How To Get a Negative Review or Attack Site Off the Front Page
Did you have an angry customer or disgruntled employee create a smear website or leave a bad review that ranks on the front page?
There is Good News & Bad News
The bad news is this is going to take dozens of hours of work, and months of time will go by before the offending website is removed from the front page. The good news is that 95% of what you are going to do, will be an application of good SEO practices and will have general SEO benefits to your site. Pushing the Bad website off the front page is going to be mostly a side benefit.
But it’s only off the front page? I want it to disappear!
Trust me, once it is off the front page it is effectively gone. 91% of searches never click beyond the first page. In addition the people clicking beyond the front page usually are not your best customers, they are often employees and competitors. It is very unlikely you will be able to get something removed from the internet entirely, but there is a small chance and that will be discussed further below.
Step 1 - Make less listings appear on the front page.
In the image below you can see the difference between traditional listings and expanded listings using structured data in the Google search results. Configuring your schema correctly to produce these types of rich data cards will actually take up more space on the page. This results in the website you are trying to hide being pushed further down the page and possibly even off the front page.
Step 2 - Company Micro Sites
Next we take information that would normally be contained with a page on your website, or maybe even just a section of a page like the Mission Statement from an about page, and we make a whole website out of it.
We will link to this page from your website’s about page. And we will link back to your website from this microsite. For some companies a mission is really important. So an expansion from one paragraph to several pages of examples or stories about why you do business makes sense.
Other great opportunities to create a micro sites can come from the careers page of your website. This page can easily be expanded with information on company culture and what types of things you are looking for in applicants resumes. This can actually really have a positive impact on the business because it really is useful for the candidates you most want to higher.
And another good place to build a microsite would be if your company has any type of non profit initiative it is involved in. Even something like a day where your company goes to clean up a nearby park is a great place to look for self promotion. These types of activities are typically blog posts but there is no reason they can’t be their own microsite
I would do a maximum of 6 of these types of related domains. It works a lot better if you can find two or three links that you can get to point to these sites, besides your main websites. For example, if you have a website dedicated to your "City Park Cleanup Day", maybe the city Parks and Recreation website would be willing to give you a link.
- Special note, many people will think this technique sounds like creating a PBN (Private Blog Network). Which is Black Hat and not something Google approves of. PBN websites will hide their WHOIS information, set up on different Web Hosts and do everything they can to trick Google into thinking they were not developed by the same person. We are not going to do this, all of these websites can be hosted on the same platform, and have identical Whois info. If you don’t have more than 6 company micro sites this is should not trigger any PBN warnings with Google.
Step 3 - Don’t Forget the Easy Stuff
Often the links directly under a company will be social networks when looking for a company name. You need to make sure you have pages on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat and all the major social sites. What controls how high those links appear is how active those profiles are. So use a program like Buffer to schedule posts for the week and make sure that your company profiles are updating every day with new content.
This is the easiest thing you can do and will also be the quickest strategy for pushing down the site we are trying to drop.
Step 4 - Disavow the Link
What does it mean to disavow the link?
Normally if you start to receive links that look spammy, Google will think you are trying to artificially inflate your rankings. In order to not get punished by Google you can “disavow” those links to your site, saying that you have no relationship with the sketchy links and those sites aren’t related to yours.
Because the site that gave us a bad review probably linked to us, we can “disavow” their link as well. This won’t have a major impact on their site by itself, but it is a negative signal to Google that someone has a problem with their site. It also lets Google know that maybe that site isn’t a good match for searches of your brand name.
Special note, if you are very lucky and this negative site has ALSO linked to the website of a mutual party that you are affiliated with you should also ask them to disavow the link.
“Joe Plumber’s service was no good. I ended up having to go to a local hardware store to buy the stuff to do my own project”.
If you are lucky and can get the local hardware store to also disavow links from this page, it will be a VERY negative signal to Google and we might see this page not just pushed from the front page but out of the search results entirely.
Step 5 - Push for a News Link
If a small to medium sized business is written about in the local press it can be the second or third link on company name searches for years!
This is the most difficult strategy to replicate for each unique business and in some ways falls more under the category of PR than SEO or reputation management, but it can be the most effective way to control the message and google results for your company. So think about what makes your company story worthy and reach out the local press to see if they would be interested in running the story.
For more help getting a news link check out this excellent Moz article from Casey Meraz.
Step 6 - Guest posting with Partner Businesses
Are there businesses you work with closely and have a good relationship with? Trade Blog posts with that company, where each of you will write up a quick company profile to expose your customers to the partner business.
Have them write something simple like, “Why we use company Joe’s Plumber service when we need to fix a pipe” but make sure that the are correctly optimizing their post to rank for your company's name. A tool like Yoast can be great for this.
Step 7 - The Psychology of Dealing with the Angry (Possibly Crazy) Customer Directly.
Now that you see how much work it can be to remove a negative listing from the front page, make sure you aren’t overlooking the most direct approach. Asking the angry customer to take it down.
I have two important questions I try to answer before I talk to the customer. When did they put up the angry site? And can i speak with them in a professional way?
The question is the most important. If you cannot remain perfectly calm and professional when dealing with the customer, you risk upsetting them further and creating more problems, so do not engage with them at all. Even if you are 100% right and they are 100% wrong, it is important not to argue with them. Be apologetic, offer to make recompense in some way and see if that can solve their issue. Make sure to document all communications, and make double sure that every communication makes you look like a great company with excellent customer service. You can already see how it will take dozens of hours to remove their listing from the front page. Depending on what the customer thinks the problem was it can often be much cheaper just to give them a refund they don’t deserve rather than pay for the work of burying their site. If you are very lucky perhaps a simple apology will accomplish the job for you.
But whatever you do, don’t be these guys - part of being a good business is accepting criticism gracefully, even if it isn't warranted.
Now that we got that out of the way, we can get to the interesting stuff. The first benchmark was how quickly after your first issue with this customer did they put up their angry site? This is something I have never seen discussed in the fields of Reputation Management but has been my secret weapon.
If the angry site went up within 1-3 days of their interaction with your company, I put them firmly in the category of (Bored techy with too much time on their hands). Which is really good. You don’t know if they were really that upset, because the work of throwing up this site was not much to them. Maybe they had other things going on in their life at the time, and they aren’t even upset anymore, they just haven’t thought about it enough to take it down. People in this category often take down their sites for an apology, and I once even saw them change the highly ranking review to a positive one after a simple refund!
Warning: if they come from the second group and their negative review site went up 3 months or more after their interaction with your company then they have a very different kind of problem. Someone who has been dwelling about an experience this far in the past and has gradually become angry enough about it that they will create a whole site to damage your company may have mental health issues. I usually do not recommend contacting these people at all. But you can read their specific grievance and give it a shot if you are very good at conflict management and think you can help them to see your side.
Anyone who comes within the grey area of more than 3 days, but less than 3 months is someone you will have to use your best judgement on. But keep all your records and as a last step you can use an attorney if you need to.
Step 8 - Legal Intervention
Assuming you have kept excellent records of your communication with the person smearing your business and you have provided excellent customer service along the way it may be time to speak with an attorney.
There are metrics you can use to determine the lost business and how much you have been harmed financially by the negative review site and that will be a good number to reference if things get to that point.
Most small businesses don’t have the time, money or patience to hire a lawyer, but most consumers have even less time and money for one. The review is legally entitled to speak about their experience, but anything they say about your company that isn’t factually true is defamation. Having a lawyer draft a letter to them threatening legal action if they website doesn’t come down can be an effective strategy to get the website taken down.
Final Tip for Extra Credit - The Epic Signature / Bio
This tip from Rand Fishkin on the Moz Blog. It is from 2010 but it has still been working great for our clients.
Do you ever see Bio’s like this? This speakers biography is a useful map to a group of websites, all relating to the speaker and their business. This universal biography can be repeated wherever an authors or speakers bio appears. These types fo bios send a strong signal to Google that these links always appear together and are related. Because of that relation they have a higher chance of appearing together on the front page of your searches for your companies brand name.
The Anatomy of the Post [Ideal Outline of a Blog]
You may have heard that blogging is essential for content marketing success, but did you know that blogging helps to position you as an expert in your field, presents a valuable resource for your site visitors, and creates new opportunities for your site to rank on Google results? So what is the ideal outline of a blog for SEO?
Businesses that blog acquire 126% more leads than those who do not.
Do I really need a blog?
It’s critical to have a blog on your site so that you can help answer your visitors’ questions. Sharing your expertise, assisting the visitors to solve issues that they are encountering, and improving your overall site experience with your blog is what helps to get your rankings on Google up.
Don’t be confused, though. Blogging for SEO requires more than simply stuffing keywords into your posts and waiting for traffic to pour in. Bloggers should focus on writing content about subjects surrounding target keywords so that they can provide a breadth of knowledge on a given topic with the intent to help visitors rather than merely trying to drive traffic to sell more stuff.
Blogging on topics is great for user experience, helps people answer their questions, and will keep people returning to Google (and hopefully your blog) to solve future issues, the reason Google created the ranking algorithm after all.
However, there is a formula that works for creating individual blogs well for SEO. And, yes, it does involve ensuring that your target keywords are included in specific sections in the post to squeeze the most out of each article.
Blogging for SEO
So how can you ensure that people see your posts and that you blog yields traffic? We encourage our clients to use this method:
Keyword Research
Use multiple tools such as SEMRush, Keywordtool.io, and Answerthepublic.com to find long-tail keywords that surround your area of expertise and your industry.
Long-tail keywords are phrases that are more specific to your niche. They will usually have a lower number of monthly searches, but also fewer people competing for top results.
Look for words that have high traffic with relatively low competition.
Let’s consider one of HARNESS’s areas of expertise: video marketing.
The search term “video marketing” has 4400 searches per month, which is relatively high.
However, it also has a keyword difficulty (a score between 0-100 rating how difficult it is to rank on the first page for that keyword) score of around 68.58.
That search volume means it’s a popular keyword and one for which we want to rank. On the other hand, it has a high keyword difficulty (KD), so it will likely require many blog posts to hit that front page with this search.
What if we modified that keyword to find a long-tail search on the same topic?
Let’s try this one: video marketing services.
The term “video marketing services” has 480 searches per month with a keyword difficulty score of 41.01. The search volume level is lower compared to “video marketing,” but we can rank for this keyword with only a few blog posts.
Further, even if the 480 people are searching for this term, we want to talk to all of them as they are likely to be qualified traffic to our website. Heck, if only one person is searching for one of our high-value keywords, I want them to hit my site rather than my competition’s page.
We consider these low-competition keywords the low-hanging fruit, so we advise clients to start there. Higher difficulty keywords will have more traffic but require more work. Those are long-term goals, so work on those over time.
Titles - Use Your Keywords
Use your keyword to create a title that makes sense to your reader. Note: you must use the exact phrasing of the keyword in the title; otherwise, the keyword difficulty and volume will be different.
Your title should read naturally and help to start the process of the blog to educate, solve a problem, answer a question, and/or entertain. Creating titles can be one of the most challenging parts of the process.
You want a title that will grab attention and make people want to jump in. However, do not use clickbait titles unless you want to aggravate your readers. While clickbait titles will generate more traffic on the front end, if it’s all flashy title and no substance, you will send your readers to the next site looking for better, more informative content.
Title Generators
There are many title generators out there that can help with ideas. Hubspot offers one, but it tends to be pretty superficial in the ideas it generates. Portents is another option.
Let’s use our example of “video marketing services” in these title generators.
First, let’s plug it into the Hubspot Blog Idea Generator:
- Video Marketing Services: Expectations vs. Reality
- Will Video Marketing Services Ever Rule the World?\
- The Next Big Thing in Video Marketing Services
- Video Marketing Services Explained in 140 Characters or Less
- This Week’s Top Stories About Video Marketing Services
Mostly garbage, right? It does, however, illustrate the way we work to include the phrase in the title.
Next, let’s try the Portent title generator:
- The Hunger Games Guide to Video Marketing Services
- 8 Freaky Reasons Video Marketing Services Could Get You Fired
- How Video Marketing Services Aren’t as Bad as You Think
- True Facts About Justin Bieber’s Love of Video Marketing Services
- Where Video Marketing Services are Headed in the Next Five Years
These are also pretty rough, but they are unique at the very least. Number five is not terrible, but will this compel our users to click? That’s the question you have to ask yourself.
Do you need a title generator? No, not at all. You can quickly brainstorm 50 ideas with your keywords. Answer the Public (referenced above) provides some great ways to phrase questions around your keywords.
Some of your phrases will require more creativity than others to arrive at a compelling, natural sounding title, but that’s part of the fun.
A Note on Title Length
Let me make it slightly more complicated :)
- The perfect blog post title is 60 characters
- Titles with 8 to 12 words are shared more often on Twitter
- Titles with 12 to 14 words are shared and liked most often on Facebook
Keep those additional thoughts in mind as you work on your list of title ideas.
The Outline
Note: there are many ways to write a blog. The following is just one example format, but it tends to be very successful because it is the same format that many successful public speakers use to present information on a massive scale. It also brings the keyword in at appropriate times for SEO.
Check out our other posts for other templates such as the How To Post, the List-based Post, and Curated Content.
Now onto the layout -
Killer Title (H1 Tag)
- Use your keyword as discussed above
- Beautiful Picture or Graphic
- Ensure that your keyword is in the title of your photo and your alt text in a natural way
Introduction
- Keep it concise and punchy. Perhaps you can present a common opinion or idea and then disagree or agree with it. Ask a question. Tell them what you are going to say. Anything that will help to excite the reader and warm them up for the main content.
- Important: Be sure to use your keyword in the first sentence of your first body paragraph.
Main Content
- The main body is where you support your thesis from your intro. Why do you disagree with the argument? What is the answer to the question? What are the top five reasons that dogs can’t drive? Present the meat of your article here.
- Use synonyms of your keyword in these supporting paragraphs. You can reuse your keyword if it reads naturally. Don’t force it.
- Use subheaders to divide up content into easily scannable heading
Conclusion
- Don’t write your conclusion like an essay in high school but do bring it all together for the reader. Summarize what you said in a clear, concise way and present your commentary as needed.
Feedback/CTA
- Invite interaction and engagement by providing a space to comment or create a call to action to take users to the next stage of your sales funnel. You can link to a content offer here as well.
Meta Description
- The meta tag is not part of the post that your users will see, but will be the text that will display on Google search results. This description should be helpful to users in deciding whether or not it solves their query. Include your keyword in the meta info.
Important SEO Areas
These are the areas to ensure you use your keyword to maximize your chances of ranking.*
- Title (H1 tag)
- First Paragraph
- Image Alt Text
- URL
- Meta Description
*Remember that your main goal should be to create content that is inherently valuable to readers and then focus on SEO and rankings.
Just creating content based on keywords and stuffing them in as many places as possible can get you penalized by Google. The intent of your content should be to present information with practical value.
Avoid fluff content. Don’t waste your users’ time by presenting superficial garbage. Your blog must be high quality, comprehensively answer questions with relevant info, and it must be easy to read across devices.
Conclusion
So is blogging for SEO easy? Yes, once you get the hang of it, but it takes some planning and practice just like most things worth doing. This type of formatting becomes second nature after you write a few posts.
Does this seem like too much trouble?
Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. HARNESS is an inbound marketing agency that specializes in creating content for each stage of your unique sales funnel. We can help to get you in front of your target customers, taking them from a new visitor to brand evangelist.
LEARN MORE
How to Effectively Use Different Types of Video Marketing (Part 2)
How to Use Video Marketing for Consideration Stage
The beauty of using video here is that they’re highly successful in moving viewers to action. This is especially important for growing your email list. Giving a clear call-to-action in your video that directs users to the next step will have a tremendous impact on your conversion rates.
Here’s how to put it to use:
#1 Video on Landing Page
Landing pages that include video can increase conversions by a whopping 80% (Source: Hubspot)
#2 Webinars
Webinars allow you to showcase your expertise and knowledge in a given area. You can dive deeper into topics and give people a chance to ask questions for further understanding. It also bolsters your lead generation as each participant must register before joining your broadcast
#3 How-to’s and Instructional Videos
YouTube and live-streaming are ideal platforms for how-to and instructional videos.
#4 Promote Your eBook
eBooks are ideal sources for product comparisons, how-to’s, or giving detailed instructions. Shoot a video that promotes your eBook and shares how viewers can opt-in to get their copy
#5 Mini-Video Series
Consider repurposing your popular, evergreen, or long-form blog post into a mini video series that you can distribute on social media or use as a lead magnet. Repurposing content fills your content calendar, giving you ample material to share with your audience.
Decision Stage
Your prospect is now closer to making the financial decision to solving their problem. Through your email nurturing tactics, they’ve been cultivated by your content (whether blog posts, videos, infographics, etc.) and perhaps ready to make the purchase. Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads (Source: Emma). Your video marketing strategy is about to pay off big, but we’re not finished yet!
The content used to help close the deal will be different from the content leveraged in the previous stages. Your focus here is to make the sale, so it’s vital to create a smooth transition to the transaction.
How to Use Video Marketing for Decision Stage
Videos will help get the job done. Hubspot also shares that after watching a video, 64% of users are more likely to buy that product online. You’re using the right tool to convert leads into customers.
The following ways show how:
#1 Gather Customer Testimonials
User-generated content and sharing testimonials are incredibly useful in boosting sales revenue. It builds trust with your audience and shows that what you have, works! Compile your customer’s social videos into one, compelling marketing video to share with your list
#2 Live Demo
Show prospects how your products work live and in living color by hosting a webinar or live-streaming video on social media. Outline the benefits, features, and how people use it as their solution. Allow an opportunity for participants to ask questions for immediate response.
#3 Share Your Story
Storytelling is a powerful strategy for pulling your audience in and connecting them with the vision of your brand.
#4 Product Videos
Create an extensive video for each of your products and services. This can be evergreen content that you can use forever that highlights the details, advantages, and how viewers can purchase.
Final Key Pointers
Video marketing is a powerful tool in the inbound marketing box! By honing on your video strategy, you can significantly boost brand awareness, get more eyeballs on your content, grow your leads, and increase revenue. The key is ensuring that you’re leveraging the different types of videos appropriately to move your audience effectively.
Use this blueprint as a guide to creating your video marketing strategy. Be consistent and patient with your results. Regularly test your outcomes to discover what’s working best with your audience and what needs to be modified. In due time, you will experience the desired growth in your business with video.
Ready to ramp up your video marketing? We are equipped to help you get in front of your audience and achieve results in your inbound marketing. Reach out to us here and let’s chat!
How to Effectively Use Different Types of Video Marketing (Part 1)
It’s been established that video is one of the most effective ways to promoting your brand in an ever-evolving digital age. YouTube consumption rises 100% every year, and marketers are taking full advantage of using this tool to get in front of their audience, bring awareness to their brand, and leads viewers to take action.
The key to an effective video strategy is ensuring that your content aligns with each stage of the buyer’s journey.
You see, your marketing will attract different prospects who are at different phases in your sales funnel. You may have a visitor who is ready to invest in your service yet another who merely wants information. It’s essential to create content that suits these needs at each stage that moves them to the next step in your funnel.
The ultimate goal is to convert prospects into buying customers. Video marketing is a top tool in inbound marketing to help you achieve this objective.
In this guide, we’ll outline the three stages to the buyer’s journey and how to effectively use different types of video marketing in each phase for maximum success in your strategy.
Awareness Stage
In the awareness stage, the prospect is in the discovery process of your brand. They understand they have a problem and begin researching ways to resolve the issue. As a result, they land on your content as the solution. Your prospect is merely looking for educational material that will help them quickly overcome their pains and challenges.
Your goal in creating video content for the Awareness Stage is to do just that build awareness of your brand. Here, you’re positioning your company as a resource, expert, and solution in the industry. It’s where you let your audience know what you offer so buyers recognize what you do and how you can help them.
Therefore, you want to engage your visitor in a way that encourages them to indulge more in your content by focusing on their pain points, not your products or brand.
How to Use Video Marketing for Awareness Stage
Here are the typical content types that work best in the Awareness Stage using video:
#1 Social Videos
Social promotion is an excellent medium for building a following and community around your brand. It’s also a tremendous asset to getting your video content in front of an engaging audience.
There are three types of videos to consider when posting on social media:
- Sharing videos from your YouTube channel – an excellent way to feed your followers with valuable content while increasing views
- Uploading organic videos directly to social media – you’ll obtain greater reach with your audience using natural videos (Source: Social Media Today)
- Live-streaming video – apps like Facebook Live, Periscope and Instagram Stories are generating massive engagement on social media. It is an excellent tactic to build exposure to your brand fast
#2 Add Video in Blog Content
Search is still the #1 source for content generation and the perfect platform to create quality rich-content that educates your audience while increasing visibility of your brand. Add videos to enrich website-experience and keep people on your page longer (improving SEO)
#3 YouTube
As the second largest search engine, building your channel is smart towards growing brand awareness. Be sure to optimize your videos for better ranking.
Consideration Stage
Good news! Your prospect has warmed up to your brand, and you’re now viewed as a credible source. They’re also clear on their goals, are committed to addressing it, and now looking at options on how they can handle their issues. At this stage, they’re actively looking for content related to solutions.
Content in this phase needs to be incredibly informative and help the prospect gain clarity on how to solve the problem they are experiencing. In the Consideration Stage, you’re also focusing on capturing qualified leads by leveraging compelling lead magnets to get them in your sales funnel.
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Stay tuned for part 2!
How Can Health Care Providers Incorporate Video into Their Marketing
When looking at some social media sites, you will come across everything from 'homemade' cell phone videos of patients and procedures, to just a slideshow of still (stock) photos with generic music in the background.
If healthcare professionals want to capture potential patients attention, they need to be effective with their presentation style.
It's common for someone to ask a friend for a recommendation to a dentist or doctor and word-of-mouth is the absolute best advertising. The crucial point is when the person getting the recommendation goes to search out the care provider to find out more information. The health professional only has one choice for a first impression when potential clients get to their website or social media page. Using quality video content is one key way of creating a positive impression (no pun intended).
Going to the doctor is a not-so-pleasant experience for some people, so they need reassurance that they are in the hands of professional and caring people. A quality video will portray precisely what the potential patient needs to see to feel comfortable picking up the phone to call for an appointment.
Here are some critical facts about video marketing:
- 70% of marketing professionals report that video converts better than any other medium
- The average internet user spends 88% more time on a website with video than without.
- 64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. - Forbes
- A successful video campaign is just one aspect of an overall marketing and relationship-building strategy. As a health professional, you are an absolute expert in your field, having spent hundreds of hours studying and learning your art. The one thing that is not taught in medical colleges is how to market yourself. This is where you need to seek out a professional who has spent their time studying their field of marketing. Partnering with a consulting firm that has a successful track record will benefit your practice immensely.
Here are some areas where videos can be successful:
- A promotional video that explains who you are and what you do. A smiling, confident face goes a long way in making someone comfortable. If you have a team practice, then that video should show you as a team.
- A virtual tour that shows what your facility looks like, highlighting any new technology along with anything that helps make the patient experience that much more comfortable. You can even include short clips of some simple procedures; something that sets you apart.
- Patient testimonials that communicate your practices value, expertise and professionalism. Word of mouth is the best advertising and having real people give favorable testimony will go a long way to building confidence in a potential patient.
- Stand out from the competition by adding a video to your business listing in online directories
- Partnering with a professional consulting firm makes it simple to accomplish these goals.
Some of the other, finer points of videos in marketing include:
- Using videos to drive traffic to your website/social media. Search engines love video, and with proper video SEO, you can use video to drive lots of traffic to your site.
- Use targeted keywords when titling and tagging your videos
- Create a variety of videos, each focusing on a different search term
- Use multiple video sharing sites to increase links back to your main website - Lifewire
As pointed out earlier, video is just one aspect of a successful marketing program. Tying in all of the other tools available with professionally produced videos will ensure that your practice attracts new patients and continues to grow.
You can download our free e-book "Video Marketing Road Map" to give you an idea of what we can help you accomplish in your practice. You can contact us for more information or with any questions.
Why Videos Are the Best Tools in Your Inbound Marketing Strategy
Did you know that consumers prefer videos over text when discovering more about brands and products? In fact, four times as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product than to read about it (Source: Hubspot).
Marketers have noticed a surge in engagement, conversions, brand loyalty, and customer experience when leveraging videos in their inbound marketing strategy. Videos have a fantastic way of capturing attention and drawing your audience into your message. It’s one of the best tools to humanizing your brand and getting people to take action.
Let’s review what video and inbound marketing are and why it’s essential today
What is Video and Inbound Marketing?
Let’s begin with inbound marketing. This strategy focuses on attracting ideal prospects and customers to your brand through valuable content that solves problems, educates and informs. Rather than using traditional outbound marketing like cold calling, buying email lists (spam), and ads, inbound embraces sharing content that your audience will find useful and relevant.
As a result, you’ll be viewed as an expert and valuable resource. In a digital era where a search is a top source for finding information, inbound marketing positions you to show up when your audience is looking for you. Therefore, you’re utilizing platforms like your business blog, social media pages, video and podcast channels to share your expertise and give value.
This is a much better approach than chasing prospects…you’re drawing them in, making them more qualified and receptive to your content.
Now, video marketing is a part of your content marketing strategy which is a subset of inbound marketing. You see, your content includes blog articles, images, infographics, email messages, eBooks, checklists, videos and much more. A video is a tool leveraged with the intention of either increasing brand awareness, capturing leads, or generating sales.
Why Videos Are More Effective in an Inbound Marketing Strategy
The benefits of using videos in your inbound marketing strategy abound when you consider the impact and influence it has on moving viewers to action. Videos give your audience a chance to experience your brand’s culture, making you relatable and trustworthy. It significantly bolsters the know, like and trust factor which are key ingredients to getting people to do business with you.
Here are several top reasons why videos are incredibly useful in an inbound marketing strategy:
- It dramatically improves lead conversions. Including one on a landing page can improve opt-ins by a whopping 80% (Source: Hubspot)
- Creates more opportunities for customers to find you on Google and YouTube, boosting brand visibility
- 62% of B2B marketers rated videos as an effective content marketing tactic in 2016
- Adding video to an email accelerates engagement, leading to a 200-300% increase in click-throughs
- Allows you to build genuine relationships with your social followers, email list, and potential customers
- Video appeals to mobile users, a significant benefit since more people use their smartphones than desktops
- Videos can help explain everything. Whether you’re launching a new product or idea, attempting to explain a difficult concept or need to dive deep into a topic, you can be as creative as you want to help viewers understand
How to Implement Videos in Your Inbound Marketing
With a clear understanding of what video marketing is and how it can positively impact your numbers, the following provides a step-by-step blueprint on how to incorporate it into your inbound marketing strategy:
#1 Be Clear On Your Audience
Having clarity on your target audience and knowing their pains, problems and challenges is the prerequisite to a solid content marketing strategy. One of the best ways to understanding your market is by developing buyer personas. This process will help you to create winning topic ideas that you can share in your videos that appeal to your audience.
#2 Brainstorm Content that Aligns with the Buyer’s Journey
Your viewers will each be at different junctures in the buyer’s journey. This is important to recognize as you want to create videos that target each stage to increase your reach. These include the Awareness, Consideration, and the Decision stage. Think of video content ideas for each stage to have a well-rounded video marketing approach.
#3 Use an Editorial Calendar
Plan, organize and schedule your video content by utilizing an editorial calendar for consistency. By mapping out your topics, you’ll get a holistic view of when your content will publish, so you’re constantly feeding your audience with quality-rich content. Google Calendar is an excellent tool to schedule your videos.
#4 Create and Publish Your Videos
Videos can take on many forms such as YouTube videos, webinars, social videos, and live-streaming video. Decide on the types of videos you will use for your topics and begin publishing.
To create stunning videos that capture attention and exudes your brand personality, leverage a team of experts that can help you stand out in the crowd!
#5 Promote Your Videos
Get more eyeballs on your content by promoting your videos. Synchronize them in your social media, email and blogging strategy for maximum impact. Effectively promoting your videos improves its viewership, SEO ranking (if on YouTube) and brings more significant exposure to your brand.
Conclusion
Videos are one of the best tools you can implement in your inbound marketing strategy. Adding them today can catapult your business goals, increasing brand awareness and generating engagement from your audience. Given the way people consume content online, amplifying your video marketing will position you to reach more of your audience.
How to Create a Strong Video Marketing Strategy
Implementing a video marketing strategy is a must if you desire to reach today’s consumer. The popularity of video is undeniable as more consumers are using it to discover, engage and stay connected with brands.
Video marketing can enrich every aspect of your digital inbound strategy. From growing brand awareness, improving lead generation, boosting engagement and driving revenue. Videos can be the secret sauce you need to amplify your inbound efforts. The key is creating a video strategy that aligns with your ultimate business goals and the needs of your customer.
Are you ready to add video marketing to your inbound marketing mix or looking to improve your current one? If so, here are five steps to creating a robust strategy that gets in front of your customers and generates results.
1. Be Clear on Your Audience and Goals
Knowing who your target audience is and the results you desire from your video marketing campaign are essential to your strategy. It sets a solid foundation and serves as a guide to ensure that the content you publish aligns with your goals and speaks to its intended audience.
Create Buyer Personas
Perhaps you’re already clear on your target audience from your inbound marketing plan. If not, the best way to gaining this clarity is by creating buyer personas. This process allows you to paint a clear picture of your ideal customer which positions you to produce content that appeals to their needs.
You’ll glean data such as their job description and responsibilities, the problems and pain points they have, what their role is in the buying process, keyword phrases they’re likely to use when searching online, their unique goals, and more. It helps you create the content that your audience wants to see. Therefore, making your strategy highly effective.
Know Your Goals
What exactly do you want to achieve from your video marketing strategy? Are you seeking to build brand awareness? Capture leads? Increase your sales?
Whatever the goals, it’s important to know upfront to keep your campaign centered on achieving them. When your business understands why you’re creating video stories, the content becomes intentional and purposeful.
2. Brainstorm and Decide On Your Video Content
There are a plethora of video content ideas. From how-to’s and product videos to customer testimonials and video email marketing, the options are many when considering the video topics you want to publish for your audience.
In addition to key videos, every business should have that highlights their brand and purpose; it is important that you create content that supports different points in the buyer’s journey to hit all targets in your audience.
You see, some may be familiar with your brand through social media or as an email subscriber. Others are more in the discovery phase. Having videos tailored to each prospect maximizes your reach and impact. Viewers are likely to move in your favor (opt-in or purchase your product) when your content relates to their specific journey.
With that said, here are different types of video content every brand should have in the vault and ones that relate to each stage in the buyer’s journey:
Videos Every Brand Needs
- Explainer Video – videos that explain your product or service or offers an in-depth explanation of a specific facet of your product empowers future clients to make educated buying decisions
- Product Videos – each of your products and/or services should be featured in its own exclusive video. Highlight the benefits and the results your customers have achieved through your business
- How-to Videos – showing your customers how your product works is extremely beneficial for customer success
- Customer Testimonials – did you know 88% of people trust reviews as personal recommendations? Posing your testimonials using video can be a power-packed strategy to building trust and converting leads into customers
Videos for the Buyer’s Journey
- Awareness Stage - Prospects are simply looking for educational content that will quickly solve a problem. You want to position your brand as an expert. The best videos here include social videos, YouTube (for search), and ones shared in your blog articles
- Consideration Stage - Prospects are looking at options on how they can handle their issues. They view you as a trusted, credible source and looking to stay connected. Optimal videos in this stage include webinars, instructional, mini-video series, and adding a video to your landing page to boost conversions
- Decision Stage - Your lead is closer to making the buying decision. Make it easy by sharing demonstration, product, and customer testimonial videos
3. Decide How You Will Create Your Videos
With clarity about your audience and content topics ready, it’s time to create and publish remarkable videos that capture attention and WOWs your audience. You have to decide whether you’re going to make your videos in-house or leverage a video production team that can bring your ideas and vision to life.
Using both approaches to creating your videos is highly suggested as you can designate professional ones for evergreen and promotional content and others such as live videos and webinars can be performed by your team.
For videos produced on your own, use these tips to help you in the creation process:
- Get to the point quickly, keeping it short and concise
- Showcase your personality to stand out. Allow viewers to relate to your brand through your style and message
- Make great eye contact. Refrain from looking at yourself in the screen but rather gaze into the lens, so it appears you're looking directly at your viewer
- Give a call to action. Tell your audience what to do next to improve engagement. Whether it's to opt into your list, give a comment, or share with their friends, make it clear, so people follow your instructions
4. Create Your Video Promotion Plan
Getting your video in front of as many targeted eyeballs as possible is crucial for brand awareness and meeting your goals. Traffic, lead generation, and sales opportunities are dependent on how successful you promote your video content. In fact, you should spend 54 minutes promoting your content for every hour you spend creating it (Source: CoSchedule).
Although there are tons of ways to spread the word about your video, be sure to include the following tactics in your promotion plan:
- Social Media Promotion - Each network has a different tolerance of how often you should post and the way you tailor the headline for that specific network. It’s okay to share your video more than once to increase exposure. Just be sure to switch up your headline, so it appropriately speaks to the audience when you’re promoting your video
- Video Email Marketing – Your subscribers should be the first to know about your video as your fans. Keep them connected by including your videos in your email strategy. Create your campaigns if your videos are designed for the buyer’s journey
- YouTube – Although a no-brainer, simply uploading your video on YouTube is not enough to drive engagement. Optimize your video and its title, description, and tags for SEO to improve ranking in Google and YouTube search. The title should include the full keyword you’re aiming to rank for. Also, consider uploading a transcript for further optimization
- Influencer Marketing – Leveraging influencers can play a big role in getting your video in front of new people. They already have a large active following that supports their content. Build relationships with influencers in your niche to create winning partnerships where they promote your video in exchange for something (whether intangible or tangible)
5. Decide How You Will Measure Results
The final step to creating a strong video marketing strategy is measuring your results to test effectiveness. There’s too much invested in “hopes” that your video generates desired engagement to meet your business goals. You must know what’s working and what isn’t so you can continuously make improvements to your strategy to yield favorable results.
The good news is, deciding on how you’ll measure your efforts isn’t complicated. You can create a simple system of questions that analyzes and gauges your outcomes. Here are a few to consider to test your video marketing strategy:
- What keywords are people using to locate my video in search (on Google and YouTube)?
- Which content topic generates the most shares (i.e. explainer, tutorials, social videos, etc.)?
- How long are viewers watching my video? Are they staying for most of the video or leaving after the first few seconds?
- How many views did my video receive?
- Which content topic produced the most social engagement (combination of likes, shares, and comments)
- How many leads did my video generate?
A Strong Video Marketing Strategy Engages Your Customers
Video is a game-changing tactic to capture attention and increase engagement with your target audience. Engaging video helps your brand become more visible in search results. Best of all, it converts prospects throughout the funnel. It’s one of the best tools you can leverage in your inbound marketing.
Use this blueprint as a guide to building a strong video marketing strategy in 2017. You will appeal to today’s consumer and find your company quickly meeting milestone goals for your business.
Much success.
Are you ready to publish compelling videos that sell your product, educate and delight your customers? Reach out to us here to discover how we can help get you to your next level through video.
5 Important Aspects Your Video Marketing Campaign Should Include
Are you using video marketing the right way? Video Marketing is an effective way to reach out to customers while keeping them engaged and interested in your material. Customers can get all of the information they need through a video in just seconds. So how do you optimize video marketing to make your campaign even better? Here are five methods:
Schedule your Videos
As you may have discovered, scheduling your social media is an effective way to release posts consistently and at the optimal time for engagement. You should do the same thing with your videos. Be creative with it. Instead of releasing unrelated videos, come up with a topic and put together a series of related videos that will tell a story to you customers. Remember, you can also utilize this tactic to lead up to a big announcement, launch or event.
Take Advantage of Micro-videos
Micro-videos are all the rage right now on social media. Making small videos through apps is a smart way to promote your product on social media as customers scroll through their social media feeds. Consider using Vine or Instagram to make videos. Make them entertaining so your audience will want to watch them.
Tutorial and Tips: Implementing tutorials in your video marketing campaign is a way to keep customers coming back to your site. Some may think that providing tutorials and tips is giving away your company’s secrets, but in actuality it makes customers look for you as a point of reference. This will also keep customers coming back because they will look for more videos hoping that there are a series of tutorials.
User-generated Content: Let your customers be on camera sometimes. This allows customers to be involved with your brands and give genuine thoughts on something related to your brands. Instead of making a script, customers can come up with their material. You can even incentivize users to create content by awarding the best video. This will show people how passionate others are about your product.
Call-to-Action: Tell your users what to do after watching. Provide a description of next steps in your video. Without this, your customers will have no idea what to do after watching. An example of a call-to-action can be a coupon code, or you can even offer a discount to customers who mention your video on their social media. Another method is to utilize a “turnstile” to capture emails to view the video if the content is particularly valuable. Finally, a call-to-action button, such as a “buy now” or “learn more” button, can be utilized to drive traffic to a landing page to drive traffic and increase conversions.
Now that you’ve learned how to optimize your video marketing campaign, you can stand out from other products or marketing companies. For more information on video, marketing stays in touch with Harness on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
5 Tips To Generate Leads At Outdoor Retailer
Tradeshows are not an inexpensive pursuit nor are they a guaranteed success. Outdoor Retailer is no exception. The value gained from attending and exhibiting at Outdoor Retailer is immense, but companies must consider their strategy to truly take advantage of that value. Just purchasing a ticket to walk the floor of most shows can cost several hundred dollars or more. Hosting a booth to market your brand is even more expensive. That does not even factor in the time commitment of your staff, strategy, design, and marketing collateral needed to have a competitive presence at most shows. Once those items are examined, the costs add up to be quite substantial. However, if a company maps out a strategy, then the benefits can be immeasurable.
Considering those costs, how can you succeed despite the high cost of entry?
Trade show veterans can quickly provide you some info on lessons they learned the hard way. We have taken this into account and had a few tips below on how to get the most for your trade show marketing dollars:
- Establish your plans well in advance. A month before the show is not enough time to start planning. In fact, three months is not long enough. Successful marketers start planning at least six months before a show start, and many take a year or more.
- Set goals for all of the shows in your trade show schedule. All of your marketing efforts should tie back to the overall strategic plans of the organization and trade shows should align with individual campaigns that carry the marketing strategy forward. With that in mind, your trade show goals should match up with the goals of the campaign into which the show fits. Trade show marketing goals can include:
- New leads and direct sales
- Increasing traffic to your site - driving website traffic is always a good idea because it can also create new leads
- Building your social media following - social goals seem a little passive to many old-school salespeople, but consider that most new sales require three to five touch points with a future customer before gaining commitment
- Expanding your email list - while many prospects may not be ready to buy now, they may be interested in keeping in touch to learn more about your product/service over time. The buying process is cyclical so keeping in touch is critical
Once you have established your goal for this show, you should identify metrics that allow the analysis of progress, success, and failures at a given show.
- Stand out. How can you reflect the culture of your company at your show? Regardless of how automated and digital our world has become, people still buy from people. Future customers are interested in learning more about you and your company as well as what it is like to do business with you. Your booth presents an opportunity to reflect the individual traits that make your organization unique.
The tradeshow floor can become quite monotonous as one booth blends into another because people follow the same formula for materials, design, and displays. Create something that stands out. You spent years developing your product or service in a way that your value proposition is different from any other business, your first impression on your new customers should be a reflection of that effort. While the extra effort may cost more, this added expense can be the difference between whether or not a new key account bothers to stop to meet you.
- Consider your booth - can you create something different than everyone else? How can this further the goal you set for this show?
- Dress for success - how will you and your team dress? How does this reflect you as an organization and your culture?
- Collateral - what are your signs and other materials going to do to further your goal? More on this later.
- Create a single call-to-action. Assuming you have set your goal and created metrics, you should establish the pathway that a future customer will take to reach your goal. This call-to-action will become part of every facet of your trade show strategy, allowing a customer to move quickly from being a total stranger into your sales pipeline.
While designing your booth, materials, landing page, and analytics, you should consider this call-to-action (CTA) as being the keystone to all of your efforts. A CTA should inspire a visitor to commit to an action of some type and can include:
- Subscribe to our newsletter
- Register for a webinar
- Sign up for a product demo
A CTA will direct your visitors to a landing page, a web page that is specifically designed to provide targeted information to visitors in exchange for the offer for which they initially registered. In turn, your CTA will lead to increased conversions and more qualified leads.
Only gathering business cards a tradeshow, which is what many salespeople do, is squandering the valuable resources required to get the company to the show. While that lead may have seemed very qualified and excited about your business at the time of the show, that excitement dissipates as time passes between the show and your sales team’s follow-up. However, if your CTA draws that visitor back to your website, then they are more likely to move all the way from stranger to lead and on to becoming a customer because of the excitement generated by your offer.
- Create a landing page for each show you attend. Mentioned above, the CTA will drive traffic to a dedicated landing page that furthers your overall goal. Prospective customers will provide their email address in exchange for a valuable piece of content such as a video series, ebook, white paper, or product demo. The page itself and the content offer should be tied back to your trade show presence. By creating a landing page that you only send trade show attendees to, you can measure the success of your trade show presence by the response generated by your CTA and landing page.
Finally, have a particular, detailed process for how the content will be delivered to leads and the process for follow-up. How will leads be scored and qualified in your system? How will you keep track of the follow-up process? What are your next steps to further your goal and move prospects down the buyer’s journey? These questions must be considered in depth before launching your campaign.
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By utilizing these steps as a guide and adapting the advice to your particular organization, you are certain to have trade show success. Please get in touch if you have specific questions on how to establish a strategy to make the most of your shows.
Why Social Video Is More Important Than TV To Generation Z?
Generation Z uses social video as not only a way to pass time but a way to stay connected to family and friends. By understanding this, you may better understand why social video is such a vital part of your video marketing campaign, and whether or not your audience will react well to social video.
Who’s watching social videos?
According to a study done by Defy, 13-24-year-olds were watching YouTube more than TV. These people were able to identify better with YouTube stars than celebrities on television. Video is now actually going beyond entertainment. Instead, it is educating today’s young adults, acting as a stress reliever, and keeps young people connected with their peers. Interestingly, 85% of young adults watch video via YouTube.
Young people and video consumption
Think of your video marketing campaign along with the videos you plan to produce and read these facts about how much video young people consume. Ask yourself if you’re putting out enough video and it you’re using the right platforms:
- The average young person consumes 12.1 hours of free digital video per week.
- Many young people consume an additional 8.8 hours of subscription digital video.
- Young people watch about 8.2 hours of television per week. However, there are fewer 13-24-year-olds watching TV compared to digital video.
Considering how young people are watching videos, this validates that a video marketing campaign is an excellent way to get your brand’s message out, especially to Generation Z.
The videos that Generation Z is watching excludes any video made by family or friends. This is because Generation Z is watching digital stars or people they don’t necessarily know personally.
Are you utilizing social video to the best of your ability?
Create social videos that become a reliable source for Generation Z. The philosophy behind this is that young people look up to digital celebrities and understand how advertising can help their content. If you can make your content appealing and trustworthy to youth, then you can get a loyal “fanbase” or audience.
About 62% of youth can’t live without YouTube, 52% can’t live without Netflix, and 48% can’t live without social media. Consider these platforms and how effective they can be in your video marketing campaign in reaching out to both Generation Z and other generations.
Read more about YouTube and how it will help you in your video marketing campaign in our book, “The Video Marketing Roadmap.”