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The way we decide what to buy can be boiled down to two questions:

Does it make sense? (features and price)

Does it feel right? (brand affinity)

A lot of businesses tend to treat these separately. They have a product team that designs the product, and they have a separate team that tries to sell it.

Conventionally, businesses tend to use the first question as the point of departure, letting features and price dictate the end result. The second question is left to the sales and marketing teams to figure out – usually by trying to communicate said features and price.

The result is communication that talks about product features that, especially in a commoditised market, are probably the same as their competitors. Leaving consumers feeling fairly neutral about the brand.

What if ‘feeling’ was given higher priority? What if the point of departure of product design was value-based first?

What if what the brand believes in is given more priority than what the market demands?

That’s the story of Patagonia.

Patagonia’s journey began as ‘Chouinard Equipment Ltd.’, a small company that sold climbing gear to the founder’s social circle and other climbing enthusiasts in the US.

At one point, the founder – Yvon Chouinard – realised that the metal climbing pitons they produced were actually damaging the very rock faces they were climbing, which led to the very first values-over-market decision they ever made.

They stopped selling their best selling product, and swapped to a cleaner alternative that their users weren’t familiar with. All because Chouinard felt that preserving the rock faces for future generations was more important than his company’s sales.

But when environmentally conscious climbers understood the reason for the change, they swapped to the new alternative almost immediately. 

And, as a result, began to trust that the decisions that Chouinard and his company were taking were good for the environment. Sales of the new product quickly eclipsed the pitons.

This mindset continued through the founding of Patagonia. Rather than just reacting to commercial market demands, the brand has thrived for decades by letting their values lead the way, making sure to let their audience know what they care about, and creating products that align with those shared values.

They actively encourage repair over replacement. They streamlined production and distribution processes to cut down on resource waste. They focused product design on durability, providing customers with information on how to properly care for their gear. They pioneered the production and use of organic cotton. They developed long-term relationships with their suppliers to make sure overall standards are upheld, and helped those suppliers reach those standards when they weren’t.

And, essentially, they communicated all this through one of the earliest forms of what we call content marketing today – their mail order catalogue.

Printed mail order catalogues at the time were just that – product catalogues. Page after page of product after product. 

Patagonia did something a little different.

They used their catalogue to showcase their values first. 

They used beautiful photography of their favourite climbing spots. They shared articles about clean climbing. They petitioned their audience to contribute to environmental causes. They share stories from fellow climbers and adventurers. 

Then, they talked about their products. 

And even when they did talk about their products, they talked about the benefits that their core audience would actually care about.

By appealing to their audience’s values, they built a loyal following that believes that every decision Patagonia takes is in line with what they think is right for the world. Patagonia’s track record of having end-users either design or heavily influence their products also adds to that trust.

While features and price are still a key component of the decision-making process, the value match is a foregone conclusion so long as Patagonia sticks to this philosophy. The moment they sell out the brand for short term profit, that core audience will disappear, along with Patagonia’s future.

Naturally, catalogues are no longer the primary way with which Patagonia communicates with their audience. They use email, social media, advertising, ecommerce, etc., just like any other modern business. Yet, their philosophy of leading their operation, product design, and communication with what they care about hasn’t changed.

I recommend anyone interested in learning more about Patagonia’s journey to read ‘Let My People Go Surfing’ – a memoir and brand guidebook written by their founder.

As you consider your own brand’s path forward, ask yourself: does every aspect of our communication and service/product offering reflect our core values, as Patagonia’s does?

Does a quick scroll through your social media or website tell the story of your brand beyond the technical features of what you sell?

Are your core values properly defined and followed to begin with?

It’s not just about standing out; it’s about standing for something.

The post Patagonia & The Art of the Mail Order Catalogue appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

What is SEO and why is it important in Malta?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is about increasing the quality and quantity of user traffic a website receives from organic search results. Basically, SEO is every effort you make towards your website ranking at the top of Google Search results for relevant search terms. For most businesses in Malta SEO is normally something they’ve heard of, but haven’t looked into properly, or brushed it off as an unnecessary marketing expense that they can do without. This results in a huge amount of missed opportunities. Here’s why.

Think about the way you research and purchase a product. We’re willing to bet that most of the time, your journey starts with a Google search. You’re either researching the product type, a specific brand or perhaps you already know what you want. You might just be looking for a website that delivers to your country. 

With that in mind, think about just how many purchasing journeys in your industry are started each day. How many of those is your business missing out on because your website isn’t optimised for SEO, and not appearing at the top of search results?

Another reason that for businesses in Malta SEO is a must is because of international competition. More and more businesses are looking overseas for customers thanks to the boom in eCommerce and the shift to remote work. This means that many businesses are less limited by geographic locations and can offer their services more broadly. This is where SEO efforts & Google Search results become essential. If you can rank well against all your competitors, including international ones, you’re guaranteeing that a large number of potential customers will find you organically.

SEO Services by Switch

At Switch, we understand that your website’s performance can make or break your company’s goals in a number of ways. While we can help you build a beautiful website, it would essentially be worthless without a steady stream of high-quality traffic. That’s where our SEO services come in.

Optimising your website to attract high-intent users from search is one of the first things we suggest. A large percentage of business leaders underestimate the power of SEO in Malta. And in doing so, miss one of the most effective ways of generating leads.

We get this done through a specific process that’s tailored to each of our clients. In the following paragraphs, we’ll take you through what the steps we take usually are. We’ll talk about why each step is so important, and what sets us apart from others in the field. You can also learn more about the importance of SEO in a little more detail if that’s what you’re looking for. Especially about how it can affect your brand’s trust & authority.

If you’re ready to talk about how to introduce SEO into your business, click here and let’s get the ball rolling. Otherwise, keep reading!

How Switch handles SEO in Malta

Context

Understanding the Industry

Before even looking at your website, we study the context of your business and its place within your industry. This is where we will need the majority of your input. At the end of the day, you know your industry and business better than anyone. During the process of onboarding a new client, we also set our research team loose. Their task is to gather every shred of information they can from all the sources available.

Audience Identification

One cannot really understand an industry without also analysing the market that it serves in-depth. Audiences can range from an entire country’s worth of purchasers to a handful of individuals responsible for purchases within organisations. Each audience that we identify always requires a unique approach, as they always differ in their behaviour and interests. Accurately understanding what attracts the right audience is already half the SEO content battle won.

Competitor Analysis

As part of our research, we deep-dive into all marketing being done by all local & international competitors in your industry. This usually results in an understanding of audiences that are currently already being targeted. Along with those that are currently left out and might be worth communicating to. When appropriate, we also analyse overseas players in the industry for further industry insights.

Website Technical Audit

Consistently high-ranking websites are created and optimised in a very particular way. This allows Search Engines like Google to easily scan them to understand their structure and content. The result of this scan judges whether they’re high-quality enough to rank well on search result pages. If your website was not built with SEO in mind, it may be lacking in certain key technical SEO areas, stifling performance.

We’ll perform an in-depth analysis of your website, then highlight and prioritise changes that would greatly improve SEO performance. Suggested adjustments can be related to any of the following:

• Indexing errors
• Low-quality content
• Incorrect Robots.txt usage
• Mobile page issues
• Structured data errors
• Inaccurate metadata
• No internal link optimisation
• Lack of https security
• Slow page speed
• Duplicate content
• Broken links

Content Strategy & Production

Keyword Research

With a strong foundation of research and knowledge of the industry, we can now begin our keyword research. Using cutting-edge industry tools, we determine which attainable keywords are most relevant to your business. These will also depend on what resources we have at our disposal. This is where our creativity and industry knowledge shines.

Attempting to rank for the most obvious industry keywords is a tempting idea, however, it’s usually an extremely expensive endeavour. Many-a-time there are other keyword opportunities hiding beneath the surface. These would allow us to capture specific parts of the market with significantly less effort and required resources. Capturing ancillary keywords gives a website just starting to optimise for SEO the chance to begin collecting useful traffic, while also building its authority through great content.

Effective, Long-lasting Content

Putting all the research and technical jargon aside, you still need excellent content to be able to attract your target audience. At Switch, we are a multidisciplinary team of writers, designers, illustrators, photographers, video specialists, and audio dabblers. We’re happy to push ideas around and see how they grow and flourish as each mind adds something to the story. 

With a broad and eclectic set of sources of inspiration and an unusual way of connecting the dots, we’re known for creating work that’s beautifully innovative.

Authority & Link Building

Ranking well in competitive keyword landscapes also depends on the number of times other websites have linked to yours. We call these backlinks. The more backlinks you have, the more authority you have in Google’s mind. And the more highly you’ll rank for a given keyword. Google also takes into account other factors, such as your social media presence and online conversations about your brand.

Building quality backlinks and authority is extremely important, but it’s also a complicated process. One of the most challenging but effective ways of building backlinks is to create content that other websites want to link to. The more authority the website that has linked to you has, the more valuable the link.

Through our content strategy and keyword research, we’ll identify the absolute best opportunities available to build these links. With time and effort, ranking for more and more competitive and valuable keywords will become easier.

Optimisation & Reporting

Just like any other marketing campaign, reporting and analysis of results is an essential part of the process. Here’s how:

• Keeping constant track of our progress on each individual keyword we’re attempting to rank for.
• Monitoring the performance of each piece of content we produce, along with what the competition is actively doing.
• Using a combination of our years of experience and the industry tools available to us.

Through an extensive set-up process, we’ll also make sure to be constantly analysing the behaviour of the traffic we’re drawing. This way, we make sure we’re pulling in the intended audience. At the end of the day, getting huge amounts of traffic is useless if nobody is converting into paying clients. Regardless of the results, we will always aim to boost the conversion rate of all the traffic we send to your website through a live content strategy and constant keyword research.

What are the benefits of SEO?

Matching user intent to useful content.

The whole point of a search engine is simple. It takes what people are searching for, scours the internet for it, then provides the closest matches. That may be the mother of all oversimplifications, but that’s the basic gist. This happens really quickly, and it happens literally billions of times per day.

If you want a little more detail on how search engines (mostly Google) have gotten this done over the years, take a look at this video by Google themselves.

With all that context in mind, SEO is basically the act of making it as likely as possible for a search engine to pick your website when someone searches a term that’s relevant to your business.

Quality Traffic

Digital marketing efforts are often measured in clicks. Your marketing team might give you a report on a particular campaign and hail it a success because it generated so many of them. 

But this begs the question – how many of those clicks were actually worth anything?

The click is only the midway point of the journey towards a conversion. If your campaigns generate 1,000s of clicks, but 95% of those clicking users never got past your homepage, how successful are they?

This is the most obvious reason for investing in SEO, and, in turn, investing in traffic from organic search results. Think about your own behaviour. If you’ve Googled something and clicked on a result you found interesting, you’re going to give a decent look at that website. Especially if the site has what you’re looking for.

Trust & Awareness

If a website ranks at the top of Google search results for a relevant query, that result alone provides it with some level of authority and credibility. You’re much more likely to trust a website that occupies the spot usually kept by Wikipedia. Then, if that website ranked #1, the user clicked, then had a positive experience, a relationship has been formed. Even if it’s the first time that particular user is interacting with that brand.

If SEO is properly implemented on a website, it will achieve high rankings on a number of relevant industry keywords. Then, it can enjoy a flow of organic traffic and leads without having spent a single cent on paid digital advertising.

As we’re explaining above, it’s obviously not something that can be achieved at the drop of a hat. It requires technical knowledge, a sound strategy, the means to produce great content, and a little bit of grit.

Does your business need SEO services?

If you have (or need) a website which will generate leads/purchases with the right traffic sent to it, then you definitely need SEO services. If you had to take potential leads and spread them out on a scale from cold to hot, the majority of leads that are generated through SEO are definitely on the hot end due to their intent. And what business doesn’t need more hot leads?

For businesses that want to be ahead of the curve in Malta SEO is a no-brainer. That’s because of a combination of competition from overseas markets, along with the apathetic approach to SEO that many local businesses suffer from. If you’re ready to take the next step and are looking for a guide, click here.

Free SEO Audit

Still unsure whether your website needs an SEO strategy? Why not start with finding out where your website stands from a technical SEO point of view? Just fill in the form below to get a free, no-strings-attached audit of your site, sent straight to your email.

SEO Trends in 2022

If you want to read about the very latest trends dominating SEO in 2022, and how they will affect your SEO efforts in Malta, click below.

Further Reading

If you’d like to learn more about SEO, here’s a list of articles we’ve put together at Switch on the subject. These are based on our decades of experience, and include tried and tested tips & suggestions. We hope you find them useful.

Planning 2022: SEO

Local SEO in Malta: 3 Essential Tips to Get Started

Why Writing for SEO in 2021 is Bad SEO Advice

Is SEO worth it for you? Here’s how to find out.

SEO Trends 2022: More Human

The post SEO Malta: A Complete Guide appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

In our experience building leads for B2B clients, we’ve found that only through a content-focused, first party data strategy can B2B businesses truly provide themselves with a passive source of leads that has a decent conversion rate. 

This strategy brings the brand to the forefront of thought leadership in the industry, and places it squarely in the minds of decision makers. Even if said decision makers are not in the market at that very moment, remaining top-of-mind through consistent, high-quality communication is what makes the difference.

It also serves to enhance the reputation of the business within the industry at large, increasing the chances of information spreading through word of mouth. Even the sales process is made easier, thanks to basic introductions being less necessary when leads are generated through this method.

First party vs Third party Data

The difference between first and third party data is simple. The former is data that you build yourself through a variety of methods, while the latter is data provided by another source – usually at a price. Vendors of said third party data will usually provide segmentation options in order to narrow down the provided audience to better suit requirements, but there will always be a significant proportion of the audience that is mismatched with your goals.

What are the benefits of First-party data in a B2B context?

Accuracy & Relevance

The main difference from a quality and relevance perspective between first and third party data is that, as long as a thoughtful first party data strategy has been used, one has a much more accurate idea of the kind of individuals that make up their database than the other. If one understands exactly how and why an individual has ended up in their database, it makes it significantly easier to create relevant and personalised content that will appeal to them specifically.

Control over data & segmentation

With most content-driven first party data strategies, individuals are added to the database from multiple sources – each journey slightly different, but normally with plenty in common. With this in mind, it is significantly easier to segment audiences and organise them in a way that allows for more even effective, personalised communication. 

One can even take things a step further, and segment audiences based on their reactions to communication, and allow them to play an active part in what content they’ll be receiving. Audiences that receive the more relevant communication tend to trust its source more readily.

Creates a truly personalised experience

All of the above leads to this – creating a B2B customer journey that does not feel like a marketing campaign, but rather a human exchange that leads to mutual benefit. Through significantly personalised communication, converting leads into business becomes easier. While overall communication is done in relative volume, because of its accuracy and relevance, branching into a personal conversation is seamless.

How do I build First-party data?

Human-focused Communication

In the B2B marketing industry, we often forget that we are still communicating to humans, despite the term ‘Business-to-Business’. While overall motivations of those who are receiving our communication are business-focused, not personal, what attracts them remains the same. Communication that they find relevant, that validates their problems and provides solutions without overtly pushy messaging, will be most effective. The key lies within a fair exchange of value. 

True Value Exchange

Building leads is essentially an exercise of asking for data directly from your audience. Very often however, many B2B marketers think that the exchange goes something like this: 

‘In exchange for your email address/attention, I will try to sell you my service.’

You’ll likely notice that this is extremely one-sided. It benefits the marketer, but there is no obvious benefit on the receiving end. Yet, unfortunately this is how a lot of business development is attempted. 

Other than the obvious, one of the problems with this is that by jumping straight into a sales pitch, it assumes that your B2B services are required in the very near future. If the sales pitch fails, communication often ceases. Oftentimes, the decision to use B2B services takes weeks, months or even years – so it is essential that communication continues into the long-term.

To that end, it should look more like this:

‘In exchange for your email address/attention, here’s something that you’ll find relevant or interesting.’

This exchange is a lot more balanced, and it is only the beginning of the relationship. It should continue as follows:

If you liked what we sent you, I’ll continue providing similar valuable information that will establish my team as experts in our field, and if you need our services, we’re right here.’

This way, those on the receiving end continue to receive high-quality, relevant information, and in exchange, the B2B business remains at the top of their audience’s mind. Once the B2B business’s services are needed, most of the trust-building has already been done.

Creating a B2B first party data strategy

Building first party data should form part of an overall strategy that takes into account:

• Your industry and market’s unique characteristics
• Your brand, your USPs, and your values
• Your target audience and their own values
• The right communication channels to reach your target audience

All of the above will culminate in a strategic, and creative way of building and distributing content that brings all of the above together to provide value, and allow for a fruitful B2B exchange to take place.

For more on B2B marketing strategy and practical tools to help you communicate more effectively to your audience, take a look at our latest B2B marketing content, or get in touch for a no-strings-attached consult.

The post First-Party Data for B2B, and its Importance appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Let’s face it, most B2B SMBs around the world get by without a huge amount of marketing. 

At least, for a while. 

CEOs and Business Development staff of such companies are normally responsible for the bulk of new leads, which are generated through specific sales tactics, or, more often, networking and word-of-mouth.

These methods of lead generation are 100% legitimate and have stood the test of time, but precisely because of this, many B2B companies don’t tend to look at other potential sources of leads – one of those being SEO.

What is SEO for B2B?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of adjusting and building your website to give it the best chance of appearing at the top of search engine results pages for target search terms.

So, for example, if someone is searching for agricultural supplies in their city, and you are a supplier of agricultural supplies, you want to be one of the first few results in google when someone types “agricultural supplies city name”.

From a technical point of view, this process is exactly the same for B2B companies as it is for B2C, but there are key differences from a strategic point of view.

B2B SEO vs B2C SEO: Audience Size

Naturally, the number of individuals searching for B2B services is much smaller than any equivalent B2C service. For example, according to Ahrefs, the search term ‘home security’ is searched over 50,000 times per month, while ‘office security’ is only searched 1,600 times per month. And while there is likely much less business competition on the B2B front, the audience size is still extremely small.

Take your own B2B business as an example.

Realistically, how many individuals within your ideal target audience really exist? And how many of these could potentially be looking for your services at any given moment? That number is probably relatively small in comparison to what most B2C brands need to consider. And while this narrows down the range of content ideas that you can create, it does help us focus on what’s important.

All of this means that the content that B2B companies should aim to create for SEO needs to be very specific, both in terms of its content, and in terms of the audience it’s attempting to address.

The first step in this entire process is to brainstorm and identify the audiences that are most likely to be actively searching for the services your B2B company provides. For example, a marketing agency would look at business owners, chief marketing officers, and business development managers as their primary audience.

Keyword Research

After we’ve identified our audience, we need to take a few steps in their shoes. In order to place ourselves in the right position, at the right time, we need to try and understand our audience’s search behaviour. 

This is where a full keyword research exercise would take place.

This process involves brainstorming of possible search terms that reflect an intent to engage in the services we provide. 

In other words, our  example marketing agency would probably pinpoint ‘marketing agency services’ or ‘social media marketing services’ as two of their primary keywords. 

With these two keywords in mind, we can use specialised keyword research software to identify the amount of individuals searching for those terms in specific locations, and we can also identify other keywords that are similar or related to those primary keywords.

The goal is to end up with a healthy set of primary keywords that we can base our website content on.

Technical Setup

Ideally, before you move on to actually creating or modifying the visible content on your website, it’s a good idea to make sure that your site is SEO-friendly on a technical level. This means running a diagnostic test on your website in order to find out if there are any flaws or errors that might prevent it from ranking on search engines in the future.

These errors can be any of the following:

• ​​Indexing errors
• Low-quality content
• Incorrect Robots.txt usage
• Mobile page issues
• Structured data errors
• Inaccurate metadata
• No internal link optimisation
• Lack of https security
• Slow page speed
• Duplicate content
• Broken links

For a quick understanding of where your website lies on this front, you can run a test that’s been designed and provided directly by Google. Simply enter your website’s URL and run the test here. The results should give you an indication of what problems your website might be facing from an overall performance point of view – all of which may be preventing the site from ranking on search results.

If the results of that test aren’t painting a pretty picture, then we’d definitely recommend getting in touch with your web developer to try and mitigate some of those issues. An even better solution would be to engage a technical SEO expert to help guide your web developer to make overall adjustments to the site that would help any future SEO efforts reach their full potential.

On-Page Optimisation

On-page optimisation is a process through which the main pages of a company website are analysed and adjusted in order to have a better chance to rank on search engine results. By ‘main pages’ we’re talking about the home page, services page, about us page, contact us page, etc. 

Very often, while the content itself conveys the intent of the website owner well, there could be various issues that may be preventing these pages from appearing higher on search engine results. 

For example, it is advisable to take one of the primary keywords that we identified during the keyword research phase of the process and use it as the foundation of a particular page. For example, if we’re aiming to rank for the search term ‘marketing agency’, we need to make sure that our homepage uses this search term frequently and in the right places.

This includes, but is not limited to:

• Proper heading and title tag structure
• Image alt text
• Primary keyword frequency
• URL optimisation
• Meta description optimisation
• Synonym-rich content

This applies to all major pages, and this process will definitely help elevate the position of any website on search rankings, if done well.

Content Marketing: Create Value

Once all of the above steps are completed, it’s time to put together a long-term B2B content marketing strategy. Still using the results from the keyword research exercise done earlier, we can now create new content on the website that will bring value to our target audiences. 

The content can take multiple forms, including blogs and articles, videos, interviews, podcasts, and more. What you produce depends heavily on the type of audiences you’re trying to reach, and the financial commitment you can make towards these efforts. 

That said, it is always essential to keep your target audience in mind – it’s easy to create content that your own peers and colleagues will find interesting, but that’s not necessarily what your target audience is looking for. In most cases, those looking for your services are having trouble with it on their own, so creating content that easily and simply breaks down real-world issues and brings value to these individuals is inevitably going to do a lot better.

Ensure that the content you’re creating is actively targeting any of those keywords you’ve identified. It’s also a great idea to tackle the same subject from a multitude of different angles. If you’re offering I.T. services for example, don’t just talk about the specifics of those services – talk about all the different ways they can bring practical benefits to a business owner – always in as much context as possible, without getting bogged down with technical detail.

Not to mention – all this content you’re creating can also be the source of a social media strategy that could not only bring traffic to your website, but also build your business’s reputation in the right circles as a thought leader.

In short, have a plan based on solid research and execute it with as much value as possible.

BONUS: Digital PR

Another way your business could receive an SEO boost is through digital PR. The process is simple, but can bring immense value.

Let’s say that you provide outsourced HR services to SMEs. Using the data that you have available to you, or data that you proactively collect, you can put together industry insights that business leaders would find immensely interesting.

By putting together those insights into an easy-to-access, well-designed piece of content, and getting that content into the press cycle, you can generate a lot of traffic and interest to your website in a short period of time.

Often enough, if that piece of content is of value, then other publications may link to that content on your website, thereby strengthening its authority and helping it rank for keywords surrounding that topic. 

I’ve obviously made this process sound a bit simpler than it often turns out to be, however that’s the gist of it. If done well, it can bring immense value – not only for SEO purposes, but for overall brand reputation within your industry as well.

Wrapping up

In short, SEO for B2B requires an initial investment that may not pay off in the very short term, but it has the potential to bring immense value if taken seriously. At Switch, we’ve replicated the above process for many B2B SMEs to great effect – often doubling or tripling business leads and website traffic within the first year.

If you’re intrigued but not convinced, let’s have a chat about what SEO can bring to your B2B SME – no strings attached.

The post How to Get Started with B2B SEO: SMB Edition appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Click below for a free PDF version of our overall 2022 marketing trends report.

Intro to SEO Trends 2022

The practice of SEO has been the equivalent of a cat-and-mouse game for years now. SEO experts are basically just trying to keep up with Google’s latest updates, and always trying to figure out how to stay ahead of the algorithm game. 

That was true for 2021, and will continue to be true into 2022. 

But the direction Google has been steering its ship towards for many years now is clear – make search more helpful to humans through AI. Here’s a list of SEO trends that you’ll definitely need to be aware of if you want your business to make the most out of SEO in 2022.

Not an SEO practitioner? Read this first

We’ll be getting into a few technical details throughout the article, so here’s a very short Cliffs Notes version of what you can expect in the rest of this article. If you want to get straight into the nitty-gritty, skip this part.

1. Familiarise yourself with Google I/O – it’s a yearly event where Google announces changes to the way search works. This year’s edition reinforces what we already know – content that follows EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) will continue to win.
2. Write content that answers questions, so it has a good chance of appearing on Featured Snippets in search result pages. Quick, snappy, clear answers to common questions.
3. Look up what Google Shopping is if you sell things online. Thank us later.
4.  Get in touch with your Web Developers and ask them how your website’s Core Web Vitals are doing and make sure your website works well on mobile.
5. Create lots and lots of good video content that your audience will find useful, and make sure you clip-mark it.
6. Wean yourself off of third-party cookies for advertising purposes. Start finding ways to build your own first-party data using SEO.

Trend 1: Google is working on understanding context across data formats

The way someone asks a question and the way they type a query into the Google Search bar have always been a little different. Ever since the introduction of voice assistants though, Google has understood that their definition of a search term needed to broaden. 

Over the past few years, they’ve developed their AI to understand longer and more complex searches that come from voice users. 

They’re now taking that to the next level with something called the Multitask United Model, which they showed off during Google I/O 2021. In more understandable terms, MUM is an AI model that focuses on natural language analysis – it basically tries to understand the meaning and intent of human language beyond face value, and provides contextually accurate results based on that analysis.

It’s also capable of generating responses while drawing information from multiple sources and formats of information, even across different languages. What we’re trying to say here is that Google is attempting to consolidate all the data it already has, and make complex search terms that seem more conversational in nature possible to search.

Imagine asking Google whether your hiking boots are good enough for taking on Mount Fuji by snapping a photo of them and just asking. Google would then take the data from the photo, and give you a definitive yes or no answer, along with information about the best hiking gear for Mount Fuji. That’s the level of helpfulness Google is trying to reach using MUM.

So what does MUM mean for SEO practitioners? 

Will it be a game changer? Not necessarily. The exact way MUM will be drawing information from the internet is yet to be determined, but if it’s anything similar to previous AI models, there will be a continued emphasis on EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). 

So keep creating content that other humans will find genuinely helpful. Use visuals, videos, long-form content if you want to rank well, and make sure your website is technically up to Google’s standards – more on that later.

All this was announced at Google I/O 2021 – a yearly event where the company shows off its latest developments across their products – including Search. Taking a look at the developments that Google announces is essential for any SEO practitioner to stay updated with what’s coming. And it is genuinely insightful.

We’ll be discussing more of what was announced at Google I/O 2021 later in this article.

Here’s a compressed version of the event if you’re interested:

Trend 2: Featured Snippets & Passages

As part of Google’s shift towards answer-based search results, featured snippets and excerpts are being rolled out globally. In Google’s ideal world, every search term has a definitive answer that it can provide with confidence – that’s what the featured snippet tries to accomplish.

As an SEO practitioner, you might find it difficult to rank your page for a highly competitive, broad keyword, but through well-written, answer-based content, an excerpt of your page could be used to answer a long-tail search term – essentially leapfrogging higher ranking and more authoritative pages. 

So make sure that you’re using your titles and headings in a way that allows Google to easily understand the content of your page, and easily lift passages to answer commonly asked questions. 

In the above screenshot, the website that provided information in a clear, simple, step-by-step format that directly answered the question posed by the search term was placed in the featured snippet. The website itself didn’t even rank in the first page of results for the search term!

As a bonus, featured snippets are also the answers that Google Assistant provides users who are using Voice Search.

Google has said that 7% of all search terms will include a featured snippet once it rolls out globally, so this is definitely something to keep in mind when creating your content. 

Trend 3: Google Shopping: Real-time Product Data

The evolution of online shopping was given the equivalent of a can of Popeye’s spinach during the pandemic, and Google has taken note, and adapted. Thanks to their existing infrastructure, Google is capable of drawing data from across the web to provide extremely accurate recommendations based on search terms.

Using partnerships with global eCommerce providers such as Shopify, along with a huge amount of data straight from retailers, Google Shopping offers product results based on a number of different factors such as availability, reviews, loyalty schemes, and prices. They also removed the fees and commissions that previously existed to use their platform to make it more accessible to smaller businesses.

They call the underlying AI model Google Shopping Graph.

Google is in a unique position in terms of eCommerce. If its shopping platform truly takes off, it could even pose a threat to some of the online retail giants that don’t want to play ball with them. If the item you’re searching for on Google shows up on the search results page with the best available deal from across the internet, why would you bother going to Amazon?

If it’s not present already, make sure you’re looking into the Google Shopping platform for your eCommerce site, otherwise you could be seriously missing out in 2022. 

Trend 4: Core Web Vitals & UX Optimisation

As the pool of data and websites has become richer over time, Google Search has become pickier. For example, if your website has excellent content, but loads very slowly on mobile, you’re likely to get shunned by the search engine. 

In order to judge your website from a technical point of view, Google is adding something they call ‘Page Experience’ to the list of factors that can have an impact on whether or not your website ranks well on search result pages.

Google defines ‘Page Experience’ as: 

“a set of signals that measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page beyond its pure information value.”

What are these signals you ask? Well, there are 4.

Core Web Vitals

The most important is Core Web Vitals, which measures 3 main metrics on your website. These are:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This measures loading performance. Google recommends aiming for an LCP under 2.5 seconds after a page starts to load.
• First Input Delay (FID): Measures interactivity. Google recommends an FID of less than 100 milliseconds.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability. Google recommends a CLS score of less than 0.1.

The above may or may not sound like technical jargon to you, but in plain English, Google is measuring:

• How fast your website loads
• How quickly it responds to input by the user
• How stable your website’s visuals are (in other words, it measures whether elements on screen are moving around way more than they should)

If you’re not entirely sure how your website is performing on these fronts, you can follow Google’s own instructions (warning, more technical jargon incoming) or ask your web developer to look into it. The scores you’ll want for each of these metrics are as follows:

If you want a quick idea of your website’s technical health from Google’s perspective, you can also run a quick PageSpeed Insights report. 

Mobile Friendly

This isn’t exactly 2022-worthy news, but it bears repeating. Your website needs to work well on mobile, otherwise it’s useless to a huge percentage of your potential traffic. Google knows this, and will penalise your website severely in its search rankings if you ignore it.

Not sure whether your website is really mobile friendly or not? Fear not, Google has another test you can run that you can show to your web developer.

HTTPS

The third factor that makes up Google’s Page Experience rating is security. You need to make sure your website has a security certificate. In plain English, just make sure your website has that little security lock next to the URL on Chrome.

This one.

If that little lock isn’t there, you need to give an earful to your web developer, cos this is pretty basic.

Intrusive Interstitials

The last element that affects your website’s Page Experience is ‘No Intrusive Interstitials’. Google loves its jargon doesn’t it?

Don’t you hate it when you load a website that seems to have the exact information you need, but as soon as you enter the site, a bunch of pop-ups and banners appear trying to get you to sign up to their newsletter? 

Well, it turns out that Google doesn’t like that either. So make sure your content isn’t getting hidden behind a bunch of annoying crap as soon as the website loads. This applies for desktop, but especially for mobile, where the lack of screen real estate makes these issues more obvious.

That said, your page won’t be penalised for pop-ups that are legally required, such as cookie usage notices or age verification notices.

Don’t do this.

Trend 5: Suggested Clips & Key Moments

You have most likely noticed recently that video results are turning up more and more often at the top of search results over the past few months. That’s because Google understands that sometimes, the answer people are looking for is best explained visually, using a relevant video.

For example, let’s say I’m an aspiring musician, and I want to quickly get an example of how to pluck a cello. More than likely, I’d take that exact term: ‘how to pluck a cello’ and run it through Google search. Just a few months ago, I would have been given a set of search results, and maybe some video options as well.

Now, though, Google takes it a step further through ‘Clip Suggestions’. Not only does a video appear at the top of my search result page, but a particular clip is selected, showing me exactly what I’m looking for. See for yourself:

If I click on that option, I’m taken to the video itself (not YouTube, just the video), and the suggested clip begins playing.

In the past, this YouTube channel would have likely never really been close to ranking this high up on a search result page. But Google is flexing its video muscles by including more search functionality into its YouTube infrastructure. By analysing the video visuals and audio, Google is able to understand what exactly is happening in the video, and whether it would be valuable to someone who is searching.

A while ago, a feature was added to YouTube videos called ‘Key Moments’, where video creators could essentially bookmark, or segment, their videos. This way, just by mousing over the video, you could get a quick idea of what’s in the video itself.

Extremely useful for those who like to watch YouTube videos, right? Not only. Google is using this extra data gathered from the video creators to provide even more detailed, and specific information on Google Search results.

The screenshot above is from a video review of the latest Apple laptop. Most likely, this video is the absolute best way of getting a quick but in-depth understanding of this product. So if I search for ‘m1 max macbook pro review’ on Google, this is what shows up:

Not only does the video itself show up first, but Google also provides me with a breakdown of exactly what’s in the video, using the Key Moments feature mentioned earlier.

So what’s the lesson for SEO practitioners? Well, thus far, video has mostly been a ‘nice-to-have’ in the SEO world. Now though, with Google giving more value to video results, video is going to be a ‘must-have’ sooner rather than later. Not only should you have videos that accompany your text content, but ideally you’re also creating high-quality, standalone videos that thoroughly answer the questions your audience is asking.

Trend 6: SEO will be essential for first-party data

With the slow, drawn out death of the third-party cookie, you could be forgiven for having a relatively lackadaisical approach to building your own audience database. After all, we’ve been successfully targeting new users through paid formats such as Google Display and Facebook Ads for years now.

The problem is that it’s not sustainable in today’s social climate. People are resisting having their personal data used for advertising purposes, and with good reason. While most advertisers are just trying to sell their products to people they hope might be interested in them, recent events have shown that ultra-targeted advertising can be weaponised for more nefarious purposes. Plus, a lot of people don’t like big tech companies they don’t trust holding so much of their data.

So, in a this-is-why-we-can’t-have-nice-things move, tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. are being forced into giving up some of their ability to sell their users’ data to advertisers.

This means that, as a (hopefully) non-malicious advertiser, you’re going to have to fend for yourself if you want to target new interested users and build conversions. 

SEO is definitely one of the best tools for that job. 

For example, by creating content that is genuinely useful and interesting to your target audience, you can generate a database of interested users through email sign-ups. 

Say you have an excellent piece of content about the Marketing Trends of 2022. You publish it online, but it’s a pretty long, but valuable piece, so you also offer an option to your audience to download a specifically designed PDF so they can read it at their own pace. In exchange for the PDF, you ask for an email address.

If your piece of content is good enough, and you’ve built a solid reputation with your audience, most people would gladly provide their email address because they know they won’t regret it later on as they’re emptying their spam folder. 

That’s the way you can leverage SEO to build a first-party database. But, doing that takes a lot of time and effort. And even though the death of the cookie is still a while away, you need to start building that database. Yesterday.

To Wrap Up

The evolution of Google Search, and by association, the SEO industry, has been slow, but steady. Every update seems to add a little bit more of what humans are looking for, rather than what an algorithm would. 

What’s great about this is that, even though there are less ‘hacks’ and quick wins to be had, it means that it should be easier than ever for genuinely good, human-focused content to rise to the top of search results. The difficulty lies in creating that content, rather than getting it to rank.

We hope these 2022 SEO trends help any practitioner on their way to creating genuinely useful content for their audiences. If you have any questions or would just like to have a chat about SEO, drop us a line.

In the meantime, happy ranking.

Want to read more marketing trends for 2022?

Here are a few more resources we’ve put together, with more on the way:

Web Design Trends 2022

Marketing Trends 2022: The Year of Conflict

Seven Regional Marketing Trends We Want To See More Of

Social Media Trends 2022: The Year of More

B2B Marketing Trends 2022

The post SEO Trends 2022: More Human appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Well, it’s marketing based on performance. Duh.

It’s basically the scientific method, but for digital advertising.

Success in performance marketing is purely measured by a tangible result, often one with a direct contribution to the bottom line. Purchases, leads, subscriptions, downloads. Essentially, it draws a direct line between an ad and one of the desired actions (or conversions) we just mentioned.

So an advertiser can see exactly what led to the conversion, and exactly how much it cost. This way, they can calculate a fairly accurate ROI on performance marketing. This is one of the main reasons for its popularity. It allows marketers to show off their success with stone-cold numbers instead of vague statistics.

Just like we did when we discussed the way we brought one of our client’s Facebook Ads ROI up by 3,300% in a month and a half. 

If you didn’t click that link, you might want to. We spilled the beans on the exact method we used to reach that astronomical number. I suggest bookmarking it for later at the very least. 

So, why doesn’t everybody use it?

The issue is that not every marketing effort can be tracked so neatly. Let’s say your goal is to sell more packets of cookies at supermarkets. You’re obviously running lots of ads about those cookies and the brand they’re part of. Unfortunately, you can’t draw that line between the ads and the desired action (cookies purchased from the supermarket) so clearly because the purchase isn’t a digital one.

With that said, the meteoric rise of eCommerce solutions introduced to the market over the past year has changed things. People buy things online that they never used to in the past. Such as cookies. 

And spending online overall has never been higher.

How can you get in on the performance marketing action?

If your business is reliant on purchases that are completed online, then congratulations, you’re ready to go. 

Well, not really. But it does help.

The next step is to make sure your technical setup is watertight. Every time someone performs a desired action (purchase, form submission, subscription, download), you need to know where that purchase is coming from. Without that information, you’re pretty much toast when it comes to performance marketing.

The process of creating that technical setup is normally a bit of a lengthy process, and depends on a number of factors. So if you don’t have it, and want to get into performance marketing in 2022, you’d better get started yesterday.

Alright, I’m all set up. Now what?

You could just start running some ads at this point and see the numbers trickle in. You’ll likely see some conversions, run your report at the end of the month, and show it to your boss. You might even be able to calculate your ROI! 

High fives all around. Right?

Here’s where I channel my inner Max Lord.

First of all, are you looking at all the right numbers? If you’re running ads promoting high-value purchases, like consumer electronics, ROI is a pretty good metric. That is, if all you’re doing is running basic ads and running a monthly report. But what about at ad level? How do you know which ads are actually performing well vs others?

This is where metrics like click-through-rate, cost-per-view, bounce rate, conversion rate, cost-per-lead, and an endless amount of other metrics come into play. These can help you identify which of your ads are actually bringing home the bacon. 

More on KPIs and goals here.

Remember when this article was about planning?

Neither do I, but this is where planning becomes important.

For performance marketing to work, you need to constantly be interpreting marketing metrics like the ones we just mentioned into tangible learnings that you can trust. 

For example, you want to know whether still images or video work better for your audience. Maybe YouTube delivers better results than Facebook Video using the same video. Or a particular tone of voice generates a higher click-through-rate, even if the visual remains the same.

All these questions can be answered. And the more you have of these learnings, the more efficient your advertising can be, and the higher your ROI will be at the end of the month. 

But getting all this done requires a proper test calendar. 

Each time you communicate, you’ll want to be testing out a theory. This means manipulating your overall communication calendar into a system that improves itself. With each test, your content gets better, your budget distribution gets better, and your knowledge of your audience’s tendencies gets better.

A few extra suggestions

Get a head start

Running this method of advertising requires plenty of thought, content creation, boss approvals, budget proposals, ad spend plans, etc. And we all know that getting things like that together can take weeks, if not months. Especially if your technical setup isn’t up to the task and needs work.

So start building your performance marketing plan as early as possible. 

Manage expectations

This sort of process doesn’t always show results instantly, and requires plenty of buy-in from both a time and financial perspective. But, if executed correctly, the knowledge generated from the tests can make future marketing communications a lot easier to generate, and a lot more efficient. 

Never stop testing

If after the first few weeks of this method you start to see that cost per conversion metric shrinking and your ROI skyrocketing, take a minute to congratulate yourself. 

Good job, buddy.

Now, go back to testing.

The thing is, what is true today is likely going to change in a few months. Human behaviour shifts quicker than Vin Diesel in a muscle car. So those learnings that you used to build your great ROI need to be retested regularly. If all this sounds great, but a little daunting, get in touch with us and let us know how we can help tell your story.

The post Planning 2022: Performance Marketing appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

I’ve done just that countless times, trying to imagine what life would be like. My dominant thought was always that I’d probably feel a lot smaller, more insignificant. From one of a few hundred thousand in a land I know inside-out and backwards, I’d go to one of millions in a country that is completely unfamiliar to me. 

In any case, I’d think about it briefly, then board the plane to the life I’ve known and have been comfortable with for my entire life. 

I grew up in the not-so-mean streets of Gharghur and Naxxar in the 90s. I attended private schools and church schools, stumbled my way through university and didn’t have much trouble finding a decent job. 

I’ll admit I’ve lived a relatively sheltered life without above average drama.

So when in May 2021 my partner told me “Luke, they offered me the job.” I stood blankly for a moment. See, the job itself isn’t particularly outlandish. 

Except that is literally outlandish, as in, out-of-this-land. 

Specifically, in Madrid. It was also a no-brainer career move for her, so what began as a fleeting airport thought years prior suddenly became a reality. And so, during a year and a half plagued rather literally by change and uncertainty, we were going to throw an overseas move into the pot. 

The planning began in earnest. 

I won’t bore you with the details, but it was busy enough that the reality that we were moving country didn’t have the chance to properly set in until much, much later.

While I’ll admit that we had been toying with the idea of moving to Spain for a while, nothing could have really prepared us for the actual transition. We had most of the main aspects of the move well-planned, but inevitably, things slipped through the cracks and caused problems and stress. 

Thankfully, nothing really went horribly wrong, but the list of things to pack/do/fix/buy/plan seemed endless and daunting. Not to mention the pure emotional upheaval of leaving family, friends, and home behind. 

We persevered and supported each other through countless issues that would crop up throughout the move itself. But upon arrival, we spent most of our time trying to find ways to turn our apartment into a place we could re-establish as a home base. It felt like once the biggest change was made, it was just about making incremental ones that would improve our quality of life over time.

That’s probably what any successful major change is all about. Having the courage and determination to take a dive into the deep end, knowing that it’s impossible to have all bases covered. 

Then, make the necessary adjustments to solidify your position and adapt. In many ways, those small changes are the most important step to ensure long-term success.

Successful change can’t be out of character either. While I may have slightly downplayed it here, I had always been fascinated by a move abroad. While I didn’t necessarily think the opportunity would present itself, it was on my bucket list. So when the opportunity arose, I had the determination to see it through. That motivation is essential.

Here’s my 5 tips for anyone looking to make a similarly huge change in life or business:

1. Major changes must be made in character. If a change clashes with an essential value that you hold, you’re going to find it very difficult to see it through. Believe in the change, or work on changing your beliefs if you have no other choice.
2. Plan ahead as much as possible, but prepare for the plan to fail. Very few plans are bulletproof, and putting pressure on yourself to execute the plan perfectly is a recipe for disappointment and frustration. Give yourself wiggle room to make mistakes, and more importantly, the energy to bounce back.
3. Invest in a support system. Emotions run high during periods of stress. Forcing a change through without considering the impact on mental health can only lead to even more errors, more frustration, and eventual burn-out. Vent frustrations to others, find activities that relieve stress, and plan for plenty of down time.
4. Take the leap, then adjust slowly. Attempting to, or expecting to have every single aspect of a change done immediately will likely lead to burn-out too. Once the major change has been done (mostly) successfully, take the time to pat yourself on the back before moving to the next step.
5. Finally, monitor your progress and state of mind. This is where I find myself at the moment. Regularly pause and take stock of how you’re feeling. The major change and many adjustments may have been done, but only time will tell whether more changes will be necessary. Upkeep and maintenance is essential for longevity. 

I’m certainly not the first or the last person to go through a major change. And I’m definitely not the first to put together those tips. But having gone through it now, these tips feel more real than ever, and I can personally vouch for their effectiveness. 

We’ve all had a taste of major change over the past year and a half. Switch moved from a vibrant office full of personality and energy, to everyone working from home within a couple of weeks back in March 2020. We even shifted focus and are on the road to becoming a fully-remote team. We already have team members across Europe and clients literally on the other side of the globe.

But it took months for many of us to adapt to the change. Speaking for myself as someone who loves human contact (especially from humans I genuinely like) the move away from the office took a significant toll on my mental state. But the adjustments that we made over time, and the awareness of the impact that major change can have, allowed me to recalibrate. Enough to even make room in my life for yet another huge change.

In any case, change isn’t easy, but it can be made easier. So, whether you’re a business leader planning to shift a major part of your business strategy, a couple deciding to move to another country, or any other major life-shifting change, give yourself the best chance to succeed with a solid but flexible plan and realistic expectations.

On the subject of planning, we’ve been running a series of articles on the importance of planning ahead when it comes to your marketing. Take a look at the first one here!

The post 5 Tips on Moving to Madrid (or any life-altering changes) appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

It requires commitment to a strategy. 

That strategy needs to be rock solid from the start.

Social media or display advertising campaigns are very transient. They can be set-up in a matter of minutes and can also be stopped with the click of a button. It’s all relatively immediate. 

SEO is not. 

Once you’ve committed to an SEO plan, it’s essential that you stick to it, because results reveal themselves significantly more slowly. 

And changing tacks midway through the year will slow you down. 

A lot.

However, the results can be phenomenal.

68% of all internet experiences start with a search engine. 

The effort you put into SEO is worth it. If you’re not present, you could be missing out on two-thirds of your potential audience. 

What to do before 2022

There are countless excellent guides available online that will take you through the process of getting yourself set-up with SEO. 

But sometimes they’re long. Informative, but a bit tedious. 

Before you set out on your SEO journey, we’re going to lay out the foundations that you’ll need to really get it right. Most of these have relatively little to do with the technical side of SEO, but are absolutely essential to your success on search result pages.

1. Get your KPIs sorted

If you read our most recent article in the Planning for 2022 series, we discussed goals & KPIs. There, we go into detail about how important it is to know exactly what you’re measuring and why. 

Both from a business and a technical perspective.

Depending on your business type, the ultimate goal you might want to achieve with your SEO efforts can differ wildly. eCommerce sites need sales, content sites need quality traffic, B2B sites need leads. 

So figure out the key one or two metrics that your business needs to grow and hold on to them. Make sure that every other number you measure is ultimately going to affect that golden KPI.

2. Identify core audiences

Hopefully you’ve done this already at some point during your marketing efforts, but if not, you’ll definitely need them for SEO. Understanding who your core audiences are and how they behave in relation to your business is essential. Make sure you have demographics that are primarily based on behaviour and customer journey rather than age and gender. You’ll see why in just a minute.

Once you have a shortlist of these audiences, you can move on to the next step. 

3. Keyword research

We could write several articles on the subject, but here are the basics. Go through each of your customer personas and begin writing as many possible search terms as you can. Start with broad search terms that cover as many relevant categories as possible, then get into slightly longer keywords that are a little more specific. You’ll need to make sure people actually do search these terms. For that, you’ll need a tool such as this one.

Once you’ve created your list, start filtering by volume and keyword difficulty. You should end up with a list of valuable keywords that are exactly relevant to your audience in relation to your business.

4. Work on the content plan

Take a look at which websites are already ranking at the top for the keywords you’ve chosen. What sort of content do they offer? Based on the fact that they’re at the top, that’s the sort of content that Google thinks searchers want. So you’ll basically have to do better. 

Take a good look at your own landing pages and spend your resources on making those pages that absolute best that they can be from a content perspective. Always keep in mind that Google will lift your rankings if it provides real value to those who are searching. 

5. Look at the technical side

Is your website loading fast enough? Is it up to the high standards that Google has been imposing on websites to rank well? Are your main services pages optimised with the right keywords?

 If you don’t have the individual knowledge to answer these questions, get in touch with people who do. You can have the absolute best content targeted towards the most relevant keywords, but if it takes 15 seconds for your homepage to load on mobile, you’re in deep trouble. 

Getting all of the above sorted out is no mean feat. SEO takes time, patience, and resources, but there is absolutely no doubt that it’s worth it. It’s been proven time and time again that organic search traffic is the most valuable. 

So get cracking.

The post Planning 2022: SEO appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Only we don’t fire up a cigar every time a campaign hits its goal. 

(I apologise in advance for any pop-culture references I may make in this post. As a person, I am blursed with the ability to think of a quote from tv or film for nearly every situation I find myself in.)

Often, businesses just think of marketing as a goal unto itself and go directly to putting together a communication plan of some sort. A plan is never a bad idea. To reach a hailed cigar-worthy moment, however, a plan must have a specific set of objectives to reach. Along with the appropriate metrics to measure success.

Where do you start from?

Before you can delve into the nitty gritty of specific marketing KPIs, you need to start with your overarching business goals for the time period – in this case, 2022. 

As we talked about in the introduction to this series of articles, it’s worth setting both attainable and ‘unrealistic’ goals. 

More on that here.

These goals are your pillars, and once they have been clearly defined, you can start thinking about exactly and with which tools you’re going to use to achieve them. 

Start by making a list of all your current and potential communications channels. 

Which of these channels provide you with measurable metrics that, if focused on, can contribute to the achievement of your business goals?

Let’s take a more concrete example.

Example: eCommerce Website

You may understandably guess that the best measure for an eCommerce website is how much revenue it generates during any given period.

And what do you need for more revenue? 

More traffic. 

So, just send more traffic to the website and that’s a job well done, let’s go home, right?

Sort of.

In reality, while volume revenue goals are definitely important, it doesn’t really tell us just how well the website is performing in terms of generating revenue efficiently. A wiser approach is to first analyse what further value you can get out of your already existing traffic. Rather than spending more money sending traffic to a website that might not be working efficiently. 

Just like it’s not worth pumping fuel into a thirsty old engine rather than investing in a new and more efficient electric motor. Putting money into a website that’s not working efficiently is a waste. 

Better Metrics

A metric that gives us a better idea of how well the website works is conversion rate. This number tells us what percentage of website visitors are actually converting into paying customers. If your conversion rate is currently sitting at 1%, optimising the website to improve that number to 2% literally doubles your revenue without making any changes to your outbound communication strategy. 

This said, optimising a website for better conversion rates isn’t always straightforward. It requires an in-depth analysis of current activity, a prioritised list of areas of improvement, and an actionable plan. Along with the resources to execute said plan.

This is an example of a cost-effective, long-term KPI that contributes very directly to business goals without having even touched external communications.

Optimising your website isn’t the only way to increase your conversion rate, though. Once you have a plan to increase your conversion rate, you can begin analysing which current traffic channels provide best conversion rates and highest average revenue per sale. 

You might discover that you’ve been spending 80% of your marketing budget on social media, but traffic coming from your Google Search campaign has a 3x better conversion rate. This could mean that your communication on social media might not be attracting the right audience, or that you should refocus your marketing on search engines. 

Or both.

The process

Let’s break down what we just described. 

First, we identified a business goal: eCommerce Sales

Second, we identified a KPI that directly contributes to the previously identified business goal: Conversion Rate

Finally, we found several ways to improve said KPI: website optimisation and channel resource reallocation.

This process can be repeated across every marketing channel, with several KPIs to identify for each. These KPIs will then serve as the measuring sticks for each and every piece of marketing communication that you place in your plan for 2022. 

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be going into more detail about how to plan more specifically for some of the most important marketing channels around. From B2B to social media, to performance marketing. 

Keep an eye on our feed for more. In the meantime, here’s a detailed breakdown of the most important marketing trends of 2022.

The post Planning 2022: Marketing Goals & KPIs appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

A lot of advertising communication happens between businesses, and it’s quite a different ball game than when communicating to everyday consumers. The biggest difference between the two is that one is usually a much longer-term project than the other. 

There are relatively very few ‘impulse’ purchases in the B2B world. Patience and strategy are the name of the game.

In this article we’re going to discuss the basics of B2B marketing and how to set yourself up for success when trying to generate leads & sales. Let’s start with the fundamental tools you’ll need to get started.

What are the Essential B2B Marketing tools?

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Before getting your feet wet, you’ll need to identify what your targets are. You won’t know if your marketing efforts are succeeding if you’re not measuring the right numbers. So, first figure out what would be the ideal outcome of your marketing. 

Is it a contact-form submission? A purchase on your SaaS eCommerce site? Somebody clicking on the Call Now button on your Facebook page?

One thing we always advise our clients is to try and ignore the vanity metrics, or metrics that can be increased simply by increasing the budget. Getting a high amount of impressions or clicks on a PPC campaign usually just depends on how much money you’re putting in. Instead, look at the Click-Through Rate, for example, as a measure of how effective your PPC ads are.

In most B2B settings, the main metric is cost per lead. How much you’re spending to generate a single lead. You could also go slightly further than that if you’re qualifying your leads and filtering out the ones with little or no value. In that situation, cost per qualified lead is your golden number. This can be easily calculated by dividing your marketing spend by the number of useful leads you’ve generated in that time span. 

Throwing in your generated revenue can also give you your ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) – another metric most marketers use. 

All of this said, KPIs are not just about taking a couple of main metrics and ignoring the rest. As we’ll discuss later on, there are a myriad of smaller metrics you should pay attention to depending on the sub-goal of your marketing efforts. Especially when you’re just starting to communicate with your audience. 

B2B marketing is a long-term game. Expecting the leads to start flowing from the word go is a good way to disappoint yourself. So, for each piece of content or marketing effort your produce, have a metric in mind that will help you judge its effectiveness, and make sure you’re gaining knowledge about your audience based on what they react to. More on content later.

Technical Set-Up

Everything we just mentioned above sounds great, but if your business’s online setup isn’t giving you these numbers, or you don’t know where to find them, you’re DOA. 

Answer the following questions to make sure your technical set-up is ready to give you the numbers you need.

1. Is Google Analytics (or an equivalent) installed on your site, and do you have access to it?
2. Are goals & conversions (such as “Call Now” clicks and contact form submissions) set-up on Google Analytics (or an equivalent)?
3. If you’re advertising on Google Ads, are conversions set-up, and is it linked to your Google Analytics account?
4. Is Google Search Console set-up and linked to your Google Analytics account?
5. If you’re communicating on Facebook, is your Facebook Pixel set-up correctly on your website, and recording conversions?
6. Is your Google My Business account properly set-up with the right information and assets?

If you’ve answered no to any of these questions, or you’re unsure, make it priority number 1 to fix it. These technical issues are usually not too difficult to sort out, but can take time. If you begin communicating without this technical setup complete, you’ll be losing valuable information about your efforts that you won’t be able to recover later.

If you’re not sure where to start, speak to an expert.

How do you identify your B2B audience?

Thoroughly identifying exactly who your audience is has two main benefits.

1. It helps you understand where you could reach them
2. You can tailor your content to what they’re looking for

While business decision-makers are usually the main target, it’s quite unlikely that any B2B business will have just one target demographic. The decision-maker is influenced by a vast and complex set of factors that could encourage them to contact a business. Word of mouth remains one of the most powerful motivators. This means that if you’re a financial services business looking to target CFOs, it doesn’t mean you should limit all your communications to CFO-friendly content. That CFO likely has a wide professional network and colleagues who could influence their decisions.

So, should you create content that appeals to every individual a CFO might have in their lives? Not exactly, but thinking slightly wider than a typical CFOs interests will help broaden the scope of your communications. 

Spend time figuring out where your target audience is most easily reachable, and what sort of content they would find truly valuable. Let’s start with the first bit.

Which Channels should you use for B2B Marketing?

The most common digital B2B marketing channels are:

• Social media
• PPC/Display Advertising
• Paid Search (SEM)
• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) & Content Marketing
• Email Marketing

There are others, but these are the main ones from a digital point of view.

All of that said, choosing B2B communication channels is definitely a subjective choice. It should be based on where you feel your audience is most receptive to communication and can vary from industry to industry, from company to company.

It may still make sense in your particular case to rely on cold-calls, but studies have shown only around 2% of cold-calls actually result in an appointment. And as time goes by, the prospect of cold-calling potential clients in an age of high-quality B2B communication strategies seems more and more inappropriate.

The main B2B communication channels mentioned above can be split into two; inbound and outbound. Let’s start with the latter. Outbound communication can be simply defined as communication that happens when the receiver isn’t looking for it. They’re scrolling through their social media, browsing a news site, or watching a video on YouTube when they’re suddenly faced with an ad. 

This type of advertising is extremely common, yet is essential for brands looking to build awareness around their company, product, or service. The effectiveness of this type of advertising is heavily reliant on the quality of the content. Many-a-time, brands resort to fantastical claims or clickbait to draw attention away from other content that their audience is looking at. With that said, there are versions of outbound marketing that are common, and extremely useful for B2B communication.

LinkedIn

Before you ask, no, we’re not talking about creating a company profile on LinkedIn and posting the exact same content you post on Facebook. LinkedIn can be used for much more than that from an individual level. Having company leadership active on LinkedIn can be an excellent way to share knowledge and industry insights to everyone in their network – most likely, individuals with a sphere of influence that will include potential clients. 

If said leadership has curated their LinkedIn network well, posts high-value content, and communicates genuinely, word-of-mouth can spread organically and effectively. 

There are countless studies showing that word-of-mouth is likely the most effective business generator. LinkedIn is a channel that very much encourages post virality based on its engagement. If a post gets traction, it’s reach can expand exponentially, very quickly. 

It’s also one of the slower mainstream social media channels. In the sense that the lifespan of a post can sometimes be several weeks long, versus the immediacy of posts on other platforms such as Facebook & Instagram. On the latter channels, even successful posts don’t last longer than a couple of days before losing relevance. 

For the reasons mentioned above, LinkedIn is the best outbound form of B2B marketing when it comes to social media, but your mileage may vary based on which industry/location you’re in.

B2B PPC/Display Advertising

As we’ve mentioned, the typical B2B audience is usually a relatively small one. Standard targeting methods offered by ad platforms such as Facebook & Google Ads can provide some measure of success, but as time goes by, these methods are becoming slightly less effective due to privacy updates. This slight inaccuracy makes it difficult to justify the advertising spend required to generate decent quality traffic.

That said, however, using PPC/Display advertising for retargeting purposes can have major benefits. Once someone has shown interest in a piece of communication you’ve created, then visits your website, you likely want that person to revisit soon. That’s where retargeting comes in. It’s also the main reason your technical setup needs to be on point – without it, accurate retargeting isn’t possible.

Just make sure your communication when retargeting is tailored to those who are already aware of what you offer.

B2B Email Marketing

Another highly-effective outbound form of B2B marketing is email, but it works slightly differently to the rest. Obviously, before you start sending out emails, you need to build a list. This can be done in quite a few different ways, including the use of lead magnets, website pop-ups, or simply getting all your business cards you’ve collected over the years and inserting them into a database (not exactly recommended). Building a database of useful contacts is not easy, but it is essential, and a subject that requires its own deep-dive. In the meantime, read this to get more acquainted. 

Once your list starts growing, you can start emailing. But do so with caution. Here are some tips to keep in mind when writing your email marketing content.

Provide valuable content

Don’t invade someone’s inbox with sales language from day one. You need to give your list a reason to open your second email, not just your first. Email marketing (like most other good marketing) is about building a value-based relationship over time. Put yourself in your reader’s shoes and think about topics and information that they would find interesting, coming from you. 

Be Consistent

Set clear expectations in terms of frequency and content, and stick to them. If you only get in touch when you need a sales boost, you’ll start to see your open-rate plummet. Be a consistent voice in your audience’s inbox.

Foster Conversations

Email marketing is normally a relatively one-way street in terms of conversation. It doesn’t have to be. Speak like a human and invite conversation. If your content is genuine and engaging, you’ll likely have a few individuals wanting to prod the subject a little further. These individuals could be extremely valuable ambassadors for your business.

There is a lot more to email marketing than the above, but the best tip we can give you is to go ahead and get started. Create a plan and start understanding what kind of email communication works best for your business.

Paid Search (SEM) for B2B

If you’re leading a fledgling B2B company, or one that has been around for longer but has never invested much in terms of SEO, then paid search is probably the best place to start. It’s the first form of inbound marketing we’ve talked about so far. Inbound marketing refers to traffic or interest generated from those who are actively searching for something related to your business. The most obvious version of this is traffic generated through search engines.

With paid search, you target particular keywords that are relevant to your target audience and your business with text ads leading to your business’s website. Sounds simple, because it is. That said, there’s still quite a bit of nuance that goes into it. The most important aspect to keep in mind is the journey your audience goes through.

Always think about the flow that is created from the moment someone searches for a particular term. They’ve written their search term because they’re looking for something in particular, and that’s what you need to make sure to deliver. Don’t target keywords with content that is wildly different from the intent of the searcher, otherwise you’ll just get ignored. 

Make sure your copy is topical, clear, and makes a promise your audience is interested in. That’s only half the battle though. You may have won a click, but the content that they see after clicking is just as important. Now you need to deliver on your promise. The landing page needs to provide exactly what they’re looking for with the right amount of detail, along with a strong CTA – either to purchase, read more, or to get in touch. 

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) & Content Marketing

SEO is a beast of a subject. The amount of content available on the subject is nearly limitless. That’s why we wrote a simple guide for you to figure out whether SEO would be worth a try for your business.

On average, traffic generated organically through search engines is usually one of the highest volume traffic channels for websites, along with the most valuable. Users arriving organically through a search term you’ve ranked for are high-intent individuals who’ve decided that you have what they’re looking for. Therefore their bounce-rate is low, their engagement with your website is high, and they are the most likely to convert. Building this audience is probably one of the most cost-effective, long-term ways to build business.

That said, SEO mostly begins and ends with great content. Obviously, you need to figure out what content you’re going to create for your audience, along with understanding the feasibility of ranking for certain keywords. With that said, SEO is a long-term game that requires strategy and long-term thinking. Here are the basics of what you need:

1. A well-designed website with a solid technical SEO foundation
2. A set of high-traffic keywords with low levels of competition
3. A malleable content strategy that provides value to searchers
4. Analytics that provide real learnings of what’s working

With those four beats covered, you can begin to build organic traffic that provides value to your business. We’ve written a fair share about SEO if you want to keep on learning. 

How do you create the right B2B content?

That’s the golden question. 

Building great B2B marketing content is a test of your understanding of what your audience finds valuable. 

Think about what would attract you, as someone who is probably targeted by B2B communication on a consistent basis. We’re willing to bet that it’s not an email with a subject line in all caps screaming about a new product launch. Or an insistent social media ad, constantly throwing sales figures and percentages in your face, telling you that their offer expires in 24 hours. 

Write and create content (or get someone else to do it) that provides something of value to those you want to be communicating with, and leaves out the rest. Don’t try to be something to everyone, otherwise you’ll be nothing to everyone. 

Also, if you’re writing for SEO, make sure you’re not writing for SEO.

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