Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Putting the spotlight on content, GA4, Website optimization and CTAs: Andy Crestodina
167 Plays2 years ago
The digital marketing landscape is always changing.
There are new channels, tools, and approaches.
But it feels like we’ve entered uncharted territory for digital marketing amid global economic growth.
The rising tide that lifted many, if not all, ships has disappeared. And there’s increasing pressure on digital marketers to perform and do marketing that converts.
I couldn’t think of a better person to offer insight and perspective about digital marketing than Andy Crestodina, who has been operating in the digital world since 2000.
On the podcast, we talk about:
- How blogs can rank in search
- How to use GA4
- The effectiveness of "Get a Demo"
- Why so much homepage messaging is unclear
- Whether AI-powered writing tools will make an impact
Recommended
Transcript
The Evolving Digital Marketing Landscape
00:00:11
Speaker
The digital marketing landscape is always changing. There are new channels, tools, and approaches. But it feels like we've entered unchartered territory for digital marketing amid a global economic slowdown. The rising tide that lifted many, if not all ships, has disappeared. And there's increasing pressure on digital marketers to perform and do the marketing that converts.
Interview with Andy Crestodina
00:00:35
Speaker
I couldn't think of a better person to offer insight and perspective about digital marketing than Andy Crestodina, who has been operating in the digital world since 2000. Andy is the co-founder and chief marketing officer with Orbit Studios, which offers web design, development, digital strategy and website optimization.
00:00:53
Speaker
Welcome to Marketing Spark, Andy. Thank you for having me, Mark. I'm excited to be here.
Challenges in B2B Content Marketing
00:00:57
Speaker
There are many, many topics to discuss. Let's start by looking at the state of the B2B content marketing landscape at a time when it seems there's so much content being published. My take
00:01:10
Speaker
is marketers are struggling to figure out what's working, so many of them are leaning heavily into content to attract and engage prospects. What's your take on the landscape these
Strategies for Content Marketing Success
00:01:20
Speaker
days? There's more content and more competition, but that's such an oversimplification that we should drill down and see really where that impacts us. At the top of the funnel for general topics, content promoted in social and search,
00:01:35
Speaker
Insanely competitive. Very difficult, very crowded, very noisy. Farther down the funnel for people that have selected a specific niche, for topics that solve for a very specific use case, for articles that are sort of, there's some blue ocean out there still, lots of it. People that go deeper into things that are
00:01:57
Speaker
just more relevant to a smaller group are still finding great results, especially when they promote that content in communities or when they use kind of an ABM, account-based marketing approach, or when it's just sales marketing alignment. That makes competition sort of irrelevant because when you have content that the sales team can use to follow up with their prospects, it's magical. It's both much, much more competitive, but with still huge opportunities for people that are
00:02:26
Speaker
very strategically focused.
Crafting Effective Content Strategies
00:02:28
Speaker
If you're a content marketer or the VP of marketing and you recognize that content is the way to attract and engage prospects, what are the best practices or the fundamentals when it comes to putting together a content strategy? Content for the sake of content, a lot of companies do that simply just to get content out there. But if you're going to do it right, if you're going to create content that aligns with what your target audiences want, where do you start?
00:02:56
Speaker
Well, that initial content marketing mission statement or the content strategy foundation is step zero. And when you do that well, you are just far less likely to produce content for its own sake because you're thinking about the audience.
00:03:10
Speaker
When you niche down to a specific group, specific industry, specific geography, specific job title, you're just much, much more likely to make something that's meaningful to your prospect or to a buyer. When you start with a keyword for a strategy or a real general like, let's focus on Pinterest or start with a network or start with a
00:03:29
Speaker
a big topic, you're just far less likely to connect. So start with the audience. It should be audience focused. Hopefully we've all kind of had the sense for that. And then in the topics, let's get really specific about what are the true information needs of our audience? What are the things that they have to read or experience or watch or view or hear before they'll take action?
Orbit Media's Content Approach
00:03:50
Speaker
What builds confidence the best with your audience?
00:03:53
Speaker
That's another huge shortcut. And then finally, just there's certain formats that are intrinsically differentiated. Original research. If you produce original research, you just made all of your competitors irrelevant because you made a new original stat that made your site, your company, the primary source for new information.
00:04:10
Speaker
or thought leadership, which I define as strong opinion or perspective, strong POV. What do you believe that most people think is unlikely or what's the real problem? What can you say that's really counter to the common narrative, automatically differentiated? Those aren't easier formats to do, but they're possible for anybody. It takes a little more planning and forethought and sometimes a little more just courage and guts.
00:04:34
Speaker
It's interesting. I read a lot of the Orbit content. Obviously as a digital marketer, it talks to me. It speaks to some of the questions that I have or some of the things that I'm interested in. So can you walk me through
00:04:45
Speaker
the content strategy that you use internally to create content that aligns with what your target audiences want to read? If I were starting from scratch now, I'm not sure that I would have this content strategy. Our content program is 15 years old. So the initial plan was to produce something that would keep the attention and make us top of mind for
00:05:08
Speaker
marketing decision makers on the day they need a website. We're doing websites and new website like once every four years. So how do I stay top of mind? Web development topics are not going to keep people's attention for four years. So I have to talk about marketing more generally. I had no experience in advertising because we've never done that. I never
00:05:24
Speaker
done any paid marketing. So it had to be something that we knew and were working and kind of could use ourselves as case studies. So it became a blog about content marketing analytics and web design, really focusing a lot on the content strategy and SEO side and just built it up. Now the formats we chose were also specific to us and do also can kind of help you find a blue ocean and make others irrelevant.
00:05:46
Speaker
by doing events. From the very beginning, we had a monthly in-house event right over there in that conference room. That helped us stay, you know, very high touch, very connected to certain people. And that room would fill up once a month with 30 people. Let's say 10 were friends, 10 were prospects, 10 were
00:06:03
Speaker
random people, sometimes competitors, sometimes prospects and clients. So that made a big difference. As it evolved, we put a bunch of the articles together into a book, which made it greatly behind powerful tools, sales and marketing alignment. So that content strategy, I'm not sure. And then also original research we've been doing for like 10 years makes a huge, huge difference.
00:06:22
Speaker
more recently on COVID kind of doubled down on video because we had fewer live events.
Choosing the Right Content Channels
00:06:27
Speaker
And then also always did a bunch of accepted invitations to present anywhere, tiny classes, big conferences, just say yes to all things. Today, if I were doing that again, starting today, I would probably exclude some of those topics and just make it like,
00:06:41
Speaker
more of an SEO and analytics blog, or maybe a content strategy blog, because I think it's a little bit late to be. The later it gets, the harder it is to be a generalist. Also, I would have started account-based marketing much sooner, producing industry-specific things for certain audiences. And I probably would have done, these days, I would maybe make most of, at least half of my articles, original research, even if it may have reduced frequency.
Creating High-Value Content
00:07:05
Speaker
It's just so much more effective. I just don't have the resources to do it all the time. If I were starting now, I'd maybe just create more of these sort of annual reports, things that are relevant to an entire category and grow our backlink profiling and keep us top of mind at the same time. A bit of a softball question. When it comes to content marketing and your target audiences, how do you know
00:07:29
Speaker
the channels in which they're consuming content. Lots of people, for example, use default, use Facebook or LinkedIn or YouTube as their default channels. But when it comes to producing the right content for the right people in the right places, how do you discover where that content is being consumed?
00:07:47
Speaker
If you're inspired to create something on a topic, you can look at that topic and instantly try to deduce if that's going to work better in search or work in social. The search social difference is an obsession of mine and something that becomes very useful perspective for any content strategist. So if you make a list of all these topics and ask, is that going to work better in search or social? The question becomes, is there demand for that? Is it answering your question? This is an article that meets expectations.
00:08:13
Speaker
If yes, probably there's a keyword for it and it could work in search. If it's not something that meets expectations, but rather is a bit unexpected, that's something that's going to work in social. So I'll give you examples. I did an article once about, I asked 27 marketing friends and virtual keynote speakers and YouTubers to send me pictures of their desks. You can see the camera, the microphone, it's like super cool behind the scenes.
00:08:40
Speaker
Zero people are searching for that. No demand at all. But it's super visual. It's unexpected. It sounds like an insider peak. So that was perfect for social. Another one, best practices for FAQ page design.
00:08:56
Speaker
Wow, what percentage of people are looking for an FAQ page today, like designing an FAQ page? Very, very few. But if you need that, you need it. And if you search for it, you really want it. That's going to work better in search than in social. So that's step one. Is this topic meeting expectations or is this topic unexpected? You've got your search or social split. Social, your question really was about social. I'm less certain in my recommendations now because sort of
00:09:21
Speaker
Even if your audience, even if your buyer isn't searching for tips while they're on Instagram, they're probably on Instagram at some time in their day. The classic recommendation of B2C is Instagram and Facebook, and B2B is LinkedIn and Twitter is both. I'm not as certain anymore. I think if we think about
Impact of Google Analytics 4 on SEO
00:09:43
Speaker
the audience as being a group of people, just humans in their lives, that a lot of people use a lot of networks.
00:09:49
Speaker
But generally, I just find the noise levels to be lower and engagement to be higher in LinkedIn. I can see the conversion rates from visitors to subscribers is higher from LinkedIn. But then again, I know that I'm missing out by not promoting our events better in Facebook and Instagram. So we're going to be pivoting a little bit.
00:10:08
Speaker
You mentioned original research and for many years orbit has done an annual survey the most recent survey suggest that blogging is effective still effective but it's not getting easier and that marketers are still getting value from blogs can you provide some highlights of the survey and maybe some of the surprising things that you discovered.
00:10:29
Speaker
We were all surprised and maybe a little happy, actually, to see that the average length of an article is finally topped out. This arms race to produce ever longer articles is finally curbing a little bit. Some things that I thought were unexpected. There are certain formats that seem to be getting the best results. The collaborative formats, roundups and interviews are basically influencer marketing collaborations, organic influencer marketing. Those are those over index on success for bloggers.
00:10:59
Speaker
The really visual formats, of course, bloggers that add more visuals and bloggers that produce more video are more likely to report success. Even though influencer marketing correlates with success, it's on the decline. Far fewer marketers are doing influencer collaboration than they used to. I'm not sure why. Why fewer bloggers and content marketers are failing to include contributor quotes in articles. That's as easy as it gets. Just include contributor quotes in every article.
00:11:23
Speaker
I think that the long march you can see content is getting longer, people are publishing less frequently, content is getting more visual, people are spending more time on it. So it's just this, the big takeaway is it's just this evolution and the ongoing professionalization, I guess, of logging and content marketing. It's just getting to be a more serious discipline practiced by people who are investing more in it than ever
00:11:49
Speaker
Related question is how you see the role played by blogs have been competition for eyeballs and services like tick tock. What are best practices for companies that want to leverage blogs to drive marketing and sales and.
00:12:03
Speaker
How, for example, do you write a blog post that ranks? Jason Miller says that, famous content marketer, says that the blog in the Big Lebowski, it's like the rug, it ties the room together. Without having that one place, your own property, your place for publishing digital content, if you lack that, then what are we doing here? Your entire presence is on another company's website.
00:12:28
Speaker
you're making a living completely married to a social network or YouTube or something like that. I would always emphasize the power of owning your content by putting it on your own website and you get the SEO benefit because if anybody links to anything on your
Principles of Effective Website Design
00:12:43
Speaker
website, it proves your domain authority. Higher domain authority means that every page on your website is more likely to rank
00:12:49
Speaker
Having a site with lots and lots of links to it means you can target really valuable key phrases. We built a whole business on it. I mean, we have a million and a half visitors a year, generate 900 leads a year, never spend a dollar on advertising. Again, that may change, I'm not sure. That's step one, have a place to publish on your site and publish original research, collaborate with influencers. Those are the three key ingredients. You should organically attract links from now on.
00:13:13
Speaker
After that, if you want to write an article that ranks, you should first confirm that you have a chance of ranking for it. Is the authority of the other pages that rank for the phrase much higher than yours? If so, you probably want to choose a longer, more specific, less competitive key phrase.
00:13:28
Speaker
That's competition and authority. It's the check. Let's set that aside. We can talk about that for an hour. Right. Step two is to write an article that meets two criteria. One, it is literally one of the best pages on the internet for the topic, and I'm not exaggerating. I'm not trying to be cute about it. I mean that. You're writing a page that you are
00:13:47
Speaker
that you believe in sincerely, you've gone in, you answered all the questions, you addressed all the subtopics, you covered off on all the, you supported everything with evidence and you never missed a chance to add a visual and you've got contributor quotes in there for every, to support your messages or to provide a contrarian view. And step two, you've indicated relevance. Use a primary key phrase in the title, the header and the body text. And in the body text, use the semantically related words and phrases.
00:14:15
Speaker
Those are the other phrases that are suggested when you begin typing the keyword into Google. Those are the questions that people also ask box questions. They're the phrases sometimes you can check and see what your competitors are ranking for, include those phrases in there, the related questions, all of the subtopics. That's basically it. Know your authority, check competition, choose a phrase for which you have a chance of ranking.
00:14:38
Speaker
Write a super awesome piece that you would stand behind completely and defend as being one of the best pages on the web for the topic. It means it's going to be probably a 2,000 plus word article. That's typical. Then finally, indicate relevance. There's no trick to it. Just indicate relevance. If you do all those things, you've got a 60, 80% chance of ranking right out of the gate.
Optimizing Website CTAs
00:15:00
Speaker
If you don't, it's not over. Go back and keep improving it. Keep updating it. Keep indicating relevance. Keep adding data. Keep linking to it from other things.
00:15:08
Speaker
basically SEO in the three minute version. All right. Everything you need to know about SEO and ranking on a blog post that you were afraid to ask. And now you got all the answers for related to that is, uh, obviously, you know, you spend a lot of time focused on SEO analytics. Google has been warning us for months that, uh, GA four is coming, uh, one.
00:15:27
Speaker
Can you explain, in layman's terms, the bigger differences between normal GA and GA4, and what it's going to be the impact on search engine optimization? The so-called data model is different. So we're universal, we call it, I guess. Universal analytics, the current version, is based on page views, and a page loads, and JavaScript gets triggered, and it's tracking views of pages.
00:15:52
Speaker
Event tracking is something we did separately to track other things that weren't normally like new pages loading. The new version of analytics is 100% based on events. Everything is and is an event. So rather than like landing page, you know, views, you're tracking session start.
00:16:10
Speaker
So everything kind of has a slightly different name. The number of session start events is like your number of landing page visits. It's like, hey, you were really good at Italian. Now you're going to learn Portuguese. Everything is sort of a little bit different. It's like learning a slightly different language. It's also a tool where instead of having account properties and views, there are no more views. We don't customize it at the level of the view. Each thing is just its own property.
00:16:36
Speaker
And each report, I think there's only like 10 reports, each report you sort of have to build and set up. So changing the order of the columns or adding comparisons or adding filters or there's just a lot of little things that you're going to do inside the report to get to the insight that you need. It's a bit of like a build it as you go doing your analysis. It's a bit of understanding how it's tracking things. It's a bit of knowing when to use a report and when to use a so-called exploration.
00:17:06
Speaker
We're all going to be fine. You're going to get there. Just start using it. And don't just use it. Don't just click around or it could be frustrating. Go to find an answer to a question. This morning, someone sent me a testimonial. I'm thrilled by that. Thank you. Eternally grateful. Where should we put this testimonial? I want to put it on one of my top pages. What are my top pages? I know where to find that in Universal Analytics, but in GA4,
00:17:30
Speaker
So under engagement pages and page path and screen name, and then switch that, you know, you can choose like page title to be the primary dimension or page location, and then scroll down and find your top pages based on that. It was just finding the same answer in a different place. Please don't expect to learn much. If you're just clicking around, use analytics as you always have to not just do reporting, but to do analysis, go find answers. It'll build your confidence much faster.
00:17:59
Speaker
What do you think Google's motivations were to make the change? I mean, obviously, as you say, it's from speaking one language to another, and change for the sake of change,
00:18:08
Speaker
What were they driving at? What's the biggest difference that they're trying to make in terms of analytics, which has been the same for many years? In many years, I suspect most people have been pretty happy with analytics. Great question, Mark. No one knows. I suspect they saw themselves falling behind as the hardcore analytics users were gravitating toward products that were a bit more robust. Analytics is an old tool.
00:18:33
Speaker
And honestly, when you look back on it, there's a lot of stuff in normal analytics that is very clunky and weird. How to set up goals, kind of weird. How to track video views, kind of weird. Tracking scroll, tracking non-page view interactions. There's a lot of stuff that if I wanted to track it in analytics, I had to go and literally set up an event in Google Tag Manager.
00:18:56
Speaker
and then go back to analytics and look for that. A lot of that stuff is sort of native to the tools now. We'll look back and realize that universal analytics was pretty kludgy.
00:19:07
Speaker
Switching gears, why don't we turn our sights to website design and optimization? I spend a lot of time on positioning and how it unfolds on websites. And I'm always surprised and troubled that so many home pages are confusing and unclear. You read the headlines and have a little clue about what the company actually does. And to make matters worse, many websites are badly designed, far from intuitive, and they make it hard for people to get the information they need or want.
00:19:36
Speaker
Given the importance of a website, why do so many companies drop the ball when it comes to copy and design? Loaded question, but I know you spend a lot of time focused on this and your company obviously signs and develops many, many websites. It's actually a great question. I mean, why do, you know, if we were behavioral economists, we would try to research this and find the answer. It's like, why do smart and experienced veteran data-driven marketers build things that are not focused on the user?
00:20:03
Speaker
that we lose sight of the audience when we start focusing on brand or is it on possession with differentiation? Is it a concern that if we're too specific in our in our marketing language that we're going to exclude certain groups? People do that.
00:20:16
Speaker
So they write these headlines that are super vague, or they just do stuff that looks very clever but isn't clear at all. Regardless of the reason, it's just a disaster. If your site fails the five second test, why? What would it cost you to just write a specific headline that names your service? Why do people have these weird headlines that say like, finding a better way, or pioneering the difference, tomorrow's future today. What? No one knows what you do. Why would you do that?
00:20:45
Speaker
You assume that 100% of your visitors are already brand aware. Is your audience, are you excluding all of your new potential prospects and only talking to your customers? I don't understand why people do that. It's easy to disabuse them of that notion though, if you show them the results of a five second test. By the way, you can do during a meeting, if you go to usability hub and upload two screenshots, A and B, one that's clever, one that's clear.
00:21:11
Speaker
in 20 minutes, you're going to have the results and you can show them during the meeting. And it often stops the conversation and they stop getting overly brand focused. They start becoming more empathetic opinion versus opinion, the highest paid opinion wins. So opinion versus data, the data will, it should win. So bring data to your meeting. If you're trying to help someone make a better decision about their own positioning or copywriting.
00:21:33
Speaker
And the other question relates to navigation and making design intuitive, user-friendly, accessible. I find a lot of websites, I can't do it. I want this. There are CTAs peppered all over the place, suggesting that I ask for a demo when I'm really not interested in a demo. Why do companies make mistakes there? And what are some of the basics they should be looking at in terms of making their site as user-friendly as possible?
00:21:56
Speaker
Another way to think of all this is that everything on your website is in fact just a hypothesis that you're testing and go look at your analytics to see the click-through rate on those calls to action and then conclude whether or not that's your new benchmark you're happy with it or if you want to try something else and try to improve that click-through rate.
00:22:12
Speaker
The demo one though, Mark, you mentioned one that I'm really interested in testing and we're testing a little bit. I think request a demo is an ambiguous CTA and specificity correlates with click-through rates. We should be specific when possible, but a demo could mean you're going to watch a video or it could mean you're going to talk to a rep. I'm actually concerned about that CTA and interested in trying different things. Get Started is very specific or action-oriented.
00:22:40
Speaker
concise, that we've been doing tons of testing on and see that performing pretty well. Think about it this way. The reason you make a navigation label, a CTA or a menu item, is to help your visitor accurately predict what they'll get if they click. So if you called it solutions,
00:22:59
Speaker
What's that about? That's generic to millions and millions of companies. Why be generic to millions of companies? Why not be specific to you? And if you call it healthcare data analytics solutions, ah, now I know if it's for me. I can accurately predict what I get if I click. So specificity correlates with conversion. Same message about the headlines. Look at every word on your top pages at least and ask yourself if you've missed any opportunities to be more specific and thereby more helpful to your visitor.
00:23:25
Speaker
I want to circle back on get a demo because I spent a lot of time with B2B SaaS companies and get a demo is the ubiquitous CTA. But the question is, if you don't use get a demo, is there a list of better keywords? Let's get started. Could be get started with the application, get started with the product, get started with a conversation. How much testing have you done? And it sounds like it's still early days. Using alternatives to get a demo, which seems to be
00:23:51
Speaker
I don't know whether it's effective anymore. If people see that and go, you know what, I'm probably gonna get a slew of emails and yeah, exactly. Call me and they're gonna bug me and I'm not gonna do it.
00:24:01
Speaker
It's really interesting, right? I think that I have the same psychology. I'm a data set of one. I try to avoid ever using myself as an example. But you're right. What it could mean, and it means on many websites, is that you enter an email address and you go into an automation sequence and they're going to start hitting you with all kinds of stuff. Not what I wanted when I clicked on get a demo. It could mean that you land on a page that's got a scheduling widget and you're going to find a time to talk to a rep.
00:24:27
Speaker
It could mean you land on a page that's got, you're going to go through a gate and then you're going to land on a page with a bunch of videos. Get could be more specific. Watch demo now would indicate that there's a benefit. Basically, people click on calls to action when they've concluded that the benefit exceeds the cost. We all do cost benefit calculations before we click or tap on anything. What is the benefit? I'm going to see how it works. What's the cost?
00:24:52
Speaker
Two second, you know, three minutes of my time. Watch demo, watch video demo now might be something that entices a greater percentage of clicks.
00:25:00
Speaker
Or if it's a demo, like you're going to get a walkthrough from an expert and maybe call it that, get a walkthrough from an expert or ask a question, talk to a, an implementations pro part of the psychology here is you might get, you might worry about writing very long CTAs because how does it look on mobile? Is the button going to wrap? Is there room for that long button text? Get over it. I don't know. That's an opinion that you like it or don't your, your preferences are nice, but not.
00:25:27
Speaker
That's not science. I don't know, Mark, if you want to test this one together or do a quick study or collaborate somehow to figure out what get a demo means to people in the world, I'd be thrilled to work on a little piece of research together. That would be really cool because I antagonize over get a demo because I'm not sure it has any relevance anymore.
AI Tools in Content Marketing
00:25:45
Speaker
I mean, it's easy and it's a cheap way to write a CTA, but we can talk about that offline. Did want to circle back a little bit on content marketing. As a writer and a content marketer,
00:25:55
Speaker
I'm curious, but still not convinced about the growing number of AI-powered tools that purportedly make life easier for digital marketers. I mean, there are companies like Jasper that have attracted a lot of attention and as important investment capital. At a high level, what's your take on these tools? Do any of them jump out as interesting or have a lot of utility? And how should digital marketers approach them and use them?
00:26:20
Speaker
Years ago, I heard a really interesting interview with the editor of Wired magazine. He said that AI is not going to replace jobs in the short term. It's going to replace tasks. Therefore, we're all going to get little AI helpers that help us do a better job in our day. An example might be a tool like Market Muse that creates a brief for you. You write an article about how to set up an FAQ page. Here's a brief. It analyzes a bunch of content on the internet and gives you a mini outline.
00:26:44
Speaker
Now you can just write into the outline. That might be useful for some people. Great. There's other things like, I don't know, Grammarly or these tools that will compare your content to others, the SEO writing assistant from Market Muse or SEMrush. I think that there is definitely a use case for AI as tools to help marketers do a better job or be more efficient. Will AI produce
00:27:04
Speaker
content just out of blue sky that gives traction. Maybe yes. I'm not going to say no, but here's my case against it. Will AI ever write an article that makes you laugh? Will AI ever write an article that changes your perspective or that challenges the status quo? It's the opposite of thought leadership.
00:27:23
Speaker
It's literally follower. It's following trends. It's following other language. AI is machine learning that's analyzing other content. It will never be super original. It's never going to pop up with an amazing insight. We asked AI to write an article about
00:27:40
Speaker
get a demo, it's going to just write an article about a bunch of things. It's not going to really challenge the reader's notion about that topic. You and I, thinking as chaotic freewheeling humans, came up with an idea to challenge that status quo. AI would never, never do that. If you're interested in thought leadership or being inspirational, AI is not going to be very useful to you.
Review of Social Media Platforms
00:28:00
Speaker
If you want a shortcut to do your job a little faster, it might work great.
00:28:04
Speaker
Let's turn our focus to the social media landscape, which has become even more fascinating or troubling in the wake of Elon Musk behind Twitter. Why don't we do a rapid fire round looking at the different social media platforms? I'll give you a platform and I'd like your hot take on them. You ready for this? Ready. Twitter.
00:28:21
Speaker
Sadly, on the decline, badly disrupted, future uncertain, yet very, very relevant, useful place for networking, for conversation, for research, and for connecting with truly influential people beyond social media, such as journalists, thought leaders. Perspectives are formed on Twitter. It's a globally important network, even for things like democracy. TikTok.
00:28:49
Speaker
Very, very powerful. It's an incredible innovation to pay less attention to likes and more attention to people slowing down their scroll. Expanded far beyond the dance video, leveraging the power of short form video.
00:29:03
Speaker
really a new niche that is rewarding those who embraced it early, not too late for anyone. I don't think it's a positive for society because it leads to a lot of the self-esteem issues for kids and short attention span and this giant distraction from, you know, it's probably not a net gain from a sociological perspective, but for marketers, probably should not be ignored. Take a look. The platform where I spend most of my time, LinkedIn,
00:29:31
Speaker
amazing networking tool, amazing platform for publishing, extremely useful for research, almost impossible for many of us to do our jobs without LinkedIn. Hey, I'm setting up a meeting. What time zone is that person in? LinkedIn is the use cases keep growing.
00:29:46
Speaker
I think it's, uh, I'm, I'm bullish on LinkedIn. Uh, they're doing amazing. The COVID helped them with the LinkedIn learning platform. I mean, that's like a, there's a lot more to it than just the, for job seekers and networkers, but, uh, critical for them. I would recommend if anybody that has any interest in building a personal brand should build a very detailed LinkedIn profile page, because it's probably ranking number one for your name. Facebook, the platform that people seem to be down on, but still attracts almost 3 billion users a month.
00:30:18
Speaker
It is what it is. I don't really see it declining much. I think the corporate vision is flawed and that their bets are probably not going to pay off. I think it's almost like a public utility. It needs to be carefully regulated. It's a dangerous platform in terms of things like misinformation, but I don't see it going anywhere. If you're targeting audiences and paid social, it's going to probably work for you.
00:30:41
Speaker
organic reach isn't great, but still how a lot of people stay in touch with each other and I suspect it will be relevant for 10 plus years at least. What about the stepsister Instagram?
00:30:52
Speaker
I sort of, personally, I love it a little bit even though I'm not very active there. It just feels like a pure network. The content promoters don't spam it because there aren't any links. I mean, it's a great place for exhibitionists and people who are for selfie takers. Obviously, it's super relevant for some categories, but now relevant for more or less everybody.
00:31:12
Speaker
Also a great place to connect with people on paid social, also a great place for short form video. Again, I think similar to its position in Facebook, it's just going to be a stable and solid tool for people to connect and a tool for marketers to connect for years. The platform that I've never used, Snapchat.
00:31:30
Speaker
I assume that it's also, its relevance will remain, but at a smaller level because LinkedIn, because Facebook sort of took that from them with the copying those features in Instagram and in Facebook. I don't know much about it, but I have not really seen, I guess I'd have to look. I don't know if it's on the decline, but I won't be surprised. I mean, the world is big. I won't be surprised if that remains relevant for a long time.
YouTube's Growing Influence
00:31:53
Speaker
The world's biggest or second biggest search engine in YouTube.
00:31:57
Speaker
I think it's going to continue to grow. I think it's going to grow probably through subscriptions. I think there's a lot of us that are ready to pay instead of watching ads. It's an amazing place to look for information, anything that's visual. I think you can find an answer there. It functions as a search engine. It functions as a social media network. It functions as a TV channel.
00:32:15
Speaker
It is a, probably the targeting is very lucrative for people that have figured out how to find their audience there. YouTube videos appear in Google search results. So the reach is far greater than you might think. Very little effort during COVID. I just started putting videos on YouTube and the results are breathtaking. I'm always amazed. So YouTube is probably something that most brands should be using. If you're using video at all, it's, it's a no brainer.
00:32:38
Speaker
Pinterest, the mega social media network that seems to operate very quietly but nevertheless has a very sticky and active community. I think actually it's special and I understand it better now after some recent conversations. People using Pinterest
00:32:56
Speaker
It's not just top of the funnel. It's sort of a middle or bottom of the funnel place because you're using Pinterest frequently because you want to make a change. You're planning a project. You're thinking about what to do or what to wear or what to make or how to make it or what it looks like. So people collect Pinterest boards sometimes because they have commercial intent.
00:33:15
Speaker
That is very different from most social networks, right? A lot of activity in social networks is just 100% top of funnel. No one there has really any intent. People in search are busy, people in social are bored, except Pinterest. Those people are actually built ready to embark on a creative project. And last one, the wild card, or the one that B2B marketers would dip their toes in because they're afraid of getting penalized is Reddit.
00:33:42
Speaker
Oh, it's still going, right? I think it's probably more popular than ever. You can't really use it as a marketer without getting attacked by the Redditors. The spam radar is way up. So I think that I've been punished where someone took one of our articles and put it on Reddit and everyone decided it was unoriginal and they downvoted it and left a bunch of negative comments.
00:34:07
Speaker
I didn't even post it there.
2023 Content Marketing Focus
00:34:09
Speaker
It wasn't me. I never said it was an original thing. It was just something short that I had written that answered a question people kept asking me. But I think that it's an excellent tool to see what's getting traction. You can spot trends early. Kind of a noisy, kind of a, we have to filter ourselves when you go in there because it's kind of a mess. But people who use it love it. And it's how a lot of people start their day on the internet.
00:34:35
Speaker
Final question, admit the doom and gloom of the digital marketing landscape in 2022. What most excites you about digital marketing in 2023? Boy, I find myself more and more motivated the closer to the bottom of the funnel I get. Producing content specifically for prospects. I'm ready to start producing content specifically for my current clients.
00:34:57
Speaker
Hey, great, you signed up for a project. Welcome to the first day of your new website and making videos and articles that tell people what to expect in the upcoming meetings. Improve the customer experience through content. CX, that's probably our best opportunity. Next level above that, create content specifically for certain prospects. Stuff you can send to people right after the sales call. Next level up above that, account-based marketing. Produce content specifically for people who are your ideal client profile.
00:35:25
Speaker
Next level up, produce content that answers sales questions to whoever's on your website. So I'm more and more motivated and excited about the bottom of funnel stuff. It makes my competitors irrelevant because it's content I'm producing specifically for very small groups. I'm going to be doing a lot more of this 2023 and I predict I'll get great results from that. I hope so. I hope that works for all of us. That's great insight. If people want to learn more about you and Orbit, where do they go?
00:35:50
Speaker
orbitmedia.com. On the blog, I write an article there once every two weeks. LinkedIn, I have a newsletter on LinkedIn called Digital Marketing Tips. I know that's a simple but specific name, right? I'm trying to be clear, not clever. Mark, I hope you got what we talked about. It works for me. And then the book is called Content Chemistry. It's on Amazon at 380 pages of very concise, actually, and filled with diagrams of everything that I know about content marketing, everything I've learned in the last 22 years, you can find it on Amazon.
00:36:17
Speaker
Well, thanks Andy for your time and thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review, subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, and share via social media. To learn more about how I work with B2B SaaS companies as a fractional CMO and strategic advisor, and a position in a messaging consultant, email mark at markevans.ca or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you soon.
00:37:56
Speaker
you