luni, 18 mai 2015

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Keyword Research for the Modern Customer Journey - Moz Blog


Keyword Research for the Modern Customer Journey

Posted on: Monday 18 May 2015 — 02:15

Posted by mattgratt

User behavior and customer purchase journeys are more complex today than they've ever been before.

Modern consumers – especially those purchasing high-consideration or B2B products – look across a variety of media and conduct a lot of searches. Google reports that the average B2B researcher does 12 searches before they engage on a specific brand's site. They are seeking reinforcement and comfort not just from the information about the product, but also from the opinions of other customers.

How SEOs and marketers approach keyword research has to evolve, along with this consumer behavior.

In many industries people simply search, click, and transact. In some verticals, though, user search patterns have grown more complex – they look for:

  • Reviews
  • Adjacent topics
  • Comparisons
  • And even after they've bought they look for ways to get the most out of their products

This is a model of SEO that is dramatically more complex than simply aiming to rank number one for a bunch of commercial keywords. It seeks to model a customer decision journey, optimize appropriately, give the right person the right message at the right time, and win the competitive battle before it even occurs.

This same model also allows for a modern search practitioner to create significantly more value for a client or organization. In place of simply "traffic plus conversion", the value of search becomes "awareness + branding + list building + traffic + conversion + competitive wins + reducing support costs + upsell, cross-sell, and customer success," justifying both more investment and a much larger organizational impact (and promotions or higher consulting fees for the practitioner).

In this post, we'll look at a SaaS companies as examples, as SaaS and software comprise the majority of my experience, clients, and knowledge.

However, this framework can be applied to many industries and verticals. One good example: Everette Sizemore recently wrote a great Moz post about using lead-gen tactics in ecommerce.

The considered purchase search journey (also known as a funnel)

No Problem Awareness

This is the very beginning of the process, when the prospect is fully 'at rest.' They don't know you, they don't your product, and they don't even know they have a problem.

So you might be wondering, can we even do SEO here?

I would say yes – in this case, the opportunity is audience development, and building an audience of people interested in your topic (that can subsequently convert after they've grown to know, like, and trust you).

When you think "audience development," focus on trying to get the right people to come to your website. That means building that audience and affinity with a mix of content marketing and SEO before it starts.

In this case, you'll want to target keywords that people would search for before or after they think about your product. This is one case where going for the high-volume, low-to-medium competition keywords with little purchase intent can be really helpful. (This is also the spot where that high-funnel, highly linkable content belongs.)

For example, for a website optimization software company, in this stage content might include interviews with web performance experts, general resource guides, and other content that, while it ranks for keywords with volume, doesn't yet address a specific customer pain point.

You see companies like Marketo doing this, creating guides around topics other than marketing automation but that are top of mind for their consumers, like international expansion and event marketing. Even though Marketo has some features here, they know that people interested in these topics may someday become loyal Marketo customers.

You'll want to get the right people to your site and then bring them into a permission marketing asset – be it an email list (the best), a social audience (good but less so), or a retargeting pool (generally the least preferred).

Vero is a company out in the market today that's doing a great job using email marketing teardowns, getting people who are interested in email marketing into their purchasing funnel while also building awareness and educating potential customers.

Awareness of the problem

This is the next step on the buying path. Your prospect knows they have a problem and looks for information, but doesn't really understand what you're doing yet – or even what to do to solve their problem.

This is an often-ignored opportunity. You can get ahead of people by creating landing pages and content about their problems and pain points.

Action Item: Take your target audience's pain points and try to turn them into keyword lists. What problems does your product solve? How might someone search for those?

Some of the best tools to do this are KeywordTool.io and Term Explorer, and I'll detail the process below.

For example, if you consider the website speed optimization tool again, some of the things we'd look for are:

  • "Slow website"
  • "Diagnosing a slow website"
  • "Why is my website slow?"
  • "How to speed up a website?"
  • "Increase website speed"
  • "Make my website fast"

And other similar phrases.

How to do it

Start by brainstorming a list of problems your product addresses, and begin by putting these keywords into something like Google suggest (or a tool like UberSuggest or KeywordTool.io):

Then, I like to pick the best ones, and bring them into Term Explorer's keyword discovery engine, for further expansion:

After that, I like to pick the ones I have a realistic chance of ranking for (based on SERP and PPC competition), and begin asking, "How can I address this question? What content – topics, ideas, and forms – will help this person, while potentially moving them a step down the funnel?"

Sometimes the answer is a landing page. Sometimes it's something like a blog post or a free tool. All of these strategies should be judged against organizational resources, keyword competitiveness, and ultimately ROI.

Solution awareness

At this stage in the funnel, prospects know what they need. Coming back to our running example, they're looking for a marketing automation solution, or a website optimization solution, or something else they can clearly define.

This is the land of the "3-letter acronyms," where people know what they're looking for and it's up to you to provide it.

For the tools used here, I would take your conventional 'category' terms and put them into Keyword Tool and then Term Explorer to build out a larger collection of keywords, and then take a look at what has significant volume.

The other area you can work on here is "modifiers" – descriptive terms like "simple CRM system" or "secure web host."

While you can look at your original positioning documents (sometimes this will be obvious), the other approach is to use your Net Promoter Score (NPS) feedback. NPS feedback is a wonderful source for the "voice-of-the-customer" that you can incorporate into your keyword research process.

What traits do the promoters (NPS 9-10) like about your service? Those are the best modifiers to go after.

Additionally, there's another positioning exercise here in your NPS data. If you don't have a clear idea of what exactly you should be optimizing for (there are, after all, some great products that don't lend themselves to a simple description), consider asking your 9 and 10 NP scores:

"So, if a friend of yours at a conference said, 'What's (Brand Name),' how would you describe it in a sentence or two?"

This can result in great customer language to use on landing pages and in A/B tests, as well as in keyword targeting.

If your product does a lot – if you have more of a "solution" than a "tool" or simply have lot of good use cases for your tool – consider optimizing for each of those and doing additional keyword research around it.

This is where prioritization is crucial. There will be some extremely competitive categorical keywords that will never provide much value and will take tons of time and money. Ideally you can go after keywords where you can rank in a reasonable amount of time and have enough volume to move the needle for your business.

Solution comparison

If you're in an established market, you will have competition, be it direct or indirect. If you have no competition, that's generally a bad sign, and is generally a segment where SEO is not going to be the best marketing channel. Remember, SEO is a tactic to harvest demand, not to create it from scratch.

This is a part of people's search as well, and you can find these comparison terms and reach those people appropriately. These searches are often (for example) something like "marketo vs hubspot".

You can find these by simply throwing ["Your Brand" vs] into a keyword tool. For example, for our friends here at Moz, it looks like this:

These terms are interesting ones to optimize for – it generally means someone is towards the bottom of their purchase path. (It's also a great term set for affiliates to optimize for.)

Now that you understand the competitive set, how should you approach these?

Some companies are bold and make pages on their site for their comparison terms.

For example, HubSpot has a page about how they compare with Marketo:

If this isn't something you're comfortable with (many brands aren't, and in some countries with different commercial laws such comparisons are illegal – definitely a good idea to consult with your legal counsel before embarking on a strategy like this), you can think about how to enlist your community to help people make the right choice when they search for these terms.

Some of the tools in your toolbox here are:

  • Affiliates and friendly bloggers who write posts about tools
  • Comparison sites like G2Crowd and TrustRadius
  • Q&A sites like Quora which often rank for things

As the chart below shows, B2B buyers really want independent reviews – making heavy use of the independent sites makes sense here.

ProTip: If you have NPS data, consider asking your high-NPS customers to contribute to these sites about your product, so potential users can understand what your customers that really like your product think about it.

It's also worth noting that you can step into competitor's funnels here (if you're comfortable with that.) "[brandname] alternative" is a structure that comes up in almost all SaaS searches – if you're a small, scrappy startup, you may want to create pages about being an alternative to the big goliath competitor.

Buying

Similar to the previous stage, here people are at the very bottom of the funnel, and often want to figure out a few things before they start with your product.

This is a great opportunity to deliver a great, frictionless buying experience. For example, if you sell web hosting, people might want to know if you have cpanel or an alternative system – having a page on the site that addresses this can be really important.

You can:

  • Look at your brand searches in UberSuggest – I know I keep coming back to this, but this is an amazing technique. For every popular query, do you have a page or a piece of content that addresses this?
  • Live chat logs – Live chat is a wonderful source of online marketing insight. If you have chat logs from a support department or wherever else, start looking through them. If you see the same questions coming up over and over again, you definitely want to have content somewhere that addresses them – it means other people have the question and aren't asking.
  • Support requests and tickets – Similar to online chat logs, these support requests usually include specific language about what your customers are trying to accomplish and where they're confused. This language should not only be used to improve the use and experience of your product, but also as a keyword map for solution-focused content.

Implementation, customer success, and upselling

Now that you've gotten the customer to become, well, at least a trial customer, go get something to drink – you've had your first small victory.

But if you're in SaaS or another subscription business, it's time for coffee, not champagne, because the hard work is still in front of you. You have to earn that monthly recurring revenue.

I would look at searches around your brand – can you help someone before they ever file a ticket? Are there common issues that you can proactively address?

For example, the popular heatmap tool Crazy Egg has a frequently searched term around "Crazy Egg Behind Login". This means users are wondering if they can install Crazy Egg behind a log-in wall.

You can see that the team behind Crazy Egg have gone ahead and created a page optimized for this question – turning what would be a pre-sales question or frequent support ticket into something that can be handled effortlessly by their website.

And that's the SaaS customer life cycle.

But before I leave you, one last thought…

Thinking beyond the landing page

As SEOs we often think about marketing to keywords in a somewhat simplistic way: If a given keyword exists, our page on our website must rank for it, or it's like it never happened.

When we think that keyword searches represent one person on a mission to solve a problem and buy something – rather than "traffic" – we begin to see that strategy in a different light. And there are many terms that, frankly, we're just never going to rank for.

But just because we may not be able to rank for a given term, doesn't mean we can't influence it. Rand Fishkin talks about "Barnacle SEO," and I would suggest you take that mindset to other pages as well.

Can you:

  • Make an affiliate partnership with the ranking site? This way you can still influence people, often on a pay-per-lead or acquisition basis, rather than investing in SEO. (Not the best choice, but still an arrow in your quiver.)
  • Do PR and get on the site that way? This is a great way to quickly rank for things that you may never be able to rank for organically – especially if you're new.
  • Contribute bylined content (occasionally known as a guest post) to the site? Very similar to the above concept – but with a branding bonus as well.
  • Buy an ad placement (through GDN, a service like BuySellAds, or directly) to get you placement on that site and page, and thus the search term?

You have many options to reach searchers – too often SEOs fail to think beyond SEO and market to people rather than keywords.

In closing

As customer journeys get more complicated, we can adjust and take advantage fo the full customer cycle, from unaware to aware to solution comparison and more. And if we're creative, we can use these searche terms to not only deliver a great experience but to also capture customers early in the buying cycle, as well as lower support costs.

Good luck and good SEO'ing.

--

This post was co-authored by Matthew Gratt and Nick Eubanks.

Nick Eubanks manages digital strategy for W.L. Snook & Associates, Inc., a digital asset holding company with a focus on Ecommerce and Software. He is also a founding partner at I'm From The Future, and an active investor and advisor to online businesses including SchoolSupplies.com, YourListen, Sports Pick Predictions, and others.Nick is the owner of top-ranked SEO Blog, SEONick.net and the creator of Master Keyword Research in 7 Days.


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Seth's Blog : Why do you do it this way?

Why do you do it this way?

That's the simple test of a bureaucracy that has lost its way.

If your employees can't answer how something they do helps the customer or the company, you've insulated your people from their jobs.

"It's our policy," is not an answer to why. Saying the policy again, louder, is not an answer to why.

Their inability to answer this simple question might be because you haven't taken the time to teach your people how to think about the work you do. Or it might be because you're hiring people (or rewarding people) who don't want to think about your work.

Don't you want the people who do the work to understand it?  And don't you want your customers to feel respected by the people who serve them?

       

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duminică, 17 mai 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Greece to Face "Take it or Leave it Offer" Just Like Cyprus

Posted: 17 May 2015 10:13 PM PDT

In March of 2013 the Troika gave Cyprus a "take it or leave it offer" that destroyed many savers who were foolish enough to keep money in Cypriot banks despite obvious troubles.

Given that Greece needs a third bailout, odds Greece receives a similar kind of offer increase every day.

Last week Greece averted a default on a loan repayment to the IMF only by borrowing money from the IMF to pay the IMF back. For details please see my May 12 article Greece Empties IMF Reserve Account to Pay IMF.

Next month Greece has still more payment obligations and the reserve fund is tapped out. Where will the money come from?

Take it or Leave It

The Financial Times discusses the situation in Tsipras Letter Reveals Precariousness of Greece's Finances.
Greece came so close to defaulting on last week's €750m International Monetary Fund repayment that the prime minister warned IMF chief Christine Lagarde he could not pay it without EU aid.

Alexis Tsipras wrote to Ms Lagarde, warning that the IMF repayment would be missed unless the European Central Bank immediately raised its curbs on Greece's ability to issue short-term debt.

The letter, first reported by the Greek daily Kathimerini but independently confirmed by the Financial Times, raises questions about how close Athens is to bankruptcy. In addition to payments due to the IMF next month totalling €1.5bn, the Greek government has struggled to meet its wage and pension bills, which must be paid at the end of the month. The next €300m IMF payment is due on June 5.

The contents of the Greek prime minister's letter were revealed by Ms Lagarde at a closed-door meeting of the fund's board on Thursday.

According to officials briefed on the talks, Poul Thomsen, head of the IMF's European department, warned the board that negotiations on the Greek economic reform package remained so unproductive that the fund could be forced to withhold its €3.6bn portion of the €7.2bn aid tranche.

Officials said Ms Lagarde fully backed Mr Thomsen, telling staff that they should not proceed with a "quick and dirty" approval process.

"It's clear that we are very far from something the IMF will be able to support without fundamentally breaking its own rules," said one official briefed on the fund's board discussion.

According to two officials briefed on the talks, at least one board member raised the possibility of presenting a "take it or leave it proposal" to Greece.

The idea of a "Cyprus-like" presentation to Greek authorities has gained traction among some eurozone finance ministers, according to one official involved in the talks.

The official noted that the recent public backing by Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany's finance minister, for a Greek referendum fits into such a scheme. Under this scenario, Mr Tsipras would take the bailout ultimatum to a nationwide vote for approval.

However, another official involved in the talks cautioned that a "take it or leave it" approach remained only one of many ideas being discussed informally as a way to finalise an agreement.
Roadblocks

There are two roadblocks to the "Take it or Leave it Offer"

Figuring out how big the third "bailout" will need to be.
The IMF believes Greek debt needs another haircut, but Germany, Finland and other countries insist there will be no more haircuts.

Once again, anyone who has money in Greek banks has mush for brains.  Nothing good can possibly come from it.

Two very bad outcomes for Greek depositors include a Cyprus-like bail-in and/or a Greek return to the Drachma coupled with a massive haircut on the currency.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Obama's Push to Expand Credit to "Credit Invisibles"

Posted: 17 May 2015 09:49 AM PDT

A recently released government study by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on "Credit Invisibles" has some interesting facts on people with and without credit histories.

  • Approximately 188.6 million Americans have credit records at one of the NCRAs that can be scored by the commercially-available model. This represents over 80 percent of the adult population. 
  • An additional 19.4 million Americans, representing 8.3 percent of the adult population, have credit records that cannot be scored. These are almost evenly split between consumers with credit records that are insufficient unscored (9.9 million) and those that are stale unscored (9.6 million).
  • The remaining 11 percent of adults, or about 26 million Americans, are credit invisible.
  • Over 80 percent of 18 or 19 year olds are credit invisible or have unscored records. This percentage drops substantially for older consumers, falling below 40 percent in total for the 20 to 24 year old age group. After age 60, the number of consumers that are credit invisible or that have an unscored record increases with age.
  • Over 10 million of the estimated 26 million credit invisibles are younger than 25. Consumers in this age group also account for a disproportionate share of insufficient-unscored credit records. In contrast, most consumers with stale-unscored records are middle aged. Consumers aged between 25 and 50 account for over half of stale-unscored credit records.

Percentage Share of Invisibles and Unscored by Age

Number of Invisibles and Unscored by Age



Credit Expansion

The study did not indicate how many of the 45 million (invisibles plus unscorables) are illegal aliens. But the name of the game as always is credit expansion.

Investor's Business Daily discusses situation in Obama Pushing Banks Into Riskiest Borrower Pool Yet: 45 Million 'Unscorables'.
Housing: As part of its amnesty program, the Obama regime seeks to expand credit to a whopping 45 million potential deadbeats — including illegal immigrants — whose credit files are too spotty even to score for risk.

In a just-released federal report, the administration portrays these "credit invisibles" as victims of a traditional credit-scoring system. And since most are minorities, it claims that excluding them from the financial mainstream is discriminatory.

"Our report found that black and Hispanic consumers are more likely than white or Asian consumers to have limited credit records," CFPB Director Richard Cordray said in a press call.

To remedy the "credit inequality," credit reporting agencies are being pressed to generate scores for this high-risk group based on payments of cellphone and utility bills, as well as immigrant remittances.

But analysts say most of these "unscorables" are not creditworthy, and according to preliminary estimates, their median credit score falls well below the subprime cutoff (535 vs. 620). Public records show many are subject to third-party debt collection and tax liens.

Lenders rely on the three-digit credit score as an indicator of how likely it is a borrower will repay a debt. Stale files or thin credit history does not allow FICO and other risk modelers to accurately predict future credit performance — that is, the likelihood, relative to other borrowers, that a consumer will become 90 or more days past due on a credit obligation in the following two years.

Using "alternative" inputs in the models, such as utility payments and remittances, could water down the models and make credit scores less reliable, leading banks to make even riskier lending decisions.
Undoing the "Card Act"

Part of the alleged credit injustice dates to 2010, when many of the provisions of the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act (CARD Act) took effect.

CNBC discusses the Card Act in 45 Million Americans Live Without a Credit Score
After the CARD Act passed in 2009, consumers under age 21 had to prove they had a job or a co-signer to get a credit card. The goal was to keep younger consumers from taking on credit card debt they could not repay, he said, "but if you are going to restrict people from getting credit, you are also going to restrict their ability to build a credit report."
Get a Job

Is that a real hardship to require a job or other source of documented income before giving someone a credit card or mortgage?

Instead, CNBC offers this advice on rebuilding or establishing credit.
How to Rebuild Your Credit

Consumers have a number of possible ways to build or rebuild a credit history. One thing they can do is obtain a secured credit card. A credit score is not necessary, and using the card to draw on money you deposit with a bank will help you build a credit history.

If you go this route, make sure to choose a card that will report your payment history to all three credit rating agencies, Ulzheimer cautioned. Not all do, and "without reporting to all three, it's like a tree falling in the woods," he said, because your credit history will not be known.

Becoming an authorized user on someone else's card is another option for consumers. College students may do this with a parent's card, for example. They also establish some credit history when they have a student loan. Even when they are in school and payments are deferred, the loan will show up as part of their credit history, Ulzheimer said.

Another option that is less well-known is to take out a credit builder loan from a credit union. Instead of receiving the loan money upfront, a consumer makes payments into an interest-bearing account for the life of the loan. At the end of that time, the consumer receives the money with any accrued interest.
Instead of granting credit to those with no jobs, teenagers who live at home, illegal aliens, and other non-creditworthy individuals, the CNBC advice seems reasonable enough. Instead, Obama wants another credit free-for-all to expand housing and car loans.

Didn't we try that once already, with miserable results?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Seth's Blog : Politicians, patriots and statesmen

Politicians, patriots and statesmen

Some of the definitions are changing, but most fields have all three.

The politician used to be what we called a bureaucratic operative, someone who carefully chose his words and actions so he would offend no one. (Today, it's more likely to be someone who intentionally slows things down, who works hard to point fingers at the other side and is constantly on the hunt for money).

The patriot used to be someone who put aside his own interests in exchange for the organization he represents. (Today, it's more likely to be someone who's merely jingoistic, with a bit of short-term thinking thrown in for good measure). Plenty of blustering tech company CEOs could be put into this category.

And the statesman? The statesman is the person who will speak the truth, take the long-term view and do what's right, even if it hurts his position in the short-run. Fortunately, this definition hasn't changed much over the years. This is the leader who doesn't want to know which side someone is on before he can tell you if the decisions made were good ones or not. He's the one who works hard to see the world as it is, as opposed to insisting it must only be the way he expects. And mostly, he's the one you should work with, vote for or follow as often as you can.

Too often, the following statement is true, "For awhile, he was acting like a statesman, but then he became a short-term patriot and now he's merely a craven politician."

An interesting exercise: before you speak up (or fail to speak up) on something that matters, role play each of the three types and see which one matches your behavior.

       

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