The importance of engaging content

Content marketing is quickly becoming one of the most important factors in today's digital landscape. If you're not creating content, you're not doing digital marketing. With digital marketing channels so closely integrated, it's important that customers and prospects get the answers they're looking for.

Let's take a look at the benefits on engaging content in three important areas:

Social Media

Engaging content in social media should be a given. When it comes to social it's all about the content and not the channel (Facebook vs. Twitter vs. Pinterest etc.). Think of content as social currency and the better the currency, the more likely it's going to be shared. Your customers should be your biggest brand ambassadors and you must give them tools (great content) to be able to evangelize for you.

When you are developing your social content strategy keep in mind that you don't need different content for each social channel, but you can repurpose content to make your budget stretch further.

Search

It's likely that most of the traffic to your site is going to come from organic search. Engaging content will get shared and, more importantly, linked to so it shows up in search results. Knowing the keywords that are important to your company should be strategically inserted. Content that educates and interests your customers and validates your industry knowledge are critical.

An article on Social Media Examiner titled "How Search, Social Media and Content Accelerate Your Business" that talks about this specific topic. One of our favorite lines in there is:

You must publish, you must tell stories and you must become interesting to your customers so that they find, like and trust you.

That has never been more true because creating great content and ranking high in search will lead to an increase in...

Customer Acquisition

It's important to know which channels are driving the most direct conversions, but it's also to know which channels are assisting in those conversions. For example, let's say most people may convert the most when they come directly from paid search, but they may need 4 visits to your site before converting. It's critical to know where people are coming from the three times before they convert.

Search and social media may not be the last touch for someone before they decide to purchase, but they will most certainly play a role in the decision making process. You need to be where your customers are (Social) and show up when they have questions (Search).

There's a new tool in Google Analytics called "Multi-Channel Funnels" and it shows the tops paths people take before they make a conversion. 

Keep an eye on where people are coming from so you can make strategic decisions on where to be and where to put your great content. 

3 easy steps to determine your campaign effectiveness

Your website is the digital hub of your online marketing initiatives. It's the place where you educate, engage, sell and grow your brand online. In addition to your website you have a strong social media presence, some PR and some paid advertising that is driving traffic. But do you know which one of those is helping - or hurting - you achieve your objectives?

You need to pay attention to the numbers that are helping to drive your business. Not the "feel good" or "Vanity metrics". KISSmetrics defines vanity metrics simply and perfectly:

Vanity metrics are all those data points that make us feel good if they go up but don’t help us make decisions. 

Here are three steps to help you determine what is working and increase effectiveness:

Step 1: Understand where all your traffic is coming from

In Google Analytics, click "Traffic" and then "All Traffic". This gives you a detailed snapshot as to where people are coming to your site from. 

 

Be sure that you are tagging your links properly so you can each traffic source is getting the credit it should (and so you can see if that traffic source is driving people who are doing something on your site).

Step 2: Use advanced segments to gain insights

Now that you know where your visitors are coming from, it's time to see what the people that come from each of those sources are doing. Create an advance segment in Google Analytics so you see what content people, from social media for example, are interested in.

If you are running a few different social media campaigns, drill down to the campaign level (i.e. Twitter or Facebook) to get further insights such as "Which traffic drivers have high bounce rates?" or "Where is the majority of purchases coming from?" or "What content are these people most interested in?" 

This will help you more effectively engage with people on these sites if you know what they're interested in.

Step 3: Test, optimize and kill campaigns (if necessary)

Now that you know what is and is not working, it's time to optimize. Data doesn't lie, and an much as you like linking your Twitter to your Facebook account for status updates, it's not driving any incremental traffic. It's probably time for a switch in strategy. Or maybe it's time to double down on email because now you know it drove 25% more sales than your PR did.

Also utilizing simple and effective A/B testing tools such as Google Website Optimizer, Unbounce or KISSmetrics will allow you to test different ideas you have. Test copy, images, landing pages in different channels to see what helps your business.

These are three simple steps that help determine campaign effectiveness and can help prioritize your budget.

Let us know in the comments what are other useful tips and tricks you use. 

PS - You might want to follow us on Twitter. We cool cool stuff.

Three things that help customer acquisition and smart decisions

Image: ParkOurGenerations.com

Quick data? Yes. Learnings overnight? Not really.

When running a PPC, SEO or even a content marketing campaign it's always exciting to log on to Google Analytics or into Mail Chimp and see how a particular email performed or how many clickcs a specific ad group received. It's also great when you can even get some free advertising to get metrics.

However, we must remember that data can come quickly, but learnings take time. Data can make it easier to decide on whether which headline works better (i.e. using A/B testing), but to truly understand the "why" of customer behavior, gain a true insight or to recognize a trend it's important to have a little patience. 

Example

Let's say we start with a Google Adwords campaign with a $200 budget over a week. While we can get some learnings in order to optimize or perfect a user experience in a week (or even less), what we can't see in this one week timeframe are three things that can help with customer acquisition and help drive smarter, more strategic decisions. 

• Trend - Over the past X weeks we seem to get the most clicks on Thursday
• Insight - Here's why we get the most clicks on Thursdays
• Strategy - Now that we know the insight and why people click, here's how we're going to optimize and increase clicks on the other days of the week

We believe that small data is the difference between a successful company and company that is not quite there yet. So a little patience, a tiny bit more investment and some smart thinking can make something huge.

The four key metrics every entrepreneur must know

We all know how important a low customer acquisition cost (CAC) can have a huge impact on your business. The cheaper you can get new customers to pay you, the more profitable you are. In the customer acquistion and during the growth period keeping an eye on this metric can be the lifeblood of your company.

However, there are three other metrics that you need to be monitored just as closely to sustain a long-term business. These metrics are:

• Customer lifetime value (LTV)
• Churn/retention rate
• Net promoter score (NPS)

Let's explore these metrics in more detail

Customer lifetime value (LTV)

The lifetime value of a customer is determining how much a customer will pay over over their lifetime or calculating how much each customer is worth. This is important to understand so is can help you set a goal for the customer acquisition cost.

As a good rule of thumb your CAC should be less than a third of a customer's LTV. For example, if your LTV is $30 then you should shoot for a CAC goal of around $10.

Churn/retention rate

The churn rate tells you what percentage of people stop being your customers. If you have a monthly subscription business model and your churn rate is high, that means you will have to spend more money to get new customers. The more you can retain your customers the more profitable you will be because your spend will be down.

Net promoter score (NPS)

The net promoter score is defined as:

"NPS is based on the fundamental perspective that every company's customers can be divided into three categories: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors. By asking one simple question — How likely is it that you would recommend [Company X] to a friend or colleague?" - Netpromoter.com

Asking this one question will allow you to understand how satisfied people are will your service or product and is product that can be linked to growth and loyalty. The higher your NPC is the better your chances are that you customers are happy and you are growing your business organically (i.e. not paying for new customers).

So what?

The reason why these numbers are so important is because these are the numbers potential investors and partners are going to ask you. These numbers indicate how well you're performing and can be a litmus test to how you are as an entrepreneur.