Biznology

Most of you are aware of the marketing funnel, which describes the different phases in the buyer’s journey. A typical way to slice up the funnel is in terms of  Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Loyalty, and Advocacy as shown in the diagram from Adam Cohen’s blog at right. With limited budgets, in what phase of the funnel do you concentrate your resources? Some folks believe you invest the lion’s share of your resources at the conversion or purchase phase because it is the most efficient. Others believe the Awareness phase is the most important, because developing it is the surest way to grow your business. Read the remainder of this entry »

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Last month, I explained how I help executives descend a common learning curve, to get them to buy into outside-in marketing. Most executives from traditional marketing backgrounds build branding campaigns and drive eyeballs to them through advertising. I explained how this model doesn’t work especially well in digital, where the target audience is more skeptical and proactive than in traditional media. Rather than being pushed passive messages, the digital audience needs to be pulled into active engagements. Read the remainder of this entry »

Word cloud for content marketing.

As I have been writing in this space for the last three posts, SEO is not just the domain of consultants. It is a vital skill for every role in marketing and communications. Of course, SEO is essential for teams building digital experiences, and the communications professionals supporting those experiences. But none of that matters if their executives don’t support and fund what I call outside-in marketing, but what most people call content marketing. Because the pull marketing model is so new to these folks, it is often difficult to get their buy in. Without their buy in, digital marketing experiences don’t have a chance. Read the remainder of this entry »

Panda and Penguin

Last month, I wrote about how SEO is not just the domain of consultants. Rather, every person in digital media production needs to know how their work affects search effectiveness. If SEO is seen not as a well-kept secret by the few SEO consultants, but as a vital skill for everyone, organizations will be much more effective in producing findable content for the target audience, especially in the age of Google Panda. Thing is, if you rely on Google to discover your content and give it the value it deserves, you will often be disappointed. You also need to build a network of links into your content, which tell Google about the relative importance of the content in the context of other related content. In the age of Google Penguin, this can’t be an artificial process performed by SEO consultants. It needs to be built into the publishing process. This means coordinating your publishing efforts with other internal content strategists, with paid search leads, media relations managers, and especially community managers. Giving these folks the SEO skills they need to help promote your content is just as important as building the content right in the first place.

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Photo credit: Wikipedia

Last month, I said that SEO is the top skill for digital marketers. This might seem outrageous to one who has not read that post. Even to those who have read it, it might seem controversial. Many people in my Twitter stream are calling SEO the bane of the web. @markwschaefer, for example, recently tweeted: “SEO is the plague of the world.” How could it be a vital skill and be such a pariah? The point of this post is to counter these objections and show how SEO skills are so vital to critical web development roles.

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