Ryan Deiss

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-14-2021

No matter their industry, all businesses can benefit from digital marketing — from business-to-business software companies to online clothing stores, and from mega corporations that are household names to mom-and-pop stores, whether they’re online-only or brick-and-mortar stores. But the world of digital marketing is constantly changing. Although this field may rapidly be evolving, many of its core principles remain the same. This Cheat Sheet examines and explains many of these digital marketing tenets.

Article / Updated 08-16-2020

Forged in a world of constant innovation, evolving platforms, and cutting-edge strategies, digital marketing has the unique luxury of endurance in the job market. Maybe you’re looking for a new career path that’s not in danger of becoming obsolete. Maybe you’re already working in digital marketing and wondering how your job will stand the test of time, or what your growth opportunity looks like over your career. Arguably, careers in digital marketing, more than any other industry, are more concerned with your skill set than your job title. If you have skills (or at the very least, a major drive to learn), you’ll never run short of assets to include on your resume. In this list, the focus is on digital marketing skills and the possible jobs and salaries that go along with them. Content Marketing Positions Using content as a digital marketing strategy is a deep well of career development. Not only are skills needed to create and distribute engaging content across a variety of platforms, but that content must be designed to attract a specific target audience and drive people to take a measurable action (like buying a tractor, for example). The digital marketing space hosts a wide variety of content types: blog posts that serve to segment potential audiences; podcasts that educate and create brand awareness; social media updates; infographics; and even e-books that introduce people to your company and offers. It doesn’t stop there, either. Content creators also create educational resources, surveys, and webinars that help prospects evaluate their choices. Content creators identify and broadcast customer stories and put together spec sheets that push prospects over the edge and help them decide to purchase. Now imagine all those different pieces of content working together to guide someone from introduction to sale. These efforts all fall within the realm of content marketing, which amounts to strategically creating stellar resources that turn someone who has never heard of your company or products into a buyer and brand evangelist. If you can grab hold of content marketing as a skill set, you have a growing opportunity to apply yourself in any number of opportunities in the digital marketing space: Brand journalist. Brand journalists, sometimes referred to as corporate reporters, specialize in producing a variety of multimedia that communicates brand value to a company’s customers. A typical brand journalist salary ranges from $40,000 to $90,000 per year, but average around $58,000 a year. Managing editor. Managing editor is another trending career option for the aspiring content marketer. They handle the day-to-day storytelling of a company. Projects, people, and deadlines: A managing editor has to juggle all three. A managing editor can expect to make between $41,000 and $98,000 annually, but average around $63,000 a year. Content marketing manager. Content marketing managers serve as leaders of a company’s content team and make sure that all of the content assets are in line with the overall marketing strategy. They are responsible for content management, design approval, developing resources, and audience development. Content marketing managers typically earn from $45,000 to $98,000 a year, but average around $67,000 a year. Paid Media Manager Buying traffic is a vital part of a marketing strategy because paid traffic is a reliable and plentiful traffic source for your offers. Pretty important stuff. If you know how to make a business profitable, your skill set is highly desirable. Paid media managers, in short, negotiate, purchase, and monitor advertisements, and in the digital marketing space, that means knowing how to generate the most leads and sales at the best possible price. The skilled media manager understands that paid traffic is a system that builds relationships before it sells. Familiarity with in-depth marketing research techniques assures that media buyers can place their ads on the right platform for the desired audience. These marketing professionals are also skilled with the following types of advertising: search, display, native, mobile, video, and third-party. They know how and when to use pixels in advertising campaigns and are adept at taking a variety of raw data and turning it into valuable metrics such as Average Customer Value, Cost per Acquisition, and more. Media buyers also know how to design ad campaigns that work in conjunction with a company’s content marketing efforts. Media buying is an important part of any traffic strategy, so companies invest a lot in this area of their business. A successful paid advertising strategy is the key to making the wheels of e-commerce turn. The job of acquiring media can go by many names, including media buyer or digital media planner, but the job description is the same: develop a paid advertising strategy and successfully implement it across a variety of digital channels. Media buyers plan campaigns from start to finish and handle things like budgets and clients. They constantly look for new and better ways to get the most out of their campaign efforts to use content in ads to drive traffic to your content. Successful traffic acquisition specialists understand the nuances of changing digital advertising platforms, so they constantly keep up to date on the latest advertising channels and terms of service. Data drives their decisions — data pertaining to budget, ROI (return on investment), CPC (cost per click) and PPC (pay per click) — and a media buyer keeps an eye on them all. There is a definite strategy behind purchasing traffic, and acquisition specialists are intimately familiar with the structure and implementation of ad campaigns that align with specific business goals. Traffic acquisition specialists can expect an annual salary range of $41,000 to $98,000, but average around $66,000 a year. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Manager Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t dead, but it has changed. Thanks to Google’s constant algorithm updates, the old rules of SEO no longer apply. Today, to get ranked (and stay ranked), site owners need to emphasize user experience over traditional variables such as links and keyword density. Marketers who specialize in SEO know how to create and implement search marketing campaigns that move the needle for their company. They understand that search should be optimized for mobile use, and they know how to optimize content for a wide variety of search engines, from Google and Bing to YouTube and Google Maps. They embrace the technical side of marketing and employ techniques that stay within the search engines’ terms of service to increase return on investment through search strategies. Your job title in this position might be SEO (sometimes also referred to as SEO Specialist). SEOs are responsible for driving global organic search strategy and improving visibility of web properties, increasing website traffic from target audiences, and driving qualified leads and sales. They know how to get eyes on content from blog posts to podcasts to YouTube videos, using methods that are consistent with SEO best practices. They troubleshoot and track site performance, including in the areas of social sharing, page load speed, and other technical issues related to search marketing. Successful marketers in this role possess a detail-oriented mind that they put to work identifying search traffic growth opportunities for content and products based on analytics. They are also researchers and constantly look into the latest in search engine compliance and guidelines so that they can adjust strategy as necessary. Data drives their decisions; SEOs also monitor and report on search metrics and demonstrate continuous improvement of the SEO strategy. SEOs can expect to make a yearly income between $57,000 and $113,000, but average around $77,000 a year. Social Media Marketing Social media marketing is one of the most in-demand skill sets for organizations seeking to implement digital marketing strategies. Since skyrocketing to popularity in the early 2000s, social media has evolved into an unstoppable force that companies have harnessed to drive brand awareness and website traffic, generate leads and sales, and connect directly with their audience and community. Although social media powerhouses can rise and fall (sorry, Myspace), you’ll be hard pressed to find any reasonable person who doesn’t think that social media is here to stay, which means that social media marketing strategies are here to stay, too. Competent social media marketers know the best way to position content, no matter the platform; that is, they know the right piece to put in front of the right audience. They are also typically in charge of curating short lists and using social media channels to network with other industry leaders who can move the needle for the company. As skilled listeners, social media managers route customer needs and pain points to the people who can create relevant content and products that meet those needs. They often create offer awareness, taking care that it doesn’t feel intrusive or too much like a hyped sales pitch. Working to create a strong presence on the social web, social media managers dynamically connect with their audience and work to build a tribe around the brand. Social media marketing is all about listening, networking, influencing, and yes, selling. It’s about taking a company’s content assets and making sure that the message is accessible, engaging, and translates across different social media channels. Social media manager is a likely job title in this area, and people who fill this job are data-driven content curators who serve as a voice of the company on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or wherever else the business has an online presence. They keep channels running smoothly by creating and scheduling content such as photos, videos, and graphics. They measure ROI by likes and follows, reach, engagement, leads gathered, and sales made. Personal attributes of a great social media manager include an imaginative approach to content. A social media marketer creates a lot of content for multiple platforms, so the ability to adapt the same information to different content types is essential. The ability to write conversationally is equally important. You don’t want all your messages to sound like advertising. Social media managers know how to mix it up. Their creative side is balanced by a healthy dose of analytics know-how. Successful social media marketers can look at raw data and calculate their next move. They can expect an annual salary between $40,000 and $86,000, but average around $64,000 a year. Community Management Many companies are embracing community management as a way to make the customer relationship ascend beyond the level of buyer and seller. Online communities are places where people build relationships with each other around a strong common interest — namely, your brand, products, people, or mission. Thanks to the Internet, you can easily locate and connect with others who share similar interests, and community management is a growing skill set to create a healthy environment for those passionate people to connect with each other and facilitate, strengthen, and encourage those relationships. Community management skills have deep roots in behavioral and social psychology, with emphasis on guiding and influencing group behavior and initiating relationship development. Professionals in this area of digital marketing understand that building community is a long game and return on investment can take months, if not years, of consistent hard work. The name of the game here is relationships — not only between customer and company but also customer and customer. Relationships take time to develop, and they need a safe space to do so. Online communities serve many different purposes, from increasing retention rates to reducing customer support tickets to identifying product and content gaps, but the end result is the same: increased brand loyalty and advocacy, higher customer satisfaction, and a direct line to the experiences of your customers. A position in this area is community manager, a job that entails bridging the gap between company and customer. Whereas social media marketers work to make the brand attractive and engagement-worthy on various platforms, community managers build and nurture the human relationships hidden in social media communication. Social listening and moderating online “tribes” centered on the company and products are common responsibilities for this position. Community managers excel at advocating on behalf of the customer while also advocating for the brand. So, what personal attributes should you possess to be successful in this position? A community manager’s first super power is empathy. The importance of being able to communicate empathy to the brand’s community can’t be emphasized enough. Social media can also be time consuming, so the community manager must effectively manage time and prioritize tasks. The community manager also needs to establish meaningful connections with community members and various members of the company’s internal team to effectively advocate for customers. Community managers bring in $37,000 to $80,000 annually, but average around $53,000 a year. Video Marketing and Production Positions Video marketing is a niche of content marketing strategy, but make no mistake — nothing tells a story quite like a video, and companies know it. That’s why video marketing is a specialized skill that will never go out of style, because nothing tells a story quite like showing a story. New features like YouTube Cards and Facebook Video make video more engaging and accessible than ever. Understanding the strategies around video marketing is a must for digital marketing efforts. Video marketers know how to leverage interviews, testimonials, demos, and other storytelling styles to fit the needs of the target audience. They strategically examine available platforms and apps to ensure that the content is on the right channel. In addition, they know how to optimize video for search engines using keyword-enriched descriptions and tags, as well as possess a deep knowledge of video editing, production, and animation that enables them to tell stories in the most engaging way. Video marketing is one of the most powerful digital marketing strategies that exist, and the technical, analytical, and creative know-how is in demand. Being able to leverage visual storytelling to strengthen emotional connections, engagement levels, and understand how all these aspects fit into a content marketing funnel is a valuable skill that companies actively seek. Video production specialist. Production specialists direct, organize, and facilitate a company’s video initiatives. Tasks include planning the content, filming, editing, mixing, compressing, and all other aspects of physically preparing the content and getting it out to the masses. Video production specialists tend to earn $35,000 to $70,000, but average around $50,000 a year. Video marketing manager. Video marketing managers often handle the technical side of content creation, with the added responsibility of communicating the content’s unique value to the target audience. They concern themselves with things like publishing frequency, analytics, and determining exactly where the video content falls in the content marketing funnel. Video marketing managers have an annual salary range of $39,000 to $87,000, but average around $60,000 a year. Web Design and Development Positions The website is often the first impression a prospect has of a business. The company website is, increasingly, where that important first impression of a brand occurs. A well-built, professionally designed website can generate leads and sales at a greater rate than a poorly designed website. With the ever-growing number of people accessing the web from mobile devices and tablets, a greater need exists for well-trained professional web designers and developers who understand how mobile technology has impacted web browsing. Front-end developer. Front-end developers create, maintain, and troubleshoot user-facing web pages so that your customers and clients have a great experience with your brand. Front-end developers can make between $48,000 and $109,000 annually, but average around $72,000 a year. Back-end developer. Back-end developers program and maintain the structure of a company website and other digital assets; they are the behind-the-scenes builders of a company’s website. These developers coordinate pages, forms, functions, and databases, and make sure that everything is running smoothly. A back-end developer’s salary range falls between $49,000 and $99,000 per year, but average around $72,000 a year. Direct-response copywriter. Direct-response copywriters understand the methodology in getting prospects to take immediate action when they read through a marketing email, and they know how to create the irresistible headline that gets the email opened in the first place. Direct-response copywriters earn between $39,000 and $88,000 a year, but average around $58,000 a year. Email marketing analyst. Responsible for email marketing campaigns from start to finish, marketing analysts (sometimes called email marketing specialists) do much of the day-to-day coordinating of campaigns, including promotion schedules, planning and implementation, and troubleshooting any roadblocks that arise along the way. As an email marketing analyst, you can expect to make between $41,000 and $74,000 per year, but average around $55,000 a year. Data Analysis Positions These marketers specialize in making data-driven decisions. They aren’t big fans of making decisions based on hunches. The ability to determine the key metrics that a brand needs to track, as well as collect and analyze them, are part of this indispensable skill set in an industry that makes changes and adjustments based on what the numbers indicate. Many marketers shy away from data analysis because the numbers can be daunting; so much needs to be reviewed and understood. Analysts specialize in not only diving into the metrics but also knowing what questions to ask in order to interpret the information correctly. They create accurate reports that are easy for employers, stakeholders, and clients to understand. These days, just knowing where to look for numbers isn’t enough; you need to know what they mean. Interpreting data correctly increases your company’s ability to scale, gives detailed insights, and ensures that you’re not relying on your “best guess.” Data analyst. Data analysts are responsible for aggregating and interpreting a variety of analytics for a company. They research new ways to collect data, analyze the information, and draw conclusions from the data. They identify new sources of data and develop or improve on methods of data collection, analysis, and reporting. A data analyst earns between $41,000 and $84,000 per year, but average around $60,000 a year. Testing and optimization specialist. Marketers are social scientists. They are masters at trying something, looking at the results, deciding what those results mean, and then making changes as necessary. Savvy digital businesses focus on getting more out of what they already have, a discipline called conversion rate optimization (CRO). This fact explains why specializing in testing and optimization is an upward-trending career path for the industry. A mid-level website optimization specialist will earn between $71,000 and $95,000 a year, but average around $75,000 a year.

Article / Updated 08-16-2020

The cost of acquiring new customers is often the most expensive one that businesses incur. After you have a buyer, asking that buyer to buy from you again makes sense. You want to turn that customer you spent so much time and money acquiring into a repeat customer. The marketing campaigns you employ to sell more, or more often, to the leads and customers you’ve acquired are called Monetization campaigns, and these campaigns have a number of different types of offers to employ. Most companies are running monetization campaigns (making high-dollar and complex offers) directed at ice-cold prospects and new leads. Although it would be fantastic to be profitable without needing to warm up a prospect with ungated, gated, and deep-discount offers, making that work is very difficult. The sequence of the offers you make to people is extremely critical to avoid being the business that is asking its prospects for too much, too soon. Make an upsell or cross-sell offer The first type of monetization offer is the immediate upsell, and it’s one you’re probably already familiar with even if you’ve never heard the term. An example of the immediate upsell is the famous “Do you want fries with that?” offer made at McDonald’s. Upsells offer customers more of what they already bought. The purchase they are currently making and the upsell should lead the customer to the same desired end result. In the McDonald’s example, adding fries to your order gets you a bigger meal. The cross-sell offer, on the other hand, makes an offer related to the first purchase. For example, a clothing retailer might offer dress shoes to a man who just purchased a suit. Amazon.com (and virtually every other successful online retailer) uses upsell and cross-sell offers to increase the number of items people purchase. Amazon’s “Frequently Bought Together” and “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” sections contain immediate upsell and cross-sell offers to help ensure the sale and possibly increase the basket size. For example, after we select a book for $17.98, Amazon suggests other products that we may want to make with this purchase, as shown. If we accepted all the suggested upsells, the amount of our purchase would increase from $17.98 to $44.96. In the figure, the item being searched for is Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and Amazon offers some related Harry Potter books that would serve as an upsell and increase the basket size. But Amazon also offers cross-sells in the form of other fantasy books that may appeal to a fan of Harry Potter because they are of the same genre. Because the cross-sell may not be as relevant to the first purchase, a cross-sell can feel like it’s coming out of left field, which can be jarring to and unwanted by the customer. That’s why you have to be careful with cross-sells, or you risk annoying your customers. Imagine buying a Mac computer and having Apple ask before you’ve even left the store whether you want to buy an iPhone or an iPad. That said, if the cross-sell truly complements the initial purchase, your customers will welcome the offer, and you’ll welcome the additional revenue. Build bundles and kits Bundles and kits are other forms that your monetization offer can take. A bundle or a kit is taking one of your stand-alone products and combining it with other like items that you or one of your business partners sell. For example, if you sell men’s razors, you might bundle the razor with a shaving kit that includes all the essential items a man needs to shave with, from the brush to the after-shave. This “essential shaving kit” will cost more than an individual razor, which increases your revenue per sale. Do you have products or services that you can combine to create a new value proposition? Tack on a slack adjuster Slack adjusters can have a dramatic impact upon the bottom line. A slack adjuster is a product or service that you offer at a price point much higher than your typical offer. The price is generally 10 to 100 times higher than your usual offers. Although this product or service will appeal to only a very small portion of your market, those that do make this high-ticket purchase will have a dramatic impact on your revenue. For example, Starbucks sells cups of tea and coffee, but the company also sells coffee makers. The coffee maker is far more expensive than the $6 cup of coffee. Most people stick to their usual beverage and ignore the coffee maker, but a few buy the coffee maker. When a product is that much more expensive than the core offer, only a small number of slack adjuster sales is needed to make an impact. Recurring billing Sometimes called a continuity offer in digital marketing circles, a recurring billing offer charges the customer periodically — usually each month or year. This may take the form of a club or some other type of membership, or a subscription such as a monthly gym membership. In the latter case, the gym charges a membership fee 12 times a year. You also find recurring billing in content and publishing with subscriptions to Netflix or Cosmopolitan magazine, and in e-commerce with products like Dollar Shave Club and Birchbox. Look to your products or services and consider how you can make a sale once and get paid over and over again. Recurring billing can be a difficult sell because of the commitment that goes along with it. To overcome this issue, clearly communicate the advantage provided by the recurring billing offer and lower the perceived risk by clearly communicating the cancellation. For instance, the cooking delivery company Blue Apron often states in its offers that you can cancel anytime. Customers must decide whether they want to commit to you for an extended period.

Article / Updated 08-16-2020

As a digital marketer, you’ve likely put lots of work into finding out who your audience is. But, what do you do with the information? You put it to work. Google Analytics enables you to break down your audience into segments based on the following: Channel Traffic source Completed actions Conversions In the context of analytics, a segment represents groups of visitors with shared characteristics or behaviors. Segmenting your audience in Google Analytics allows you to Figure out who finds your message appealing so that you can send more of this audience to this particular offer. Craft customized messaging to enhance ad copy and shape follow-up campaigns. Segmenting might sound simple, but it provides one of the best ways to make the most of your budget, or to know where you should spend your time and energy to drive new customers. By segmenting your audience, you gain a better understanding of what's working and what's not so that you can plan accordingly. Creating audience segments Using audience segments as a strategy shows you how to focus on the most valuable, highest-converting audiences. This allows you to figure out what makes them tick, so to speak. Creating segments is fast and easy. You create a set of rules that include or exclude certain people, allowing you to narrow down your audience to look at a specific subset rather than all site visitors, such as people who opted in for a gated offer. After creating a segment, you can analyze how this subset of visitors behaved or who is in the subset, giving you valuable insight on what offers to make to this audience. Follow these steps to create your own segments. In Google Analytics, navigate to the Reports navigation menu on the left. Select the Audience suite and click the Overview tab within the Audience suite. The Audience Overview report appears. Click the + Add Segment field along the top of the page. The Segment menu appears. Click the New Segment button to create a new segment. The Segment menu opens, allowing you to set conditions for your segments to meet and exclusions you want your segment to ignore. For instance, you might set a condition for age or operating system. Set conditions for your segment by selecting any of the following check boxes or filling in the field within in the following categories: Demographics: Segment your users by demographic information, such as age, gender, location, and other details. These are check boxes and form fields, depending on the option within the Demographics category. Technology: Segment your users' sessions by their web and mobile technologies, such as browser, device category, and screen resolution. These are check boxes and form fields, depending on the option within the Technology category. Behavior: Segment your users by how often they visit (called a session) and conduct transactions, such as sessions, session duration, and days since last session. These are form fields. Date of first session: Segment your users (create cohorts) by when they first visited your site. This is a form field. Traffic sources: Segment your users by how they found you, such as the keyword they used, the ad campaign, and the medium used. These are form fields. Ecommerce: Segment your users by their transactions and revenue. These are form fields. (Note: This may not appear depending on your business type and how you’ve set up your Google Analytics.) Conditions: Segment your users, their sessions, or both according to single or multisession conditions, such as time, goal conversions, and custom variables. This is a form field. Sequences: Segment your users, their sessions, or both according to sequential conditions, such as the steps they took to reach your site. This is a form field. After setting your conditions for your segment, name your segment by filling out the empty name field. Click the Save button to successfully complete this segment.Your new segment loads, and you can return to this segment at a later date when conducting future data research and analysis. After your new segment loads, the data for your segment is displayed, allowing you to make assessments. For instance, it displays how many users make up the segment, as well as other stats. Here’s an example of a completed segment; this segment shows mobile users and consists of 122,263 users. As a general rule, you want to aim for a minimum of 3,000 people in your audience segment, which ensures that you have enough subgroups to have faith in your groupings. You can experiment with fewer, but the larger your segment category is, the more trustworthy your data will be, allowing you to make sound, educated business decisions. Segments aren’t limited to the Audience suite. You can create a segment for any of the following suites: Audience, Acquisition, Behavior, or Conversion. Choose the suite that best meets your needs to create this segment and select Overview within your chosen suite. Although the suite you choose may be different from Audience and thus the data it measures, the steps you find here to set up a segment remain the same.

Article / Updated 08-16-2020

In digital marketing, the cornerstone of optimizing a website is split testing, which means to conduct controlled, randomized experiments with the goal of improving a website metric, such as clicks, opt-ins, or sales. Split testing takes two different forms: A/B testing, a technique in which two versions of a page can be compared for performance, and multivariate testing, a testing method in which a combination of variables is tested at one time. During a split test, you split incoming website traffic between the original (control) page and different variations of the page. You then look for improvements in the goals you’re measuring (such as leads, sales, or engagement) to emerge so that you can determine which version performed best. You use split testing to test areas where you might be able to improve a measurable goal, such as your online checkout process. The test helps you try to determine what factors increase conversions, what factors deter conversions, and what can lead to an increase in orders. Obtain the tools you need to run split tests To run split tests, you need effective tools. This section tells you about the technology you need to run split tests so that you can optimize your campaign for maximum results. An analytics suite To choose the right pages to test on your website, you rely heavily on your website analytics tool. This chapter focuses on Google Analytics, a website analytics solution made available by search engine giant Google. This tool measures website, app, digital, and offline data to gain customer insights. Google Analytics has two pricing tiers: free and premium. For most small and medium-sized businesses, the standard, free version of Google Analytics is more than sufficient. Testing tech Split tests require the technology that enables you to edit variations, split test variations, and track conversions. You can choose from among several services, including: Visual Website Optimizer: An easy-to-use split testing tool. It allows you to run A/B and multivariate testing to optimize your website for increased conversion rates and sales. This paid tool has several pricing packages to choose from for individuals to large agencies. Unbounce: Gives marketers the power to build, publish, and optimize and test landing pages. It has several pricing tiers to choose from for entrepreneurs and enterprise-level businesses alike. Optimizely: One of the world’s leading experimentation platforms for websites, mobile apps, and connected devices. Optimizely makes customer-experience optimization software for companies, which gives businesses the capability to conduct A/B and multivariate testing. The company offers three pricing tiers. Make sure to integrate your testing tech tool with Google Analytics so that your Google Analytics reports reflect accurate data. Test duration calculator A test duration calculator is a simple calculator that determines how long you need to run your split test to get a reliable test result. You input data such as the existing conversion rate, the number of variations in the test, the amount of traffic your site gets, and more. The calculator then determines how many days to run this test to get a reliable result. The following figure shows the free test duration calculator offered by Visual Website Optimizer. Not every page on your website needs to be tested or requires optimization. In the next section, we discuss the ways for you to isolate the pages to test so you can maximize your return on investment (ROI). Follow the split test guidelines When you’re looking for pages to split test, use the following guidelines to determine how worthy a page is to test. First, here’s what not to test: Your worst-performing pages (this sounds counter intuitive, but we explain why). Pages that don’t impact your longer-term business goals, for example, your 404 page. Pages that don’t get enough traffic to run a split test. So why shouldn’t you test your worst-performing pages? When looking for pages to optimize, your job is to focus on opportunity pages, which are pages that will have the greatest impact on your goals. For instance, if you expect a 10 percent increase in conversions from your efforts, would you rather that lift be on a page converting at 50 percent or 5 percent? The one at 50 percent is an opportunity page. Further, your worst-performing pages don’t need a testing campaign; rather, they need an overhaul. The ship is sinking, and you don’t have time to hypothesize over what to do next; you need to make a drastic change that likely doesn’t need to be tested. Remember, in such a case, don’t test; implement! For the same reason that you don’t want to test the worst-performing pages, you also don’t need to test your nonconversion-oriented pages. These nonconverting pages include your About Us page or your “dead end” 404 page. However, optimizing 404 pages has proven to be useful in marketing. Even on that page, you should include an offer, a call to action, or some additional steps to keep the user engaged. You don’t need to test adding these elements to the page, however; just add content that meets your goals and then move on to more important pages that impact conversion. Amazon’s 404 page, shown in the following figure, directs people to the Amazon home page or suggests continuing to search. The final guideline you should follow when determining whether to split test a page is the page’s traffic. Look at the number of visits and of conversions that your page gets over the potential test period. Notice where traffic falls off considerably. You can easily identify your pages and their traffic numbers using Google Analytics. Examine the number of Unique Pageviews for pages under consideration for split testing. The best report to employ for this job in Google Analytics is in the Behavior suite. In Google Analytics, navigate to the Reporting section and then select the following: Behavior →Site Content→All Pages. The All Pages report loads. From there, use the filter tool in Google Analytics to search for the specific pages you’re considering for a split test. This figure shows an example of what an All Pages Report looks like from DigitalMarketer. After you gather the data from the All Pages report, you should contextualize the pages. You’ll always see a massive drop-off in page views (the total number of pages viewed by a user; repeated views of a single page are counted) after your home page. However, your home page is so far away from your main converting action that it doesn’t make sense to test. Now, if you see a massive drop from a product page to the checkout page, you know that something is wrong with your product page and that you need to optimize it, and that merits a split test. By following the guidelines in this section, you can hone in on pages worthy of your time and resources for testing. When you find a page that you consider to be test worthy based on the guidelines, make sure to ask these four questions: Does the page get enough unique visitors? Does the page get enough raw conversions? Does this page directly impact my goals? If indirect, how far away from the primary conversion action is the page? What’s the potential impact on your goal, such as for sales or leads? Answering these four questions before you commit to testing a page accomplishes the following: Qualifies that the page is worth using resources to test. Gives you an idea of whether testing will actually be useful. By determining which pages aren’t worth split testing, you can find the pages that merit testing.

Article / Updated 08-06-2020

Everything you know about digital marketing is moot if your emails aren’t reaching your subscribers’ inboxes. Did you know that 21 percent of emails worldwide never reach the desired recipients? A whole lot of work, effort, and brilliance are being wasted on emails that end up floating around in cyberspace. How do you make sure that all your work isn’t wasted? It comes down to one simple thing: You have to prove that you aren’t a spammer and that you have no intention of being one. Sadly, the Internet service providers responsible for determining whether you are sending spam consider bulk mailers to be guilty until proven innocent. They assume that emails are spam from the outset, and until you can show them that you don’t act like a spammer, your email deliverability will be affected. There are some methods for improving deliverability. Most of these methods are very technical. If you’re a tech wizard, go forth and set up your infrastructure to ensure deliverability. If you need help with technical stuff, find a local tech person or call your email service provider, and get some systems in place to ensure that your emails reach the people you want to reach. Monitoring your reputation To ensure deliverability, you have to keep track of how you’re interacting with your list. Do the following things: Monitor the complaint rates and the volume of complaints you're receiving. Your email service provider should provide reporting capabilities on the number and rate of complaints your emails are receiving. Respond to complaints in a timely manner. Make sure that you unsubscribe and stop sending email to anyone who unsubscribes. Your email service provider should provide a path to unsubscribe from every email and automatically remove those that unsubscribe from your email list. Keep your message volume steady. Don’t send a million emails one month and then none for six months. Check your blocklist status on the major blocklist sites including Spamhaus and Spamcop. These major blocklist sites are referenced by mailbox providers like Google's Gmail to help them determine whether your email should be delivered to the inbox. Each blocklist has its own process for removal from its blocklist; you can find this information on its website. Proving subscriber engagement The best way to assure the Internet service providers (ISPs) that you’re not a spammer is to prove that you engage your subscribers with every single email you send. If people are opening your emails, reading what you have to say, and then clicking relevant links, you aren’t a spammer. Subscriber engagement rates are based on the following factors: Your open rate: This rate isn’t the number of emails that are opened, but the percentage. Your lateral scroll rate: This rate is how far recipients scroll down on your emails. Your hard and soft bounce rate: A bad email address is considered to be a hard bounce. A soft bounce can happen for many reasons, including a full inbox or accidental flagging as spam. If you continue to send emails to addresses that reject your mail, you look like a spammer. Export your entire list, and send it to a company called BriteVerify. This company runs an analysis of your list and tells you which addresses are definitively good, which ones are questionable, and which are bad. If you expunge the questionable and bad emails from your list, you’re practicing good list hygiene and increasing deliverability. Unsubscription and complaint rates: If you receive high numbers of unsubscriptions or complaints, examine your campaigns to see whether you’re doing something to upset subscribers. Tools that ensure email deliverability Several applications can help you ensure a high percentage of email deliverability. A few of our favorites are the following: Mail Monitor: Mail Monitor breaks down delivery per IP address, message, and email service. Return Path: If you have your own IP address, Return Path allows you to monitor your reputation and set up alerts. You get a baseline email deliverability score. EmailReach: This service allows you to set up tracking on domain and IP blocklisting and scans these blocklists daily, notifying you if you've been added.

Article / Updated 03-11-2017

What do you do with the results of your split test to ensure success for your digital marketing campaign? After you run your split test, you either have a successful, a failed, or a null test result. After you’ve concluded the test, you can dig into the data to analyze what happened during the test period and determine your next steps. To analyze your split-testing data, follow these steps: Report all your findings. Collect and put your testing data into words. You can use a test report sheet or PowerPoint deck for this. Considering breaking your report into the following sections: Slide 1: Test title, URL, timeline, and metric(s) measured Slide 2: Hypothesis Slide 3: All the variants you tested Slide 4: In-depth results Slide 5: Results showcasing the winning variant, conversion lift, and confidence rate Slide 6: Analysis Slide 7: Other observations Slide 8: Recommendations Report your conversion range. The conversion range is the range between the lowest highest possible conversion rate. This range may be written in the form of a formula, as in 30% lift @@pm 3%, or you might say that you expect conversions to be between 27 and 33 percent. Be sure to report your conversion rate as a range. When you report a 40 percent conversion lift, but you really have a range of 35–43 percent, you’re doing yourself a disservice by not properly setting expectations for your results or your recommendations. Don’t let your boss or client think that the conversion rate is static. It isn’t. Set proper expectations by reporting on your conversion rate as a range. Tools such as Visual website Optimizer create this range for you. Look at each variant’s heat map. Observing each variant's heat map helps you find new things to optimize and test. Place these finding in the “Other Observations” section of your report. Analyze key segments in Google Analytics. Here, you’re determining whether the test indicates a higher or lower conversion rate for certain types of visitors. Implement the successful variation. Ideally, thanks to the results of your split testing, you know what works. Now you can put that knowledge to work. Use your data to make educated decisions about what changes you should make on the page. If the result of the split test was null, pick your preferred variation. At this point, if your test has declared no winner from either variation, you can choose which one you’d like to implement. Use this data to develop a new hypothesis and create a new test. Use your findings to create new hypotheses and plan future tests. Optimization is a process. Your latest findings should feed into your future work. Here is where you can learn from segments, heat maps, or the test proper to develop your next iteration or fuel a test on a new page. Share your findings. At the very least, you should send your report over to your boss or client, and to your colleagues who have a stake in the test. If you want to go above and beyond, you could even publish your findings as your own primary research. Case studies are valuable resources that can establish you as an authority in the market and also generate leads within your market.

Article / Updated 03-11-2017

Split tests are helpful tools in digital marketing. When you have your hypothesis, your variations, your KPIs, and your test schedule outlined, you’re almost ready to begin your split test. Complete the following steps to take in preparation for your test and then you'll be ready to click the Start button in your testing tool! Defining goals in Google Analytics Just having Google Analytics on your site isn’t enough; you need to establish your goals. Setting custom events or e-commerce tracking works as well — you just need something to measure. Having a measureable goal is important because when you have proper e-commerce or goal reporting in Google Analytics, the results of your testing are determined by objective numbers rather than subjective opinion. Having goals set up in Google Analytics is incredibly powerful and will start to show you the efficacy of your campaigns in a single platform. Checking that your page renders correctly in all browsers If a page isn't performing properly, it will corrupt the data. You may think that the variation you are testing has failed because your hypothesis was incorrect, but in truth, it might be a tech issue. For instance, if one of the pages you are testing is showing a broken image, the conversion lift (or failure) for that page is not caused by the changed variable but rather by the page’s functionality, in which case your test will be for naught. Before you launch your test, double-check your page for bugs by using tools such as BrowserStack or preview options in Visual website Optimizer. Ensuring that you have no testing conflicts You don’t want your tests to overlap. Therefore, you should never run multiple tests on the same page at the same time; for instance, running a second, separate test on a page while another test is already being performed on the same page results in conflicting data. You can run tests on different pages at the same time. However, when running tests on different pages at the same time, you need to make sure that traffic included in one test isn't included in the other. Checking links Just as you need to ensure that your page is functioning, you also have to make sure that your links actually work and go to the right page. A split test between a page with links and a page without properly functioning links is obviously a fatally flawed test that won’t give you true results. Keeping variation load times similar or identical Keep your load time in mind when you optimize. If you have a variant with a better load time, that variant will likely beat out its competition, skewing your results. Use tools such as PageSpeed to analyze and ensure that your variant load times are as close as they can be.

Article / Updated 03-10-2017

Knowing your audience is important for any digital marketing campaign. Although analytics programs like Google Analytics track the origin of your site visitors using their default settings, you'll likely find that these default settings are too broad to ascertain meaningful data. To get more granular (and thus more useful) data, you can append UTM parameters to the links you share around the web. UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module, and it is a tracking marker appended to a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). The UTM system allows users to tag hyperlinks in order to trace where visitors originated. For example, if you want to track the number of leads generated by a single link shared with your Facebook fans, you can do that using Google Analytics and a link with UTM parameters. Simply put, you place a UTM at the end of a hyperlink so that you can figure out how people get to your site and what they do after they get there. For every hyperlink you want to track, whether on your blog or your social media channels, that directs traffic to a landing page you own, consider adding UTM parameters. By adding this tracking code to the hyperlinks you share, you can track the origins of that visit. A UTM consists of various parameters. Here are the UTM parameters that matter most: Campaign source (utm_source) Campaign medium (utm_medium) Campaign content (utm_content) Campaign name (utm_campaign) Campaign source (utm_source) Generally, the source of a UTM describes where your visitors come from. The source tells you the specific place where the referring link was shared, such as An email promotion A social network A referring website Common sources include Facebook Email newsletter Twitter Google YouTube The source enables you to know which email, search engine, or Facebook ad (or other source) a user came from. Knowing where traffic is coming from can be powerful because you gain insight into what your users are responding to. Campaign medium (utm_medium) This parameter identifies the medium or vehicle that the link was used on, such as email. Medium tells you how visitors arrived at your site. Some of the most common mediums include Email Pay per click (PPC) Banner-ads Direct (which tells you users directly typed in your site address) Campaign content (utm_content) Campaign content describes the specific ad, banner, or email used to share the link. It gives you additional details to use with A/B testing or content-targeted ads, as well as helps you determine what creative is working best at promoting an offer or distributing content. Be as descriptive as possible with this parameter's naming structure so that you can easily remember what email or ad this UTM refers to. Campaign name (utm_campaign) This parameter serves as an identifier of a specific product or promotion campaign, such as a spring sale or another promotion you run. The campaign name's basic purpose is to highlight promotional offers or content distribution strategies so that you can easily compare performance across time and platform. Campaign links should be consistent across all different sources and media for any given promotion to ensure that the campaign as a whole can easily be analyzed. Dissecting a UTM This section examines a UTM’s structure. For instance, here’s what a UTM looks like for a flash sale for one of DigitalMarketer's products, the Content Engine: http://www.digitalmarketer.com/lp/the-content-engine?utm_source=house-list-email-boradcast&utm_medium=email&utm_content=content-engine-flash-mail-1&utm_campaign=content-engine-flash-sale-1-1-16 Your UTM might look something like the preceding. Following is breakdown of this URL with a UTM by section: http://www.digitalmarketer.com/lp/the-content-engine: The hyperlink. ?utm_source=house-list-email-broadcast: The campaign source, which is the referring source of the traffic. In this case, it's an email to our “house” email list. &utm_medium=email: Campaign medium, which is how the user was referred. In this case it was via email. &utm_content=content-engine-flash-mail-1: Campaign content, which is the ad or campaign identifier you assign. In this case, this is the first email for the Content Engine flash sale promotion. &utm_campaign=content-engine-flash-sale-1-1-16: Campaign name, which is the specific promotion or strategy. In this case, this campaign is the Content Engine flash sale beginning on January 1st, 2016. Creating UTM parameters for your URLs Google makes building UTM links super easy with a free, easy-to-use UTM builder called the Google Analytics URL Builder. Visit the page, follow the steps, and plug in your information to automatically generate a hyperlink with UTM parameters that you can then track with Google Analytics — that is, if you've properly set up a Google Analytics account. If you haven't already, visit Google Analytics Help Center. This resource contains further instructions about how you can use each of the different UTM parameters. Creating properly attributed hyperlinks takes some time to get used to, but the data it provides is worth its weight in gold. To make consistency easy, create a unified document in which you track all the hyperlinks you use, which will make it easy to refer back to when you’re analyzing later. UTM parameters are case sensitive, so if you use abc for your utm_campaign tags on some links and ABC for your utm_campaign tags on other links, they show up as separate campaigns in your Google Analytics.

Article / Updated 03-10-2017

The first thing you should do as a business owner or digital marketer after you decide to start an email marketing strategy is come up with a promotional calendar. That way, you’ll know when to send the messaging your customers need when they want to receive it. Using a promotional calendar gives you the opportunity to elicit action. It mobilizes your subscribers to do something that you want them to do — buy something, ask for information, call you, or come to a store, for example. The right message delivered at the right time elicits action. Cataloging your products and services Before you can build an accurate, all-encompassing promotional calendar, you have to know exactly what you’re promoting. Spend some time carefully cataloging every product and service that your business offers and taking some time to understand how to promote it best. You can use a promotional asset sheet like this one. Be sure that whatever record you keep of your promotional assets contains the following information: Name of the product or service Price (both full price and sale price) Where the transaction occurs Whether you’ve sold this product or service via email before Whether past marketing efforts worked (and why or why not) When you last promoted this product or service How many emails you sent about this product Whether the product is currently available to promote (and if not, why not) You may be wondering why you should spend so much time cataloging your marketing efforts. Wouldn’t that time be better spent, perhaps, marketing those assets? The truth is that by carefully tracking the sales of your products, as well as the marketing campaigns that correspond with your sales, the job of marketing those assets becomes much easier. When you know what you have available to sell and the results of the promotions you've employed in the past, you can simply do more of what's working and less of what isn't. The time you spend cataloging and analyzing these assets and the campaigns surrounding them is valuable marketing time. All marketers should gather the promotional assets from all the products and services they offered so that they know exactly what they can sell, how they can sell it, whom to sell it to, and (perhaps most important) when to sell it. Creating an annual promotional plan After you catalog your assets, create an annual promotional plan. This plan aligns your 12-month revenue goals with your annual promotions and marketing efforts to help you reach your goals. Here is a sample worksheet. You can download your own 12-Month Promotional Planning Worksheet at DigitalMarketer.com. Developing a digital marketing plan Creating and developing an annual marketing plan takes some time, but after it’s done, you have a solid framework for building your promotional calendar. Follow these steps: Write your 12-month revenue goals. Consider your target revenue goals, and figure out where you want to be each month to reach those goals. List your nonrevenue goals. This list could include nonrevenue growth opportunities such as the launch of a blog or podcast, the release of a book, or the opening of a new location. Slot holiday promotions into the appropriate months. For many retail businesses, November and December are key sales times and thus require strategic marketing. Other businesses may have peak promotion at varying times, such as before a major conference or during a certain season. Slot annual promotions into the appropriate months. These promotions may include major sales, product releases, or events. Denote seasonality. Every business has slow and busy months, so note those months in your plan so that you can build appropriate promotion during those times. Slot nonrevenue goals into the appropriate months. Are you planning to release a new book or launch a new blog in March? You need space on the promotional calendar for these nonrevenue initiatives. Break your revenue goals into monthly allotments. Keep seasonality in mind (see Step 5). Add your standard revenue projections. Include promotional efforts, major events, standard rebilling contracts, and subscriptions. Subtract your expected revenue from the target revenue. After doing this, consider how you can fill in the remaining revenue needed. This step is where your marketing efforts come into play. Brainstorm additional promotional ideas that could generate the revenue you need to reach your goals. Will you need to add new products or services to promote to reach your target revenue? Can you find new ways to offer the existing products and services you already have? Spot-check and adjust. Ask yourself whether your calendar helps you meet your goals in a way that will be both effective and practical. List additional items that you need to meet your target. You may need to launch a new product or service, or to create a sales presentation, for example. Creating a 30-day calendar The next step is to get down into the nitty-gritty of what you’re going to do for the next 30 days. A promotional campaign should have three goals: Monetization: Making money or making a sale Activation: Moving your customer forward on the customer journey Segmentation: Becoming more aware of customers’ needs and desires so you can segment your list and deliver value For your first 30 days, try setting one of these promotional goals for each week and reserve the fourth week for a wildcard campaign. A wildcard campaign gives you the chance to try something new, get creative, test new ideas, or try to replicate your most successful campaigns. You can use a monthly planning worksheet so that you can easily track which promotions you’re running and how they do. You might also plan a backup promotion for each campaign in case the primary campaign falls, so that you still reach revenue goals regardless of how the campaigns perform. You can download your own monthly email planning worksheet at DigitalMarketer.com. Creating a 90-day rolling calendar When your 30-day promotional plan is up and rolling, you can plan a bit farther in advance with a 90-day rolling calendar. This calendar is referred to as a rolling calendar because by repeating similar promotions every 90 days or so, you keep your customers informed and engaged without making the same offers with the same campaign goals over and over again. Use a calendar application like Google Calendar or hang a dry-erase board with a 90-day calendar template on it in your office so that you and your team can routinely map out a schedule that meets your revenue targets without repeating the same promotions too often. When viewing your 90-day calendar, you might find that you have three monetization campaigns in April, but none in May. Moving a monetization campaign or two to May will make it more likely that you hit your revenue targets in May and reduce the number of monetization offers you send to your email list in April.