Reports and data are a wonderful thing for strategic direction in our businesses – but only provide us value if we know how to read and interpret them!

How often have you received a report, or had to issue a report, only to wonder how useful the exercise was? Your boss is demanding a return before spending another dime on marketing, but everyone is unsure how to measure effectiveness. If we understand how to capture and utilize data with the right analysis, it can really make our decision making so much simpler. We’ve put together a quick list of the types of data that will save you money and time in your digital advertising efforts, and help you dominate your competitors over time:

If you can understand how visible a business is within their local search directories, this will give you an indication of what their exposure is to potential clients in your local market – look at tools like Google My Business and Yelp. A check of the business name and any online reviews ( ie. on Google or other industry specific review sites) are available for potential customers to read.

There are tools available to test and analyze the level of paid search advertising activity that is presently being used by companies. With this information, you can then determine how much money is required up front to bid against your competitor, whether you have deep enough pockets for advertising and for which products, and also how much of it is paid versus organic search. You may decide after this research to conduct just a targeted local campaign, or that you are unable to invest in paid search due to your budget at this time. You may also see that search is a great compliment to a PPC strategy for longer term growth. The point is, obtaining this information prior to making any advertising decisions can save you a lot of money later on.

By analyzing levels of social media engagement, the frequency of content posted, as well how often competitors are sharing information on social channels, can help us determine methods that are working to develop contacts online. Does it look like your competitors have a lot of followers, are they sharing more often or more pertinent information? Are they on the right channels for your type of industry?

Is your website easy to find and index? Have you submitted the site to google or other search engines for indexing? There are a number of key factors that directly contribute to a website’s ability to be indexed by the search engines and be found online by searches for your particular services. Make sure you have the basics covered- these are easy fixes that will ensure you are in the game.

We can test the technical performance of each website as well as other technical factors that can affect customer usability and business conversions. Does the site load quickly? Are all the links properly working and pages loading? Do you have proper backlinks in place that show you are an authority on your topics?

A competitive analysis is a great way to come up with all this information in one place and make side by side comparisons. It can help you identify key strategic openings for your campaigns and how to exploit any obvious cracks in your competitors’ online presence, making you get a leg up on your competition online.

I recently helped a customer who was thinking of combining her previous real estate experience with her expanded skillset of feng-shui. It was just an idea, but she wanted to understand if there was anyone already doing this in her area and if so, could she make it work as a way to differentiate herself in her marketplace and boost her revenue with something she enjoyed doing.

The agent had a general idea of who might provide this service today, but was unsure if there was actually a demand for the service. She was understandably cautious about delving into this new arm of business before doing some market research and hired us to do the analysis for her.

Through conducting a competitive analysis on her known and newly-identified competitors, we determined that there was in fact demand in her marketplace by doing some keyword research. We in fact found that complimentary keywords such as ‘meditation’ would bring in even more traffic.

We then wanted to validate whether those she saw as competitors actually were- and we found out these people were in fact not even present online. A further diagnosis turned up a laundry list of easy things she could do immediately to help her website stand out against her competitors.

We also could determine that with an effective pay per click campaign and social media strategy, it wouldn’t be too hard for her to start to garner a significant amount of traffic to help get her qualified leads to talk to.

By investing just a bit up front before spending a dime on advertising, the data we collected and then interpreted enabled us to determine not only that this would be a good business decision, but also the strategy on how to get there. Rather than guessing at tactics, we had real time information with which to make a valid business decision, eliminating a lot of the questions she had about entering this new market. Data in digital marketing will become even more critical in the years ahead as we are required to make business decisions even more accurately and quickly in a rapidly changing world.

In this age of technology, efficiency is an evolving concept. What was efficient a year ago may not be as efficient today; heck, the best way to accomplish a task last month is probably no longer the optimal way to do it. Technology and innovation have a huge impact on both our professional and everyday lives.

Think about the things you do daily, even the simple ones right after you wake up in the morning. Your alarm, now set on your smartphone or other digital device, rouses you from your slumber. Then you brush your teeth with an electric toothbrush and mosey on downstairs to make an extremely convenient coffee with your Keurig machine. The last task before leaving the house is to automatically start your car and begin defrosting those windows – while you’re still inside sipping coffee.

In 2016, that’s what we like to call an efficient morning.

In our latest digital marketing video, we brought the efficiency conversation to the marketing table. The digital world is a tough realm in which to operate at maximum efficiency, but with marketing automation technology, Turning Visitors into Leads, and Leads into New Customers has never been easier:

Before you can set up a workflow of highly personalized marketing messages, landing pages and emails designed to convert website visitors into leads, you need to understand who is interested in your products and services.

In other words, you need to identify your audience.

The only way marketing automation works is if you have in-depth customers personas that define the various groups of people that make up your target audience. It seems a little counterintuitive because creating customer personas isn’t an automated process, but trust us – it’s the key cog that starts the entire system on the right track.

One of the biggest and most common inefficiencies companies experience is a disconnect between marketing and sales teams. If these departments aren’t aligned on the awareness, interest, evaluation, purchase, advocacy and retention of their leads and customers, marketing automation can’t and won’t work the way it was designed to.

We talk about content all the time, but in 2017 and beyond, content needs to be valuable and specifically targeted toward various points of the marketing automation funnel. If there aren’t enough leads coming in, brainstorm ideas for content that helps people enter your funnel and get to know the company. If you have enough leads but not a satisfying conversion rate, create content that helps your target audience make the decision to purchase.

For marketing automation to achieve maximum efficiency, your content needs to integrate with the overall process in a logical way.

Part of achieving efficiency, at least in a marketing sense, is using all of the channels available to you, with each one making an optimal contribution. For marketing automation to work, each channel has its own function and only together, as one cohesive unit, can the process remain efficient. Don’t focus on one area with marketing automation – let each channel do one small thing really, really well.

Automation isn’t about sending only email communications or focusing solely on your blog to generate and convert leads, it’s about understanding the perfect mix of tactics that will really drive your marketing campaign. You don’t nail the perfect setup on the first try but the good news us a little tweaking and testing will help you find the most efficient process in no time at all.

If you would like more information on marketing automation or need help setting up your workflow, get in touch with your local WSI Digital Marketing Consultant today.

The debate rages on. Is SEO dead? Should today’s marketers still put time and energy into building links? If you’ve been wondering about the future of SEO, you’ve come to the right place!

Think about the last time you wanted to try a new restaurant or store. Did you search for its location on the Internet? Did you read reviews and look for social media posts discussing the quality of the food or product?

If you did any of these things, you are living proof SEO is alive and well. SEO may not be the same kind of strategy it was five or even two years ago, but it has evolved along with the rest of the digital landscape.

The question isn’t whether SEO is dead or alive, but instead, are you prepared for its role in future marketing campaigns?

As we usually say, don’t just take our word for it; we’re right, but we have proof! According to a recent survey, 96% of marketers use SEO to provide informational and educational content to their audience. This isn’t surprising, but we do feel bad for the other 4% because, well, what exactly are they doing?

Given the lopsided numbers, why is there still a debate? We suspect – and now we enter the realm of conjecture – that because SEO has changed so drastically we’ve started to call it something else (like content or social media marketing). The fact SEO has evolved into a more cohesive tactic that not only combines with, but requires, other tactics to succeed shouldn’t propagate rumours of its demise. Yet here we are.

Don’t believe any of it: SEO is healthy and should be part of every digital marketing strategy.

At one point in its history, SEO was all about the end result: help a specific page rank #1 in the SERPs for a certain keyword or keywords, no matter what. The process was non-existent; it was the digital world’s equivalent to the Wild Wild West era – there were no rules.

Now, SEO is much more process driven, which means it works in tandem with and often relies on other digital tactics. In fact, 76% marketers use social media to support and boost SEO efforts. Five years ago, social media wasn’t considered to have an impact on SEO, but as we’ve said, things have changed for the better. Digital marketing isn’t about one tactic anymore, it requires seamlessly fusing multiple tactics into one cohesive strategy.

The “SEO is dead” camp often cites the staggering mobile app usage stats as the death knell of browsers and SERPs. To this we say: not so fast!

70% of mobile searches lead to online action within an hour. With that kind of conversion rate, who would abandon SEO? Not us (or anybody who listens to us)!

Apps are undeniably popular, and with good reason. We’ve all got our favorite apps that help us accomplish various goals or make us more efficient. But in terms of searching for things we need, the stats show 50% of mobile users prefer a mobile browser to a mobile app. Apps aren’t going anywhere, but neither is SEO!

The one area in which SEO is thriving is local. Local searches lead 50% of mobile visitors to visit stores within a day. Again, this is a crazy high conversion rate! On top of that, more than 60% of consumers have used local information they found in ads.

Part of the reason SEO flourished in the first place is that it allowed businesses to connect to a global audience. While a reach that spans the globe is still an important part of SEO, consumers’ growing dependence on search engines for local information is a huge reason why, as we’ve said a few times now, SEO has a firm place in the marketing campaigns of the foreseeable future.

That’s it for this month’s infographic summary, but come back in September to see what we create next. Here’s the full infographic, for your sharing pleasure:

On July 26, 2016, WSI Consultants Henry Bendik, Peter Jasniewski and Kaitlyn Krause enjoyed the payoff from their hard work.

There were informative sessions with various Google directors and project leads. There was a happy hour and walking tour of Google’s new space in Waterloo, Canada. And of course, there was a night of rockin’ out with Bryan Adams to hits like Summer of ’69 and Run to You.

To the victor go the spoils, indeed.

The trio attended the incredible event as a reward for WSI winning the Race to Google Canada contest. The contest measured the mobile ad spend and mobile site adoption of Canadian agencies during Q2 of 2016. WSI received three tickets for winning the contests and we awarded the spots to the Consultants with the biggest increase in spend from Q1 to Q2.

The Race to Google Canada is just one of the many perks of WSI’s close partnership with Google. Among the highlights from a knowledge-filled day were talks from Google Canada’s Managing Director Sam Sebastian and Ben Wood, Google’s Director of Channel Sales Americas.

Congrats to Henry, Peter, Kaitlyn and everybody in the WSI network who contributed to the win!

Marketing automation is all the rage these days, and for good reason: it frees up humans to do things humans are good at, and automates repetitive and mundane tasks. With marketing automation technology improving by the day, it’s easy to see why it’s become so prevalent.

A word to the wise, though: just because you engage with and implement marketing automation processes doesn’t guarantee you marketing automation success. It’s like anything else in life, you need to put in time and effort to hone your skills in order to generate the best results.

To help you avoid turning what should be a time-saving process into an inefficient and confusing mess, we put together an infographic outlining the 5 Steps to Marketing Automation Success:

Successful marketing automation boils down to one simple concept: knowing exactly what your customers need and the reasons why they need it. In order to understand the what and the why of your customers’ needs, however, you have to truly understand your customers. This is why even though marketing automation is a an automated process, it only works as well as you set it up. And to properly set things up, you need to understand what causes your customers pain so you can help ease it.

Once you know exactly how to meet the needs of your customers, the automation process begins. The first step is to set reasonable goals by delving into your site’s traffic numbers. If you know you need 500 incoming site visits to generate 5 new leads, make that your goal and drive headlong toward it.

Upon first blush, marketing automation might seem drastically different than the digital marketing strategies of the last few years, but that’s not the case. Marketing automation uses the same tried and true tactics – content, social media and email – it just organizes them better. Think of it like the wrap jobs you see on Christmas presents; you can use the exact same same wrapping paper to wrap a present, but if one is wrapped with more care and expertise, it absolutely glows below the tree (while the poorly wrapped present lays crumpled to the side).

The content that functions best within an automation strategy focuses on answering customers’ question while offering your products and/or services as potential solutions.

The worst thing about most lead generation processes is internal communication within a business or company. Small businesses often have so much work piled onto not enough people that leads fall by the wayside. And within larger companies, a misalignment between sales and marketing is often the culprit of too many leads left unconverted. Neither of these situations is a case of not enough leads being generated, it’s about leads being mishandled. If you can treat your leads properly – something marketing automation demands – you may not need to generate more.

Another issue with many marketing strategies is they are so disconnected it’s nearly impossible to tell whether they are working. With the amount of access we have to data and information in today’s word, not knowing is never acceptable. If you establish a closed-loop reporting process that tracks your leads as they travel along your funnel, you’ll always know.

Yeah, yeah, testing is another thing we talk about all the time. But the reason we harp on some of these things so much is because they make that much of a difference to your success! Landing pages, blog posts, emails and social posts all need to be tested and tweaked until they are delivering optimal results. There’s no reason to settle for less when a little bit of effort can help you maximize the dollars you spend on digital marketing!

As Porky Pig would say, “That’s all folks!” But please, share this infographic with vigor, and come back in December to see what we come up with for the holiday season. Here’s the full infographic:

Success happens when you measure and understand what is working and not working. We measure things every day in our life, how long it takes us to get somewhere, how much sleep we had the night before – and then ask do I need more or less. Marketing is no different, if you are going to spend money wouldn’t it be great to know if you are spending the right amount in the right way?

Google Analytics is a great tool to get started measure how well your website is working. You can measure how many visitors come to your website and what actions they take. Understanding some of these simple things helps you to make decisions to define a marketing strategy. Marketing your business online can be very expensive when you make choices that follow a path away from your business objectives.

Here’s a few tips to get you started on Google Analytics:

Knowing you want to grow your business is one thing, but let’s dig a little deeper. How much do you want to grow your business and what product or service would you like to focus the growth? Setting specific and attainable goals is the first step to having the ability to measure those goals. Do you want to grow your business by 10%, 25% or 50% this year? Where have you been most successful?

In order to developing a good digital marketing strategy you must understand your competition and how they are competing. Understanding what your competition is NOT doing gives you a competitive advantage and understanding what is working well for them allows you to maximize opportunity.

Understanding what interests your visitors and where they spend their time allows you to improve your visitor’s experience. Dominate in search engines by tailoring content for how your target markets is searching for you and encouraging your existing customers to return.

With so many ways to make yourself found by search engines, it’s important to know which tactics are working. Do you have a huge following on social media and are marketing on multiple social media channels? Are you the best content marketer and Google is rewarding you by increasing your ranking? With the many other ways you can increase your brand awareness it’s important to know which ones are working the best. Understanding where your traffic is originating can allow you focus on what is working and stop doing what is not working.

First let’s answer the question, what is a bounce rate and why do I care? A bounce rate tells you that someone has visited your site and taken no actions before leaving. Actions can be visit another page or complete a form. To put it into perspective, If you went into a store and realize it’s not what you expected, turned around and walked out – technically that is a bounce. A high bounce rate tell you that you are not displaying what people want, or how they are finding you through search is not relevant to what you sell. All of your marketing efforts are wasted if people aren’t looking for what you’re selling.

Measuring your marketing efforts can be simple or complex based on your business objectives. Even in the most simple form your business will reap the benefits of knowing you are making the right choices.

If you would like more information on analytics or need help setting up tracking and reporting, get in touch with your local WSI Digital Marketing Consultant today.

You know how when you go to the grocery store and randomly see Lays chip display in the dairy section? Or chocolate at the end of the canned vegetable aisle? These displays are put in these odd spots for a reason: to see what customers will do, and whether they’re more likely to buy these specific products in this spot vs. their normal, chip and candy aisle spots.

It goes without saying that the stores know exactly how many units of each product are sold and the location from which customers grabbed them. Without accurate analytics on their products and customer tendencies, there would be no purpose in moving items around the store.

If only every company treated their website and its components like a grocery store – what bliss! Alas, this is not the case. Too many businesses try this and that on their website – changing button colours, images, text size – but never measure or analyze what happens after each change is implemented.

In our latest digital marketing video, we outline the reasons why pulling reports and analyzing data is not optional. If you want to improve your overall customer experience and increase sales, the number one way to do it is by regularly reviewing these 5 profit pulling analytics reports:

Well, it’s that time of the year again: the one where we make a few predictions for the marketing world, and revisit our past prognostications. We started doing these prediction posts back in 2014 after we read Rand Fishkin’s annual predictions. In case you’re curious about how how our future-telling escapades have gone, read our 2015 and 2016 marketing prediction posts.

As usual, we’re going to grade last year’s predictions before we allow ourselves to make another set but SPOILER ALERT: we’ll be gazing into our crystal ball either way.

Here’s the grading scale we decided on in 2014’s post:

• Oracle (+2) – when we’re so right it’s like we channeled that nice lady from The Matrix
• Oracle In-Training (+1) – we didn’t quite see the whole picture, but hey, we still saw the future
• Clear As Mud (0) – we weren’t right, but we weren’t wrong, either
• Just A Bit Outside (-1) – we tried to paint the corner of the plate, but the ump didn’t give us the call
• Swing And A Miss (-2) – like a batter who expects fastball and gets a curve, we weren’t close

For 2016, we made these five predictions:

To be honest, we knew this was going to be a tough one to grade. Dropping the “digital” in “digital marketing” is something we wanted to see happen, but was it just wishful thinking on our part? As we’ve graded ourselves, the answer is clear as mud.

We found an article discussing one big marketing agency’s decision to drop the “digital” from all the organization’s job titles, which we count as a win for us. Yet it still doesn’t seem like enough people have embraced the digital realm as the marketing realm. Heck, we’re still using it ourselves, so we really can’t award any points for dropping the world “digital” in “digital marketing.” Maybe 2017 is the year the domino finally falls.

Another mediocre prediction by us. There is no better microcosm for shopping than Black Friday, and a recent study found that mobile payments accounted for just 0.6% of all sales during the 2016 post-Thanksgiving shopping holiday. The fact that this represented more than double the rate of mobile payment usage on Black Friday 2015 is the only thing keeping us from negative points.

We said we’d show you the stats, so here they are:

• 73% of major organizations now hire someone to manage their content marketing strategy
• On average, 39% of marketers anticipate their content marketing budget will increase in 2017
• 88% of respondents to a survey indicated that content marketing is an important component of their organization’s marketing program in 2017 and beyond

It took three predictions, but we’re finally on the board!

Yes, I’m still using Waze during my commute, and yes, I still see ads flash by all the time. The ads are sometimes even interactive as all of the sudden a message will pop up and as me if I’ve seen any Tim Horton’s restaurants along my route. Well duh, I’m in Canada – there’s a Tim Horton’s on every corner up here!

But seriously, the title of this article says it all: Digital Ad Spending Will Surpass TV Spending For The First Time In U.S. History. Without a doubt, ads are showing up in more and more places, whether it’s on our computers, phones, or tablets while we’re watching videos or perusing our social feeds, there’s a personalized ad lurking around every corner.

I’m confused as to why this didn’t happen, but I don’t think there is any evidence to support the claim that predictive content tools drastically grew in 2016. Articles such as this one tout the uses of predictive analytics – similar to the way we have in the past – but in there’s more excitement about the potential rather than facts about what we currently have. It’s a shame, but maybe things will take off in the next couple years.

We’ve done it again! By the skin of our teeth, our 2016 predictions were more right than wrong. So without further delay, here are our best guesses for five things that will happen in the marketing world during 2017:

This may already be a trend, in which case it’s a bit of a softball, but data-driven marketers are the best kind of marketers, so we’ll see the number of job postings for data scientists (or any similar titles) continue to grow. Full disclosure: by “any similar titles” we reserve the right to deem “geeky math nerd” as the equivalent of data scientists.

Until now, influencer marketing has been operating in the shadows of the digital world. You’ve probably heard tell of large sums of money being paid out to popular Instagrammers to simply put on a dress and take a picture, but that was during what we’ll call the Wild Wild West of influencer marketing. Now, with more influencer marketing platforms emerging and marketers realizing there needs to be more of a relationship between brands, influencers and customers, this relatively young tactic will begin to fully develop.

Marketing automation is huge – there’s no denying that. But the cost and complexity of setting up and managing a marketing automation has been a huge obstacle for small businesses; it’s hard to find the time to learn and setup automaton when the one thing you don’t have is time! As the platforms continue to get better and using them easier, small business owners – and the marketers who serve them – will realize marketing automation is the way of the future.

Stats show that a third of all online activity is spent watching video and the average user is exposed to 32.3 videos in a month. Smart marketers are in tune with these numbers, and whether it’s video ads, video storytelling, or live streaming, they’ll find a way to incorporate more videos into their 2017 marketing strategy.

This is going out on a limb a little bit, but I believe the advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning will soon impact the world of content marketing. As these amazing technologies are used to create real-world applications and devices, it won’t be long before somebody finds a way to use them to do better content marketing – hopefully in 2017!

Wish us the best of luck with our 2017 marketing predictions. If you believe in us, you might even get a jump on your competition by using these predictions to implement some new marketing processes. And don’t forget, check back here in 12 months time to see how we did and do it all over again!