Lecturer Monika Skaržauskaitė

using research to guide digital strategy

Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)

Showing up in the top 3rd of the SERPs for a keyword phrase is critical for driving traffic to your website.

The long tail contains hundreds of millions of unique searches that might be conducted a few times in any given day, but, when taken together, they comprise the majority of the world's demand for information

through search engines.

Lesson for marketers

LONG TAIL KEYWORDS OFTEN CONVERT BETTER, BECAUSE THEY CATCH PEOPLE LATER IN THE BUYING/CONVERSION CYCLE.

keyword research

IT'S NOT ALWAYS ABOUT GETTING VISITORS TO YOUR SITE, BUT ABOUT GETTING THE RIGHT KIND OF VISITORS.

Why you need that?If you don’t know the ways people are seeking your content, it’s pretty hard to ensure that your content “speaks” to them using the words they search for.

The first stage in SEO keyword strategy development is to create an exhaustive list of potential keywords and keyword phrases. In this activity, the focus is on thinking broadly to ensure as many candidate keywords as possible are considered. The goal is to be overly inclusive so as not to miss any high potential keywords.

set of working hypotheses

Thinking like a customer

When generating keywords it is important to think like a customer, and in particular, to think like a new customer. When people begin their search for your goods or services, they are typically at the beginning of their education process

Example: hearing aids, not electroacoustic devices.

Remember: target audiences + personas

• What do they want?• What needs are not met?

Why we need these? Content strategy – provide content that us useful and relevant (example: eco cosmetics)Targeted keyword discovery – base keywords on what audience wants not on what you have on your site

Your personas

MRU

1. Prospective International Student for Bachelors’ Degree (Business Informatics)

2. Prospective International Student for Masters’ Degree (Electronic Business Management)

3. Prospective Student for Bachelors’ Degree- Lithuanians (Financial Economics)

4. Prospective Student for Masters’ Degree- Lithuanians (Communication and Creative Technologies)

Rinno hotel

1. Belarusian persona

??? visitors from other countries coming for business??? visitors from other countries coming for touristic reasons

Hotels in VilniusConsumer behavior in choosing four star hotels in Vilnius http://vddb.laba.lt/fedora/get/LT-eLABa-0001:E.02~2010~D_20100903_124239-24109/DS.005.0.01.ETD

In 2012, according to the Lithuanian State Department of Tourism, 400,000 Belarusian guests visited Lithuania. http://belarusdigest.com/story/vilnius-new-mecca-belarusian-shoppers-and-activists-13258

Overnights of non-residents by country in all paid accommodation in 2007. Germany 17,0%, Poland 15,4%, Belarus 11,7%, Russia10,2% http://www.tourism.lt/upload/VTD%20statistika%202007_2.pdf

Study in LithuaniaNumber of international students in Lithuania went up by third over four years http://www.15min.lt/en/article/culture-society/number-of-international-students-in-lithuania-went-up-by-third-over-four-years-528-286396#ixzz2QYap0iKT

What is stopping students from studying abroad? http://chronicle.com/article/Dearth-of-Information-Keeps/137707/

Best places to study abroad http://www.huffingtonpost.com/her-campus/6-best-places-to-study-ab_b_2823871.html

Factors Influencing the Students' Decision-Making to Study Abroad http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5578491&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D5578491

brainstormingmethod # 1

“Affliction vs. Aspiration”helps us get creative around potential topics for content.

1. Lay down your personas on sheets I distributed. Read it over and adopt this user’s mindset.

2. Make two columns with the headings: “Aspirations” and “Afflictions”3. Tape your user persona in the upper left hand corner.4. Under the “Aspiration” column, write down everything you feel your user persona is

aspiring to do in life. Remember people buy on emotion and backfill with logic. Defer any judgment on whether your product or service fits these desires. Just go for quantity.

5. Take a break6. Under the “Affliction” column, do the same thing. Focus on how the existing reality

is not working for your user persona and seek to tie it into emotional responses. “No time for the gym” or “long commute”.

7. Look over your two columns. Do common themes start to emerge? Are there any good fits where your product or service can help make the user persona’s life easier or better? Jot these down and stick it to the whiteboard.

8. From these two simple categories of Afflictions and Aspirations, we can work out our keyword phrase strategy. Tackling each one of these phrases, we can create a blog post, video, photos or a specific page on our website that deals with this and optimize it around that targeted keyword phrase

9. Build a simple spreadsheet with the content categories listed on the left and the split of Afflictions and Aspirations across the top. Dump your keywords into here and add rows as needed below the categories

Why it is important?

• it provides another chance to empathize with our user by reacquainting ourselves with their persona

• it forces us to think through and identify why they are going to a search page to get answers. Both of these make it easier for us to feed the content beast.

brainstormingmethod # 2

The following three categories are good jumping off points for brainstorming:Product – brainstorm keywords directly describing your product. Start with the official name and brand of the product. Then consider less formal names and the name of the category. Then think about synonyms. There are usually many different ways to describe a product category. Problem – list keywords that describe the problem that your product solves. While many people search directly for your product, a significant segment searches instead for solutions to problems that your product solves.Complements – consider keywords that are tangential to your product and describe complementary topics.

COMPETITOR KEYWORD RECONNAISSANCE

– Competitor On-Page Keywords– Competitor Keyword Rankings

Begin by identifying the leading competitor websites. Use Google to locate the top ranking sites in the industry. And use your industry knowledge to identify the top companies in the industry. Then navigate to these sites and begin your scouting.

Competitor On-Page Keywords

1. Review competitor websites and observe their use of keywords in the page title, meta-tags, navigation, page headings and text.

2. Take group of keywords, discard the ones that seem irrelevant and expand upon the ones that seem most promising.

Page title

Meta tags

Nav

igati

on

brand first impressions research

Customers form their opinion not on your website or print adHow you look on SERP?Allow to engage people online

• Poor product reviews, negative comments, lack of credible 3rd party sources all send social proof of what your brand is all about.

brand first impressions: step 1

Autocomplete on a search engine

• Does your site or brand appear in the top third of the first results page for these searches?

• If present, does your brand show up in the ratings and reviews for your category?

• If you brand is local, be sure to enter a geography qualifier into the query (Ex. “best hair salon in Pasadena”). This is particular powerful for seeing user reviews and ratings.

brand first impressions: step 2

Brand Image Search Exercise:

Enter “Your Brand Name” – what do the results say?Enter “Your Brand Name” Review – what does it say?Best “Your Category” – who shows up?

brand first impressions: step 3

Look at Paid Search Ads

• Do you see a lot of ads above the results and off to the side? This means the keyword is pretty valuable and likely to generate a click-thru. It will also likely be tough to rank on.

• What type of content and calls to action are they using?• Any ideas pop up? Create a separate tab called

“Opportunities” in your spreadsheet and list anything you see that sparks an opportunity.

What is an opportunity?

• These might be blogs you see for Your Category search that you could approach for possibly guest-blogging or coverage of your brand.

• Reviews or ratings on your brand that need to be addressed in the conversation.

• Ideas for content creation around forums or questions. Yahoo! Answers, Quora, and even Wikipedia is great for this.

• Major competitors not yet identified through traditional competitive audits.

CROSS-CHECK THIS WITH YOUR FIRST TAB ON YOUR KEYWORD PHRASES THAT YOU BRAINSTORMED OFF THE USER PERSONA. WHAT HOLDS TRUE? WHAT NEEDS TO BE ADDED?

Machine Generation

Go to Google Keyword Tool and enter Starting Keyword Set. Then – collect and curate keywords.

OTHER TOOLS

1. Google Insights for Search2. Google Trends Keyword Demand Prediction3. Microsoft Advertising Intelligence4. Wordtracker’s Free Basic Keyword Demand

Keyword research: google keyword tool

• goal is to try and understand the ways people will search for our product or service.

• Google’s Keyword Tool - allows us to research the rough volume of keyword phrases and how popular those searches are. We can enter various search terms and get ideas on what other terms users may be searching for.

1. Enter your keyword phrase 2. Look at the Keyword 3. Remember if it’s a generic term and the competition is high, it will

be tough to rank in the “organic” results. An example would be “ipad 2 cases”.

4. Sift through the results and look for ways to match High Competition keyword phrases with Low Competition. An example might be something like “reviews for best ipad 2 cases for business travelers”. Looking for the Long Tail.

5. Enter this keyword phrase into your spreadsheet under the appropriate category.

6. Pick another phrase and enter it into the tool.

Think content that educates and helps solve their Aspirations and Afflictions.

• Terms that are highly competitive with a high Cost-Per-Click (CPC) will most likely be tough to rank on. However, they are also very likely to convert traffic

how keywords perform over time?

Using Google Trends for SEO:• Gives a glimpse of how keywords perform over time –

often several years back • provides information around geography and related

terms• assessing keyword phrases over each other for getting

a quick sense of volume

Best ski resorts

Adding in a second phrase like “Ski Resort Vacations” as the red line we see:

Choosing advertising messagescar manufacturer

Creating brand associationscomputer hardware company

• When comparing laptops or notebook, it's useful to apply the Category filter, whereby the data will be narrowed down to just Computers & Electronics.

• Carefully examining the resulting top related searches and the rising searches can help the marketer to better understand competitors' offers, thereby creating a campaign to differentiate their client's brand.

At the same time when you identify phrases that differ dramatically in volume and are trending up and to the right over time you can zero in on topics that are worth creating content around because there is proof of a market demand.

Customer Interactions

Because they are less familiar with your products, customers often use different words and phrases than industry insiders.

CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVES CUSTOMER COMMENTS SEARCH BOX FORUMS

WHEN SHOULD I STOP COLLECTING KEYWORDS?

When you start coming across the same keywords again and again, and are no longer running into new keywords, it is a good indication that you have touched on most of the relevant keywords for your niche

COMPETITIVE SITE TRAFFIC AND SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT RESEARCH

What your peers are experiencing?Free tools to use:

– Alexa.com– Compete.com– Open site explorer– SEOmoz toolbar– Social media

Alexa.com

• service ranks the world’s most visited websites based on a variety factors. Helpful for getting a sense of inbound links to the site and where a site ranks across all websites online.

• This is good for a big picture view.

Mruni.eu's three-month global Alexa traffic rank is 55,422. The site has a bounce rate of roughly 21% (i.e., 21% of visits consist of only one pageview). Search engines refer approximately 5% of visits to this site. It is relatively popular among users in the cities of Kaunas (where it is ranked #70) and Panevezys (#85). Relative to the overall population of internet users, Mruni.eu's users tend to be under the age of 25, and they are disproportionately less affluent, childless women browsing from school and home who have postgraduate educations.

Compete.com

• Free for basic information• Gives you a sense of overall unique visitors to a

website broken down by month. • only an approximation• But helpful for setting traffic goals when you’re

starting out or relaunching a web property. • For small sites, there might not be enough

traffic to generate a report.

Open Site Explorer + SEOmoz toolbar

• inbound links are a critical part for ranking better. SEOmoz has put together a free tool that helps you explore a variety of SEO factors,

• Find out what type of sites are discussing and linking to your and competitors website.

Social Media

Knowing your target market, you can select the right social channels they most likely engage with. Facebook and YouTube is usually a given and increasingly so is Twitter. Emerging channels like Pinterest or foursquare can be worth looking into as well. Spend some time looking through your competitors’ Likes, Followers, Subscribers but also dig deeper and see if they are getting good engagement with their online community (Retweets, Comments, etc).

Why research should guide the strategy?

Our next section will deal with Strategy and by doing our Research first, we’re in a great position to make calculated guesses for acquiring people’s attention and hopefully converting it into revenue (the whole goal of marketing, same as it ever was regardless of the technology involved).

STRATEGY

The digital marketer’s job is to take their understanding of the foundations of the online world, mix in research, and find a bridge between the current business reality and the desired future revenue goals.

Note

• no amount of smart digital marketing can make up for a poor product or service experience. Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare are all just a click or swipe away for the customer and they will let the world know their thoughts at or even before the time of purchase.

Build Trust Online with Your Website

1. Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site2. Show that there's a real organization behind your site.3. Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and

services you provide.4. Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site.5. Make it easy to contact you.6. Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your

purpose).7. Make your site easy to use -- and useful.8. Update your site's content often (at least show it's been reviewed

recently).9. Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers).10. Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem.

http://credibility.stanford.edu/guidelines/index.html

How to evaluate social and digital technology - POST

• People. What are your customers ready for? • Objectives. What are your goals? Are you more interested in talking

with the groundswell for marketing or in generating sales by energizing your best customers? The clarity of your objectives will make or break your strategy.

• Strategy. How do you want your relationships with your customers to change? Do you want customers to help carry messages to others in your market? Become more engaged with your company?

• Technology. What applications should you build? After having decided on the first three, you can move on to pick appropriate technologies (blogs, wikis, social networks, etc.).

Strategy forming processes

1. Study our customer2. Work with management or company founders

to identify where the business needs to go and how to maintain or increase profitability.

3. The strategy flows out of these discussions and goals – clarity is a must here.

4. Finally, apply all these filters to the technology tools available and only pick ones that line up and can deliver results.

Using SMARTevaluating goals and objectives

• just a simple checklist• Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-

focused, and Timebound.

“marketing needs to increase overall sales for the company”

Specific: Think of POST framework

“We’ll increase sales and profitability by increasing site traffic to our most profitable product through a blend of social media, content creation, and search engine rankings.”

“marketing needs to increase overall sales for the company”

Measurable: By what percentage points?

Know what you’ll be measuring and how you’ll do it before you commit. You might need to bump up website traffic by 300% over the year to drive 5% in sales.

“marketing needs to increase overall sales for the company”

Achievable: Is this goal realistic given our brand’s trajectory, resources, and time?

If the company has experienced year over year sales growth of 5% and suddenly the goal is 20% with no other change in the product mix or budget, it is likely that marketing is getting setup for a spectacular failure

“marketing needs to increase overall sales for the company”

Results-focused: How will we know we’re making progress?

Closely following conversions and sales on a weekly basis can be very helpful to tweak the marketing efforts versus waiting til the very end. Small corrections done on a regular basis are much easier than giant shifts.

“marketing needs to increase overall sales for the company”

Timebound: how much time you have to achieve the objective?

what factors will drive performance and thus deliver results?

key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric that helps you understand how you are doing against your objectives

Could be: conversion rate, visitor loyalty, search

how website traffic can originate?

Where to start?

1. Owned. Ensure you have a great digital experience on Owned.

2. Earned Media requires a solid dedication to listening to the conversation. Whether it’s earning shares on social media, in blog comments on a press site, or in user’s reviews on ecommerce sites, the digital marketer has to be ready to listen and then participate in the conversation.

3. Paid Media can be a dependable source for bumping traffic. These campaigns to perform requires rigorous monitoring, testing, and tweaking with a solid understanding of online analytics.

Executing Online Campaigns

Owned Media

• We want traffic to our digital property• We can measure traffic

Developing a great experience on your own digital property means you can control and ultimately reap the rewards of that engagement.

Suggested workflow

1. Starting with our User Persona (creating content that our target market will want to engage with)

2. build a user-friendly sitemap and design that allows users to efficiently move through our website

3. Review your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). What are we striving to achieve for engagement with this audience?

4. Constantly adding fresh content5. Develop weekly or daily cadence – for keeping

customers loyal and coming back (ex – email marketing)

Executing Online Campaigns

Earned Media

• User Generated Content (UGC) • Social media shares of your content

Earned is powerful influencer online. Yet, brands have very little control over the message. The best approach is to be humble, transparent, and do your best to put your brand in service to others.

Suggested workflow

1. Creating valuable content2. PR (bloggers, news media, 3. Use technology to listen to the online

conversation (Google alerts)4. When someone retweets, shares, mentions,

or otherwise gives you free exposure be sure to express some gratitude.

AdWords management process

1. Continuous keyword research to build and grow PPC keyword lists

2. Strategic keyword grouping and organization to build effective ad groups

3. Constant monitoring and analysis of your campaign's progress

4. Filtering negative keywords from your list so you won’t waste money bidding on irrelevant terms

5. Delegating your ad budget through careful AdWords bidding6. Writing ad text that will draw qualified visitors to click on

your ads