4 Tools to Turn Your WordPress-Powered Website into a Growth Engine

Today, over one-third of all websites use WordPress for infrastructure and content management, making it the world's most popular site building platform.

Perhaps the biggest reason for this level of market penetration is WordPress's versatility. It can become almost anything you want it to be, a type of blank canvas for the digital work of art that is your branded online presence.

It doesn't matter what design element, user interface module or back end tool you can think of. Thanks to the vibrant community of WordPress developers (it's open source, after all), there's probably an existing plugin that can do what you have in mind. And if there isn't, you can have one built for you. Because the platform has emerged as the industry standard, WordPress's plugin developer ecosystem is expansive and growing. It allows millions of developers worldwide to create exceptional applications and tools that integrate into WordPress sites to give them added functionality.

For businesses, this means that your website can become one of your most powerful engines of growth – whether you are on a mission to grow exponentially (viral growth), retain customers (sticky growth), or bring in customers through advertising (paid growth). You can use the WordPress framework, along with whatever set of third-party components you like, to make your site work for you in ways that were impossible even just a few years ago.

However, with great choice comes great paralysis. It can be hard to know what WordPress plugins are best for the specifics of your situation. At the time of writing, the WordPress plugin marketplace is home to some 45,312 options, and that's before we count the thousands of standalone SaaS tools that integrate with WordPress sites from beyond the confines of your host servers.

To get you started in the right direction, here are four tools that can help turn your WordPress website into a powerful growth engine.

1. Drive Traffic Back to Your Site Using Start A Fire

If your brand is active online, chances are you share content from other brands as well as your own. This is true when it comes to outbound links in your blog content, and it's true when it comes to your social media channels.

Curating great third-party content that's relevant to your audience is one of the most effective ways you can position your brand as a leader in your niche, because it helps to cultivate the impression that you've got your finger on the pulse of your industry. And when you're a trusted go-to hub of valuable information, people will want to keep coming back for more of what you're serving up.

The disadvantage of using curated third-party content, though, is that you're essentially asking your audience to click out of your owned web property to go to someone else's, which means they may never return to your site. Have you ever thought about how much of your potential audience you're essentially sending away?

Now imagine being able to drive those clicks to others' sites back to your own content, because with Start A Fire, you can do just that.

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Start A Fire is a tool that allows you to add your own floating recommended links box, called a “badge,” to any URL you share. This means that whenever someone clicks on a link on your WordPress blog to a third party site, they'll have a reminder to come back your site when they're finished.

And Start A Fire-enabled short links can be shared anywhere, so you can even drive your social media traffic back your site after they've clicked on a link in your feed. Click on the link in the tweet below to see it in action.

BotPages: Explore the world's largest open bot directory https://t.co/zlqzPINuS6

- Matthew Barby (@matthewbarby) June 24, 2016

If you click the link, you'll be taken to this page which includes this widget:

In addition to the WordPress plugin, marketers can integrate Start a Fire with their social media dashboards and email marketing platforms, so that every link shared has your custom badge on it.

Start A Fire is a free tool, with premium features available via custom pricing for agency and enterprise accounts.

2. Convert with Content Using Content Upgrades Pro

You could probably start a whole new business with the amount of time you spend researching, curating, creating and promoting content. Yet our content isn't working nearly as hard for us as it could at converting viewers into subscribers and customers.

Content Upgrades Pro is a plugin that promises to use your content to “turn up to 59.2% of your visitors into email subscribers.” How do they do that? This clever plugin allows you to offer a “content upgrade” to your WordPress blog posts – a piece of extra content that you offer within your article, but people can't get access to it unless they opt-in with their email address. It's analogous to gating resources behind a lead capture form, except that with content upgrades, the audience is all the more likely to convert, because they're already enjoying a taste of the premium content on offer.

This way it works is simple. You simply add a bonus “Fancy Box” to your WordPress content using the plugin, which triggers a popup requesting the visitor's email address. Once they enter and click through to access the bonus content, the plugin redirects them to a download page or sends them an email. At the end of the day, they get more of the content they crave, and you get another qualified subscriber. It's a win-win.

So what qualifies for content upgrades? Anything you want! It could be an expanded version of the article your audience is reading, with more details or extra points, or maybe a PDF version for easy reference in the future. Or better yet, a totally separate but equally relevant offer, such as a free checklist, e-book or guide on the topic, which you can offer on multiple articles at once. The choice is yours.

Content Upgrades Pro is available for $57 as a one-time licensing fee for a single website, or $77 for up to five sites.

3. Give Your Site Superpowers with SumoMe

Alright, so including SumoMe on this list was a bit of an underhanded move on my part, because even though it's one package, it comes with more than a dozen extremely powerful add-on tools that add great functionality to your site.

From its heat maps, which tell you where your website visitors are clicking (or not), to its free exit intent popup email list builder, which promises to increase your email signups by 20% daily, SumoMe provides a well-curated group of useful apps, all aimed at growing your website traffic and increasing conversions.

Seeing a grid of this many tools may be a little overwhelming for someone just starting to explore the world of WordPress plugins. But don't worry – you don't have to use all the tools they offer. Just the ones you need, and you can add more as the need arises. Additionally, SumoMe walks you through the setup process for each, and provides great tips and tricks for optimization.

And if you ever need some inspiration or ideas on how to make use of the tools for your website, they provide a great showcase library of how some of their top customers are using these tools and the results they get.

SumoMe is available in a robust “free forever” version, with paid plans ranging from $20 to $119, depending on your features and traffic volume.

4. Make Your Numbers Count with Kissmetrics

There's no way we could talk about growth-enabling tools and plugins and leave Kissmetrics off the list. The company has spent years crafting the ultimate analytics platform to help WordPress users (and non-WordPress sites) with all levels of expertise to dig deep into their metrics, to learn what's happening with their sites, and to discover ways to optimize the onsite experience.

What makes Kissmetrics different from the standard analytics platforms available is its emphasis on the end consumer. Instead of just focusing on metrics like pageviews and bounce rates, which is the realm of Google Analytics, Kissmetrics tracks individual users to help you understand and segment your audience so you can create better content and onsite experiences for success.

Any business that aims to convert customers through their WordPress site and wants to know who their visitors are, where they're coming from and how to get more of them to convert, should be using Kissmetrics.

Along with the standalone tool, Kissmetrics offers a standard plugin for WordPress, which allows you to track data and view the results directly on the back-end of your site.

And to top it all off, the Kissmetrics Blog that you're reading is one of the best sources of high-quality, consistent, relevant content about the latest in analytics, online marketing and website development. So you can always be sure that you have an ally that's just as invested in getting the best, most current information to help you succeed.

Kissmetrics pricing starts at $120 per month.

A Time for Growth

Once they're set up, the tools listed here are all more or less capable of working behind the scenes. Once you let them get to work, they'll require very little maintenance, but they'll provide massive results. You can't ask for much more.

While I've only provided four of the most beneficial tools and plugins that I'm familiar with, remember that there are thousands of options to choose from that can help develop your site into the growth machine it has the potential to become, and even more being developed daily. Keep looking out for that next great app that will help you even further in your growth journey.

About the Author: Nadav is a veteran online marketer and the Founder & CEO of InboundJunction, an Israel-based content marketing company. Nadav helps well-known brands in boosting their online visibility through PR, SEO and Social Media.

Data-Driven CTAs for Each Stage of Your Sales Funnel

The topic of conversion optimization often revolves around the call to action, with recommendations for improving conversions pointing to variations in shape, size, color, placement on page, copy, etc.

That said, one factor that's often neglected – with sometimes dire consequences – is the relevance of the call to action to the stage of the sales funnel, or what point your audience is at in the buyer's journey.

When your call to action doesn't match the intent of your audience, you're going to see a sharp decline or limited lift in conversions for a given piece of content or landing page.

The Basics of the Call to Action

The call to action (CTA) is an instruction you give to your audience to provoke an immediate response and get them to take action.

That action can be a lot of things: a request to download an eBook, opt-in to an email list, sign up for a webinar, register for an event, purchase a product, take a live demo/product tour, read another article, share, comment, etc.

In some cases marketers will utilize multiple calls to action; however, best-practices state that it's best to only use one call to action to eliminate the paradox of choice. This focuses the audience on that single action you want them to take, rather than split their attention.

Not all CTAs are created equal; it's not enough to just slap a brightly colored “click here” button throughout your funnel. Not only are various elements crucial to the effectiveness of a call to action, but the performance of your CTAs will vary based on their placement throughout the buyer's journey.

Here's some generic CTAs turned better by focusing on benefits the visitor gets by clicking the CTA:

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A CTA can be placed virtually anywhere in and around your content, but your call to action can't just be placed haphazardly in your sales funnel.

Crafting an Effective Call to Action

Creating an effective call to action starts with the little details. It's easy to create a call to action, but it's far harder to create a call to action that converts well.

Here are some of the most common components that play a part in getting a conversion lift during CTA creation and A/B testing.

The Design

In order for someone to click on a call to action, they first need to see it. Eye-catching designs are helpful, and this is one point where it's OK to step outside of your brand's style guide. You want colors that contrast with the rest of your content and that are large enough to stand out over everything else.

The copy

You can't just tell someone to “click” or “submit.” Your copy should use power words and actionable verbs, often personalized (“you”, “your”, “my”) to have the most impact. Here's a guide to writing CTAs.

The value proposition

Make sure your audience knows exactly what they're getting when they click. Your call to action should be explicitly clear about what comes next, or about what they're getting in exchange for taking an action.

Placement in the funnel

A CTA is most effective when it's wholly relevant to the content it's placed in, as well as the user's intent. As such, it's best if it delivers the user to a dedicated landing page relevant to the stage of the buyer's journey, rather than a random website page.

For example, a CTA to a Contact Us page won't be as effective in gathering leads as a CTA that drives the reader to a landing page for a free download.

Likewise, you'd never create a call to action for a product demo (a bottom of the funnel CTA) at the bottom of a blog post when that blog post is providing top of the funnel content meant to drive awareness.

Hitting on all of these components is a critical part of a well-performing call to action. To simplify it, you can break any call to action down into two key concepts – Value and Relevance:

• The copy of your CTA conveys value and relevance


• The position of your CTA within the sales funnel reinforces relevance

Fitting your CTA to the Stages of the Sales Funnel

While most funnels will come in three stages, no two funnels are the same. The buyer's journey changes depending on your audience, the product or service, the industry, etc.

Some funnels are very short (B2C online retailers for example) while others are much longer. For example, an enterprise level SaaS like Salesforce isn't a quick purchase. There's often a much longer period of awareness and evaluation before a purchase is made.

Let's take a look at a typical funnel and the types of content and calls to action at each stage:

Top of the Funnel

The top of the funnel is the awareness stage. You're not here to push or promote any specific product or service. Instead you're offering a broad range of knowledge intended to educate your audience.

They're looking for answers – sometimes specific, sometimes not so specific. Your job is to create content at this stage that captures their attention and provides them with answers.

At this early evaluation stage, marketers typically use long form blog content to grab referral and organic traffic and introduce a brand to the audience. Other types of content at this stage include:

• eBooks and white papers


• Reports


• Infographics

Companies often put a great deal of their marketing efforts into producing a lot of top of the funnel content. And that's a good idea – this type of content marketing can generate 3 times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing, but costs 62% less than traditional marketing efforts.

Blogs are often the most popular; 79% of companies with an active blog report a positive ROI.

At this stage, your call to action needs to focus the attention of the audience. They're not yet a qualified lead or customer, and you don't want to push promotional CTAs or you risk driving them away.

Instead use personalized calls to action that promote continued engagement. This can include:

• A CTA to drive engagement – “Share this post with your network” or “Leave a comment below with your thoughts”


• A CTA that gathers info – “Click to get your free eBook” or “Download your free local marketing checklist”

Check out this CTA that Hubspot places at the end of a blog post. It invites people to try out their new tool, with benefits-focused copy:

Remember that the focus here should be on education and continued engagement, with the goal of moving visitors to the middle of the funnel (the evaluation phase).

Middle of the Funnel

The middle of your sales funnel is also known as the evaluation phase. At this point, your audience is aware of your knowledge and offerings. They're committed to finding a solution, but they don't quite know what that is yet. For now, they're simply researching and trying to understand all of the options that are available for solving their problem.

Your goal here is to continue to educate them while also positioning your solutions as the ideal choice.

At this stage, it's not uncommon to use email marketing, segmented by audience and intent, to build a relationship with the audience. Other types of content for the evaluation stage include:

• Comparison white papers


• Expert guides


• Live interactions including webinars

Here's an example of a white paper offer from Zendesk:

Calls to action in this phase are often extremely focused, with dedicated landing pages. HubSpot, for instance, increased subscribers by 128% in a 90 day period by using blog opt-in boxes on dedicated landing pages. Those CTAs can be made even more effective by narrowing the focus for your audience. As many as 16% of landing pages eliminate navigation to achieve this.

CTAs should focus on relevancy at this stage, highlighting the expert nature of educational information with a strong value proposition.

Here's a CTA shown to Kissmetrics highlighting the free case study they'll receive in exchange for an email address.

Bottom of the Funnel

Just because you've moved your audience to the bottom of the funnel into the purchase phase doesn't mean you're going to close the lead. They're certainly ready to buy, and you want to ensure that they buy from you – but it's far from guaranteed.

Hopefully, at this point, you've mapped content and CTAs to effectively guide your audience through the lead nurturing process. According to HubSpot, nurtured leads produce on average a 20% lift in sales vs non-nurtured leads. Further research from Forrester has shown that companies that excel at lead nurturing can generate up to 50% more sales leads at 33% lower cost.

At this phase, you want to leverage content that persuades your audience to make a purchase. This can include:

• Trial downloads


• Demos


• Infographics


• Product literature or buyer guides


• Further case studies

As a result, the most effective CTAs will be personalized based on relevancy and intent:

• “Get your membership access now”


• “Start your free trial today”


• “Request your free evaluation now”

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Conclusion

Creating an effective call to action goes beyond design and copy. It has everything to do with aligning your offer and CTA with your sales funnel to ensure it's relevant to the audience's intent.

Don't stop once your CTAs are mapped appropriately, though.

Setup follow-up content that moves the target back to the middle of the funnel with an appropriate CTA to keep them engaged. Maintain the marriage with the customer and turn them into a lead-generating brand ambassador, using CTAs to inspire them to spread the word.

Do you make CTA placement and creation part of your documented content marketing strategy? Share your approach to CTAs with me in the comments.

About the Author: Andrew Raso is the co-founder and director of Online Marketing Gurus, a fast-growing, award-winning search company working with brands including HelloMolly, Baku Swimwear, and Forcast. Follow him on Twitter at @andrewraso1 or on LinkedIn.

3 Steps to Put Customer Acquisition on Autopilot

Everyone's short on resources.

You got a tight budget. Limited staff.

But what's really in dire need, is more time.

There's only so many campaigns you can create, or issues to respond to, without working yet another weekend.

Simply keeping up is half the battle.

The good news is that some of the best marketing tactics can also be automated, allowing you to set-and-forget while the tools take care of the rest.

Here are three ways that time-strapped companies can better leverage their promotional efforts through using remarketing ads, marketing automation, and dynamic product ads.

Step #1. Remarketing for New Website Visitors

Only a tiny majority – like single digits tiny – are going to purchase when they hit your website.

Using powers of extreme deduction, that means MOST people hitting your website (like the other 90%+) aren't spending a dime.

Add to that, at least half of all customer interactions are now multi-event (and often multi-device) journeys. People rarely convert on their first visit, after seeing a PPC ad for the first time.

Instead, they might first find out who you are months in advance after seeing a display ad or clicking a referral link. They might have even done a quick search for a problem, looking for some basic information.

All that stuff happens before they start shopping around, evaluating their alternatives to purchase. (Google's Customer Journey to Online Purchase tool can replicate this for your own business.)

This nonlinear process becomes disjointed if you have an extremely commercial website. One that focuses a lot of attention and pages of content about your products and services, with little else to offer those people not yet aware of a need for your stuff quite yet.

In other words, great stuff for people already close to the 'Last Interaction' highlighted above. Yet nothing for all the other ones who might be 'earlier' in the marketing funnel.

But what about… everyone else?

There's no Plan B. There's nothing for people who might be interested in what you have to offer, but aren't ready to convert just yet for whatever reason.

That's where remarketing can come in, giving people a reason to come back to your site with lesser offers (or micro conversions), nurturing them along until they're ready to make the ultimate decision.

Setting these up for the first time is fairly self-explanatory. You can create a new campaign directly in AdWords, make sure you've got the right tracking pixel in place, and then start work on the ad creative for all the different sizes Google offers.

I was going to show a few screenshots, but honestly that's all it takes. So here's your obligatory image instead:

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Being so simple and easy to create, it's hard to believe that it's still an underused tactic. Especially with costs commonly ~46% less than standard advertising too. What's even more compelling, is that the more retargeting campaigns used, the more conversion rates go up.

Wait. Why?

It's a nudge; a gentle reminder that you're still there and have something that they need. (Not your product or service at this point necessarily, but a solution to their problem nonetheless.)

You can even try 'Super Remarketing', which is a tongue-in-cheek concept from Larry Kim that describes overlaying demographic and behavioral-based information from Facebook (or even Twitter) to your existing site visitors.

Starting with the people who visited your site in the last 30-60 days is a good start, because you should (hopefully) be fresh in their minds. However combining that with ad creative designed to match their demographic stuff (like their job titles) or behavioral (like their interests) could be an extremely powerful – and automate-able – way to drive new leads.

But what are you supposed to do with them?

Automate your follow-up too of course.

Step #2. Marketing Automation for New Leads

Most people here are familiar with marketing automation (and it's power to increase sales by almost 34%).

Yet most, like 85% of B2B marketers (!), are unhappy with their execution.

When done correctly (and combined with earlier efforts including remarketing ad campaigns), marketing automation is your best-bet for increasing lead generation on autopilot.

Here's how.

My company worked with a client who relied heavily on Google AdWords for lead generation. Sites like this generally perform well with direct-response advertising, because you're purposefully attracting people who're close to making a decision. But they also naturally had a huge percentage of people leaving the site without giving them anything.

We hypothesized that these people were leaving the landing pages and Quote Request form because they weren't quite ready to speak with a sales rep just yet. They were interested in what the company had to offer, but were still looking for basic information prior to making their ultimate decision.

So we created a simple calculator that would provide them with a few fast facts (like what they're going to get and what it's going to cost), without the need to 'be sold'.

After entering their basic information, the person would receive customized results specific to them (while also entering an automated workflow, which we'll touch on in the next step).

Now we have something interesting and compelling to promote with remarketing ads, targeting those people who were just on the website but didn't convert.

And best of all, we received some interesting information to set-up new automated email workflows.

Not just a name or email address, which doesn't give us much. But also more important qualifying information that's critical to determining if these people are good potential leads and how to prioritize them.

We can create not just a single, standard email workflow now, but a few sophisticated ones that combine some of a person's unique characteristics to truly personalize the context of each interaction.

(That's a fancy way of saying a person's more likely to open and click your email because it's better – more timely, relevant, and personal – than all of the other crap in their inbox.)

Most popular tools can run these campaigns for you. HubSpot is awesome (yet expensive). So I also recommend Autopilot and MailChimp for budget conscious companies.

Next you can brainstorm or outline a series of emails to nurture these people over time. For example, pick an interval first (like every 2 days or every week). Then choose a sequence of message topics that will start with supporting their initial request, slowly building to soft sells or even hard sells if appropriate.

For example, if someone just used your calculator (or downloaded your eBook, attended your webinar, etc.), send them to the next logical step in your funnel.

Maybe that's a case study or a pricing page. It might even be directly to a product page that can deliver the result that your email promised.

Whatever the case, just create a simple cadence to start and repeat for a few days.

Once you've got the basic structure down, you can branch off based on how people do (or do NOT) interact with you.

For example:

• Did they attend the webinar you linked to in Email 1? Remove them from this list and add them to another to make sure they attend it!


• Did they purchase the product you described in Email 3? Remove them from this list and add them to a New Purchases one to (a) upsell or (b) get them to recommend you


• Did they receive 10 emails but fail to even open them? Send them a break-up email unless they start responding.

As you can see, the possibilities are endless.

Start with the most obvious or basic site interaction. And then continue to build out overtime, adding in complexity where appropriate to completely automate how strangers are nurtured until they're ready to purchase.

Step #3. Dynamic Product Ads for Purchase-Ready Prospects

'Good' leads are ones that view your key pages.

They view your pricing pages, they view case study pages, and they view your product pages.

These people are checking you out; dipping a toe into the possibility of initiating a new relationship with you.

When these people leave your site, it's tragic. They were so close.

You can (and should) use marketing automation campaigns if possible to continue following-up with these people to get them back to your site (or on the phone).

You can (and should) also use remarketing campaigns to remind them of what they're missing.

Fortunately, you can also use remarketing on steroids with Facebook's Dynamic Product Ads.

In a banner blind world, where average click throughs are a dismal sub 1%, relevance and timing win.

These dynamic product ads are like a cross between marketing automation and remarketing ads, leveraging your product database and an ad 'template' to show people specific ads on Facebook for products they just viewed on your website recently.

Digital advertising automation is still in it's infancy, but this is pretty damn close.

For example, Jessica Alba's The Honest Company saw a 34% increase in click through rates. Which ain't bad. But it's even more impressive when they ALSO saw a 38% reduction in cost per purchase at the same damn time.

That's why those buzzwords like 'relevancy' and 'timing' are important. When done right, they = better results for less.

Get started by creating a product catalog in an XML or CSV file, similar to the one below (or simply use your Google Shopping product feed from Shopping campaigns).

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Get yo' tracking pixels on fleek to track peeps who:

• View Content


• Add to Cart


• Purchase

If you're keeping score at home, those are three different 'stages' you can personalize ads to now.

(The Pixel Helper Chrome Extension can help if you're having issues with setup.)

The next step is to begin setting up an standard ad 'template' that will be customized dynamically. Here's what that looks like:

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Once you've activated these campaigns, each ad will be customized with the content from your product feed based on whatever criteria each person meets (i.e. previously viewed content, added product to cart, etc.).

Now Let's Put it All Together

Standard remarketing campaigns with Google, marketing automation, and Facebook's Dynamic Product Ads are each incredibly powerful tools on their own.

They allow you to customize marketing messages on the fly, without the need for you (or your team) to personally do anything (besides monitor results and adjust over time).

But the REAL value is in integrating these three concepts at the same time, creating a seamless customer experience in a multi-channel world.

For example, cart abandonment strategies now take on a whole new meaning.

Sure, send the standard, “Hey, you forgot this product in your cart” email. But combine it with an automated ad of that specific product on Facebook. And support these two activities with branded messages as they browse around Google's omnipresent ad network.

Marketing tactics, in isolation, can provide incremental improvements. But together, they have the power to deliver significant benefits.

Especially when some of the most powerful can be set on autopilot too.

About the Author: Brad Smith is a founding partner at Codeless Interactive, a digital agency specializing in creating personalized customer experiences. Brad's blog also features more marketing thoughts, opinions and the occasional insight.

How Much is Bad Data Costing Your Company?

In a world of big data, bad data is becoming more and more commonplace. Part of the issue is fueled by the technology we use to help manage and organize that data. In our rush to be more on-demand, personalized and data-science-powered, we've embraced cloud computing, mobility, social collaboration and enhanced analytics. Every scrap of every shred of customer data is valuable. But in doing so, we've also let our data quality control lapse.

And when departments are clamoring for numbers despite the inaccuracies, it leads to a ripple effect of poor decisions based on those errors. But just how much is it really costing us? And what can we do to stop poor data hygiene before it spreads? Let's take a closer look:

A Company Problem – Not Just an IT Problem

Even just a few years ago, in 2013, the looming spectre of bad data was apparent. Gartner surveyed a wide range of companies in its study and learned that data quality costs them over $14 million dollars a year. Now imagine how much more connected we are today and you can see how the problem could compound exponentially.

Source: Ringlead

Many companies, in an attempt to wrangle departments to make sense of it all, place the task of organizing and managing all this information squarely on IT's shoulders. But bad data affects more than just servers and databases – it affects everyone. In this day and age, it is very much a business problem.

And that's not even factoring in the cost beyond customer data. A few inaccuracies in customer names or details is one thing. But oftentimes, depending on the company culture in relation to data upkeep, it can affect other areas of business as well – productivity, security and making cost effective decisions.

In short, this is not a problem we can continue to throw money at and hope it goes away or works itself out.

What Exactly Is “Data Quality”?

Before you begin to get a handle on the data itself, it's important to understand what “it” is. According to another Gartner study, data quality is examined by several different points, including:

• Existence (does the organization have the data to begin with?)


• Validity (are the values acceptable?)


• Consistency (when the same piece of data is stored in different locations, do they have the same values?)


• Integrity (how accurate the relationships between data elements and data sets are)


• Accuracy (whether the data accurately describes the properties of the object it is meant to model)


• Relevance (whether or not the data is appropriate to support the objective)

That's a lot of information to try and clean up “by hand”.

A Portfolio of Options

To help meet the rising urgency of this challenge, there are many data cleansing solutions available. These companies typically look at the big picture of data quality and help to standardize records as a whole. They often source data internally and externally to help maximize relevance and consistency across the board.

As with the other tools in your business arsenal, it's a smart idea to have a portfolio of options available for your data cleansing needs. You may only need a one-time data cleanse to keep your information up-to-date, or you may need ongoing work. Ideally, you'd only need a one-time data quality cleanup if you're migrating to another system or doing a mass marketing campaign. Otherwise if the information isn't tended to often, it can deteriorate and compound problems considerably.

For particularly large or error-prone data sets, a data quality cleansing tool may be set up to run automatically. These types of systems can either cleanse data at specific intervals or notify managers and staff in cases where ongoing data quality monitoring is important.

What to Look For in a Data Quality Solution Provider

Because there are so many options available, and more tools being created all the time, it can feel overwhelming to try and narrow down your options when you're not even really sure what you need. No matter what you ultimately decide, the proposed solution absolutely must be able to:

• Be able to deliver an immediate impact and noticeable improvement based on the company's current data hygiene state


• Leverage both real-time information and historical details – customers, staff, products, techniques and processes


• Have a rock-solid foundation to be able to use new technologies such as predictive analytics, forecasting and modeling


• Scale and adapt based on the volume, speed and variety of data while keeping everything valid and consistent

And just as the cost of bad data can continue to multiply year over year, the savings from having accurate data are just as big (if not more-so), as noted in this chart from RingLead:

Source: Ringlead

What a Difference Clean Data Can Make!

Of course, cost savings are one thing, but oftentimes management (and other executives) don't just want savings – they want to see a direct correlation in terms of revenue as well. The real question is, how much can clean data make for us? Here's a hypothetical (albeit very realistic) example from the same Ringlead chart:

And in addition to revenues and savings, the benefits of clean data go much farther. With greater data reliability comes greater credibility and a stronger decision-making foundation backed by data. Reports become more accurate. Customers respond to more accurate personalization. All departments enjoy greater productivity and efficiency. It's a cycle of wins.

So as you can see, a few inaccurate records or non-standardized entries don't seem like a big problem, but as your business scales, more and more information becomes fragmented and fraught with issues. Costs escalate. Efficiency plummets. But by the same token, by spending a little now, you reap far greater benefits over time. And any campaign started or improved based on solid, reliable information is one you can look to time and time again for greater insights and metrics that count.

Do you use a data hygiene strategy in your own company? How has it worked out for you? Have you seen better performance as a result or is the jury still out when it comes to making an impact? Share your stories with us in the comments below.

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today! Follow @sherice on Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+ for more articles like this!

Interview with Barry Schwartz of the Jewish Ad Network

In today's online marketing world, we have become increasingly skeptical about jumping onto that next Ad platform that offers new and improved “bells & whistles” but in reality its just another “me-too” type startup looking to get a piece of market share. However, there is one company that has emerged onto the scene that doesn't promote shiny bells and whistles, but rather harnesses one of the oldest and trusted forms of social media – email marketing. That new Ad platform is called the Jewish Ad Network.

I had the privilege of interviewing Barry Schwartz, a legend in Search Engine Marketing and CEO of Rustybrick – the parent company behind the Jewish Ad Network (JAN). Barry was kind enough to answer a few questions to help better explain the benefits and the motivations behind his new venture.

 

Tell us a little about the Jewish Ad Network and why advertisers should consider it as part of their strategy?

 

The Jewish Ad Network is unique in that it lets advertisers use specific Jewish data in an anonymized manner to do targeting like no other network.  By leveraging our ShulCloud database, we have the ability to let advertisers target a larger population of Jewish users based on their denomination, i.e. reform, conservative, orthodox, etc, or many other criteria.  Advertisers can target based on location, gender, ages, yahrzeit dates or birth dates.

The best part, these ads go directly within the synagogues email communications to their membership. So the emails are highly engaged with and going to an active, receptive and engaged audience.  If you are looking to drive business from the Jewish market, this is an excellent way to do that. There is no such targeting available in any other network, even Facebook or Google.

 

What motivated you to create this network and what kind of impact do you it will have in the online marketing industry?

 

Two things motivated us in creating this ad network.  The first is how poor the Jewish advertising world is.  You go to some popular Jewish web sites and you are embarrassed by the bombardment of ads you see everyone, it is virtually impossible to find the content on the site beneath all the ads being thrown at you. We want to make ads on these Jewish web sites better and while we are not at that point now, that is our long term goal.

Second, synagogues are looking for ways to drive more revenues to pay their bills.  Many synagogues these days are barely able to pay their operating costs.  We saw that they were not monetizing key elements of their web sites and emails, so we decided to do it for them and help them earn more money.  It is a win-win situation all around.

 

How is the JAN different from other Ad Networks and what are the key benefits for advertisers?

 

As I described before, there is no such targeting available in any other network.  Second fold, the place your ads show up, have never been monetized before by these synagogues.  So they have high engagement and view rates, as opposed to other ad placements that have higher ad blindness.

From a technical perspective, can you explain how the JAN contextually targets customers Ads across the Shul newsletters.

 

Since we have user data from ShulCloud, and since we power those emails and web sites, we are able to contextually target the data.  We know that user A has a birthday tomorrow and we are able to let the advertiser target people based on birthdays, without revealing to the advertiser who the user is.  This works a lot like Facebook but we have this information from our membership management database.

 

Does JAN offer its own Reporting and Analysis? Is it compatible with other Analytics platforms such as Google Analytics?

 

We do provide both an advertising and publisher dashboard. The advertiser dashboard shows advertisers their clicks, impressions, CTR and cost by day, by campaign by platform.  It is similar to what you'd see in other advertising portals.   The publisher dashboard shows the synagogues how much they are earning by day and their payout reports, similar to Google AdSense.

We do recommend to users to use tracking URLs, either through Google Analytics or their preference analytics software. This way they can set their destination URLs as they see fit and thus track it down to the conversion.

 

We are living in a Social Media world that is saturated with too many “Me too!” Startups. Does the JAN represent a natural shift back to our earliest form of social media (aka email marketing)?

 

Well, I believe most marketing agencies would agree that email marketing still does work.  But pairing that based on highly targeted knowledge about who you are sending the ad to can help make the ad, in the email, much more targeted.  So we think pairing social like data and email marketing works very well.

Stop Overspending Time and Money on Marketing Techniques That Don't Work

I hate to see money wasted on outdated online marketing techniques.

It's not just about money, but also about time and resources that could be used in a better way. Marketing budgets are often tight, and you just can't afford to spend them on strategies or things that don't work.

To help you cut waste and make your marketing strategy more effective, I've created a list of six most common ways small and medium sized businesses lose their budgets online. Here's how to stop overspending time and money, and turn those losses into gains.

1. Using “Guaranteed SEO Services”

SEO is not an exact science and getting results overnight is a myth. Google's algorithm has become smarter and smarter in the last years and there are no easy shortcuts. It's commonly known that Google uses hundreds of ranking factors, but the truth is that no one knows precisely what all of those are. With time, you get to learn what techniques work better, but anyone that offers guarantees to rank a site on the 1st position for a particular keyword is a scammer.

Google warns people not to buy SEO services from companies or freelancers that guarantee to rank 1st for any given keyword. Here's Google's take on guaranteed SEO:

If you are not experienced, you might be tempted to choose an SEO company that guarantees you'll rank first for your main keywords over a company that doesn't offer this guarantee. Makes sense, right? But it doesn't.

The SEO companies that offer such guarantees are commonly formed by black hat SEOs that are not fully committed to making your website successful. They are just fine with taking your money for 3 or 6 months, and don't care so much that eventually you'll leave disappointed. That's because at least 1000 of potential new clients search in Google each month for “Guaranteed SEO”. They can easily find another naive person to sell them guaranteed SEO services and replace your contract.

Be very picky and skeptical when choosing an SEO firm. If you don't know where to start, Moz has a list of recommended SEO companies.

2. Buying Social Media Followers

The number of followers you have on social media is simply pointless. What matters is the engagement and how many real users see your posts. It's not like in your childhood when it mattered if you or your brother had a bigger portion of goodies. Many fall into the trap of believing that the more followers their business has, the more trusted and reputable it will be.

You should never buy social media followers. Neither on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or whatever social media platform you choose to use for your sites. Bought “followers” are fake and besides being a waste of money, you can also end up having your account suspended.

3. Not Measuring The Success And ROI For Your Marketing Campaigns

All businesses and industries are different and therefore what works great for some, might not work as good for others. For example, social media can be a golden nugget for sites in the entertainment or technology industry, but for a business that sells forklifts will not be as important. Just because a channel works great for most sites doesn't mean that you should block your resources on something that's not suitable for your type of business.

To succeed with online marketing, you have to analyze and measure the success of all your campaigns and then focus most of your attention on the channels that give the best return of investment. Use an analytics tool like Kissmetrics to see where your site traffic is coming from and check how the visitors are funneling through your website.

It's critical to measure how well your marketing campaigns are performing and know what you should prioritize for the future. If social media doesn't work well for your site, you can focus more on creating quality content, or maybe launch a better advertisement campaign.

The most common mistake marketers tend to do is not to measure their campaigns and sources of conversions on a regular basis. It's not enough to check what works best for your site once and then take decisions upon what you've discovered on that analysis. Each week, marketers should check what worked best and how the conversions are going for each channel. Marketers can do all of this within Kissmetrics.

4. Content Marketing Done Wrong

The interest for content marketing has grown to unexpected levels in the last years. It's estimated that the whole industry is worth roughly $190 billion and it will grow to $300 billion by 2019.

Content marketing is about creating content in the form of videos, articles, infographics, images, slideshows, etc. With the industry growing so quickly, the competition is also becoming stronger and stronger. Quality is the differentiator between a good and a bad content marketing campaign.

The main reasons why most of your content marketing campaigns fail is because:

• You don't write about topics that people are really interested in. Sure, it's your blog and you can write about whatever you want, but if you are aiming to get more visitors, you have to research your topics. With the help of BuzzSumo, bloggers can find what content from other sites is performing great on social media. It's a simply way to finding what works best for your competitors and what gets the most shares. The tool gives you access to an endless resource of topic ideas.
  
  
  
  It's also a good idea to check what key phrases people use to do searches in Google. For that, Google's keyword tool can be very handy.


• You don't promote the content campaigns you have created. It's not enough to write an article, video or build a great infographic and then move on. Just because you've clicked the “publish” button, it doesn't mean that your job is over. Not even close. You can't just create some content, and hope that it will go viral. Things don't work that way. Chances are nobody will ever find your new piece of content, unless you try to promote it. Do outreach and try to promote the content through influencers.


• You content marketing campaign has no value. You see low-quality content marketing campaigns everywhere. If the content you've created doesn't bring value to the reader, don't bother publishing it. Instead of posting 10 useless articles or videos, try to make one that will stand out as the best in the niche.
  

  It's the same with guest blogging. There's no point to write for sites that have no authority and no one has heard about them. Don't spend your time and budget to write for several low-quality sites, but instead aim to be a contributor on the big sites in your industry.

5. Not taking backlinks seriously

Backlinks are important not just for SEO, but they can also send relevant referring traffic, help you build partnerships, bring you customers, and measure the success of your online marketing campaigns. Sadly, many tend to ignore backlinks and rarely check the ones of their site.

If you are running a content marketing campaign or simply doing outreach to promote your website, besides checking analytics, it's also important to check your site's backlinks. That's so you can know whenever a site links back to you and see how successful was your outreach campaign. If your content marketing campaigns are not generating quality links, you might have to reconsider your strategy.

Here are several reasons why everyone should pay more attention to backlinks:

• Backlinks are the main ranking factor for Google and Bing and they will continue to be for the coming years. A site that has good backlinks will rank higher for more related keywords and get more traffic from search engines.


• Bad backlinks acquired naturally or because someone has built them to your site can drag your site down in the SERPs. It's important to know whenever your site gets new backlinks or otherwise all your SEO efforts will be pointless and you'll end up wasting time and money.


• Backlinks can tell you when a blogger sends a link to your site. You can thank them for recommending your site, and perhaps build a partnership with them.


• Backlinks can show what websites are referring the most traffic to you, and you can try to get more of the same.


• If you are buying ads through banners, it's important to know if the advertiser removes the backlink.

To be up to date with all your site's backlinks, you can use the SEO Tool Monitor Backlinks, which sends you an email whenever your earn or lose links. Besides the email alerts, the tool shows more than 15 different metrics for each backlink, to help you easily see in a glance their SEO quality. Another useful feature is the warning sign that is showed for links that have questionable metrics.

To prevent organic traffic loss, it's advisable to often check your site's backlinks. SEO is one of the best online marketing channels that can generate traffic, even if you are in a boring niche. If you've hired someone to do SEO for you, you still have to check your site's backlinks. Don't sit back and think that everything will be alright. Your business responsibility is still in your hands and you are the only one that's going to lose in case something goes wrong.

One of the worst mistakes people tend to do about backlinks is thinking that they need hundreds or thousands of links to rank high in Google. All that matters is QUALITY. The number of links you have is not important and you shouldn't be obsessed about it. It's best to have 10 quality links rather than 1000 backlinks from unknown sites.

6. Outsourcing To Bad Companies

As your online business starts to grow, you can start to consider outsourcing some of the tasks to a specialized company. You can outsource social media, content marketing, SEO, advertising management, etc. Whatever you outsource, don't forget that you are still in charge and you can take over if the results are not the ones you expect.

There are numerous cases where companies are outsourcing services to a bad content marketing or SEO firm. However, they keep using their services. That's because when outsourcing, companies tend to rely solely on the reporting provided by the outsourcing firm.

If your results are not close to your expectations, and you have a feeling that your money are being wasted, take action before it's too late.

Conclusion

It's hard to succeed with online marketing without measuring all your channels correctly. Set your KPIs and don't be afraid to change or stop working on a channel that's consuming too much financial and time resources.

Be very doubtful when choosing to work with an outsourcing company and continue to use your own tools to measure the success of their campaigns.

About the Author: Felix Tarcomnicu is an Internet marketer with a strong passion for SEO and social media. You can follow him on Google Plus or Twitter @FelixTarcomnicu for similar articles.