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Are you mindful of your customer's experience after they become a lead? It's easy to fall in the same old rut of newsletters, invoices, and sales emails, but for a truly exceptional customer experience that improves their retention and love for your brand, you need to go above and beyond. In this week's episode of Whiteboard Friday, the ever-insightful Dana DiTomaso shares three big things you can start doing today that will immensely better your customer experience and make earning those leads worthwhile.
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Hi, Moz fans. My name is Dana DiTomaso. I'm the President and partner of Kick Point, and today I'm going to talk to you about building better customer experiences. I know that in marketing a lot of our jobs revolve around getting leads and more leads and why can't we have all of the leads.
The typical customer experience:But in reality, the other half of our job should be making sure that those leads are taken care of when they become customers. This is especially important if you don't have, say, a customer care department. If you do have a customer care department, really you should be interlocking with what they do, because typically what happens, when you're working with a customer, is that after the sale, they usually get surveys.
"How did we do? Please rate us on a scale of 1 to 10," which is an enormous scale and kind of useless. You're a 4, or you're an 8, or you're a 6. Like what actually differentiates that, and how are people choosing that?
- InvoicesThen invoices, like obviously important because you have to bill people, particularly if you have a big, expensive product or you're a SaaS business. But those invoices are sometimes kind of impersonal, weird, and maybe not great.
- NewslettersMaybe you have a newsletter. That's awesome. But is the newsletter focused on sales? One of the things that we see a lot is, for example, if somebody clicks a link in the newsletter to get to your website, maybe you've written a blog post, and then they see a great big popup to sign up for our product. Well, you're already a customer, so you shouldn't be seeing that popup anymore.
What we've seen on other sites, like Help Scout actually does a great job of this, is that they have a parameter of newsletter at the end of any URLs they put in their newsletter, and then the popups are suppressed because you're already in the newsletter so you shouldn't see a popup encouraging you to sign up or join the newsletter, which is kind of a crappy experience.
- Sales emailsThen the last thing are sales emails. This is my personal favorite, and this can really be avoided if you go into account-based marketing automation instead of personal-based marketing automation.
We had a situation where I was a customer of the hosting company. It was in my name that we've signed up for all of our clients, and then one of our developers created a new account because she needed to access something. Then immediately the sales emails started, not realizing we're at the same domain. We're already a customer. They probably shouldn't have been doing the hard sale on her. We've had this happen again and again.
So just really make sure that you're not sending your customers or people who work at the same company as your customers sales emails. That's a really cruddy customer experience. It makes it look like you don't know what's going on. It really can destroy trust.
Tips for an improved customer experienceSo instead, here are some extra things that you can do. I mean fix some of these things if maybe they're not working well. But here are some other things you can do to really make sure your customers know that you love them and you would like them to keep paying you money forever.
1. Follow them on social mediaSo the first thing is following them on social. So what I really like to do is use a tool such as FullContact. You can take everyone's email addresses, run them through FullContact, and it will come back to you and say, "Here are the social accounts that this person has." Then you go on Twitter and you follow all of these people for example. Or if you don't want to follow them, you can make a list, a hidden list with all of their social accounts in there.
Then you can see what they share. A tool like Nuzzel, N-U-Z-Z for Americans, zed zed for Canadians, N-U-Z-Z-E-L is a great tool where you can say, "Tell me all the things that the people I follow on social or the things that this particular list of people on social what they share and what they're engaged in." Then you can see what your customers are really interested in, which can give you a good sense of what kinds things should we be talking about.
A company that does this really well is InVision, which is the app that allows you to share prototypes with clients, particularly design prototypes. So they have a blog, and a lot of that blog content is incredibly useful. They're clearly paying attention to their customers and the kinds of things they're sharing based on how they build their blog content. So then find out if you can help and really think about how I can help these customers through the things that they share, through the questions that they're asking.
Then make sure to watch unbranded mentions too. It's not particularly hard to monitor a specific list of people and see if they tweet things like, "I really hate my (insert what you are)right now," for example. Then you can head that off at the pass maybe because you know that this was this customer. "Oh, they just had a bad experience. Let's see what we can do to fix it,"without being like, "Hey, we were watching your every move on Twitter.Here's something we can do to fix it."
Maybe not quite that creepy, but the idea is trying to follow these people and watch for those unbranded mentions so you can head off a potential angry customer or a customer who is about to leave off at the pass. Way cheaper to keep an existing customer than get a new one.
2. Post-sale monitoringSo the next thing is post-sale monitoring. So what I would like you to do is create a fake customer. If you have lots of sales personas, create a fake customer that is each of those personas, and then that customer should get all the emails, invoices, everything else that a regular customer that fits that persona group should get.
Then take a look at those accounts. Are you awesome, or are you super annoying? Do you hear nothing for a year, except for invoices, and then, "Hey, do you want to renew?" How is that conversation going between you and that customer? So really try to pay attention to that. It depends on your organization if you want to tell people that this is what's happening, but you really want to make sure that that customer isn't receiving preferential treatment.
So you want to make sure that it's kind of not obvious to people that this is the fake customer so they're like, "Oh, well, we're going to be extra nice to the fake customer." They should be getting exactly the same stuff that any of your other customers get. This is extremely useful for you.
3. Better contentThen the third thing is better content. I think, in general, any organization should reward content differently than we do currently.
Right now, we have a huge focus on new content, new content, new content all the time, when in reality, some of your best-performing posts might be old content and maybe you should go back and update them. So what we like to tell people about is the Microsoft model of rewarding. They've used this to reward their employees, and part of it isn't just new stuff. It's old stuff too. So the way that it works is 33% is what they personally have produced.
So this would be new content, for example. Then 33% is what they've shared. So think about for example on Slack if somebody shares something really useful, that's great. They would be rewarded for that. But think about, for example, what you can share with your customers and how that can be rewarding, even if you didn't write it, or you can create a roundup, or you can put it in your newsletter.
Like what can you do to bring value to those customers? Then the last 33% is what they shared that others produced. So is there a way that you can amplify other voices in your organization and make sure that that content is getting out there? Certainly in marketing, and especially if you're in a large organization, maybe you're really siloed, maybe you're an SEO and you don't even talk to the paid people, there's cool stuff happening across the entire organization.
A lot of what you can bring is taking that stuff that others have produced, maybe you need to turn it into something that is easy to share on social media, or you need to turn it into a blog post or a video, like Whiteboard Friday, whatever is going to work for you, and think about how you can amplify that and get it out to your customers, because it isn't just marketing messages that customers should be seeing.
They should be seeing all kinds of messages across your organization, because when a customer gives you money, it isn't just because your marketing message was great. It's because they believe in the thing that you are giving them. So by reinforcing that belief through the types of content that you create, that you share, that you find that other people share, that you shared out to your customers, a lot of sharing, you can certainly improve that relationship with your customers and really turn just your average, run-of-the-mill customer into an actual raving fan, because not only will they stay longer, it's so much cheaper to keep an existing customer than get a new one, but they'll refer people to you, which is also a lot easier than buying a lot of ads or spending a ton of money and effort on SEO.
Thanks!
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Do you want to reach more prospects on LinkedIn? Interested in using LinkedIn video ads to promote your products and services? In this article, you’ll learn how to plan and execute your first LinkedIn video ad campaign. #1: Define Your Target Audiences The first step is to determine what audiences you want to target with
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I’ve been to a lot of content marketing conferences, and I finally got to see one from the inside out.
Last week, the Convince & Convert team partnered with our friends at Uberflip to produce and host CONEX: The Content Experience.
750 content marketers joined us in Toronto, including many Convince & Convert readers, clients, and fans. Thank you!
It was a fantastic experience, and I can’t wait for the next edition of CONEX: The Content Experience (which will be August 20-22, 2019)
I learned a lot about hosting and co-producing a content marketing conference, as well as some new ideas from our lineup of amazing speakers. But instead of just passing along my own recollections and notes, I thought it would be more interesting to provide my favorite tweets from CONEX, so you can see what real attendees thought of each speaker. Tweets are presented in chronological order.
IMPORTANT NOTE: You can watch the livestream of the event here: https://contentexperience.uberflip.com/live-stream-2018/
No More Random Acts of ContentKarine Bengualid picked this up from our very own Anna Hrach (a strategist here at C&C) who ran an outstanding pre-conference workshop on how to create the ultimate editorial calendar. (note: We will be offering this material as an online course this Fall).
Content Success is About Remixing the ContentNo more random acts of content! #conex @annabananahrach @convince @Uberflip
— Karine Bengualid (@KarineBen) August 20, 2018
The theme of the CONEX content marketing conference was “Remix” and several speakers talked about repackaging content, and merchandising it better for content consumers. This trend was kicked off by Uberflip CMO and co-founder Randy Frisch, in his opening keynote. Kevin Webb tweeted this concept from Randy’s talk.
Viral Means NothingMarketing’s ability to remix the right content makes or breaks the content experience @randyfrisch #conex pic.twitter.com/7Od8LGJIfv
— Kevin Webb (@KevinWebb) August 21, 2018
My old pal Scott Stratten brought some thunder to the opening keynote and indicted the entire notion of trying to go viral with content marketing and social media. Yvonne Tsui tweeted one of many quotable Stratten-isms. (listen to Scott on the Social Pros podcast)
The Best Content Marketing Experiences Have 4 IngredientsVanity viral aka the great social reach around. It feels good, it means nothing. If it doesn’t move the needle it doesn’t matter. @unmarketing #ConEx #contentmarketing
— Yvonne Tsui (@life_of_Y) August 21, 2018
A highly relevant presentation from Nate Skinner of Pardot was next up on the agenda. I hadn’t heard this framework from Nate before, and I really liked his construct. So did Alex Fasken, who also grabbed a photo of the accompanying slide.
Behavior Change Starts with Perception“The best experiences have 4 ingredients: entertainment, education, escapism and aesthetic” @renniksn @Uberflip #Conex pic.twitter.com/yaQJqL12Jd
— Alex F (@alexfasken) August 21, 2018
Tamsen Webster is on fire. She’s a content coach and idea whisperer who’s Red Thread system is being used by more and more executives and professional speakers to add clarity to their messaging. (disclosure: she’s worked with me) Tamsen brought her ideas to the stage at CONEX too and had a big impact on Madison Harbin and many other attendees.
Content Is Critical at All Stages“You can’t change WHAT people do without changing HOW they see it”. Great session @tamadear #CONEX pic.twitter.com/qHRvOXa2uA
— Madison Harbin (@Mads_Harbs) August 21, 2018
As I mentioned in my introduction of him (I was the emcee at CONEX: The Content Experience) Carlos Abler of 3M may be the smartest bald guy I know. Or perhaps he’s the smart guy with the least hair. Either way, he knows a LOT about content. He brought a ton to the stage at the event, especially his ideas about content at every stage of the customer journey. Stephanie Totty tweeted about it.
Honest and Transparent Content Creates Customers“There is never a touch point in the customer experience when content is not involved – it’s a complex journey and relationship that requires thoughtful setup.” @carlos_abler #conex
— Stephanie Totty (@Tottums) August 21, 2018
This may be the quintessential quote from a Marcus Sheridan presentation. Marcus preached the gospel of no b.s. content at CONEX, and had the audience transfixed, as usual. Nice .gif usage here from Katrina Couto! (Listen to Marcus on the Social Pros podcast)
Time to Play the Feud“Honest and transparent content is the greatest sales and trust-building tool in the world.” – Marcus Sheridan, @TheSalesLion#CONEX @Uberflip pic.twitter.com/TRnj8ow8Vt
— Katrina Couto (@KatrinaMktg) August 21, 2018
One of the highlights of our particular content marketing conference is The Content Feud, which closes out day one. Inspired by Family Feud, we pit content marketing strategists against content marketing practitioners in a five-round quiz show, with me as the host. In a nail-biter that went down to the last question, the strategists (captained by Ann Handley) retained their title.
Customer Retention is the New MarketingFun way to keep up w/ marketing trends, content, digital & more at @Uberflip’s Content Feud #conex pic.twitter.com/K7j7toKBx7
— Lara Martinez (@LAMKVH) August 21, 2018
As anticipated, a tremendous day two opening keynote from Joey Coleman, whose book “Never Lose a Customer Again” may be my favorite business book so far this year. Joey also co-hosts the awesome ExperienceThis! show that we used to produce via Convince & Convert Media. Thinking through retention-based content resonated with Melanie Persaud. (Listen to Joey on the Social Pros podcast)
Social Video Isn’t TVCustomer retention! The next frontier in marketing? “We’re not just here for you in the beginning, we’re here for you all the way through.” #conex @thejoeycoleman pic.twitter.com/MPvOFgQ5BJ
— Melanie Persaud (@Melanie_Per) August 22, 2018
The delightful Caitlin Angeloff runs global social at Docusign and brought a supremely relevant and tactical presentation about social video, especially Facebook Live, to the CONEX event. Demand Gen Report tweeted one of Caitlin’s key points, about the real-time interactivity of social video. (Listen to Caitlin on the Social Pros podcast)
Engage Buyers on Their Terms, Not Yours“Social video should NOT be a mistake for TV. Television doesn’t let you interact with your audience. Facebook does.” –@caitlinangeloff of @DocuSign #conex pic.twitter.com/wES4txgz9W
— Demand Gen Report (@DG_Report) August 22, 2018
Laura Ramos from Forrester delivered tremendous advice rooted in new research. Her talk centered on empathetic content: being prospect/buyer focused instead of company focused. Brandi Smith grabbed this photo and Tweet.
Create More Content Without Actually Creating More ContentGreat advice @lauraramos from @forrester. Engage buyers on their terms, not yours. Provide the right level of access and personalization based on where they are in the buyers journey #conex pic.twitter.com/nh4I5v6uGR
— Brandi Smith (@brandismith01) August 22, 2018
Corinne Sklar is the super smart CMO of Bluewolf, and shared her concept of “Plucking the Chicken” at CONEX. What she means by that is that if you have a piece of content, if you keep plucking, you can create several other iterations and version of that content, boosting content efficiency. We call that “atomization” here at C&C, but I like a good chicken metaphor, as does Deirdre Buckingham (who won a return trip to next year’s CONEX during the event).
Don’t be Clever. Be VulnerableHow can we extend our content and keep it going… without creating MORE content? #PluckTheChicken
@csklar #Conex pic.twitter.com/mmpPltZTyw
— Deirdre Buckingham (@dlaubuck) August 22, 2018
I wore a Buzz Lightyear outfit when I introduced Matthew Luhn, a legendary storyteller from Pixar.
A post shared by Jay Baer (@jaybaer) on Aug 22, 2018 at 9:13am PDT
With that less-than-ordinary lead-in, Matthew took the stage at CONEX and blew us away with heart and poignancy. His advice that content marketers are trying to get too cute was spot-on. His talk really resonated, including with Function 1, who grabbed this great photo in their tweet.
Ignoring Video is the Avoided Handshake of 2018Storytelling advice from Pixar’s @matthewluhn: “Don’t be clever. Be vulnerable and honest.” #ConEx pic.twitter.com/Q7bXAzmZ8b
— Function1 (@function1corp) August 22, 2018
Amy Landino brought a warm, story-filled approach to her presentation on the importance of video content. She emphasized video’s ability to build community, and also shared her own formula for creating authority videos. Super useful! Dionne Mischler grabbed this photo from the balcony at the Royal Conservatory of Music, in Toronto. (Listen to Amy on the Social Pros podcast)
Bridge the Curiosity Gap to Create Content Success“Ignoring video is the avoided handshake of 2018.” Schmittastic #conex pic.twitter.com/dSN3MXSHUs
— Dionne Mischler (@MischlerDionne) August 22, 2018
The legendary Andrew Davis delivered a hilarious and important keynote presentation about curiosity and delayed gratification, poking holes in the “audience is too distracted” excuse for poor content performance. Watch this one on the live stream: you’ll be glad you did! Mo Waja was on the scene to capture this tweet.
Mobile isn’t for Serving Content it’s for UtilityEarning attention means bridging the Curiosity Gap between what your audience knows and what they want to know. @DrewDavisHere #Conex pic.twitter.com/V7E81dE1HB
— Mo Waja (@iammowaja) August 22, 2018
Bonin Bough is the former head of digital of Pepsico and the former global head of media and digital for Mondelez. Bonin closed out Conex: The Content Experience with a roaring keynote that reminded attendees that mobile can (and should) do a lot more than it’s doing today, in most cases. Maya Chendke was paying close attention!
Mobile isn’t a medium to serve content, it should create utility. @boughb talking through crazy #mobile realities. #CONEX #mobilemarketing #contentmarketing
— Maya Chendke (@mayachendke) August 22, 2018
That’s a wrap. 14 lessons from our content marketing conference. You may have your own takeaways. Watch the on-demand livestream and see for yourself. It’s free!
Huge thanks to everyone at Convince & Convert and Uberflip for their work on the event. And massive thanks to all the speakers, sponsors, and attendees.
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Do you market to multiple buyer personas? Wondering how to be sure you’re marketing to each audience segment in the right way? In this article, you’ll learn how to research buyer personas to reveal preferences and behaviors that will help you deliver successful, targeted social media campaigns. How Researching Buyer Personas Improves Marketing Campaigns The
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Let me tell you a story.
It begins with me in a hotel room halfway across the country, trying to figure out how I'm going to land a contract from a fantastic new lead, worth annually $250,000. We weren't in over our heads by any measure, but the potential client was definitely looking at what most would call "enterprise" solutions and we weren't exactly "enterprise."
Could we meet their needs? Hell yes we could — better than our enterprise competitors — but there's a saying that "no one ever got fired for hiring IBM"; in other words, it's always safe to go with the big guys. We weren't an IBM, so I knew that by reputation alone we were in trouble. The RFP was dense, but like most SEO gigs, there wasn't much in the way of opportunity to really differentiate ourselves from our competitors. It would be another "anything they can do, we can do better" meeting where we grasp for reasons why we were better. In an industry where so many of our best clients require NDAs that prevent us from producing really good case studies, how could I prove we were up to the task?
In less than 12 hours we would be meeting with the potential client and I needed to prove to them that we could do something that our competitors couldn't. In the world of SEO, link building is street cred. Nothing gets the attention of a client faster than a great link. I knew what I needed to do. I needed to land a killer backlink, completely white-hat, with no new content strategy, no budget, and no time. I needed to walk in the door with more than just a proposal — I needed to walk in the door with proof.
I've been around the block a few times when it comes to link building, so I wasn't at a loss when it came to ideas or strategies we could pitch, but what strategy might actually land a link in the next few hours? I started running prospecting software left and right — all the tools of the trade I had at my disposal — but imagine my surprise when the perfect opportunity popped up right in little old Moz's Open Site Explorer Link Intersect tool. To be honest, I hadn't used the tool in ages. We had built our own prospecting software on APIs, but the perfect link just popped up after adding in a few of their competitors on the off chance that there might be an opportunity or two.
There it was:
I immediately submitted a request and began the refresh game, hoping the repo was being actively monitored. By the next morning, we had ourselves a link! Not just any link, but despite the client having over 50,000 root linking domains, this was now the 15th best link to their site. You can imagine me anxiously awaiting the part of the meeting where we discussed the various reasons why our services were superior to that of our competitors, and then proceeded to demonstrate that superiority with an amazing white-hat backlink acquired just hours before.
The quarter-million-dollar contract was ours.
Link Intersect: An undervalued link building techniqueBacklink intersect is one of the oldest link building techniques in our industry. The methodology is simple. Take a list of your competitors and identify the backlinks pointing to their sites. Compare those lists to find pages that overlap. Pages which link to two or more of your competitors are potentially resource pages that would be interested in linking to your site as well. You then examine these sites and do outreach to determine which ones are worth contacting to try and get a backlink.
Let's walk through a simple example using Moz's Link Intersect tool.
Getting startedWe start on the Link Intersect page of Moz's new Link Explorer. While we had Link Intersect in the old Open Site Explorer, you're going to to want to use our new Link Intersect, which is built from our giant index of 30 trillion links and is far more powerful.
For our example here, I've chosen a random gardening company in Durham, North Carolina called Garden Environments. The website has a Domain Authority of 17 with 38 root linking domains.
We can go ahead and copy-paste the domain into "Discover Link Opportunities for this URL" at the top of the Link Intersect page. If you notice, we have the choice of "Root Domain, Subdomain, or Exact Page":
I almost always choose "root domain" because I tend to be promoting a site as a whole and am not interested in acquiring links to pages on the site from other sites that already link somewhere else on the site. That is to say, by choosing "root domain," any site that links to any page on your site will be excluded from the prospecting list. Of course, this might not be right for your situation. If you have a hosted blog on a subdomain or a hosted page on a site, you will want to choose subdomain or exact page to make sure you rule out the right backlinks.
You also have the ability to choose whether we report back to you root linking domains or Backlinks. This is really important and I'll explain why.
Depending on your link building campaign, you'll want to vary your choice here. Let's say you're looking for resource pages that you can list your website on. If that's the case, you will want to choose "pages." The Link Intersect tool will then prioritize pages that have links to multiple competitors on them, which are likely to be resource pages you can target for your campaign. Now, let's say you would rather find publishers that talk about your competitors and are less concerned about them linking from the same page. You want to find sites that have linked to multiple competitors, not pages. In that case, you would choose "domains." The system will then return the domains that have links to multiple competitors and give you example pages, but you wont be limited only to pages with multiple competitors on them.
In this example, I'm looking for resource pages, so I chose "pages" rather than domains.
Choosing your competitor sitesA common mistake made at this point is to choose exact competitors. Link builders will often copy and paste a list of their biggest competitors and cross their fingers for decent results. What you really want are the best link pages and domains in your industry — not necessarily your competitors.
In this example I chose the gardening page on a local university, a few North Carolina gardening and wildflower associations, and a popular page that lists nurseries. Notice that you can choose subdomain, domain, or exact page as well for each of these competitor URLs. I recommend choosing the broadest category (domain being broadest, exact page being narrowest) that is relevant to your industry. If the whole site is relevant, go ahead and choose "domain."
The results returned will prioritize pages that link to multiple competitors and have a high Domain Authority. Unlike some of our competitors' tools, if you put in a competitor that doesn't have many backlinks, it won't cause the whole report to fail. We list all the intersections of links, starting with the most and narrowing down to the fewest. Even though the nurseries website doesn't provide any intersections, we still get back great results!
Now we have some really great opportunities, but at this point you have two choices. If you really prefer, you can just export the opportunities to CSV like any other tool on the market, but I prefer to go ahead and move everything over into a Link Tracking List.
By moving everything into a link list, we're going to be able to track link acquisition over time (once we begin reaching out to these sites for backlinks) and we can also sort by other metrics, leave notes, and easily remove opportunities that don't look fruitful.
What did we find?Remember, we started off with a site that has barely any links, but we turned up dozens of easy opportunities for link acquisition. We turned up a simple resources page on forest resources, a potential backlink which could easily be earned via a piece of content on forest stewardship.
We turned up a great resource page on how to maintain healthy soil and yards on a town government website. A simple guide covering the same topics here could easily earn a link from this resource page on an important website.
These were just two examples of easy link targets. From community gardening pages, websites dedicated to local creek, pond, and stream restoration, and general enthusiast sites, the Link Intersect tool turned up simple backlink gold. What is most interesting to me, though, was that these resource pages never included the words "resources" or "links" in the URLs. Common prospecting techniques would have just missed these opportunities altogether.
While it wasn't the focus of this particular campaign, I did choose the alternate of "show domains" rather than "pages" that link to the competitors. We found similarly useful results using this methodology.
For example, we found CarolinaCountry.com had linked to multiple of the competitor sites and, as it turns out, would be a perfect publication to pitch for a story as part of of a PR campaign for promoting the gardening site.
TakeawaysThe new Link Intersect tool in Moz's Link Explorer combines the power of our new incredible link index with the complete features of a link prospecting tool. Competitor link intersect remains one of the most straightforward methods for finding link opportunities and landing great backlinks, and Moz's new tool coupled with Link Lists makes it easier than ever. Go ahead and give it a run yourself — you might just find the exact link you need right when you need it.
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Even if you haven’t attended SXSW before, you’re probably familiar with the cultural impact of the sprawling annual conference/festival/showcase in Austin. From global brands to influential futurists, just about everyone who is anyone makes an appearance at the conference at some point. Elon Musk has been there, as has Joe Biden, Kesha, and even the cast of Game of Thrones. For many marketers, it’s important to get brand visibility at SXSW if they want to be viewed as future-forward.
It’s also unique in that the community is highly involved with the programming process, with about 30% of sessions’ overall “scores” determined by audience votes. This year alone, there are approximately 4,000 session submissions to SXSW and 1,500 to SXSW EDU in dozens of different tracks within the Panel Picker. Voting ends August 30, so now is your time to impact the conversation in 2019 by voting on which panels you’d like to see come to life.
Not heading to Austin? Many of SXSW’s sessions are recorded and broadcast via their Facebook, YouTube, and Soundcloud channels.
I love browsing the Panel Picker submissions—it gives you a glimpse into the zeitgeist. (Side note: My colleague Lauren Teague and I are on Panel Picker this year for Evolving Communities: Connectivity in Education and Busting Glass: Millennial Women in Sports Careers. Would you vote for us, please? 
).
What are the topics that people are interested in talking about and thinking about in 2019? What should your company be paying attention to, heading into 2019?
Let’s explore the 2019 Panel Picker submissions in 5 charts.
1. Looking Towards the Future of Tech
Panel Picker Technology Submissions, SXSW 2019
Dominating the field, AI and trends drive the largest share of session submissions. Furthermore, the new tracks of “VR/AR/MR” and “Blockchain & Cryptocurrency” reflect larger trends. Plus, the fact that both tracks have strong submission numbers indicates that there is absolutely hunger and interest in discussing the promise and realities of both areas.
Within the broad “Tech Industry & Enterprise” track, we find submissions that vary from “Industrial Cyber Security & Complex Threats” to “How Women are Rebuilding a Man-Made Internet.” Unsurprisingly, as the technology has matured, more of the conversation has shifted from what comes next to a more nuanced picture of why and how it should be executed within a broader cultural context.
2. “Social & Global Impact” Holds Its Own Among Business and Government Topics
Business & Government Panel Picker Submissions, SXSW 2019
Some of the most popular tracks include “Brands & Marketing,” “Future Workplace,” “Social & Global Impact,” and “Entrepreneurship & Startups.” In fact, within the SXSW Interactive festival, business leaders, marketers, and salespeople have become a strong contingency over the years, sharing case studies, best practices, and trend views.
3. Marketing Is Interwoven Into Most Areas of Business
Most Used Terms in 2019 SXSW Panel Picker Submissions
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised as a marketer that, in the Brands & Marketing track alone, there are over 500 submissions. Sure, marketers love talking about our own work, and we’re often the storytellers and cheerleaders within our own organization. But I think what’s also reflected in the word cloud of the most used terms within the titles of those 500 submissions is that marketing is inextricably woven into the way we think about business in the internet age.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one posts a photo or tweets about it, did it really happen? Every industry needs to communicate with its stakeholders, and marketers are putting emphasis on how those stories are being told.
4. SXSW Continues to Incubate Industry-Specific Tracks
Industry Specific Panel Picker Submissions, SXSW 2019
This year, SXSW has introduced a “Cannabusiness” track and changed its “Health” track to “Health & MedTech.” The shift in the health focus area has resulted in strong submissions of over 250 sessions, indicating the high level of relevance right now.
In addition, we see Food, Sports, and Gaming (specific industries that it had developed out in past years) return. While these tracks have more modest numbers of sessions proposed, they also indicate areas of commitment by the festival to these specific industries.
Speaking of sports, if you’re interested in the future of business in sports and its changing demographics, be sure to vote for my fellow Convince & Convert strategist Lauren Teague’s panel, “Busting Glass: Millennial Women in Sports Careers.”
5. The Business of Making Art
Film & Music Track Panel Picker Submissions, SXSW 2019
Rounding out the business/tech-focused SXSW Interactive festival, SXSW Film and SXSW Music make up the largest parts of the conference. Yes, there are lots of screenings and showcases, but SXSW also has a strong selection of panels and speakers focused on the business of making, selling, distributing, and marketing art.
Among the sessions proposed in these tracks are panels that discuss culture and intersectionality, the practical considerations of licensing, and the challenges of funding.
Education Brings Together Robust Cross-SectionsIn addition to these tracks, SXSW EDU features another approximately 1,500 submissions focused specifically on issues within the education space. Ranging from K-12 to higher education to informal education, these sessions bring the same innovation and creative, cross-disciplinary approach to this vital industry.
In fact, three extremely experienced colleagues and I have joined together to submit a session called, “Evolving Communities: Connectivity in Education”, which explores how technology, digital media, and educational institutions are interfacing to bring together different groups for the purposes of spreading knowledge and connectivity. From parents/families to teachers to students studying across state lines, how we create connections is key to support education.
Whether you’re attending SXSW or not, your vote to select the topics that will be impacting the industry in 2019 is well worth a few minutes of exploration in the Panel Picker. And of course, if you’re interested in up-voting Lauren’s session or my session, we appreciate your support!
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Want to improve your Facebook retargeting campaigns? Wondering how to build a Facebook ad funnel that saves you time and effort? In this article, you’ll discover how to build a Facebook ad funnel that retargets users with multiple ads over a substantial time period. About Facebook Retargeting and Ad Fatigue Most businesses have relatively small
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Do you have a Facebook Messenger bot? Have you thought about retargeting your bot subscribers with Facebook ads? In this article, you’ll learn how to create custom and lookalike bot audiences for Facebook ad targeting. Why Retarget Messenger Bot Subscribers? There is no warmer audience than a Facebook Messenger bot audience. These users are typically
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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media. On this week’s Social Media Marketing Talk Show, we explore Twitter API changes and LinkedIn Groups relaunching. Our special guests include Madalyn Sklar and Michael Stelzner. Watch
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Thinking about getting into Messenger bots? Wondering how to use bots to get people into marketing funnels? To explore what you need to know about setting up a successful funnel using Messenger bots, I interview Mary Kathryn Johnson More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners,
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SEO isn't all meta tags and content. A huge part of the success you'll see is tied up in the inevitable business negotiations. In this week's Whiteboard Friday, our resident expert Britney Muller walks us through a bevy of smart tips and considerations that will strengthen your SEO negotiation skills, whether you're a seasoned pro or a newbie to the practice.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Hey, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. So today we are going over all things SEO negotiation, so starting to get into some of the business side of SEO. As most of you know, negotiation is all about leverage.
It's what you have to offer and what the other side is looking to gain and leveraging that throughout the process. So something that you can go in and confidently talk about as SEOs is the fact that SEO has around 20% more opportunity than both mobile and desktop PPC combined.
This is a really, really big deal. It's something that you can showcase. These are the stats to back it up. We will also link to the research to this down below. Good to kind of have that in your back pocket. Aside from this, you will obviously have your audit. So potential client, you're looking to get this deal.
Get the most out of the SEO auditYou're going to do an audit, and something that I have always suggested is that instead of highlighting the things that the potential client is doing wrong, or screwed up, is to really highlight those opportunities. Start to get them excited about what it is that their site is capable of and that you could help them with. I think that sheds a really positive light and moves you in the right direction.
☑ Explain their competitive advantageI think this is really interesting in many spaces where you can sort of say, "Okay, your competitors are here, and you're currently here and this is why,"and to show them proof. That makes them feel as though you have a strong understanding of the landscape and can sort of help them get there.
☑ Emphasize quick winsI almost didn't put this in here because I think quick wins is sort of a sketchy term. Essentially, you really do want to showcase what it is you can do quickly, but you want to...
☑ Under-promise, over-deliverYou don't want to lose trust or credibility with a potential client by overpromising something that you can't deliver. Get off to the right start. Under-promise, over-deliver.
Smart negotiation tacticsKnow everything you can about this clientPerhaps what deals they've done in the past, what agencies they've worked with. You can get all sorts of knowledge about that before going into negotiation that will really help you.
☑ Prioritize your termsSo all too often, people go into a negotiation thinking me, me, me, me, when really you also need to be thinking about, "Well, what am I willing to lose?What can I give up to reach a point that we can both agree on?" Really important to think about as you go in.
☑ Flinch!This is a very old, funny negotiation tactic where when the other side counters, you flinch. You do this like flinch, and you go, "Oh, is that the best you can do?" It's super silly. It might be used against you, in which case you can just say, "Nice flinch." But it does tend to help you get better deals.
So take that with a grain of salt. But I look forward to your feedback down below. It's so funny.
☑ Use the words "fair" and "comfortable"The words "fair" and "comfortable" do really well in negotiations. These words are inarguable. You can't argue with fair. "I want to do what is comfortable for us both. I want us both to reach terms that are fair."
You want to use these terms to put the other side at ease and to also help bridge that gap where you can come out with a win-win situation.
☑ Never be the key decision makerI see this all too often when people go off on their own, and instantly on their business cards and in their head and email they're the CEO.
They are this. You don't have to be that, and you sort of lose leverage when you are. When I owned my agency for six years, I enjoyed not being CEO. I liked having a board of directors that I could reach out to during a negotiation and not being the sole decision maker. Even if you feel that you are the sole decision maker, I know that there are people that care about you and that are looking out for your business that you could contact as sort of a business mentor, and you could use that in negotiation. You can use that to help you. Something to think about.
Tips for negotiation newbiesSo for the newbies, a lot of you are probably like, "I can never go on my own. I can never do these things." I'm from northern Minnesota. I have been super awkward about discussing money my whole life for any sort of business deal. If I could do it, I promise any one of you watching this can do it.
☑ Power pose!I'm not kidding, promise. Some tips that I learned, when I had my agency, was to power pose before negotiations. So there's a great TED talk on this that we can link to down below. I do this before most of my big speaking gigs, thanks to my gramsy who told me to do this at SMX Advanced like three years ago.
Go ahead and power pose. Feel good. Feel confident. Amp yourself up.
☑ Walk the walkYou've got to when it comes to some of these things and to just feel comfortable in that space.
☑ Good > perfectKnow that good is better than perfect. A lot of us are perfectionists, and we just have to execute good. Trying to be perfect will kill us all.
☑ Screw imposter syndromeMany of the speakers that I go on different conference circuits with all struggle with this. It's totally normal, but it's good to acknowledge that it's so silly. So to try to take that silly voice out of your head and start to feel good about the things that you are able to offer.
Take inspiration where you can find itI highly suggest you check out Brian Tracy's old-school negotiation podcasts. He has some old videos. They're so good. But he talks about leverage all the time and has two really great examples that I love so much. One being jade merchants. So these jade merchants that would take out pieces of jade and they would watch people's reactions piece by piece that they brought out.
So they knew what piece interested this person the most, and that would be the higher price. It was brilliant. Then the time constraints is he has an example of people doing business deals in China. When they landed, the Chinese would greet them and say, "Oh, can I see your return flight ticket? I just want to know when you're leaving."
They would not make a deal until that last second. The more you know about some of these leverage tactics, the more you can be aware of them if they were to be used against you or if you were to leverage something like that. Super interesting stuff.
Take the time to get to know their businessLastly, just really take the time to get to know someone's business. It just shows that you care, and you're able to prioritize what it is that you can deliver based on where they make the most money off of the products or services that they offer. That helps you tie in the ROI of the things that you can accomplish.
☑ Know the order of products/services that make them the most moneyOne real quick example was my previous company. We worked with plastic surgeons, and we really worked hard to understand that funnel of how people decide to get any sort of elective procedure. It came down to two things.
It was before and after photos and price. So we knew that we could optimize for those two things and do very well in their space. So showing that you care, going the extra mile, sort of tying all of these things together, I really hope this helps. I look forward to the feedback down below. I know this was a little bit different Whiteboard Friday, but I thought it would be a fun topic to cover.
So thank you so much for joining me on this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I will see you all soon. Bye.
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When was the last time you analyzed your Twitter marketing? Looking for tools that can help you get a grip on your audience and Twitter content? In this article, you’ll learn how to analyze Twitter audience makeup and engagement data to deliver the types of content your audience values most. #1: Assess the Personality of
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Your brand is in a constant fight against competitors.
You have to know how you’re perceived. Where you’re losing. What your competitors excel at. And where they’re weak.
Unfortunately, most brands don’t prioritize this data. They either don’t collect it because they don’t know what to look for, or they don’t have the right tools to measure it.
Working with our friends at Brandwatch, I set out to help solve this problem in a Webinar on effective competitive intelligence using social media data.
Phillip Agnew, Product Marketer at Brandwatch, joined me for this session, where we presented a five-stage checklist to help you figure out how you’re performing.
You can get the entire session—at no cost—on demand right now. Just visit this link.
Why You Should Keep ReadingToday, customer expectations are liquid, meaning that they slosh over from one business category to the next. It wasn’t that long ago that customers would say “that’s a pretty good experience, for a financial services company.” Or, “that’s a pretty good experience, for a B2B company.” No more. The best companies in the world are training YOUR customers what to expect, period. If they can make it one-click easy, offer free two-way shipping, be open 24 hours per day, and send hyper-relevant emails, why can’t you?
The genie of customer expectations is never going back in the bottle, and what was amazing in 2015 is “meh” today. You simply must continue to raise the bar. This is what I am constantly harping on our team about here at Convince & Convert: yesterday’s victories mean nearly nothing now. The scoreboard always resets to zero. How can you get better and better and better and better, without end?
Customer experience is an escalator, not stairs.
Your competitors—the smart ones at least—are thinking the exact same way. Your customers are overtly measuring what you deliver to what your competition delivers.
And to stay on top, you need to know exactly what the other guys are up to, which is where social media data becomes very valuable when you use it consistently and wisely.
Here’s a summary of 5 key points in the Webinar on how to use social data for competitor analysis.
1. Share of VoiceCompared to your competition, how many customers are talking about you?
2. Sentiment by CompetitorWithin your competitive set, are consumers saying positive or negative things about each company? Who stands out? Who is the “favorite” of the consumer?
3. Key Topics by CompetitorThis is where it gets insightful. Using social data, you can (and should) create maps about what topics competitors are posting about on social media. This helps to understand their product strategy, their marketing strategy, their sales strategy, their customer service strategy, their employee advocacy program, and a lot more.
Smart analysts use social data to be the cartographer of their business category.
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This example, supplied by Brandwatch, shows social media chatter about competitors Heineken, and Guinness. As you can see, the topics in this snapshot in time are very different, even though the products are quite similar.
Social media chatter about Heineken and Guinness
Here, you use social media data to determine how often consumers are talking about your brand in the context of specific products. For example, in the Webinar, Phillip showed an example of Burger King tracking how much consumers talked about their new veggie burger, in comparison to vegetarian offerings from other fast food restaurants.
5. Benchmark by Product AssociationI love this one. Here, you track how often specific, desirable attributes are associated with your brand (vs. competitors) by mining word inclusion in consumers’ social media posts.
Adjectives associated with automotive brands
In this example, supplied by Brandwatch, you’ll notice that Mercedes-Benz dominates the conversation around “comfort”, while BMW has far more social chatter related to “luxury.”
If you’re trying to figure out your brand positioning, content marketing, social media marketing, and PR approach, this information can be incredibly valuable.
There are, of course, many more ways to use social data to gauge competitor behavior and attributes. But those are the five that we focused upon in our session.
I’d love it if you took the time to watch the replay. It’s a good one!
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If you want to engage in social media, you need to have a social media strategy. If you want to engage in social media to market your company, you need to have a social media marketing strategy. Whether or not you have a formal social media marketing strategy written down or not, here are some tips to help make your social media engagement more strategic.
The Template for a Successful Social Media Marketing Strategy
1. Know your target audience
The first step towards creating a successful social media marketing strategy is knowing who your target audience is : determining who your product is meant for. How do you go about deciding who your product would appeal to?
Here are 3 things you should consider while making a decision :
Wondering what your competitors’ social media ads look like? Have you heard of the ad transparency tools for Facebook and Twitter? In this article, you’ll discover four ways social media marketers can use Facebook and Twitter ad transparency tools. Access the Ad Transparency Tools on Facebook and Twitter The ability for any user to see
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I’m new, and I want to learn more about YOU.
Jay tasked me with the job of doubling our blog traffic. 
Considering how popular the blog already is, this is no easy task.
But we don’t just want any traffic. We want quality traffic that turns into awesome clients and even better friends. So while I could simply turn on the listicle and how-to machine, and churn out new posts on every topic imaginable (statistics and tools posts, anyone?), we will be much more successful if we tailor our content to solving your problems and making your life better.
Here’s a little background on our content evolution:
A New Editorial Strategy for Convince & Convert: Phase 1Last November, the awesome Kelly Santina and Jess Ostroff explained an updated C&C content strategy, with 5 posts per week. Traffic was dipping, and the goal was to increase new and returning visitors. Traffic steadily increased, but there was more work to be done.
Convince & Convert Weekly Editorial Calendar: November 2017
While visitors and views are nice, they don’t mean a thing unless they turn into real relationships. So Jay, Jess, Kelly and the team refreshed the Convince & Convert content strategy again. Instead of posting 5 days per week, they reduced the number of weekly posts to 2 in order to allow our team to focus on improving the quality of original content and in-house research (check out our latest study on the Best University Websites for 2018).
The Consulting team backs up all client strategy with data and research, so our in-house content marketing strategy should reflect that, too.
As Jay explained in his post last month, we’re “we’re not in the how-to business, we’re in the ‘now what’ business.” While I seriously love a nice how-to post for generating views and organic search traffic, there are already a variety of amazing resources for that, including MarketingProfs (my personal fav) and Content Marketing Institute.
Our content strategy should reflect what is unique and valuable about our company. And a great place to start? The work we do with many of the world’s most interesting brands to solve large and thorny marketing and customer experience challenges. So we’re creating more content based on client questions and experiences, and more content featuring our own in-house, first party research.
Content Strategy: Phase 3And now here I am, mapping out our content calendar for Q3 and beyond.
My goal is to double our blog traffic and the number of quality leads we bring in on a monthly basis.
I already know who our clients are, but now I need to know who you are, trusty reader.
Are you more in the weeds or more in the C-suite? Do you market B2B or B2C? Are you in manufacturing, education, tourism, or something else entirely?
So please, take a minute and fill out our 60-second survey. We will analyze the results, and turn those findings into topics for our editorial calendar, a more effective content strategy, and perhaps even, a monthly reader’s choice post where you, the reader, select the topic of one post per month.
If you include your email address, you will be entered to win a pass to Social Media Marketing World 2019 OR ConEx 2019—your choice! I’m sure we’ll be there too.
So take the audience survey now. I can’t wait to get to know you, and meet you IN person—if you are the lucky winner of the conference pass!
Winners will be notified on September 30.
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Wondering how to get more from Instagram Stories? Have you considered using Stories stickers in your marketing? In this article, you’ll discover how to use Instagram Stories stickers to deliver engaging and useful Stories content. Find Your Instagram Stories Stickers To access all of the different Instagram Stories stickers, start a story post with a photo
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