The Marketing Stack Explorer

Content is not 'lots of words to help me rank higher.' It's every form of communication that passes information: Product descriptions, photography, blog posts, articles, white papers, video... Everything.

Content drives your entire business:

1. It carries your message to folks who discover you
2. It reinforces that message to folks who search for you
3. It controls communications with the public and the media when things go right (or wrong)
4. It tells potential customers about your products
5. It supports current customers

Content affects every channel: Paid (think of Google Adwords), earned (think of 'organic' search and social media) and owned (your own web site).

Analytics tracks impact on key performance indicators (KPIs). Revenue. Profit. Leads. Whatever metric you care about the most, it should drive your entire analytics strategy.

Analytics provides the data to build and adjust your plans:

1. It tracks channel performance, telling you how you're doing in paid, earned, and owned media.
2. It measures audience response and impact of that response on your KPIs.

Analytics is not reporting. It's not a static thing. It's an activity. It should illuminate the next actions for your marketing strategy.

Infrastructure delivers your website enabling the rest of the elements and channels to come to life. Without it, you have no website, and you have no online brand.

To optimize it, look at:

1. Stability. If it doesn't work, the rest of your work doesn’t matter. Pretty simple.
2. Load speed. Every second you can shave off your website’s load time increases conversion rates substantially.
3. Scalability. What happens when you go from 1,000 to 100,000 visitors? If it can't handle the load, you'll miss opportunities for growth.
4. Security. Comply with published standards for internet security. If you're using one of the many open-source tools out there (like WordPress), keep it patched and updated.
5. Browser compatibility. Does your website function smoothly on all browsers and screen sizes? It doesn't have to appear identical, but it should present a reassuring, functional face to all visitors regardless of the technology they are using.
6. WCAG guidelines. Does your website comply with accessibility standards? If not, spend some time optimizing.

Infrastructure impacts every other marketing activity and channel. It's the foundation for all digital marketing