Ah, direct traffic, one of the greatest myths in Google Analytics. If you think direct traffic is caused exclusively by users typing a website address into their browser (or clicking on a bookmark), this post is for you. And, if you think direct traffic is somehow bad for your site, again, this post is for you. Let’s go straight to the point.
David is not a marketer by training, but he’s held plenty of other titles, from software engineer and CTO, to Chief Product Officer, co-founder, and CEO. “I had to teach myself marketing, and I started focusing on how we think about marketing from a brand standpoint.” What we found most interesting in our recent conversation with him was how that storytelling has become a vital internal center of gravity for the company.
How effective is your link building campaign? I bet your answer is “I wish it could be better.” Talking to business owners and executives on a daily basis, I have yet to meet one who would be satisfied with their link building strategy. Everyone needs links, yet they are getting harder and harder to get. The solution? Change your link building mindset.
“Churn” is a term we all use in SaaS as a core metric, but its roots, as near as I remember and can tell, come from our B2C colleagues. Folks churn out of their Verizon plan, their Netflix subscription, etc. The problem with the term “Churn” with Big Customers is that it makes the whole concept sound blameless and unavoidable. This isn’t what happens in the enterprise.
Our team of content strategists spend all day, every day, creating content strategies. They live in keyword spreadsheets, sitemaps, and Google Analytics reports. They’ve brainstormed enough articles to keep a content calendar full for several decades. Here are their 6 best lessons learned from a year in the trenches with content strategy.
How a two-pronged approach can help you increase brand awareness and organic traffic. One piece of content can’t meet all of your goals. This may sound obvious, but sometimes marketers treat all of their content equally, which is a mistake. Each piece of content you create should have its own individualized expectations and goals.
When building any technology product, one of the most common pieces of advice is “talk to your users.” But the default way most of us talk to customers and prospects is unscientific and fraught with confirmation bias, putting us in danger of being lied to and wasting months building something nobody wants. At least half of our ideas are just not going to work, and even the good ideas take several iterations to become viable.
Competitive analysis is the process of identifying and researching your competitors to get the information you need to gain a competitive advantage. Only then can you develop an effective marketing strategy to steer the ship in the right direction. Here’s how to do the competitive analysis in 8 simple steps.
For the sake of argument, let’s say you know the basics of copywriting. From where you’re sitting, “write compelling headlines” isn’t helpful anymore. Can something as subjective as copy be judged as “good” or “bad”, without relying on a single opinion or inflated ego? Yes, by using data to improve your copy.
Here’s the hard truth: No one cares about your new product. Your goal is to create something worth remarking about. Something people will stop and pay attention to, and have to share with their friends. Great, be remarkable. How the hell do you do that? Well, I’ve got some answers. I spent the past few weeks collecting and categorizing the buzziest launches I could find.
Customers will perceive a product with limited availability as more valuable. Flash sales, limited product runs, and exclusive memberships are all examples of scarce offers. People value scarcity because it makes them feel unique. Scarcity bestows higher status. People perceive scarce products to be more expensive. Scarce things seem to be higher quality.
A unique Value Proposition answers the most important question a customer has when they visit your site: What makes this better than the alternatives? A strong Value Proposition is the most important factor in deciding whether a visitor takes action. It is the promise you make to potential customers when they’re comparing options, and the answer to each “Why” question they ask. These three key factors make it extra persuasive.
“Show, don’t tell” is one of the most important rules of effective writing. Learn the art of using concrete details and you’ll learn how to put your readers into different emotional states. Make them hurt, make them hope, make them crazy with curiosity to find out more.
The global attention span is narrowing because of the sheer amount of information we have to process every day. This means that we have about three seconds to catch the attention of a prospect. Yes, you heard right. You have three seconds to make a good first impression with potential customers so that you can then get them to try out your product or solution.
Sujan Patel came on the podcast a couple of weeks back. He told me that I needed to 10x our content production at bCast… we’re talking 30-40 articles in a couple of months. I wasn’t ready for this… So over the past two weeks, I built a content machine. Here’s how… The very first thing you need to realize if you want to build a content machine is that you need to remove yourself from the process.