I am seeing renewed signs from mid-last week of yet another Google search ranking algorithm update from over the weekend. There is significant chatter from over the weekend with many of the tools spiking over the past couple of days.
Over the weekend there has been numerous complaints about using Google Search Console to get content indexed faster – in short, SEOs are saying it doesn’t work. I guess this is through the “request indexing” feature in Google Search Console. To be clear, Google has not confirmed the issue, in fact, John Mueller implied nothing is wrong.
When I was scheming to give Lisa Barone a hard time before our interview, Lisa recommended I sit down with Jennifer Van Iderstyne (@vanetcetera) to discuss SEO with her…
If you have conversion data for your web site or app in your Google Analytics profiles and you are running Google Ads, Google by default will export the data from Google Analytics and bring it into Google Ads. Google announced this in Google Ads and on Twitter.
Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter “Most sites don’t have “toxic” links, or at least, created them on their own.” He then added his line that there are “more important things to focus on, by our engineers, and definitely by site owners.”
Mordy Oberstein posted on Twitter a GIF of a Google local panel for a business showing a new interface for displaying photos of the business. The photos are really large and show in a grid-like format. This is not the normal interface, so it seems Google is testing this.
Here is a photo from the Boston area where Google did a ground breaking on a new building they will be putting up in Kendall Square – the tech epicenter of Boston. I have embedded the photos below, w
Dentsu Aegis Network has bought 4Cite, a first-party identification and analytics platform. 4Cite will become part of the Dentsu Aegis-owned marketing performance company Merkle Inc. 4Cite’s identity resolution capabilities will also be used by M1, Dentsu Aegis’ people-based identity and data platform.
“The 4Cite acquisition plays a critical role in the future-proofing of our platform in a world where the third party cookie is crumbling,” said Merkle Americas President Craig Dempster. 4Cite will retain its company name and its 50 employees will join Merkle’s staff.
Why we care
The acquisition underscores the growing importance of first-party data solutions as advertisers search for new ways to consistently and effectively reach their target audiences. Merkle said it is “making a priority” of investing heavily in first-party data technology. Marketers are being forced to prioritize first-party data with the advent of privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA and moves by browsers operators, including Apple, Google and Mozilla, to crack down on third-party cookie tracking.
More on the news
This is Dentsu Aegis’ second acquisition already this year. The company announced last week that it had bought Digital Pi, a digital marketing agency and marketing automation consultancy.
4Cite CEO Bob Gaito is taking on the role of chairman and will report to Merkle’s Chief Data Officer Eugene Becker.
Merkle Inc. is one of ten global network brands owned by Dentsu Aegis. The other nine include Carat, Dentsu, dentsu X, iProspect, Isobar, mcgarrybowen, MKTG, Posterscope and Vizeum.
About The Author
Amy Gesenhues is a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land, Search Engine Land and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.
As I sit here and begin this guide I can’t help but feel a little weird as I am not a blogger or “guide writer”; I hate writing (we even talked about how much we hate it here). It was the fact that so many people have spoken to me about how to get started with podcasting over the last couple of years that led me to finally put down in writing what I and by proxy (Dave & I) have learned.
Some Truth Many Won’t Tell You
Before we really jump into it, I feel I need to point out that the Business of Digital Podcast is not perfect. Our equipment and set up is not perfect. We know this, and it is okay. If you wait for everything to be “perfect,” you will never begin a podcast.
Point being — not everything has to be perfect or in place to get started. I remember the first few episodes we actually used Skype to record. We have moved on to better technology as we grew and got smarter, but the most important thing is WE STARTED.
Choosing a Co-Host: Skillsets and Personalities
Here is some raw truth you didn’t know — both Dave and I hate writing, but once you get us talking, it is hard to shut us up. We have been great friends for a long time, and it just felt like a perfect fit to start a podcast together. The friendship fosters a comfortable feel for our guest and audience.
We both bring different strengths and skillsets to the table — this is critical if you want to meet the needs of an audience and have a broad range of topics to discuss.
The creative and visual side come from me. I love photography, and I own an agency that focuses on creative visual content. I have a background in Radio. I was a DJ and was a morning show co-host.
Dave is active in the Digital Marketing trenches with clients and is able to manage and update the site and other technical aspects. He is also a great yin to my yang when we have guests and will throw in other questions and angles that can help others with in-depth insights about the day to day of things.
So a successful formula includes:
Actually liking each other, even if your opinions differ.
Having similar and yet different skillsets and talents.
Being able to divide and conquer the tasks and work as best as you can.
Schedules that work at least often enough to make your show work.
Finding a Podcasting Angle
Dave and I have been podcasting for over two years now, so we jumped into it at just the right time. In fact, I think we are hitting the second wave of Podcasting popularity. It has been an amazing way to keep myself in the industry eye without having to do the things I hate the most (writing).
The most crucial step is figuring out what your angle is. For Dave and I, we wanted to keep it simple. We decided to keep our podcasts around 20 minutes, so if you are commuting or taking a jog, it is just about the perfect amount of time to listen to our entire podcast. We also wanted to make sure we didn’t bore you to death with lengthy obnoxious introductions and ramblings.
One of the things we hate the most is listening to a show from somewhere else, and it takes 45 min to even jump into the point or “meat” of the show.
Finding “Your” Audience
We really wanted to make sure we spoke to the mom and pops and small business owners that are new or somewhat new to the industry. In reality, we have been told by a lot of our veteran industry friends how insightful our podcast is, even to them. We just wanted to share the combined 20+ years of industry knowledge knocking around in our head.
We focus on providing solutions (for SEO, PPC, content marketing, local, outreach, social, etc.,) to those smaller mom and pop companies and smaller businesses that could never afford a marketing person, let alone a conference ticket.
Think of who your audience will be before you get started. Do they need you? What do they need to know? What can you offer them that hasn’t been said before?
Podcasting is Content Marketing
The more I have jumped into the world of podcasting, I have found that there are so many “content marketing” opportunities it is insane. I absolutely consider Podcasting content marketing, but even beyond that, there are so many opportunities to take advantage of it, and hopefully, I will address all of that in this guide.
If anyone wants to learn more about my background and why I wanted to podcast, check it out here.
Let’s Talk Podcast Promotion
If you are not sure how to promote your podcast once you get it going let me address that.
Radio Guest List and Podcast Guests are great places to look at being guests on. You can get a ton of exposure for your podcast by being a guest on other shows. Also, anyone you have on your show will more than likely do everything they can to help promote their episode, thus exposing you to their network.
It is ok to hit up a friend; they typically want to help. I try not to spam my network of friends and loved ones, but once I got yelled at by a friend that told me he didn’t know that I had a podcast and had been listening to it. He said there were so many episodes that answered precisely the things he had wanted to know. He said, “You can let me know what you are up to. In fact, I will even share it with everyone in my network”.
So the point being — don’t hesitate to hit up your personal networks in getting the word out.
The only warning I would give you is don’t be these annoying like the people below when pitching to get on podcasts (and we get so many we, of course, did a podcast on — it #85 if interested).
Things to Include in a Podcast Pitch
Here are some great examples of things that we recommend you include in your pitch:
What can you add to the show? What can you help educate the audience on?
An audience-first approach — make it educational and interesting for their audience (it isn’t about you).
Link to a page or a list of places that have had you as a guest; also include you are published.
Get to the point; life is short.
Have quality equipment and state that you have a decent setup that will sound well.
Link to an about page (on your site or even LinkedIn).
Again, focus on how you being a guest on the podcast can help their audience.
Podcast Factors to Consider Before You Start
Whatever your plan is, there are several key questions you need to consider first, such as:
How often will you publish?
How long will each episode be (minutes)?
At what point will you have 100 plays per episode? 1,000? 5,000? 10,000?
Where is your site or do you not want a website?
What can you afford each month?
What factors can impact your podcasting planning and schedule?
Dave and I wanted to be very general in the Digital Marketing space. We wanted to be able to have both HIGH and LOW-level conversations about topics, but we always want to keep in mind the “mom and pop” types out there listening. We never wanted to create a podcast for our peers; we wanted to create a podcast for the types of people that listen to our peers.
What is going to make your podcast stand out?
What is going to make your podcast different from literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of other ones similar?
What does YOUR show have that will bring in the listeners?
You need to nail these things down before beginning along with the things I mentioned above. Think about the type of person that will be listening to your content. How will they be listening to it? At the office, running, driving to work? Tailor to those types of audiences and then answer all the questions I have broken down.
The Technical Side of Podcasting
Make sure you have your podcast hosted on your own website. I will not debate this; the old school SEO in me knows this is the right move. I repeat DO NOT use a 3rd party site. The more you get into podcasting, the more you will see how amazing the exposure can be and the rankings you can grab. Remember, podcasting is content, and the transcripts (when properly formatted) provide unique content that can result in a variety of ranking opportunities in the SERPs. And, wee all know the search engines love quality content.
There are a ton of tools that can be used with Podcasting.
Disclaimer — I am not paid to promote any of these tools. I am only sharing what is out there and what we use.
Podcast Hosting Options
PowerPress is a great Podcast software that many people use.
Seriously Simple is what The Business of Digital currently uses.
File Hosting options all have their own Pros & Cons. AWS, SoundCloud, and Web Host are the most common ways to go for those just looking to store their files somewhere.
Podcast hosting options are plentiful. There are so many options that we recorded a show on this topic because the best solution for people really “depends” on several different factors (more than I can break down in one post).
Podcast Organization
What works for Dave and me:
We use Google sheets to plan everything out. It is a free and simple system. Both Dave and I have access to this, and it is great for writing thoughts down that come about upcoming shows, or ideas for shows. It is also great to let you know what you have already podcasted about and helps you not to be too redundant.
Google Forms work really well for us in capturing guest information. It helps us be prepared, and it is also a nice little carrot to dangle for potential guests knowing they can drop a link and share whatever they want on their bio page with our listeners.
When it comes to ideation for podcasts, our strategy is all over the place. We have one centralized spreadsheet where we dump everything, but ideas can come from anywhere at any time. I will be in Amsterdam overlooking the most beautiful canal and see something that makes me text Dave and say, “This would make a good topic,” or I will see a meme that could work for us, etc. Basically, we are taking our real-world everyday lives and inserting them right into the show with ideas that come in real-time.
How to Record Podcasts
Still not sure you can Podcast, or worried that it is going to be too expensive? Let me show you a few of the costs involved, and you can answer that yourself.
On-the-go Recorders
ZOOM Series rock but are not cheap at $250-300. It does allow up to 4 people at a time, though.
Tascam DR-05 has 2 channels and is ~$100
Tascam DR-40 is 4 channels and is in the ~$175 range.
Zoom ZH1 H1 is in the ~$75 range if you can find it.
Add a microphone to your digital camera.
Or just use your phone(s) to record.
Offline Recording (desktop recording, etc.)
Skype (windows and apple)
eCamm (Apple)
Pamela (Windows)
When it comes to offline recording Phone/Apps, you have a ton of options. Check out this screenshot below for just a taste of what is out there. Depending on if you are Droid/Apple/Other, the options will change, but there will most certainly be many for you to pick from. For offline recording, you can also use Garageband (iTunes) or Audacity to edit and process your recordings.
Online recording options that range from free to $30 a month:
Ringer
This is Cast
Anchor
Zencastr
Conference Software such as Zoom.US
These are all-in-one options that will even host, record, process, analytics, automatic transcription, and give you the ability to include an intro and outro as you record (and more in some cases). Most include only some of those features, so figure out what matters to you and go from there.
We use Tryca.st but we are always continuing to evaluate our needs, thinking about what works best, and what is most cost-efficient.
I use the Blue Yeti mic and just a simple pair of earbuds that are plugged into the Yeti mic. You don’t have to go out and purchase expensive headphones if you don’t have the budget for it. I have a nice set of Bose noise-canceling headphones, but I still use my Apple Earbuds; they work well and are easy.
How to Promote Podcasts
So let’s continue the discussion of how to get your podcast out there and attract guests.
Twitter
Start a Twitter Account.
Be active.
Share every new podcast.
Share it again that day.
Share it again that week.
Schedule old episodes to share when timely, and when relevant to a trend or news.
Facebook
Start a page.
Start a group.
Share on your page & your timeline (if you didn’t delete it!)
Share to your businesses page.
Share to groups without spamming; Relevancy is critical.
Use as answers to questions in groups and in your timeline.
LinkedIn/Beyond – If you are B2B, why wouldn’t you?
Whatever groups you are active on, share there when you can.
Reddit, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.
Forums, newsletters, emails.
Some Other Options
Be social (AND REAL) everywhere you can. Every time I take a trip, I try to have a branded podcast sticker and take a picture with it to share on our social channels. This strategy lets you share your branding in different locations without spamming, and it shows that you care about your listeners while keeping you relevant.
Side note: We created some stickers to help promote the show; it is funny how nobody these days will take a business card (it seems), but everyone is fighting over a sticker. I love that.
We try our best to take advantage of all the available channels, like adding our episodes to YouTube.
Dave and I include links to the podcasts and little blurbs anywhere we can. Here is an example of that podcast showing up on a personal page of Dave’s on a business site:
The guests you have will often help you promote without prompting, but make sure to mention the benefit of them sharing their podcast episodes. And let your guests know when you will initially share their podcast so they can answer any questions that might pop up on social media.
Podcast Syndication Options and Tools
Alright, onto the most important thing I know you have been wondering. How do I get my episodes on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Play? Visit these sites below and sign up!
Remember to market your content; it is a simple reminder, but most forget to do the basics. If you have an opportunity, guest post somewhere and can mention your podcast. Take advantage of any opportunities that come your way.
You can make money podcasting. We didn’t get into Podcasting to make money. We wanted to remain relevant in our industry without having to blog or write (did I mention enough how much I hate writing and OMG can’t believe I got this far on this guide – my hand hurts). It has been great for guest opportunities, speaking engagements, or even posts like this one. As a bonus, we started making money by getting leads, making sales, and selling sponsorships for shows on the podcast.
My biggest advice would be to just jump in and get started. Don’t wait for everything to be perfect. What I have learned is if your content is good enough, listeners are willing to look past little technical difficulties and enjoy consuming the content. We see so many positives from having a podcast that we could never mention all of them, but we hope we have shown you some of the opportunities that could benefit you.
What separates the heavyweights of the search engine rankings from everyone else? That’s a question every good SEO constantly asks themselves as they look to outrank sites that seem to dominate Google for every relevant keyword (like Wikipedia or WebMD).
Unsurprisingly, these sites have more than a few things in common. It’s not just their age or authority either—factors that other sites can’t hope to match. There are plenty of similar qualities that help top sites stand apart from their competitors that you can copy and improve today.
Let’s review five of the most important and surprising factors and explain what you can learn from them and how you can use that to improve your own site.
1. Backlinks Reign Supreme
Let’s get the least surprising commonality out of the way first. The top-ranked sites on Google all have a serious number of backlinks. As we all know, high-quality backlinks almost always mean high rankings.
Research from Backlinko finds the first result on Google has an average of 3.8 times as many backlinks as the rest of the results on the first page.
The big boys have it made when it comes to acquiring more backlinks, too. They continue to get more backlinks over time as a result of their position in Google.
Research by Ahrefs finds that the top three results generate more new referring domains than the rest of the pages on Google. Pages ranked first and second get significantly more new referring domains. Those pages ranking first get between backlinks at a faster rate of between five percent and 14.5 percent per month.
It’s not just a large number of backlinks that are important. They need to be high quality, too. What does a quality backlink look like? It comes from an authoritative domain, is placed within its content, and has topical relevance to your website.
Let’s say you have a car blog. A link from another high-ranking car blog carries more weight and is of higher quality than a link from a major health website because it’s much more relevant to your niche.
You shouldn’t discount internal links, either. The biggest websites (and news outlets in particular) almost always put a lot of effort into making sure every new piece of content links back to several previous posts.
Great internal linking makes it significantly easier for Google to crawl your website and index your information. The easier your site is to crawl, the more likely Google will find and rank your content. They may not have the same power as backlinks, but internal links can still result in higher rankings.
All this is to say that you need to build backlinks in a scalable way if you want your site to compete with the biggest brands in your industry.
2. Provide High-Quality Content
Most top-ranking websites are well known for the quality of their content. Okay, some major sites don’t publish high-quality content all of the time, but every high-ranking site does produce exceptional content, at least some of the time.
Don’t forget, high-quality content doesn’t necessarily mean it’s longer or more detailed than everyone else’s. It might contain unique research that other companies can’t hope to copy. Or it could break a story. Or it could be designed better. Or it could go viral. There are lots of ways to create amazing content.
Doing so matters when it comes to SEO because high-quality content helps boost several ranking factors. It’s a magnet for backlinks, it reduces your bounce rate, and it should result in a higher clickthrough rate (CTR).
The top-ranked sites don’t just rely on the objective quality of their content, though. They also take steps to optimize it to perform better in Google. That means including keywords in header tags, throughout the content, in the page title, and in the URL.
Creating high-quality content isn’t easy, especially when there’s no objective way to determine how good your content is. That’s the job of your users. That being said, there are still steps you can take to make it more likely your users think highly of your content.
The first is to make sure it’s written by an expert. This is a pretty simple task for some top-ranking sites like media outlets. Journalists, by default, are experts on certain topics. However, there’s nothing stopping you from writing about your expertise or hiring expert writers, either.
You could even use a strategy adopted by some health websites, where content is written by a professional writer and then fact-checked by a medical professional. Doing so has the double benefit of having content written by an excellent writer while also being medically accurate.
3. Focus on User Experience
Top-ranking sites on Google put a premium on the user experience and do everything they can to keep customers coming back. This means having a great design, high-quality content as discussed above, an intuitive layout, and a great browsing experience in general. Yes, some of the highest-ranking sites may serve up ads on their pages, but they don’t ruin your browsing experience with them or use intrusive popup ads, either.
A great user experience is one of the reasons these sites are top of Google, after all. Google announced that user experience metrics would be used to rank sites, beginning in 2021. How your site loads, what it looks like, and how users interact with it contribute to your rankings, along with other factors like HTTPS, safe browsing, mobile friendliness, and the presence of interstitials.
Google puts such a big emphasis on your site’s user experience because it aligns with its goal of giving customers the best possible browsing experience. The search giant finds over half (52 percent) of users will be less likely to engage with a brand after a bad mobile experience. So why would it rank you if you have a high bounce rate?
Improving your site’s user experience and aligning it with the experiences provided by the top-ranking sites won’t just improve your rankings; it also makes commercial sense. Ad network Ezoic generated a 186 percent increase in earnings per 1000 visitors by improving the UX of a publisher.
4. Make Sure Your Page Speed Is Competitive
You’ve never had to wait for the New York Times to load, have you? That’s because top-ranking sites know the importance of delivering content as fast as possible. Page load speed has been a ranking factor for desktop searches since 2010, and Google announced it was also a ranking factor for mobile searches back in 2018.
Say it with me: A slower site means lower rankings.
You need to optimize for page speed if you want to mix it with the highest-ranking sites. It’s not so much about getting the edge over your competitors and making your site 0.1 seconds faster, however. It’s about having a site that’s fast enough to not impact the user experience negatively.
Research by Google finds over half (53 percent) of visitors abandon a mobile site if it doesn’t load in three seconds.
If you have a slow site, you won’t just get penalized for a poor load time. You’ll also get penalized for having a high bounce rate as users get fed up with waiting and choose a different site instead.
The easiest way to check your page speed is by using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. It will let you know how fast your site is, give it a score out of 100, and suggest improvements.
Have you noticed how some top-ranking sites have several pieces of content that all seem to approach the same topic from a slightly different angle? That’s because they understand the power of user intent and the value Google places on it.
Google wants to serve up the best and most appropriate content for each query. A big part of that is understanding what the user is trying to achieve from their search. Are they trying to learn something? Research a topic? Make a purchase? Google delivers different results for each intent.
For instance, Google shows e-commerce pages where it thinks the user is trying to make a purchase, but it serves up blog articles for information-related queries.
Knowing what type of content Google thinks users want to see is key to becoming a top-ranked site, because you’re much more likely to get ranked if you create content that matches the user intent for each target keyword. This is why so many top-ranking sites have similar content targeting the same topics: to catch every user intent.
It’s not simply a matter of informational vs. commercial, either. There are dozens of types of informative content that users may want to access. In some cases, it’s a listicle. For other queries, a video may be more appropriate.
Taking time to understand the user intent for each keyword or topic you’re targeting can yield serious results. Marketing SaaS CoSchedule saw a 594 percent increase in search traffic when they aligned content with user intent.
Top Ranked Sites: FAQs
What do the top-ranking sites have in common?
They all have a lot of high-quality backlinks, great content, an excellent user experience, a fast-loading website, and content that matches the user’s intent.
Why do the top sites have so many more backlinks?
This is partly because of the quality of content but also due to the fact that they sit at the top of Google. This makes them an easy target for people trying to link to an authoritative source.
How can better content improve my rankings?
Better content can improve your rankings in several ways. High-quality content attracts more backlinks, but Google also rewards in-depth content and results in users spending a long time on the page.
Why does user experience matter?
Google wants to provide the best experience to its users. Part of that means sending them to sites that are easy to browse. It’s why user experience factors are now ranking factors.
Google the keyword you want to rank for and look at the pages that appear in the results. If all of the content has the same format, that’s the type of content you should create.
Conclusion: What You Can Learn From the Top Ranked Sites
You can’t turn your website into a top-ranking site overnight. However, you can learn a lot from them and implement tactics they use to improve your site’s Google ranking. There are more than a few things they do in common, as you’ve learned.
Make sure you have a scalable system for generating backlinks, create high-quality content, focus on the user experience, ensure your site loads fast, and consider user intent when you create content.
Do these five things, and you could be well on your way to having a top-ranked site in the future.
As you know, we’re in the middle of awards season. Oscars. Grammys. Golden Globes. All fine trophies to be had. But my favorite kudos, of course, are The 2020 Stackies: Marketing Tech Stack Awards. Marketers send in a single 16×9 slide that illustrates the way they think of their marketing stack. We share them all with the community. And then we celebrate the winners of the five best (where “best” is a function of how they educate and inspire us).
The contest is open for entries through March 20, and then we’ll announce the winners at the MarTech conference in April in San Jose. (Checking on a red carpet now.)
But along the way, I’m eager to highlight great entries as they come in. Such as today’s, sent in by Mary Blanks, director of marketing capabilities in global marketing operations at Red Hat. (By the way, can I just say how much I love the framing of “marketing capabilities” in marketing operations?)
The overarching design is aligned with their customer journey: customers exploring change, committing to change, exploring solutions, and finally committing to a solution. Below that is a back-channel of measuring and analyzing responses, the data from which also feeds back into optimizing and personalizing customer experiences. The illustration does a really nice job of representing the flow across these stages, while keeping the customer in mind throughout.
It’s also a good example of an enterprise multi-platform stack, with Adobe, Oracle Eloqua, and Salesforce all in the mix, along with a diverse set of more specialized products. It’s a best-of-breed world.
Want to learn more about how they actually got this all to work? Joel Eaton and Tim Sawicki, a data architect and data engineer respectively from Red Hat, will be presenting “How To Get Your Martech Stack To Share Data And Play Nicely” at the MarTech Conference in San Jose, April 15-17. (Note: the early bird “alpha” rate on tickets expires in two weeks!)
To quote from their session description:
We love SaaS marketing applications — but making them play well together is hard, especially as your data sets get larger and larger. With millions of contacts, leads, and campaign transactions handled daily, we needed a way to make our tech stack integrations faster, more reliable, and flexible enough to handle upgrades and additions without having to change everything else.
In this session, you’ll gain insights into how Red Hat used leading-edge, open source software to build a marketing integration platform that shares data in near real time and is application agnostic. You’ll discover how it works, how the experience of building it challenged the way we thought about data, and how it’s changing the way Red Hat does marketing.
Mary and team were also willing to answer to a few questions about their stack to hear their thinking behind it in advance:
Can you walk us through the model you created to organize your martech stack and tell us about the inspiration behind it?
It was important for us to depict our stack in terms of how it aligns to and fuels the customer journey. We organized based on capabilities rather than individual tech. We wanted our marketers to better understand how the tools support the activities they’re running each day.
It begins with customers and prospects exploring change and researching potential solutions online. Our web properties provide solution-focused content aligned to key IT challenges. As visitors gather more information, we offer additional resources via content syndication efforts, events, paid media, and social platforms. As we learn more about them, we use our marketing automation platform to refine the content we deliver and nurture the relationship. We also offer assessments to help them evaluate solutions and give them easier, faster ways to engage with content.
We enrich data where needed and create insights to help us optimize interactions and move customers and prospects farther along in their journey, faster. As they begin to commit to a solution, we stitch together all of these signals of demand generated across our stack and further qualify their needs and interests to prepare them for sales.
I love that your stack illustration is aligned to a customer’s journey. Were there other organizing frameworks that you considered?
Yes, there was a lot of healthy debate about the approach.
Among the different variations we considered was a circular model with the customer placed at the center and the martech sort of radiating out from there, but that proved to be tough to unpack.
Ultimately the final version allowed us to both illustrate the stack and tell a streamlined story (which we reinforce in a video walkthrough) about how it all fits together to support today’s evolving buyer’s journey. We were intentional about highlighting core capabilities, like events and paid media, that we expect to remain in the stack for quite some time, while leaving flexibility to add and change the underlying tech that supports those capabilities.
Were there any new insights you had into your martech stack when illustrating this slide for the Stackies?
One of the most compelling things about this stack is how all of the interactions and data generated are used to help inform optimization and personalization for the experience.
We are very careful to ensure our marketers understand the importance of setting up their activities correctly and tracking that engagement so we can see what’s effective and what may need to be optimized as we move forward.
What words of advice would you offer to other marketers thinking about how to best organize and manage their martech stack?
Keep two perspectives in mind: your customers and your marketers.
How does your stack support the customer? We see our martech stack as organized around offering a great digital experience supplemented by additional activities specifically designed to address the decisions and challenges our customers and prospects are working to solve every day.
If your marketers don’t understand how the tools fit together and what’s important to track, the individual tools alone don’t matter.
The other key component is to think of it as “marketing to marketing.” If your marketers don’t understand how the tools fit together and what’s important to track, the individual tools alone don’t matter. They have to collectively tell a compelling story that makes marketers want to learn more and use the tech to help their target audiences.
Thanks, Mary and team! We really appreciate you sharing this with us.
Reminder to everyone else: You have until Friday, March 20 to send in your entry to The Stackies 2020: Marketing Tech Stack Awards. It’s so helpful to the community to learn from examples of how different organizations think of their marketing stack. I hope you’ll contribute!
More about the MarTech Stack Awards
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
About The Author
Scott Brinker is the conference chair of the MarTech® Conference, a vendor-agnostic marketing technology conference and trade show series produced by MarTech Today’s parent company, Third Door Media. The MarTech event grew out of Brinker’s blog, chiefmartec.com, which has chronicled the rise of marketing technology and its changing marketing strategy, management and culture since 2008. In addition to his work on MarTech, Scott serves as the VP platform ecosystem at HubSpot. Previously, he was the co-founder and CTO of ion interactive.
If you have noticed that your site rankings on Google, or other search engines, are stagnant or aren’t moving anywhere, we’re here to help. We’ll provide you with some tips to improve your site rankings and how to properly build out other areas, too. Read on to learn more about the reasons your website rankings are being held back and what you can do about it.
Google announced yesterday one of, if not, the first, use case for MUM – Multitask Unified Model – in search. Google did tell us they will let us know when it is being used and here it is. They used it “to identify over 800 variations of vaccine names in more than 50 languages in a matter of seconds.”
