Tag: Strategy

How to Develop a Winning Digital Marketing Strategy in 4 Easy Steps

According to Smart Insights, 45 percent of companies don’t have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy; 17 percent of companies have a digital marketing strategy in place, but it’s separate from their marketing plan. 

This means 62 percent of companies are unprepared. 

They don’t have the strategy, tactics, or tools they need to market their business well. The bad news is that marketers waste 37 to 95 percent of their marketing budget. This is really common, but it doesn’t have to be; if you have the right digital marketing strategy in place, growing your business is easier. 

If you’re feeling unprepared, don’t worry. 

Today we’re going to cover the important ins and outs of creating a winning digital marketing strategy. 

Why You Need a Digital Marketing Strategy

Your digital marketing strategy gives your company direction. With a plan in place, you’ll have the details you need to help your company grow consistently. Your digital strategy document should: 

  1. Define your short and long term goals
  2. Show you who your customers are
  3. Show you where you can find them 
  4. Outline what you need to attract your customer’s attention
  5. Offer a step-by-step plan to attract and hold customer attention
  6. Show you how to analyze and improve marketing performance

Why go to all the trouble? 

Is it worth the time to create a strategy document? CoSchedule’s State of Marketing Strategy Report found winning marketers: 

  • Document their digital marketing strategy. Marketers who document are 538 percent more likely to achieve success than those who don’t.
  • Document their marketing processes. Those that do are 466 percent more likely to achieve success consistently over time than those who don’t.
  • Winning marketers set goals. Goal setters are 429 percent more likely to report success than those who don’t; 81 percent of these marketers achieve their goals; 10 percent of organized marketers always achieve their goals.
  • Winning marketers study their audience. These marketers are 242 percent more likely to conduct audience research four times a year. Almost 60 percent of the elite marketers featured in their study conduct audience research once or more per month.

It seems too good to be true, but it’s actually the reality.

The more time you spend thinking about your goals, getting to know your audience and planning how you’ll approach your digital marketing, the more likely you are to achieve success. 

What Should Be Included In Your Digital Marketing Strategy

I’ve already given you a sneak peek, did you catch it? 

To be successful, your digital marketing strategy should focus on four specific areas. 

  1. Setting goals, objectives, and key performance indicators (KPIs)
  2. Understanding and defining your audience 
  3. Creating and implementing your digital marketing strategy
  4. Auditing and improving your marketing campaigns 

You’ll want to break each of these areas down in enough detail so you (and your team) can work with each of these areas properly. With each of these areas, you should have a pretty clear idea about: 

  • The information, tools, and resources you’ll need to create a plan
  • Who will be responsible for creating your plan
  • Who will be responsible for implementing your plan
  • The KPIs and metrics you’ll use to measure the success (or failure) of your plan
  • The tools and resources you’ll need to implement and improve campaign performance

Each of these points needs to be defined clearly for the four steps areas above. 

Let’s take a closer look at these four areas and break things down a bit more clearly. 

1. Setting Goals, Objectives, and KPIs

This step is all about deciding what you want.. 

Planning your marketing strategy begins with setting quantitative and qualitative goals;  you’ll also want to set KPIs. These goals are sort of like the railroad tracks that keep your digital marketing strategy on the right track. 

What’s the difference between qualitative and quantitative goals?

G2 has a really helpful way of defining these, so I’m going to paraphrase their definition here. 

Quantitative goals can be counted, measured, or displayed using numbers. Goals like increasing monthly recurring revenue by 15 percent or boosting your conversion rate by 3 percent are good examples of quantitative goals.  Qualitative goals are abstract, descriptive, or conceptual — these goals are usually tied to the question “why.” Goals like increasing customer trust or improving brand reputation are examples of qualitative goals. They’re difficult to measure but just as important. 

You’ll want to make sure that your goals are: 

  • Challenging, realistic, and attainable
  • Tied to your company’s mission, vision, and values
  • Concise — 2-3 main goals 3-5 supporting goals
  • Specific, clear, and timely
  • Broken down into smaller, step-by-step milestones 

Your goals are important, but they’re difficult to achieve if you don’t have a step-by-step plan to follow. That’s where milestones come in; milestones are tactical. They’re great because you can use them to move towards your goals quickly. 

What about KPIs? 

Scoro has a list of 136 KPIs you can use to jumpstart your planning. I’ve listed a few of the more common examples you can use below.

  • Unique visitors per day/month
  • Pages per visit
  • New leads per day/month  
  • Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)
  • Conversion rates
  • Churn/attrition rate
  • Cost per conversion
  • Conversion rate per keyword
  • ROI per content
  • Click-through-rate on paid advertising

Focus is really important. 

It’ll be tough to focus on lots of metrics at once. Instead, you’ll want to focus your attention on a small number of really meaningful KPIs and metrics. 

Which ones are meaningful? 

They’re the KPIs that have the biggest impact on your company, the ones that generate consistent returns or a large amount of cash for your company. You’re looking for the 20 percent of KPIs and metrics that produce 80 percent of your results. 

That’s a pretty easy place to start. 

If you’re not sure which KPIs you should focus on, start with the common KPIs and metrics that have a direct impact on your business. These are typically metrics that focus on traffic, conversions, and optimization. 

2. Understanding and Defining Your Audience

You know what your goals and objectives are. Now you need to figure the same things out for your customer. This step requires some upfront research, but the success (or failure) of your digital marketing strategy starts here. 

Think about it. 

If you find the right customers, the people are excited to buy your product, then selling is a whole lot easier. It’s especially easier if you can understand what they want and how you can go about selling to them. So to do that, you’ll need information on your customer’s demographics and psychographics. 

What are you trying to figure out? 

  • The size of your market: You’ll want to figure out some important details about your market —is it new or established, niche or mainstream, broad or specialized. You’ll want to figure out who the major and minor players are, market expectations, areas you can disrupt, and the financial upside in your specific market. 
  • Who your customers are:  Are you targeting new moms, weekend warriors who are active on the weekends? You should have a basic idea of the customer you’re targeting. Are you focusing your attention on a specific niche, i.e., affluent travelers, price-conscious fashion aficionados? Use previous sales, competitor research, and market research sources like Ubersuggest and Google Trends to find the answer. 
  • Where they spend their time: Your customers have specific hangouts. Web developers spend their time on sites like ArsTechnica, Reddit, SitePoint, etc. New moms spend their time on sites like Babble, CafeMom, or Bundoo. If you know where your customers like to spend their time, you have a pretty good idea of the channels to target and the content to use. 
  • What they consume: This overlaps a little bit with where they spend their time. When there is an overlap, you’ll want to break the differences down even further. For example, your customers may spend a lot of time on Reddit, but this doesn’t tell you what they’re consuming on Reddit. Reddit is where they spend their time; the subreddit r/RobinHood is what they consume. See the difference? One tells you about their specific interests and desires; the other focuses on location. 
  • Why they buy: Your customers don’t buy for the same reasons. Sources like online reviews are a great way to get really helpful, in-depth feedback on why customers buy from customers themselves. You can also use tools like surveys or polls to attract responses. You’re not looking for an individual answer; you’re looking for trends. 
  • Where and how they buy: Do customers price shop offline, in your store, then order online from Amazon? Maybe your customers prefer a one-time purchase over recurring payment options? If you understand when and how your customers buy, you’ll be able to adjust your marketing around their expectations. Maybe that means persuading customers to do something different or stick with market expectations. 
  • What they need to buy: Online reviews are a helpful tool here as well. If you’re a new business, you can start with competitor reviews. Go through your competitor reviews, then make a list of the concerns brought up in each review. Look for customer objections, technology issues, complaints, reputation issues, any problem that customers felt were deal breakers. If you have reviews of your own, you can do the same thing there. 

Remember the research I shared earlier? 

Elite marketers study their audience, conducting audience research once or more per month. This step is important because it gives you the instructions you need to create a winning digital marketing strategy. Audience research shows you how to persuade your customers. 

This isn’t rocket science. 

But it requires more effort than most companies are willing to give. 

Here’s why. 

Most companies assume they already know their customers. They believe they know what their customers want and the best ways to approach them. 

They may be right. 

But the data they have on their customers changes often. Consistent research is the only way to stay on top of what your customers actually want. At this point, you’re ready for step three. 

3. Creating and implementing your digital marketing strategy

If you’ve done your homework, you should have the building blocks you need to create a well defined digital marketing strategy. You should be able to identify the marketing channels that will work best for your business. There are lots of digital marketing channels you can choose from. 

You can focus on: 

  • Content marketing
  • SEO
  • PPC
  • Display advertising
  • Email 
  • Online video
  • TV commercials
  • Mobile ads
  • Channel partnerships
  • Events 
  • Social media advertising 
  • Podcasts and radio advertising
  • Print advertising

In fact, there are more than 51 different marketing channels you can use to promote your business. Which one are you supposed to use? 

There are a few ways you can approach this. 

  1. Investing in the channels your customers use (e.g., search, social media) 
  2. Investing in the channels that give you independence and control (e.g., email, partnerships)
  3. Investing in the channels that are most common/popular (e.g., SEO, PPC, Social media) 

Start by testing the channels where there’s more overlap. 

If your customers use popular channels like Google search or Facebook, those are great places to start. If you’re looking for a channel that gives you maximum control and works well with other channels (i.e., email), you can start there. 

Don’t forget to test. 

Testing shows you what works. The tools you use for testing tend to be consistent with the channel (e.g., email comes with analytics. Google offers Google Analytics, etc.). Typically, you can branch out once you’ve identified the marketing channels that perform best for your business. 

You’re looking for stability. 

You want to get two to three channels working well before you decide to add more. Once you’ve identified your channels, use the data you’ve collected in step two to create the kind of marketing content that fits well with the customers you’ve identified.

Your content should: 

  • Attract their attention
  • Be fascinating 
  • Discuss a problem or challenge
  • Offer a solution to the problem or challenge you’ve just identified

Here’s another important detail. The research you’ve done should help you create a strong value proposition that answers the “why me?” question. Your value proposition is basically a promise. It’s the most important part of your marketing copy. 

It gives your customers a persuasive reason to do business with you. 

Your value proposition sets you apart from the competition. It gives your business an unfair advantage, and it gives you the opening you need to attract more customers, increase customer loyalty, command higher prices,  and beat your competitors. 

Here’s a detailed breakdown if you need help creating your own value proposition. 

If you’ve followed the steps I’ve mentioned above, you should have the information you need to create amazing content that draws customers in. 

4. Auditing and improving your marketing campaigns 

If you can’t measure your marketing, you can’t improve them. Part of the reason marketers waste 37 to 95 percent of their marketing budget is the lack of measurement.  Forrester’s research stated that between 60 – 73 percent of a company’s analytics data goes unused. 

Companies don’t know how to work with their data. 

  • They don’t know which problems to fix
  • They don’t know what they have 
  • They can’t see the value of their data
  • They don’t know how to evaluate or analyze their data
  • Their data isn’t available to analysts who can use it 
  • There’s too much data to go through and not enough people or time to use it

The other three steps aren’t all that helpful if you can’t see your marketing results. If you’re going to create a successful digital marketing strategy, you’ll need a plan that helps you to capture, report, and analyze the data. 

You’ll need analysts who can use your data to solve problems. 

That’s part of the problem. 

Most companies don’t have the people or processes in place to handle this. This is why it’s so important for businesses to get help. It’s too much for most companies to handle on their own — small, medium, and large companies all struggle with these issues. 

If this is the case for your organization, it may be a good idea to get help from an agency. 

You should be able to plan, implement, and optimize your digital marketing strategy.  If you can’t, it’s a good idea to get help with all or part of the process. 

Conclusion

Almost half of companies don’t have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy in place. A smaller segment of respondents haven’t connected their strategy and their marketing. Most companies are unprepared; they’re not ready to handle the requirements that come with creating their digital marketing strategy. 

If you’re feeling unprepared, don’t worry; use the information we’ve discussed as a guide. If you’re aware of the ins and outs of planning, you can create a winning digital marketing strategy in four easy steps.  

The post How to Develop a Winning Digital Marketing Strategy in 4 Easy Steps appeared first on Neil Patel.

Digital Strategy Consulting

Businesses have always enjoyed a comfortable position when it comes to planning and preparation.  Sadly, this isn’t the case anymore. Due to the competitive digital landscape, business owners need to chalk out entire outlines, strategies, and implementation within weeks – or even days.  So if you can’t keep up with this accelerated pace, somebody else …

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Digital Strategy Consulting

Businesses have always enjoyed a comfortable position when it comes to planning and preparation. 

Sadly, this isn’t the case anymore.

Due to the competitive digital landscape, business owners need to chalk out entire outlines, strategies, and implementation within weeks – or even days. 

So if you can’t keep up with this accelerated pace, somebody else will.

The best way to stay ahead in the competition? Having a carefully drafted digital strategy.

Think of the whole thing as the guiding light. 

Without it, companies will be stuck with their old-fashioned efforts and won’t be able to take advantage of moving online. Plus, a result-driven approach serves as the basis of digital strategy, which can be very beneficial for your company.

If you think that the ongoing pandemic has changed things, you‘re wrong. 

On the contrary, experts at DMEXCO predict that 70% of executives expect the pace of digital strategy to boost further during these unique times.

So yes, you do need a comprehensive digital strategy that works for you. 

And what better way to develop this other than enlisting the help of an expert digital strategy consultant who can do a broad set of activities, each of which is directed towards helping you meet your goals.

In this guide, our team at Neil Patel Digital will take you through the whole process of hiring the best consultant, along with the benefits of seeking a consultancy for your business.

Let’s begin!

5 Ways a Digital Strategy Consultant Can Help Grow Your Business

What is your primary objective for launching a business?

Profit and long-term growth, right?

Well, identifying your digital strategy is the most crucial aspect for attaining both goals. 

After all, it’s a high-level overview that defines and outlines where you are currently and where you would want to be. It also includes milestones set throughout a specific course of your journey, making it a reliable long-term plan.

Keeping this in mind, digital strategy consulting can help you recognize new technologies and services suitable for your platform. And hiring a consultant will make sure you‘re taking advantage of everything that’s out there and reaping the profits.

Boosting Efficiency and Increasing Margins

If there’s one thing that companies want, it’s consistent improvement in efficiency. Whether it’s targeting employee collaboration and performance or better delivery to customers and clients – everything counts. 

You’ll be able to jumpstart your company‘s efficiency with the help of a digital strategy consultant.

You see, being an expert gives them the knowledge to use cutting-edge digital tools that can ensure precise and fast communication within your company. The data they offer will be more accessible and polished. 

Plus, there’s zero risk of anything being lost or repeated due to clear and carefully designed strategies that have been optimized for efficiency.

Getting a consultant can be useful for streamlining client communication too. As a result, you can build long-lasting relationships by giving customers higher value for their investment.

Happier clients translate to higher profit margins and more referrals, so it’s only positives for your company.

Staying Relevant and Important

Turning digital means you‘ll have several competitors – nay, several tough competitors.

Entering a digital culture means your customers do everything digitally, from transactions to information gathering to investing. 

You can stay ahead in your niche industry by offering a unique product that no one else offers, but it still isn’t the endgame.

You have to go beyond your website, electronic device optimization, or implementing best SEO practices. 

A consultant will guide you with the digital changes that are happening around us, equipping you with the newest technologies as they arise, and incorporating the latest market developments into your business direction.

Essentially, the expert will make your business digitally competitive right from the start and establish you as a digital leader.

Give You the Biggest Bang for Your Buck

You must already be on the lookout for investments that can maximize ROI – or get rid of bad investments altogether.

But this isn’t a perfect world.

You have to be careful about the decisions you make and how you run your company.

Working with a digital strategy consultant does require investment, but it’s one that has a greater possibility to pay off – in fact, some might say it’s guaranteed too if you have the right man for the job.

They give you access to a lot of crucial information and are ready to do all the hard work to provide you high value in a short period. 

And not only that, you get a clear idea of the path you should take for your company to maximize your revenue and ensure success. 

Moreover, having a consultant also eliminates the need for other employees, hence, cutting down costs in the long run. This will then contribute towards a boosted ROI in the end.

Gaining New Partnerships

Partnerships with business and corporations are a necessity for long-term growth, no matter how old your business is.

In fact, you can transform your company vision and enter a new frontier in your niche if you choose your partnerships carefully. This, in turn, can relatively increase your customer base as well as present a lucrative alternative to going solo.

In other words, a consultant will point you in the right direction to become digitally competitive.

You might also receive invites from organizations that want to enter into a mutually beneficial partnership, and ultimately, achieve digital leadership. 

Let’s not forget there is also a possibility of turning your competitors into partners that can increase market demand and customer base as a consequence.

A Successful Digital Transformation

Remember all the dinosaur processes that will only be you down today? 

Digital transformation will help you bid farewell to all of them, as well as cut down unnecessary costs for employees, products, and services.

Since a consultant makes you more available and accessible for your customers, you’ll be able to maximize user experience, allowing you to climb to the top of your industry.

A digital strategy will lay down the stepping stones that you and your team can follow to become digital relevant.

How to Get Started With a Digital Strategy Consultant

Good digital strategy consultants have a similar style of working with the odd exceptions as they primarily focus their attention on your customer and company goals.

Hiring the Right Digital Strategy Consultant

Before choosing a specific candidate, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

  • Does digital technology impact the businesses you are in?
  • How could digital technology improve the way you add value to the businesses?
  • Is it possible for digital technology to change your target customer?
  • Does digital technology affect the value proposition to your target customer?
  • Can digital technology enhance enterprise capabilities, helping you differentiate your brand from your competition? How?

Look for a prospective consultant that can refine your understanding of the above questions further. In addition to this, you should ask to see a list of samples, references, reviews, and case studies to determine their competency.

Holding Meetings to Streamline Strategy Development

A consultant won’t be able to create a digital strategy for your company if they don’t have an in-depth understanding of your business.

So the first thing that they do is ask you a lot of questions to gain a clear understanding of how your business functions and its objectives. For instance:

  • Questions regarding your current benchmarks, overall goals, and objectives for every segment and as a whole.
  • Questions about KPIs and metrics that you used to measure performances.
  • Questions about tactics used to achieve your business goals and objectives and the marketing channels you used to attract customers.
  • Customer expectations.
  • Questions about platforms with the highest customer engagement.

Don’t shy away or get irritated by these probing questions. After all, your digital strategy shows you your current situation, tells you where you’re going, and devises ways to help you get there.

Chalking Out the Final Game Plan

After you answer their questions, you can expect the consultant to show you a cohesive strategy that has been tailor-made to suit your business needs.

The plan should include details about the following:

  • Media advertising, which includes TV commercials, streaming services, and so on.
  • Public relations that focus on strategies to increase visibility and publicity for your business.
  • Digital marketing, which includes local search, organic search engine optimization, advertising, and content marketing.
  • Direct response tactics like hyperlocal print advertising or geofencing – whichever is a better fit.
  • Possibility of future partnerships.

The expert will show you a proposed digital strategy or examples from previous client campaigns, and how they plan on moving forward with your campaign.

You can use this as an opportunity to evaluate the consultant’s work and skillset. Don’t be afraid to suggest specific tweaks and adjustments if you deem it fit.

Here’s what you can do:

  • Request performance data for evaluation purposes.
  • Carefully observe the campaign elements they consistently prioritize.
  • Identify knowledge gaps, holes, or weak points in the strategy.

Another alternative would be to pick a specific part of your business, such as advertising or content, and ask the consultant to build a strategy to accommodate a specific goal. This can be to increase sales for the worst-performing products, double the traffic within a month, etc.

Supplying the Necessities

If you’re happy with the consultant after analyzing their approach, the next step would be to provide them with necessary documents and give access to things that could help them implement the strategy effectively.

This includes an official agreement, brand content (brochures, flyers, images, logos, content), relevant photography (company photos, portraits of key people, location, office space, event photos), and social proofs.

The Final Implementation

Having your consultant create an effective digital strategy is crucial, yes. But it isn’t as important as its successful execution.

So just having a great strategy isn’t enough.

Your consultant should have the experience, expertise, and team back up to implement the strategy and produce results.

After execution, you should ask the consultant to collect, analyze, and provide you with useful insights about the launched campaigns. You can incorporate their suggestions and increase your budget to drive results, if required, as well.

Measuring the ROI of Digital Strategy Consulting Services

Consider this: How will you be able to conclude whether you‘re on the right path without knowing the ROI?

Luckily, figuring out the right KPIs for your business can help you measure the success of a business strategy.

The following are a few KPIs that allow you to analyze the overall performance of your digital campaigns:

Brand Engagement on Website

Your brand is necessary for building customer loyalty, creating a competitive advantage, and just… long-term survival.

It’s what distinguishes you from your direct competitors.

To properly measure brand engagement on your website, you need to consider the more refined KPIs that provide valuable metrics, such as:

  • Number of unique visitors
  • Number of return visitors
  • Popular pages and how customers get there
  • Total time spent on the website
  • Number of people registering for a specific offering

Traffic Source

Knowing where your customers come from is key to developing a powerful digital strategy since you know exactly what or who is driving visitors to your website.

For this purpose, you need to consider four main traffic sources:

  • Direct visitors who visit your website by typing the URL into their browser.
  • Referral visitors who ended up on your website after clicking a link on another website.
  • Organic visitors who arrived at your site after searching in a search engine.
  • Campaign visitors who visited your site via an advertisement or campaign.

Inbound Marketing ROI

Of course, you want to see a return on your investment.

However, it can be difficult to see the full potential and value of inbound marketing if you don’t have KPIs. For this purpose, consider the following formula:

ROI = (Sales growth – Marketing Investment) / Marketing Investment

Social Media Traffic

Social media is an integral part of every digital strategy. If your consultant doesn’t include it, know right away that they don’t know what they’re doing.

At the same time, simply creating accounts on popular social media platforms isn’t enough for success. In this case, the KPIs are as follows:

  • Number of leads generated from every social media channel.
  • Number of conversions generated from every social media channel.
  • Number of customers who reach out to your company via every social media channel.
  • Overall percentage of traffic that advance from social media channels.

Landing Page Conversions

You should check whether your landing page is sending your customer on the right path, which is why KPIs are crucial here.

The tricky part here is this metric is a little difficult to measure since the consultant may have a different goal for landing pages. Nevertheless, you can ask the expert to use Google Analytics to gain access to reports that help you measure organic traffic as well as per search traffic.

You can also make changes to your CTA, CTA buttons, revise written content, or add reviews and testimonials depending on the results generated after A/B testing.

4 Point Checklist For Finding the Right Digital Strategy Consultant

If you’re still figuring out how to find the right digital marketing consultant for your company, take a look at our short checklist to know where to start.

Familiarity With the Digital Landscape

Whether it’s setting short-term goals or long-term goals, the digital strategy consultant should have demonstrated knowledge about the market to think of strategies that can enhance your inbound marketing and outbound marketing efforts.

Creating a plan will always differ according to your business. For instance, some businesses require CRMs, while some need ERPs. The expert should know the right way to proceed to help you achieve your business objectives and streamline campaign processes.

We would highly recommend working with industry thought leaders who understand the digital world and have the credentials to back it up.

Processes to Develop and Execute Effective Digital Strategies

As mentioned before, knowledge of custom tools is important for delivering satisfactory results. More so, in the ever dynamic landscape of digital marketing.

You want to hire a consultant that uses relevant marketing techniques which include:

  • Content creation
  • Search engine optimization (SEO)
  • Social media marketing
  • Responsive web design

At Neil Patel Digital, for instance, we have an in-house SEO program powered by content marketing, that can be useful for enhancing the effectiveness of digital campaigns.

Combination of Experience and Expertise

While it’s true that you can find several freelance digital strategy consultants, your main lookout should be to identify the extent of their experience and expertise.

Yes, they say that they can triple your conversions, but do they have the brain and muscle to back their claims?

It’s best to work with seasoned professionals who understand your current marketing strategy and can identify weak spots that require improvement.

Broad Industry Knowledge and Diverse Portfolio

A digital strategy expert must have expertise across several different verticals. The idea here is to make sure the professional knows the technical foundations of different things where they can use their marketing know-how and promote your offerings.

The best way to ensure this is by choosing a consultant who has worked with diverse clients. Working with a reputable digital marketing agency, for instance, will give you access to a team with several specialties that can be beneficial for your campaigns and other operations.

Wrapping Up

Now more than ever, businesses had to adjust their plans and offerings to meet customer expectations.

Digital strategies that played out over the course of years may now be over in a matter of days, which is why hiring expert help can be useful to keep up with this dynamic arena. 

Having the right digital strategy consultant will ensure your company adapts smoothly to rapidly changing markets and remain ahead of your competition.

Thinking of the next steps? Get in touch with our experienced professionals here.

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How to Choose The Right Digital Strategy Agency

According to a recent survey from the DMEXCO, 70 percent of executives worldwide expect the pandemic to accelerate the pace of digital strategy.  In the past, businesses had more time to plan and prepare. 

That’s no longer the case. 

Today, businesses are expected to outline, plan, implement the digital strategy in a matter of days or weeks. The market is moving at an accelerated pace; many businesses find they’re unable to keep up. If you can’t keep up, does that mean you’ll be left behind?

Not if you have the right digital strategy agency.

With the right agency, you’ll be able to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances and events. Here are some steps you can take to find and vet the right agency. 

Know your goals and desired outcomes

Identifying your digital strategy is the key to long-term growth. 

Your digital strategy is about setting goals and objectives. It’s a high-level overview that defines where you are now, outlines where you’d like to go (as an organization), and how you’ll get there. It’s a long(er) term plan that sets a course or destination for you to follow before starting your journey.

You’re going to need a list of: 

  • Goals, KPIs, and objectives: For example, you could focus your attention on generating a specific number of leads, customers, or revenue. You’re running a SaaS business, focus your attention on reducing churn and increasing MRR. 
  • Target audience members: It would be best if you had a clear idea of the specific customer segments you’re looking to target. Your agency should help you with the demographics, psychographics, and ethnographics if you need help clarifying your audience. 
  • Customer hangouts: You’ll want to identify your customer hangouts and the places online where your customers spend their time. This will help you identify potential partners, advertising opportunities, and strategic alliances you can use to grow. 
  • Obstacles and challenges: You’ll want to outline the list of barriers and challenges that may prevent you from achieving the goals and objectives you’ve listed above. 
  • Competitors and key players: You’ll want to identify your competitors and their strengths and weaknesses. This reduces direct competition, making it easier for you to attract customers based on your strengths and the areas you perform best. 
  • Strengths and weaknesses: Point out the areas where you have an advantage in your market or where you’re most vulnerable. Your agency should be able to provide you with options to address each of these, so you’re able to outperform your competitors. 

If you have clear answers to these questions, it’s easier for your agency to supply you with the strategy you need to be effective. 

3 Characteristics That Make a Great Agency

Great agencies have a few characteristics in common. They’re able to focus their attention on the details that matter to your company and your customers. 

1. They ask probing questions

Your agency can’t create the right digital strategy for your company if they don’t have the answers they need. A great agency asks probing questions that may seem simple, dumb, or unimportant at first. You want your agency to ask these questions because these questions help them to develop an in-depth understanding of your business. 

Here are a few examples. 

  • What are your current benchmarks?
  • What are your goals and objectives for your business overall? For each segment?
  • Which KPIs or metrics are you using to measure performance? 
  • What do customers expect from your business?
  • Where do your customers spend their time online? 
  • Which marketing channels work best to attract customers?
  • What tactics should we use to achieve our goals and objectives?

Questions form the basis of your digital strategy; your digital strategy shows you where you are now, tells you where you’re going, and how to get there. Good digital marketing agencies should be asking these questions at the beginning of the engagement process. 

2. Ask your agency to give their strategy away

Your agency should be willing to share bits and pieces, showing you what a cohesive strategy could look like for you. This is important because it gives you several data points you can use to evaluate their work. This doesn’t mean that you should expect your agency to work for free; it just means they’re willing to demonstrate their skills.

Your agency can share this with you in several ways, over the phone, in your proposal or quote, or a case study. You’re looking for them to share pieces of their proposed digital strategy or examples from previous campaigns they’ve implemented for other clients.

  1. Request performance data from your agency
  2. Use performance data to evaluate their performance
  3. Pay attention to the campaign elements they prioritize consistently
  4. Look for knowledge gaps, holes in their strategy, or weak points
  5. Discuss the details you’ve noticed with them during the interview process

Another option would be to pick one part of your business (e.g., content or advertising) and ask your agency how they’d build a strategy to accommodate one specific goal (i.e., how would you increase sales for my worst performing products using content marketing?). 

3. Your agency knows how to implement 

Digital strategy is important, but it’s not as important as the ability to execute that strategy. A great strategy isn’t enough. Your agency should have the experience, skill sets, and team you need to implement your digital strategy and produce the results you need to grow. 

You’re looking for three things. 

  1. An agency that can create a comprehensive digital strategy that works with your existing marketing plan
  2. An agency that knows how to implement your digital strategy successfully
  3. A proven track record showing that they’ve achieved this for other clients in the past

Your agency should provide you all three of these, and they should be able to provide you with evidence showing that they offered other clients these as well. 

How to Work with a Digital Strategy Agency

As you’d expect with any other agency, you’ll want to see a list of samples, references, case studies, and reviews showing that they’re legitimate and competent. 

Ask your clients to provide you with a list of milestones and campaign deliverables.  You’re looking for a clear timeline that projects how long everything will take to implement, and when they anticipate, you’ll begin seeing results. Your plan should include details on: 

  • Media advertising: This includes commercials on tv or streaming services, as well as app, radio, podcasting, and sponsorship spots. This won’t be relevant for some, but it’s still something your agency should be able to support if you need it. 
  • Public relations: What will your agency do to generate press for your business? What strategies will they use to increase visibility and publicity for your business?
  • Digital marketing: This encompasses everything from local search, organic search engine optimization, content marketing, advertising, 
  • Direct response: This can include tactics like geofencing or hyperlocal print advertising; it’s a direct response option that’s designed to integrate with your overall strategy. This is especially important for local businesses that operate in a specific market. 
  • Partnerships: These partnerships can include tactics like JV partnerships, strategic alliances, or channel partnerships. These pieces are essential and should be an important part of your digital strategy.  

Your agency should be able to show you how they plan on approaching your campaign or project. Ask them to break down the approach that goes into their strategy documents; this document should clarify how they’ll approach your campaign, what you should expect, what their goals are, and more.

You’ll want to provide your agency with the following:

  • Agreements. It’s common sense, but it’s also something many clients ignore. Take some time to look over their agreement; look for red flags and trouble spots with legal before you sign. 
  • Brand content. Gather all of your content, brochures, flyers, guides, promos, images, logos, style guides, and marketing materials for your agency. 
  • Photos. Give your agency access to all relevant photography — company photos, portraits/photos of key people, office space, location, general and event photos, etc.).
  • Accolades. Make a list of the social proof your company has — awards, recognition, testimonials, praise, positive reviews, or feedback you’ve received. Give your agency with the assets and resources needed if they ask.

The digital strategy company you choose will provide you with a list of items they need and the options you need to implement their plan successfully.  

How to Find the Right Digital Strategy Agency For You

You can use directories like Clutch.co, HubSpot Agency Directory, or Sortlist to find the right digital strategy agency that’s best for you. Here’s a list of some of the best in the industry. You can go through the traditional RFP process or you can simply request a quote. 

The 6 Top Digital Strategy Agencies

Here’s a list of six of the top digital strategy agencies online. 

1. Neil Patel Digital — Best For Content Marketing & Digital Strategy

I’ve created more than 4,294 blog posts in 10 years. I’ve written millions of words, and I’ve used content marketing to build three companies of my own generating 195,013 visitors a month. I did the same things for large fortune 500 clients; now I can do that for your business too.

2. REQ – Best for Enterprise Business Strategy

REQ is an award-winning agency with enterprise-level expertise. They’re industry veterans with some of the best talents in the business. They’re part of the Inc.500 and Deloitte Fast 500 lists – they’re one of the fastest-growing companies in America.

3. Usman Group – Best for Mid-market Business Strategy

With 80% of its clients in the mid-market range, earning between 10M – 1B, the Usman Group, specializes in digital strategy and market research. Their agency is oriented around design thinking; they produce projects that are evidence-driven, practical, and focused on research. 

4. DeSantis Breindel – Best for Branding Strategy

DeSantis Breindel is a digital strategy company that specializes in end-to-end branding strategy. They’re focused on all things branding — they serve businesses via brand differentiation, brand valuation, brand launches, and employee engagement and more.

If your company relies on image and brand reputation, DeSantis may be a good fit. 

5. Mabbly – Best for Data Analysis, Channel Strategy

As a digital strategy firm, Mabbly emphasizes market research and data analytics. They specialize in converting large and complex problems into growth opportunities for established and up and coming brands. Their starting price is slightly higher but worth the investment if you’re looking for a data-driven approach. 

6. Ironpaper – Best for Small Business 

Ironpaper bills itself as a B2B growth agency. As a digital strategy firm, their conversion growth strategy focuses on gaining traction with growth up to 1 percent. The growth phase starts at 1 to 3 percent, with anything above 3 percent listed as scaling. 

Conclusion

Businesses have less time to adjust; now, more than ever before, customers are expecting companies to meet their expectations and needs immediately. Digital strategies that played out over the course of one to three-year cycle now finish in a matter of days or weeks. Business is accelerating as customers move more of their business online. 

Most companies will need help to keep up. 

If you have the right digital strategy agency, you’ll have the support you need to adapt to a rapidly changing market and events. Use this guide to find and vet the right agency for your business. 

The post How to Choose The Right Digital Strategy Agency appeared first on Neil Patel.

The 6 Best Digital Strategy Companies of 2020

According to Smart Insights, 49 percent of organizations don’t have a clearly defined digital strategy. 

Choosing the right digital strategy for your business is essential. Experience helps you sift through what to do differently, what not to do, and where to focus your energy. Having a fresh perspective from an outside eye can make all the difference. What’s more important is choosing a company that can execute that strategy. 

When you need to choose the best digital strategy company, you may be wondering where to start. Here’s a list of our picks for the best digital strategy companies in the world.

1. Neil Patel Digital — Best For Content Marketing & Digital Strategy

I’ve written more than 4,294 blog posts in 10 years. I’ve created millions of words and I’ve used content marketing to build three companies of my own. I used content marketing to generate 195,013 visitors a month and I’ve done the same things for my fortune 500 clients. When it comes to digital strategy and content marketing I’ve shown it can work. 

I do the same thing for clients with my agency, NP Digital. We help our clients develop a digital strategy that maximizes the results they achieve with their content marketing, advertising, and SEO campaigns. 

The focus with our digital strategy is revenue. Everything we do is focused on producing real results for businesses whether that’s more traffic, leads, or revenue. 

NP Digital’s client list includes:

  • Facebook
  • Viacom
  • Google
  • GM
  • eBay
  • NBC
  • Thomson Reuters foundation
  • TechCrunch
  • Cheezburger
  • American Greetings

2. REQ – Best for Enterprise Business Strategy

REQ is a Washington DC based, award-winning agency with enterprise-level experience. They’re industry veterans with some of the best talent in the business. 

Projects start at $50,000. They offer a comprehensive suite of solutions for your marketing and digital strategy needs. Including: 

  • Advertising & Media
  • Digital Advocacy
  • Brand Strategy
  • Reputation Management
  • Public Relations
  • Data & Analytics

They’ve been named to both the Inc.500 and Deloitte Fast 500 lists – they’re one of the fastest growing companies in America. They have offices in Washington, DC, New York, Boston, San Diego, Las Vegas, and San Francisco.

REQ’s client list includes:

  • eBay
  • Amazon
  • StubHub
  • Sweet Green
  • Mastercard
  • Empire State Building
  • Constellation Energy

3. Usman Group – Best for Mid-market Business Strategy

With 80% of its clients in mid-market range, earning between 10M – 1B, the Usman Group specializes in digital strategy and market research. They provide analysis, strategy, execution, and measurement to help clients deploy successful campaigns.   

They apply the four key principles of design thinking, learn from people, identify patterns, make solutions tangible, iterate continuously, in all of their client engagements.

Projects start at $10,000. You get a hand-picked team that will provide evidence-based, practical strategy and recommendations.

Usman Group’s client list includes:

  • Red Prairie
  • University of Chicago
  • National Safety Council
  • Chicago Sun Times
  • Priceline
  • Baird

4. DeSantis Breindel – Best for Branding Strategy

DeSantis Breindel is a New York City based digital strategy company that specializes in end-to-end branding strategy. They help businesses with brand differentiation, customer experience, merger & acquisition branding, brand valuation, brand launch, and employee engagement.

Projects start at $75,000. They offer thorough research and measurement for your digital branding, brand identity and strategy, content marketing, customer experience design, and film production services.

DeSantis Breindel’s client list includes:

  • Verifone
  • Lathrop Gage
  • OneSpan
  • SailPoint
  • Lincoln International
  • Lewis Roca

5. Mabbly – Best for Data Analysis, Channel Strategy

Mabbly is a Chicago based strategic design agency that relies on digital strategy, market research, and data analytics. They focus on turning complex problems into growth opportunities. Supporting human connection with digital experiences, via sophisticated design and data-backed digital strategy.

Mabbly’s team of digital and brand strategists work together to curate a channel strategy that combines the message along with the medium that’s right for your business opportunity. Projects start at $25,000. 

Mabbly’s client list includes:

  • Edelman
  • Microsoft
  • Berkshire Group
  • Griffith Foods
  • 21st Century Fox
  • Limitless Coffee & Tea
  • ShopRunner

6. Ironpaper – Best for Small Business 

Ironpaper bills itself as a B2B growth agency. Their conversion growth strategy is focused on gaining traction with growth up to 1 percent. The growth phase is set at 1 to 3 percent, with anything above 3 percent listed as scaling. 

What’s interesting about Ironpaper is the fact that they discuss the elephant in the room. 

“Oftentimes, enterprises try to answer the question, ‘What is a good conversion rate?’’ without any context. What is a good conversion rate? When establishing conversion rates, context is everything.

A lack of context can actually do harm to a marketing team, because it causes teams to make the wrong assumptions.”

This tells you that Ironpaper isn’t focused on vanity metrics or conversion manipulation. They know the difference between high and low value conversions. Their projects start at $10,000 and are focused on small businesses.

Iron Paper’s client list includes:

  • Nokia
  • Echo226
  • Telmar
  • Mformation
  • Arago

3 Characteristics That Make a Great Digital Strategy Company

Your digital strategy company should be able to provide you with specifics ahead of time. While many companies are able to provide you with amazing strategies, many are unwilling to demonstrate this ahead of time. 

1. Your agency asks the right questions

Creating an exceptional digital strategy begins with your agency asking the right questions. These questions determine what will be answered and where your answers will go. Here’s a small sample of the questions your agency should be asking. 

  • How is our business currently performing? 
  • Which parts of your business are underperforming?
  • What’s our goal for each area of our business? 
  • What do customers expect from our product and our business?
  • Which marketing channels are our customers active on?
  • Which marketing channels should we use to accomplish our goals?
  • Which metrics and KPIs will we use to evaluate performance?
  • How should we promote our products and services in the market to achieve our goals? 

These questions inform your digital strategy. 

  1. Why are we in business?
  2. Where are we right now?
  3. Where do we want to go? 
  4. How will we get there?

Your digital strategy framework should answer four high-level questions. Good digital marketing agencies should be asking these questions at the beginning of the engagement process. 

2. Your agency is willing to share strategy

The agency you choose should be willing to share sample strategies with you. This doesn’t mean that you should expect your agency to provide the entire strategy upfront, for free. Spec work isn’t ideal and that’s not what you’re looking for.

You’re looking for one example. 

They can share this with you over the phone, in your proposal or quote, or in a sample report. You’re looking for them to share a small snippet, a piece of their proposed digital strategy. This is important for several reasons. With sample data you can: 

  • Evaluate your agency’s competence 
  • Use sample data to evaluate potential performance
  • Assess their digital strategy or marketing priorities
  • Outline knowledge gaps and weak points in their process

You’re not asking for a comprehensive strategy document, you’re simply asking your agency to pick one part of your business and create a strategy around that; ask your agency a question (e.g., how would you increase sales for one of my products?). 

3. Your agency can implement Strategy

Venture Capitalist Arthur Rock, believes strategy is important, but not as important as people who can execute that strategy. 

“Over the past 30 years, I estimate that I’ve looked at an average of one business plan per day, or about 300 a year, in addition to the large numbers of phone calls and business plans that simply are not appropriate. Of the 300 likely plans, I may invest in only one or two a year; and even among those carefully chosen few, I’d say that a good half fail to perform up to expectations. 

The problem with those companies (and with the ventures I choose not to take part in) is rarely one of strategy. Good ideas and good products are a dime a dozen. Good execution and good management in a word, good people are rare.”

A great strategy isn’t enough. You need amazing people who can implement your digital strategy and produce the results you need to grow. 

Your agency should have two things: 

  1. A team that can implement your digital strategy
  2. A proven track record showing that they’ve achieved this consistently in the past

If they can provide you with both or they’re willing to provide you with a trial period where you’re able to test their ability to execute your digital strategy, then it may be a good fit. 

What To Expect From a Great Digital Strategy Company

Your agency should provide you with detailed specifics for each of these points. If you have more questions or concerns, you’ll want to bring those up with your agency. 

  • A clear track record: Your agency should be able to show you samples, references, case studies, and reviews showing that they’ve achieved results for other clients.
  • Clear milestones: You’re looking for clear milestones, timelines, and deliverables that show you’re able to create and implement a plan successfully. Your agency should be able to provide you with a timeline, explaining how long everything will take to implement, and when they anticipate you’ll begin seeing results.
  • Agency procedures: You’ll want to see how your agency plans on approaching your campaign or project. They should be able to break down the approach that goes into their strategy document; this document should clarify how they’ll approach your campaign, what you should expect, what their goals are and more.

The digital strategy company you choose should provide you with the options you need to implement the plan successfully.  

Conclusion

Choosing the right digital strategy for your business is essential. You need a plan to guide you, outlining where you are, where you want to go, and how to get there. Having a fresh perspective from an outside eye can mean the difference between success and failure. 

Remember, executing your digital strategy plan is even more important than simply having a plan.  Use this pool to choose a digital strategy company that will partner with you to achieve your business goals.

The post The 6 Best Digital Strategy Companies of 2020 appeared first on Neil Patel.

Develop Content Strategy – Streamline Your Content Production

Over 95% of marketing nowadays takes place on online platforms. Simply having an online presence is nonetheless not enough to get people on your website and social media pages. You need content that keeps people glued to the pages, sharing links to the pages, and coming back time and again. Churning the right content is, …

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New Guide Provides Framework Guide Strategy Planning Convers…

New Guide Provides Framework Guide Strategy Planning Conversations With Directors as well as Management Lots of B2B suppliers continue in typical earnings development strategies, declining to offer durable on-line possibility experiences or to captivate alternate B2B profits versions. This cost-free overview will certainly aid execs as well as boards to start the important, reflective job …

1,083,219 People Per Month and Counting: My New Favorite SEO Strategy

Podcasting.

You’ve heard about it before and I bet you’ve even listened to a handful of podcasts. But you probably haven’t created one yet.

Just think of it this way…

There are over 1 billion blogs and roughly 7 billion people
in this world. That’s 1 blog for every 7 people…

On the other hand, there are roughly 700,000 podcasts. That means there is only 1 podcast for every 10,000 people or so.

Podcasting is 1,428 times less competitive than blogging.

So, should you waste your time on podcasting?

Well, let me ask you this… do you want a new way to get more organic traffic from Google?

I’m guessing you said yes. But before I teach you how to do that, let me first break down some podcasting stats for you, in case you aren’t convinced yet.

Is podcasting even worth it?

From a marketing and monetization standpoint, podcasting isn’t too bad.

I have a podcast called Marketing School that I do with my buddy Eric Siu. We haven’t done much to market it and over time it’s grown naturally.

Here are the stats for the last month.

We got 1,083,219 downloads or “listens” last month. To give you an idea of what that is worth, Dream Host paid us $60,000 for an ad spot…

They’ve also been paying us for a while, technically we have a 1-year contract worth $720,000.

Now on top of the ad money, Eric and I both have gotten clients from our podcast. It’s tough to say how much revenue we’ve made from the podcast outside of advertising, but it is easy to say somewhere in the 7-figure range.

Keep in mind, when I make money through ads or generate revenue for my ad agency, there are costs so by no means does that revenue mean profit.

Sadly, my expenses are really high, but I’ll save that for a
different post.

But here is the cool thing: Eric and I only spend 3 hours a month to record podcast episodes for the entire month. So, the financial return for how much time we are spending is high.

And if that doesn’t convince you that you need to get into podcasting, here are some other stats that may:

  • 32% of Americans listen to a podcast at least
    once a month.
  • 54% of listeners think about buying products advertised
    in podcasts.
  • Businesses spent $497 million on podcast ads in
    2018 (probably much larger now).
  • 51%
    of monthly active podcast listeners     have an annual household income of at
    least $75,000.

If you haven’t created a podcast, this guide will
teach you how. And this
one will teach you how to get your first 10,000 downloads.

Alright, and now for the interesting part…

How to get more SEO traffic through podcasting

Back in 2019, Google saw how podcasts were growing at a rapid pace and they didn’t want to miss out.

They wanted people to continually use Google, even when it came to learning information that is given over audio format. So they decided to make a change to their search engine and algorithm and started to index podcasts and rank them.

And depending on what you search for and the more specific you get, you’ll even notice that Google is pulling out details from specific episodes. This clearly shows that they are able to transcribe the audio automatically.

This shouldn’t be too much of a shocker as they’ve already had this technology for years. They use it on YouTube to figure out what a video is really about.

But here is the thing, just recording a podcast and putting
it out there isn’t going to get you a ton of search traffic.

So how do you get more SEO traffic to your podcast?

It starts with topics

Podcasting is a lot like blogging.

If you create a blog post on any random topic that no one
cares to read about, then you aren’t going to generate much traffic… whether it
is from social or search.

The same goes for podcasting. If you have an episode on a random topic that no one cares to listen to, then you won’t get many downloads (or listens) and very little SEO traffic as well.

Just look at the stats for a few of our episodes.

Look at the screenshot above, you’ll see some do better than
others.

For example, the episode on “7 Secrets to Selling High Ticket Items” didn’t do as well as “The 7 Best Marketing Conferences 2020” or even “How to Drive More Paid Signups In Your Funnel.”

You won’t always be able to produce a hit for every podcast
you release, but there is a simple strategy you can use to increase your success
rate.

First, go to Ubersuggest
and type in a keyword or phrase related to what your podcast is about.

Once you type in your keyword or phrase, hit search.

You’ll land on a screen that looks something like this:

Then in the left-hand navigation, click on the “Content Ideas” option.

From there, you’ll see a list of popular topics on the subject you are researching.

This report breaks down popular blog posts based on social shares, SEO traffic, and backlinks.

Typically, if a blog post has all 3, that means people like the topic. Even if it has only 2 out of the 3, it shows that people are interested in the topic.

What we’ve found is that if a topic has done well as a blog post, it usually does well as a podcast episode.

See with the web, there are so many blogs, most topics have been beaten to death. But with podcasting, it is the opposite. Because there are very few podcasts, most topics haven’t been covered.

And if you take those beaten-to-death blog topics and turn them into podcast episodes, it is considered new, fresh content that people want to hear. And they tend to do really well.

Now you have to dive into keywords

Hopefully, you are still on the content ideas report and you’ve found some ideas to go after.

If not, just scroll down to the bottom of the Content Ideas report and keep clicking next… even if only a few numbers show, don’t worry, there are millions of results and as you go to the next page, more pages will show up.

Once you find a topic, I want you to click the “Keywords” button under the “Estimated Visits” column.

This will give you more specific keywords to mention and so you can go even more in-depth during your podcast episode.

Remember that Google is able to decipher your audio and knows what topics and keywords you are covering.

So, when you mention a keyword within your podcast, your podcast episode is more likely to rank for that keyword or phrase.

But there are a few things I’ve learned through this whole process:

  1. You don’t have to keyword stuff – you don’t have to mention a keyword 100 times or anything crazy if you want to rank well organically. Mention it whenever it is natural.
  2. Episodes titles that contain popular keywords tend to do better – do your keyword research and include the right keywords within your title (I’ll show you how in a bit).
  3. Episode titles that contain questions do well – eventually, you’ll also see these episodes perform even better because when people ask questions in the future on smart assistants like Alexa and Google Home, you’ll eventually start to see them pull from podcasts.

So how do you find the right keywords and questions to
incorporate into your podcasts?

Head back to Ubersuggest and type in a keyword or phrase related to a podcast episode you want to create. This should be a bit easier now because you’ve already leveraged the Content Ideas report to come up with popular topics that people want to hear about. 😉

This time, I want you to click on the “Keyword Ideas” report in the left-hand navigation.

You’ll then see a list of suggestions that look something like this.

As you scroll down, you’ll continually see more and more keywords.

Don’t worry about the CPC data, but you will want to look at the SEO difficulty score as the easier the score the better chances you will have of ranking your podcast episode on Google. Also, look at search volume… the higher the number the better as that means more potential listens.

My recommendation for you is to target keywords and phrases that have an SEO difficulty of 40 or less.

Once you have a list of keywords, I want you to click on the “Related” navigational link on that report.

Now, you’ll see a much bigger keyword list.

In this case, you’ll see 405,513 related keywords that you can target. Again, ignore the CPC data but target keywords with an SEO difficulty of 40 or less and the more popular the keyword the better.

Lastly, I want you to click on the “Questions” navigational link…

Then scroll through the list and you’ll see a list of
questions that you can target.

According to Comscore, over 50% of the searches are voice searches. A large portion of those are questions, so covering them within your podcast or even labeling your titles based on questions is a great way to get more traffic.

If you don’t think going after questions is a good strategy
to get more traffic, just look at Quora.

With roughly 111,114,424 estimated visits a month from Google, Quora is getting a lot of traffic by optimizing their site for question-related keywords.

Conclusion

Google
is the most popular site in the world. Whether you love SEO or hate it, you
have no choice but to leverage it.

One way to get more SEO traffic is to write tons of content and leverage content marketing. It’s a competitive approach and you should consider it.

But another solution that’s even easier is to create a podcast and rank it well on Google.

And ideally, you should be doing both.

Do you have a podcast? Have you tried ranking audio
content on Google?

The post 1,083,219 People Per Month and Counting: My New Favorite SEO Strategy appeared first on Neil Patel.

How to Enhance Your Video Strategy: OTT, Live-Streaming and More!

Video industry is huge these days: Either you are in or your brand is missing out! Small Biz Trends claims that by 2019, 80% of all web traffic is going to be video traffic. All major agencies and brands have already joined the trend: According to Outbrain survey, over 8o% of digital marketers have started… Read more »

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