The Business of Digital Podcast

The Paid side of the house has all the fun tools so why not leverage them for SEO? Listen as we go through some data sources and ways to use Paid Audience Data to improve your SEO and Content Marketing campaigns.

Ad Targeting & Paid Audience Data For SEO Personas

So the title is a mess of things and hopefully covers really what we talked about, or is as close as we could get! Once a year or so we both are in the same place, have time, and record a few episodes together. This is one of those rare episodes!

This episode was sponsored by MarTech® West (April 3-5) in San Jose, CA and MarTech® East (September 16-18) takes place in Boston, MA. To save 15% use MarTech® Conference promo code BIZPODCAST when you register.

* 1st Screenshot - This is the screenshot that was mentioned about the audience data from Facebook.

So what paid tools can you leverage (at least to start with?):

Twitter Audiences

Facebook Audiences - see your ad preferences

Google Audiences

Pinterest

Display Marketing - what sites are conversions coming from?

What can you use the data for? You can certainly use it for SEO campaigns but also Product Marketing and Product Features.

Content Marketing

Targeting complementary audiences

Expanding your audiences

Expand upon or improve your Personas

Content ideation

Look for uses or ways to help answer questions with your product/content with new audiences

Product Marketing and Product Ideas

Think of the two examples given - suitcases with batteries/chargers for phones. The other was coolers that also have power sources to fuel phones while out camping, support lights or have radios and speakers integrated so you have one less thing to carry.

* 2nd Screenshot - this is an audience screenshot from the Twitter example that was mentioned during the show.

The goal for a marketer is to get in front of people and solve problems. Using the audience and interest data is a great way to dig into problems and possible

product uses (or features) that you can leverage to help people but also your sales.

Episodes 89 Mentioned Tools & Resources

Google Ad Settings

How does Facebook decide which ads to show me and how can I control the ads I see?

Here’s how to see, edit and delete the topics that Facebook advertisers use to target you

Kristy Morrison's tweet spurs a discussion around customer first view of content, creating content with a purpose, owning your voice and connecting the dots between personas and the final result.

Customer First View and Content Balance - Getting the Share, Click, or Sale

Kristy's tweet was caught by Dave (see the tweet below) that spurred an idea for this show. Often people create content to get the click, spur debate, encite some type of reaction or engagement but also think about who someone might WANT to share the content with.

Your cutesy puns and cheeky illustrations might be fun to use in your thought leadership - but guess what? It means I probably won’t share it with my execs. Think about desired use case for your readers as well when you’re creating content - not just your own.

What is the goal of your content? Is it shareable?

Kristy was faced with the following options, when creating content and supporting materials think of how someone reading your content may also ask these questions (and why they may think these things):

Not share it and move on with her day.

Share it and apologize for the immature or not work appropriate aspects

Summarize the article in an email, say what she wanted to say regarding the topic and content and then source it

In the end she went with option #1 and wasn't able to share the great content with other team members and executives. Could you be missing opportunities for your content to be shared on social platforms or within your target audiences company?

This episode was sponsored by MarTech® West (April 3-5) in San Jose, CA and MarTech® East (September 16-18) takes place in Boston, MA. To save 15% use MarTech® Conference promo code BIZPODCAST when you register.

Do You have a Customer First View for Digital & Content?

Are you creating content for everyone or no one? Is there a disconnect between Headline -> Persona -> Business Goal -> Content and maybe take a step back and see if all the things work together or if there is that disconnect.

Know your audience and know the possible and even more the likely use case for the content you are creating for that person and their role. Think about the following things when creating content:

Where along the customer journey is your audience?

What is their role?

What problems are they trying to solve?

How is this piece of content going to help them?

How do they plan on using it? Or how might you inspire them to use it?

If there is ever a question as you go through the process just go back to "What was the objective" for a piece of content. In terms of ways to go about doing all of this, here are some ways to dig into if you are doing a great or poor job:

Support Site

Site Search

Navigation - is your navigation aligned with business or customer. Your site search data will support this.

Why hide answers in the FAQ, why isn't it on the key pages people are looking for?

Episodes 89 Mentioned Tools & Resources

Kristy's Tweet

Best B2B Content: Analysis and Insights from Over 50,000 Articles

Mat and Dave dive into what many people think or expect from a person or company and what that person actually really should do. Rarely is one person an expert on everything!

Minding & Closing the Gap of Digital Marketing Expectations

Mat and Dave dive into what many people think or expect from a person and what that person actually really should do. Often companies want to hire a PPC person but expect them to do Social Media, Content Writing, and SEO. You aren't going to find a single person that is awesome at everything thing and can do everything. Sure you can find them but they likely won't want to work for entry-level pay! Along those lines, Know Your Marketing Budget Before You Hire an Agency/Consultant.

This episode was sponsored by MarTech® West (April 3-5) in San Jose, CA and MarTech® East (September 16-18) takes place in Boston, MA. To save 15% use MarTech® Conference promo code BIZPODCAST when you register.

From a digital side of things, these are often some of the "jobs" that may have some limited crossover but also might require experts in each domain for your campaign or project.

Developer - is the person that can code

Graphic Designer - can make the great images, hero shots and such that you need

X Agency - to do the X marketing optimizations

Web Designer - to do layouts

Analytics - understands the reporting and setup

Email - knows the platform and can run campaigns

Social Media - knows the various platforms that your business is on

SEO - your SEO person

Not familiar with the digital needs or are unsure how this applies? Here are some other examples for your health, home interior and home exterior. Each of the skills and services below has an expert that you would work with so when it comes to online and offline marketing why wouldn't you also seek out experts in each skill?

Roofer

General Contractor

Landscape Architect

Plumbing

Electritian

Engine Mechanic

Foot Doctor

Hand Doctor

Veterinarians

Interior Designer

Furniture Maker

Your expectations of what one person can do and what their skills are should be tame. People will often say yes to everything and oversell what they can do. Don't be oversold, ask questions, ask for examples, ask that others join in on the hiring/recruiting too. In the end, if your expectations are that you can hire one person/company to do 5 things, it is very likely that you find someone but that they won't do most of those things well and your business/project/campaign could pay for it. Yes, there are always exceptions to the rule, but do make sure you talk to all of the people that will be working on a project and make sure that the skills you are being promised are real and that your expectations for what they can do are realistic too!

Episode Mentioned Tools & Resources

Website Frustration

Why you should not hire a website designer

Hire Web Designer

Holmes on Homes

Things evolve and this includes all things Digital (SEO, Social, etc.). Instead of dwelling on the negative impact of change, look at how you can leverage it.

Episode 87 - SEO is Dead. X is Dead. Long live X!

Last year we talked about Link Building is NOT Dead and this episode is more about how you need to not just follow the hive mind thinking and best practices. Nothing dies, it just evolves as should your tactics and ways of using SEO, PPC, Email, Display, Landing Pages, Images, Infographics, Data, Metrics, etc...

Here is a (mostly) verbatim account of Mat's original idea for this episode:

Stop listening to people that say “X” is gonna die. New episode idea. Basically, I was told over 6 years ago infographics were dead. I grew a company for many years where our primary offering was infographics. We could even talk about the SEO is dead crap, but just was thinking about that this morning.

So what types of things are we talking about? When you see someone say "X is Dead" it likely is just clickbait. What they really mean is that X has changed and evolved. If something DOESN'T evolves then it really will die.

SEO is Dead

Email is Dead

Do this one Best Practice

Facebook is Dead

Google Says X

Google Says Dont Do X

Image Search

Voice Search

This episode was sponsored by MarTech® West (April 3-5) in San Jose, CA and MarTech® East (September 16-18) takes place in Boston, MA. To save 15% use MarTech® Conference promo code BIZPODCAST when you register.

If nothing else - take a "best practice" guide with a grain of salt, read it, test it, adapt it for your company/project/budget. Instead of dwelling on the negative impact of change, look at how you can leverage it. Did Google or Bing change things? What can you do to leverage it to eclipse what you were doing prior.

SEO is Dead Episode Mentioned Tools & Resources

Worldwide Email Users (chart is above)

Burger King's OK Google Ad

Vertical Measures

Why These Tech Companies Keep Running Thousands Of Failed Experiments

Aaron from SimilarWeb joins us to talk Competitive Research Beyond Just Keywords. The goal was to dig into ways and data points beyond just pulling some competitive keyword data and calling it a day.

Episode 86 - Competitive Research Beyond Just Keywords

This episode the guys have guest Aaron Friedman of SimilarWeb joining the dig into Competitive Research. The goal of the episode was to dig into ways and data points beyond just pulling some competitive keyword data and calling it a day. By the end, we did circle back and prove Dave wrong and cover/includes keywords but overall the idea of themes, topics, personas, categories, audiences should be looking at and not just get bogged down in just keywords.

If you get nothing else from the conversation, look at themes. Themes in keywords. Themes in sites your own ad teams and competitor advertise on. Where people sponsor and the themes or audiences. Keep going higher in the audiences and themes to help you find where to get links, traffic, content to create and in general to help guide your own marketing.

Competititve Data Beyond Keywords

Solve problems. Mat digs into HVAC and hail damage. Think about why people may be looking and help solve their problems.

New product or category. What happens if your product or services is brand new? There are no keywords. You need to really think about why they would need or search for what you offer.

Fidget spinners and topics or emerging topics that you didn't know existed. How and where can you monitor these types of things?

URL Data and Campaign data - what offers and promotions are people running?

This episode was sponsored by MarTech® West (April 3-5) in San Jose, CA and MarTech® East (September 16-18) takes place in Boston, MA. To save 15% use MarTech® Conference promo code BIZPODCAST when you register.

Where to Find Competitive Data

Social Networks - FB, Reddit, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.

Advertising Network Audiences - FB, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.

Look beyond single keywords, group them. What themes or topics stick out? What are you missing?

Combine prospect interests to create content - use ad and display placement data to spark ideas and creative ideas for content.

Episode Mentioned Tools & Resources

Business of Digital on Similarweb

Google Correlate