But why dragons? Perhaps these serpent-like caricatures were included to warn travelers of impending danger. Maybe they were pure figments of the map makers’ imaginations. Who is to say there was not legitimate proof that ocean dwelling monsters actually lived in those waters? More likely, no one really knew too much about certain patches of the sea, and just like our modern day attitudes about things we do not understand, this caused an irrational fear.

When viewed through the lens of digital marketing, what would you consider to be your dragon? Does social media marketing cause you to recoil? Does your lack of experience with search engine optimization or email marketing force you to look the other way? Does the mere thought of creating an online marketing campaign keep you from even attempting to do so? If so, here are some tips to aid in your exploration of digital marketing seascapes.

Build Your Library

One of the most beautiful and challenging things about being a digital marketer is constant and unrelenting change. Much of what we did last year, is now obsolete. It is so important to build a tenable roster of resources that refreshes itself as often as you need to. Here’s a few suggestions:

Books & eBooks: I hesitate to lead a categorical list off with this one as many books start to degrade to irrelevance the moment they are printed. However, I have several favorites that stand the test of time including Don’t Make Me Think, Information Dashboard Design, The Cluetrain Manifesto, The NOW Reovlution, buy•ology, and The Findability Formula.

RSS: Utilize Google Reader to create a list of blog and online publication subscriptions. Depending upon your niche, you can use an RSS reader to find, read, save and share important news as it is published in the blogosphere.

Slideshare: I think Slideshare is often overlooked as a valuable source of information. Many of the best speakers and brightest minds in our industry publish their presentations on Slideshare. You can follow several Slideshare accounts and create your own to promote your own thoughts in PowerPoint form.

Twitter Lists: I must confess I don’t use Twitter too often to converse with others. I choose to use it as an information gathering tool. Once you begin to follow smart digital marketers and build out lists that gather their tweets in one place, you can really start to rely on Twitter for nearly instantaneous and meaningful updates, news and thoughts about this space.

Others? Please list any the resources I may have missed in the comments.

Befriend a Herd of Nerds

One of the best ways to learn a new trade is to make friends with those who have already found success in that particular line of work. If you are interested in becoming a digital marketer, please go find and hang out with digital marketers. Attend local and regional events. Find out if there are local shared workspaces where online marketing types gather.

“When the character of a man is not clear, look at his friends.”

When I first started my consultancy, I made it a goal to go to coffee, lunch or happy hour with at least one person a week. If I didn’t have something scheduled with someone in my industry that I knew or wanted to know, there was something wrong. Part of the reasoning here was to expand and fortify my connections, but I continue to learn something new with every meeting. You may consider doing the same. Let your guard down, seek out some friendly resources, and become a reliable confidant as well.

Consult The Oracle

I’m going to let you in on a little secret here. There have been several times in the past month when my clients, partners and contacts have remarked about how amazed they are that I can respond to a question, find a resource or hunt down a solution to an itchy problem. Here’s the truth: I really don’t know the answer at least half the time. But my friend, Google, does.

A quick story. Nearly a two years ago, my sister took an extended hiatus from her job as an elementary school teacher to be at home with her newborn – my niece. In her spare time, she built a blog and started to network with other young mothers in her area. I was so impressed with the site she had built from scratch I told her:

“You should really consider selling your time to help other people in your area create blogs. With your own site as a working example and your teaching background, I think you would do really well.”

To which she replied:

“Hmm. That’s interesting. Yeah, I could do that. Here’s how the first day of class would go…. ‘Class, if you have a question, Google it. Class dismissed.’ “

Coincidentally, we come from a long line of smart asses.

Get Dirty & Embrace Failure

Sometimes you eat the bar. Sometimes, well, he eats you.

Lessons learned are the offspring of well-intended mistakes.

If you are really serious about becoming a digital marketer, the best advice I can give you is to simply start. Adopt a pet project, help out a friend or relative or offer your services pro bono to a local business or charity. Not actually trying is the worst possible outcome. The best? Failure.

Every one makes errors, but the good ones don’t forget them. Accept failure as a part of the process, and go kick a dragon’s teeth in.

Read the rest of this content marketing article on Jay Baer’s Convince & Convert blog.

Download and share the Bricks vs. Feathers infographic.

How can you get your videos to rank well in YouTube search? The following provides some guidance on how to optimize video for YouTube rankings plus some of my own investigation efforts to determine what really matters in the YouTube rankings game.

(Entertaining) Content First
Before we dive into the technical trappings, let’s talk content as the priority. Think about your own YouTube watching habits. I’m going to take a wild guess that you are not spending your quality time viewing episodes featuring actuary scientists in action, instructions on how to be a Walmart greeter, highlights from the local academic decathlon or a series on the finer points of quilting. On YouTube boring never wins. Your goal with every YouTube video should be to entertain and if you attempt to educate, please do so in an entertaining and enlightening fashion. Like this gentleman:

Tom Dickson makes blenders interesting. No, really.

Find Your Keywords
When clients ask me about my preferred keyword research tool, I tell them to go straight to the source. The Google Keyword Tool offers reliable data and excellent filtering options to help marketers uncover origins of consumer demand. Similarly, YouTube offers a keyword tool. Simply enter a phrase and get search volume metrics back.

When selecting keywords consider choosing those that are already working or have a proven track record for generating leads and/or sales from other search marketing campaigns.

Optimize Videos Like Individual Web Pages
Search engine optimization at its most basic fundamental stage involves including target keywords in web page titles, meta data and page content. Every web page should be considered a destination and can and should be optimized with a keyword phrase. Videos are the same way. Select a target phrase to incorporate in each of your videos.

If you are familiar with basic web page optimization practices, think of it like this:

Web Page Title = Video Title
Web Page Meta Description = Video Description
Web Page Meta Keywords = Video Tags

Video Titles – After 60 characters (letters and spaces), the title gets cut off, so that should be your maximum. Use your keyword target in the title. Consider using “Video” in the title as this might help you in Google Search results pages.

Video Description – Provide a detailed description of your video and include your target keyword phrase. You have a 5000 character limit so the feel free to extrapolate without stuffing keywords. Include a link back to relevant content on your website or blog as this will help with search engine optimization efforts.

Video Tags – Unlike meta keywords which are ignored by Google’s search engine, video tags are quite important. However, you don’t need to over do it. Repeat important keyword phrases found in your video title and description. Wrap multi-word phrases in quotes to ensure the entire phrase is listed as a tag (e.g. “chicken fajita pita”).

Other Optimization Tips
Video Sitemaps – If you plan to embed videos on your website, help Google find and index them by placing a video sitemap on your website. The always impressive community at SEOMoz provides direction for creating video sitemaps.

Sharing and Syndication Options – Within your video settings on YouTube, you’ll have a number of sharing and response settings. Open it all up to the community. Allow comments, ratings, embedding and syndication. By doing so, you give your video a greater opportunity to be seen and to rank in YouTube search.

A Tiny Research Experiment
While I hope you find the above useful, for me it didn’t seem like enough to ensure success in YouTube search. I conducted a few searches on my own for three different keyword phrases all with decent popularity based on results in both the Google & YouTube Keyword Tools. In my little research experiment, I also recorded qualitative and quantitative metrics for the top 10 videos appearing in YouTube search results for each query.

Metrics Captured

• Keyword in Video Title (Yes, No)
• Keyword in Video Description (Yes, No)
• Keyword in Video Tags (Yes, No)
• Total Views
• Video Age (Months Since Upload)
• Total Ratings, Both Positive & Negative (i.e. Thumbs Up or Down)
• Positive Rating Percentage (Positive Ratings / Total Ratings)
• Total Comments

And here are the results:

Keyword #1: marlin fishing

Keyword #2: adobe fireworks tutorial

Keyword #3: bbq pork ribs recipe

As you can see from just a cursory glance at the data, really the only consistent trend in each data set is the high percentage of positive ratings. Neither keyword inclusion nor views nor amount of ratings and comments was the determining factor. Please see the graphs below. Very few listings in the top 10 results for each query dipped below an 80% approval rating. Those that were at 0% simply didn’t have any ratings. However, each of those with no score did include the keyword in the Title, Description and Tags.

Positive Rating Percentage for Each Keyword Results Set Analyzed

Results Explained

Ratings Reign Supreme

Final Recommendation:

• Create entertaining video content
• Optimize key elements of the video with popular keywords and phrases
• Aim for positive ratings on YouTube

For additional reading, the concepts of “Audience Approval” and “Relevance to the Query” are explained in detail in this article penned by Terry Van Horne of SEOPros.org, which also references the YouTube Creators Playbook.

If your next question is “how do I earn positive ratings?”, I really don’t have the definitive answer. This goes back to the idea of creating entertaining content as a priority. I can say that earning positive ratings is impossible without first getting your video played multiple times by your audience. Here are some final thoughts on how to increase views for your YouTube videos.

Increase Views for YouTube Videos

• Embed on owned online properties (i.e. your website, blog)
• Promote video on social media venues (Facebook, Twitter, Google+) and via online press releases
• Plan to promote or include partner content within your video and allow partners to embed your videos
• Video Distribution Services: TubeMogul seems like the most reputable in the industry. Submit and distribute videos to over 20 video content sites. There is no fee for non-commercial videos.
• Use Google Adwords for video. This service is very similar to Google Adwords and provides the advertiser with the choice to appear in search results, as a featured video on the right-hand side of the watch page or in-stream as pre-roll as part of their TrueView program.

Does this help? What other YouTube or video optimization tips can you share?

Last year, I prepared a presentation on how to Create a Marketing Dashboard. This information below contains pieces from that presentation, but primarily focuses on the process to build out a website analytics report for the first time. Please keep in mind that while there are reporting standards, there is no standard report. I prepare 10+ reports for clients on a monthly (and sometimes weekly) basis and none of them look alike. Your report should be as unique as the business for which you are preparing it.

To demonstrate each step more clearly, I’ll provide examples from a make-believe business. Let’s say we are preparing a report for a dentist.

A. Define business objectives
This may seen obvious, but I’ve seen plenty of metrics reports that don’t provide a clear indication of what the business is working to accomplish. Your business goals must be at core of your reporting metrics or else you are merely reporting less than meaningful data.

Sample Objectives:

1. Increase the number of new patients by X%
2. Retain Y% of all current or previous patients
3. Improve per patient revenue to $Z

Keep in mind that in most cases the website alone cannot accomplish your business objectives by itself. However, monitoring visitor behavior and website results can help to inform your overall business strategy and help you stay on target.

B. Identify questions the report must answer
Try to avoid pulling random site metrics out of a hat. Think carefully about what you want your report to tell you independent of any specific statistics or analytics-oriented data types (e.g. time on site, bounce rate, total pageviews, etc.).

Sample Questions:

1. How many new patient inquiries did we receive?
2. How many new patients called?
3. How many new email newsletter subscribers did we earn?
4. What other sales oriented actions did visitors take (e.g. visits to “Contact” page, driving directions, new patient Insurance forms, monthly special page)?
5. What is the ongoing trend for visitors?
6. How many visitors come to the site for the first time? returning visitors?
7. From where are visitors and new leads coming?
8. What dental services are most popular amongst visitors?

C. Match those questions with available metrics
Now that you know what you want to measure, you must determine if you actually can. This process involves either examining your current analytics data or placing tracking code from a tool like Google Analytics. Once you have your analytics house in order, you can begin to create question-metric pairings.

Sample Metrics:

1. How many new patient inquiries did we receive? –> Visits to the “Thank You” page
2. How many new patients called? → Call tracking software. If you use Google Analytics, see this handy guide for phone call tracking tool integration.
3. How many new email newsletter subscribers did we earn? → Visits to the “Sign Up Confirmation” page
4. What other sales oriented actions did visitors take (e.g. visits to “Contact” page, driving directions, new patient Insurance forms, monthly special page)? → Visits to those pages
5. What is the ongoing trend for visitors? → Monthly visit tallies and daily totals for the current month
6. How many visitors come to the site for the first time? Repeat visitors? → New vs. Returning monthly visit tallies
7. From where are visitors and new leads coming? → Visit tallies by traffic source
8. What dental services are most popular amongst visitors? → Pageview tallies for each “Services” page

D. Construct the report and include notes
The notes should seek to interpret data charts on the report and uncover other interesting findings that may influence your decisions about site content and marketing strategies.

As my friend Chris Book would tell you, try to abide by the 80-20 rule with your report notes. Your notes section may only take up 20% of the real estate on your report, but you’ll likely spend 80% of your time to produce the report on this section. Take the necessary time to dig for game changing data points, extract meaning and provide thoughtful recommendations.

Check out the sample report for our make-believe dentist. Thanks to Bacon Ipsum for the incredible dummy text used in the notes section. Also, you may notice that I used Numbers from the Apple iWork suite for this report. While I prefer Microsoft Excel when working with data (sorting through data tables, creating formulas, constructing pivot tables, etc.) I like Numbers a bit better for reporting because of its ‘cleanliness’ and presentation quality.

Additional Considerations
1. Who is the ultimate audience for this report? Depending upon who is reading the report, you may choose to include a legend to help define metrics and what they mean. You should also try to avoid jargon or acronyms found in many analytics reporting tools. If you have multiple audiences with different agendas, you may have to create more than one report that are formatted differently for the appropriate people (e.g. CEO receives top level sales metrics and the Marketing Director receives campaign-specific reporting).

2. One page, please. Just because you can measure it doesn’t mean you should always report it. Stick to the most pertinent, goals-focused data. Avoid getting caught up in the minutiae. Assume that your report audience does not have an overwhelming amount of time to commit to your analysis. Make it digestible in minutes (if not seconds).

3. Beware of pie charts. Pie charts are visually appealing and can be an effective way to show percentage comparisons some times. However, when showing how fractional relationships change over the course of time, pie charts can be misleading and just don’t cut the mustard. Use bar or column charts instead.

4. Know that your report will likely change. Think of your analytics reporting as a living, breathing organism. It will adapt and evolve along with your website and your marketing campaigns. Alter the report and its format as needed to provide the utmost relevance.

5. If you are an agency, this report could be your meal ticket. I’ve gone so far as to encourage some of my agency clients to offer analytics reporting at a discount or for free in some cases. It allows you to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise while uncovering opportunities for new or simply more effective campaign strategies.

You may think of analytics reporting as a burdensome chore. In truth, it is a gold mine.

What is graymail?

Graymail can be defined as messages that drop out of the inbox due to lack of activity from individual recipients. They can also be classified as once welcome email messages that have since fallen out of favor with their intended targets. Hotmail accounts for over 12% of the email client market share and they are of course owned by Microsoft, the developers of Outlook which sits atop the email client mountain.

However, this graymail phenomena is not unique to Microsoft email clients. For instance, I use Gmail for several of my own accounts. Here is a screenshot of my SPAM box. Please note that these are all messages that I agreed to receive. Due to my lack of response (opens and clicks), Gmail has automatically routed them to SPAM. No offense to any of the companies referenced below – I’ve just been a little busy.

Why is graymail making email marketers sweat?

There are two primary reasons email marketers have cause for concern.

1. Graymail is difficult to discern from a marketer’s perspective. To my knowledge email service providers don’t really have a means of tracking what percentage of emails sent turn gray. They should appear as a successful delivery and most likely as a “did not open”. Thus, we really don’t know how many of our messages fall under this category, but open rate can be somewhat helpful.

2. Point of no return? Once something becomes classified as graymail, it can be very difficult to reverse that status in all likelihood. To use my Gmail example above, it has been months since emails from some of those senders referenced has made it to my personal inbox. To make it out again, the individual must denote that the message is not SPAM. This is not a very likely scenario and these kinds of relationships can be difficult to rekindle.

How can you combat graymail?

Unfortunately, there is no Just for Men email marketing solution to help you “keep your edge”. What this really requires is preemptive planning combined with guarded message scheduling of content-rich messages. As noted earlier, the jury is out on whether graymail can be fixed. You can only hope to avert it. Here are a few ideas to help you avoid the effects of graymail on your email marketing campaigns:

1. Setting Expectations
The first step in avoiding graymail actually starts with the first step in building a list. It is crucial to help potential recipients clearly identify what they will receive, when they will receive it and how to get more or less messages from your organization. By explicitly identifying the rules of your relationship with each individual subscriber at the time she signs up, you can improve your standing from the outset. Sometimes this process requires added steps in the sign-up process which can equate to a lower conversion rate. However, focus on getting quality contacts to Whom you can deliver quality messages.

2. Be Selective with Audience Selection
I’ve written previously about the merits of segmentation and the importance of delivering relevant messages to the right audience. Use individual messages to learn more about every member of your audience. Each recipient will have varying levels of loyalty and different offers will appeal to different motivations. As you build your list, break it down into sections to provide supreme quality in your email communique. Accept the fact that “batch and blast” is a one way trip to email list rigor mortis.

3. Guard Your List with Your Life
As an email marketer, you must also be a steward of your list. You may get pressure from your boss, company executives and other members of the marketing team to use your list in ways it should never be utilized. Warn them carefully to back away before someone gets hurt. Here are some situations to avoid:

• Sending the same exact message twice to the same audience. Yes, this actually happens.
• Sending for the sake of sending or to meet some mystical frequency quotient. This occurs often when promoting events and when someone utters, “but we only sent the invite to them once”.
• Sending unexpected information to a house list. Remember, set expectations about the messages you plan to deliver, and keep your promises.
• Making email a part of your full court press. Be careful about including an email message to loyalists as part of your marketing emergency.

4. Continuously Improve Upon Content Quality
Every time you send an email to your audience is an opportunity to make or break your relationship. The content of your messages is an extremely important factor in their decision to stay or go. Dedicate time and resources to developing amazing content that is consistent with your brand. I also suggest using other channels like social media and search to determine what kinds of content will resonate best with your audience. In some cases, you may be able to carefully test different kinds of content, offers and promotions with extreme loyalists to determine what will work with others who are less committed to your organization.

Ultimately, graymail is not the real problem. Lack of planning, forethought, respect for the list and content so good that you can’t afford not to forward it on to friends and colleagues will lead to lower inbox deliveries. Solve for those issues first and graymail will be less of a frightening concern.

A popular television series ran from the late 80s to the early 90s called Quantum Leap. The show’s lead character was played by the immensely talented Scott Bakula, probably one of the most underrated actors of our generation. Quantum Leap was a comedy-drama-science fiction hybrid, but it was altogether amazing. The show’s premise was based on a time travel experiment gone awry in which Mr. Bakula’s character, Sam, randomly “leaps” into the body of another person in history. Throughout the series, Sam would move from person to person with each show providing a new setting and experience. While Sam would normally not take the place of any important individual in history, he would often influence them by coming into contact with the likes of Jack Kerouac, Buddy Holly and an adolescent Donald Trump.

Here are a few ways in which I think marketers can learn from Scott Bakula’s character in Quantum Leap.

Get in Character
To avoid upsetting the historical apple cart, Sam would have to take on the persona of his new host after each leap. If he leaped to a baseball player, he’d have to play baseball. If he leaped to a pilot, he’d have to fly a plane. If he leaped to a woman, he’d have to behave, dress and act like a lady. By making an honest attempt to take on the persona of each individual to which he would leap, he got to know them and their surroundings intimately.

As a marketer you must also strive to understand your audience. My skin crawls every time I hear a marketer start a sentence with, “Well when I search, I…” or “when I visit a website, I…” or “when I receive an email, I…”. Shut up. Stop thinking about how you would behave in a particular situation. It is paramount that you begin to feel, act and react like your customer. Become a secret shopper. Try your best to imagine what the customer’s feelings, motivations, potential influences and past experiences regarding your product might be. Sometimes this might require research, observation, or god forbid, actually talking to a customer.

Allow Science to Point the Way
Well, the “science” part of the show was shaky at best. However, Sam was placed into a random host in each episode and each leap was totally out of his control. So in a way, he relied on science, although incongruous and completely screwed up, to provide him with direction.

Just like Sam, marketers must submit willingly to science. If calculated and collected appropriately, numbers don’t lie. Rely on research to educate you about the best methods and messages to incorporate into campaigns. Conduct surveys and personal interviews with the audience that will shed light on the best ways to reach them in a compelling manner. Observe them constantly.

In the interactive marketing profession, we utilize processes like user testing, eye tracking studies, search taxonomy analyses and social media monitoring to learn more about consumers. Above all, always be testing. The testing process will help you solve big problems like what campaign strategy to employ with a multi-million dollar ad buy. It can also answer less important questions like what color the “add to cart” button should be.

Adapt Quickly
At some point in each Quantum Leap episode, Sam would suddenly leap into a new, unfamiliar situation. Like clockwork, his reaction in every instance would be a perplexed, “Oh boy.” However, just as any classic protagonist, Sam would figure it all out – a process that embodied the show’s charismatic charm.

When it comes to planning marketing activities and designing marketing programs based on learned consumer behavior, understand that each situation is completely different from the next. Marketing plan templates are commonplace within marketing departments and agencies. I use them myself. Regardless, marketing plans must be as unique as the client or campaign they are designed to support and the customers they are intended to reach. One size does not fit all. Marketers should treat every campaign differently . Carefully consider how to communicate to disparate audiences with methods that are equal parts creative, effective and measurable.

Put Right What Once Went Wrong
Throughout the Quantum Leap series, Sam is continuously placed in sticky situations. On many occasions his influence helped change the course of history for good. For example, he performed the Heimlich maneuver on Dr. Heimlich, Sam prevented the shooting of Jackie Kennedy and he taught a young Michael Jackson how to moonwalk.

Let’s face it. The marketing/advertising profession has not always had the best reputation. Any time the task is defined as influencing another human being’s behavior, some will ultimately question your motivations. You as a marketer ultimately have a choice about how to use your talents. You can choose to educate and enlighten the masses about products, services, people and ideas that can help them, or you can choose to sell only for the purpose of helping yourself. Never take a job just for the money. Focus your energy on doing great work to support organizations that can improve the human condition. Do that with humility, and the rewards will follow. I promise. And don’t waste your time with miscreant clients. You are better than that.

You may have heard that the search engine with the funny name continued to pick up steam (well, just a bit). We monitored its progress and started to optimize client web pages to rank more prominently in Google results. Due to lack of competition and necessary sophistication, search engine optimization was kind of easy. It went a little something like this…

1. Go find keywords with a tool like Wordtracker
2. Include those terms in the page title and meta description. Stuff terms overtly into the meta keywords (pointless today). And include the keywords in the page text in such a repetitive manner that Google would be silly not to rank your page well (and customers would be silly to purchase anything from such a poorly written website).
3. Submit the site to search engines manually and allow their meta crawlers, also known as ‘spiders’, to index the website.

That was about it, and believe it or not, that REALLY worked.

Today the role of an SEO professional is much more complicated. We’ve seen waves of algorithm updates from Google, each with a cute little name. Over the years, the good people in Mountain View have rolled out Florida, Jagger, Vince, MayDay and most recently the Panda/Farmer updates. With every new iteration, Google has made it more difficult for SEOs to sway the robots controlling the system, and some would argue, made the experience better for humans.

Thankfully we are no longer writing for robots.

I would argue that our role as search engine optimization professionals has morphed from one that involves the cajoling of search engine spiders into becoming multi-talented arachnids ourselves. Perhaps some of us would be better characterized as eight legged freaks. Here are eight roles necessary for a well-rounded SEO practitioner in 2011.

Modern Day Search Arachnid – 8 Legs

Leg 1 – Researcher: Find and analyze keyword targets using myriad tools. I personally prefer the Google Keyword Tool.

Leg 2 – Competitive Analyst: Uncover how those ranking well for target terms are doing so and what specific on-page (site optimization) and off-page (link marketing) tactics they employ. Determine what methods you should employ to mimic, thwart or combat those competitors’ efforts. Here’s a good primer on how to perform a competitive SEO analysis.

Leg 3 – Technical Savant: Understand the nuances of SEO-friendly website design and coding. Know what search engines like and don’t like and how to modify site code and structure to provide for proper search indexing. View this technical SEO checklist.

Leg 4 – Writer/Producer: Create and develop new content that resonates with the audience and is attractive to search engines. Content could be classified as text, photos, graphics or video. Here’s some more info on content marketing strategy.

Leg 5 – PR Pro / Pitchman: In the realm of link building, a certain amount of salesperson panache is necessary to develop a dialogue with bloggers, site owners and other online influencers who hold the keys to unlocking new links to your website. This link building graphic tends to resonate with many of my clients. Also see notes from Jason Falls, a terrific proponent of blogger outreach done respectfully and effectively.

Leg 6 – Social Butterfly: Be cognizant of social media’s impact on search engine rankings and positioning. Utilize popular tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to generate links and promote new content. Check out the “Future of Search” section of this amazing collection of Search Engine Ranking Factors from SEOMoz.

Leg 7 – Data Hound: Get comfortable with website analytics to discover new opportunities for your SEO campaign as well as provide a method for measuring real progress. Rely on history to impact future successes.

Leg 8 – Strategic Sage: Think past search engine page rankings, visits from search, new inbound links and other tactic-oriented accomplishments. The end game should always involve a dollar sign. Generate a sound SEO strategy that supports your website/marketing objectives and dutifully communicates your message online to the right audiences to produce revenue.

If all that sounds like too much (fun) for one person, sometimes it can be. Such shifts in the practice have required one-man SEO departments to evolve into full-blown search engine optimization teams within organizations and marketing agencies. To simplify matters, generating results in Google and other search engines has always been about one thing only: create and promote content your audience finds meaningful and useful. Failure to abide by that mantra ultimately renders all the tactical exercises pointless.

Have you provided SEO services for some time? How have your efforts changed over the years?

To adequately make this point, first allow me to explain marketing segmentation in manner more formal than I am usually comfortable:

Customer segmentation has often been used by marketers to break a large audience into smaller subsets. The practice of creating audience segments, sometimes referred to as ‘buckets’, allows skilled marketers to deliver unique messages to a clearly defined group and monitor that group’s response to various marketing stimuli. Each group is defined by a common set of criteria that distinguishes them from other types of customers. The lines of demarcation when classifying customers are often aided by:

• Demographics (gender, age, employment status, location)
• Psychographics (personality, attitudes, interests, lifestyles)
• Technographics (ownership, usage patterns and attitudes toward specific technologies)
• Brand-specific behavioral measures (purchase history, purchase frequency, purchase amount), also known as the RFM model
• A mix of the four above.

If executed correctly, audience segmentation allows marketers to provide more relevance to individual groups of customers which in turn spawns greater ROI for the business.

Now, here’s the more laid back approach to describing segmentation:

There was always that kid in high school who could get along with every clique. He could talk about beer and girls with the jocks, compare notes on lyrics from The Cure with the goths, play hacky sack with the stoners and share TI-82 calculator tricks with the geeks. He could even make nice with the teachers in a way that wouldn’t alienate himself. Proper use of segmentation is the ability to be that kid.

In a perfect world, we would have the time, resources and knowledge to communicate to every individual customer in a unique way.  For most businesses, that is near impossible and most of us are not ready for retina scan marketing.  However, examination of what matters most to your customers about your offering (and why) will provide some guidance to create the right buckets.  While the merits of segmentation can be described in much more finite detail by people smarter than me, it is possible to be too good at segmentation or perhaps just overzealous. Here are a few common problems and some potential solutions.

Problem #1: Imagine you have identified your various customer groups, but when it comes to communicating with them, you literally don’t have enough time. Now that you have X number of segments, the time required to prepare and deliver unique, relevant messages to them just increased by a factor of X. Your segments are so many that you lack time and resources to adequately communicate relevant messages to all of them and still turn a profit.  In a way, you’ve gone and bucketed your way to inefficiency.

What do you do?

Solution 1A: Do More with Less.  Several years ago, I worked for a Fortune 500 national home builder that had about a dozen customer segments.  Here’s the thing – we were a Fortune 500 national home builder.  We could afford to have so many segments because we had so many unique kinds of customers and so many resources at our disposal.  If you are just starting with segmentation work, roll out with 3 to 5 customer segments.  Any more than that can quickly become too expensive, confusing and arduous.  Be honest with yourself and tackle only what you can handle as an organization.

Solution 1B: Calculate Segment ROI.  Just in case, here’s the equation:

ROI = (Gain – Cost) / Cost

Now run that same calculation against each individual group. If the overall takeaway is not greater than the time and materials investment you make with each segment, determine a way to consolidate smaller segments or come up with an alternative way to cut the pie.

Solution 1C: Automate the Process. Work smarter, not harder. Automate the process of communicating specific messages with technology that can determine customer segment and define unique message for every individual audience member automagically. Examples include CRM tools tied to email marketing platforms and behavioral targeting networks for online advertising.

Problem #2: You have carefully divided your larger audience into neat little groups, but no matter what you do to communicate with them, you don’t see a lift in results. You understand the potential value for segmentation, but you just aren’t seeing it.  Your return is about the same as communicating to the entire group.

Solution 2A: Get Samples and Start Over.  Let’s face it – right out of the gate, your segments might just be crap.  Work with existing customer data to extract meaning and define legitimate customer groups. If adequate customer data is readily available, the correct segments are probably already there. You just have to find them.  Try to avoid dividing customers into buckets solely on demographic or psychographic attributes.  While those measures can play an important role when combined with purchase behavior, the decision to purchase is not driven by demographic characteristics alone.

Solution 2B: Get Scientific and Survey.  Construe a hypothesis about what your segments might look like by determining the product/service attributes to which customers may gravitate. Work with a pro to create a survey that collects all necessary data elements (demographics, phychographics, etc.) and allows you to cross-tab product attributes with customer characteristics and behavior.

Solution 2C: Double-Check Your Marketing Tactics.  Actually implementing your segmentation strategy is akin to applying a culture change within an organization.  Time and care is needed to ensure everyone who interfaces with customers is familiar with your segments and knows how to apply the right message to the right person at the right time.  Allow your message to become more relevant and meaningful in time with testing to each segment.  Also, consider how your segmentation strategy applies to areas outside of marketing in the traditional sense (i.e. customer service, product development, research, hiring and staffing practices, etc.)

Ultimately, creating buckets for your marketing program can be a very good thing. Just be careful about overdoing it or segmenting in ways that don’t produce a positive impact.

See that look of innocence below? It hasn’t always been that way. To be honest, this dog used to be a throbbing nuisance. A real pain in the ass. Her name is Trixy. Many would refer to her as a “rescue”, but I think that term is a slight to those who do actually bring others out of harm’s way. We didn’t chopper in past enemy lines. No shots were fired. My two-year-old may have been wearing camouflage shorts, but that’s more out of necessity to be cute rather than unseen. So, I’ll just say we picked her up from a local animal shelter.

Looking back, we now refer to the first several days with this dog as Hell Week. She was a total bitch. Our living room carpet transformed into a giant pee pad. She made a few escape attempts running with reckless abandon throughout the neighborhood leaving frightened children and irritated lawn care professionals in her wake. She even nipped at that two-year-old with the camo pants, and my five-year-old was severely annoyed by all things Trixy.

Prior to simply throwing our arms up and giving up completely, I made a call to a friend of mine – also our veterinarian. I explained all our troubles, and he quickly diagnosed the problem. It wasn’t Trixy. It was us. We weren’t walking her twice a day. We weren’t making any attempt to train her how to behave in the house. We weren’t playing with her often enough. Simply put, we weren’t taking the time necessary to love the newest member of our family.

Many business owners and social media managers express the same kinds of frustrations with their social media program. A common scenario looks a little like this: A few accounts are set up on some popular tools (Facebook, Twitter, et al). Those given responsibility for the program make an attempt to create content. This (often minimal) effort does not bear fruit, and a once promising campaign goes into hibernation.

Sound familiar? If so, here are a few tips to creating or reviving your social media program.

Pick An Objective: Social media is proven to do many different things: provide customer service, build loyalty with an existing customer base, create awareness amongst new groups of prospects and influencers, etc. Keep it simple and just choose one of these objectives to start. Ensure your campaign reflects that in all that you do as well as demonstrating what sets your business apart. Select the proper vehicles (see below)

Align Your Metrics: Once you have a social media marketing objective, you must find a way to determine success. Admittedly, this part is not easy. Each social media program is different, and yours will require different metrics than another. However, if your metrics center around your number of likes or followers, chances are you are off base. Focus on more meaningful metrics such as:

• Lift in site traffic and search volume
• Share of Voice
• Views or downloads of key content
• Redemption of coupons or discounts promoted exclusively via social media
• Increase in community participation
• Impact on Net Promoter Score

Please note that I’m not suggesting that you utilize all of the above. Carefully select the metrics that allow you to adequately answer the question, “what does success look like?”

Plan Your Posts: So much of the communication you have with your audience through social media is reactive – as any conversation would be. For that reason, I’m not a huge proponent of creating a regimented social media protocol with respect to your campaign content. However, I definitely recommend creating a social media editorial calendar of sorts. Doing so will help you evade scenarios in which your content is undefined. Identify specific topics and pieces of content that you’ll want to cover and publish over an extended period of time. Work with as many members of your organization to give your social media ed-cal breadth and an accurate representation of your message and brand. Here are some sample methods to create a reliable content schedule.

• Create a list of 30+ questions your audience asks about you. Answer those questions with various content formats (text, photo, video) over an extended period within your campaign.
• Rely on other sources like website analytics and search volume to uncover what topics and content types are already in high demand.
• Align social media content with other advertising, earned media messages or seasonal aspects of your business so that there is consistency throughout your entire marketing program.

Get What You Give: Like most jobs, you really need to possess three qualities to perform social media marketing well: awareness, acumen and affection. ‘Awareness’ corresponds to your knowledge of the organization you support, its purpose and its role in the lives of your consumers and advocates. Additionally, social media acumen is required to perform the simple tasks required by the job whether they be technical, design oriented or simply call for an element of writer’s panache. Finally, and most importantly, you have to love this stuff. If you don’t, find someone else within the organization who can. All the background on the business and talent in the world does not replace passion for the gig.

That final piece is what really helped bring Trixy around. Rather, it helped bring us around. We committed religiously to caring for our dog. And she rewards us for it daily.

Jumbo Keyword
Use this tool to place terms found during keyword research in the approproate match types. With a click of a button, you can format your terms in Phrase and Exact match prior to placing them in Google Adwords.

Mergewords
For the purpose of maximizing coverage for a set of keyword phrases, you can combine various descriptors and core terms to create a healthy list of relevant terms. This tool can be used in combination with the Google Keyword Tool to find pertinent phrases to substantially grow click volume the right way and leave no stone unturned.

Keyword Niche Finder
A great tool for finding “long tail” search terms, the Keyword Niche Finder from WordStream allows you to expand different derivatives of a phrase core to your business. Unlike the Google Keyword Tool that requires filters and patience to find a healthy set of keyword phrases very specific to your research purposes, the Keyword Niche Finder allows you to locate and pick out gems quite easily.

SpyFu
SpyFu offers competitive intelligence for search engine marketers. Enter your top competitors’ names, websites addresses or terms they would likely target in their own search marketing efforts to learn more about what they are spending daily, their relative ad position for all target terms and the relative level of traffic they earn from paid vs. organic search efforts.

Compete.com
Another competitive tool that you can use to measure your site’s traffic and top keywords to your chief competitors. Compete is a free service with upgrade options to view more competitors at one time, view competitor search terms and other sources of traffic.

Google URL Builder
Google provides a tool to easily add tracking code to your paid search ads. While most Adwords Campaigns will be visible in Google Analytics by the campaign name, specific tracking code can be added for Bing or to determine which landing page, ad or set of keywords is producing more sales than another. Simply paste in the URL for the landing page and add in tracking attributes to generate a URL ready for campaign tracking.

Google AdWords Editor
Google Adwords Editor is a server side tool that you can download to your own machine. Built to provide pay per click marketers an easy way to make bulk changes to campaigns, AdWords Editor can save an enormous amount of time. Use this tool to make simple changes to keywords, ads or campaigns that you will want to apply across your entire account.

MockFlow
Creating and designing landing pages for paid search campaigns can be arduous without the use of wireframes to carefully design page layouts and determine the spatial relationship between elements on a page. Mockflow is a free, web-based tool in which you can create useful page wireframes in minutes. Store your previous mock-ups for editing later and export the files as PDFs, Word documents or PNG images.

What did I miss? Do you have a favorite PPC tool you can share?