shop for steak or steak


online, right, these broad keyword phrases.


The branded terms of their competition had more search demand than all of the keywords,


the specific keywords, the unbranded generic keywords put together.


That is a very different picture from a world like soccer jerseys where I spent a little


bit of keyword research time today looking and basically the brand names in that field


do not have nearly as much search volume as the generic terms for soccer jerseys and custom


soccer jerseys and football clubs, particular jerseys, right.


These generic terms have much more volume, which is a totally different kind of SEO that


you're doing, right.


One is very, oh, we need to build our brand, we need to go out into this marketplace and


create demand.


The other one is, hey, we need to serve existing demand already.


So you've got to understand your search demand landscape so that you can present to your


executive team and your marketing team or your client, whoever it is, hey, this is what


the search demand landscape looks like and here's what we can actually do for you.


Here's how much demand there is.


Here's what we can serve today versus we need to grow our brand.


Next goal of keyword research, we want to create a list of terms and phrases that we


can then use to match our marketing goals and achieve rankings.


We want to make sure that the rankings that we promise, right, the keywords that we say


we're going to try and rank for actually have real demand, that we can actually optimize


for them and potentially rank for them or in the case where that's not true, there are


too difficult, right, they're too hard to rank for or organic results don't really show


up in those types of searches and we should go after paid or maps or images or videos


or some other type of search result.


We also want to prioritize those keyword investments.


So we're doing the most important work, the highest ROI work in our SEO universe first.


There's no point in going after, you know, spending hours and months going after a bunch


of keywords that if we had just chosen these other ones we could have achieved much better


results in a shorter period of time.


And finally, we want to take all the keywords that matter to us and match them to the pages


on our site.


If we don't have matches we need to create that content.


If we do have matches but they are suboptimal, not doing a great job of answering that searcher's


query, well, we need to do that work as well.


If we have a page that matches but we haven't done our keyword optimization, which we'll


talk a little bit more about in a future video, we've got to do that too.


So an important part of understanding how search engines work is to have this – we're


going to start down here and then we'll come back up – is to have this understanding


that when you perform a query on a mobile device or a desktop device Google shows you


a vast variety of results.


Ten, fifteen years ago this was not the case, right?


We searched fifteen years ago for soccer jerseys.


What did we get?


Ten blue links.


I think unfortunately in the minds of many search marketers and many people who are unfamiliar


with SEO they still think of it that way.


How do I rank number one?


The answer is, well, there's a lot of things number one can mean today and we need to be


careful about what we're optimizing for.


So if I search for soccer jersey I get these shopping results from Macy's and Soccer.com


and all these other places.


Google sort of has this sliding box of shopping, sponsored shopping results.


Then they've got advertisements below that notated with this tiny green little ad box.


Then below that there's a couple of organic results, what we would call classic SEO, right?


Ten blue links style organic results.


There's two of those.


Then there's a box of maps results that show me local soccer stores in my region, which


is a totally different kind of optimization, right?


Local SEO.


So I need – you need to make sure that you understand and that you can convey that understanding


to everyone on your team that these different kinds of results mean different types of SEO.


Now I've done some work recently over the last few years with a company called Jumpshot.


They collect clickstream data from millions of browsers around the world and millions


of browsers here in the United States.


So they're able to provide some broad overview numbers collectively across the billions of


searches that are performed on Google every day in the United States.


The clickthrough rates look something like this.


For mobile devices, on average, paid results get 8.7 percent of all clicks.


Organic results get about 40 percent, a little under 40 percent of all clicks, and zero-click


searches, where a searcher performs a query but doesn't click anything.


Google essentially either answers the results in there or the searcher is so unhappy with


the potential results that they don't bother clicking anything.


That is 62 percent, right?


So a vast, vast majority of searches on mobile are no-click searches.


On desktop, it's a very different story.


It's sort of inverted.


So paid, 5.6 percent.


I think people are a little savvier about which result they should be clicking on desktop.


Organic, 65 percent, right?


So much, much higher than mobile.


And zero-click searches, 34 percent, so considerably lower.


There's a lot more clicks happening on a desktop device.


That being said, right now, we think it's around 60-40.


So meaning 60 percent of queries on Google at least happen on mobile, 40 percent happen


on desktop.


Somewhere in those ranges might be a little higher or lower.


Another important and critical thing to understand about the keyword research universe and how


we do keyword research is that there's a sort of search demand curve, right?


So for any given universe of keywords, there are essentially some, a small number, right,


maybe a few to a few dozen keywords that have millions or hundreds of thousands of searches


every month.


Something like soccer or Seattle Sounders, right?


Those have tens, hundreds of thousands, even millions of searches every month in the United


States.


But people searching for Sounders FC away jersey customizable, there are very, very


few searches per month, but there are millions, even billions of keywords like this.


When Sundar Pichai, Google's current CEO, was testifying before Congress just a few


months ago, he told Congress that 20 percent, around 20 percent, of all searches that Google


receives each day, they have never seen before.


No one's ever performed them in the history of the search engine.


I think maybe that number's closer to 18 percent.


But that is just a remarkable sum, and it tells you about the long tail, right, what


we call the long tail of search demand.


Essentially tons and tons of keywords, millions or billions of keywords that are only searched


for one time per month, five times per month, ten times per month.


If you want to get into this next layer, what we call the chunky middle in the SEO world,


this is where there are thousands, tens of thousands of keywords potentially in your


universe, but they only have between, say, 50 and a few hundred searches per month.


And then this fat head has only a few keywords.


There's only one keyword like soccer or soccer jersey, right, which is actually probably


more like the chunky middle, right, but it has hundreds of thousands or millions of searches.


The fat head is higher competition and broader intent.


What do I mean by broader intent?


That means when someone performs a search for soccer, you don't know what they're looking


for.


The likelihood that they want a customizable soccer jersey right that moment is very, very


small.


They're looking for something much broader, and it's hard to know exactly their intent.


However, as you drift down into the chunky middle and into the long tail where there's


fewer keywords – sorry, where there's more keywords but fewer searches for each keyword,


your competition gets much lower.


There's fewer people trying to compete and rank for those because they don't know to


optimize for them, and there's more specific intent.


Customizable Sounder's FCOA jersey is very clear.


I know exactly what I want.


I want to order a customizable jersey from the Seattle Sounders away, right, the particular


colors that the away jersey has, and I want to be able to put my logo on there or my name


on the back of it, what have you.


So super specific intent.


As a result, you need to figure out what the map of your universe looks like so that you


can present that, and we need to be able to build a list that looks something like this.


You should, at the end of the keyword research process – and we featured a screenshot from


Moz's Keyword Explorer, which is a tool that I really like to use and I find super helpful


whenever I'm helping companies, even now that I've left Moz and been gone for a year.


I still sort of use Keyword Explorer because the volume data is so good and it puts all


this stuff together.


However, there are two or three other tools that a lot of people like, one from Ahrefs,


which I think also has the name Keyword Explorer, and one from SEMrush, which I like, although


some of the volume numbers, at least in the United States, are not as good as what I might


hope for.


There are a number of other tools that you could check out as well.


A lot of people like Google Trends, which is totally free and interesting for some of


that broad volume data.


So I might have terms like soccer jersey, Sounders FC jersey, custom soccer jersey,


right for Seattle Sounders, and then I'll have these columns.


Volume – because I want to know how many people search for it.


Difficulty – how hard will it be to rank, right?


If it's super difficult to rank and I have a brand new website and I don't have a lot


of authority, well, maybe I should target some of these other ones first that are lower


difficulty.


Organic click-through rate – just like we talked about back here, there are different


levels of click-through rate and the tools – at least Moz's Keyword Explorer tool


– uses jump shot data on a per-keyword basis to estimate what percent of people are going


to click the organic results.


Should you optimize for it?


Well, if the click-through rate is only 60%, pretend that instead of 100 searches, this


only has 60, or 60 available searches for your organic clicks.


Ninety-five percent, though, great, awesome.


All four of those monthly searches are available to you.


This value – how useful is this to your business?


Then set some type of priority to determine.


So I might look at this list and say, hey, for my new soccer jersey website, this is


the most important keyword.


I want to go after a custom soccer jersey for each team in the U.S. and then I'll


go after team jersey and then I'll go after customizable away jerseys and then maybe I'll


go after soccer jerseys because it's just so competitive, so difficult to rank for.


There's a lot of volume, but the search intent is not as great.


The business value to me is not as good, right, all those kinds of things.


Last but not least, I want to know the types of searches that appear – organic, paid.


Do images show up?


Does shopping show up?


Does videos show up?


Do maps results show up?


If those other types of search results, like we talked about here, show up in there, I


can do SEO to appear in those places too.


That could be – that could yield in certain keyword universes a strategy that is very


image-centric or very video-centric, which means I've got to do a lot of work on YouTube,


or very map-centric, which means I've got to do a lot of local SEO or other kinds like


this.


Once you build a keyword research list like this, you can begin the prioritization process


and the true work of creating pages, mapping the pages you already have to the keywords


that you've got, and optimizing in order to rank.


We'll talk about that in part three next week.


MozCon 2015 - 10 - Expertly Curate Owned Audience Cookie Pools with Marty Weintraub

Hi.


Hi.


It would be traditional in situations like this when someone comes out the end of a long


day and they say hi, you will say hi back.


Let's try it again.


Hi and you say.


Hi back.


Okay.


It's kind of a test.


See where we are.


I think you guys might be one of the most beautiful audiences in the whole world.


Look at all you beautiful marketers.


So this, yeah.


Yeah.


Now that is agile and responsive and efficient.


Unrehearsed again.


Filled with unrehearsed moments.


So it's awesome to be in Seattle and I'm just looking at this title here.


Ultimate.


So that's a pretty big promise to make.


So it's like a casual or mostly ultimate search and social mashup.


Just like that word.


It's like hacks or mashup or whatever.


And expertly, expertly.


Not casually or sort of curate which means keep track of owned which means it's a brand


asset that belongs to me.


Audiences.


Collecting people.


Audiences and cookie pools.


So that's kind of buggy and stuff.


Especially after a whole day of MozCon.


Like what is that?


I mean it's all too much for me.


I'm trying to keep track of everything that I'm learning here and thank God there's like


Rand to save us.


Thank you Rand.


You are at the center of the blue eyeball.


You are the center of my blue eyeball.


You got it?


Raise your hand if it's not your job to make money with SEO and social and PPC and retargeting


and data and business automation and cookies and blah blah blah vomit.


Raise your hand if it's not your job to make money.


Right?


Because that's what we do.


We make money.


We're marketers so we figure out how to sell things.


And there seems to be a suggestion out there that you cannot make money with social.


So that's pretty cool.


I like that because there's more money making in social like for us who know what to do.


And the secret is you have to integrate the flanks if you will.


Anybody ever search for a steak map cow?


Steak map cow.


It's like you know there's the social stake.


The search stake.


The mistake.


The stakeholder.


Just kidding.


So I have the pleasure each year of judging some of the awards like a couple of European


search awards in Reykjavik in Berlin and then a couple of US search awards and in 2013


like my whole office was fortunate and grateful to have me receive the US Search Personality


of the Year award on behalf of my whole office.


And you know what the real cool thing you get from that particular thing is?


You get to see 230 agencies case studies from all around the world every single year.


And the tactics that I'm going to share with you today they're prevalent all over the world.


Europe is kind of actually a little ahead and like in my opinion.


But all over the world people are using hybrid tactics like what I'm going to share with


you.


And the data is really really clear.


Like there's no question in well in my mind that the way I'm going to share mashing up


search and social and paid and organic and SEO and everything there is like a tactic


that binds all this stuff together.


Every award in the short list that was a blend of paid and organic and social for this year's


European search where it had some component of what I will share with you because the


reality is is that if you give us tools if you give us money if you give us people like


you to help lead thinking and all we're going to think of cool shit to do aren't we are


we going to think a cool shit to do give me a yes right.


We do cool shit we're marketers.


So I want to spend a few minutes on this slide uncharacteristically for me.


The yellow line I'm sorry the orange line at the top the upper left see that little


orange line that's cost per that's cost per final conversion in a lead generation environment


and the blue line are leads and the red lines are final conversions.


Let's just get with this concept.


So you'll see at the very beginning in the upper left it costs way too freaking much


money and we're getting a lot of leads but they're not particularly bright leads or great


leads.


So the amount we're spending and the amount of leads we're generating aren't converting


reciprocally to second tier conversion.


So this is a lead gen analogy but it works in any multi stage conversion process which


is what content and social often is.


So you'll see as we go on in time the amount we spend to get a lead lowers rather dramatically


until it settles into an efficient mode right there where the CPA is nice and low we're


generating the right amount of leads and we're getting reasonably priced conversion.


That's the model we look for as marketers any time we have two steps in a conversion


whether we're talking about pay per click retargeting content discovered by SEO and


retargeting anything any combination leads that become sales.


Okay so these are the three things I'm going to share during my time.


How many people have ever seen me speak before?


Raise your hand.


How many people were at MozCon in 2012 and saw Rand come out and sit on the stage with


me?


That's the way the internet turned out to be.


It is.


So we're going to talk a little bit about gleaning social intent especially in paid


amplification targeting and just selling with psychographics.


Psychographics who we are.


What makes us up?


Biased affinities, prokivities, biases, politics, sexuality, occupation, net worth, liquid net


worth and lots of really cool big data objects that you can layer to make us who we are and


I want to help you with like that first stage because the first thing you want to do is


just sell right away.


Then number two I think that social media marketers are going to have a whole new set


of expectations placed on them in terms of their place in the marketing process so we'll


talk about those responsibilities and then finally we'll take a three year later pass


at filtered retargeting and social marketers who push content with amplification to psychographics


and then turn the audiences over as curated cookie pools for performance marketers to


run search campaigns to, to follow around with a different set of filtering or whatever.


Okay so I just lost the first little part of you but don't worry I'll take you back


to that.


So number one we're marketers.


We sell things.


Put me in an elevator and if we can't sell it in an elevator we're not going to do it


on the internet very well unless it requires a lot more information right.


So selling with psychographic data.


The reality is is if you buy targeting in Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, DataLogix,


Epsilon, BlueKai, any data service if you drive someone to your website you are buying


the list.


You don't have to score with them right away.


You could just build out a test audience and then do whatever you want to them until you're


done right.


Curating humans so, so you have to think about buying a high profile psychographic to your


site as a way to hold on to those users and there's lots of amazing things you could do


with it and it's more than the mainstream channels.


Obviously Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn they've got really incredible data and if


I was going to like invest in ad tech that's probably I'd put my money in those companies


and Oracle.


It seems to be buying up data services.


The reality is that when it comes to psychographic selling we think about these mainstream social


channels but there is dozens, dozens of boutique agencies and some of them have such unreal


data that seems like one side of the room is the NSA and the other side of the room


is you shouldn't click on my ad because I'll associate it with your customer record.


The worst thing you can do on the internet right now is click on someone's ad and become


a known customer because they're sharp.


They're collecting you.


So let's do an analogy of like really active and well rooted psychographic personas.


It doesn't matter what channels we're in.


We'll make this one channel agnostic as a concept.


So let's start with home square footage.


That one is available on Facebook.


Say I'm like selling homes right.


Target people homes right.


Then you can find out the let me take a step back because I got excited.


We're selling home mortgages here.


So we start with the square footage of the house.


The year of the home loan that's pretty cool data.


We're layering it so it's the and operator.


Then we go OK so they make more than like a buck twenty five or they have high household


income.


So the data objects are coming from different places and we're layering them in a program


like trade desk or something like that.


And now let's throw in they like online investment and trading so they're likely to be susceptible


to do it yourself creative like do it yourself creative.


So that's a pretty tight persona pretty tight but I think you can get deeper using preset


objects but you get the theory right of how we can layer targeting and it reduces the


audience every time.


Say we're marketing a restaurant like you know like twenty two dollar a plate sixteen


to twenty two dollar a plate restaurant.


You could start in Facebook with this data logics behavior.


A lot of the behaviors have money built into them and intent.


They're pretty cool.


And you go this is the thing that is going to root all my personas and I'm going to filter


that because this is MasterCard data.


MasterCard data by way of data logics inside of Facebook.


So we're targeting Facebook network users with data logic objects here from MasterCard.


That's where data logics got the data extensively and the data object is mid range restaurants


non quick serve and over on the right they are high spenders at mid range restaurants


not average spenders they're high spenders right and it's not McDonald's it's non fast


food so this is a really cool place to start right.


But oh and by the way going back that's in America that's fourteen point four million


people and we're after three thousand or three thousand to ten thousand people in a geo with


this targeting then dial in active words right eating at if you're interested in culinary


tourism then you like to go out and do shit culinary tourism dining out with eating out


with you have to be careful about the whole eating out thing in terms of skewing the data.


Sometimes I'm too geeky for my own face that's for sure.


So start with an object in Facebook that really is about intent and financial qualifications


that's a big number and then filter it with active words like spending time keyword with


watching attending visiting touring playing selling going to you know it's really whacked


about the social psychographic sales thing after all this time you know what it is it's


freaking keywords it's like social intent is about keywords it just kind of blows my


mind it's like great SEOs are social marketers for sure keywords what a concept then let's


keep layering on the and operator that you could go for income you could go for a luxury


items you could say that they use their credit cards or whatever and there is a new category


and more demographics and Facebook under the net worth that you can't see until you drill


all the way in that's about liquid net worth liquid freakin net worth not only are they


loaded but they stuff it in their pillows in investable assets.


Thank you God for investable assets as a way of filtering customers on Facebook.


Thank you.


And so that works out to be like several thousand people then if you want to expand you just


relax some of the restrictions right here's another one here's a dual route for a persona


again in the mortgage tips selling mortgages say veterans or something like that so now


I could go there needs to be two root behaviors because there's enough data out there so we


go there interested in mortgages online and they're previously employed by the US military


right mash that together and there's actual numbers remember we're selling refi loans


to vets and originating loans and then you could get active with it right remodeling


my home extreme home makeover right remodeling income property that is a lot of intent.


What's sad is that we know a couple of things we know that the more we focus it the more


we run out of people like every other kind of targeting on earth and so that that specificity


is the enemy of scale and it's easy to talk about this a lot but go into your vertical


and your geo and see exactly how much you can filter it and that's the towel specificity


versus scale is a huge consideration.


Also some marketers when they put thing on walls they're not using units that drive people


external you know if you put a picture that is hosted on Facebook on your Facebook wall


and somebody clicks on it it doesn't mostly go to your website so that seems like kind


of a waste want people on our website we want people on our website.


Leading me to this slide which I actually created this slide for 2012 it's the only


slide in this deck that existed in 2012 and I just want to do a quick thank refresher


about why we even bother with social why we care about content and social we want traffic


to our site we want scalable traffic to our site visitors who are going to do whatever


we want them to do we want to be able to say that if they come to our site that ultimately


they will take the action we want them to take.


We still need links that's why we amplify content to every columnist who works for a


major American newspaper who likes NASCAR or grooved couplings or dental adhesive because


definitely sending content by way of application around the internet to influencers works really


well you need to create social signals so of course I'm going to amplify content to


people who like the onion or have a track record of taking things hot on the internet


we still need likes and follows and shares and if we do all these things then that protects


us from little hummingbirds and penguins and pandas that like nip us on the ass and make


for conversations like oh no I've been bit by a hummingbird.


I don't know if technically a hummingbird can actually bite anybody ever been bitten


by a hummingbird.


God.


I want the person who names the drugs for the pharmaceutical company.


I want that job.


A long time ago when I had cancer there was like this shot you had to get every week it


was called new blast a new blast.


And then while I was ill and recovering and I'm perfectly fine now of course they invented


the shot that made it last for a whole month and it was called new last.


I wonder how much they paid a PR company for that shit.


So if you're a social marketer if you work for me there are some things we expect.


We expect that if we spend any money time effort content creation anything sending people


to a Web page that we own we want you to turn those users over to the performance marketers


to operate on.


The good news is it works really well to run search campaigns by way of our LSA remarketing


list for search ads.


If you run remarketing lists for search ads to people who were on your site for content


theoretically it should convert better than just the plain keyword to everybody or else


our branding doesn't work.


And I don't think anybody would ever say that branding doesn't work even though in previous


generations of marketing we could not prove that as well.


New expectations.


You can find this on aim clear blog aim clear blog.


That is the root of this talk this blog post.


It's the notion that whenever we drive people to our website whether it's for a big keyword


that matters to us that costs a lot of money or whether it's a social audience we want


to ask ourselves is there any reason to keep track of this audience other than just dumping


it all in some big dumb ass retargeting bucket of everybody who touched a page.


You know the metaphor right.


Wait we should take a breath.


We've reached the halfway point and it's traditional to take a breath at this time.


Ready any.


OK ready in wise out.


I feel cleansed.


How about you.


You feel it.


Do you feel it.


It's last here after you had a whole day of egghead Mozcon.


So you know how I fixed it for me.


Half the slides I would usually put in this space half.


So you know the concept where we just go oh the page is how we target retargeting like


I search for a trip to Heathrow from Minneapolis and then I go into Facebook.


You know I'm on the page like Minneapolis St. Paul to Heathrow Minneapolis St. Paul's


my home airport.


So for one thing British Airways needs to make that about England and Heathrow in that


ad and not bury in the text.


But the point is the targeting for the retargeting retargeting is just targeting but the targeting


for the retargeting was that I touched that page and so the ad is still customized in


little gray text.


I almost can't see United Kingdom is the last word on the lower right.


Tell me SEOs do we put the most important words in the last words in the lower right.


No no.


Airbnb is really good at it.


Airbnb is really cool at it.


I'm looking for an Airbnb so I can go musky fishing in Hayward Wisconsin and I go to read


the Star Tribune to see what the weather is going to be in there working to sell me Airbnb.


And then there's the companies that assault you as if you are a criminal being pursued


in the Black Forest where you have the misfortune to click on an ad and go to a landing page


because your car broke and it's freezing out.


Get away from me I already bought something.


Page as the metaphor right.


I had the misfortune to touch a page right or funnel retargeting like the page is the


metaphor I get to step three of the funnel and I bail before the end and so they send


me a better offer or why did you leave our funnel you creepy boy.


How about if the ad says you left our funnel and we're going to hunt down your parents.


My segue to the digital marketing industry was from CBS where I helped make early broadcast


television websites in the early and mid 90s and we always thought we should make a thing


for the news.


Watch our news or will harm this puppy.


I love animals.


I kid I kid I kid.


So now there is a new way of thinking about retargeting other than just I hit that page


and I'm going to be abused.


And it's segmenting it.


Listen you know how you lump all your retargeting for the landing page from all the keywords


into like one page and shit.


Why not separate out the $50 ones the the 92 percent that don't convert because obviously


immediately following those suckers has a little more financial weight than your program.


Why not separate those out and run our LSA informational campaigns that cost 20 cents


as they nibble around the edges and you've already attached their keyword to it.


And in reality you could look at the targeting strengths of any channel either search or


social or whatever and you could go is there anything here that bears separating out for


a different treatment.


Is there anything there.


And oftentimes there is.


Like if you're the algorithm if you're algorithmically the best known and most traffic outfitter


at the end of the gun Flint trail in Minnesota in the Boundary Waters.


Anybody here know what the Boundary Waters are.


Yeah.


Segal outfitters.


They're our client.


I experiment them on them a lot.


It's the only trade that aim clear has and with really good reason.


And I wouldn't want to be any of the other outfitters.


They curate their cookie pools as people who love the Boundary Waters they live in Minnesota


they buy fishing and outdoor equipment and they make money or they love the Boundary


Waters there anywhere in America they buy fishing and outdoor shit and they have money


or they're the hot states and fishing and outdoors or they're all over the world with


no other filtering and they make money everywhere except America.


Right and what's pretty cool is we could run search campaigns just to these people.


It's really fairly easy.


OK.


Anybody can anybody tell me what kind of fish that is please.


What kind of bass.


Nice.


That's good.


Now it's going to get hard.


What about this one.


We're not really going to talk about marketing I'm just going to show you my freaking fishing


pictures and I just like to point out that I'm showing really big fish and I didn't catch


any of them not any of them.


So just like brand terms are a brand asset I think of our good friend Bill Hunt who worked


at IBM for many years and he always said be in a search marketer IBM was somewhere between


being a mediator and a rodeo clown because who gets the keyword IBM what business division


then how do you decide what business division gets IBM.


So the answer is first who's going to lose their job if they don't get IBM and then he


had this whole system.


And so if you sell dental adhesive to orthodontist that all practices of a certain size or chapstick


to ski instructor or pizza to people that smoke weed in London in the middle of the


night and you drive those people into your landing page and you convert a prodigal amount


most often from social not enough conversion at too high a cost and the low cost stuff


there's not enough of it scale specificity specificity scale seems like kind of a mambo


sort of thing scale specificity.


So you look at these primary audiences that are vertical eyes per our clients or your


business anyway and you go who owns that audience who owns the $50 keyword chunk to follow it


around.


So segmented retargeting is the second thing and it makes a whole ton of sense filtered


retargeting.


So this was Marscon in 2012.


It was like six months before before remarketing came out and the only retargeting in the world


that was really effective at the time was kind of Adroll I mean there were other services


but that was the one we kind of all understood and I spoke to the crowd here at Marscon and


I talked about psychographics and retargeting and filtered retargeting and pages the metaphor


and thinking about it was really hard to explain and Rand came out on the stage and sat with


me and said Marty I sense that you're saying something that will somehow be important or


even revolutionary I mean you guys think that's true in the audience when yeah I'm looking


at 800 people and ego raise your hand if you don't have any idea what the fuck Marty's


saying.


And I look at my face I mean I'm just like looks like I just saw a ghost or ate raw liver


or it was really and then I went back under the soundboard and curled up in the fetal


position for like about 15 minutes and suck my thumb and tried not to cry.


And then for three years I got phone calls from marketers saying holy shit then I made


ten million dollars and that's the way the Internet turned out to be actually because


all I was trying to say is if you retarget everybody that comes to your e-commerce site


why not retarget the ones that are rich and love to buy that shit.


That was the most harrowing moment of my life.


Just like I was here and I was kind of here then I was kind of here.


I think I need to have a moment with this.


Well how bad would it be if I tripped and fell off the stage and broke my face it would


be bad.


Then when remarketing came out I went I knew it.


I knew it.


People who visited your site or app filtered by analytics.


It became kind of obvious in those days that marketing isn't really actually like a funnel


it's more like a bong.


Well it is Washington isn't it.


No smuggling on this road trip.


You know what's really cool when you're on an airplane and you want to keep being on


your smartphone just put on earbuds and just go like that while you screw up your phone


and they think you're just listening to like something leave your phone on longer.


That's the most valuable tip of the talk.


You drive stuff into your marketing system on the right from psychographics social targeting


display displays as old as the freaking moon targeting is just way better now or from search


and then you do your best to convert in the chamber and then if you don't convert then


you kind of shoot it up again and it comes back down in I mean it's not really a bong


I mean it just looks like a bong I mean my artist did it and I went that's a bong but


doesn't really work like a bong I mean you know blow it back in or anything.


Don't tell my mom.


So I can drive someone in from a psychographics segment and then I could retarget them filtered


by search remarketing lists for search ads anybody here use our LSA of course you do


of course people do raise your hand if you use our SLA raise your hand if you just don't


like raising your hand and you use our SLA raise your hand if you want me to shut up


my face about raising your hand.


OK thanks.


So that's pretty cool because that that's where you drive someone into your Web site


who works for one of three thousand companies and run adwords campaigns filtered by occupational


psychographics or it means you drive in all your sports people who are loving moms and


like to take their daughters mountain climbing and then run adwords campaigns to them or


follow them or follow them filtered by something where we retarget retargeting where you start


with social and then you run adwords campaigns to those people puts the credential social


behind the inquiry search the credential behind the inquiry or you could drive someone in


from your big keyword and filter that by psychographics.


Here's an example.


The keyword is Nikon binoculars discount which is or something like that that's a very expensive


keyword you drive them into your Web site and ninety two percent of the people do not


convert so you keep track of that audience because it's a super expensive keyword and


these days the first place we go to decide if anything needs a special retargeting treatment


is did it cost way too much to where I don't even want to buy it anymore.


Why buy the data twice I could get that in front of search users for 20 or 30 cents if


it's the right keyword and who cares if it's only friends right.


I know what they want.


They're attached to that big query but you drive them in and now I've got fifty thousand


people say that search for that over the course of like six months or whatever whatever the


scale is I retarget into Facebook and I filter it by people that like to use their credit


cards online and the Audubon Society and I serve them creative that's pictures of looking


at beautiful birds with binoculars because the secret of all of this is that creative


is truly the last mile of psych psychographic segmentation.


And if you're not willing to segment the creative then there is a case to be made to ask why


am I bothering with this shit.


Then drive them in from search.


I said that scenario before big huge money keyword builder remarketing.


You can only do our L.S.A. with Google products at this time unless you build something.


So you drive them in for the big money keyword and then who cares what they're searching


for when I hit them next time if it's even lightly associated because it's only the people


who I purchased buying that big expensive keyword because you see marketing is list


building again.


Whenever we buy keywords or social segments we're buying the data.


And remember that chart we looked at where it started too high.


That's where you're gathering the data and the next part is where you're operating on


them until they do what you want them to do.


And almost every marketer gives up that we've that I know this is not scientific but many


marketers certainly to equivocate many marketers look at that first one and they go this isn't


going to pay for me.


That keyword is not going to work.


That social segments not going to work.


It's way too expensive.


I generate a whole bunch of dumb ass leads and you know they convert but they're not


good etc.


And so as marketers we're going to need to take a longer view of all this stuff.


And of course you could drive someone in from like a psychographic segment and filter that


by anything.


I don't want to get too far in the weeds.


I think you're understanding the great big bong of marketing.


Just like say it's a marketing bong.


That's me when I was six.


That's ridiculous.


So nice to have time.


Oh wait I didn't mean to do that.


OK.


So this is a bit abstract but if I do drive them in because they're nuclear scientists


who live in Europe and I run an AdWords campaign to them searching for ways to defect.


I definitely mean there's no scale there but you get the idea.


Sometimes it frightens me how my mind works.


I'd be scared of me.


Anyway the point is is that if I drive somebody into the Web site for one reason certainly


I can grab those variables from the URL and associate that information with their record.


I mean I know how I targeted them and they came to my Web site and they became a customer


so I've got the data right.


Maybe if I retarget them I can take note by that tagging that I followed them and that


they became a customer.


And certainly if we filter the retargeting we can add the additional variable and build


a dossier basically on users.


And that's the closest I've ever seen in all the bullshit uses of the word persona to actually


building a persona that I can actually own and keep doing shit to until I prove that


we can't figure out what to say to them or nobody cares about the product because at


the end of all of this what you have is are you good enough creatively to sell your shit.


And everything that I'm describing here within many of your careers will be mostly programmatic


except humans will input to targeting concepts because only I know that if I'm going to sell


snow to Eskimos I can sell the lady Eskimos blue snow and say it makes hubby virile and


want to clean up and I can tell the men Eskimos that the red snow makes lady Eskimos want


to dance close.


No machine's going to do that for me yet.


Not in this world.


So targeting and creative and the irony of all this is after all is leveled in the playing


field and we all use these techniques all the time and the systems and you eyes are


built beautifully it's going to come down once again to who says the right shit to sell


a product.


It's pretty exciting.


So a lot of these expressions are kind of overused psychographics.


I like to do a little thing I imagine psychographics psychographics psychographics psychographics


and personas like how many different I have to do a blog post about how many different


bastardized versions of personas like what the hell is a persona.


It's an expression of who people really are maintained with data warehouses where we can


operate on them as marketers anytime we want.


That's a persona.


It's not actually that complicated so sell with Internet wide psychographics not just


Facebook and the main channels.


There's many different ways to use data like that all over the Internet and you could do


anything you need with Facebook and Google and Twitter arguably is really cool.


If you're a social marketer and we ever hire you or you ever hire me you have to go Hey


all this money we're spending on content amplification.


How about if you hand over the cookie pool and I'll run ad words to these people for


a while when we're done and double edged sword.


What if it doesn't work.


What if my branding doesn't do anything.


What if I use it to focus up my content by seeing what kind of content touches and up


being customers in our LSA campaigns.


And then keep in mind that retargeting doesn't have to be big and dumb.


Listen if a thousand people come to your Web site a week then retargeting has to be very


general everyone who touches the whole site.


If you're Amazon dot com then you can filter retargeting in layers and find where it is


in your case study.


Find where it is.


So we have a super secret psychographic social distribution weekly tip sheet social psychographic


social distribution weekly tip sheet.


We never market to you.


You can email me just email me Marty at aim clear dot com and I'll route you.


Also I just turned my Twitter profile at aim clear over to my company and I'm at Marty


white job and I think I have about six followers.


It was stark.


It was like having my identity stripped like all my hair.


So with that I'll just say you guys are like some of the most beautiful marketers like


in the whole world.


I can't even tell you what it means to me to be able to speak with you here at Mars


Con and see so many great minds and just think how much media spend would be screwed up if


they knew to this room.


So with that I'll say thank you and if there's any questions we'll answer them.


I'll stay around as well and be at the networking event to holy shit.


That was pretty slow for me wasn't that.


That was half the slides in twice the time.


No sitting on the floor this time.


I have PTSD from that shit.


Holy shit.


Oh my God.


And then PTSD though you have to it to truly have PTSD.


You have to actually avoid something.


But I seem to go back to the scene of the crime.


You do.


You do seem to go back to the scene of the crime.


Marty I think once again you told me amazing stuff.


Thank you.


You told all of us amazing stuff.


But I only understood 20 percent of it.


That 20 percent made me very excited.


But I think the 80 percent can blow my mind.


Well I'm not disappointed about that this year.


Excellent.


OK.


So I'm going to say what I think I heard and you're going to tell me if I was right.


You're right.


Let's try this again.


I'm going to tell you.


All right.


So in 2012 you told us the Internet will soon allow us to market to people who visited our


Web sites and performed particular actions.


And you told us that the Internet would let us market to people who've taken actions not


even on our Web sites like on social networks through search through what they visited on


the Web.


Basically by the list.


You buy the list.


Now you're telling me that have this right.


You're telling me that I don't even I don't have to choose just one of those.


I can combine all of them together in a huge variety of ways.


So I can basically say anyone I ever touch or anyone who touches you whoever touches


me or touches any of these networks or search terms I can now combine them.


Yeah.


So you can take the keyword and when you follow those people you could say only the rich ones


or you could take the rich ones who have a certain job and like a certain thing and market


content to them and then run ad words campaigns to those people.


And I can take anyone who visits my site or any part of my site and then I can filter


by demographic psychographic by search keyword and and I can choose the creative.


So your point at the end there was basically all you have to do is find the right creative


because we know everything about that.


Targeting and distribution aren't the problem anymore.


Like targeting is like empirical and distribution is ubiquitous and following is filtered.


Targeting is empirical.


Totally.


Because there's so much data particularly in America.


The Europeans have their panties all bunched up about data.


Because they have a lot more privacy issues.


You've been saying to people in America for like about eight years buy your list now before


politics shuts it off.


Buy your list now.


So basically basically what it means is that anytime you do what you would consider traditional


social targeting which everybody can relate to and we all can relate to following those


people around.


But now following them around means you can run an ad words campaign to them and it works


coming from the keyword side too.


You take a very like why wouldn't you filter out your $55 keywords and make them a special


class because if they're served up right away they're $55 freaking keywords.


But now I can take them and I can say only show the $55 keywords to this particular.


Yes.


It's remarkable in itself that one would consider just separating out expensive keywords for


money and follow them at all.


Then you can put a keyword filter on it.


When you follow you put you could put not a keyword you could put a filter on that when


you follow them and say not the ones that have bad credit.


That's awesome.


Okay.


Each part's pretty remarkable.


So this is how you achieve that first slide that you showed which was basically you took


the cost per click from way too high to way down low and you took the number of people


or the percent of people who got from a first conversion to final conversion way up.


Right.


It's pretty neat because.


So higher conversion rate plus lower cost per acquisition.


Yeah.


And all I have to do is filter and filter and filter.


Basically almost all paid media search or social is too little conversion at too high


a cost.


And the stuff that you can afford there's too little of it.


Otherwise you would be the biggest company in the world and not Google.


Because they're not going to give you anything that's ROI positive at scale.


They're going to make.


And do you not think that Google could layer like custom affinity audiences on the first


hop for search.


Like Twitter does.


Yes.


Like so what's happening here is we've passed the point of innovation where it devolves


to keep us at bay.


Because Google could absolutely go yep it's a keyword and a custom affinity audience and


you know what would happen.


We'd have like 45 percent click through rate and shit.


And CPAs would be crushing.


We'd keep our money instead of Google.


Like so they make you combine the data with these bullshit layers with remarketing.


So you're just saying you're just telling us how to do that extra work.


And the two tools that make this real for you to do it today people are re Google remarketing


where it's very easy to segment out individual cookie pools.


Don't go segmentation crazy you have to lump a lot of stuff together but select things


to segment out and Facebook retargeting that just lets you retarget into Facebook native


with additional Facebook targeting including custom audiences.


Can I take can I take the custom audiences and then put that in my own remarketing pool


like with Adroll or something like that.


There is all kinds of different tools out there in this world that let you take pieces


of data about people and create look alike concepts.


What do you what do you guys use it in clear.


That's what I always say to like Google just to piss them off.


What what do we use.


So we use a lot of Facebook native and various API tools the same ones that people here use.


And we and we we invent we invented a device called retrocket that that helps us manage


like we created a push button appliance that's the top of the funnel and the bottom of the


funnel.


So you press three buttons on the left and it drives in our segmented top and then you


turn them off and press three buttons on the right.


And it it has just that's custom built.


Yeah it's custom built.


But you don't need to custom yes what we use but you don't need to custom build it at all.


You could do it you could leave here today.


Anybody here native do native retargeting into Facebook where you just follow in.


It's the best retargeting it's great retargeting right.


Go up to more demographics and filter it by anything over thirty thousand dollars and


just start by saying they make some money right.


And then what's really cool is that if you try to sell with that shit first you find


out if if there is a segment in Facebook you can use to sell a pizza or a mortgage or a


nine hundred million dollar water treatment plant.


That's the same targeting that's going to work as a filter when you retarget everything


else.


You pilot your if you're at scale and you have a lot of visitors technically speaking


your direct response social targeting is what you can filter site wide retargeting for and


it's it's dead eye.


It's crazy as shit.


Like it's just dead eye.


Marty can almost explain it this year round.


I feel like I get the other 80 percent.


Thank you.


Thanks.


I love you.


Thank you Seattle.


We love you Seattle.


The Tie That Binds: Why Email Is the Key to Maximizing Marketing ROI [MozCon 2017] — Justine Jordan

Hey, hey there, everybody. How's it going? Good, good? So Ronelle already said I'm here


to talk about the tie that binds, why email is the key to maximizing your email marketing


ROI. And I'm Justine. So hello there. That was the look on my face when they asked me


to come back and present at MozCon again. I was like, ugh, right? I had to change my


hair and my glasses just to make sure you guys wouldn't recognize me this time. But


I'm Melodori on Twitter and litmus is litmus app. I'm really privileged to be able to be


back here and be able to talk to you guys again so the more you tweet, maybe more I


can come back next year. So the slides and a lot of the resources I'm going to talk about


are already up on a landing page. I always say that if you take a picture of one slide


today, this is the picture or the slide that you want to do it on. So it's litmus.com.


I'll show it again at the end. Just so you know.


All right. So I have been a huge fan of Karma for years. They saw these beautifully designed


Wi‑Fi hotspots and the data to go along with it. In fact, I first heard about Karma


from a friend several years ago. They'd reached this ultimate phase of the marketing funnel


where they turned into an advocate. They exposed me to the brand. I converted as a customer


and then I became an advocate too. Amazing. Their value prop from day one was pay as you


go. You didn't have to sign a contract or pay a monthly fee. You just got this Wi‑Fi


hotspot that worked all the time and didn't really have any strings attached. It solved


a really unique consumer problem. And their branded marketing communications backed it


up. The subject lines on their e‑mails were amazing. Magical even. They notified me when


I earned extra data whenever I shared my Wi‑Fi hotspot with other people in public. And they


also encouraged me to get outside when the weather was nice. You know, I've actually


worked on a park bench with my Wi‑Fi hotspot before. It's kind of an amazing experience.


It seemed like their e‑mails were always about you and never about them. My inbox was


just full of all this love and good karma. So the love didn't stop at the inbox. It continued


with great copywriting and customer centric value in the e‑mails themselves. They talk


about their commitment to you, the customer, and all the value that they're bringing you


by bringing you online whenever and wherever you want. It never felt like they were selling


you something. So when they did finally go to sell you something, it didn't really feel


like it. It just felt like, you know, good karma. One of my favorite e‑mails of all


time, like seriously of all time, not just from karma, but any e‑mail I've ever received


is this one. It looks really simple. It just says, hey, your karma battery is dying. But


the brilliance of it is that they wanted me to recharge it. Because the more I kept using


the karma hotspot, the more I was getting value from it as a customer, but the more


data I had to buy from them. It was a win‑win proposition. It was benefiting them and it


was benefiting me. They were creating a ton of goodwill with customers by doing their


branding and marketing communications this way. And they were fulfilling the promise


of their brand name. They were creating good karma. It was like this amazing feedback loop


of just pure goodness. You know, we toil away at e‑mail because


we feel like it's something that we just have to do. Like it's another box in our marketing


arsenal that we have to check. And we don't really think anybody notices it or pays attention


or might not have that much impact. Like who cares about opens and clicks anyway, right?


But the more great e‑mails that karma put out into the universe, the more good karma


they got in return. This is what we want, right? This is doing our jobs as marketers.


This is brilliant. This is good work. The kind of marketing that really no one kind


of sees but occasionally people tweet about positively. I know I like that kind of marketing


when it happens to me at Litmus. So our jobs as marketers is to sit at the


intersection between what our customers need and what our business needs and act as a translator


between the two. Whenever we can overlap the needs of our audience with the needs of our


business, that's when that magic in marketing becomes really, really powerful. That's good


karma. But then, dun, dun, dun. You know the story


couldn't have a totally happy ending, right? In August of last year, I just kind of stopped


getting those brilliant well branded marketing e‑mails from karma. They just completely


felt silent. I kept getting the transactional e‑mails that told me when people shared


my Wi‑Fi or my battery died. But aside from that, I didn't really get anything anymore


for like four months. But then on Christmas Day, what a great present, they started again.


Well, sort of. Gone was the brilliant copywriting and customer


focus message. In its place was these shouty all cap subject lines that demanded that I


buy more data at a discount. And it was a limited time discount but the discount happened


like every other day. So gone was the customer focus copywriting.


Gone was the value proposition that I had come to expect. And in its place was nothing


but buzz words and vague marketing speak, shouting at me about a grandfather refuel


program that they kept using RGP as an acronym. I'm like, what is this? If I weren't a marketer,


I might not have any idea what they're talking about. It seemed more like an internal marketing


brief that accidentally got sent from their ESP than something that you would actually


want to send your customers on purpose. And their customers noticed. It started off


friendly here with Aaron saying here's some friendly feedback. Your emails look spammy


and use a bunch of foreign terminology. Thanks, Aaron.


Then Stanford chimes in. He says it looks like you got hacked or maybe you fired your


brand and marketing team. Finally, Annika asked, seriously, what happened?


Hey, karma, blink two times if you're in danger. That's my favorite one, too.


So I'm with Annika. Like, seriously, what happened? Their emails went from brilliant


to spammy in just four months. They went from near daily customer value to almost these


promotional shouty emails that didn't really even say anything of meaning. I've never seen


a brand crash so quickly and so far. Clearly the marketing team was given new goals or


maybe a new marketing team was brought in altogether. And they no longer had a brand


and a trust component to their goal setting for their email program. It became painfully


obvious that the goals of their emails were to get clicks, opens, conversions and to get


sales. It got so bad that a customer even penned


an article that said how my favorite company failed me. They started off by saying I wore


Karma's shirts religiously and I believed in the product, the brand and the people behind


it. Then they said everything changed and I have nothing but hatred. That's strong.


The CEO left, a new board took over and changed everything I knew about the product. That's


crazy. All those people on Twitter were right. Something drastic had shifted internally at


Karma and it was completely evident through their email program. That's not because email


is just another box that we have to do. It's not another channel that we feel compelled


to do in the long list of things that we feel obligated to run. Email is a personal medium


and it gets delivered to one of the most personal digital spaces that we have, which is the


inbox. And as email, more than any other channel, it exposes our work as marketers. It exposes


the goals behind our business and our marketing efforts. Our KPIs become really, really obvious


when we send emails like this, for better or for worse.


So good Karma was sending subscriber centric emails that really talked about the value


of the product and were valuable to the customers as well. Bad Karma was sending buzzword laden


emails that had shouty caps and acronyms that no one understands. These emails were the


tie that bound the entire customer experience at Karma together. Their business strategy


pivot became painfully obvious through their email program alone.


So what happened? The user needs part of that Venn diagram just completely fell out of the


equation. So as marketers, we can't focus just on our goals or the goals of our business.


The goals of our business should be to drive lifetime value. But as marketers, sometimes


we get caught in the day to day goals, things like opens, clicks, sometimes even sales.


But our subscribers care about things like value and fun and relevance. So email at Karma


became a box that was checked, a means to an end. Let's be honest, just a way to sell


shit rather than a method of communication. And their email communications just made it


really obvious what was going on. In some respects, we've all become Karma in some ways.


We've lost our way as marketers. We have all these channels and priorities and goals and


processes and tools and KPIs, and that's what we're focused on. We're not always focused


on the long tail or have our eyes on the prize. And we track our progress and we show our


work as marketers based upon getting the open, getting the click, making the sale. Your email


tool probably doesn't have a report that shows lifetime value or brand sentiment online and


how people are reacting to your emails. But you might think it's nothing, but it's really


the tie that binds. The email channel is going to show the nature and the quality of our


work as marketers. So most marketing is really selfish, right? With very few exceptions,


we're not solving world peace or creating, solving world hunger with our emails. But


when we take subscriber trust and magic completely out of the equation, all we're left with is


bad Karma. So I bet those Karma emails had a lot of opens and a lot of clicks, right?


You can even tell by on Twitter, like all those people definitely opened the email because


they had to read it in order to tweet all these nasty things about it. But how many


people unsubscribed? How many people left Karma altogether? What was the revenue impact?


What was the lifetime value impact? Email has this opportunity to make or break our


customer relationships. It shows our work and our intent behind our brand. So my question


to you is, how are you showing your work? How are you showing your intent through your


marketing program? And how do we make sure that our email program reflects the quality


of everything that we want to do? So Vicky is a product manager at Amazon, and she actually


has a really great story to tell about how they shifted their mindset about how customer


goals and business goals align at Amazon. In 2010, a customer contacted Jeff Bezos.


FYI, all of you guys can email Jeff Bezos anytime you want, jeff.amazon.com. Maybe you


can tell him that I'm not here. He doesn't get mad at me. And this customer was really,


really upset. He was browsing the intimacy section of amazon.com. We sell everything,


including intimacy products. And after he had looked at a couple of different products


and made a purchase, we thought it would be really helpful and probably earn some money


if we sent him some recommendations for gels and other intimacy products. And surprise,


this customer didn't feel that was helpful. This customer felt really embarrassed and


offended. I mean, people are looking over his shoulder. He opened it up, and there's


all this stuff in the email. That wasn't at all something that the customer was expecting.


That was a huge trust buster. And Jeff Bezos got really mad at my vice president. He held


a meeting with Steve Schur, who is my org's VP, and he said, I want you to shut down the


channel. We can be a $100 billion company without sending a single email, so who in


this room is going to get up and go turn off email? That's really scary for my job prospects.


We don't have to send anything if it's going to break customer trust. I think this is very


illuminating because it tells us that email is a privilege, not a right. We don't have


to send email. Customers don't have to get recommendations from us. It's just all marketing.


So if we're going to do it, we need to do it right by the customer. We need to pay attention


and listen to how the customer reacts to our marketing. And we need to adjust.


So what does Amazon threaten to do? They threaten to uncheck the email box because if it didn't


meet their subscriber needs, they didn't want to send it. So let's talk about what unchecking


the email box looks like and what you can do to meet your subscribers' needs. My colleague


Chad White has this framework he calls the hierarchy of subscriber needs. It starts off


at the foundation with emails that are simply respectful. Do you have permission to send


them and are they meeting the subscribers' expectations? The next level of the pyramid


are emails that are functional. Do they break when they hit your inbox or do the links of


the images work? Pretty basic stuff, right? Then come valuable emails. Are the emails


targeted? Are they relevant? Are they personalized? The very top of the pyramid are remarkable


emails. And these emails are understandably rare. They're hard to strategize, they're


hard to execute, and you shouldn't send them all the time. But these are the kinds of emails


that get forwarded, they get printed, they get screen shot and shared on social media.


Those are really remarkable experiences. And one of the things that we can look at when


we consider how or if we're meeting our subscribers' needs is something like spam rates. So we


asked 1500 U.S. consumers why they mark emails as spam. A lot of them said that they received


too many or irrelevant emails, they just weren't interested anymore, they didn't subscribe


in the first place, come on, guys, or they couldn't easily unsubscribe. And what's really


interesting is a lot of them said that they'd unsubscribe or they'd mark as spam when they


had a bad customer service experience. This goes back to that idea that our brands are


omni channel, and I hate buzz words, but that notion that a customer doesn't think about


your brand in marketing channels like we do, your customer thinks of your brand as your


brand. They don't differentiate from, you know, the email channel, from the social channel,


from maybe the in store experience. So there is even some evidence in our survey that people


that had a bad customer service experience by something like a cashier at a point of


sale in a brick and mortar store, they go back and mark those emails as spam and retribution,


like a revenge spam later on. Right? That stuff happens. It's kind of crazy. Because,


frankly, we make as marketers unsubscribing way too hard. 40% of the people in that survey


said that it was difficult to unsubscribe from promotional emails. So there's a blog


called dark patterns that showcases examples of strategies that are business focused rather


than customer focused. I found this example there. It was an unsubscribe link that was


white text and a white background. If I can't find that link, guess what? Spam. And 50%


of consumers say it's actually easier to mark you as spam than it is to unsubscribe. That's


crazy, right? So which is kind of funny considering that marketers complain about the very tools


that help consumers manage their inbox in the first place. I remember when this unsubscribe


box was first released for iOS 10 sometime last year, like every marketer I knew was


like freaking out and asking me for advice. Did you freak out? Be honest. Were you like,


oh, my God, this is going to kill my email program. Even this guy on Facebook says this


is not good for marketers. This is why email list marketing is dying a slow death. Here's


my argument. Inbox providers wouldn't have to create those tools if we didn't make it


easy to unsubscribe, if we didn't send people stuff that they wanted to receive in the first


place. This is a reaction to the consumer's need to better manage their inbox, not to


the marketers' need to send them junk. Because really what matters is unsubscribes, right?


Because unsubscribing doesn't hurt your sender reputation, but spam complaints do. You want


to avoid that at all costs. You don't want to hide your unsubscribe button when marketing


is spam is the alternative. Another way that we can make sure that we're


meeting our subscribers' needs is to look at what I call the subscriber experience.


I break this out into two phases, into the inbox and then into the email body. So a lot


of us really focus on the email body. We write great headlines. We decide what images we're


going to use, what kind of copy we want to write. We A B test like C T A's on buttons


to maximize conversions. All that's really good work. But then we do all that work, we


check it in our email tool, and then you turn to your team and say, hey, what should the


subject line be? You've done that, right? I know I have. But it's crazy to think that


it's actually the first thing that subscribers see. And so why do marketers, why is the first


thing that subscribers see the actual last thing that we as marketers think about? Something


to think about. So the inbox has your from name, your subject line and this thing called


preview text. And you want to think about those things and actually maybe consider them


first. An optimized inbox, especially on a mobile device, is going to look something


like this. It's going to have that from name, that subject line and that preview text right


there front and center. And that's going to determine whether or not all the email body


stuff gets seen. I talk about mobile because there's actually some truncation potential


here. A lot of mobile inboxes cut off the second half of your subject line or that preview


text. So you have to front load the first part with all the good stuff in case the back


lock half gets cut off. And speaking of subject lines and from names, it's actually really


interesting that we spend so much time A B testing and optimizing and really, let's be


honest, obsessing over subject lines as marketers because it's actually the from name is the


thing that subscribers look at first when they're deciding whether or not to open your


email. Just who the email's from. So you can use your brand name, you can use a company


name or I like what Quora does. Rather than actually putting just their brand name or


even a person's name, they start to set examples or expectations of what's actually in the


email, saying things like Quora Digest or people you follow or session recap. That's


great. It actually tells me what's in the email. And behind each of those from names


is what we call the from address. If the subscriber replies to the email, this is where the email


goes. So I don't know if it's out of just lack of awareness or maybe laziness or what


it is, but a lot of brands use a no reply. So think about, again, what that says about


your brand's willingness to meet your subscribers' needs. It says I don't really care about you


or where your email reply goes if you have a question or a problem. And speaking of trust,


54% of subscribers said they felt tricked or deceived by a subject line in an email


they've received. That's crazy. That's more than half. What comes to mind is those emails


that are those gimmicky techniques, like they use RE or forward. We call that in the email


industry a fake forward. Don't do that, right? It feels deceitful. It's not actually a forward.


It might get a lot of opens and clicks, but are you letting down your subscriber at the


end of the day because you're basically lying to them in your subject line? So be straightforward


and direct. Don't do that stuff. And then if your email looks bad on mobile, forget


about it. 43% of people said they'd mark emails that looked bad on mobile as spam, and 51%


said that they'd unsubscribe. We've been tracking this data point for probably three or four


years now, and it keeps going up. That tells me that subscribers increasingly have really


high expectations for the kinds of emails that we're sending them. I think the other


channels, again, coming back to the idea of omnichannel, other channels are raising their


expectations. All the people that are doing this well are training people to expect it


in their inbox. And keep in mind that if people unsubscribe or mark your emails as spam, you


can never email them again just because it looks bad on mobile. So rather than just doing


what you do normally do, especially when it comes to email receipts, I don't know how


many of you run a point of sale or send anybody any kind of receipt, but make it easily readable.


These are two emails that I've recently received that one I could actually read on my mobile


device, especially when I was at the store and requested an email receipt, versus the irony


thick here. I went to the car. I'm obviously not near a desktop computer, and the receipt is


basically unreadable on my phone. So how do you make your emails mobile friendly? These are


my favorite tips. Another popular slide to take a picture of. I say body copy should be at


least 16 pixels. If you're like, whoa, Justine, that's really big, then think about 13 pixels as


your absolute minimum. And the reason why it's 13 is because if you do anything less than 13,


iOS, like iPhone and iPad, is going to automatically resize it to 13 on your behalf, so you'll be


stuck with 13 no matter what. I say headlines of 22, and then buttons of 44 by 44. Why? If there's


any UX people in the room, you probably know that that's the guideline that Apple recommends.


Apparently 44 by 44 is the size of your thumb. And if you're like, Justine, I don't know what the


heck a pixel is because I'm not a designer, you still have no excuse. All of you have and can


follow what I call the rule of thumb. If the thumb tip is about 44 by 44 pixels, you have a pixel


detection device attached to your body that you can use whenever you want. So don't tell me you


don't know what a pixel is. And speaking of great tappable touch targets, we have to stop


measuring just opens and clicks. Don't stop measuring them all together because they're


important, but stop focusing on them obsessively. Email software has a big emphasis on opens and


clicks. It's really easy to track without some third-party integrations or other data sources


coming into it. And you want to look beyond just opens and clicks, though. You want to see the


whole picture. You want to start measuring the negative performance metrics in addition to the


positive ones because that can give you a really good indication if you're meeting your subscribers'


needs and setting the right impression about your brand. Things like bounce rate and spam


complaints can really tell you, can paint a better picture. You want to aim for less than a 2%


bounce rate and less than a.02% spam complaint rate. And remember that unsubscribes are okay or


even good. You want to encourage those instead of leaving people with the option to mark you as


spam. You can also look at your web analytics, right? We all like SEO in here. We're at


MozCon. Or you can look at third-party tools. Actually, Litmus does this to look at things like


read rate or engagement. And even if you have really high engagement or people are spending a


long time reading your emails, that doesn't necessarily mean a good thing. It could mean your


emails are really engaging and people are spending a long time reading them. It could mean your


emails are confusing as heck and they're searching around for a CTA or how to unsubscribe. So


let's also talk about the analytics part for a second in Google Analytics because I know there's a


lot of SEOs in the room. So instead of looking at open click rates, what I've been doing


lately at Litmus when I've been looking at the success of our email programs is looking at


email traffic into our funnel. So we have different goals in Google Analytics and we break our


funnel into several different steps. We say you saw our sign-up flow, you looked at the pricing


page, you entered your card details and then you convert. We break that up and we track each


of those as goals. And time after time, email shows up in the number one channel for all those


stages in the funnel. So in particular when it looks to our sign-up flow, email has the highest


volume of sessions. Then when we go to the pricing page and we look at number of sessions


there, we can actually see that people that originate from email actually spend twice as long on