By now you’ve probably read the headlines and seen the stats from HubSpot and others about the virtues of inbound. There’s no denying that inbound marketing can be effective in generating quality leads for your business. Even so, inbound marketing should be treated as an addition to your other marketing strategies – not a replacement. Even if you are really good at it, inbound marketing only opens a small window into your total addressable market, leaving the rest wide open for your competition. So before you consider abandoning outbound efforts for inbound – ask yourself these questions:
#1 – Is it easy for prospects to find you?
To be successful with inbound, you’ll have to produce a substantial amount of premium content that’s highly optimized for search. While quality content can help build your brand and drive inbound interest, it can be resource-intensive, expensive, and there are no guarantees that your prospects will find it. In fact, with every technology vendor trying to become a publisher, getting your content noticed is harder today than ever before.
If you want to truly understand how much demand you can realistically capture through inbound, start by mapping out how many content assets you can produce a week and compare it to vendors who have leading organic positions for keywords you’d like to own. Are you producing as much content as they are? Can you? Remember, certain keywords are going to require much more effort to make it to the first page, especially if you’re competing against larger vendors and publishers who have entire editorial teams dedicated to creating content. Take TechTarget for example. We have over 1,000 editors and freelancers writing content every day just so we can drive thousands of inbound visitors to our sites. Ultimately, competing with such brands for content volume is unproductive. Redirect your efforts from quantity to quality of content and ensure you’re delivering something new and distinct that can be promoted as such.
Instead of going “all-in” on inbound, consider pushing your content out to target prospects and leads to supplement your inbound efforts. These are the exact same people you’re trying to attract via inbound, so why not engage them with outbound marketing too? Not only will this help you generate quality leads faster, but it will also provide additional coverage in areas where you may lack inbound interest.
#2 – Are you attracting and identifying the right prospects through your site?
Even if you’re able to attract thousands of prospects to your website, are they the right ones? Not always. In many cases you’ll find tire-kickers, partners, or other vendors downloading your content to better understand your solutions or gather competitive intelligence.
And it’s not just about getting the right people to your site; you’ll also have to know who they are. One of the most challenging parts of inbound marketing is converting anonymous website visitors into leads. And with the average inbound conversion rate for B2B/Tech hovering around 3% (WordStream), you’re going to burn a lot of time generating inbound interest that will never turn into deals. Even if you can convert the right person, there’s no guarantee it’s the right time; you don’t have the resources to waste on false positives.
Unlike inbound, outbound gives you control over who to target and the ability to reach known prospects from companies that are more likely to buy from you. This not only helps you focus your efforts on the right prospects but also eliminates wasted time sorting through (or even worse, selling to) unqualified inbound leads.
#3 – Are you effectively reaching entire buying teams?
Let’s say you’re successful at converting inbound visitors to leads. Now what? To turn them into customers, you’ll need to decide how to market or sell differently to every member of the buying team. Relying on an inbound-only lead source limits your visibility into the entire buyer’s journey and may not uncover key decision makers who are involved in the final purchase. This is critical today when an average of 6.8 people are involved in the buying process (CEB). To win deals, your sales team is going to have to know exactly who is on the buying team and what they’re researching – when they’re with you AND when they’re not.
Instead of relying exclusively on inbound, TechTarget can consolidate your efforts by making your inbound traffic more valuable and employ a strategic outbound approach. TechTarget’s Priority Engine includes Inbound Converter, which identifies accounts visiting your website and exposes active demand from those accounts directly within the platform, including members of the buying team and insights to help you better understand the topics and competitors the buying team is researching when they’re not with you. Overall, Priority Engine identifies the accounts that are most active and interested so you can target the right people at the right time.
We’ve come a long way since the early days of the internet, in regard to different web design trends. Yesterday’s dos are today’s don’ts and nobody knows for sure what the future will bring.
But what we know for certain are web design turn-offs and things virtually no one likes to see on the internet of today. This is a highly competitive place, and you don’t want to risk anything by having an off-putting design of your website. What you want is to provide users with delightful surfing experience. It’s the only way you can hope to retain each hard-won customer and eventually make your company profitable.
That’s why, in this article, we’re going to give you 5 things you simply need to avoid if you don’t want users to leave your website in frustration.
It Takes Ages for the Website to Load
This was maybe ok in the 1990s when we were all using dial-up connections to surf the web, but in today’s day and age, it’s almost a sacrilege to have a slow website. No user likes to see when the page takes ages to load. In fact, today’s users are much more likely to try somewhere else, if a search result they click on sits on a blank page loading for three seconds or more.
There’s also a report by BBC from 2018 which illustrates nicely just how important it is to load your pages fast: every additional second that people have to wait for the page to load will cost you around 10% of your users. To further emphasize just how huge this is in internet terms, this would mean that by the time the first 10 seconds are up, you’d lose all your website traffic.
If you think this is an exaggeration on BBC’s part, Google also did their fair share of research with similar results. More than half of mobile users will be gone if a site takes more than three seconds to load, and if it takes six seconds you can bid farewell to all of them.
Too Many Popups Will Kill Off Your Traffic
How many times have you visited a webpage and it felt almost impossible to get to the actual content you were looking for because of all those annoying popups? We know the answer to this question is ’too many’, so it’s every webmaster’s job not to let this happen.
Losing users and customers because of the popups makes you think if they actually defeat their own purpose. On the one hand, some designers and advertises swear that popups lead to improved conversion rates. On the other hand, the statistics also show that 70% of people find them annoying.
If you want to be absolutely sure that your web page makes the best out of both of these researches, consult reliable professionals from Orion Creative, for instance. That way you’ll be certain that you’re actually utilizing popups and not overly irritating anyone. If the popups are done badly, they don’t respond to the user’s needs, or there’s just too many of them at once – you’re bound to lose traffic. At the same time, if done properly, you can actually gain profit.
Not Catering for Mobile Users
It may be strange to see that there are still many mobile-unfriendly websites out there, but it’s a sad reality that we’re all unfortunately witnessing.
The fact that it’s still not uncommon to see sites where items are misaligned, overlapping, formatted strangely, and so on is almost disheartening. Not only does this mean that you’re not following the latest trends that say that more than 50% of all internet traffic happens on mobile phones, but you’re also neglecting the fact that a low-quality mobile site will almost definitely affect your SEO performance negatively.
Going All-In On Animation
Sure, everyone likes to see a professionally-designed and trendy website, and there are few things that scream this louder than smooth transitions, transforms, and appearances, or well-deployed animation. All these things can be pretty vital and make a huge difference in comparison to the otherwise static and sterile layout.
But what you want to avoid at all costs is too much animation. Just like with popups, you need to use them sparingly. In any other way, they’re a distraction that simply no one wants or will tolerate – rest assured that the users and customers will jump ship if they get heavily distracted by your aesthetic presentation.
Autoplay Media
This was always a big no-no, and one of those irritating web design faux pas things that you have to avoid at all costs.
We’re not saying that there aren’t ways to do this tastefully, but it’s much more frequent than you’ll see (and hear) something which irritates and annoys you so hard that you’ll want to click that ’close’ button as fast as you can.
A word to the wise: don’t incorporate autoplay media to your pages unless you’re absolutely positive that it won’t interfere with the user’s ability to concentrate on the content she or he came for in the first place.
Wrapping Up
Essentially, all these 5 examples we’ve discussed in this article stem from bad UX design and lack of research. If you want to have a website that helps you attract more users and also retain the old ones at the same time, you’ll definitely try to do your best to avoid these 5 problems and issues. Ideally, you want to anticipate the user’s needs and treat both their time and attention with utmost respect.
By Nick Brown
“Nick is a blogger and a marketing expert currently engaged in projects for Media Gurus, an Australian business, and marketing resource. He is an aspiring street artist and does Audio/Video editing as a hobby.”
Are you making the most of Adobe Stock? Here are some extra ways it could save you time.
When you need a stock image for your graphic or web design, Adobe Stock is the place to turn. Integrated seamlessly into the Creative Cloud, it provides you with access to millions of high quality photographs and illustrations, not to mention templates, vectors, video footage and more.
But even if you’re already using Adobe Stock on a regular basis, you may well be missing a trick or two, that could save you a serious amount of time and energy.
Read on as we highlight some of the less-obvious uses for Adobe Stock that you may not have considered. And if they inspire you, then why not take out a one-month free trial to Adobe Stock?
01. Visual inspiration
Adobe Stock is a stride ahead Google Images when it comes to visual inspiration
(Image credit: Adobe Stock)
Right at the start of a project, when you’re still thinking loosely about concepts and ideas, it’s natural to go looking for inspiration. And for most people, Google Images is often the default.
But think about it: the images you’ll find there are going to vary hugely in quality, while on Adobe Stock there are millions of consistently high quality, professionally created photos, illustrations and videos to inspire you and give you fresh visual ideas. So you’re far better off using the sophisticated search filters provided by Adobe Stock, and seeking out visual inspiration there instead!
02. Website mockups and wireframes
The main aim of a digital mockup or wireframe is to get the functionality right, and make sure that the site or app can fulfil the needs of the user in a fast and efficient manner.
For this reason, they’re often created as “bare bones” designs, with zero imagery, and that approach can be appropriate when you’re just working on things in-house. But once you get to getting sign-off from stakeholders and clients, it can be worth using some of the high quality stock photography or illustrations available on Adobe Stock to make it look a little nicer and more approachable.
Because however much you ask people to “see past” the lack of visuals, it’s often a psychological hurdle that non-designers find difficult to navigate.
And the best news is, if you don’t want to spend any money, you don’t have to. You can use watermarked versions of any Adobe Stock image in your designs, and you only have to pay once you’ve got sign-off. If you don’t use them, you don’t pay: simple!
Adobe Stock saves you time by letting you search for pics of a certain shape (in this case, square)
(Image credit: Adobe Stock)
From Facebook and Twitter to Instagram and Snapchat, there’s so much noise on social media these days that attracting people’s attention with a brand campaign is a tough ask.
But one thing’s for sure: the brain processes pictures far more quickly than words, and so powerful and eye-catching images are key to attracting those eyeballs.
A small investment in the high quality photography and illustrations that Adobe Stock can provide, then, will pay off handsomely when it comes to clicks and likes.
And not only are you free to crop the images you license to whatever shape and size you need, but you can even save yourself time by, for example, searching for only square, horizontal, vertical or panoramic images.
04. Moodboards
The moodboard is a time-honoured tool in conveying the mood and spirit of a proposed campaign, and getting approval from clients and stakeholders before you head too far down the wrong path.
To create one, many people often just scrape images from Google, because while this is technically copyright infringement, in practical terms they’re unlikely to ever get sued for it.
However, legal issues aside, it’s worth considering using images from Adobe Stock instead. After all, they’re available in high resolution, so will look much better blown up at size. Plus the millions of high quality images available, in combination with sophisticated search filters, means that you’ll be much more likely to find the right images to bring your moodboard to life.
The email newsletter seen a massive resurgence in recent years. Perhaps as a reaction to the amount of noise on social media, people seem to like like the idea of a regular, curated and above all, short summary of what they need to know about a certain subject.
In some cases, they’re even willing to pay for this service, and some people now make their living entirely based on producing a must-read email newsletter.
Whether your newsletter is paid-for or free, though, success isn’t guaranteed, though. You have to produce one kick-ass newsletter if you’re going to succeed in this busy marketplace.
And so here again is an arena where the right images can play a key role. Liven up your email newsletter with some high quality imagery from Adobe Stock, and – as long as the content is equally high quality – your sign-ups and open rates should soon start to climb.
06. Your blog
If you’re writing a personal blog or the official blog for your design studio, imagery is again a great way to lure people in.
Most of the time you’ll probably want to use killer images from your latest design work, but that may not always be possible. The client may not have given permission, for example. Or perhaps there aren’t great visuals from the work to show (if your work was in the field of strategy, or web development, for example).
In such cases, don’t just leave a blank, or post an uninspiring image. Think outside the box, and search Adobe Stock for images that represent the theme of the story instead. For example, if you’ve has been invited to sit on a government panel to discuss how the creative industry should respond to Brexit, you might want to use the image above to highlight your news.
07. A/B testing
Want variations on this pic? Click here, then scroll down to ‘More from this series’
(Image credit: Adobe Stock)
A/B testing is about serving up two versions of a web page, Facebook ad, etc, to your audience and seeing which one leads to the most conversions. Given the importance of imagery, it’s often useful to test different lead images, to see which one leads to the best results.
The good thing about Adobe Stock is that there are often images from the same photoshoot, which means you can choose between small variations on the same image. This makes Adobe Stock ideal for when you really want to nail down the perfect image to help your website conversion rate.
08. Your personal videos
Most video professionals will know about Adobe Stock’s motion design templates, which allow you to add cool effects, titles, transitions and more to your projects with very little effort. But they’re so simple to use that anyone can use them for their own personal videos too. Especially as many of them are free!
To see how easy it is to use Adobe Stock’s motion design templates without any training, check out our tutorial on how to add wow to your holiday videos.
Planning a wedding? Adobe Stock can help here, too! It has an amazing range of top quality templates for your wedding designs that are fully customisable within Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.
Finally, Christmas is approaching, you’re a designer so why not design your own bespoke Christmas cards? It’s a great way to delight a client or potential client, and make sure they remember you. Or alternatively, you might just want to put a smile on the face of a friend or family member.
It isn’t just meant for criminals and suspicious activities
In cyberspace, the darknet is the equivalent of that dark, seedy alley that you’re advised to steer clear of.
Often referred to as the corrupt underbelly of the internet, common lore is that it’s the place where the drug dealers, human traffickers, terrorists, arms dealers and child pornographers hang out. But here are five things about the darknet that aren’t so dark after all.
It’s probably the only place to live freely on the internet
Net neutrality is the idea that all internet traffic is created equal. The very fact that we are having a conversation about it and that laws are being pushed to challenge it, is, safe to say, the stuff of nightmares for the forebears of the internet and World Wide Web. The darknet, given that it exists outside of the monitored internet, may soon be—and may even already be—the only online space where you can be truly free.
It’s the only place you can have total privacy
We live in an age of constant surveillance—by governments, by advertisers, by service providers and so on. Most of us often have no idea that every move of ours is being watched, or if we do, we don’t quite understand why that might be a problem. Nothing on the internet is private—unless, that is, you go rogue and take the late train to Downtown Darknet.
The darknet doesn’t have to be so dark … it depends wholly on the people who use it.
It’s where whistleblowers roam freely
If you have information that no one wants you to have or share, the darknet is your safe haven. From conspiracies against states to corporate misconduct, from fraud to malfeasance, whether disclosure or secrecy, the underground tunnels of the darknet are where whistleblowers roam. There are underground channels, such as activist groups, whistleblower forums and even media presences for secure and anonymous exchanging of sensitive information.
It allows for decentralized currencies
There’s a reason cryptocurrency is the money that talks inside the darknet: the absence of centralized control. Cryptocurrency transactions are recorded in blockchain ledgers. In plain English, this means that rather than having a central bank maintain records of transactions of assets held by individuals or of the amount of currency in circulation, cryptocurrency records are stored in public databases, secured by cryptography. This allows for privacy in financial transactions and easier peer-to-peer or international trade. Of course, the legality of cryptocurrency is dubious in many countries, and it is used for all manner of nefarious activities—but one could say that of legal currency as well.
It has its own justice system
In tech speak, this is called hacktivism. These under-the-radar vigilantes carry out their own justice, which can be in the form of shutting down seedier activities, like child pornography or human trafficking, or generally striking a blow for human rights. One of the most well-known of such groups is Anonymous, which took down a large network of child porn on the darknet.
But, yes, there is a “but.”
Every one of these instances has equally effective use for illegal—or inhuman—activities. The darknet doesn’t have to be so dark, but like all technology, it depends wholly on the people who use it.
Feature Image Credit: If you have information that no one wants you to have or share, the darknet is your safe haven. Illustration: Trent Joaquin; Sources: Unsplash
Newsletters are all the rage these days, and with good cause: in the age of cluttered social media feeds and algorithmically-sourced content, newsletters remain one of the few ways to reach readers in a way that feels refreshingly personal. We’re big fans of newsletters over here, and we’ve heard many of our readers feel the same way.
However, The Atlantic’s newsletter infrastructure was from another time, and was showing its age. When we first built our newsletter codebase several years ago, we wanted to be able to publish every newsletter as an article on our website, which limited what we could do. That’s changed — newsletters are now a standalone editorial product, and the old restrictions don’t apply.
We’d reached the technical limitations of what we could do with our current code, and our editors were finding creative workarounds to the limited styling available, such as using emojis in place of actual section dividers. It was long past time to burn down our old newsletter infrastructure and start from scratch.
Building a complete editorial toolkit
Our legacy newsletter system was good for editing text and adding images, but the landscape had evolved to where we wanted to provide a complete editorial toolkit for our writers to create richer email reading experiences.
From a product design perspective, we had to think about two sets of users: our writers, who would be interacting with the newsletter admin system to create and publish these emails, and our readers, who would be reading the newsletters. We worked with editorial folks to map newsroom needs and came up with a range of formats we wanted to better support: photo essays, interviews, excerpts, timelines, news roundups, feature stories… the list goes on and on.
Our new backend provides a more flexible set of tools to accommodate these formats, while laying the groundwork for whatever the newsroom cooks up in the future. Through multiple rounds of design reviews and testing, along with good ol’ documentation, we made sure the new system was clear and the toolkit was easy enough to use that writers could run with it themselves.
Some new modules and heading stylings
A modular design system
Designing for newsletters means accounting for how different email clients render various elements and fonts (more on that later), while also providing enough flexibility that editors can create a new newsletter with a unique look while still having it feel consistent with The Atlantic’s newsletter brand. Back in the day, we basically stored newsletter content as raw HTML in our database. But to achieve our new goals of flexibility and brand cohesion, we created a range of styleable modules that editors could stack together to build a newsletter.
While each module’s structure is consistent across the suite, certain elements such as typefaces or background colors can be changed so different newsletters can be themed in distinct ways, while still being recognizable as Atlantic newsletters.
Some examples of potential ways to style Atlantic newsletters, using the same fundamental modules
This modular system also gives editors a lot more flexibility with creating new kinds of newsletters. They could put together an image-heavy newsletter that primarily uses image blocks, or they could make a text-centered version that relies on big quotes and lists. Both versions are easy to make with the new system, and since we’re using modules that have already been tested across email clients, we know they’ll look great no matter where they’re found.
Progressive enhancement approach
Coding for email is notoriously challenging because different email clients display the same newsletter in different ways. One of the biggest inconsistencies among email clients? Fonts.
Not all major email clients support custom fonts. However, a progressive enhancement approach with our typography allows everyone, even people using older versions of Outlook, to receive the best experience we can deliver. In practice, this means organizing our font stack in the following tiers:
1. Our Brand Fonts
These are web fonts that need to be loaded externally, so they will only appear in the best-case scenario: that is, a user on an email client that supports loading external fonts. In the following example, we’re using Graphik for our heading and Lyon Text for our body text . This is how the component would ideally appear in the browser and in Apple Mail/iOS:
Brand fonts (Graphik and Lyon Text) rendering in Apple Mail/iOS 🎉
2. Modern Native Fonts
Because many major email clients, notably Gmail, do not support loading web fonts, our brand fonts will unfortunately not always be available. However, the good news is that Gmail now has a few of its own fonts built in natively, namely Roboto and Google Sans. Operating systems have also upgraded their system fonts in recent years, each with its own proprietary sans-serif answer to Helvetica. For OSX & iOS, there is San Francisco, for Windows, Segoe UI, and for Android, Roboto.
These fonts are good news for email developers because they expand our options a bit more — these new system fonts typically come in a wider array of weights than your run-of-the-mill system fonts. The only bad news is that serifs are nowhere to be found (however, Georgia is an old standby in the next tier down).
Here’s how our example above would look in Gmail on a desktop using Chrome — note that the headline font has been replaced with Google Sans, and the body font we’re seeing is Georgia:
Google Sans and Georgia rendering in Gmail desktop 👍
3. Ye Olde System Fonts
For older machines and Outlook, we’ll fall back to default system fonts. Some more styling degradation happens here too, like losing the red border and some spacing irregularities, but with some experimentation, we were able to devise an experience that still looks correct even in this limited environment.
Here’s a system font scenario, Outlook 2013 on Windows 7. For fonts we’re back to good old Arial and Georgia, but hey, it’s still legible:
Arial and Georgia rending in Outlook 2013
So that’s the overview of newsletter design and development techniques that will power the next generation of Atlantic newsletters! The flexibility of the modular design system and progressive enhancement techniques will allow the framework and designs to be applied to various newsletters.
Are you connecting with the right people on LinkedIn? Want to build a stronger LinkedIn network?
In this article, you’ll learn how to make strategic LinkedIn connections to grow your influence and your business.
Why Build a Selective LinkedIn Network?
Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a business professional, LinkedIn is the perfect social media platform to grow your business network. The platform is deliberately designed to encourage you to make connection requests to people you already know.
The key to building a powerful LinkedIn network is to choose your connections strategically. Instead of adding anyone and everyone, limiting the number of people you add to your network will ensure you see posts in your feed from people who are truly relevant or of interest to you.
Sales on LinkedIn come when you’ve developed a valuable network and start to engage with that network. A soft-selling approach works best. Sharing content that helps your network, highlighting examples of how you’ve worked with clients, and answering questions about your field of expertise are all good approaches.
How do you add people to your network? You can send out your own connection requests to your colleagues, clients, and local business network. You’ll also receive connection requests from people you may have never interacted with, either on- or offline.
Rather than accepting every request you receive or sending out hundreds of requests a week from your own account, here’s how you can build a genuine network by being selective.
#1: Control How People Can Connect With You on LinkedIn
By default, anyone can send you a connection request on LinkedIn; however, there are ways to control how people can connect with you.
The idea of making money completely independent of any employer is a dream for many. But what skills do you really need to start living with that kind of freedom?
When you’re working for a company, you’re often a single part of a larger machine. You only have to focus on being the best gear or crankshaft that you can be to keep collecting that paycheck.
For many, this is a perfectly fine way of surviving. They occupy their desk, they collect their cash, and they “live” during the hours they can be home.
What does it take to live free?
There are some, though, who want more freedom. They aren’t satisfied being a piece of a machine. They want the flexibility and sense of pride that comes from steering their own life from the ground up.
When you’re running your own operation, you are the machine. That means all of your individual parts (skill sets) have to be up to snuff if you want to be profitable. So what skills do you need to be a business online?
Core skills for the entrepreneur:
Marketing
SEO
Copywriting
Business management
Data management and visualization
That list isn’t so daunting, is it?
Unfortunately, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Each of these bullet points represents a body of knowledge that entire degrees are dedicated to.
Do you really need 5 degrees to be a successful online business?
No! Thankfully not!
In the past, when information was less available, higher education or apprenticeship were the only ways to access this knowledge. Nowadays, you don’t have to waste your time with humanities classes you’re not interested in or fill out a tedious list of requirements all while accruing a debilitating amount of debt.
All the specific skills you need are readily available through online courses.
With online courses, you strategically invest in yourself. Individually they can be pretty pricey, but if you hunt around, you can find relevant bundles that fit all of your needs.
Bought individually, these courses would run you over $1,800. However, for the next few days you can snag lifetime access to all these resources for $39.
Sound too good to be true? It’s not! Course creators often bundle new courses with previously successful ones to boost enrollment in the new course. Their marketing ploy is your opportunity get the gold without breaking the bank.
If you’re interested in freeing yourself from the grind and striking out on your own, consider investing $39 in yourself. Get the full breakdown by clicking the button below!
Its forecasting panel was revamped, and Boolean logic can now be used in queries
LinkedIn added several tools to help marketers on its platform bolster the effectiveness of their targeting.
Director of product management Abhishek Shirvastava said in a blog post detailing the new tools, “You’ve shared that one of your biggest priorities is to reach more of the right audiences at scale. We’ve recently invested a lot in bringing that to life with the introduction of new tools to expand your reach, including lookalike audiences, interest targeting with Bing search insights and audience templates. Today, we’re taking that up a notch by bringing more sophisticated audience targeting and campaign reporting features to Campaign Manager. These tools are designed to help marketers who are looking for more powerful reach and insights for their LinkedIn campaigns.”
The professional network said it improved the campaign forecasting panel in Campaign Manager, enabling marketers to see the makeup of their target audience directly via the dashboard.
The panel can now be customized to bring up specific professional characteristics, such as top industries, years of experience or company sizes.
Shirvastava wrote, “When combined with contacts you’ve uploaded to matched audiences, you can be sure that you’re not only serving ads to the specific prospects you’re trying to reach, but that you’ll have the demographic insights to deliver the content and creative mix that will resonate with them.”
LinkedIn also added targeting using Boolean logic, or using “and/or” in queries, at the top of the list, so that marketers can combine profile facets including job function, seniority and titles in a single campaign.
Shirvastava explained, “For example, let’s say you wanted to target people using director seniority and the finance job function. Previously, within a campaign, you could only do so by targeting directors in finance roles. Now, with Boolean targeting, you can use a single campaign to reach people who are directors at any job function, as well as people in finance roles of any seniority. This gives you greater flexibility to determine the kinds of professionals who see your ads.”
A how-to video on Boolean targeting is available here.
Finally, LinkedIn is adding the ability to track measurement insights at the audience level, including leads, Sponsored InMail openings and video ad views.
Shirvastava wrote, “With this data, you can demonstrate to your leadership or partners in the sales org exactly what kinds of professionals are becoming quality leads for your business, or what kinds of audiences are spending time with your video content or reading your Sponsored InMails.”
The updates to audience forecasting and addition of Boolean targeting are available worldwide starting Tuesday, while the new demographic reporting features will be rolled out over the next two weeks.
Google released a major update. They typically don’t announce their updates, but you know when they do, it is going to be big.
And that’s what happened with the most recent update that they announced.
A lot of people saw their traffic drop. And of course, at the same time, people saw their traffic increase because when one site goes down in rankings another site moves up to take its spot.
Can you guess what happened to my traffic?
Well, based on the title of the post you are probably going to guess that it went up.
Now, let’s see what happened to my search traffic.
My overall traffic has already dipped by roughly 6%. When you look at my organic traffic, you can see that it has dropped by 13.39%.
I know what you are thinking… how did you beat Google’s core update when your traffic went down?
What if I told you that I saw this coming and I came up with a solution and contingency strategy in case my organic search traffic would ever drop?
But before I go into that, let me first break down how it all started and then I will get into how I beat Google’s core update.
A new trend
I’ve been doing SEO for a long time… roughly 18 years now.
When I first started, Google algorithm updates still sucked but they were much more simple. For example, you could get hit hard if you built spammy links or if your content was super thin and provided no value.
Over the years, their algorithm has gotten much more complex. Nowadays, it isn’t about if you are breaking the rules or not. Today, it is about optimizing for user experience and doing what’s best for your visitors.
But that in and of itself is never very clear. How do you know that what you are doing is better for a visitor than your competition?
Honestly, you can never be 100% sure. The only one who actually knows is Google. And it is based on whoever it is they decide to work on coding or adjusting their algorithm.
Years ago, I started to notice a new trend with my search traffic.
Look at the graph above, do you see the trend?
And no, my traffic doesn’t just climb up and to the right. There are a lot of dips in there. But, of course, my rankings eventually started to continually climb because I figured out how to adapt to algorithm updates.
On a side note, if you aren’t sure how to adapt to the latest algorithm update, read this. It will teach you how to recover your traffic… assuming you saw a dip. Or if you need extra help, check out my ad agency.
In many cases after an algorithm update, Google continues to fine-tune and tweak the algorithm. And if you saw a dip when you shouldn’t have, you’ll eventually start recovering.
But even then, there was one big issue. Compared to all of the previous years, I started to feel like I didn’t have control as an SEO anymore back in 2017. I could no longer guarantee my success, even if I did everything correctly.
Now, I am not trying to blame Google… they didn’t do anything wrong. Overall, their algorithm is great and relevant. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be using them.
And just like you and me, Google isn’t perfect. They continually adjust and aim to improve. That’s why they do over 3,200 algorithm updates in a year.
But still, even though I love Google, I didn’t like the feeling of being helpless. Because I knew if my traffic took a drastic dip, I would lose a ton of money.
I need that traffic, not only to drive new revenue but, more importantly, to pay my team members. The concept of not being able to pay my team on any given month is scary, especially when your business is bootstrapped.
So what did I do?
I took matters into my own hands
Although I love SEO, and I think I’m pretty decent at it based on my traffic and my track record, I knew I had to come up with another solution that could provide me with sustainable traffic that could still generate leads for my business.
In addition to that, I wanted to find something that wasn’t “paid,” as I was bootstrapping. Just like how SEO was starting to have more ups and downs compared to what I’ve seen in my 18-year career, I knew the cost at paid ads would continually rise.
Just look at Google’s ad revenue. They have some ups and downs every quarter but the overall trend is up and to the right.
In other words, advertising will continually get more expensive over time.
I didn’t want to rely on a channel that would cost me more next year and the year after because it could get so expensive that I may not be able to profitably leverage it in the future.
So, what did I do?
I went on a hunt to figure out a way to get direct, referral, and organic traffic that didn’t rely on any algorithm updates. (I will explain what I mean by organic traffic in a bit.)
I went on my mission
With the help of my buddy, Andrew Dumont, I went searching for websites that continually received good traffic even after algorithm updates.
Here were the criteria that we were looking for:
Sites that weren’t reliant on Google traffic
Sites that didn’t need to continually produce more content to get more traffic
Sites that weren’t popular due to social media traffic (we both saw social traffic dying)
Sites that didn’t leverage paid ads in the past or present
Sites that didn’t leverage marketing
In essence, we were looking for sites that were popular because people naturally liked them. Our intentions at first weren’t to necessarily buy any of these sites. Instead, we were trying to figure out how to naturally become popular so we could replicate it.
Do you know what we figured out?
I’ll give you a hint.
Think of it this way: Google doesn’t get the majority of their traffic from SEO. And Facebook doesn’t get their traffic because they rank everywhere on Google or that people share Facebook.com on the social web.
Do you know how they are naturally popular?
It comes down to building a good product.
That was my aha! moment. Why continually crank out thousands of pieces of content, which isn’t scalable and is a pain as you eventually have to update your old content, when I could just build a product?
That’s when Andrew and I stumbled upon Ubersuggest.
It used to be a simple tool that just showed you Google Suggest results based on any query.
Before I took it over, it was generating 117,425 unique visitors per month and had 38,700 backlinks from 8,490 referring domains.
All of this was natural. The original founder didn’t do any marketing. He just built a product and it naturally spread.
The tool did, however, have roughly 43% of its traffic coming from organic search. Now, can you guess what keyword it was?
The term was “Ubersuggest”.
In other words, its organic traffic mainly came from its own brand, which isn’t really reliant on SEO or affected by Google algorithm updates. That’s also what I meant when I talked about organic traffic that wasn’t reliant on Google.
Now since then I’ve gone a bit crazy with Ubersuggest and released loads of new features… from daily rank tracking to a domain analysis and site audit report to a content ideas report and backlinks report.
In other words, I’ve been making it a robust SEO tool that has everything you need and is easy to use.
It’s been so effective that the traffic on Ubersuggest went from 117,425 unique visitors to a whopping 651,436 unique visitors that generates 2,357,927 visits and 13,582,999 pageviews per month.
Best of all, the users are sticky, meaning the average Ubersuggest user spends over 26 minutes on the application each month. This means that they are engaged and will likely to convert into customers.
As I get more aggressive with my Ubersuggest funnel and start collecting leads from it, I expect to receive many more emails like that.
And over the years, I expect the traffic to continually grow.
Best of all, do you know what happens to the traffic on Ubersuggest when my site gets hit by a Google algorithm update or when my content stops going viral on Facebook?
It continually goes up and to the right.
Now, unless you dump a ton of money and time into replicating what I am doing with Ubersuggest, but for your industry, you won’t generate the results I am generating.
As my mom says, I’m kind of crazy…
But that doesn’t mean you can’t do well on a budget.
Back in 2013, I did a test where I released a tool on my old blog Quick Sprout. It was an SEO tool that wasn’t too great and honestly, I probably spent too much money on it.
Here were the stats for the first 4 days of releasing the tool:
Day #1: 8,462 people ran 10,766 URLs
Day #2: 5,685 people ran 7,241 URLs
Day #3: 1,758 people ran 2,264 URLs
Day #4: 1,842 people ran 2,291 URLs
Even after the launch traffic died down, still 1,000+ people per day used the tool. And, over time, it actually went up to over 2,000.
It was at that point in my career, I realized that people love tools.
I know what you are thinking though… how do you do this on a budget, right?
How to build tools without hiring developers or spending lots of money
What’s silly is, and I wish I knew this before I built my first tool on Quick Sprout back in the day, there are tools that already exist for every industry.
You don’t have to create something new or hire some expensive developers. You can just use an existing tool on the market.
And if you want to go crazy like me, you can start adding multiple tools to your site… just like how I have an A/B testing calculator.
So how do you add tools without breaking the bank?
You buy them from sites like Code Canyon. From $2 to $50, you can find tools on just about anything. For example, if I wanted an SEO tool, Code Canyon has a ton to choose from. Just look at this one.
Not a bad looking tool that you can have on your website for just $40. You don’t have to pay monthly fees and you don’t need a developer… it’s easy to install and it doesn’t cost much in the grand scheme of things.
And here is the crazy thing: The $40 SEO tool has more features than the Quick Sprout one I built, has a better overall design, and it is .1% the cost.
Only if I knew that before I built it years ago. :/
Look, there are tools out there for every industry. From mortgage calculators to calorie counters to a parking spot finder and even video games that you can add to your site and make your own.
In other words, you don’t have to build something from scratch. There are tools for every industry that already exists and you can buy them for pennies on the dollar.
Conclusion
I love SEO and always will. Heck, even though many SEOs hate how Google does algorithm updates, that doesn’t bother me either… I love Google and they have built a great product.
But if you want to continually do well, you can’t rely on one marketing channel. You need to take an omnichannel approach and leverage as many as possible.
That way, when one goes down, you are still generating traffic.
Now if you want to do really well, think about most of the large companies out there. You don’t build a billion-dollar business from SEO, paid ads, or any other form of marketing. You first need to build an amazing product or service.
So, consider adding tools to your site, the data shows it is more effective than content marketing and it is more scalable.
Sure you probably won’t achieve the results I achieved with Ubersuggest, but you can achieve the results I had with Quick Sprout. And you can achieve better results than what you are currently getting from content marketing.
He is the co-founder of Neil Patel Digital. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies. Neil is a New York Times bestselling author and was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations.
Social media has become a hub of influence on many consumers’ shopping. Boomers, though, have been wary of this, whether via ads, postings by fellow consumers or the cajolery of “influencers.”
According to February 2019 polling by Oracle, social media ads inspire little credence from boomers. Fewer than one in 10 internet users ages 55 to 75 said they trust social ads for recommendations when shopping.
“It’s not just an aversion to straight-out advertising. Influencers are conspicuously uninfluential, too,” said Mark Dolliver, principal analyst at eMarketer and author of our latest report, “US Boomers 2019: ‘Aging in Place’ in Multiple Aspects of Life.”
In Oracle’s polling, 96% of boomers (along with 90% of Xers and 79% of millennials) agreed that they “distrust influencers and bloggers.” Meanwhile, ThinkNow Research’s April 2019 survey found a mere 9% of 55- to 64-year-olds (vs. about four in 10 millennials) saying they heed what social media influencers recommend.
Boomers are also less likely than younger consumers to report being influenced by other peoples’ opinions online. In Oracle’s survey, 14% of boomers—vs. 22% of Xers and 28% of millennials—said they trust the recommendations of “fellow consumers online.” Similarly, a Charles Schwab survey in February 2019 found boomers about one-third as likely as millennials (16% vs. 49%) to say they are “likely to spend on experiences because of something they saw on social media.”
According to Joe Beier, executive vice president of GfK, there’s an important distinction between boomer attitudes toward “expert reviews”—those given by authoritative sources with credentials in a subject area—and reviews by everyday users. Boomers are less likely than younger people to find value in the latter. “What does Bill next door know that’s really going to enlighten me?” as Beier put it. But they do pay attention to the expert reviews. “Boomers have much more of an old-school view, ‘Ok, the experts are the ones that know what’s going on. And therefore they’re the ones I’m going to trust and look to help inform my decision.’ … If it’s just more of an anonymous pool of user reviews, there’s a certain skepticism about that,” he said.
While marketers view social media as a venue where they can bond with consumers, many boomers regard it as a place where companies invade their privacy. In March-April 2019 polling by CivicScience for the Internet Innovation Alliance, 79% of respondents 55 and older disagreed (62% “strongly”) with the statement, “I’m OK with online tech/social media companies that collect and use my personal data because it makes my online searches, advertisements and content more relevant to me.”
Few boomers are eager about social commerce. In the eMarketer/Bizrate Insights polling, about half of 55- to 65-year-olds said either that they haven’t made purchases via social and are uninterested in doing so (49%) or don’t know what that is (3%). Just 7% reported using it regularly.
