Build an Audience on Facebook

The first step to using Facebook is using Facebook. It’s impossible to engage with a community that doesn’t exist, so the starting point for any business has to be to build an audience based on value and helpfulness. I know, I know… that’s a lot of work. But even if your end goal is to sell products, no one will “Like” a Facebook page simply to be sold to. When your fans Like your page, they are doing so because they trust you, and they want to hear from you. In order to hold up your end of the bargain, you need to do more than just sell to them — you have to delight them!

Delight Your Audience

What does it mean to delight an audience? It means being 100% UNselfish with your messaging, and sharing relevant, informative, and valuable stuff on a regular basis. Especially for businesses that have traditionally used “hard sell” techniques to move inventory, this can often be the more difficult step, because it is critical NOT to sell. It’s your opportunity to build relationships, and be a positive presence in the lives (well, at least the Newsfeeds) of your fans.

Take a look at this recent post by Sony on their Facebook page. Sure, there are Sony products featured, but that’s not the point. The image (and linked blog post) is designed to provide value to the audience. As a photography enthusiast myself, I am always dying to know what’s in everyone else’s camera bags!

Delighting your audiences with interesting posts and a general level of approachability is not only good for business, but it’s also good for the fate of Social Media as a whole. By definition, Facebook is a platform intended to connect human people and build relationships. It’s not a megaphone for your latest promotion! But by using your brand page to connect with your audiences, you will be in the minority of companies who are actually using Facebook the way it’s meant to be used.

Pull them in

When you focus on delighting your audiences 70-80% of the time, you’ve earned the right to be promotional — you are a business after all! As long as you find the right balance between delight and promotion, your audiences will accept (and even welcome) posts about your products and services.

There it is — your license to sell. But how do you do it?

Even when you’ve earned the right to sell, striking the right chord with your promotions on Facebook is still tricky business. You always have to remember that you are communicating with people in a very (very) personal space.

Think about it — your message is going to show up in their newsfeed, and will probably be surrounded by updates from their friends and family. Which means, if you do it wrong, your Facebook post could look something like this:

Aunt Tilly: OMG! Your new baby is so adorable!!1 Can’t wait to see her!
Jane Jones: You’re the best husband ever! Thanks for the flowers!
[Your company]: BUY A NEW SEPTIC TANK NOW!
Tim Smith: Thanks for the friend request! How’ve you been since high school?

In the context of that newsfeed, would you (or anyone) really care about buying a septic tank at that point in time? Probably not.

Instead of transplanting promotional messages from your brochure to your Facebook page, your messaging on social media should always be tailored toward your audience, and optimized for the platform. That is, you’re not just competing with other Septic Tank suppliers, but you’re competing with everyone else in your fan’s newsfeed. That means your message, while promotional, also has to be interesting and intriguing enough for your fan to scroll past Aunt Tilly and click your link.

Use images

One of the best ways to pull users in on Facebook is to use amazing imagery. Whether it’s a photograph they can relate to, a well designed infographic, or an artistic illustration, an image will stand out in your fan’s newsfeed, and attract their initial attention.

Sell the lifestyle

Unless you’re Sony, Apple, or Burton, your products may not be attractive enough to sell themselves. And even if they were, remember that your audience is browsing through a newsfeed of their life and their connections — not a product catalog. So when you’re selecting imagery, or writing copy, make an effort to connect with your fans on their own terms. That means understanding their lifestyle and catering to it with your messaging!

Don’t be sneaky

Within your promotional messages, don’t be shy about being promotional! Like we mentioned before, if you’ve done your job, and delighted your audience 80% of the time, you don’t have to beat around the bush when it comes time to promote. Make a strong pitch using your best images, best copywriting, and most persuasive ideas. DON’T mislead your fans by trying to sneak a link to a product into a “delight” post.

Meet their expectations

Your fan clicked your link! Now what?

Just as important as your messaging ON Facebook is your messaging AFTER Facebook. The page you direct your audience to should be tailor-made for that specific link. That is, you should pair your social promotions with specific web pages on your site that ensure any expectations you set on Facebook are subsequently met on your site.

This can be as simple as making sure the message and imagery are in sync, or as complex as creating a custom landing page that matches your social content exactly. In either case, your website landing page needs to walk the walk that you’ve promoted on Facebook.

Get them to share

One often-overlooked strategy for leveraging Facebook (and other social media) to increase sales is to make it easy (and/or incentivize) for your customers to tell their networks about their purchases. Again, this isn’t applicable for all businesses (no one wants to share the fact that they bought a new toilet plunger), but for companies looking to amplify their social message, a key strategy is to enable your audiences to spread the word!

Using social media to drive sales to your eCommerce website can be really tricky business. But if you focus on the tips provided here, and on making sure you understand your customer’s expectations and needs, Facebook and other social platforms can be powerful sales tools for almost any business!

device like a smartphone or tablet. Whether it’s a responsive design that repositions site content automatically as the screen size varies or a mobile-detecting site that serves specific content and design based on the device used, mobile design is a critical component for ensuring that all users (especially the exponentially increasing number of mobile users) get a full, rich website experience however they are accessing your site.

Well, Google agrees. In fact, mobile optimization is at the forefront of their latest algorithm update (You know, those cryptically named updates like Panda and Hummingbird). On Google search results pages, mobile-friendliness will not only have an impact on user experience, but will also have a DIRECT impact on a site’s ranking performance. That is, sites optimized for mobile will rank higher than those that aren’t.

In the screenshot below, you can see an example of this change. Notice the label underneath the first search result that says “Mobile-friendly” Now, look right below it — Coffee Bean Direct does not have the mobile-friendly label.

So, how does this affect you? And what makes a site mobile friendly anyway?

If your site is mobile optimized, you have nothing to worry about! Good job! If your site is not optimized, you may find that your rankings (and in turn, your traffic) begin to drop. You may lose your “spot” at the top of the search results page, or you may be bumped from the first page all together!

If you’re not sure whether your site is mobile optimized, here are a few things to look for:

1. Does your site use Flash for any reason? If so, Google will see that as a negative strike in terms of mobile-friendliness.
2. Does your site’s design adapt to different browser sizes or screen sizes? If so, that’s called “responsive,” and is a good sign for mobile optimization!
3. Do you find that links and buttons are just way too small to tap without “pinching and zooming”? If so, your site may not be mobile friendly, and may be penalized.
4. The easiest way to check is to simply do a Google search for your website, and look for the “Mobile-friendly” label.

Whether we are happy or not about all of Google’s changes, they can have an enormous impact on a business’s online presence, and it’s critical to be aware of algorithm changes, and make the required site modifications to adapt to them. With 89% of smartphone users actively using Google to perform web searches, the market is simply too big to ignore!

If you’d like to talk with someone about your site, or are worried that it might not live up to Google’s mobile-friendliness standards, please give us a call! We’ll be happy to help out (even if it just means telling you you’re totally mobile-optimized!)

(Don’t worry, the irony is not lost on us that this blog isn’t yet mobile optimized! But hang tight — we’re working on it!)

When it comes down to it, that’s really all lead generation is: A strategy for attracting and managing communities of folks who are interested in your product, service, or industry.

But with all of the lead hype, there are bound to be a number of misnomers and myths about the best way to generate and nurture leads for your business. I can only imagine that this isn’t the first list of myths you’ve seen, but here are 6 of the most important myths that need to be busted before you can start generating leads like a machine!

Myth #1: Lead generation is the same as database marketing

Lead generation and database marketing are in the same marketing family, but they are not the same thing. Both involve a database: true. Both focus on collecting contact information for use in marketing materials: true. Both attempt to lump individuals together to send mass messages to mailing lists: FALSE.

Database marketing is the technique commonly used by companies who have the resources (and energy) to acquire humungous lists of individuals who may be interested in their brand message, and then sending them stuff. You’ve seen this stuff — solicited or unsolicited postcards, emails, flyers, or even phone calls. Sure, you may fit their target demographic closely enough that they feel confident in contacting you, but that’s no way to form a relationship!

On the other hand, lead generation is more of an organic strategy that is beneficial to both your business AND your consumer. The key difference between lead generation and database marketing is that in lead generation, your consumer has a choice, and the progression of the relationship is in their hands — you are just there to help! Modern lead generation means offering potential customers valuable resources to help them through their buying journey. That’s right, you’re there to help — not to sell. By being helpful, your customers can (and will) choose to begin their relationship with you by signing up for your email list, trial program, etc, hence becoming a lead.

It’s your user’s autonomy that really separates these two strategies. If you’re doing it right, your leads should have CHOSEN to be leads — not just matched up with some arbitrary demographic parameters.

Myth #2: Lead generation means I have to SPAM my audiences

What did I just say? Lead generation is about helping, not selling. It’s a well documented fact (well, now it is) that SPAM has never helped anyone accomplish anything. It’s an act of desperation businesses take when they feel disconnected from their audiences.

When you generate leads, you are attracting consumers to your brand — not trying to bully them into a sale. Focusing on lead generation that is organic, helpful and personal will always be a more effective way to develop relationships with customers and prospective customers. This is done not by SPAMming, but by crafting relevant and helpful messages that focus on your audience’s needs, rather than your own.

Myth #3: Broadcast marketing drives leads because it makes more people aware of my brand

Broadcast marketing has been, and will continue to be effective in building awareness for a brand. When a TV commercial smacks you in the face by interrupting the latest episode of Dancing With the Stars, it’s hard NOT to be aware of the brand. But that’s a completely different ballgame. Broadcast messaging is an effective way to hit a lot of people with your brand message, but where’s the helpfulness? Where’s the valuable, helpful information that would prompt someone to visit your website or call your office?

Awareness is great, but using lead generation strategies like inbound and content marketing (that is, publishing content so good your audience would pay you for it) to attract prospects allow you to build a community of highly qualified, motivated prospects, rather than just anyone who liked the breed of puppy who starred in your latest TV ad.

Myth #4: Lead generation requires a huge sales team to manage all of these new relationships

A large sales team is a luxury that not all businesses are able to sustain, and that’s OK! At the time of this blog’s posting there are exactly 1.2 million marketing automation tools available for businesses of all shapes and sizes. From automated list segmentation to workflow-based email campaigns (That send emails to individuals automatically based on actions they’ve taken), technology solutions are becoming more and more commonplace for businesses who used to rely on large sales teams. This is not to imply that salespeople can be replaced by technology — but with marketing automation tools, a lot of a traditional salesperson’s work can be automated, leaving them to focus solely on the most valuable aspects of their job.

Here’s an example of the difference between a traditional sales cycle, and one supported with marketing automation tools:

Traditional sales interaction:

1. Website visitor reads your latest case study, and decides to submit an inquiry asking for more information
2. Email is sent to your top salesman (we’ll call him Dwight)
3. Dwight immediately calls the customer, and begins qualifying them by asking questions and talking about benefits
4. Customer likes Dwight, and likes the product, but isn’t ready to purchase, and needs to learn more.
5. Dwight offers to call back in 6 months after the customer has had a chance to learn and get ready to buy.

Introducing marketing automation:

1. Visitor reads your latest case study, and wants more information.
2. They fill out a form that asks for their: industry, business size, main problem area, and buying timeline.
3. Based on their responses, an email campaign is triggered that regularly sends them buying tips, industry info, benefits summaries and more. Always giving the consumer the power to move at their own pace, and take the relationship to the next level (connecting with a salesperson) only when they are ready.
4. Based on the buying timeline they specified, Dwight is automatically notified that the customer should be checked in within 6 months.

In the first scenario, Dwight is spending a lot of time doing things manually which could be automated. And when business improves, Dwight only gets busier.

In the second scenario, Dwight gets involved only when the customer is ready.

Myth #5: Lead generation requires me to dangle free trials and other free stuff as bait

Yes and no. Modern lead generation techniques are increasingly dependent on a company’s willingness to give. But that doesn’t mean giving away your product for free, or even giving away anything that would otherwise cost you money. Rather, it means you are willing to give free help and value! If you sell wearable fitness trackers, for example, this means being open and transparent about the technology and research available within the industry. It also means being willing to help your audiences achieve their fitness goals, whether they buy your tracker or not! Fitness tips, diet plans, and even online communities would be great ways to connect with audiences, and start to create relationships with potential purchasers. Over time, the relationship can and will mature, and your product will be the first and most obvious choice.

Myth #6: I don’t know… lead generation just sounds kind of skeezy

This one is the worst of all! As I already busted in Myth #1, lead generation is often falsely associated with mass database marketing and SPAM, but when it’s done correctly, lead generation is ultimately about relationship building. Sure, “collecting contact info,” “segmenting lists,” “nurturing sales down a purchasing funnel” have all come to receive a negative connotation, but all of these things are intended to position your company as a helpful partner to your customer. Collecting contact info simply enables you to keep the conversation going; segmenting lists simply means understanding who you’re talking to, and doing so effectively; nurturing through a purchasing funnel simply means you are focused on helping the customer meet their goals. These ideas (especially the reference to a sales funnel ::shutter::) have been mis-used, and in many cases even bastardized, and turned into less helpful, more selfish sales strategies.

The landscape of consumer expectations is rapidly evolving, and requiring businesses to react and serve their audiences in new and sometimes unfamiliar ways. When fully understood, modern lead generation techniques help businesses build relationships serve their audiences, and ultimately drive more qualified buying traffic.

There were four very significant events which occurred in 2014 which are very significant to the history and future of MINDSCAPE, and I didn’t want to get too far into 2015 without taking a few minutes to share some of these details with you.

Results Tracking

The MINDSCAPE team derives the largest portion of our motivation through the results we create for the partners we serve. This is the thing that gets us out of bed and to the office early each morning to watch those metrics improve to levels which, at times, is quite surprising to us (humble brag).

We made the decision in early 2014 to invest our time and energy into creating tools to help us gather data, and present it to our partners in a way that is easy to understand, and as up to date as we can get it. One of our favorite sayings around here is, “what gets measured, gets done,” and we believe this investment has put us in the best position to make strategic decisions for our partners based on fact and true numbers.

Go to Market

MINDSCAPE was founded as a company focused on handling every aspect of digital marketing for our clients. On one hand, it’s pretty cool to be surrounded with so many experts from different discipline areas. On the other hand it can be quite a challenge to communicate what you’re best at to the marketplace.

We spent a considerable amount of introspection among our team to determine what it was that we were best at so we could tell a better story. Once we began to analyze the type of results we’d produced for the partners we serve it wasn’t that difficult to understand what we do best. We help create and implement digital strategies that help our partners create more inbound leads and drive higher online sales.

New Hires

This increased focus puts us in a better position to increase the depth of our offering while attracting top talent from around the United States to assist us in continuing to create industry leading results. We added four new team members in the fourth quarter of 2014 who came to us from the Syracuse University MBA program, from Team Detroit a premiere advertising agency and Priority health.

Focused Growth Plan

We proudly celebrated making the INC 5000 list for a third consecutive year in 2014. We aren’t stopping here as we plan to add an additional 5-7 MINDSCAPERs over the next 18 months. We’ve been working through a very intensive strategic planning process to help bring more predictable growth and to ensure we sustain the high level of results we’ve been doing for our partners.

We couldn’t be happier with our results in 2014, but we’re not much for sitting back and relishing in the past. We’re extremely excited about what the future is going to bring for both MINDSCAPE and the partners we serve. We hope your New Year is off to an excellent start and you’re on your way to achieving all your business objectives and make 2015 your best year yet!

Everybody is on board with using digital marketing to grow, and 30% named the digital engagement of customers as a strategic priority. However, only 7% say their organizations understand the exact value at stake from digital.

Why the disparity? If it’s truly a strategic priority, then why is there such ambiguity in what to do and why to do it?

The top 5 challenges for companies under $1 billion in revenue:

1. finding talent (32%)
2. lack of quality data to inform business decisions (19%)
3. organizational structure is not designed appropriately for digital (16%)
4. business processes too inflexible to take advantage of new opportunities (15%)
5. inability to adopt an experimentation mind-set that is key for best practices (13%)

Doom and gloom? For me it’s exciting. These hurdles can be overcome by leaders who see the value in investing in digital strategy for the long term. The beauty of digital is that everything is measurable and nothing is set in stone.

Create a plan, execute the plan, measure the plan, make changes to improve as you go along. What do you think? Is it that easy?

Can a company brand a feeling? Because AirBNB has just announced their new logo includes the Bélo, a symbol that represents “belonging.”

“Belonging has always been a fundamental driver of humankind. So to represent that feeling, we’ve created a symbol for us as a community. It’s an iconic mark for our windows, our doors, and our shared values. It’s a symbol that, like us, can belong wherever it happens to be.”

Founded in 2007 by two guys who wanted to share their idea of seeing the world via coach surfing, now valued at $10 million, AirBNB is a company that helps you rent your home or find one to rent when you travel. Beyond online travel booking, it offers a non-touristy option for travelers who want an authentic “like the locals” experience.

It’s actually a lovely brand story. One I probably wouldn’t been interested in looking into if I hadn’t heard some colleagues snickering about a site set up to mock the Bélo. Now I’m kinda going to check into it further because it seems like it could be an affordable way to see places I’d never really thought about before. So if the logo was intended to make a splash, it worked and then some.

But I wasn’t sure I jump on board with the idea that a for-profit company just decided to create a symbol for “a sense of belonging.”

The first universal symbol I thought of that could compare to this was the peace sign. Did a company create this as part of their identity too? The answer is no. A British graphic artist created the famous circular symbol to use on banners for a nuclear disarmament rally held in London in 1958. The simple symbol caught on in the U.S. and was used in Civil Rights demonstrations and Vietnam War protests in the ‘60s. So, no for-profit company created it.

What about the heart as love? Starting in the 14th century, a version of the heart representing romantic love started appearing in art, but didn’t start becoming a popular culture staple till the 19th Century when it was used on products like candy and Valentine’s cards to signify romance. Again, no for-profit company created it.

What do you think? Can a company create a logo to represent a feeling? Will the Bélo always be associated with the company that paid for it to be designed by an agency? Or will the origins eventually be forgotten as with designer Gerald Holtom’s peace sign for that rally way back in the ‘50s?

Take an Inventory

The first step in organizing your content is to make sure you take an inventory of everything that is either existing or proposed for the site. If you will be replacing your current site with a new one, there are some tools out there (Screaming Frog or SEOTools for Excel) that will crawl your site and return a list of all the pages as well as some on-page SEO elements. This is usually a great place to start and helps you get a handle on all that content.

Good ol’ Pencil and Paper

Even though we’re a digital agency, I often say that sometimes there’s nothing more effective than a good ol’ pencil and paper! Once you have your pages listed out, get yourself some 3×5 index cards. Cut them in half if you need to. You’re going to take each page in your inventory and write the name of it (include a description if you need to) on an index card. If you have 25 pages in your site, you’ll have 25 index cards at the end.

Card Sorting

Once you’ve got your cards complete, you go through two rounds of sorting the cards. Have people in your organization (having actual customers do this is even better!) put the cards in groups and make notes about what cards are typically grouped together. You’ll quickly start to see that 1) most people group things in similar piles and 2) a few cards always switch between groups, depending on who is grouping them. Once a person has made their groups, have them name each group something they think fits.

What you’re doing here is trying to understand how different people think of your content. Why did they group “about us” with “history”? If there are cards that people struggle to group together, you may want to consider removing those pages from the site completely. Alternatively, you might want to take the content on those pages and combine it with another page. That decision can be made by best understanding your user paths – but that’s for another blog post!

Create the Sitemap

After you have your groups named and you know the pages inside each group, you just have to put together the Sitemap. We just use a spreadsheet to document it all, which allows us to add some on-page elements to each page. It’s a nice way to keep everyone on the same page. If you’re part of a development team though, it may make more sense to just implement in whatever system you’re using. In either case, you’ve managed to wrangle in that content beast and create a nicely-organized site!

Clear as a Bell Summary

Planning your site architecture can be a challenging task – especially when you’re converting legacy content! But, if you begin by taking an inventory and then enlisting the help of your colleagues and customers, you can pretty quickly decide what content should stay and where it should live inside the site.

Free Guide!

If you’d like more information on how to effectively plan your site, we’ve got an entire guide we’ve assembled to help you. If you need further help ensuring your site architecture matches your strategy, or you’re interesting in having your site earn you more leads or more sales, we’d love to talk to you more about how we could help!

Formalizing an Index Metric

In order to make an index we have to understand the goal we are trying to measure. Once we understand the goal we can compile a group of available metrics that, when taken together, measure the achievement of that goal. With the individual metrics in hand, it just comes down to aggregating them in way that makes sense for the index. Oftentimes it’s not just a matter of adding some number together. Usually we must apply individual weighting to each metric where the weight is proportional to the metrics involvement in satisfying the intended goal. So, that is basically how an index is developed. Now let me share a few indexes we have developed.

Brand Awareness Index

Most online marketers cringe at trying to measure brand awareness.  When we had keywords available to us, it was a little easier. However, a lot of brand awareness occurs off-line. This is where indexed metrics come into play because we can start to put together a bunch of other signals which have less weight per metric, but when combined, will paint the picture of a brand’s name being used online.

When we started to develop our brand awareness index, we had a few people sit down and write down what they thought showed brand awareness. The list of metrics we got back ranged from direct visits to social media mentions. This new index approach gives us the power to pull data points from any online data source so that we are no longer limited to just one resource. Not only does the brand awareness index pull in multiple metrics from multiple data sources, it actually gives a better picture of how well the brand is doing online, as a whole. Gone are the requirements to watch 9+ metrics and decide if we are doing well or poorly for that goal. And we no longer need to have a data expert explain what each metric means to everyone getting the reports.

Search Engine Visibility Index

Search Engine Optimization is one of the base-level requirements for the online success of a business. It has become one of the biggest pipelines for incoming visitors and will surely grow more important each day as the internet is being wired into our everyday lives, devices, and appliances. SEO has required a completely new approach because of the ever-changing algorithms search engine company’s like Google and Microsoft employ to calculate how pages are ranked. Once again, we are left with limited data since the disappearance of useful keyword data.

Using tools we have developed in house, we were able to identify significant algorithm changes and did a 360-degree spin to focus less on keywords and more on a page’s context and intent for organic measurement. So for us to track the success of our webpages in search engines, the development of the search engine visibility index came about. At our core, we are a company of online success optimizers; so this means that we do not just care about Google, but also Bing and any other search engine that brings in converting visitors. So, our search engine visibility algorithm takes a pages ranked position on all converting search engines and aggregates it up into one metric to trend and analyze.

With this new index we have been able to optimize faster and better to increase organic visits for our partners.  It has also made our whole system report on metrics that have nothing to do with keywords, or even one data source for that matter.  Another benefit we see is that we can pull out one piece of the aggregated data and substitute another without anything above it being noticed or effected.

The Power of Many

The final word of wisdom related to using indexes is the power and flexibility to be had by trending the system instead of many single metrics. When we do not use indexes to aggregate a goal’s measurement it requires watching and analyzing multiple single points of the story to determine if we are on the right track or not.  With the use of indexes, we can show the entire story in one metric which helps to eliminate the scares of single metric volatility and consolidates reporting.  It also allows us to quickly tell when a real success or failure occurs. For example, when the index rapidly increases in a positive direction we know most of the single metric signals are aligning for success and it is time to celebrate. The power gained by bringing together multiple metrics is one that we use every day for our client’s success.  It efficiently tells the complete story towards our objective and is an easy way to combat the big data problems we are faced with today.

Let’s Work Together

Measurement and success important to you? We’d love to talk more about how your digital efforts can perform better!

Sit back, take a deep breath, and imagine with me for a moment. Imagine that you could read the minds of anyone with whom you came in contact. You could read their emotions and their motivations. You would know what they wanted to hear and exactly what to say. You would understand what they wanted to achieve. You could take all of your insights and combine that with the person’s surroundings; you would know what they were doing, where they were currently and where there were headed, if they were using a mobile device, and a myriad of other small details. If they asked you a question, you could take all of this information and respond in a way that would perfectly meet their needs at that moment. If for some reason you didn’t meet their expectation, you could know that and change your response. Wouldn’t this be great if communication worked this way?

The New Reality

You may think this mind-reading reality doesn’t exist, however you are somewhat wrong. In the digital world, it is real.  More than ever, Google is focused on the use of semantic search; moving beyond keywords to tap into the searcher’s intent. Semantic search is the pursuit of helping respond to both implicit (behavioral or environmental based) and explicit (a typed or voice search) queries based on the meaning behind the queries. It’s the challenge of getting users from a question to an answer with fewer clicks and searches, or in some cases, without a click at all.

With the continual changes Google is making to its search algorithm, search engine optimization (SEO) is increasingly challenging. Therefore, we need to shift toward a content-centric SEO approach.  It’s time, in 2014, to develop a solid content strategy and put our efforts into developing unique, high-quality content that provides users with the best experiences across multiple digital platforms. It’s important to create humanized content on every page of your site. Humanized means content is created in the best interest of the customer and presented to them in a way that immediately addresses the appropriate context and intent for every question they are asking within each stage in the buying cycle.

Lets examine the meaning of this:

Note: The following are definitions from dictionary.com

con·text

noun

1. the parts of a written or spoken statement that precede or follow a specific word or passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect.

2. the set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc.

in·tent

noun

1. meaning or significance

Implicit and explicit context

Determining context is one of the most customer-centric tasks we can do. When we do this, we are concerned with how we provide the customer with the best products and services given their location, their mood, their tastes, the time of year, etc. It goes beyond targeting and customization. It’s about getting a wider view of the customer. Where is she? What is she doing? What does she want? What’s the easiest, most enjoyable way for her to shop? It’s also about providing information, tailored to her needs, on how and why our product or service is fit for her.

If you are searching the question: How to change a tire?

The intention of the query holds a unique meaning depending on the device used and current surroundings that leads to a very different answer. Are you on a desktop or on a mobile device?

From a desktop– Google is trying to decipher the question and can observe the user is static. They can assume that most likely this is not an urgent need. The person is likely researching and then at some point soon will be attempting this on their own.

From mobile– Google can assume this has a higher degree of urgency. The person may be stranded on the road and quickly needs roadside assistance, or needs the proper steps to quickly change the tire. We won’t get into Google Plus knowing your address and then comparing your current location with your address. We’ll leave that somewhat creepy conversation for another post.

Now with Google understanding the implicit and explicit intent, they can send the user to the site with the exact contextualized content to make sure that the content provided gets the searcher exactly what they need- the moment it’s needed. This humanizes their experience.

So where do we start?

We need to start with really understanding our audience and gathering all the information to put together buyer profiles (download a free worksheet below).  We start to form sample questions that each profile may be asking within each funnel position on multiple devices.

We look at our competitors’ content and we look at the questions our profiles are asking. We find out what profiles our competitors are targeting with content and create a gap analysis. This then provides opportunity for content.

Once we have gathered the questions and identified differentiating content, we can then start to map the information customers need at each marketing touch point, to the site map. This can help define coherent keyword groups that can all be served by the same content. We can then consistently capture the context of the moment with the right communications.

Once the content is mapped, it’s important to make sure structured markup or schema is added to the content assets. By using structured markup, you can help Google and other search engines better understand how your content provides a solution, or a complete answer, to a query now and as it evolves in the future.

Great examples of the future search experience include: Google’s knowledge graph, Instant Answers, Google Now, and local carousel. With these technologies, relevant information is available based on semantic search. Search engines return the right answers, not just a list of links to choose from. Google is looking at rich structured data sources within the web and connecting paths between them in order to come up with an actual answer to a query. Google takes into account a variety of factors like intent, sentiment, freshness, personalization, localization, and many more. Semantic markup helps Google provide more relevant results to users based on the overall meaning behind their search.

To Summarize

As mobile evolves and semantic search becomes a big part of Google’s algorithm, it is now time to develop humanized content as part of your SEO fundamentals. The customer is in charge, and getting in front of them is the biggest challenge. By strategizing every page and creating content visitors need at the time they need it, we can be sure to turn leads into actionable results.

Get started developing your customer content profiles today. Download our free worksheet below!

The Walkthrough Using The Context + Intent Theory

Instead of jumping right into the actual implementation, it is a good exercise to brainstorm and then validate ourselves later.  To start, we pick the item that we’re going to market.  It just so happens that I have been looking at tablets, so we will pick a tablet to market.  Now we would have to develop the list of intenton-based words which fit the item, the audience, and the steps in the buying funnel.  Just a few words that show intent come quickly to mind are:

• learn
• research
• compare
• buy
• purchase

There are many versions of the buying funnel, but most digital marketers will start with a streamlined 3 stage funnel.  Those 3 stages upon which we will initially focus are awareness, consideration, and purchase. These will also be the stages which we will see in our breakdown example of the tablet.

Pairing our “intent” words with the item, and aligning that with the buying funnel, will provide us with three amazing things for our site.  The first one is the individual pages which are needed to satisfy the unique pairs. The second one is the context and actions upon which each of those pages will be focused. The last thing it provides for us is the linking structure of the pages.  What I start to develop is a page-to-intent grouping like the table below:

If we did not have an example to jump right into, we would validate our context groups with search volume analysis and then start to develop the content around these pages.  While doing that, we be making sure our context and intent for each page stays focused so that we don’t have multiple pages serving the same context+intent pair at the same funnel position.

Example Product Breakdown and Litmus Test

The Awareness Funnel Stage

According to our brainstorming, the first tablet page we arrive at would be the learn [this] tablet page. It should be focused at the top of the funnel, building awareness for the tablet.

So how do you think we did?  To me it would appear that we are not that far off.  First we notice that there are actually two tablets.  So part of the awareness step is to let us know, and select, what specific tablet we want to pick for our next step.  In the image above, we accented the key words.  Notice how many times we see tablet(s) and the brand name. Next notice how the copy focuses on the actions bring, put, and give.  Combining those words, Google is “bringing to” and “putting in front of” us, their tablets. Why would they do this? Obviously so we buy them. The final thing we see is the intent used in the call to action buttons.  Google is using ‘explore’ to point us to the next funnel stage which is where the visitor would probably learn more details about the tablet version selected.

The Consideration Funnel Stage

While we follow the “explore” button, remember that our prediction for this page is that it is focused on researching and comparing tablets.

Similar to the explore page, we have a consistent intent and almost the same count of occurrences for the item and brand!  Analyzing the content, we see they are giving us details about the item and also the price.  Do you remember seeing a price on the first page?  No, and that is not because they forgot it.  The purpose of this page, and stage of the funnel, is to give us all the details which will influence our consideration for purchasing this item.  If we could actually fit the entire page in our screenshot above, we would also see five sections that each describe the tablet in more detail.  This detailed information is exactly what the visitor would need during the research step to help with further consideration of purchase.

So you may be wondering about the comparison intent we thought about.  Interestingly, I actually feel they are doing that, but by relying on what they deem as common tablet-shopper knowledge.  We all typically know what an iPad costs, and we also know that it has an amazing Retina Display (we know this because Apple’s model is to have one price, and due to it’s brand recognition, it hits every media outlet on the planet when they introduce a new product).  On Google’s Nexus page we see a lot of mentions of it’s cost in relation to Apple’s product. We also see that it has a super HD display, which has a higher resolution than an iPad.  Once again we see the buttons’ intent is the buy intent, which will take us to the final funnel stage.

The Purchase Funnel Stage

Finally we step through to the buy stage to find ourselves in the Google Play Store, which is allowing us to “add to cart.”  Interestingly, this step is on a different site, The Google Play Store, and also repeats some of the consideration stage’s content.  It is only repeating a brief part of that content, however, and also includes buttons back to the consideration page. I have to imagine we see the repetitive consideration content because The Play Store has its own buying funnel and filtering steps

Final Thoughts

Some final things which are worth noting is how true and consistent Google is sticking to the principles of single page intent.  One of the big reasons that I predict this to be the future of SEO is because it is less confusing for the robots and, more importantly, offers a better experience for visitors.  To further explain that, when we are on the awareness stage, there is no reference to the consideration or purchase stages.  Conversely, when we are on the consideration stage, there is no reference to the awareness stage.  The forward linking of the pages follows the buying funnel.  This linking of the pages creates the page’s hierarchical position in the sitemap.  In our example page set, Google also mimics the page hierarchy in the url structure; thus giving the current page’s context more definition by combining the parent pages context.

It would seem that our breakdown for a product’s pages from the “king of search” is staying true to the context + intent theory being a winning SEO approach. We hope this helps you in your online marketing efforts and gives you a shoulder to lean on if you have further needs.

A huge thanks to my fellow Mindscape colleagues for the continual steps we take everyday to set the curve, push the envelope, and produce results which validate the creation of great articles like these.