How do you drive traffic to a new website without doing heavy blogging or content marketing?
Ruben Gamez is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Bidsketch and Docsketch. Bidsketch is a web application that helps people create professional-looking client proposals in minutes. Docsketch is an all-in-one electronic signature, approval, and document tracking solution.
In this episode of The Fizzle Show, you’ll learn exactly what techniques Ruben is using to drive hundreds of thousands of visits to his websites without blogging.
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Seth Williams is a Fizzle alumni and founder of RETipster.com. In this episode you’ll learn how Seth built a real estate business both online and off, and how he grew his business big enough to quit his day job.
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One of the best reasons to use social media and other online platforms as a business is to engage with your audience. You get immediate feedback and love for your products and services.
However, there’s always bad with the good. Some of those comments may also be negative, threatening, and derogatory toward your products, your brand, or your team. Some of the negativity may stem from unhappy customers. The smart thing is to contact them to acknowledge their dissatisfaction and work toward a solution.
The problem is that when you start replying, you find that one or two of those in your community spout more negativity. That’s when you’ll realize you’re dealing with trolls.
Understanding Trolls
Once upon a time, a troll came from Scandinavian stories. These hostile creatures live under bridges or in forests or caves. Known for their trickery, trolls want to cause problems and conflict. They thrive on others’ pain and discomfort.
Combine the concept of a troll with a fishing term known as “trolling.” When a fisherman is trolling, he’s casting a line into the water to see if he can catch something.
Together, these ideas define the character and intent of online trolls. Hiding behind screens and cloaked in anonymity, trolls have enjoyed attacking people and baiting them into arguments since the dawn of the internet.
First, it was through newsgroups and forums. Then, they gained a wider audience with the arrival of social media. Now, they lurk in all areas of the web, including blogs, discussion forums, chat rooms, and email groups.
Dealing with Trolls
Trolls aren’t going away as long as these platforms openly enable people to share their opinions. Rather than focus on how to get them to disappear forever, your strategy as a business should be to create a plan to minimize their impact — and influence on your brand and audience.
Know the signs. You want to ensure that it’s a troll and not an unhappy customer. One deserves to be dealt with in a straightforward manner; the other warrants some nuance. After all, a truly disappointed customer who feels she’s been treated badly is even more dangerous — and rightfully so.
There are ways to tell the difference. A troll wants to be angry and will only fire back with inflammatory and derogatory statements. Trolls exaggerate everything that’s said and tend to make personal attacks or threaten. An unhappy customer only wants their grievances addressed and doesn’t get too unreasonable to deal with.
Monitor the conversations. To address negative press, even from trolls, you need to know what people say about your brand. Obviously, the internet is a big place, and you don’t have the time to check every platform around the clock. That’s why there are numerous social media monitoring tools available to do the work for you; they can provide alerts about conversations, mentions, and reviews.
Establish a community policy for your online presence. On your platforms, including your blog and social media profiles, you can create an official policy related to user behavior. By formally defining the rules for participating and commenting on your blog, forum, or profile, you have grounds to remove and block people who break these rules. It may even discourage trolls from joining your community. The Content Marketing Institute has a good example of this type of policy that you can adapt to fit your own community.
Respond thoughtfully with facts, not emotions. Your first thought might be to initially ignore the comments. But the better strategy is to address what you can, so the rest of your audience sees you’re on top of these issues. Focus on how you can insert facts and correct mistakes to counteract their nonsense. Stay calm and use a professional tone and respectful language. You don’t want to end up lowering yourself to the troll’s level and feed their love of drama. Other visitors will lose respect for you, which is the opposite of what you intended.
Don’t take it personally. Even if trolls are using language that verbally attacks you as the moderator, remember that they don’t know you — this isn’t personal. They behave this way with everyone they come across online. When you don’t take what a troll says personally, you eliminate his or her power.
Recognize when to stop. Most likely, you’re not going to win with trolls. Ignore or block them when you have attempted a resolution but have only received further abuse. Others who may be following your reactions can see you’ve made an effort — and that the other side hasn’t.
Focus energy on building a positive, inclusive community. Don’t let trolls distract you from your primary goal of developing an online community that’s engaging, positive, and supportive. Spend more time addressing the positive comments on your blog or profile. Your focus on the positive people in your community is more likely to attract like-minded individuals and discourage trolls who will go elsewhere to stir up trouble.
Taking the High Road
Trolls will continue to lurk in dark places. Don’t join them in their virtual caves. Instead, show your audience that you’re taking the high road and standing by your brand’s values.
Trolls might not only bother you on social media. They can post inflammatory comments anywhere online. You can only deal with them as best you can and produce the best multi-channel experience you’re able to. Find out how with “Multichannel Fluidity.”
Welcome to episode 6 of On the Fly! On the Fly is our new video series with small bites (two mins or less) of marketing advice and training from marketing experts, delivered while they are on the road, at the airport, or traveling somewhere.
Our guest this week is Carla Johnson, one of the top influencers in B2B, digital, and content marketing. Carla talks about the importance of generating joy for your customers to not only retain them but convert them into advocates for your brand.
Your customers are craving authentic, uplifting moments more than ever. When building your customer journey, instead of looking at it as a way to move people through the buying process, look at it as an opportunity to expand your relationship with your customers and create moments of joy, says Carla Johnson.
Discover how top-notch Customer Experience can help you move away from a short-lived, campaign-centric approach. Here is our helpful to Streamlining the Customer Experience.
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When someone knocks back a shot of mezcal, how its essence is harvested might be the furthest thing from that person’s mind. I read the lead article in the latest issue of Distilled magazine and now have second thoughts about ordering a drink that contains Oaxaca’s (Mexico’s) ancient spirit. According to the writer, the allure of profit is too great for the mezcaleros (those who farm the agave plant from which the nectar is harvested) to resist. So much so that they harvest it from every single plant in view which prevents those plants from ever growing to a state at which they can produce the flowers they need to reproduce. We’ve seen this overharvesting story throughout time, in virtually every region of the world – the number of plants diminish and the future of an industry turns down.
Enlightened individuals in Oaxaca are trying to stem the tide by teaching better sustainability practices but the challenge is daunting since it means that, in the process, sacrifices must be made by the farmers, sacrifices that mean lowering their already very low incomes. It’s a thorny problem, but there is hope.
It reminded me of how in our industry of SaaS we too are guilty of embracing a short-term view over the long. Of being willing to sacrifice the greater potential of long-term strength of our companies at the altar of short-term profits. Let’s call that what it is. It’s also over-harvesting because as a general rule we still place far too much emphasis on sales and marketing and not enough on services. McKinsey raises the red flag in a smart article called Reimagining Software Services for the Cloud and the Digital World:
“For some companies, the professional-services unit was viewed as a cost center or, at most, a low-margin revenue generator. Many professional-services businesses therefore haven’t invested in the new tools and capabilities they need to propel their operations. That’s a mistake. Software vendors must strengthen their professional-services offerings to meet their customers’ new demands and to maintain or increase their market share.”
Over-investing in selling products and under-investing in what it takes to help customers succeed is only going to satisfy the needs of short-term shareholders who are only interested in vanity metrics like new subscribers and number of users, and not the more critical metrics like net churn and customer retention, which are signals of long-term health.
Instead of allowing ourselves to be seduced by the narcotic of quick wins, let’s focus on building sustainable businesses that:
Partner more effectively with customers so that they engage in a bigger way; engagement is a key enabler of their success and should be something that is stimulated
Nurture a community of engagement that fosters sharing and mutual growth through your solutions
Sacrifice some short-term profits (leaders need to lead on this front and do a much better job of explaining why this is good in the long run) and retool our organizations to focus on what it takes to deliver the kind of solution experience our customers deserve
Leaders have to look at the bigger picture to provide a stronger solution. They need the best data possible to make the right calls. This means not only procuring good and useful data but managing it well and deriving the right insights. Find out how to “Go Further with Data Management.”
Did you know there are only three ways you can earn more revenue in your business?
It’s true.
If you run your own business, I’m guessing that earning more revenue is on the top of your list of goals.
There are a million things for us to do as business owners, and it’s easy to overcomplicate things when it comes to growing your business.
I find it’s useful to reduce things to first principles, so we can build a strategy that is simple and easy to follow.
Here are the 3 only ways to earn more revenue in your business:
#1: reach more potential customers
This one makes sense, right? Reach more potential customers and you’ll make more sales. This is the one most of us focus on with content marketing, advertising and hoping for word of mouth.
In marketing speak, we would call this the “top of the funnel.” If your business is online, you’ll be looking for more traffic to your website. If your business is physical, you’d be looking for more people to visit your store.
#2: close more sales (improve conversion rate)
You work hard to reach potential customers. How many of them are you converting into sales? Do you have any idea what your conversion rate is?
By closing more sales (or improving your conversion rate), even with the same number of potential customers, you will earn more revenue.
#3: increase your customer lifetime value
Your customer lifetime value is simply the average amount of money each customer will pay your business over the lifetime of your relationship with them.
If you can increase this customer lifetime value, by raising prices or selling add-on products, or by implementing some kind of recurring revenue, you’ll earn more revenue overall.
Put it all together with this formula
Using this simple formula, let me show you how you can 8x your revenue. Watch this short video to see the full formula and three scenarios that show the power of this framework:
I hope that little example illustrated exactly how powerful this simple framework can be.
Your next question probably is: how do I double my potential customers, or double my conversion rate, or how do I double my customer lifetime value?
I’ll be answering those questions and a lot more in upcoming videos. If you haven’t subscribed to my channel, click the subscribe button in the video above so you’ll be notified when I publish a new video.
Take a good look around you – the walls between editorial and advertising have finally crumbled. In the old analog era, it was very easy to differentiate between “content” and “advertising.” But in the digital era, that’s all changed.
The lines between “content” and “advertising” have now blurred to a point where it’s simply cheaper and more effective for companies to create sponsored content. And as they create more and more content – blogs, videos, podcasts, e-books – they increasingly resemble digital media companies. There are three good reasons why every company now needs to become a digital media company.
#1: You’ll Give Your Customers What They Really Want
Once you start to think like a digital media company, you’ll start to have better insights into what your customers really want. Yes, your customers want to be entertained at times, but they also want to be informed. They want to know how to make their lives better, and they want you to tell them how.
For example, if you’re a restaurant looking to attract new customers, stop blasting out advertising in the forms of coupons, discounts, and promotions. Consumers are going to pass that advertising right by. They are trained to skip over ads and to ignore billboards.
Instead, think of sending out recipes and cooking tips. Create “how-to” videos on how to make a special dish. And think creatively about how to entertain your customers. For example, to celebrate HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” write up a clever story about how to hold a “Westeros Feast.”
#2: You’ll Build Your Audience
A major concern of any media company is building an audience. Media companies publish the types of articles that are designed to win the most readers. Cable TV networks push stories and narratives that are as sensational as possible, in the hopes of winning viewers. And online websites use all kinds of tools – like using fake news headlines – to get people to read an article.
That doesn’t mean that you need to become just like Buzzfeed or adopt all the sensational antics of most print media these days [Lose 24 pounds of fat in 24 hours! Look 30 years younger in just 30 minutes!] But it does mean that you should be thinking in terms of building new audience. If you’re hosting a new podcast, work hard to find guests that people enjoy. If you’re creating a corporate blog, don’t make it boring. If your articles aren’t getting clicks and views, try again.
#3: You’ll Turn Customers into Fans and Followers
At the end of the day, you really want to have your own online community of fans and followers. That makes it so much easier to introduce new products, launch new campaigns, and build buzz about your company. So, why not borrow a page from the digital media company playbook?
Digital media companies spend a lot of time deepening their links with fans and followers. They’ll take a popular writer or broadcaster and create opportunities for fans to interact with them. That might be a live interview, where fans can call or tweet in with questions. Or, it might be something like a Reddit AMA (“Ask Me Anything”). What digital media companies have realized is that fans and followers love getting this inside access. They love meeting this on-air talent. As a brand, you can use this same tactic. Host interviews with your CEO. Let fans meet the people on your team. Use Instagram to offer behind-the-scenes looks at what happens at your company every day.
As you can see, there are several good reasons to think like a digital media company. By doing so, you’ll be able to market your products more effectively and build up a loyal community of passionate fans.
How else should marketers (and CMOs) be utilizing Instagram for marketing success? Learn “5 Instagram Marketing Strategies Every CMO Should Use.”
When I started doing SEO on NeilPatel.com I used this advanced formula to rank for 477,000 keywords.
Over time, my traffic started to flatline and I wasn’t ranking for many more keywords, even though I was continually creating more content.
But then I figured out a simple hack that took me from 477,000 keywords to 636,363 keywords as you can see in the image above.
So, what was this hack?
Well, it’s so effective that I just updated Ubersuggest so that includes the hack.
So how did I do it?
When someone does a Google search, what are they typically doing? They are trying to find a solution to their problem, right?
So how can you easily identify these problems people are searching for?
Typically, you want to look for 3 types of keyword phrases:
Questions – people type in questions because they are looking for answers. And if your product or service helps answer those questions, you’ll see a boost in conversions.
Comparisons – when someone is searching for comparison keywords such as “MailChimp VS Converkit” there is high buyer intent, even if your company isn’t mentioned in the search phase. (I’ll go into how to leverage this in a bit.)
Prepositions – when keywords contain a preposition, they tend to be more descriptive. If you aren’t sure what a preposition is, simple prepositions are words like at, for, in, off, on, over, and under. These common prepositions can be used to describe a location, time, or place.
But how do you find these keywords?
Well, I just updated Ubersuggest to now show you questions, comparisons, and prepositions.
Just head over to Ubersuggest and type in a keyword that you want to go after. For this example, I typed in the word “marketing”.
Then as you scroll down, in the keywords ideas table you’ll see tabs for questions, prepositions, and comparisons.
I want you to click on the “view all keyword ideas”.
You’ll now be taken to the keyword ideas report that looks like this:
Now, click on the tab labeled “questions”. It will adjust the keyword recommendations to show you all of the popular questions related to the main keyword you just researched.
You’ll then see some suggestions that you could consider going after. Such as:
Why is marketing important?
What marketing does?
How marketing works?
But as you scroll down, you’ll find more specific questions such as:
Why a marketing plan is important?
How marketing and sales work together?
How many marketing emails should you send?
Now that you are able to see these questions people are typing, in theory, you can easily rank for them as most of them have an SEO difficulty score of 20 or so out of a 100 (the higher the number the more competitive it is).
More importantly, though, you can create content around all of those phrases and sell people to your product or service.
For example, if you created an article on “why a marketing plan is important,” you can go into how you also can create a marketing plan. From there you can transition into describing your services on creating a marketing plan and how people can contact you if they want your help or expertise in creating one.
You can do something similar with the “how marketing and sales work together” article in which you can break down how to make each department work together. From there, you can either be an affiliate for software solutions that help merge the two departments like HubSpot or sell your own software if you offer one. You can even pitch your consulting services that help tie sales and marketing together.
And as for the “how many marketing emails should you send,” you can create content around that and have an affiliate link to popular email tools that have high deliverability and offer automation. Or you can promote your own email product.
Now imagine all of the extra keywords you can rank for by going after question-related keywords. What’s amazing about this is most of these keywords are competitive and they have extremely high search intent.
Can it get any better?
Speaking of search intent, I want you to click on the comparisons tab.
You’ll see a list of ideas just like you did with the questions tab. But what I love doing here is typing in a competitor’s brand name here.
Let’s say I am offering an email marketing tool. I could type in “Mailchimp” and see what comparison ideas Ubersuggest comes up with.
Now for this example, I want you to imagine that you have an email company called Drip and Drip isn’t really mentioned in any of these keyword comparison ideas.
What’ll you want to do is create articles on all of the popular comparison terms like “Mailchimp vs Constant Contact” or “Mailchimp vs Convertkit” and within those articles break down the differences and also compare them with your own tool Drip.
Be honest when writing the comparisons. Show off which is the best solution using facts and data and break down how you are different and in what ways your own solution is better than the two solutions the reader is comparing.
This will bring awareness to your solution and you’ll find that people will start purchasing it even though they were comparing two of your competitors.
If you want a good example of how to create a neutral comparison type of blog post, check out this article comparing web hosts.
And if you want to take it one step further, you can click on the “prepositions” tab to find even more ideas.
Sticking with the Mailchimp example, you can see that people are curious about Shopify and WordPress integrations.
You can write articles related to integrations and also push your own product and break down how it differs from the others.
If you want to take it one level deeper, it will give you ideas on how to modify your business. For example, if I created an email marketing tool, I would create a Shopify, WordPress, Woocomerce, and Squarespace integration based on the ideas I got from the prepositions tab.
So how did I rank for 636,363 keywords?
I didn’t use all of the examples above on NeilPatel.com because I am not really trying to sell a product and I don’t have the time to write thousands of new blog posts.
But I did type in my domain name into Ubersuggest and then headed over to the top pages report.
From there I looked at the pages that are already ranking well on Google and clicked on the “view all” button to see the exact keywords each page ranks for.
As you can see from that page I rank for questions like “what is affiliate marketing” as well as popular prepositions and comparisons.
How did I do this?
Well, that top pages report shows you keywords each of your pages already ranks for. So all you have to do is research each of those terms through Ubersuggest and find popular questions, prepositions, and comparisons.
Conclusion
The natural instinct for any SEO or marketer is to rank for popular terms that have a lot of search traffic.
But there is an issue with that strategy. It takes a lot of time, it’s extremely competitive, and many of those search phrases don’t cause a ton of conversions as they are super generic.
So, what should you do instead?
Focus on solving people’s problems. The way you do this is by creating content around the questions, prepositions, and comparisons people are searching for in Google.
What do you think about the new Ubersuggest feature?
