Emma Hayes hasn’t officially started as USWNT’s manager, but her influence was all over the team’s two wins over China. Here’s what we learned.
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As people return to physical shopping post-pandemic, a new behavior has emerged: hybrid shopping. Put simply, hybrid shopping is a blend of physical and digital shopping.
Given this trend, it’s important to create strategies that provide consumers with seamless, personalized, and convenient shopping experiences across digital and brick-and-mortar shops. Brands must reevaluate how they advertise, provide support, and even how they go about suggesting products.
Wondering how to get started? Learn how to better connect with hybrid consumers in the upcoming webinar we are presenting with Adweek on The Rise of the Hybrid Consumer and How They are Changing the Way We Shop on Thursday, May 5th at 1pm EST
In the post-Covid world, consumers have been rethinking, reevaluating, and adapting their lifestyles accordingly. As a result, their interests, shopping behaviors, and preferences have changed significantly.
While the “Hybrid Consumer” may seem like a new concept, we have been building towards them for a few years now. It was just digitally accelerated due to the pandemic.
In 2020, consumers did most of their shopping online; in fact, online sales grew by a whopping 31.8 percent from 2019 to 2020. This was more than double their average annual growth rate which was already impressive enough.
When businesses started reopening in 2021 and consumers began returning to in-store physical shopping, they didn’t abandon their online behaviors.
As “Hybrid Consumers”, they no longer distinguish between online and offline channels. For example, they may look at an item in-store but then do more research online before making a purchase there. They may also research and buy online before picking up a product in-store.
Rather, they’ve become “hybrid consumers” and no longer distinguish between online and offline channels. For example, hybrid consumers may look at items in-store, but complete their purchase online. The inverse is also true: they may shop online and pick up in-store.
As a result of these shifts, shoppers are creating new opportunities and challenges for marketers. It is more important than ever for businesses to track consumer actions to come up with a plan that better reaches and engages them.
Learn more about how to capitalize on these opportunities in the upcoming webinar on Thursday, May 5th.
“Hybrid Shopping” has caused a surge in sales for online marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Etsy, and Home Depot.
In fact, e-commerce sales are still growing and are expected to hit $7.391 trillion by 2025. E-commerce accounted for about $1 in $5 of total retail sales in 2020 and 2021 and as systems improve to benefit hybrid consumers, this could continue increasing.
Since consumers are now making purchase decisions based on a combination of in-store and online interactions, businesses much cater to the cultural shift which this webinar will prepare you for.
Hybrid consumers no longer distinguish between online and offline channels. They might go into a Walmart or Best Buy and see something they like, but then make their purchase through a third-party marketplace seller online.
If you aren’t creating more personalized and seamless shopping experiences that hybrid consumers want, they will look elsewhere to make their purchases.
What we are seeing is just the beginning of hybrid shopping and as consumer expectations evolve, so will the experiences needed to reach them. As people get accustomed to the seamless integration of physical and digital experiences, the “hybrid consumer” will continue to change. Things like personalization and ease-of-use were a marketing strategy at best, and an afterthought at worst.
Consumers now expect shopping to be quick, convenient, and to catered to their satisfaction. Businesses must adapt, improve their online processes, and consider what experiences are needed to match the expectations of their target audience.
Some important stakeholders who will benefit from the content taught in this webinar include:
Any business will benefit from the content taught in this webinar, especially those with an online and physical presence.
E-commerce businesses will learn actionable strategies that will drive more conversions and, thereby, grow their revenue. Shops that previously focused on physical sales will learn how to create digital experiences that will drive more traffic, increase their revenue, and grow their customer base.
There will be lots of valuable content included in this webinar to help businesses adapt for the hybrid consumer of today and the changes to come tomorrow. A few key things include:
To learn more about these specific strategies, join us on Thursday, May 5, at 1pm EST.
Google released a major update. They typically don’t announce their updates, but you know when they do, it is going to be big.
And that’s what happened with the most recent update that they announced.
A lot of people saw their traffic drop. And of course, at the same time, people saw their traffic increase because when one site goes down in rankings another site moves up to take its spot.
Can you guess what happened to my traffic?
Well, based on the title of the post you are probably going
to guess that it went up.
Now, let’s see what happened to my search traffic.
My overall traffic has already dipped by roughly 6%. When you look at my organic traffic, you can see that it has dropped by 13.39%.
I know what you are thinking… how did you beat Google’s core update when your traffic went down?
What if I told you that I saw this coming and I came up with a solution and contingency strategy in case my organic search traffic would ever drop?
But before I go into that, let me first break down how it all started and then I will get into how I beat Google’s core update.
I’ve been doing SEO for a long time… roughly 18 years now.
When I first started, Google algorithm updates still sucked but they were much more simple. For example, you could get hit hard if you built spammy links or if your content was super thin and provided no value.
Over the years, their algorithm has gotten much more complex. Nowadays, it isn’t about if you are breaking the rules or not. Today, it is about optimizing for user experience and doing what’s best for your visitors.
But that in and of itself is never very clear. How do you know that what you are doing is better for a visitor than your competition?
Honestly, you can never be 100% sure. The only one who actually knows is Google. And it is based on whoever it is they decide to work on coding or adjusting their algorithm.
Years ago, I started to notice a new trend with my search
traffic.
Look at the graph above, do you see the trend?
And no, my traffic doesn’t just climb up and to the right. There are a lot of dips in there. But, of course, my rankings eventually started to continually climb because I figured out how to adapt to algorithm updates.
On a side note, if you aren’t sure how to adapt to the latest algorithm update, read this. It will teach you how to recover your traffic… assuming you saw a dip. Or if you need extra help, check out my ad agency.
In many cases after an algorithm update, Google continues to fine-tune and tweak the algorithm. And if you saw a dip when you shouldn’t have, you’ll eventually start recovering.
But even then, there was one big issue. Compared to all of the previous years, I started to feel like I didn’t have control as an SEO anymore back in 2017. I could no longer guarantee my success, even if I did everything correctly.
Now, I am not trying to blame Google… they didn’t do anything wrong. Overall, their algorithm is great and relevant. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be using them.
And just like you and me, Google isn’t perfect. They continually adjust and aim to improve. That’s why they do over 3,200 algorithm updates in a year.
But still, even though I love Google, I didn’t like the
feeling of being helpless. Because I knew if my traffic took a drastic dip, I
would lose a ton of money.
I need that traffic, not only to drive new revenue but, more importantly, to pay my team members. The concept of not being able to pay my team on any given month is scary, especially when your business is bootstrapped.
So what did I do?
Although I love SEO, and I think I’m pretty decent at it
based on my traffic and my track record, I knew I had to come up with another
solution that could provide me with sustainable traffic that could still
generate leads for my business.
In addition to that, I wanted to find something that wasn’t “paid,” as I was bootstrapping. Just like how SEO was starting to have more ups and downs compared to what I’ve seen in my 18-year career, I knew the cost at paid ads would continually rise.
Just look at Google’s ad revenue. They have some ups and downs every quarter but the overall trend is up and to the right.
In other words, advertising will continually get more expensive over time.
And it’s not just Google either. Facebook Ads keep getting more expensive as well.
I didn’t want to rely on a channel that would cost me more next year and the year after because it could get so expensive that I may not be able to profitably leverage it in the future.
So, what did I do?
I went on a hunt to figure out a way to get direct, referral, and organic traffic that didn’t rely on any algorithm updates. (I will explain what I mean by organic traffic in a bit.)
With the help of my buddy, Andrew Dumont, I went searching for websites that continually received good traffic even after algorithm updates.
Here were the criteria that we were looking for:
In essence, we were looking for sites that were popular because people naturally liked them. Our intentions at first weren’t to necessarily buy any of these sites. Instead, we were trying to figure out how to naturally become popular so we could replicate it.
Do you know what we figured out?
I’ll give you a hint.
Think of it this way: Google doesn’t get the majority of their traffic from SEO. And Facebook doesn’t get their traffic because they rank everywhere on Google or that people share Facebook.com on the social web.
Do you know how they are naturally popular?
It comes down to building a good product.
That was my aha! moment. Why continually crank out thousands of pieces of content, which isn’t scalable and is a pain as you eventually have to update your old content, when I could just build a product?
That’s when Andrew and I stumbled
upon Ubersuggest.
Now the Ubersuggest you see today
isn’t what it looked like in February 2017 when I bought
it.
It used to be a simple tool that
just showed you Google Suggest results based on any query.
Before I took it over, it was generating 117,425 unique
visitors per month and had 38,700 backlinks from 8,490 referring domains.
All of this was natural. The original founder didn’t do any
marketing. He just built a product and it naturally spread.
The tool did, however, have roughly 43% of its traffic coming from organic search. Now, can you guess what keyword it was?
The term was “Ubersuggest”.
In other words, its organic traffic mainly came from its own brand, which isn’t really reliant on SEO or affected by Google algorithm updates. That’s also what I meant when I talked about organic traffic that wasn’t reliant on Google.
Now since then I’ve gone a bit crazy with Ubersuggest and released loads of new features… from daily rank tracking to a domain analysis and site audit report to a content ideas report and backlinks report.
In other words, I’ve been making it a robust SEO tool that has everything you need and is easy to use.
It’s been so effective that the traffic on Ubersuggest went from 117,425 unique visitors to a whopping 651,436 unique visitors that generates 2,357,927 visits and 13,582,999 pageviews per month.
Best of all, the users are sticky, meaning the average Ubersuggest user spends over 26 minutes on the application each month. This means that they are engaged and will likely to convert into customers.
As I get more aggressive with my Ubersuggest funnel and start collecting leads from it, I expect to receive many more emails like that.
And over the years, I expect the traffic to continually grow.
Best of all, do you know what happens to the traffic on Ubersuggest when my site gets hit by a Google algorithm update or when my content stops going viral on Facebook?
It continually goes up and to the right.
Now, unless you dump a ton of money and time into replicating
what I am doing with Ubersuggest, but for your industry, you won’t generate the
results I am generating.
As my mom says, I’m kind of crazy…
But that doesn’t mean you can’t do well on a budget.
Back in 2013, I did a test where I released a tool on my old blog Quick Sprout. It was an SEO tool that wasn’t too great and honestly, I probably spent too much money on it.
Here were the stats for the first 4 days of releasing the
tool:
Even after the launch traffic died down, still 1,000+ people per day used the tool. And, over time, it actually went up to over 2,000.
It was at that point in my career, I realized that people
love tools.
I know what you are thinking though… how do you do this on a budget, right?
What’s silly is, and I wish I knew this before I built my first tool on Quick Sprout back in the day, there are tools that already exist for every industry.
You don’t have to create something new or hire some expensive developers. You can just use an existing tool on the market.
And if you want to go crazy like me, you can start adding multiple tools to your site… just like how I have an A/B testing calculator.
So how do you add tools without breaking the bank?
You buy them from sites like Code Canyon. From $2 to $50, you can find tools on just about anything. For example, if I wanted an SEO tool, Code Canyon has a ton to choose from. Just look at this one.
Not a bad looking tool that you can have on your website for just $40. You don’t have to pay monthly fees and you don’t need a developer… it’s easy to install and it doesn’t cost much in the grand scheme of things.
And here is the crazy thing: The $40 SEO tool has more features than the Quick Sprout one I built, has a better overall design, and it is .1% the cost.
Only if I knew that before I built it years ago. :/
Look, there are tools out there for every industry. From mortgage calculators to calorie counters to a parking spot finder and even video games that you can add to your site and make your own.
In other words, you don’t have to build something from scratch. There are tools for every industry that already exists and you can buy them for pennies on the dollar.
I love SEO and always will. Heck, even though many SEOs hate
how Google does algorithm updates, that doesn’t bother me either… I love Google
and they have built a great product.
But if you want to continually do well, you can’t rely on one marketing channel. You need to take an omnichannel approach and leverage as many as possible.
That way, when one goes down, you are still generating traffic.
Now if you want to do really well, think about most of the
large companies out there. You don’t build a billion-dollar business from SEO,
paid ads, or any other form of marketing. You first need to build an amazing
product or service.
So, consider adding tools to your site, the data shows it is more effective than content marketing and it is more scalable.
Sure you probably won’t achieve the results I achieved with Ubersuggest, but you can achieve the results I had with Quick Sprout. And you can achieve better results than what you are currently getting from content marketing.
What do you think? Are you going to add tools to your site?
PS: If you aren’t sure what type of tool you should add to your site, leave a comment and I will see if I can give you any ideas. 🙂
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