Local Marketing In 2013

Local Marketing In 2013: The 10 Key Trends To Watch

Going into 2013, new products, industry consolidation, and new entrants into the social, local and mobile markets. Here are 10 local marketing predictions:

1.) The number of SMBs with mobile websites will triple.

More local businesses will adopt mobile-optimized websites as consumers conduct an increasing number of local searches on their mobile devices. The percentage of SMBs with mobile-optimized websites could spike from about 7% to more than 20%.

2.) Facebook paid advertising will continue to be a flop with most local service businesses.

Paid advertising on Facebook won’t work for the vast majority of local service businesses because most consumers don’t take action when they see ads for plumbers, lawyers, or landscapers in their Facebook friend feed. Facebook will be more effective as a retention tool, though its new “nearby” search tool may make it a player for retail-based local businesses.

3.) Sales will be the new leads.

The number of sales, and not just leads, will become increasingly important in measuring the success of small business marketing campaigns. The ability to connect local marketing efforts to actual bookings will result in more accountability for vendors who sell to SMBs and help to prove the value of marketing spend.

4.) National brands with multiple locations or franchises will go increasingly local.

As the ROI of local marketing is realized by a greater percentage of marketing executives whose businesses sell locally, the ad dollars that were earmarked for corporate branding will be transferred to local marketing campaigns.

5.)  Google will remain the dominant horizontal player for local search, but consumers will increasingly go vertical.

Google continues to be the most used search engine and, after introducing Google+ Local pages in 2012, will continue to help small business owners drive an online presence. However, more single-market companies such as ZocDoc (healthcare) and Uber (cab transportation) will capture increasing and significant attention from consumers.

6.) SEO will get more complex.

Google is making search engine optimization more complex. It will be increasingly difficult to keep on top of the almost constant changes that impact rankings, something we already saw in 2012 when Google introduced Penguin and Panda. Marketers in 2013 will need sufficient data in order to overcome these obstacles and successfully build small businesses’ online presence on Google.

7.) The problems of listing syndication will be solved.

Up until recently, a local business owner’s ability to maintain updated and consistent information across dozens of online directories was a cumbersome – but still important – task.   Several startups have developed solutions. However, Yext, a company that has found a way to clean and automatically sync directory listings faster than any other business, will have a significant effect in resolving this problem next year.

8.) The daily deals bubble will continue its slow deflation in the U.S.

In 2012, consumers faced mass list fatigue and 2013 will bring more of the same. However, the daily deal industry certainly isn’t going to disappear. The companies will aggressively try to diversify to show long-term value.

9.) Retention and acquisition marketing will continue to blur.

There were several deals in 2012, which indicate that companies currently providing local business tools are diversifying their product mix to become more of a single platform solution. Groupon, for instance, purchased OpenCal and integrated its technology to launch GrouponScheduler, a service designed to make it easy to bridge the offer and appointment booking, and scheduling. This trend will continue unabated in 2013.

10.) We’ll see at least two filings for blockbuster IPOs of local tech companies.

Several companies in the local space have reached, or are close to the revenue level thought to be the indicator of a viable IPO candidate. Companies such as Yext and Square are strong candidates to go public.

SEO in 2013: 7 Surprisingly Simple Factors That Will Take The Lead

2013: The 7 Factors That Will Determine Your Survival in SEO

If it were up to me, I’d simply focus on creating value for the reader — because ultimately, that should be the goal of any website. However, increasing competition may require you to employ strategic practices in a pragmatic approach to assist your rise to the top of the SERPs. Here are the tactics and strategies that will dominate the SEO landscape in 2013.

1. Quality of Content

Ultimately, it all comes down to the quality and value of the content on your website. Google has been very explicit this year about good-quality content, and we expect this trend to carry over into next year in full force. By content quality, the metrics are:

    uniqueness of the content/topic
    resourcefulness and information richness (i.e., no thin content)

2. Content Marketing

Content marketing is being touted as the next big thing. Experts have called it the new SEO. To an extent, this is true. As a general rule, content marketing attracts backlinks, and adds value for the user/reader. It is more challenging, because you have to generate more content of high quality, circulate it, and make sure your content gets published widely with ample social signals to generate substantial SEO value.

Since Google takes valuable content seriously, a solid content marketing strategy will be the key to climbing to the next level in SEO.

3. AuthorRank

AuthorRank has emerged as a vital metric in deciding SERPs, although studies about its value are still ongoing. One thing that we can be sure of in 2013 is that AuthorRank will add credibility and value to your website, and it will be vitally important for every webmaster.

4. Social Signals

After much debate and discussion, social signals have largely been accepted as valid ranking factors. In the next year (and probably in the years to follow), social signals will play a growing role. Shares, retweets, mentions, and perhaps most importantly, +1s are trophies every webmaster should be amassing.

5. Mobile/Responsive Design

Although this does not directly influence the ranking of a page, it will play a role in your fortunes. Google was one of the first companies to become aware of this trend in web browsing due to the growing presence of tablets and smartphones. Responsive design may not be an explicit SEO factor, but in terms of usability, it is likely to be a highly influential element to consider in 2013.

6. Localization
Google’s growing preference for local websites and information has become evident in many searches. It’s safe to assume 2013 we’ll witness an increase in this preference. Websites that apply local SEO will enjoy higher rankings and visibility. This includes map data, listings, citations, and reviews on local information sites.

7. Media

Images and videos have become staples on the Internet. We’ve consistently seen that relevant results that include videos get ranked higher than text-only content. The further emergence of media content is an important development you can expect next year. It’s becoming essential to add relevant non-textual media to text content, because this adds value and makes the content more resourceful.

Advanced filters

Looking for specific non-branded keywords

Sometimes, it helps to see keywords that contain a certain word or phrase, but exclude the brand name. Taking a company called DeLallo Italian Foods, for example. If I wanted to see all the keywords that contain the word Italian food but exclude the brand name DeLallo, I could easily use the advanced filters for this. Previously, I would have done this using regular expressions in the filter:

  

Filter Keyword: containing ^(?=.*italian food)(?!.*(delallo)).*

No more! Now, we don't need to do this! Now, it is so easy with the advanced filters. Just filter for Keyword containing Italian food and excluding DeLallo.

 Landing Pages, Sorted by Bounce Rate

Has this ever happened to you - you're looking at your Top Landing Pages report, and you sort by bounce rate, only to have a bunch of pages with 1 entrance clogging the top of the report? With advanced filters, you can filter out those pages with a low number of entrances to get a better look at which landing pages with significant traffic have a high bounce rate. All you have to do is filter by Entrances greater than 50 (or whatever threshhold floats your bounce-rate-boat).

5 Steps to Calculate Social Media ROI Using Google Analytics

5 Steps to Calculate Social Media ROI Using Google Analytics

Sixty-five percent of CMOs in the strategic phase are looking to convert followers to paying customers, and 63 percent wish to achieve or increase ROI from investments in social media, according to MarketingSherpa.

While marketing professionals have recognized the mandate to be socially engaged, the monetization and ROI of social media to support business goals still eludes many.

Efforts to promote social profiles, pages, sharing, and engagement are meaningless unless they support a path to conversion and positively impact the bottom line. Many marketers struggle to quantify their efforts and demonstrate ROI, unaware that this data is readily available to them through Google Analytics Social Reports.

Tangible Data Drives Results

While other solutions are offering social media insights, Google Analytics integrates social data in context, providing a holistic view of the website as the center of the digital universe for the brand. Data for metrics such as Network Referrals, Pages, Plugins and Visitor Flow are automatically captured in Analytics Reports connect-the-dots between content and community.

Once a dollar value is assigned to each Goal as a Conversion, Google Analytics enables a dollar-based definition of social impact, revealing which visitors, social platforms, and content drive high-quality customers toward conversion and the bottom line.

Marketers no longer have to work to draw assumptions or guess what is or isn't working. Brands seeking to intelligently adapt social strategy in response to conversion and performance data can now do so with ease.

1. Define KPIs for Social Media

Just as you would define the end goal for any other marketing initiative, key performance indicators (KPIs) are vital to strategic planning and reporting on investments in social media. Whether performance will be measured by purchases, email opt-ins, demo requests, shares, downloads, or time spent on the website, Google Analytics Social Reports allow for KPIs to be reflected as Goals.

The impact of social on each defined benchmark is revealed in an easy-to-read report. And, because a Goal can be identified by URL Destination, Visit Duration, Page/Visit or Event, and assigned a Value, measuring performance of social initiatives as they relate to the specific business model and goals of the brand is available to any website using Google Analytics.

Google Analytics enables marketers to determine exactly how valuable social is to realizing goals and completing eCommerce transactions.

2. Use Data to Make Informed Decisions

Data is only useful when it is applied. Social Reports provide marketers data-driven insight to replace the assumptions previously made through observation and mining what data was previously provided.

Google Analytics uses website data to reveal Social Sources, identifying which social networks drive the most traffic, result in conversion and deliver the most high quality visitors. Access to this data enables marketers to identify the highest-performing networks and define how/whether to invest in other social networks to support KPIs and Goals.

The Visitor Flow Report illustrates which paths visitors from social networks take once they arrive on your website, whether they continued onto other pages, or exited the website. This insight can help identify missing links in the conversion path, and drive strategic content development.

3. Leverage Social Data to Drive Content Marketing

The Content Reports provides comparison charts, revealing which of the social networks delivers the most high-value visitors, and which content is most relevant to those who will convert.

The Pages Report identifies the most viral content, shared by others on the website as well as external sites. Invaluable insights can be leveraged to determine what followers, friends and connections find "shareable" to guide the planning and deployment of future content.

The Social Value Graph provides a snapshot of all Goal completions, identifying conversions resulting from social referrals, allowing for comparison to visitors from other sources such as Search, Direct or other Referral Sources.

Google states “Content that gets shared, wins.” Google Analytics Social Plug-ins Report’illuminates which posts on your website have been shared, which social buttons were used, and where the content was shared (Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.). These insights can be leveraged to build community and promote organic sharing of content.

4. Leveraging Social Relationships

Measuring the impact of relationships with audiences over time is perhaps one of the most elusive metrics for socially-engaged brands. An immediate conversion is not always won. Sometimes, it simply takes time to build trust, present the right offer, or provide the right incentive to win a conversion.

Google Analytics has made it easier to justify the long-term investment in social, by differentiating between an immediate conversion, or one from a returning visitor. Last Interaction identifies a social referral that results in a conversion. Assisted Social Conversions identify visitors from a social referral source that do not result in a conversion during their first visit, but do convert during a later visit to the website.

This data can be invaluable in justifying the long-term investment in social relationships, as opposed to the temptation to simply use social platforms to deliver one-way broadcasts.

5. Use Social Sources to Learn More About Your Audiences

One of the most powerful aspects of social is the mere fact that behind every interaction is a human. Post-conversion customers are easier to define. However, gathering insight into those who interact with the brand before conversion can be more challenging.

The Google Analytics Social Sources Report shares typical metrics such as page views, duration of visit, pages per visit, etc. by network. Analytics reports how many visitors were referred by social each social network; Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, YouTube and other networks, and displays which content page URLs were shared on each platform.

Additional insights are provided by what Google calls Hub Partner Networks including enhanced off-site data such as URLs shared on that site, and how they were shared (+1, re-share, comments) and conversations around your content on partners such as Google+, Google Groups, Disqus, Digg, and others. View the current list of Google Social Data Hub networks.