Let’s start with the fact that the concept “content marketing” is not well-established at the moment. Actually, marketing experts began to use this very term only in 2012, before this other terms were used: educational marketing, inbound marketing, involvement marketing, etc. But the point is the same: content marketing is creation and distribution of branded content which has its own value for the customer. Technically, it is an approach to the company site by the principles and patterns of thematic media – with publication schedule, editing, and dissemination of the content.    

Content marketing is often confused with copywriting. But they are not the same thing. The copywriter’s task is to create content. Content in content marketing is a basis but not the final point. Its key difference from copywriting is presence of content strategy. The principal “engine” of content marketing is not a copywriter but a content strategist. A content strategist builds a long-term plan of content distribution.

Content strategy is a sort of glue keeping all parts of the project together. If it doesn’t have a clear trend or there is no trend at all, the probability of your commercial failure is almost 100%. If it is used in the right place in the right time, you are bound to achieve the necessary results.

However, achieving the results is not an easy task. The process of implementing content strategy is fraught with many nuances and challenges and requires not only decent knowledge of content marketing, but an established pattern of interaction between all members of the team: content strategist, developer, copywriter, designer, SEO optimizer and other participants of the project. And as the most problems arise when a designer and a copywriter collaborate on the landing pages, we will make this issue a focus of today’s article.    

We hope that our experience of work in this area and our mistakes will help you improve the management of your projects as well as quality of products and services.

Beginning: the first step, the most difficult one

Project manager: We need a landing page for customer X.

Designer: I can’t start working on the design until I see the content.

Copywriter: I can’t start writing until I see the design.

This dialogue may seem funny … until you find yourself in the same situation. How can this problem be solved? Simply enough: create a content first, then a design. Do you agree that having a ready content makes easier choosing a relevant form? It was repeatedly proven in practice that design based on the content reflects the essence of product or service the most fully, thus attracting bigger number of customers.

So, the pattern of work on content creation is reduced to the following:

1. Content strategist develops the strategy of site promotion via content and prepares the following data:

Type of audience. Strict, friendly or indifferent? Mostly men or women? Kids, teenagers, middle-aged or elderly people? What do they want to achieve? What can you give them?

The amount of the text. Some products require a long advertisement text while for others an absolute minimum is enough. By the way, this fact should be taken into account by SEO-specialists because if mistakes occur while a landing page is created, there are all chances that your content will not get search traffic.

Message priority. Which idea is the main and which is secondary? What should be said to “hook” visitors? What can prompt them to action?

A call to action. What will the most accurate wording of the call to action be? What emotional and intellectual factors will motivate a visitor to take action?

1. In accordance with these data a copywriter writes a literate selling text.
2. A designer studies the content strategist’s data, a copywriter’s work and makes a visually appealing design.

Landing pages are a perfect place to work off this interaction pattern as from the standpoint of content marketing they are less complex than other types of web pages. As a rule, they convey one particular idea, have a small amount of text and a minimum of SEO, which facilitates the creation of design significantly. As a rule they are much more important than other types of pages, here exactly the conversion takes place, they are the ones to determine if the project is going to be successful or not.

Quick tips for a successful start:

• Make sure there is one special person in your company responsible for implementing content strategy. If responsibility is not assigned, your end product will be equally undetermined;
• Do not rush! Many seek to plunge into the work on new project as soon as possible. However, this tactics does not prove to be efficient. Before you get down to business, make sure that your colleagues are on the same wavelength as you;
• If being a designer you have to work as a content strategist as well, develop understanding of this discipline. Study the literature, read the blogs, learn from experienced professionals;
• Make sure that the designers and copywriters understand what they should be doing and what they should not. Copywriters must not teach designers to create a design, and designers should not teach copywriters to write. Everyone has to do their job.

Process improvement: overcoming problems

Project manager: How are things going?

Site developer: I’m waiting for a designer.

Designer: I’m waiting for a copywriter.

Copywriter: I’m waiting for a project manager.

The process of site development involves a lot of difficulties. Problems often arise unexpectedly and at utterly wrong time.

Difficulties of teamwork on the project.

Of course this process is not ideal, but it is constantly being improved. Thus, in order to help designers adjust the text to the “framework” and page design you can use content templates. This does not only facilitate their work but allows customers getting the general idea of how the content will look on the site. It also helps calculate the words quickly.

As for communication, their quality can be improved using software for project management. The great advantage of the project management system is the fact that it provides single place for managing tasks and effective interaction of all team members. Here you can discuss the working points, exchange information, leave comments, mark reference points, put deadlines etc. Such great opportunities take away all the gaps and misunderstandings that may arise when managing the project through the E-mail.  Reviews, edits, comments on the project – everything is in one place. Each employee participating in the project monitors the events and remains informed of any developments.

Use collaborative environment when working on the projects.

Quick tips to improve processes:

Make sure there is a person who is personally responsible for project management. Without a manager the project movement will be slowed at all stages;

• Organize regular briefings on the different issues of the project. Teach yourself and others being responsible. Make daily and monthly reports on the work done not only for customers but for your project groups;
• Coordinate every stage of your work with the customer. Don’t be afraid to bother them, as your task is to make the end product which conforms to all his expectations. Otherwise you will have to rework everything, change the budget and shift the terms. Neither you nor your customer will benefit from it;
• Copywriters and designers need to resolve quickly all the issues that have arisen between them.

Conflict resolution: why do we not get along with each other?

Designer: All these words make me tired.

Copywriter: All these pictures confuse me.

Project manager: All these arguments knock me out.

No matter how well your strategy is designed and co-workers interaction pattern is established, design and content will contradict with each other almost in each project. It is OK. If no arguments and questions arise, that will be the reason for concern. Our experience shows that this very fact can prove the project to be in a serious trouble. Below you will find the main problems you can face regularly and the ways to deal with them.

Allocating a separate space for SEO-content

Not only designers but the readers as well are bored with long texts. However, sometimes SEO-optimizers require a large number of landing keys unrelated to each other semantically so copywriters have to compose long texts. Luckily, there are some clever ways to solve this problem without sacrificing quality of optimization:

1. Tabs is a great way to hide text

Tabs make possible to keep page in vertical position. What is more important, they allow visitors finding easily the necessary information and skipping the unnecessary one.

2. Allocate SEO-content in the “basement” of the page

Of course, SEO strategist would prefer the optimized content to appear at the top of the page. However, if the aim of the website is converting traffic into customers, then the visitors must see an attractive design, not a block of the text of 3000 words. But the main thing here is not to overdo. The text should be not only for search. If it is not read by real people, believe us, the significance of such content will fall for search engines as well (remember about the behavioral factors of ranking!).

3. Increase creativity of non-SEO landing pages

The pages telling about products and services are the most important for search optimization. The aim of these pages is giving useful information, not surprising with great design. So, you can better show your design skills on non-SEO pages. For example, you can do it in the section “About the company” or “Customer service”. It is where you should be creative, and your effort will be rewarded.

Clarity of thought VS. Creativity

The eternal battle “design-content” erupts with particular force when the elements of navigation, headlines of the main page and blocks calling to action are created. The nature of this battle is in the following question: “What wins over the hearts and minds of visitors more?  Awesome design or understandable and accessible information?” And you should understand that there is no clear and definite answer.

Navigation

Creating menu of site navigation (as well as its individual elements) is one of the best practices for a designer and one of the most complicated tasks. The fact that the results are predictable and expected is very important here: if a user goes to one or another section, the content of the page should correspond to the visitor’s expectations: the information of the company should be allocated in the section “About the company”, information about the  services – in the section “Services”, etc. Show your creativity wherever you want but not in the navigation menu. To make it easier for visitors to navigate, the text and design elements of the navigation should be as simple and understandable as possible.

Design and content of the main page headline

Various types of headline animation are in fashion today. No wonder, it looks like a great way to show the basic features and the cost of the company services as well as attract attention. The content should laconically convey information and the headline must work on an emotional level. But emotional response to the headline should still appear (and we feel sure about it) not through design but in the first place through the essence, sense, content.

Blocks calling to action

To begin with, make sure that the pages of your site contain call to action as it is a great opportunity to take the visitor to the next logical step. A call to action can look like a simple text link (E.g. “Learn more about our services”) or be in the form of interesting design element functioning in the same way as a miniature landing page.

The most important thing when creating a call to action is its wording. The phrase should be simple and easy to understand and relate entirely to the page which the visitor enters. Besides, the call should be aimed at committing a conversion action.

Short tips to overcome conflicts easily:

1. Maintain good communication between all team members and customers.
2. Choose a project manager with great communication skills and objective point of view.
3. Focus on the aim of the project: is it to convince, motivate, inform or any other? Creative differences should not be theoretical, they should always have real expression. This will make collaboration more effective.

Verbose copywriters VS. Creatively thinking designers

One more problem which many project managers frequently face is that copywriters are too verbose and designers are always silent. Ask a copywriter the time, and he will describe the process of clock production to you. Ask the same question to a designer, and he will draw you a beautiful picture of a pendulum. Alas, neither answer will be practical…  Differences in mentality of these two professionals make the process of implementation of these two strategies problematic. Each of them tries in his side. But think about it. Can an image convey full information about the key benefits of the product? What about just a wordy text, without a design at all? Hardly… Only the combination of these two elements can bring good results. That is exactly why we advocate development of communication between all members of the team. Only in communication and cooperation all disputes can be settled up and an optimal decision can be found.

However, there is another way. Very effective but still rather unpopular – feedback from end-users. Just show them a webpage and ask for their opinion on its presentation and content, you will find out what should be corrected and what should be left as it is. Why can’t you do it yourself? You cannot, as your opinion will always be subjective. Working on the project, you put so much effort and emotions into it that it seems great to you in any case. Only a true judge in the face of end-users can make an honest verdict to your creative effort. Why not throw away all doubts and delegate the judgment to those whose opinion will be the most objective?

Thanks to Brad Shorr for the material Content Strategy Within The Design Process – we’ve taken something from there.

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This article is dedicated to mobile app promotion with the help of ASO and localization. That is why first of all I would like to explain what that ASO actually is, what components it consists of, what it is tightly related to, and why it is so much important. As we go forward, I will gladly tell about how to use those instruments with the most efficiency, what results to expect in the long and short term according to my own experience and the experience of the company I work in. Also I will explore the ASO algorithm and will share useful resources that will help to shorten the ASO activities time and improve conversion rate optimization.  

Let’s start from the very beginning. Every mobile application developer wants his product to be effective and successful. Success rate may be measured in different ways (the number of downloads and the number of active users, ratings and feedbacks of customers, etc.) but we all understand that the greatest indicator of success is the return on investment and the profitability of the whole affair. So, what the numbers tell us is that in 2012 the global market of mobile apps applications equaled to 7.83 billion dollars approximately. According to Flurry data which you may see on the diagram below, the most iOS and Android devices are in USA and China, while United Kingdom is the third on the list.

That means that application localization for just two languages (English and Chinese) will bring you almost 500 million of potential users.

Have a look at the number of devices, volumes and the income in these markets:

Let’s analyze the data.

USA are certainly the leader in the App Store with a very heavy competition.

Japan is a promising market in case your app will be loved there (a little secret of successful monetization in Japanese Google Play zone is funds withdrawal from mobile operators’ accounts but not from credit card).

In China you will get the main profit from the App Store. You are able to download APK for your paid application from numerous Chinese forums the next day after it appears in Google Play.

And so we get back to 500 million of prospective Anglo-Chinese users. Even if one-fifth of these people buy something from you at USD$ 1.00 and 30% more of them will take the market the sum will still be quite impressive.

But what if it’s not enough for you? Here is the data about fast growing mobile devices markets. These directions and languages are really challenging and in most cases the competition is lower than in USA mobile applications market.

Here is good news for independent developers. Pay attention to the diagram below. We may see positive tendency of independent and small developers’ growth in income. Games and applications that take the positions below 100 bring 68% of the whole mobile developers’ revenue.

It means that if you are really good at what you do, you will receive the return on investment. Well, in case of financial failure you will have one less excuse.

So let’s get back to App Store Optimization, which is called new SEO by many people nowadays. I will try to explain in my own words what it is and why one may need it. There are more than 800 thousand applications in App Store currently. App Store interface updates (now search results look not like a list but large blocks with icons, screenshot, and upper description line) in conjunction with imperfect search system make our app invisible for potential users. That is why ASO is supposed to help us handle this situation.

So what does this mysterious ASO include and why is it so much effective? App Store Optimization is a set of measures. Icon, screenshot, and application name (both the app and the publisher) matter. Furthermore, keywords hidden from users play a very important role too. And do not forget about users’ reviews, their quantity, the number of backlinks to your app, the number of publisher’s applications and their quality, and many other factors influencing the ranking and position in the search results.

Let me give one more interesting diagram to show that everything is going well.

What do we see here? Almost 20% of queries are “platitude” that may be estimated in thousands and even millions. Try to search for “game” (about 160 thousand results), “travel” (23 thousand), “camera” (12 thousand), “news” (15 thousand), “shopping” (3 thousand). Certainly, nobody is going to look through a thousand of apps to find yours (do not forget that the more often an application is downloaded and the more it has positive feedbacks – the higher it is shown in the search results, so there is no room for new applications here). Let’s look at the diagram one more time. 70% of queries are rare words or words combinations, long tail or specific queries. Thus, one of the ASO bases is SEO keyword optimization that will get you to the first position in a specialized search.

So how to choose keywords? It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that long tail and efficient keyword research is typically applied to App Store. In Google Play the situation is different: the description text is indexed as opposed to App Store, and hidden from users keywords line is absent. However, it is necessary to write a separate article devoted to App Store, Google Play and Amazon keywords. ASO is a really broad theme.

In the meantime, here are some ASO newbies’ mistakes:

• Use only a comma when listing the keywords in the App Store, but not spaces!

• It is not worth making up new non-existing words. Ideally, there must be at least one keyword in application name. This will significantly increase the chances of the application for being found.

• Do not place the text on the icon. This is superfluous for sure.

• The first screenshot should provide maximum information, so it is better to place there “gameplay” or the main features of the application. It is not a good idea to put the menu or splash screen first.

• Localize the screenshots necessarily! This is obligatory!

• The most important thing in application description is the first line. Make it as informative as possible.

• App description in App Store is not indexed that is why there is no point in stuffing it up with keywords.

• It is worth to list the awards application gained or positive users’ feedbacks. This really works.

• In description on App Store it is impossible to use asterisk and tick since recently, but you still may model it creatively.

• Changing keywords in App Store is possible only when updating the application. But it is not worth updating the app only because of that. Guys from Apple may not like that.

• Use App Storerankings.net, searchman.com and other services of that type to find good keywords and to track competitors, but do not forget to double-check their work.

• Localize your applications, their descriptions and keywords, if that has not been done yet.

• The last but not the least – analyze your competitors! Check what they are good at and probably you will be able to borrow something from them.

Adapted from: http://blog.flurry.com/

http://blog.appannie.com/category/app-annie-index/

The post What is ASO and Why does App Store Optimization Matter so Much to Developers Nowadays? appeared first on - Promodo Blog.

News

Chirpify Facilitates Purchases on Social Media

Chirpify presents a new way of making purchases on social media. This software, launched in 2012, delivers greater leverage to brands that seek newer and more innovative marketing and points of sale. Chirpify converts comments and replies to cash, which allows businesses and consumers to make purchases, sales and donations, and allows them to pay in-stream and fundraise on social media. The process is smooth and hands users tremendous convenience. You can read more about Chirpify at Tech Crunch.

Google Announces Google+ Dashboard for Businesses

Google has introduced a new Google+ Dashboard for businesses to manage Google+ local page. The feature allows business owners on Google+ to manage their local pages and make use of functions such as Share, AdWords Express among other offers. Businesses will also be given better page insights.
With the new Google+ Dashboard for businesses, you have the ability to update your info with your website URLs and phone numbers apart from other actions. You can monitor all your activity such as Google+ notifications, and you can perform other actions such as assigning page managers, sharing images and videos. You may also initiate Hangouts from here.
AdWords Express and Offers campaigns are available at a glance. G+ Insights can be viewed from here, enabling you to monitor performance data for your Google+ posts along with other features. You can read more about the G+ dashboard for businesses at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Google Purchases Waze in $1 Million Deal

You may have heard a lot about the impending purchase of Waze by Google. Finally, this has happened and Google made an agreement to purchase this navigation app maker for more than $1 billion. Earlier, Facebook and Apple made an attempt to buy this company, but Google beat them to it. It is believed that if any competitor purchased Waze, it could have meant serious competition for Google.
Waze has confirmed this purchase agreement and the leadership there is excited about the idea of working with the Google Maps team. The whole idea of the two working together is to improve search capabilities and also to collaborate with them to develop a world map that will be recognized as the best. You can read more about Google buying Waze here at Search Engine Watch.

Tips
Loopholes in Internet Copyright Law

This article highlights the issues that currently exist with Internet copyright law. The incident related here possibly concerns more and more individuals and companies being penalized and even facing legal action for no fault of their own. The sharing of images, videos and other content from some sites might appear to be covered by Creative Commons licenses, but users may sometimes be shocked when they are served with a letter highlighting the violation of copyright law. The article states that this can result in severe losses to companies, especially small businesses. Read more about Loopholes in Internet Copyright Law at Hubspot.

The SEO Periodic Table Focuses on Success Factors Rather than Ranking Factors

The SEO Periodic Table had been introduced in 2011 to provide a sort of road map for SEO and to display all the SEO elements that could possibly be utilized in a marketing campaign. This table has now been updated and carries a variety of new elements.
It focuses a great deal on success factors as opposed to ranking factors, which is just what website owners should turn their attention towards. Additionally, the Periodic Table now focuses on weighting of an array of SEO elements. This provides users with a good idea about how much of their attention should be focused on certain areas. Read more about the SEO Periodic Table here at Search Engine Land.

Avoid Making the 16 Most Common Mistakes that Startups Make

When you start a new business, there are many things that you tend to pick up along the way. Some people consider these mistakes necessary so that an organization learns as it progresses. However, you do not need to make all the mistakes that everyone else makes as long as you’re willing to learn about how they occur. It’s a good idea to study the common mistakes made by startups, as these could save you a lot of time and frustration. There are as many as 16 mistakes that startups are known to make, and learning about them can help startups save time, frustration and money too. Read more about the 16 most common mistakes startups make at Mashable.

Large Tech Firms Lay Down UX Design Standards

Any UX design will carry key elements of standardization. No matter what industry you are designing a website for, there are certain trends that are followed which speak of the value businesses give their products. Standard designs will always be cross-feature, but they will remain specific to the industry you’re designing a website for. As a good designer, you will always carry these elements in your mind in order to fulfill designs that would be appreciated by top class designers. Read more about the guidelines that UX designers adhere to at Econsultancy.

10 Social Networks that Facilitate Discrete Interaction

While you have the more popular kind of social networks around that are being increasingly used for commercial purposes, here are 10 that are meant for those who want to keep things a little quiet.
These social networks allow you to carry out your family conversations in complete privacy. For many people who want to keep things private, including their images and conversations, these social networks are ideal. You can read more about these 10 social networks at Mashable.
Assessing Conversion Rates on Low-Traffic Websites
Websites tend to vary in terms of the traffic they receive on a daily basis. Monitoring this traffic is important to understand what direction a business is taking. With regards to money-making sites, it’s important to determine what kind of conversion rate you have. There are some tools available for this purpose, and they are normally quite reliable. With low-traffic, it becomes difficult to make such assessments. However, Wingify has a pretty good conversion calculator, which delivers credible results. You can read more about how it is implemented at Search Engine Land.

Google to Apply Search Ranking Standards to Smart phones

Google has penalized websites over the past 2 years for having irrelevant or low quality content as well as black hat SEO. As a result of that, website owners have paid more attention to improving their quality to meet the minimum standards.
The same rules are going to be applied to smart phones. This is being done in an attempt obviously to strive for better quality for smart phone users. This is long overdue since the revolution towards smart phones began quite a while ago. Google wants to ensure that smart phone usage is boosted because this technology is in fact the future. The declining sales of the traditional desktop PC are hints of what is to come, and so they had better get started sooner or later. Read more about the specifics of Google’s smart phone SEO standards at Google Master Central.

Studies Show that People Prefer Factual Verbiage to Marketing Jargon

According to recent research, people do not really go for aggressive marketing fluff as opposed to content that carries facts. People who use the internet prefer data that is useful, and they can do without the fancy verbiage. A wider study must be conducted to determine which segments of the consumer market prefer particular kinds of content. However, common sense tells you that it’s not a bad idea to use marketing language within reason, as long as it does not appear to be all hype with no facts. The majority of your content must be factual, and it should be provided in a manner that is easily readable. You can read more about this at Econsultancy.

Google Urges Everyone to Refrain from Short-term SEO Tactics

It’s of immense importance to refrain from temporary and short-term techniques that might get your website penalized. According to Penguin 2.0, the recommendations are clear regarding linking amid other techniques used. However, many website owners are still persisting with techniques that Google has warned everyone about. For the time being, everything seems to work fine and websites are being ranked well. However, it’s only a matter of time before you wake up and find your website nowhere near the first page. You can learn more about this at State of Search.
Solutions for Email Marketing Problems
Email marketing is relevant and booming today. Businesses find them most useful, even though there are many other techniques for online marketing available. For a lot of other people, email marketing is a thing of the past or is becoming increasingly irrelevant. This is far from true. It must be emphasized that email marketing needs to be used more effectively, and there are particular solutions being proposed for better and more effective email marketing solutions. You can read more about these solutions at Hubspot.

Infographics

Businesses Now Realize the Importance of Content Marketing

It’s apparent that Google’s Panda updates have played a significant role in ensuring the website owners focus on their content. Perhaps because of this, most businesses have now become highly conscious of the need to develop different kinds of content that they can use for their websites, blogs, newsletters, etc. The focus has now largely shifted to content marketing, and businesses are becoming more innovative and competitive in this regard. Those who benefit at the end of it all are those that read this content and imbibe the information put out there. This is exactly what Google intended, and it appears that this is exactly what is happening. You can read more about marketing content at Marketing Profs.

Google’s Cutts and Bing’s Forrester Tell Users about Working with Search Engines Legally

While search engine updates are making it abundantly clear about what is and what isn’t acceptable in SEO techniques, you will still find people accidentally overstepping the limits inadvertently. Together, Cutts and Forrester discuss the ways you can avoid falling into what they call a Search Engine Jail. They also explain how users can drive traffic, create good content and convert and keep customers. You can enjoy the full discussion here, which is available at Search Marketing Expo.

The Importance of Leaving the Correct Business Listings on Google 

Business Listings on Google allow businesses to leave traces to them. It’s like leaving a name and a number from an address book out there. Every business must focus on making sure their business details are listed correctly too. It’s futile if your business details are incorrect because you will be leaving information out there that is irrelevant and will never benefit you. You can learn more about the importance of business listings at Moz.

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In marketing, especially in email marketing, we can single out seven sins, as in the Bible: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. An inattentive marketer, who is continuously rushing somewhere may commit any of them, and they may occur even in advanced email marketing. Let’s take a closer look.

1. Pride

Last campaign was great – you can be proud of your work! Or probably you see what you want to see? Too good performance is as alarming as poor results. When it comes to email newsletters, consider them carefully: whether number of newsletter views can be compared with click through rate? How often do such clicks become conversions?

Last campaign was great – you can be proud of your work! Or probably you see what you want to see? Too good performance is as alarming as poor results. When it comes to email newsletters, consider them carefully: whether number of newsletter views can be compared with click through rate? How often do such clicks become conversions?

To be proud of your work is good, but please don’t forget that software and services failure happens at times, and people can act as a crowd. If email marketing results are clearly odd and abnormal, do your best to find the source of such effect.

2. Greed

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To increase the sales and efficiency businesses match with all tools available in the Internet. From the very beginning it was contextual advertising and SEO, than media advertising and special projects, and than SMM tools appeared. 

However, SMM result cannot be calculated by impressions or clicks as opposed to the former tools. The value of online reputation management and promotion in social media is usually complex. Although it increases sales performance and sometimes is even the only sales source however, the influence of Social Media Marketing is not direct like in PPC (clicks lead to calls) but with certain intermediate result. This causes the greatest difficulty in developing success and effective SMM strategy.

Expectations of clients may be the most diverse:

• Loyal customers;

• New sales channels;

• Additional sales in addition to current clients;

• Higher average bill;

• Repeated sales;

• Positive reputation (including the reputation of recruitment department);

• Keeping potential customers;

• Sales on the recommendations, etc.

At the same time, their recourse may be caused by some sort of a problem. Here is the list of the most frequent ones:

1. The attempts to influence public opinion turned into a disturbance wave (Black Public Relations):

● A dramatic example of such situation is a “Duckbill” company – one day several bloggers wrote alike posts about Duckbill services and how they liked a shop. Naturally, this wave of activity has been noticed and it caused rush of indignation and ironies. “Duckbill” name became appellative in advertising industry as an example of unsuccessful advertising campaign;

● We have also heard about the clients who offered to massively flood the networks forums in a month with discussions and comments recommending their goods. In situations like that it is necessary to imagine what is so special in goods that may make all the people simultaneously come online and write positive feedbacks. There is almost nothing like this and so this is a very dangerous strategy which may ruin the reputation of your client.

2. Budgets are not justified:

● For example, a client insists on being present in all possible social networks. He creates and promotes accounts in four networking sites, invests but doesn’t see the return on investment. At this point it is important to understand that SMM services are not a direct sales channel. These are the tools that help to increase the sales, but do not directly provide them. That is why the share of SMM in a budget may be the part of expenses on advertising and a client should understand what he gets at the end.

3. It seems to work but we do not see what it gives us:

● If a client hasn’t formulated for himself why did he actually need SMM and hasn’t agreed on efficiency criteria with SMM services provider than he would necessarily come up with a question “What do I get from SMM and why do I pay it?”. The work is effective only in case when you get what you expect to get.

Step #1. Do you need SMM?

To begin with SMM you need to understand whether you really need it. Despite of the fact that almost any kind of audience may be found in the Internet, not all business spheres are in equal conditions when it comes to audience interests.

Below is the list of those who primarily need SMM in our opinion:

• Popular brands;

• Products related to sport, health, beauty (manufacturers or big dealers);

• Products for children (manufacturers or big dealers);

• Expensive goods – when seller’s reputation matters a lot (cars, traveling);

• Big online shops;

• Online shops selling chips.

Furthermore, we advice SMM to those who consider big money investing in advertising.

Step #2. Can you afford SMM?

After you have determined you really needed SMM make sure you are able to make it efficient.

1. Conversion site. SMM will either deliver traffic to your site or improve its quality. In both cases your website must be ready to convert this traffic into sales. There must be contact form on the website, customers must be able to make a purchase or make calculations, check prices or order a call back. Check your website possibilities to directly get in touch with a client. If there are only one or two of such possibilities than you’d better spend on on-site audit or redesign before spending money on SMM. You will get an immediate effect in sales.

2. Analytics system. To be able to see the campaigns results and analyze them you need analytics system (Google Analytics is the first thing that comes to mind). It is important not only to set it up but also to set the goals and Ecommerce if you run online shop. Goals show you the percent of users who completed the set conditions – goal completions). For example: 3 visited pages, more than 3 minutes spent on a site, contact form pressed, call back ordered, items put in a basket, paid order, etc. You are the one who determines the goals. Just do not try to make huge amount of goals because you are going to have difficulties while performing analysis. The optimal number of goals is three.

3. Awell-defined goal. It is too early to talk about KPI; you just need to decide on what your company will receive from SMM: solution of problems with reputation, attracting loyal audience, brand support, or something else. If you are going to order SMM just because everybody does it than we advice you to order on-site audit first to understand if you have problems with clients’ communication, and if there are any problems -  to understand how to solve them.

4. Budget. Decide on a budget you are ready to spend on SMM. You need to keep in mind that having appeared once in social media it will be quite inconvenient for you to leave them. First couple of months the audience just gets involved and there is no big benefit. What budget to spend on PR? Usually we advice to spend not more than 25% from what you spend on advertising and SEO. Certainly, this is not a general-duty rule. For example, brand may spend on PR a much higher percentage of expenses. But this rule may be used as a guide for businesses that look for their clients in the Internet.

Step #3. Choose the platform

Now when we know what we want and how much we are ready to spend on this we need to choose the platform for works. To work everywhere means spending efforts and budget in vain, as well as low efficiency on each particular platform. Below are several advices on how to choose the most promising platform for promotion:

1. Analyze your auditory, its basic characteristics, interests, indirect signs you can find it by, habits, particularities.
2. Compare it with general data known about social networking sites. For example, Vkontakte has its own public page with auditory statistics available. The similar data about other networking sites may be found.
3. The choice of primary platforms pool depending on a goal. Remember the goal you have set. For example, if you need to level the negative you need to choose platforms with negative. In case you need to get feedback from target audience you need to choose popular thematic portals and groups.
4. Checking by statistics. Check where organic traffic comes to your site from and what the quality of this traffic is. If you are choosing between two networking sites and one of them already delivers the traffic to your site we advice you to choose that one already working for you because you are already known there.
5. Competitor analysis. What are the social networking sites your competitors are most popular in? They have more active groups with more participants, and they are more written about. If they invest in a certain networking site with active networkers than that social networking site works for you.

Step #4. Choose the tools

After we decided on a platform or the number of platforms we need to choose the tools to work with. For a start, it is not necessary to invest the whole budget into promotion. We spent a lot of time to choose the right platform and are able to save even more in case we test it and check if it is really up to the challenge.

To do this we measure in statistics the current traffic and its quality. We carry out the test. Test is a low cost way to establish an on-line presence. For example, you can run a poll or post in a popular group of a similar topic, to start targeted advertising or spread the information about interesting specials on the site. The variants depend on your expectations (likes, shares, comments, etc.).

After testing we analyze the results received and accept the decision whether to continue working with a chosen platform or not (whether we are satisfied with results) and what tools to use.

Step #5. Determine the Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

At this point it’s high time to choose specific KPIs according to which we will determine the success of our promotion actions.

What KPIs should be:

1. They must be measured in numbers.
2. There must be specific and independent tools or techniques that will give us that numbers. These may be: website statistics, platforms statistics, independent programs collecting the statistics information, search engines results, queries statistics. Empirical knowledge does not count.
3. They must accord with our Goal.

We should keep in mind there are tactical and strategic effects. Tactical effect can be measured in numbers. Strategic effect is determined by a goal.

Check the examples of some KPIs and their measurement and analyzing techniques.

Reputation management

Sales growth through recommendations

KPI:

● The percent of positive feedbacks more than 70% in TOP 20 search engines results page;

● Constant discussing of product and client on 20 popular portals of similar topic; recommendations and advices are given, at least one link from each site leading to our site.

● No less than 15% presence on SERPs by target queries – exterior information with a client recommendation.

Measurement and analyzing:

• Website statistics (growth of returning visitors, increase of organic traffic and its quality, referrals);

• Organic results (the percent of exterior positive information about a client, percentage ratio of positive and negative on forums);

• Platforms statistics (rating of popular portals of a certain subject, traffic ranking of thematic forums).

Managing account in social media

The goal:

Sales growth thanks to new audience from social networking sites;

Increase in an average bill (additional sales).

KPI:

• More active participants;

• Follow ups growth;

• Growth of referral traffic from a group;

• Improvement of traffic quality;

• Increase in number of natural recommendations.

Measurement and analyzing:

• Website statistics (growth of referral traffic, appearance of visitors returning from account, slow improvement of traffic quality);

• Platforms statistics (increase of audience activity, likes growth, views, growth of the number of participants in competitions and polls, growth of comments and natural reviews).

Promotion on social media

The goal:

Sales growth at cost of new sales channels;

Reduction of an offer price.

KPI (depends on a tool and statistics’ capabilities):

• Targeted audience coverage (on social networking sites, blogs, portals);

• Number of impressions, clicks, subscribers;

• Number of active users visiting a group for the first time;

• Number of conversions;

• Cost per impression, click, subscriber;

• Cost per sale or cost per goal completion.

Measurement and analyzing:

• Website statistics (number of clicks through, traffic quality, number of conversions by goals or by Ecommerce, cost per sale or conversion into a goal);

• Platform statistics (coverage, clicks, cost per impression, cost per click, per subscriber);

• Account statistics (number of subscribers, audience activity while first visiting a group).

Step #6. Count KPI at month-end, analyze the dynamics results

It is essential to analyze the characteristics mentioned above from month to month. You may set your sights on scheduled KPI to have something to go by. But in this case you need to take into account initial parameters and PR tools capabilities while working in a “Do not harm” mode. For example, you are able to get 70% of organic results in a week if required. But this statistics most likely will have the reverse effect (social networkers’ indignation) and may require even more efforts and resources to fix the problem.

Step #7. Make adjustments to work

You need to always keep in mind your final goal is and your KPI when working with SEO and SMM. Always make adjustments to your actions in accordance with them.

• Assess and make corrections to certain actions on a daily basis (wording in texts, posts selection);

• Adjust the KPI plan monthly;

• Check with a goal and adjust a plan of activities once a quarter.

SMM will be efficient once it is under budget and our expectations correspond to real gains.

Moreover, plan your SMM activity with respect to your web promotion complex. Use SMM as additional Internet marketing tool. We pay particular attention to this.

The post 7 Steps to Successful SSM appeared first on - Promodo Blog.

Search was never Facebook’s strong point – one was able to find necessary pages in social networking site only by knowing right keywords. This is about to change in the nearest future. New smart Facebook social Graph Search is beta-tested for the moment. Many experts believe this option provide brands with new possibilities and opens prospect for promotion.

Graph Search algorithm provides results on the basis of information that Facebook collected from a milliard of its networkers. The system considers the relevancy of information and its relation to a user rather than queries.

After all Facebook users are able to use Facebook Graph brands will have to accept the challenge and learn promoting with due regard to a new system.

Likes matter

Very often likes to the posts in social networking sites are thought of little account by brands. However, after social Graph Facebook had been integrated the need for likes has sharply increased. Large number of likes makes content more relevant. Likes are the most important basis in a new Facebook search algorithm. They allow users to quickly find brands. For example, if a user wants to know more about Promodo he or she just needs to enter into a search bar “Friends who liked Promodo” or “Friends of my friends who liked Promodo”, and having found necessary people a user is able to discuss any questions he or she would like to. This way of search is supposed to form deeper emotional attachment to a brand – users will know which of his friends also connect with certain brands.

Graph Search rewards for relevancy

Likes are not the only thing that may help to improve search positions. Facebook claims Search Graph to guarantee relevancy which is individual for every particular user. If you search for “tea” the search results basically depend on several parameters: tea relevant pages with most likes, tea pages you shared, tea pages you are related to (likes, shares, etc), pages of tea companies and shops located near you, tea related brands your friends liked, etc.

Targeted advertising

Facebook Graph Search is a mother lode for targeted advertising and sponsored search results, especially for local businesses. Facebook hasn’t provided much information about what advertising solutions would be available. However, experts warrant that the company will offer several sponsored results on each page and several small advertisements will be included among search results.

Graph Search optimization

Graph Search is launched as a beta for the moment and so brand have enough time to optimize their pages with respect to the new technology. The difficulty lies in the fact it is almost impossible to predict how the algorithm will be updated in the nearest months. But some advices may be given even now. To be highly ranked in Graph Search you need to:

• Provide quality content which is relevant to your target audience;

• Stimulate users to leave as many comments as possible: provide interesting pictures and videos and ask questions in posts);

• Provide maximum of the content that may gain lots of likes (these may be adorable cats if relevant to your brand);

• Stimulate “Check-In” users’ behavior and encourage them to update their current location in case you have off stores;

• Big business’ local representatives and separate shops also should create accounts on Facebook to get into “LOCATIONS NEAR YOU” search results.

The post How to promote a brand by means of Facebook Graph Search appeared first on - Promodo Blog.

These an eye catching image and user-friendly site will not be enough to amaze the user. Anybody can find many examples of skillfully crafted websites and copy their tricks. However the results are usually far from ideal. Conversion rate remains on the same level, and many website owners question themselves what decision was wrong or ineffective and what to do to increase conversion rates.

To find the answer, let’s determine how to measure the website effectiveness. Conversion rate is one of the most popular metrics, but what does show and how to increase it?

Project and conversion types

Let’s consider two project types:

1. Online stores: any website where the user can buy or order product and services.

A conversion here would be a purchase. Make sure to include both types of purchases –  made via website and telephone, if possible.  

2. Media projects: content sources, news websites, guides, etc. In this case a conversion can click on banner or number of ads views.

Media projects make money on advertisement, so the principal metrics will be time on site, number of pages which have been viewed, metrics reflecting customers’ loyalty, etc. One of the most popular goals is to find the most clickable areas and set the higher price for banner placement there.

On the Internet you can also find other types of projects, such as social networks, for example. But for now we will consider conversions only for ecommerce websites and media projects.

As we just have pointed out different website have different aims so the metrics which measure the effectiveness shouldn’t be the same too. In real life however many website owners measure only standard conversion which is not representative at all. So what should be done to improve the situation?

Effectiveness metrics

The first thing you need to do is to determine the key indicator of effectiveness (Key Performance Indicators — KPI). After that you should consider these indicators statistics over the time to be able to understand the weak points.

For online stores:

measure the overall conversion – number of purchases, also see how many users clicked the “Order now” button in the site header, in the shopping cart pop up, on product page, etc. Then segment the collected data by the product categories, regions, traffic source, and other parameters. According to our statistics the overall conversion rate substantially varies depending on the site thematic – from 0,23% to 4,69%. 

With the help of statistics, we can figure out where there is potential in website growth and what interface improvements it might need.

1. For media projects:

 measure the overage time on site, bounce rate, number of pages viewed, also check the number of banner clicks and clicks on the buttons like “Read more”  which lead to the related articles or articles of the same author.

According to our statistics, on average, media projects have the following indices.

If the data you have collected shows poorer results, then it means there is plenty of room for interface improvements.

Interface improvement

Now, when we have determined the effectiveness metrics, measured them and detected weak points, it is time to proceed to interface improvement.

General rules of effective page design still work, so let’s consider the most important of them, which are applicable to both types of websites: online stores and media projects.

1. Landing pages

You should know on what pages the users land when they come to your site or use search option inside the website. It is important to measure bounce rate on such pages.

As a result you will be hinted on what improvements your website might need. For example: there is essential traffic to the website, people can use search on the website, but nevertheless people leaving the pages (bounce rate is more than 70%). How to increase conversion and decrease bounce rate? Clearly it is the case for usability and design.

First of all, landing page should answer the question which bothers the users coming to your website and it should meet the following requirements:

-          The answer is located on the first screen

-          Landing page contains call to action

-          Target button is prominent and stands out from the rest

-          Very often there is psychological barrier in shopping online. Your task in this case should be attract the user attention, prove your credibility and give them the tool to study the website further.

2. Texts

Sadly, content still doesn’t receive enough attention, either in online stores or media projects.

Ecommerce websites do not have large budgets for writing content and typically they are limited to simple SEO texts.

Media projects also save money on hiring professional writers and journalists which directly affects content quality.

According to our experience, thoroughly elaborated micro-texts and prompts can lead to sales increase and better customers’ loyalty to media websites. They can increase conversion as well. We would cite the next requirements:

-          Texts should be meaningful and helpful to the user, not just bunch of SEO keywords

-          Text should be well-structured with clear headings, subheadings, and other elements

-          Text should be comparatively short. Remember also that if the text is not interesting to the user, they won’t read it, but if it engages, then they will read it through, leave comment or feedback. So the main purpose is to interest the user, this is how quality content resources gather large audience

-          You should always remember about the grammar side of the texts. This fact directly influences your brand credibility.

3. Images

Images should be large and quality. In shopping one of offline store advantages is ability to feel the product. To give the user the similar kind of experience, your product should feature a great number of photos. User could be interested even in tiny details, as bar-codes, storage battery images, and so on.

Good pictures in the articles make long texts easier to read and bring the sense of quality and credible resource. User will believe more the article with photos than one without them.

2. Cross referencing

Cross referencing blocks and links help users better explore the website and visit other pages.

They increase the number of pages per visit and time on site indices.

In media projects such reference blocks could be “You can also read” or “Articles related to the topic”.  To achieve this you should develop an algorithm of articles linking, so that users could see really relevant materials.

For online stores the form of such referencing could be links to the similar products, items which have been bought by users who also purchased this product, etc. Don’t be afraid to use such blocks, there is no way we can make the people to buy one particular product, but if they are already in our store, make sure to give them the widest range of choice, visually separating the most optimal options for their case.

3. Means of personalization

People like surprises. Think of how nice it is to suddenly receive a gift from the restaurant – a basket with bread or a couple of sweets. These small things can affect people’s loyalty and make them feel they are very precious customers to you.

Personalization online in possible only when you have enough information about the user. How to get it? If the users see your resource is trustworthy with the time they will provide their personal details. Besides, let’s not forget about the social networks, where you can find lots of information. Nice small things which you can do online:

-          Display the delivery cost to the user door and the time of delivery, when they view the product

-          Show to the customer what other users buy along with the product he bought a couple of months ago

-          Inform about the materials which your customer friends have read today.

Measure, implement, test”

That is the usability specialist motto.

We can give lots of advices on how to increase conversion rate, but only if you run a test you will get a definite answer works the best for you.

Try different variants and test them. This is a guaranteed way to find the most effective method to increase the conversion.

The post 5 ways to increase conversion rate appeared first on - Promodo Blog.

We’re here again on Friday Catch-up with some fresh and interesting news for our SEO and Search Engine Marketing followers. There’s a bit of everything for everyone here. So, let’s go over the various news feeds we have for you today and see which ones are having the greatest impact.

NEWS and EVENTS

Google’s Large Thumbnails Being Tested on Tablet Search Results

Google has been running some tests on their tablets. They’ve been testing larger thumbnails and so have their customers. While it’s way too early to judge the outcome, if you run a search on your device, you’ll probably still see the small thumbnails. There could be an endless number of issues that prevent the intended results from showing up. Perhaps a few tweaks within the settings might resolve this. You can read more about this at Search Engine Land.

Fresh Designs to Be Introduced for Yahoo’s Search Page

With things changing almost daily in the online world, keeping your content fresh and relevant really matters. This is why Yahoo is changing the design and layout of its search page. A fresh design is always appreciated as long as it’s pleasing to the human eye and serves everyone’s purpose. If the design integrates features that add to a user’s ease, it will be widely appreciated. You can learn more about this at Search Engine Roundtable.

Images to be Added to Google’s Adwords

Google is now advancing its Adwords tool by allowing users to add images in their advertisements. This is expected to please users because they would have an additional advantage. Placing an image with each advertisement would be more attractive and would provide advertisers more leverage. With this additional control in your hands, you are bound to benefit significantly. Read more about this at Search Engine Roundtable.

TIPS

Awesome Tips from Experts to Get Your Startups Running

Experts have provided their input for you to take advantage of. Through their experience, you can learn about small but significant points that can help you improve your business. Whether it’s related to developing strategic partnerships, expanding your social outreach or developing refined content, you can improve your business by adhering to expert advice. It just takes some knowledge to get you somewhere, but you must be willing to believe in and follow that knowledge in order to gain something positive out of it. Read more about these tips at Mashable.

Design Reviews Play their Part in Facilitating Internet Marketing

Most things that you see on the internet have aesthetic elements. This is what is used for attracting customer attention. There are certain colors, shapes and designs that are known to carry desired messages, and if these are used properly, they can comprise designs that help an Internet marketing campaign. Therefore, design is of central importance for every web page being launched today. Read what experts have to say about this at Internet Marketing Ninjas.

The Merits of Publishing Content with Entertainment Value

Here’s an interesting take on web content. Experts look into the value of creating content for the web just to amuse readers. Well, this certainly is one way of engaging readers and developing a fan base. You can also weave handy advice into such messages. This means that you will benefit in at least two ways. You can simply expand your fan base by entertaining them, and you can also pass industry and company-related information on in this way. Read more about this at Hubspot.

Your Social Outreach and Search Ranking are Increasingly Governed by Good Content

With every update that Google makes to its algorithm, greater emphasis is on content quality. Google does not need you to do too many other things. The focus is on content, and if you do this right, you are sure to move up the search ranking ladder. There is a reason why Content is King. It drives customers to your products and services and gives them real information about it. Marketing your brand any other way does not match the way that content markets your brand. For a more detailed view of this, read what the experts have to say on Search Engine Land.

Giveaways are Still Capturing Leads and Increasing Conversions

Internet marketing experts say that giveaways are effective when you want to grab leads. These leads automatically mean more conversions, and so they claim that giveaways result in an increase in conversions. Customers still find giveaways appealing, which is a positive sign. It tells us that people are using the internet and internet marketers are not wasting their time. You can read more about this at Unbounce.

Your Authority Website Must be Well Focused on Content

With Penguin’s recent update, websites have again been penalized for violating previously mentioned guidelines. Content is the focus now, and your website must have fresh and up-to-date content that speaks volumes for your business. It is pointless to go for all those previously practiced tricks in SEO when Google has been telling you time and again to focus on creating worthy content. Read more about Penguin 2.0 here at Econsultancy.

Great Tips for Choosing WordPress Plugins and Themes

The best themes to go for in WordPress are those that can be customized easily. All you want is complete control and this is true for the plugins you install. You will need to study all these before you make your decision. Although you may always switch themes at a later time, it can still cause you issues. Therefore, it’s best for you to be entirely sure of what you want to go for. You can read more about this at Jeff Bullas.

Tumblr’s Role in Marketing Your Brand

Tumblr is definitely one of the most active social media sites around. It has to be on your social media strategy apart from Facebook and G+. It has special features such as a younger fan following as well as other attributes such as a look and feel that is user friendly. Top brands are using Tumblr prolifically in order to spread their content around. Read more about why you should use Tumblr at Practical Ecommerce.

Turning Your Website into a Cash Cow

There are certain techniques that are used by expert internet marketers that actually turn websites into money-generating machines. These techniques can be passed on and they are not secrets. Applying them is a matter of common sense, and you will realize this once you read through the strategies implemented. You may have tried for a long time to become someone who has benefitted from being online, but now is the time to correct your approach so that you can earn well. To learn more about these methods, you can read about the tips posted at Kiss Metrics.

Here’s How You Can Build a Lucrative Adwords Campaign

Contrary to common perception about setting up and running a Google Adwords account, it is quite easy to understand. All you need to know is what your customers demand and some knowledge of your competitors and a little 4^th grade level math. With these in your armory, and some common sense, you can go a long way with your Adwords Campaign. Adwords has become more complex recently, and while this has happened, it has become an even bigger earning opportunity than it was before. Read more about this at Kiss Metrics.

INFOGRAPHICS

A Comprehensive Look at Product Listing Ads

Product Listing Ads are helpful for users who want detailed information in an attractive manner. This is not complex for marketers to follow, but there are many details that need to be looked at and considered for a product. There are now entire white papers being written on this subject area, as people are certainly in need of more relevant information. You can read more about Infographics at Marketing Profs.

Content is Being Widely Recognized Now as the Main Feature in Marketing

If you really want to make sure you have a website that ranks well against your competitors, you need to focus on your content. There are a few other technical aspects that you need to get right, such as your page tags, but the bulk of the focus is now on your content. Many have tried to avoid this inevitable focus, but it’s already in their faces. There is no way of denying this reality, as Google proves this point with every update to its algorithm. Read more about how important content is for your website at Unbounce.

Work Your Way to the Top with a Marketing Flywheel

Learn about the marketing flywheel and understand its importance in marketing your business online. There are tons of things that are really very simple, but we tend to overlook them just because we have our focus elsewhere. We have a wealth of information made available to us thanks to experts in online business marketing. There are numerous points they provide and an abundance of information that new and upcoming web marketers can learn from. You can learn more about the marketing flywheel here at Moz.

The post Friday Catch-up! Most Important News and Posts about SEO and Online Marketing this Week appeared first on - Promodo Blog.

• David, so how did you come to internet marketing? How did PPC associates start?

I graduated from law school in 1999 and knew that I didn’t want to be an attorney. So I moved to San Francisco and started looking for jobs. An Internet startup called Rentals.com hired me to do strategy work but while I was there I discover GoTo.com, which was the original pay per click search engine. From there I was hooked. After seven years of working at a variety of startups, I was ready to do my own thing so in 2008 I launched PPC Associates from a coffee shop in Pacifica, CA.

• Who were you first clients? What were the triggers or those breaking points that helped your business take flight? (maybe implementation of some great ERP system or participation in some conference or development of some customized in-house software)

My first clients were friends and colleagues of mine who knew I was doing consulting. Probably the thing that helped most early on was that I was pretty cheap – my minimum fee was $500 a month!

• How do you think your company will look like in 5 or 10 years? Do you have any plans?

Five years from now we will either be a multinational juggernaut with hundreds or thousands of employees around the world, or we will have been acquired by a bigger company. I don’t have specific plans right now but to continue to grow the business and provide great service to clients!

•  Have you used search remarketing in Ecommerce niche for AdWords, what strategies do you use? How do you increase the volume of sales/budgets in there?

Remarketing is great for enticing potential customers to come back to your site. There are a ton of techniques I could mention here, but one of my favorites is to offer time-based discounts – for example, to offer a 5% off coupon up to seven days after they’ve visited your site and then increase it to 10% after even days if they still haven’t purchased.

• Do you work with assisted conversions? Can you give a couple of examples from your experience, like structure and bidding practices?

Yes. We recently signed a contract with Convertro to help measure assist conversions. We’ve had several clients who were going to bid down keywords because they were not getting enough conversions but who ended up maintaining their bids after looking at the attribution data because they realized that these keywords were driving a lot of future purchase behavior. Not looking at assists is like cutting off the top of the funnel.

•  What are the average levels of conversion in different niches of ecommerce: electronics, clothing, furniture, tools. Which segments do you bet on in 2013?

It’s impossible to say what an average is, but a lot of people like to say 2%is the industry standard. I think it really depends on what you are selling and how much time you spend working on your conversion rate optimization. Segments I like in 2013 – clothing and cosmetics are two that come to mind!

•  How do you think Google Adwords changed during the last two years? What direction of development did it take?

Google has really put a lot more emphasis on mobile advertising and display advertising. They are really trying to get people to think of AdWords as an online marketing platform, not just a search platform.

•  What automation platforms do you use for search campaigns in google adwords and for campaigns aimed at GDN.

We generally use either SearchForce or Marin Software. We have also built some of our own internal API integration to streamline specific work flows inside PPC Associates.

• What are the main sources of paid traffic you offer your clients initially except AdWords and Bing? What is their ratio to Bing and AdWords?

Right now I would say Facebook. It’s still a small percentage relative to Google and Bing (probably less than 10%) but I predict it will grow a lot this year.

•  What are the main points that are important for Western clients when choosing a contractor? What do you emphasize like the main advantage of your company for your clients?

Often I think it comes down to trust. Does the contractor care about my business? Is he an expert? Has he had past success with businesses similar to mine? For us, the advantage we offer is hundreds of current and former clients that will vouch for the quality of our work – that’s the biggest reason clients are excited to work with us I think.

•  In your experience, how often do projects that work “in-house”, return to the model of cooperation with the agency? What are the reasons?

In-house teams return to agencies when they realize that either 1) online marketing is not as easy as they thought it was or 2) there is simply too much for an in-house agency to do on their own. Generally I feel like companies that bring their marketing in-house do so because they consider it a core competency of their business, so its pretty rare that a company would change their mind and go back to working with an agency, but it does happen!

•  How many projects in average does one PPC Expert in your team?

We try to have our account managers work on 4-5 clients at once. But keep in mind that we have a total of about 65 people and only 70 or so clients, so each client is basically almost getting one full time person from our staff at the moment, it’s just distributed over several team members.

•  Do you follow any news from the world of SEO, like the updates Google makes to its organic search algorithms? Have you felt that recently more clients are turning to PPC being frustrated by SEO?

We actually just brought on an awesome SEO expert – Kent Yunk – so I’m leaving all the SEO updates to him. But yet, we do see clients coming over to us because they can no longer depend on SEO traffic alone to drive enough volume for their business.

•  What kind of search engine do you use? Do you click on ads?

I use Google! I try not to click on the ads out of respect for the other advertisers. If I see an ad that I like, I’ll just write down the URL and enter it into the browser bar.

•  How do you promote your own site? PPC, SEO, email marketing, content marketing, affiliate marketing? What works best for you?

We do a little PPC but primarily we do “thought leadership” – we have two blogs, guest spots on other blogs, a very comprehensive web site and we do a lot of speaking opportunities.

• Do you think about expanding your business to Europe or Russian-speaking countries? Why? Why not?

Maybe someday. We do have a fair number of US clients that are already spending heavily with us in Europe and Russia in particular. But that’s a bit different than actually opening an office in Europe – ask me in 2014!

The post Interview with David Rodnitzky, CEO of PPC Associates company appeared first on - Promodo Blog.

In today’s speech you mentioned the importance of blogging for website promotion, so you also gain your customers through the blog?

Yes, we do, however blogger outreach is more about creating awareness of our brand across different audiences and increasing our authority among fashion industry.

Do you measure your market share? In general, as a company.

 Yes, and we use many different tools in order to understand our position and visibility online as well as interest in our brand; tools like Hitwise, which allows to understand our popularity online.

From SEO prospective it is all about monitoring our rankings as well as rankings of our competitors.

Let’s move to our official list of questions. Could you tell us how you ended up in SEO? 

I graduated Human Resources Management, so one of my first professional positions in London was a Recruitment Consultant role. It is a quite difficult job in a very sale-sy environment, but it allowed me to earn some money.

In the meantime, since I always very much enjoyed creating website and spending time online (who doesn’t like it;) and my husband was a graphic designer at that time, I created a website that sales personalized wedding invitations.

The website looked professionally, but was getting no traffic, so I started reading about online marketing and Google and this is how I first time find out that something like SEO actually exists.

As I wasn’t aware of any online resources that teach about SEO (I didn’t know any SEO blogs), I bought a book on Amazon site- “Google: how to get on the top and stay there” and this is how it started. I optimized our site and got us first clients as the website started ranking 2^nd for “personalized wedding invitations”!

All of that was happening in 2008 just weeks before the recession. When the recession started, I decided to quit my day work in recruitment and try to find a role in SEO!

So you just resigned without knowing where to go?

Yes, I saved some money that would allow me to live in London for 3 weeks without a job. I wanted to rest and then find new a job, but this time in SEO.

I sent my CV to a few SEO agencies. When invited for an interview at the ‘Search Works’ (one of the first SEO agencies in London), I took an SEO book with me to show that I’ve been learning:) and went for an interview (laughing). And I got the job!

You write that your nickname is “traveller in Search”. What do you mean by this nickname? Is it your life credo or something else?

I love travelling. It is my second biggest passion after SEO. I have a travel site and blog and manage large Google Plus travel community. I also travel quite often, I try to go to Asia once a year and explore new places and then write about it, but I do not want to associate my travel profile with Mags, an SEO consultant, so I use a different pen name.

May we try some quiz? For example, what was your worst SEO experience?

I don’t have an experience of losing all the rankings in one day (thankfully), but I have seen ranking drops for a few important terms in the past. Since I work with international sites that are old and have a lot of heritage, there are often actions taken by my predecessors that might have worked in the past but can be harmful today. I think this is a massive challenge for all SEOs.

It is also amazing how much spam is still out there in non-English Google SERP- they don’t seem to be touched by Panda nor Penguin updates.

And what gives you the most pleasure in SEO?

 I love improving sites from SEO perspective. I like finding issues that requires implementation of more complex solutions. It keeps me going. I also like finding answers in data, digging in Analytics and Omniture and finding answers for business questions.

Maybe you remember some SEO routines that were difficult for you, especially at the beginning of your SEO career?

I think meeting with clients when working for an agency. I was quite shy and even today, when giving the presentation at SECamp gave me a lot of stress:)

Maybe you can give some piece of advice for SEO beginners?

 There is one thing, which I have never changed since started working in SEO- I use Netvibes.com. I literally start every day from opening this site. It is nothing more than feed reader, but you can organize your feeds in a more visual way. It really works for me- I am very often asked how come I am able to stay on the top of all SEO news. The answer is Netvibes. And guess what? It is free!

 And what resources and bloggers are you subscribed for?

I am subscribed to all typical blogs- Search Engine Roundtable, SEOmoz and SE Journal and SEO Watch. I absolutely loved Sphinn in the past and I am really disappointed that they closed it down. My favorite now is SEO Chat!

I read a few UX, WordPress and Technology sites on a daily basis as well, websites like UX Magazine, WordPress Hacks or TechCrunch.

For social media, I find Jeff Bullas’s and Brian Solis very helpful.

Now that you are a multi-channel marketing manager what is your favorite source of traffic and what works the best for you?

 Are you seriously asking me about that? (laughing). SEO. There is no other option!

Yes, but PPC is also really good, lots of opportunity and data to analyze.

Yes! I find it more and more interesting. I am really lucky as I manage a great team on an agency side and I learn a lot from those guys!

I am also very interested in affiliates and would love to grow this channel at New Look a bit more. I like its technical aspect. You can really do a lot with the feed and if you are creative enough, you can use the feed for building some cool tools, which can be also used across other channels!

What education is more suitable for SEO, SEM work – analytical or humanitarian background?

 To be honest, I don’t think it’s important where and what you study (although some prestige university degrees might give an easier start).

I did my bachelor degree in accountancy and finance, and master’s degree in human resources management. I think, HR management helped me to understand people’s behavior, sociology and that helps me to understand online searches. I think this kind of knowledge could be also useful for UX a bit! But I don’t believe that university degree is crucial in order to be successful.

And what do you think is a key to your personal success? You have managed to achieve lots of things, you have managed to work with great companies, maybe there are life hacks about time management?

I think it’s about not giving up. I came to UK about 10 years ago from Poland by bus. It took me 48 hours to get to London . I had about 60 pounds in my pocket, and I thought it is a lot of money! I finished on a train station; I could not speak English, but I didn’t give up and here I am.

If you think deeply insight your heart that something you do is right – just do it and don’t think about it too much. And believe in yourself! Everything can be achieved as long as you believe it!

And do you think being an SEO requires much of creative thinking?

Yes, I think creativeness is one of the most important skills in SEO. That’s also why I think SEO and socials should work together. Social teams are full of young, motivated and creative people with many great ideas. So if your SEO team doesn’t have those skills, don’t worry, team up with social team. You can create much more together!

What is your daily routine as a marketing manager like at New Look?

Every day is completely different. It’s also super fast moving environment- we launch new collections every few weeks!

Monday’s mornings are all about previous week and planning for a week ahead. I’m checking performance of all channels to see if we are staying within the forecast etc. There are also many meetings happening that day!

Between Tuesdays and Thursdays, I catch up on all 5 acquisition channels I manage and try to sort out challenges we come across that week. There is always a lot of work!

On Fridays, I work from agency’s office where I held meetings with their different teams. We discuss learning from the running week and plan actions for next days.

Looks like there is a huge amount of information and routines, do you enjoy this?

I love my job, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have difficult days. If you manage numerous channels, there are many different tasks not connected with each other- I deal with everything from making sure we target relevant SEO terms, through meeting with affiliates, forecasting and dealing with technical feed problems. It is challenging, but that is what makes the job more interesting!

And when you manage to get some free time what do you do?

I run my own websites, which I have to take care of, as well as my husband (laughing). We try to work together on some freelance projects plus we also build websites.

Since the weather in London is absolutely a nightmare, I try to escape as often as I can to Italy. It’s the most beautiful country in the world for me. I love Sardinia!

Outside of that, I am in the process of creating my own business. It would be so nice to be able to explain parents what I do for a change:) I hope in 5 years time, I will be a happy owner of a small company.

 What about your own clothing brand?

 I am not the biggest “fashionista” to be honest:) Travel is where my heart is! But my husband and I are currently working on a business idea that will require us to collaborate with various fashion designers, so let’s see how it goes. I will update you in a few months time:)

Thank you very much, Magdalena!

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