We live in a culture of YES. Positive reinforcement abounds. Grade school kids get awards simply for participating. Everyone is special. Encouragement is great, don’t get me wrong. Accolades are a big part of what motivates us in life.

In the business world, however, this can translate into dangerous decision making. Fear of killing creativity, squelching ambition, and being perceived as an office meanie has caused countless managers to green light projects that never should have seen the light of day.

NO can be incredibly powerful and effective as a means to pause—to force everyone involved to stop, evaluate, and ensure all the pieces are in place. Here are just 6 situations in which NO will help you run a successful marketing campaign.

1. No goal, no go

This might seem obvious, but it’s amazing how many projects fail because the parties involved have different understandings of what success looks like. Consider a conversation like this one:

Client: We want more traffic.
Account Strategist: Great! How much? And in what time frame?
Client: Well… I dunno… my VP just says she wants to see more.

Yup, it happens more often than I’d like. But herein lies a great opportunity. As the project lead, it’s your responsibility to ask the direct questions and get direct answers.

What kind of traffic? What kind of visitors? What do you want them to do once they arrive?

Bottom line: Until all the key stakeholders of a marketing project agree on its Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), do NOT give it a green light. As a bonus, your team will recognize your leadership and respect you for demanding clarity.

2. Your goals are not supported by user behavior

Say you sell kitchen knives and you’re embarking on an SEO effort to increase organic traffic to your website. Getting more search traffic seems simple enough—rank well for “kitchen knives” and related terms. But you completely ignore the most highly searched phrase in the category: “cutlery.”

Instead of saying NO or asking for supporting data, like the above from Google’s Keyword Tool, your web manager changes all instances of “cutlery” on the site to “kitchen knives.”

Instead of the millions of searches you thought you’d garner, you are suddenly cut down to thousands. Ouch.

Bottom line: Do the research before you start an SEO effort and build your plan of action based on the data. If people on your team are making decisions based on their “gut” or “common sense,” put on the brakes and demand a review of available data sources.

3. Your team is chasing shiny objects

Your plan is set. You’ve got a budget and individual tactics lined up and in motion. And then your CFO forwards you an article about how a competitor acquired 10,000 Facebook followers by giving away free stuff. “We gotta do that too,” he says. “Get with the product team and figure out what we have in excess inventory that no one will miss.”

Sigh…

Say YES, and your marketing resources will be diverted into chasing the new project. Here’s what could happen:

• Your previously stellar, high ROI PPC campaigns sputter out. Revenue gone.
• Your creative team is tied up making a shiny app for your Facebook page, so, alas, your lead-nurturing emails are nurturing no more.
• In the weeks that follow, you watch your sales drop off precipitously, despite leading into a seasonally strong time of year.

Say NO, and you can keep doing what’s working, while establishing a timeline for testing Facebook campaigns for increased social engagement, search visibility improvement, and potential lead generation. Because those are all excellent goals. But not at the expense of your core marketing tactics.

Bottom line: Red herrings are everywhere. Beware. And don’t be afraid to manage up. Your boss wants to hear you say NO when it means you’ll make more money for his business.

4. You can’t measure your efforts

Over the last several years, you’ve seen solid—not amazing, but steady—growth with a diversified Internet marketing campaign. Your PPC campaigns are driving a positive ROI. Your organic traffic has doubled in the last year.

But your CMO thinks the online space is tapped out. He is convinced that a billboard campaign in your five biggest markets is going to be your company’s saving grace this year. So you pause PPC, allow SEO and content to stagnate, and buy up all that highway signage.

You’ve probably figured out where I’m going with this. Billboards are great for branding and getting a message out to the legions of distracted, texting, cell-phone-yammering, yelling-at-the-kids-in-the-back-seat road warriors. They’re not great for measuring ROI.

Bottom line: Never put your eggs in one basket. Or into a black box even. So many cliché expressions apply here. High spend and no way to measure results? Just say no.

5. There are too many cooks in the kitchen

You’ve been there—a giant conference room with an appropriately giant conference table and 17 people seated around it. Marketing is there. Creative services is there. IT is there. The guy from accounting is there (what’s his name again?). Don’t forget about the intern (aka your boss’ nephew) your boss forced you to hire. The meeting’s topic: the name for your upcoming Pinterest promotion.

Oh, how I wish this was an exaggeration.

Committee-based decision making has its time and place. It’s often essential when creating a long-term roadmap or discussing a major strategic shift. It’s how you ensure the right goals are set (see #1 above) and get buy-in from your team. But in marketing, it very rarely makes sense to have representatives from multiple departments providing input on tactical decisions.

Bottom line: Everyone’s opinion does not count equally. Identify task owners and give them the authority to make (informed) autonomous decisions.

6. There’s no long view

Your CFO wanders into your office and demands to know why you’re spending $100,000 on SEO over the next year. The work started two months ago and the result? Minimal growth. “Why aren’t we spending more on PPC?” she wonders. “It’s much more scalable.”

Oh boy.

You could easily agree to the change. SEO isn’t reaping benefits now. In the short term, you’ll almost certainly make more money on PPC.

But she’s dead wrong. PPC doesn’t scale the way SEO does. Even with optimally-structured campaigns and ad groups and quality scores in the 8s and 9s, you’ll still pay for each and every click. And you’re playing in a much smaller universe. One August 2012 study claims that an astounding 94% of UK searchers click on organic results. At Portent, we subscribe to a 75/25 split on organic vs. paid. So, conservatively, if you’re focused on the short term and investing more time and money into PPC, you’re only competing for 25% of potential search volume. Yikes!

Bottom line: Don’t let the fear of losing in the short term get in the way of long-term success. Just ask any Red Sox fan and they’ll tell you waiting 86 years for a World Series title was painful, but sooooo worth it. Of course, your SEO campaign won’t take quite that long to bear fruit.

When it comes down to it, we all want to see our projects succeed. And that can be so much more rewarding than temporarily placating those around us through misguided agreement. When have you said NO and lived to tell your tale of achievement? Tell me all about it in the comments below!

The post 6 Reasons “No” Will Save Your Marketing Strategy appeared first on Portent.

Beloved for its intuitive format and multi-dimensional reporting abilities, Google Analytics not only provides basic metrics like visits, time on site, bounce rates and conversions, it can also provide valuable insights for any web marketing manager looking to take their business’ online presence to the next level.

Below are three advanced tips that will help you unearth hidden optimization opportunities with Google Analytics.

Optimization #1 – Increase Conversions from Organic Search

You’re well-versed in the importance of content to organic search. You’ve done keyword research, tracked your rankings, and obsessed over getting more visits from your top non-branded terms. But that’s only part of the equation.

Once you’ve attracted visitors to your site, you need to ensure they’re getting the information they need. You can drive all the traffic you want, but the point is moot if visitors aren’t buying. To find the best conversion optimization opportunities from organic search, follow these seven simple steps:

1. Set your date range back 6-12 months and navigate to the organic search report (Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Organic)
2. Next, exclude all branded traffic by clicking on the blue “advanced” link next to the search box in the center-right portion of the report screen. Choose “exclude” from the first dropdown, leave the second on “keyword,” and change the third to “Matching RegExp.” In the blank field enter the following formula, replacing “brand” with your brand name – (not|brand).
   
3. Now you have a list of all your top non-branded keywords. Next, select “landing page” as a secondary dimension using the dropdown of the same name.
   
4. Set the report to exclude any non-conversion related pages. Typically, this will include your blog, “about” pages, careers section, and other corporate information.
5. Go back to the “advanced” filter, as you did in step #2 above. This time, select “Add a dimension or metric,” and under “Dimensions,” select “Landing Page.” Add all the folders in the “exclude” filter that apply to the description in #4 (e.g. “/blog/,” “/about/,”)
6. Now that have all your top conversion-focused non-branded keywords and landing pages, you’ll want to narrow your focus even further, keying in on terms and pages that convert at a rate significantly lower than the site average. For example, if your site’s average conversion rate is 1%, filter for all terms/pages that convert at less than 0.5%
7. You should be left with a handful of pages with a decent amount of visits, but very few conversions. To determine your next steps, consider the following:
   1. Are visitors being taken to the right landing page?
      If your keyword is “red fuzzy mittens,” but visitors are being sent to the “red leather gloves” page, clearly conversions are going to be adversely affected. Have your team update onpage copy and meta data (e.g. title tags, headlines) to help the search engines assign a better landing page for this query.
   2. Does the landing page provide relevant information?
      OK, so the red fuzzy mittens page is ranking for “red fuzzy mittens,” but users still aren’t converting. Check the content and product descriptions. Is it informative? Does it fully describe the product? If the answer is no, get cracking on some new copy.
   3. Does the landing page have a clear call-to-action?
      Does your page have a conversion button in a prominent location? Or do you need to scroll down to find the “buy now” or “learn more” button? Test new layouts, move buttons higher, and watch your sales roll in.

Pro Tip: Don’t forget about Multi-Channel Funnels. My colleague, the Google Analytics superstar Michael Wiegand, has written a great post about the hidden opportunities that multi-channel funnel analysis can unearth.

Optimization #2 – Get the Links You Deserve

Linkbuilding from GA? Absolutely.

This one is so stinking easy you’ll kick yourself for not having explored it already. Assuming you have a healthy history of analytics data, set your date range in GA back at least 6 months. Next, navigate into the Referral report under Traffic Sources. Check out your top 50 referring sites. Chances are you’ll recognize most of them – social networks, email, key partners, etc. But what we’re interested in are the referral sources that are not there.

Depending on your industry and business model, there are a handful of links you can seek out. Take a look at the list below. Do sites in these categories show up in your referring sources report? If not, get out there and claim what’s yours.

Start with your business contact list; vendors who know and love you will gladly put up a link to your site. Then move on to the “colder” leads by reaching out to webmasters. It’s a perfect excuse to establish new relationships for future promotions and collaborations.

• B2B

• Current Clients
• Vendors / Partners
• Industry Associations
• Conferences
• Industry Blogs
• Consumer Goods / eCommerce

• Retail Partners
• Shopping Engines
• Shopping Malls (if you have brick & mortar)
• Prominent Industry / Category Blogs
• Fashion

• Fashion Blogs
• Shopping Malls (if you have brick & mortar)
• Fashion Publications
• Travel / Hospitality

• Travel Blogs
• Travel Associations
• Country & Municipality Tourism Offices
• Travel Partners / Vendors
• Legal

• Law / Attorney Directories
• Industry Associations
• Conferences
• Legal Blogs
• Law Schools (.edus!)
• Health Industry

• Hospital / Doctor Sites
• Medical / Nutrition Blogs
• Industry Associations
• Medical Journals
• Conferences
• Education

• School Sites (.edus!)
• Parenting / Education Blogs
• Industry Associations
• Conferences

Pro Tip: As you check out your referring sources, navigate to each and search the web for competing sites. For example, if you’re a fashion retailer, and you have links from a top blogger in your category, check out their blog roll. Do those blogs link to you? If not, reach out and establish a relationship. See how you can work together to your mutual benefit.

Optimization #3 – Get Content and Architecture Ideas from Site Search

Site search is one of the most useful places to get new content ideas. Ostensibly, if visitors are using the search box to find information, you should have content to match those queries. Site search data can also tell you a thing or two about your site’s architecture, and whether you’ve got the best navigation links to help folks find what they’re looking for.

If you don’t already have it set up, here’s a great post from our CEO, Ian Lurie, on installing Google Analytics site search. Assuming you’ve got that squared away, and have a few months worth of data to examine, go check out your report. Here’s an example of what Portent’s site search report looks like:

Note the two items boxed in red. These searches have a high Time after Search (average amount of time spent on site after the search is performed), indicating a high level of interest, and presumably, good content on site related to those searches.

Perhaps we can make it even easier for users to find information on these topics. For example, we might check to see if these terms are included in the main navigation. In this case, the answer is yes for “PPC,” but no for “careers.” The latter is included as a link in the footer, though we can always consider making it more prominent.

Taking a look at some other metrics, such as % Search Exits, we can determine if we’re providing users with the right information. Searches on “affiliate,” for example, have a high exit rate. In our case, however, we’re not too concerned because affiliate marketing is not a core part of Portent’s offerings. If it were, we’d want to get our marketing team going on new pages outlining our expertise in this area.

Share your Google Analytics conversion optimization and linkbuilding tips in the comments.

The post 3 Hidden Optimization Tips in Google Analytics appeared first on Portent.

In order to manage internet marketing projects well, a project manager often has to channel the ways of our furry and feathered friends. Here are just a few I try to use in my daily routine:

Communicate Like an Elephant

“My, what big ears you have. The better to listen to you my dear.” Image courtesy of anniekatec.blogspot.com

Let’s take a cue from our elephant friends. Not only are they excellent listeners, they send each other clear, succinct signals when action must be taken. Imagine if elephants wasted time on details. “So, there are these humans hanging around in the bushes. I wonder what they want? Anyway, I just thought I’d let you know. Hey, wanna meet for lunch by the watering hole on Friday?”

They get to the point because they have to. “Crazy humans with big pointy things! RUN!”

As a project manager, I should:

• Keep it short and to the point (bullets are super helpful, as I’m demonstrating here)
• Ask questions up front. If I make someone read through an entire email before they finally find my request at the bottom, I’ll not only annoy them, I’ll be wasting their time. In project management, there’s no greater sin than wasting others’ time.

Keep Watch Like a Hawk

A hawk’s vision is equivalent to 20/5. This means that what most people can see at 5 feet, the hawk can see with the same clarity, from 20 feet away.

Nothing escapes this guy’s watchful gaze. Image courtesy of bradwilke via Flickr

What does this mean in project management?

• Attentiveness. Pay attention. To everything. All. The. Time.
• Foresight. Recognize upcoming search trends, and take action before the volume reaches its peak
• Be a surveyor. Know exactly what each person on the project is doing. When they’re doing it. And when they’re delivering.

The hawk is a predator. That’s no secret. I don’t intend to create a perfect analogy here, because let’s face it, if I walked into meetings with talons on full display, ready to claw my co-workers into submission, I wouldn’t gain a whole lot of allies. Instead, I try to think of project management as a leadership position in the forest that is internet marketing. I survey the forest floor for opportunities and potential blockades. Then, I use my vantage point to address them with the same authority our feathered hunters project.

Commit Like a Penguin

Ever see March of the Penguins? If you have, you know where I’m going with this. If not, I’ll get you up to speed.

Emperor Penguins literally work as a team to look after their incubating egg. Once the female lays the egg, using her feet she carefully transfers it to the male, who in turn keeps it warm by holding it tucked between his belly and the tops of his feet. The lady penguin then takes off for two months to feed. When she returns, the egg has likely hatched and the male penguin returns the baby to the mother’s care.

Why does this matter? Here’s the deal: marketing projects won’t work unless everyone involved is fully committed and shares an equitable role in ensuring a successful outcome.

As a project manager, I should be:

• Fully briefing my internal teams on the client’s goals, and checking in frequently to see that our deliverables are meeting those goals.
• Building consensus and buy-in. If the team doesn’t agree that an infographic is the way to go, the quality of our deliverable will suffer. And the project’s progress will slow to a crawl.
• Delegating. A project isn’t just my baby. It’s everyone’s baby. Sharing responsibilities leads to a well executed strategy, or in our analogy, a healthy little Antarctic waddle-bird.

There are no deadbeat dads in the world of Emperor Penguins. Don’t be your web project’s equivalent.

Got any other animalian analogies? Comment below with your suggestions!

The post Herding Cats and Other Animalian Project Management Analogies appeared first on Portent.