How To get Rid Of Squirrels | Squirrel Removal | Squirrel Control NJ: February 2016

Monday, February 22, 2016

Google Compare Will Sunset In March

The lead generation product aimed at helping searchers find and compare financial services products like mortgage rates and auto insurance quotes never gained enough traction.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

How Organizations are Leveraging Content Across the Buyer Journey

When you hear the word content in a business context, you probably automatically associate it with marketing.

As a tactic, content marketing has been around for hundreds of years, while the term content marketing has only surged into popularity (and regular marketing lexicon) in the past 6-7 years. And it shows no sign of slowing down in 2016, 88% of organizations claim to be using content marketing as a key B2B marketing tactic.

The undeniable popularity and widespread usage of content marketing points to the effectiveness of content. However, content isnt only effective in the strict marketing sense content satisfies the entire buyer journey, from awareness, to engagement, to lead generation, to sales enablement, and even to customer success.

Consequently, the way we think about content is changing: content no longer lives exclusively in the marketers domain. In fact, content is the lifeblood of your entire organization.

Content in every corner

Content certainly starts with marketing, playing important roles in generating awareness, engagement, and of course, leads. But this is only the start of the buyer journey.

As a lead converts to an opportunity and enters the sales realm, content can (and should) be leveraged by sales teams to handle objections, build relationships, and target key accounts. Building a content library for sales enablement is a powerful way to educate and nurture potential customers, clarify value proposition, execute account-based marketing tactics, and ultimately, expedite the sales cycle.

Content plays an equally important role once the prospect has converted into a customer. Your customer support or success team can (and should) leverage content to coach and empower your customers. Building a knowledge base or resource center with product-centric content improves customer marketing effectiveness by allowing the nurturing process to be continued even further. Filling your knowledge base with bottom-of-the-funnel content that enables customer self-service will increase your success teams productivity and, more importantly, improve your customer retention rates.

Why content isnt enough

Understanding why and how content satisfies the entire buyer journey is the easy part, and creating content to better satisfy the journey is an important first step.

Simply creating the content, however, isnt enough. Organizations must be able to easily leverage this content for more than one purpose and one campaign in order to satisfy the buyer journey. This is where marketing automation comes into play content fuels lead nurturing campaigns and helps build up your lead data based on conversions.

But as much as your marketing automation platform can help you deliver the right content to the right person, it cant help you deliver the right content experience for the end user (be it a reader, a prospect, or a customer).

What do I mean by this? Well, your content experience is the place where all the user action takes place. It's the destination that you send your prospects to. It's where your visitors consume your content, where they convert to a lead, and where you can measure how effective your content is at every stage of the journey.

Sending your end user (regardless of where theyre at in the buyer journey) to a non-contextual, generic blog or resource center wont help them find the information they need to move further down the funnel, and it certainly wont compel them to continue their content journey. Your content will be far more effective if youre able to send the end user on a tailored engagement path.

Delivering a well-optimized content experience

Lets take a look at this in action.

Your marketing team produces an eBook. They can leverage this eBook for lead generation, targeting the particular buyer persona for whom they created the eBook using marketing automation and paid promotion tactics. Adding this eBook to your internal library for sales enablement, your sales team can leverage it to speak to a particular pain point that one of their prospects is experiencing. Or, similarly, your customer success team could also leverage this eBook in their knowledge base to provide more high-level information for your customers.

Those are three different use cases from just one eBook, within one organization. Each use case has different end goals and requires different context.

So, how do you optimize the content experience for each?

Tailor the experience Ensure your content is targeted, personalized, and strategically organized for the particular use case. For instance, if its an advanced-level eBook, dont include a CTA to sign up for a beginner-level webinar.

Facilitate further content discoverability Dont let your content pile up by date, or by type of content. Regardless of the use case, people are much more likely to search for a specific answer than they are to search for a white paper.

Include targeted and contextual CTAs Provide a logical and contextual next step to continue the buyer journey.

Conclusion

Content begins with marketing generating awareness, engagement, and leads but it also feeds into sales enablement and customer success, fueling your entire organization and propelling your end users throughout the entire buyer journey.

However, organizations must think beyond individual content assets and start producing relevant and contextual content experiences for the desired end user. By leveraging content experiences at every stage of the buyer journey, your content will not only become more valuable to your end users, but also to your organization.

Content can do a lot of things for your organization, but not if you don't start thinking about it in a larger context. Download theModern Marketing Essentials Guide to Content Marketingand start thinking. And doing.

One More Word about Staples (Not Sponsored)

This post isnt sponsored. Im only posting it because I was thinking about another company and how they operate pretty much the exact opposite of Staples, and it made me want to write this to you.

The Best Allies Think Ahead FOR You

I just saw an ad for a high speed Internet provider. The rate they quoted was really attractive. I realized that I could probably get 40-50 more megabits of download speed and 90 more megabits of upload speed for $40 less a month than what were paying now. And then it dawned on me that my current Internet provider sure hasnt done much to make sure Im getting the best price.

The post One More Word about Staples (Not Sponsored) appeared first on chrisbrogan.com.

Understanding The Great Analytics Gap (and What to Do About It)

Analytics. Its at the heart of every conversion optimization strategy and online business decision we make. But some studies are showing an ever-increasing gap between the information key-decision makers want, and the actionable insights needed to drive business forward. The question then becomes, where are we now, and what can be done about this great divide? Lets take a closer look:

The Beginning of the Gap

According to a survey done by The CMO Survey and Duke Universitys Fuqua School of Business, even at this time last year, spending on marketing analytics was down even failing to meet the CMOs own predictions. Although their share of spending on marketing analytics was forecast to increase over the next three years, the trend was still lower than anticipated:

Marketing budgets spent on analytics fell from its projected amount year after year

In fact, looking deeper into the survey, its easy to see how CMOs could come to a decision like this. The percentage of projects using marketing analytics has gone down since 2012. Year after year, progress has shown to be rather tepid, which begs the question: are CMOs just not understanding the value of the information being provided? Or are analytics really not worth spending on?

The percentage of projects using marketing analytics has remained fairly consistent since 2012

Insightful Answers Lead to More Questions

The answer is neither. A study done by the MIT Sloan Management Review in collaboration with the SAS Institute showed that CMOs, global executives and senior management clearly want more use of analytics:

Management clearly sees the need for better, more actionable analytics data

Two-thirds of executives reporting in the survey admitted to relying more on management experience than what the data showed, and a slim minority reported frequently having all the data they needed to make insightful business decisions. Is it a knee-jerk reaction to rely on ones experience even if it flies directly in the face of what the data shows?

The study showed some interesting points that may have contributed to this feeling of lukewarm analytics reception:

Its Not The Data its What You Do With It Than Counts

As many as 75% of respondents acknowledged that their access to useful, actionable data had increased, and their ability to capture and leverage that data is improving although slowly.

Whats more telling, is that only one in eight of the respondents were deemed to be analytical innovators a term, according to the report, that was given to those employees who were part of an analytical culture fostered by their senior management. This culture highly prized data and insights derived from it, and were more strategic about their use of the intelligence they gathered.

One in eight. Let that sink in for a minute.

Only one in eight people have enough confidence to say that their company thrives on a culture where making strategic, data-driven choices is encouraged. Where gleaning insights from that data is a top priority.

And its not a case of analytics data not being worthwhile, either. A Marketo sponsored report on the future of online marketing showed that investment in actionable data is a smart decision that will power successful businesses well into the next five years and beyond.

Forecast investments in marketing technology include social media, mobile marketing and analytics

As you can see, marketing analytics found itself squarely in third place, only behind social media and mobile marketing respectively. CMOs and other key decision makers know that marketing analytics are valuable. So its not a lack of investment because they cant see the relevance.

Building a Bridge Making Sense of Analytical Data

So weve narrowed down that the cause of the gap isnt a lack of CMO knowledge or understanding, and despite prior questionable performance, spending still remains at an even level despite wanting more investment.

The cause of the gap is a lack of relevant, actionable, easily obtainable data data that can be leveraged across all major channels to provide the kind of insights the CMOs and their analytics team need to bolster sales, build customer relationships and increase customer acquisition. Theres no shortage of information. All of this big data is being collected, compiled and dropped into the laps of key decision makers to try and make sense of it.

Analytical orientation is even being noted as one of the key skills for todays CMOs to possess with creativity taking a backseat:

Strategic mindset, customer insight and analytical orientation round out the top skills expected of CMOs.

So how do we build a bridge between the numbers and information were collecting, and the business-propelling strategies that stem from it?

When Experience Matters Most

This is where management experience that aforementioned knee jerk reaction to data, comes into play. Try as we might to wring measurable, impactful details on our customers from the information we collect, theres just too much interference and noise clogging up the connection. A lot of useless chatter clouding our vision and hindering our ability to move forward.

The bridge that crosses the analytics gap isnt going to be built by digging our heels into the digital mud and going deeper into the numbers. Its going to be built on the value of the customer experience.

The perception of marketing is going to shift. While anaytics are still going to be useful, crunching numbers will only get us so far. Key drivers are going to be more experience-based rather than data-based. Things like:

Managing customer expectations over their entire lifecycle and not just the acquisition process

Measuring customer engagement, not just counting how many customers youve gotten

Cultivating and nurturing customer relationships rather than passing them off to sales and hoping for the best

Quickly and fully resolving customer issues before they grow and fester on social media

As you can see, these are intangible things that analytics simply cannot measure. But analytics can tell us which channels open the door to drive these types of experiences. So its not about choosing sides analytics or customer experience but leveraging both in such a way that they form a continuous cycle of clear insights that forge a path for the next sales cycle and beyond.

Now Its Your Turn

Do you feel theres an analytics gap within your own company or department? How are you taking steps to remedy it? Or do you think that the data has a greater role to play we just havent crafted the right kinds of tools to get the kinds of insights we need just yet? Share your thoughts and perspective with us in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!

Live From MarketingSherpa Summit 2016: Humana on the power of iterative testing

Editors note: I would like to extend a heartfelt apology to those of you who experienced difficulties streaming portions of todays special live Web clinic. Were working to identify the problem, determine why it effected some of you but not others and prevent it from happening again in the future. In the meantime, the video replay is now available!

This is Ken Bowen, reporting live from the Bellagio hotel in beautiful Las Vegas for MarketingSherpa Summit 2016. For over a decade, Email Summit has been one of the most exciting weeks of the year for email marketing practitioners.

This year, just when you think youve got it all figured out, weve gone and changed the rules.

Instead of just email, weve expanded our focus to also include content marketing, social media, mobile and data.

As Managing Editor of MarketingExperiments, MarketingSherpas sister site, Ive had the privilege of working closely with all nine presenters on the Digital & Data track over the last several months. These marketing leaders are on the bleeding edge of disciplines like behavioral economics, account based-marketing, audience and demand generation, individualized marketing, customer satisfaction quantification and even data-driven direct mail.

Its been a wild couple of months leading up to the event full of late nights at the office, jamming brainstorming sessions into every break and those crazy evenings where you shoot out of bed at 3:00 a.m. with the perfect slide idea. The exclamation point came yesterday, when a modest flight from our home base in Jacksonville, Florida to Las Vegas managed to turn into a 22-hour Homeric epic that played out like a mix of The Terminal and Home Alone.

And Ive loved every minute of it.

After spending months getting to learn from and know some of the brightest, most forward-thinking minds in digital marketing, when I popped out of bed this morning and saw this view out the window, it felt like Christmas morning in the desert, knowing that we would soon get the chance to share these great case studies and stories with our readers.

We hope to bring you details and video of each presentation in the coming weeks, but for now, lets take a look at how Mike Loveridge, Head of Digital Test and Learn, Humana, and his team leveraged iterative testing and captured big gains.

Iterative Testing

Were trying to change customer perception from were a big bad insurance company thats trying to take your money and deny your claims to we want to be your health partner for life, Mike Loveridge said to the overflow crowd in the Da Vinci ballroom.

Our goal is to improve customers health by 20% by 2020, he added.

One way to shift that perception is by testing your messaging.

[Testing radical redesign] is impractical, Mike said. Testing complete new versus complete old was a nightmare.

Instead, Humana starting testing iteratively, with an end goal of testing the former old funnel versus the complete new funnel, optimized step-by-step, to see if sum of the parts equals the whole. Mike referred to this as Humanas Super Test strategy.

During the presentation, Mike walked us through several of these iterative tests. Were excited to share the full video with you soon, but in the meantime, lets take a look at three of the upper-funnel banner tests that Mike presented.

Test #1: Banner redesign

For this banner test which Mike jokingly referred to as Winter grandma versus Summer Clint Eastwood lookalike the team at Humana wanted to test whether the messaging being used on the rotating banner of its homepage was too complex for customers.

You really have to simplify when you only have six seconds, Mike said.

In addition to the change in imagery, the headline was better tailored to users position in the customer journey (upper funnel), the copy was simplified and the CTA was given more visual punch.

The result?

A 433% increase in clickthrough into Humanas marketing funnel. By serving customers with what they want, when they need it, in an accessible way, banner performance skyrocketed.

Test #2: GEO personalization

In this test, the Humana team tested geo personalization, which serves unique pages, ads, etc. based on user location.

Take a couple, put them in a background thats fairly generic, it could be anywhere in the world, Mike said in reference to the Control tested in this experiment. Then take that couple, and put them in front of the Statue of Liberty or the Golden Gate Bridge.

More specifically, the banner featuring the Golden Gate bridge, as pictured above, was served to site users located in Californias Bay Area. And, as youd expect, the banner featuring the Statue of Liberty was delivered to New York.

The result?

A 31% increase in clickthrough.

But this wasnt the biggest surprise.

Mike and the Humana team found that geo-personalization not only increased clickthrough, but also increased overall conversion through the funnel.

p>Test #3: Banner navigation

For this next banner test, Mike told the audience, we simplified the title, bumped up the font size and made the supporting text even simpler. There was a lot of green on the page, so we made the button plum; it really stood out.

The Humana team also changed the scrolling navigation counter (bottom right corner, above) from plum to grey, so that it wasnt competing for attention with the CTA.

The result?

The Treatment outperformed the Control by 192% in clickthrough to the next step in the funnel.

Providing further clarity to the customer, both visually and via text, resulted in a massive boost in banner performance.

Key Takeaway

Later in the presentation, Mike also shared some deeper funnel tests, and spoke in-depth about the necessity of communicating the value of testing both top-down and bottom-up in order to gain buy-in within an organization.

But if theres one thing that Mike wants marketers to take away, its the sheer power of iterative testing.

Iterative testing gives you more results on a more frequent basis, he said. And theyre easier to understand.

Mike is just one of the 30+ speakers who will have presented by the time the sun sets on MarketingSherpa Summit 2016 tomorrow evening.

To read about (and see) more of these incredible stories from our fellow marketers, stay tuned here at MarketingExperiments, and also at our sister site MarketingSherpa.

In the meantime, its been an honor getting to meet so many of you here in Las Vegas and to hear about your own customer-first marketing success stories.

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Lee Odden Educates B2B Marketers on SEO for Content Marketing

As content marketing professionals, most of us would consider SEO a highly technical domain. Best leave that to the real nerds, right? Wrong. Google, Bing and all the other search engines have significantly altered their algorithms in the pastfew years. And these changes continue to favor the highest quality content, often rewarding smart content marketers with first position rankings.

With a bit of SEO sweet sauce, your content marketing sandwich will taste much better to search engines, and users too.Below, I will explore 4 major themes from TopRank Marketing CEO,Lee Oddens recent Content2Conversion talk on SEO for Content Marketers, including:

The State of SEO in 2016

Understanding Self-Directed Buyer Behavior

How to, Be The Best Answer

How to Create Smarter Integrated SEO Content for The Web

First things First: Optimizing for Users

Lets start by getting one thing straight about optimization. As content marketers, we shouldnt be optimizing our content for search engines. As Lee often points out, Google doesnt pay the bills. Your buyers pay the bills. Therefore, optimize for users, not search engines.

Old SEO rules would have you stuffing websites with keywords, creating thousands of new pages, tagging YouTube videos with every keyword you can get your hands on, and hoping something sticks. We give you permission to stop doing most, if not all of those things.

Part I: The State of SEO in 2016

So, how are most content marketers utilizing SEO in 2016? And more importantly, does SEO even matter anymore? Yes it matters. But content marketers and even many SEOs are failing to take advantage of recent algorithm changes. So, heres a snapshot from the front lines of the industry on what most content marketers actually dowith SEO:

Content Marketers_SEO Tactics

Implement more than 1-2 tactics (10-20%).

Perform Tech SEO Audit (Maybe).

Make a list of keywords.

Use keywords in titles, links, copy etc.

Share on social and wish for links.

Review monthly rankings reports

The problem with the list above is it looks a lot like 2010. Things have changed, and you should too.

Can Tools Automate your SEO?

At TopRank Marketing, we get asked about tools all the time. With all the tools, plugins and software available, its easy to believe that SEO is an automated function. Its not. In fact, as Googles algorithms become more complicated, it can be increasingly difficult to optimize your content.

According to the most recent LinkedIn data, SEO and SEM ranks 4^th among top skills companies seek (below).

What this research doesnt uncover is content marketers and SEOs are adopting an increasingly hybrid skillset. This is largely due to the fact that search engines now require higher quality content and a variety of content types, in order for content efforts to be most effective.

Hummingbirds the Word

Starting in 2013, an algorithm update was rolled out from Google, dubbed Hummingbird. This algorithm completely replaced the original Google algorithm, fundamentally changing the nature of how search engines crawl and rank web content. All you need to know is content quality, a variety of content types, and social media are all more important than ever.

Advice From The Front Lines

But dont take it from us. Here are what some much smarter folks have to say about how SEO fits into their overall marketing in 2016:

SEO is a foundational element of digital marketing Alison Herzog, Director Global Social Business & Digital Strategy, Dell

As long as theres Google, SEO will be a staple in digital marketing. Barbara Feinberg, Senior Product Marketing, McKesson

Part II: Understanding Buyer-Directed Behavior

The first step to understanding your buyers is to accept that they are self-directed. Theyll go to Google, social media, their LinkedIn network, friends, or pick up the phone and ask for a reference long before they contact you, or consume any of your content. Understanding the nature of B2B self-directed buyers is crucial to the success of any SEO efforts tied to your content marketing.

And in 2016, all of your potential customers are self-directed. According to Pardot, 70% of the buyers journey is complete before a buyer ever reaches out to sales. Which is why developing fruitful relationships between your marketing and sales department is fundamental to the success of your content marketing.

A common mistake among B2B marketers is someone from sales will reach out to a self-directed buyer, completely unaware that this buyer may have already started their journey. The sales professional (or targeted content in many cases) often treats them like they know nothing, or misses the delivers the wrong message to the prospect, based on where they are at in their journey. Say goodbye to that lead!

Take a cue from Gartner, who has done some fascinating research on this topic. They uncovered that more than 60% of all buyers indicated they prefer a self-driven informational search at the exploration, evaluation, and engagement phase of their purchase cycle (see below).

Your Buyers Already Know_Gartner

The bottom line is your customer wants to be in the drivers seat. They dont want a sales pitch. They want information. They dont want your opinion. They want a third-party opinion of your product or service. They want information from Google, Bing, YouTube, industry reports, and third-party validations.

Think about things from their point of view. They dont know who to trust, what to believe, or who is trying to screw them over.So, what are your options? Be the best answer. Be a conduit for the information. Curate your third-party verifications, peer reviews, social media posts and other relevant content.

So at this point, you might be asking yourself, What does this have to do with SEO and content? Fair question. Searc engine queries are an explicit indication of intent. And tapping into the needs, intentions, and desires of your search audience will give you a solid map for the length, type, and style of content you must produce to meet your B2B audiences needs.

Part III: How to Be The Best Answer

So, weve covered the state of SEO in 2016, weve accepted that our buyers are self-directed, and now we just need to create all that killer content that will make them fall in love with our brand. No pressure, right? Lets start by examining the following marketing funnel. Its a solid example of what NOT to do.

Marketoonist_Funnel

Instead of creating more useless content and barraging your leads with information, you should try to be the best answer in search engine results. Why? Because, by 2020 the world will have nearly 50 billion internet-connected devices. In addition, a full 90% of the worlds information has been created in the last 2 years alone. The bottom line is your prospects are overwhelmed.

The B2B Buyer Journey & Search

Before you can create content for your buyers, youll need to understand where search engines fit into your buyers journey. Start by talking to your customers. Ask them how they found out about you. Ask them what made them want to work with you, or buy your product. If your buyers are socially active, run a Twitter poll. If necessary, conduct some research to find out more about your audience. Most importantly, find out what types of content they are looking for via search engines, and where this fits in their journey.

Consider how many steps are on the following sample buyers journey, and how search engines and social media feed into nearly every step:

They see your brand or meet a salesperson at an event

They view the brand on Twitter or LinkedIn

They run a Google search for the company

Connect with someone on LinkedIn

Subscribe to company newsletter

Receive e-mail follow up from sales

Google search sales professional

Google search company

Search the solutions and topic

Download a guide via newsletter CTA

Do in-depth topical Google search based on your guide

They search for competitors

They receive nurture messaging and emails

The contact company for a demo

They evaluate options

They search for product or company reviews

They make a decision

Granted, this list is a bit aggressive. Nonetheless, it illustrates the potential complexity of your buyers purchase process, and where search engines come in and out of the process.

Your Buyers are Complex, Are You?

Maybe you look at the list above and you think, Yeah I already know all that. Great. Maybe youve already identified the B2B content marketing tactic necessary to communicate with folks at different stages of their journey. Again, thats awesome. But, are these tactics integrated?

Lee often emphasizes the fact that content marketing efforts are rarely integrated. We find the most challenging aspect of content marketing is to plan for the ecosystem. Not just an infographic, or a one-off whitepaper, or a blog post. Rather, how do all of these channels and systems integrate? Thats where you really begin to be the best answer for your B2B audience. Consider the following chart, which displays the most common B2B content marketing tactics:

2016 COntent Marketing Trends Tactic Usage

On the surface, it looks like B2B marketers are using a variety of tactics. But when you consider that 65% of B2B buyers think vendors should, Curb their sales messaging, you start to wonder if this chart represents an over-usage of a variety of channels to barrage buyers with sales messaging.

How to Become the Best Integrated Search Engine Answer

Are They Integrated & Optimized.

Certain styles, flavors and tactics make sense in each potential customer touch-point. A LinkedIn connection message should not feel like an auto-generated corporate email. Likewise, an infographic shouldnt contain so much text that your buyers want to barf. Most of all, use common sense. Without further ado, the following is a checklist of tactics that will ensure you are the best, most integrated answer for your buyers in your content marketing and SEO efforts: