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Try Your Hand at A/B Testing for a Chance to Win the Email Subject Line Contest

Editor’s Note: This subject line contest is no longer accepting entries. In the next few weeks, we will read all of the entries, select the best ones, and then run the test. Then, check the MarketingExperiments blog in a few weeks to see which entry won, why it won, and what you can learn from that to further improve your own marketing.

This blog post ends with an opportunity for you to win a stay at the ARIA in Vegas and a ticket to Email Summit, but it begins with an essential question for marketers…

How can you improve already successful marketing, advertising, websites and copywriting?

Today’s Moz blog post is unique. Not only are we going to teach you how to address this challenge, we’re going to offer an example that you can dig into to help drive home the lesson.

Give the people what they want

Some copy and design is so bad, the fixes are obvious. Maybe you shouldn’t insult the customer in the headline. Maybe you should update the website that still uses a dot matrix font.

But when you’re already doing well, how can you continue to improve?

I don’t have the answer for you, but I’ll tell you who does – your customers.

There are many tricks, gimmicks and technology you can use in marketing, but when you strip away all the hype and rhetoric, successful marketing is pretty straightforward – clearly communicate the value your offer provides to people who will pay you for that value.

Easier said than done, of course.

So how do you determine what customers want? And the best way to deliver it to them?

Well, there are many ways to learn from customers, such as focus groups, surveys and social listening. While there is value in asking people what they want, there is also a major challenge in it. “People’s ability to understand the factors that affect their behavior is surprisingly poor,” according to research from Dr. Noah J. Goldstein, Associate Professor of Management and Organizations, UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Or, as Malcolm Gladwell more glibly puts it when referring to coffee choices, “The mind knows not what the tongue wants.”

Not to say that opinion-based customer preference research is bad. It can be helpful. However, it should be the beginning and not the end of your quest.

…by seeing what they actually do

You can use what you learn from opinion-based research to create a hypothesis about what customers want, and then run an experiment to see how they actually behave in real-world customer interactions with your product, marketing messages, and website.

The technique that powers this kind of research is often known as A/B testing, split testing, landing page optimization, and/or website optimization. If you are testing more than one thing at a time, it may also be referred to as multi-variate testing.

To offer a simple example, you might assume that customers buy your product because it tastes great. Or because it’s less filling. So you could create two landing pages – one with a headline that promotes that taste (treatment A) and another that mentions the low carbs (treatment B). You then send half the traffic that visits that URL to each version and see which performs better.

Here is a simple visual that Joey Taravella, Content Writer, MECLABS create to illustrate the concept…

That’s just one test. To really learn about your customers, you must continue the process and create a testing-optimization cycle in your organization – continue to run A/B tests, record the findings, learn from them, create more hypotheses, and test again based on these hypotheses.

This is true marketing experimentation, and helps you build your theory of the customer.

But you probably know all that already. So here’s your chance to practice while helping us shape an A/B test. You might even win a prize in the process.

The email subject line contest

The Moz Blog and MarketingExperiments Blog have joined forces to run a unique marketing experimentation contest. We’re presenting you with a real challenge from a real organization (VolunteerMatch) and asking you to write a subject line to test (it’s simple, just leave your subject line as a comment in this blog post).

We’re going to pick three subject lines suggested by readers of The Moz Blog and three from the MarketingExperiments Blog and run a test with this organization’s customers. Whoever writes the best performing subject line will win a stay at the ARIA Resort in Las Vegas as well as a two-day ticket to MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2015 to help them gain lessons to further improve their marketing.

Sound good? OK, let’s dive in and tell you more about your “client”…

Craft the best-performing subject line to win the prize

Every year at Email Summit, we run a live A/B test where the audience helps craft the experiment. We then run, validate, close the experiment, and share the results during Summit as a way to teach about marketing experimentation. We have typically run the experiment using MarketingSherpa as the “client” website to test (MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa are sister publications, both owned by MECLABS Institute).

However, this year we wanted to try something different and interviewed three national non-profits to find a new “client” for our tests.

We chose VolunteerMatch – a nonprofit organization that uses the power of technology to make it easier for good people and good causes to connect. One of the key reasons we chose VolunteerMatch is because it is an already successful organization looking to further improve. (Here is a case study explaining one of its successful implementations – Lead Management: How a B2B SaaS nonprofit decreased its sales cycle 99%).

Another reason we chose VolunteerMatch for this opportunity is that it has three types of customers, so the lessons from the content we create can help marketers across a wide range of sales models. VolunteerMatch’s customers are:

People who want to volunteer (B2C)
Non-profit organizations looking for volunteers (non-profit)
Businesses looking for corporate volunteering solutions (B2B) to which it offers a Software-as-a-Service product through VolunteerMatch Solutions

Designing the experiment

After we took VolunteerMatch on as the Research Partner “client,” Jon Powell, Senior Executive Research and Development Manager, MECLABS, worked with Shari Tishman, Director of Engagement and Lauren Wagner, Senior Manager of Engagement, VolunteerMatch, to understand their challenges, take a look at their current assets and performance, and craft a design of experiments to determine what further knowledge about its customers would help VolunteerMatch improve performance.

That design of experiments includes a series of split tests – including the live test we’re going to run at Email Summit, as well as the one you have an opportunity to take part in by writing a subject line in the comments section of this blog post. Let’s take a look at that experiment…

The challenge

VolunteerMatch wants to increase the response rate of the corporate email list (B2B) by discovering the best possible messaging to use. In order to find out, MarketingExperiments wants to run an A/B split test to determine the best messaging.

However the B2B list is relatively smaller than the volunteer/cause list (B2C) which makes it harder to test in (and gain statistical significance) and determine which messaging is most effective.

So we’re going to run a messaging test to the B2C list. This isn’t without its challenges though, because most individuals on the B2C list are not likely to immediately connect with B2B corporate solutions messaging.

So the question is…

How do we create an email that is relevant (to the B2C list), which doesn’t ask too much, that simultaneously helps us discover the most relevant aspect of the solutions (B2B) product (if any)?

The approach – Here’s where you come in

This is where the Moz and MarketingExperiments community comes in to help.

We would like you to craft subject lines relevant to the B2C list, which highlight various benefits of the corporate solutions tool.

We have broken down the corporate solutions tool into three main categories of benefit for the SaaS product. In the comments section below, include which category you are writing a subject line for along with what you think is an effective subject line.

The crew at Moz and MarketingExperiments will then choose the top subject line in each category to test. Below you will find the emails that will be sent as part of the test. They are identical, except for the subject lines (which you will write) and the bolded line in the third paragraph (that ties into that category of value).

Category #1: Proof, recognition, credibility

Category #2: Better, more opportunities to choose from

Category #3: Ease-of-use

About VolunteerMatch’s brand

Since we’re asking you to try your hand at crafting messaging for this example “client,” here is some more information about the brand to inform your messaging…

VolunteerMatch’s brand identity

VolunteerMatch’s core values

Ten things VolunteerMatch believes:

People want to do good
Every great cause should be able to find the help it needs
People want to improve their lives and communities through volunteering
You can’t make a difference without making a connection
In putting the power of technology to good use
Businesses are serious about making a difference
In building relationships based on trust and excellent service
In partnering with like-minded organizations to create systems that result in even greater impact
The passion of our employees drives the success of our products, services and mission
In being great at what we do

And now, we test…

To participate, you must leave your comment with your idea for a subject line before midnight on Tuesday, January 13, 2015. The contest is open to all residents of the 50 US states, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), 18 or older. If you want more info, here are the official rules.

When you enter your subject line in the comments section, also include which category you’re entering for (and if you have an idea outside these categories, let us know…we just might drop it in the test).

Next, the Moz marketing team will pick the subject lines they think will perform best in each category from all the comments on The Moz Blog, and the MarketingExperiments team will pick the subject lines we think will perform the best in each category from all the comments on the MarketingExperiments Blog.

We’ll give the VolunteerMatch team a chance to approve the subject lines based on their brand standards, then test all six to eight subject lines and report back to you through the Moz and MarketingExperiments blogs which subject lines won and why they won to help you improve your already successful marketing.

So, what have you got? Write your best subject lines in the comments section below. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Related resources

If you’re interested in learning more about marketing experimentation and A/B testing, you might find these links helpful…

And here’s a look at a previous subject line writing contest we’ve run to give you some ideas for your entry…

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

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Discussion: Can You Disavow out of Penguin? – Whiteboard Friday

Posted by josh_bachynski Editor’s note: Whew! This one generated a fair bit of controversy in the SEO community. Be sure to check out the comments below the post for a holistic picture of the debate at hand. Carry on! Penguin is back at the forefr… Continue reading →

The Best of the Best: Celebrating the Top 10 of the Moz Top 10 for 2014

Posted by Isla_McKetta

Oh no, another year-end roundup! But before you click away, let me sell you a little on why this is the roundup you actually want to read.

You see, to compile the Moz Top 10 over the last year, we probably read 50 or more articles EACH WEEK, that’s around 100 articles for every issue. We then spent innumerable hours curating and culling until we could share with you the very best of those articles in the bi-weekly Top 10.

So this is not just another listicle. This article is in fact the distillation of the very best content from all over the interwebs for the past year that has anything to do with digital marketing. Basically, we read 2,600 (or so) articles so you don’t have to.

What does “best” mean?

There’s no formula for what makes an article Top-10 worthy. We look for the best content of each two week period and then try and winnow and fit it until each newsletter contains just the right balance of digital marketing tips, tricks, analysis, and inspiration.

We work to reach beyond SEO and find articles that will help people who specialize in content, social, design, UX, and more broaden their skill set and understand the work their marketing compatriots engage in. The mix and style changes as the author of this newsletter changes. I’m biased toward content marketing, Cyrus loves SEO. Trevor’s a sucker for a journalistic slant.

But whoever is writing the latest edition is trying to find that perfect balance so you come away from the newsletter having found at least one article that teaches you something new, changes the way you think about marketing, or makes your job a little easier.

We look for articles by authors new and old that are well written, well illustrated, and comprehensive. Sometimes we publish something because it’s a really good resource or because it says the thing that needs to be said.

Some pieces make the Top 10 because they are heart-achingly eloquent. And sometimes we include a little something fun, playful, or easy on the eyes (but still educational) at the end to finish your day off right.

Then news breaks (ahem, Google) and we reconfigure it all.

The Top 10 of the Top 10

For the Top 10 of the Moz Top 10, we could have gone with the most newsworthy content—articles that claim some tactic is dead or some era is over, but Search Engine Land already did that, so I wanted to take a different approach.

Instead, I chose the articles from 2014 that endure. Below you’ll find articles that continue to inspire, how-tos and guides so comprehensive they deserve a revisit, and, yes, even a few tips and tricks that you should really get to. Without further ado, here are the best of the best…

1. Life is a Game. This is Your Strategy Guide

If you can master life, all that marketing stuff is a cake walk. Level up in your day-to-day with this thoughtful, comprehensive, and gorgeous guide from Oliver Emberton.

2. Announcing the All-New Beginner’s Guide to Link Building

Paddy Moogan knows a thing or two about link building, and here he’s teamed up with some folks at Moz to turn all of that information into an easy-to-follow yet comprehensive guide. I had no part in this project, so I can safely tell you I <3 the Zelda references.

3. No Words Wasted: A Guide to Creating Focused Content

From getting customer interviews right to nailing content promotion, this massive guide from Distilled covers everything you need to know about content strategy. I learn something new (or rediscover something I should never have forgotten) every time I read it.

4. Micro Data & Schema.org Rich Snippets: Everything You Need to Know

If you don’t know what micro data are and you haven’t figured out what to do with Schema.org, your content marketing is missing a crucial element for SERP success. BuiltVisible to the rescue with this amazing and easy-to-follow guide.

5. The Beginner’s Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization

If you suspect there’s a blockage in your sales funnel, it’s time to think about CRO. This guide from Qualaroo will tell you everything you need to know to start pinpointing (and fixing) your barriers to conversion.

6. 2014 Industry Survey Results

A survey so big we can only do it once every two years. Peek at salaries, tools, and trends to compare where the digital marketing industry was at the beginning of 2014 to where you are now for a peek at what the future may hold.

7. UX Crash Course: User Psychology

Composed of 31 lessons, this online “course” will help you understand user motivation and how you can use psychology to massively improve your user experience.

8. A Geek’s Guide to Gaming The Algorithms

Sometimes looking at information from a slightly different angle makes it easier to digest. In this delightful piece, Ian Lurie teaches us when it’s okay to game the algorithms at the same time as he’s spelling out, in plain language, what each algorithm update was really about.

9. The Ultimate List of IFTTT Recipes for Marketers

Favorite part of this amazingly detailed post from SEER? The fact that it starts from a user’s perspective. So whether you want to “stalk your competitors’ stocks” or “keep track of industry meetups,” there’s an answer (in the form of an IFTTT recipe) here for you.

10. The Rich Snippets Algorithm

So much changed in the realm of rich snippets last year. AJ Kohn delves into the relationship between those rich snippets and knowledge graph results. It’s a heady post that just might offer some interesting insight into the future of SERPs.

Sign up for the Moz Top 10

Like what you see? Want us to read all the articles while you peruse a summary of the most important things you need to know?

Sign up for the Moz Top 10

After you click that big red button, you’ll be taken to the Moz Top 10 page and asked to enter your email and hit “subscribe.” At that moment we’ll put you on the list for the very next edition, currently scheduled for January 13.

Submit to the Moz Top 10

And if you’re someone who’s writing Top-10-worthy content and we just haven’t found you yet, we want to read what you’ve got. So please send us your suggestions. Each edition of the Moz Top 10 only covers content from the most recent two-week period, so send that link while the content is still fresh.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

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The Best of 2014: Top People and Posts from the Moz Blog

Posted by Trevor-Klein

At the end of every year, we compile a list of the very best posts and most popular and prolific people that have been published on the Moz Blog and YouMoz. It’s a really fun way to look back on what happened this year, and an insight-packed view of what really resonates with our readers.

Here’s what we’ve got in store:

A huge thanks goes to Dr. Pete Meyers and Cyrus Shepard; their help cut the amount of time creating this piece consumed in half.

We hope you enjoy the look back at the past year, and wish you a very happy start to 2015!

1. Top Moz Blog posts by 1Metric score

Earlier this year, we created a new metric to evaluate the success of our blog posts, calling it “the one metric” in a nod to The Lord of the Rings. We even wrote about it on this blog. With the help and feedback of many folks in the community as well as some refinement of our own, we’ve now polished the metric, changed the spelling a bit, applied it retroactively to older posts, and are using it regularly in-house. The following posts are those with the highest scores, representing the 10 posts that saw the most overall success this year. In case there was any doubt, Cyrus really (really) knows what he’s doing.

1. More than Keywords: 7 Concepts of Advanced On-Page SEO
October 21 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
As marketers, helping search engines understand what our content means is one of our most important tasks. Search engines can’t read pages like humans can, so we incorporate structure and clues as to what our content means. This post explores a series of on-page techniques that not only build upon one another, but can be combined in sophisticated ways.

2. New Title Tag Guidelines & Preview Tool
March 20 – Posted by Dr. Peter J. Meyers
Google’s 2014 redesign had a big impact on search result titles, cutting them off much sooner. This post includes a title preview tool and takes a data-driven approach to finding the new limit.

3. Your Google Algorithm Cheat Sheet: Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird
June 11 – Posted by Marie Haynes
Do you have questions about the Panda algorithm, the Penguin algorithm, or Hummingbird? This guide explains in lay terms what each of these Google algorithm changes is about and how to improve your site so that it looks better in the eyes of the big G.

4. 12 Ways to Increase Traffic From Google Without Building Links
March 11 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
The job of the Technical SEO becomes more complex each year, but we also have more opportunities now than ever. Here are 12 ways you can improve your rankings without relying on link building.

5. The Most Entertaining Guide to Landing Page Optimization You’ll Ever Read
May 20 – Posted by Oli Gardner
If you’ve ever been bored while reading a blog post, your life just got better. If you’ve ever wanted to learn about conversion rate optimization, and how to design high-converting landing pages, without falling asleep, you’re in the right place. Buckle up, and prepare to be entertained in your learning regions.

6. Illustrated Guide to Advanced On-Page Topic Targeting for SEO
November 17 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
The concepts of advanced on-page SEO are dizzying: LDA, co-occurrence, and entity salience. The question is “How can I easily incorporate these techniques into my content for higher rankings?” The truth is, you can create optimized pages that rank well without understanding complex algorithms.

7. Panda 4.1 Google Leaked Dos and Don’ts – Whiteboard Friday
December 05 – Posted by Josh Bachynski
Panda is about so much more than good content. Let Josh Bachynski give you the inside information on the highlights of what you should (and should not) be doing.

8. 10 Smart Tips to Leverage Google+ for Increased Web Traffic
April 15 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
While not everyone has an audience active on Google+, the number of people who interact socially with any Google products on a monthly basis now reportedly exceeds 500 million.

9. The Rules of Link Building – Whiteboard Friday
April 04 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
Google is increasingly playing the referee in the marketing game, and many marketers are simply leaving instead of playing by the rules. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Cyrus Shepard takes a time-out to explain a winning strategy.

10. The Myth of Google’s 200 Ranking Factors
September 30 – Posted by Gianluca Fiorelli
Nothing like the “The 200 Google Ranking Factors” actually exists. It is a myth, and those who claim to be able to offer a final list are its prophets. This post explains how the myth was born and the importance of knowing the stages of search engines’ working process.

2. Top Moz Blog posts by unique visits

The heaviest-weighted ingredient in the 1Metric is unique visits, as one of our primary goals for the Moz Blog is to drive traffic to the rest of the site. With that in mind, we thought it interesting to break things down to just this metric and show you just how different this list is from the last one. Of note: Dr. Pete’s post on Google’s new design for title tags is a nod to the power of evergreen content. That post is one that folks can return to over and over as they fiddle with their own title tags, and amassed more than twice the traffic of the post in the #2 slot.

1. New Title Tag Guidelines & Preview Tool
March 20 – Posted by Dr. Peter J. Meyers
Google’s 2014 redesign had a big impact on search result titles, cutting them off much sooner. This post includes a title preview tool and takes a data-driven approach to finding the new limit.

2. The Most Entertaining Guide to Landing Page Optimization You’ll Ever Read
May 20 – Posted by Oli Gardner
If you’ve ever been bored while reading a blog post, your life just got better. If you’ve ever wanted to learn about conversion rate optimization, and how to design high-converting landing pages, without falling asleep, you’re in the right place. Buckle up, and prepare to be entertained in your learning regions.

3. 12 Ways to Increase Traffic From Google Without Building Links
March 11 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
The job of the Technical SEO becomes more complex each year, but we also have more opportunities now than ever. Here are 12 ways you can improve your rankings without relying on link building.

4. Why Every Business Should Spend at Least $1 per Day on Facebook Ads
February 19 – Posted by Brian Carter
For the last three years I’ve constantly recommended Facebook ads. I recommend them to both B2C and B2B businesses. I recommend them to local theaters and comedians here in Charleston, SC. I recommend them to everyone who wants to grow awareness about anything they’re doing. Here’s why.

5. More than Keywords: 7 Concepts of Advanced On-Page SEO
October 21 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
As marketers, helping search engines understand what our content means is one of our most important tasks. Search engines can’t read pages like humans can, so we incorporate structure and clues as to what our content means. This post explores a series of on-page techniques that not only build upon one another, but can be combined in sophisticated ways.

6. Your Google Algorithm Cheat Sheet: Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird
June 11 – Posted by Marie Haynes
Do you have questions about the Panda algorithm, the Penguin algorithm, or Hummingbird? This guide explains in lay terms what each of these Google algorithm changes is about and how to improve your site so that it looks better in the eyes of the big G.

7. Make Facebook’s Algorithm Change Work For You, Not Against You
January 23 – Posted by Chad Wittman
Recently, many page admins have been experiencing a significant decrease in Total Reach—specifically, organic reach. For pages that want to keep their ad budget as low as possible, maximizing organic reach is vital. To best understand how to make a change like this work for you, and not against you, we need to examine what happened—and what you can do about it.

8. How to Rank Well in Amazon, the US’s Largest Product Search Engine
June 04 – Posted by Nathan Grimm
The eCommerce SEO community is ignoring a huge opportunity by focusing almost exclusively on Google. Amazon has roughly three times more search volume for products, and this post tells you all about how to rank.

9. Personas: The Art and Science of Understanding the Person Behind the Visit
January 29 – Posted by Michael King
With the erosion of keyword intelligence and the move to strings-not-things for the user, Google is pushing all marketers to focus more on their target audience. This post will teach you how to understand that audience, the future of Google, and how to build data-driven personas step by step.

10. Panda 4.0, Payday Loan 2.0 & eBay’s Very Bad Day
May 21 – Posted by Dr. Peter J. Meyers
Preliminary analysis of the Panda 4.0 and Payday Loan 2.0 updates, major algorithm flux on May 19th, and a big one-day rankings drop for eBay.

3. Top YouMoz Blog posts by unique visits

One of our favorite parts of the Moz community is the YouMoz Blog, where our community members can submit their own posts for potential publishing here on our site. We’re constantly impressed by what we’re sent. These 10 posts all received such high praise that they were promoted to the main Moz Blog, but they all started out as YouMoz posts.

1. Make Facebook’s Algorithm Change Work For You, Not Against You
January 23 – Posted by Chad Wittman
Recently, many page admins have been experiencing a significant decrease in Total Reach—specifically, organic reach. For pages that want to keep their ad budget as low as possible, maximizing organic reach is vital. To best understand how to make a change like this work for you, and not against you, we need to examine what happened—and what you can do about it.

2. Parallax Scrolling Websites and SEO – A Collection of Solutions and Examples
April 01 – Posted by Carla Dawson
I have observed that there are many articles that say parallax scrolling is not ideal for search engines. Parallax Scrolling is a design technique and it is ideal for search engines if you know how to apply it. I have collected a list of great tutorials and real SEO-friendly parallax websites to help the community learn how to use both techniques together.

3. (Provided): 10 Ways to Prove SEO Value in Google Analytics
February 25 – Posted by Jeff Sauer
We and our clients have relied on keyword reports for so long that we’re now using (not provided) as a crutch. This post offers 10 ways you can use Google Analytics to prove your SEO value now that those keywords are gone.

4. How to Set Up and Use Twitter Lead Generation Cards in Your Tweets for Free!
May 07 – Posted by Dana Tan
Working as an in-house SEO strategist for a small business forces me to get “scrappy” every day with tools and techniques. I’m constantly on the lookout for an opportunity that can help my company market to broader audiences for less money. Here’s how to set up your Twitter Cards for free!

5. 75 Content Starters for Any Industry
February 06 – Posted by Amanda Gallucci
Suffering from blank page anxiety? Before you go on the hunt for inspiration all over the Internet and elsewhere, turn to the resources around you. Realize that you can create exceptional content with what you already have at hand.

6. The Hidden Power of Nofollow Links
June 08 – Posted by Nicole Kohler
For those of us who are trying to earn links for our clients, receiving a nofollow link can feel like a slap in the face. But these links have hidden powers that make them just as important as followed ones. Here’s why nofollow links are more powerful than you might think.

7. A Startling Case Study of Manual Penalties and Negative SEO
March 17 – Posted by Yonatan Dotan
One day in my inbox I found the dreaded notice from Google that our client had a site-wide manual penalty for unnatural inbound links. We quickly set up a call and went through the tooth-rattling ordeal of explaining to our client that they weren’t even ranked for their brand name. Organic traffic dropped by a whopping 94% – and that for a website that gets 66% of its traffic from Google-based organic search.

8. How PornHub Is Bringing its A-Game (SFW)
July 23 – Posted by Javier Sanz
Despite dealing with a sensitive subject, PornHub is doing a great job marketing itself. This (safe-for-work) post takes a closer look at what they are doing.

9. Storytelling Through Data: A New Inbound Marketing & SEO Report Structure
January 07 – Posted by Aaron Friedman
No matter what business you are in, it’s a pretty sure thing that someone is going to want to monitor how efficiently and productively you are working. Being able to show these results over time is crucial to maintaining the health of the long term relationship.

10. The Art of Thinking Sideways: Content Marketing for “Boring” Businesses
April 08 – Posted by Robin Swire
In this article, I’ll examine the art of thinking sideways for one of the slightly more tricky marketing clients I’ve worked with. I hope that this will provide an insight for fellow content marketers and SEOs in similar scenarios.

4. Top Moz Blog posts by number of thumbs up

These 10 posts were well enough received that liked that quite a few readers took the time to engage with them, logging in to give their stamp of approval. Whiteboard Fridays are always a hit, and two of them managed to make this list after having been live for less than a month.

1. More than Keywords: 7 Concepts of Advanced On-Page SEO
October 21 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
As marketers, helping search engines understand what our content means is one of our most important tasks. Search engines can’t read pages like humans can, so we incorporate structure and clues as to what our content means. This post explores a series of on-page techniques that not only build upon one another, but can be combined in sophisticated ways.

2. New Title Tag Guidelines & Preview Tool
March 20 – Posted by Dr. Peter J. Meyers
Google’s 2014 redesign had a big impact on search result titles, cutting them off much sooner. This post includes a title preview tool and takes a data-driven approach to finding the new limit.

3. Dear Google, Links from YouMoz Don’t Violate Your Quality Guidelines
July 23 – Posted by Rand Fishkin
Recently, Moz contributor Scott Wyden, a photographer in New Jersey, received a warning in his Google Webmaster Tools about some links that violated Google’s Quality Guidelines. One example was from moz.com.

4. Your Google Algorithm Cheat Sheet: Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird
June 11 – Posted by Marie Haynes
Do you have questions about the Panda algorithm, the Penguin algorithm, or Hummingbird? This guide explains in lay terms what each of these Google algorithm changes is about and how to improve your site so that it looks better in the eyes of the big G.

5. Thank You for 10 Incredible Years
October 06 – Posted by Rand Fishkin
It’s been 10 amazing years since Rand started the blog that would turn into SEOmoz and then Moz, and we never could have come this far without you all. You’ll find letters of appreciation from Rand and Sarah in this post (along with a super-cool video retrospective!), and from all of us at Moz, thank you!

6. Illustrated Guide to Advanced On-Page Topic Targeting for SEO
November 17 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
The concepts of advanced on-page SEO are dizzying: LDA, co-occurrence, and entity salience. The question is “How can I easily incorporate these techniques into my content for higher rankings?” The truth is, you can create optimized pages that rank well without understanding complex algorithms.

7. Panda 4.1 Google Leaked Dos and Don’ts – Whiteboard Friday
December 05 – Posted by Josh Bachynski
Panda is about so much more than good content. Let Josh Bachynski give you the inside information on the highlights of what you should (and should not) be doing.

8. The Most Entertaining Guide to Landing Page Optimization You’ll Ever Read
May 20 – Posted by Oli Gardner
If you’ve ever been bored while reading a blog post, your life just got better. If you’ve ever wanted to learn about conversion rate optimization, and how to design high-converting landing pages, without falling asleep, you’re in the right place. Buckle up, and prepare to be entertained in your learning regions.

9. Does SEO Boil Down to Site Crawlability and Content Quality? – Whiteboard Friday
July 11 – Posted by Rand Fishkin
What does good SEO really mean these days? Rand takes us beyond crawlability and content quality for a peek inside the art and science of the practice.

10. How to Avoid the Unrealistic Expectations SEOs Often Create – Whiteboard Friday
December 12 – Posted by Rand Fishkin
Making promises about SEO results too often leads to broken dreams and shredded contracts. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand shows us how to set expectations that lead to excitement but help prevent costly misunderstandings.

5. Top Moz Blog posts by number of comments

While the discussions can take a big chunk out of an already busy day, the conversations we get to have with our community members (and the conversations they have with each other) in the comments below our posts is absolutely one of our favorite parts of the blog. These 10 posts garnered quite a bit of discussion (some with a fair amount of controversy), and are fascinating to follow.

1. Take the SEO Expert Quiz and Rule the Internet
May 28 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
You are master of the keyword. You create 1,000 links with a single tweet. Google engineers ask for your approval before updating their algorithm. You, my friend, are an SEO Expert. Prove it by taking our new SEO Expert Quiz.

2. The Rules of Link Building – Whiteboard Friday
April 04 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
Google is increasingly playing the referee in the marketing game, and many marketers are simply leaving instead of playing by the rules. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Cyrus Shepard takes a time-out to explain a winning strategy.

3. Dear Google, Links from YouMoz Don’t Violate Your Quality Guidelines
July 23 – Posted by Rand Fishkin
Recently, Moz contributor Scott Wyden, a photographer in New Jersey, received a warning in his Google Webmaster Tools about some links that violated Google’s Quality Guidelines. One example was from moz.com.

4. New Title Tag Guidelines & Preview Tool
March 20 – Posted by Dr. Peter J. Meyers
Google’s 2014 redesign had a big impact on search result titles, cutting them off much sooner. This post includes a title preview tool and takes a data-driven approach to finding the new limit.

5. SEO Teaching: Should SEO Be Taught at Universities?
October 09 – Posted by Carla Dawson
Despite the popularity and importance of SEO, the field has yet to gain significant traction at the university level other than a few courses here and there offered as part of a broader digital marketing degree. The tide could be turning, however slowly.

6. 12 Ways to Increase Traffic From Google Without Building Links
March 11 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
The job of the Technical SEO becomes more complex each year, but we also have more opportunities now than ever. Here are 12 ways you can improve your rankings without relying on link building.

7. The Broken Art of Company Blogging (and the Ignored Metric that Could Save Us All)
July 22 – Posted by Dan Shure
Company blogging is broken. We’re tricking ourselves into believing they’re successful while ignoring the one signal we have that tells us whether they’re actually working.

8. Real-World Panda Optimization – Whiteboard Friday
August 01 – Posted by Michael Cottam
From the originality of your content to top-heavy posts, there’s a lot that the Panda algorithm is looking for. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Michael Cottam explains what these things are, and more importantly, what we can do to be sure we get the nod from this particular bear.

9. Ways to Proactively Welcome Women Into Online Marketing
September 17 – Posted by Erica McGillivray
SEO may be a male-dominated industry, but let’s step out of our biases and work hard to welcome women, and marketers of all stripes, into our community.

10. More than Keywords: 7 Concepts of Advanced On-Page SEO
October 21 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
As marketers, helping search engines understand what our content means is one of our most important tasks. Search engines can’t read pages like humans can, so we incorporate structure and clues as to what our content means. This post explores a series of on-page techniques that not only build upon one another, but can be combined in sophisticated ways.

6. Top Moz Blog posts by number of linking root domains

What, you thought you’d get to the bottom of the post without seeing a traditional SEO metric? =)

1. New Title Tag Guidelines & Preview Tool
March 20 – Posted by Dr. Peter J. Meyers
Google’s 2014 redesign had a big impact on search result titles, cutting them off much sooner. This post includes a title preview tool and takes a data-driven approach to finding the new limit.

2. Panda 4.0, Payday Loan 2.0 & eBay’s Very Bad Day
May 21 – Posted by Dr. Peter J. Meyers
Preliminary analysis of the Panda 4.0 and Payday Loan 2.0 updates, major algorithm flux on May 19th, and a big one-day rankings drop for eBay.

3. Personas: The Art and Science of Understanding the Person Behind the Visit
January 29 – Posted by Michael King
With the erosion of keyword intelligence and the move to strings-not-things for the user, Google is pushing all marketers to focus more on their target audience. This post will teach you how to understand that audience, the future of Google, and how to build data-driven personas step by step.

4. Why Every Business Should Spend at Least $1 per Day on Facebook Ads
February 19 – Posted by Brian Carter
For the last three years I’ve constantly recommended Facebook ads. I recommend them to both B2C and B2B businesses. I recommend them to local theaters and comedians here in Charleston, SC. I recommend them to everyone who wants to grow awareness about anything they’re doing. Here’s why.

5. The New Link Building Survey 2014 – Results
July 16 – Posted by James Agate
How has the marketing industry changed its views of link building since last year? James Agate of Skyrocket SEO is back with the results of a brand new survey.

6. Google’s 2014 Redesign: Before and After
March 13 – Posted by Dr. Peter J. Meyers
Google’s SERP and ad format redesign may finally be rolling out, after months of testing. Before we lose the old version forever, here’s the before-and-after of every major vertical that’s changed.

7. Google Announces the End of Author Photos in Search: What You Should Know
June 26 – Posted by Cyrus Shepard
Many of us have been constantly advising webmasters to connect their content writers with Google authorship, and it came as a shock when John Mueller announced Google will soon drop authorship photos from regular search results. Let’s examine what this means.

8. The Greatest Misconception in Content Marketing – Whiteboard Friday
April 25 – Posted by Rand Fishkin
Great content certainly helps business, but it isn’t as simple as “publish, share, convert new customers.” In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains what’s really going on.

9. The Most Entertaining Guide to Landing Page Optimization You’ll Ever Read
May 20 – Posted by Oli Gardner
If you’ve ever been bored while reading a blog post, your life just got better. If you’ve ever wanted to learn about conversion rate optimization, and how to design high-converting landing pages, without falling asleep, you’re in the right place. Buckle up, and prepare to be entertained in your learning regions.

10. Your Google Algorithm Cheat Sheet: Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird
June 11 – Posted by Marie Haynes
Do you have questions about the Panda algorithm, the Penguin algorithm, or Hummingbird? This guide explains in lay terms what each of these Google algorithm changes is about and how to improve your site so that it looks better in the eyes of the big G.

7. Top comments from our community by number of thumbs up

These 10 comments were the most thumbed-up of any on our blogs this year, offering voices of reason that stand out from the crowd.

1. Marie Haynes | July 23
Commented on: Dear Google, Links from YouMoz Don’t Violate Your Quality Guidelines

2. Brian Dean | September 30
Commented on: The Myth of Google’s 200 Ranking Factors

3. Martin Pezet | July 22
Commented on: The Broken Art of Company Blogging (and the Ignored Metric that Could Save Us All)

4. Danny Sullivan | July 23
Commented on: Dear Google, Links from YouMoz Don’t Violate Your Quality Guidelines

5. Cyrus Shepard | October 21
Commented on: More than Keywords: 7 Concepts of Advanced On-Page SEO

6. Sarah Bird | September 17
Commented on: Ways to Proactively Welcome Women Into Online Marketing

7. Rand Fishkin | July 04
Commented on: 5 Fashion Hacks for the Modern Male Marketer – Whiteboard Friday

8. Martin Pezet | September 30
Commented on: The Myth of Google’s 200 Ranking Factors

9. Jeff Ferguson | October 24
Commented on: Is It Possible to Have Good SEO Simply by Having Great Content – Whiteboard Friday

10. Robert Duckers | March 20
Commented on: New Title Tag Guidelines & Preview Tool

8. Top commenters from our community by total thumbs up

We calculated this one a bit differently this year. In the past, we’ve shown the top community members by sheer number of comments. We don’t want, however, to imply that being prolific is necessarily good within itself. So, we added up all the thumbs-up that each comment on our blogs has received, and figured out which community members racked up the most thumbs over the course of the year. (We’ve intentionally omitted staff members and associates from this list, as they’d stack the deck pretty heavily!)

The graphics to the right of each community member show the number of comments they’ve left on blog posts in 2014 as well as the total number of thumbs up those comments have received.

This list is truly an illustration of how amazing the Moz community is. This site would hardly be anything without all of you, and we so appreciate your involvement on such a regular basis!

1. Samuel Scott (Moz username: SamuelScott)
MozPoints: 1557 | Rank: 54

2. Andreas Becker (Moz username: paints-n-design)
MozPoints: 667 | Rank: 148

3. Marie Haynes (Moz username: MarieHaynes)
MozPoints: 4706 | Rank: 7

4. Mark Traphagen (Moz username: MarkTraphagen)
MozPoints: 993 | Rank: 102

5. Steve Morgan (Moz username: steviephil)
MozPoints: 1249 | Rank: 72

6. Russ Jones (Moz username: russangular)
MozPoints: 3282 | Rank: 16

7. Martin Pezet (Moz username: mpezet)
MozPoints: 464 | Rank: 211

8. Chris Painter (Moz username: Pixelbypixel)
MozPoints: 2707 | Rank: 25

9. Bill Slawski (Moz username: billslawski)
MozPoints: 709 | Rank: 140

10. Dana Tan (Moz username: danatanseo)
MozPoints: 4071 | Rank: 11

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Stopping SEOcentrism: What Lego Can Teach All Web Marketers

Posted by gfiorelli1

Houston, we have a problem

We SEOs, myself included, have a habit of almost always focusing our attention on what concerns us directly.

We suffer what I call SEOcentrism.

Everything is SEO and, and everything ends in the sphere of influence of SEO, as if Search Marketing was a gigantic black hole.

Content? Clearly, it is SEO and SEO should govern Content Strategy!
Social Media? SEOs are those who really understand it!
Inbound Marketing? Isn’t that a synonym for SEO?

In reality, though, things are very different.

Simplifying all components of marketing, SEO is only one small component of a much bigger strategy a brand may have:

That is why most brands, above all, tend to not consider SEO as essential as we would like. Even in the best cases, they usually do not consider SEO (or more broadly Inbound Marketing) as a discipline which could inspire and coordinate all others.

That quadrant can also help us understand why the more traditional media agencies tend to have more success in winning contracts than the new digital ones (not to mention the classic SEO Agencies). The reasons are twofold:

Brands have the ability to have a unique and coordinated strategy designed and built by a single agency;
For a traditional media agency, it is relatively easier to just create a digital (or just SEO) area within its existing structure.

Be aware that I am not saying that this is the best choice a business can make; I am simply describing the reality I see every day.

This Venn by Econsultancy explains all the complexities of a complete integrated Marketing strategy

However, there is another problem.

Even if we are good at analyzing data, fixing technical issues, creating content marketing campaigns, influencing community building… even if we follow the instructions of the “good marketer” book, many times the results we obtain still don’t make us feel fully satisfied with our work.

We score a hit, or maybe more than one, but many times that success is extemporary and does not translate into continuous and long lasting improvements… and maybe for that reason our clients may fire us.

Why? It is ironic to say it, but this is mainly because we do not think organically.

Because of our innate SEOcentrism, we lose or do not take into full account the global marketing strategy of our clients, and we do not see how our job is influenced and may influence the overall marketing strategy.

For this reason I am going to describe how Lego has designed its marketing strategy, what principles guide it, how all the channels are connected by a common “brand storytelling” and what we can learn from the success of Lego.

Why Lego and not another brand? Because Lego really is a brand that is winning in marketing. It is a perfect case history and—let’s be honest—if The Matrix exists it is built with Lego bricks.

Start with why

Ten years ago, Lego announced losses of over $400 million USD.

In reality, crisis has hit Lego since the ’80s because of various reasons including:

The liberalization of the patents related to its famous bricks; and therefore
The birth of numerous competitors that offered to the public substantially similar products at a cheaper price; and
An almost total impermeability to customers and fans.

Crisis derives from Greek word “choice,” and any crisis—if well managed—can result in renewal and positive transformations that, remaining within the Greek mythology, can revive a person, a country or a business company like they were a phoenix.

Lego understood that, and everything changed.

Lego understood that it needed to reinvent itself, and it needed to start with its why:

Inspire
Think creatively
Invent

The mission statement is also fundamental for understanding the archetypical figure Lego wants to represent, and that permeates all its messages: the Builder (and it is not a case that, for those who know the reference, we all are “Master Builders”).

Reading the “Mission and Vision” page of Lego, then, we are able to understand how Lego pretends to make its Why real:

Pioneering new ways of playing;
Pioneering play material;
Pioneering the business model of play;
Leveraging globalisation and digitalisation.

The last two points (and partly the first) have a direct influence in what Lego did and does in marketing.

Takeaway

We must remember to start always from the “About us” page when pitching and building a strategy for our brand or our clients.

That nearly always-forgotten page is where we can understand the core of the marketing message that must pervade the strategy and work as an unconscious connection with our audience.

Exercise

Pick one of these other great About Us pages and try to define the Why and the How:

REI
Google (no, this is not a joke)
Moz

Audience

As I wrote before, one of reasons why Lego went into decline was that it was completely misaligned with its audience.

Lego took a long time to realize that it was no longer just a game for children, but that those children who were playing with its bricks had grown up and, because they loved Lego, they wanted it to grow up too and start creating products that could respond to their new needs.

Lego Ambassadors

Lego, then, created the Ambassadors Program (now that I am writing the post, the page is under construction for redesign, but this other page explains what it is quite well).

Lego Ambassadors, because of their über-fan nature and their evangelizing Lego values and initiatives in forums and blogs, have the function to operate like a communication bridge between Lego itself and its wider fan base, and they do it on a daily basis.

Lego Ideas

In 2010, then, Lego created the Legoclick community, which evolved into what now is Lego Ideas, a place where fans do not just discuss and present their own Lego inventions, but also can see them becoming a real Lego product, thanks to other fans’ upvotes and a final review by Lego itself.

If we have the Delorean Lego version or the Lego Ghostbusters car, it is thanks to the fact that Lego finally understood how its audience had changed. Moreover, the entire Minecraft Lego series, now quite popular, started as a Lego Ideas project.

I will return to this concept later, when talking about the importance of fandom and prosumers in marketing today.

On the other hand, Lego also created a community place for its yourger target: My Lego Network.

If you click on the previous link, you will see that Lego also prefers not to use social sign-ins, but how it relies on a detailed process for creating “Lego IDs”. This is not just for retrieving useful information, but also—from a marketing point of view—for offering children (and parents) the fan pride of owning a well-defined identity in the Lego world.

Letting your audience create what you cannot

Have you ever noticed how Lego City or the simple bricks’ boxes present no weapons? This is a voluntary choice by Lego, which does not extend to products created through co-marketing (e.g. Lego Star Wars).

This choice, however, is a problem for many fans who use Lego to recreate, for example, aircrafts, vehicles or dioramas related to World War II.

For this reason, forums or even small companies that filled this void, such as BrickArms, begun to arise.

The reaction of Lego is not to go against this unorthodox use of its name and bricks, but it is quite the opposite:

Lego allows the forums to “live,” while maintaining a discreet control over them;
Lego sends very detailed technical specifications to the companies, which manufacture unofficial pieces so that they can accomplish their work while respecting the level of internal quality of Lego itself.

Let’s build

Let me finish this chapter describing how Lego did not forget that its other main public are the children. We saw how their mission is all about them.

Lego targeted them anew, not only with a stronger attention to kids’ inputs (and possibly answering them), but also with its foundation, which has a similar mission of building a future where learning through play empowers children to become creative, engaged, life-long learners.

Products and marketing around the power of learning through play and through building is at the base of the “Let’s build” tagline.

Building the game, for Lego, is the common passion that links its two audiences: children and adults.

Takeaways

We must put the users at the center of our marketing strategy, and this starts with achieving a precise audience analysis.

However, we must always remember that the audience is not something monolithic and abstract, but that the data derived from our analysis are a reflection of real people and, as such, subject to changes.

For this reason, the audience analysis should not be conducted only at an early stage, but repeated over time so to identify as early as possible any possible change in the personas, that we have identified.

We must always remember that our audience is multifaceted and that, often, there may be personas with totally opposite characteristics, but having in common the love or interest for our brand.

Finally, let’s remember that it is in our nature to be data-informed, and that it is in our DNA to retrieve and understand data points that are not the ones commonly taken into consideration by more classic marketers. We must use this as one of our competitive advantages.

More about Audience Analysis:

The Fandom/Canon pendulum

Whenever we deal with a Brand, especially if it targets the main public, we should always remember that there exists a constant dialectic between the Canon and the Fandom. Let me explain:

The Canon represents the official branded content and messages produced by the brand, and it is defined by the official marketing strategy.

Moreover, the Canon develops its actions in the so-called “cultural industry channels (e.g. a movie like “The Lego Movie”).

The purpose of Canon is always profit, even if it may be through actions that deal with or encite fandom.

Fandom, on the other hand, represents the original content fans create using the same brand’s products—a repurposing of the original content a brand creates.

Fandom is usually delivered using channels independent from those of the brand. To use the Lego example, Vine, Instagram, and YouTube were used by Lego fans far before Lego started using them. Those channels follow very different production principles (e.g. crowdsourcing), and it’s main purpose is pleasure.

The importance of strategy in marketing and brand storytelling

Lego is very much aware of this dialectic, and explores every possible way of taking advantage of it while spreading its own brand storytelling.

From the canonical one, Lego creates (using a typical Transmedia term) a “Bible” for each one of its campaigns and products’ lines.

The Bibles, which we might also call strategic plans, are documents where everything related to a campaign is defined:

Business model
Audience
Brand storytelling
Media/Platforms
Execution
Experience
How all these elements interact between them and when.

Moreover, for every single action previewed in the campaign, the strategic plan also defines:

Business model (because a website follows different rules than a TV series);
Audience (a campaign may target just one of the different personas we have defined);
Premise (what is causing and justifying, from a storytelling point of view, this action?);
Genre (in our cases this could be the kind of content: long forms, infographics, white paper, video…);
Theme (or what facet of the general storytelling the action will be about);
Narrative synthesis (somehow a sort of adaptation of what the content will narrate);
Technical Specification (a field where we can contribute, as demonstrates Richard Baxter in his latest posts here on Moz and on Builtvisible
Expansion (the content created can possibly expanded, and this is where we should think about repurposing the content we create).

Now let’s take Yoda Chronicles, and let’s consider it as complex marketing campaign for giving new force to the Lego Star Wars products.

If we look at the Yoda Chronicles campaign by Lego, we can easily find all the elements described above:

The general business model is the co-marketing with the Star Wars brand, which is at the base of the Lego Star Wars’ product line (generic business model);
Yoda Chronicles is a spin-off of Lego Star Wars (premise);
It it set in the Lego version of the Star Wars universe, in a consistent continuity with it, and it narrates the adventures of a group of young padawans and their master, Yoda;
The audiences targeted are both the Star Wars fan (Yoda) and their sons (the Padawans);
The media/platforms used were:
- TV (the 8-episode miniseries aired on Cartoon Network, but we should also consider the classic promotional teasers and trailers);
- Microsite (intelligently hosted inside the main Lego Star Wars section in the Lego.com site);
- Online videos, hosted both in the Lego Star Wars section and in the Lego YouTube channel;
- Images of any kind (wallpapers, avatars, ready-for-memes images);
- Several apps, for pre and post-launch, and for iOS, Android, and desktop browsers;
- Billboards;
- Guerrilla marketing actions;
- Books.
The TV Series is produced by Lego itself, while external companies take care especially of the pre-launch marketing actions (Execution);
Users have plenty of occasion for engaging with Yoda Chronicles, and are enticed to revamp their own fans’ nature, thanks in particular to guerrilla marketing actions, games and message board on the site (Experience);
The games allow users to relive the adventures of Yoda and his Padawans, and the games incite players to discover secret codes to use on the site, guiding them into a web ecosystem that see also the possibility to buy the Lego Star Wars products and discuss them (interactions between all elements).

3,000,000+ bricks were needed for creating this 1:1 X-Wing Fighter. The buzz was of similar scale.
(Photo by Pascal on Flickr)

When it comes to Fandom, Lego simply allows fans the freedom of doing (almost) everything their imagination inspires them to create, and doesn’t try to control (at least in most cases) their creativity.

This attitude is key for letting consumers becoming prosumers—people who create new original content from brands’ products, helping grow the brands’ recognition and

The “philosophical” reason is that products become part of the life of the buyer, and extension of his personality, which shares the same values of the brand. Letting the buyer freely share and produce content with its own products, then, is like creating a promotional force for the brand at zero cost.

Remember, fans look for pleasure… so we should concede them the liberty of finding pleasure with our products.

The liberty of building, then, is extremely consistent with the company’s Why, and denying the freedom of literally building content would be going against its own principle.

For this reason, too, Lego lets fans doing everything with its bricks and does not commit the mistake George Lucas, for instance, did not understand about the force of Star Wars fandom when he tried to block it.

Takeaways

When we design a strategy for a brand, even if it is “just” a search marketing strategy, we should always remember to ask the right questions, which can help us understand the general marketing landscape our action will be a part of (it will determine ours).

Consistency is key in marketing. If it is not present, then the message fails to pass or our actions can even produce results opposite to those desired.

Creating a “Bible,” which not only takes into consideration all the possible connections our strategy has with other marketing channels, but also defines and describes the specs of every action and the brand storytelling consistency common to all them, will help us with the following:

Maintaining control over the development of the campaign;
Developing campaigns aligned to the general marketing campaign of the brand we work for;
Getting inspiration for new actions and new campaigns; and
Offering clear expectations to the client.

When creating this document, then, we must always answer these questions:

What facet of the brand storytelling do we want to narrate?
How are we going to narrate it?
What is the genre we will use?
If we use different elements for narrating a story, how do they relate to each other?
What kind of engagement are we looking for?
Will this engagement influence the evolution of the campaign and of the storytelling?
How will we manage the engagement and what control we will let the users have over the story?
How can we create synergy between online and offline engagement?
What platform will we use (and not use)? And do any of them really add value to the users?
Will we start targeting a massive audience or a small subset?
Will the experience be free for everyone, or will we go for a freemium or invite-only model?

This last two points are very important, because a strategy should be thought of as a modular building, so that we can start developing it even if we do not have a big budget. Remember, a marketing strategy that previews the deep interaction with the fans can also have its start in something like Kickstarter, which means that it can even be paid for by very engaged fans.

Exercise:

Choose two brands, for instance Betabrand and Beardbrand, and analyze how their marketing is based on the dialectic between canon and fandom.

Experience

If we put users at the center of our marketing efforts, then we should create a marketing strategy that is not only able to answer our customers’ needs, but also able to make them feel our brand is partly theirs.

For this reason engagement is so important, as was explained well by Rand Fishkin in his last Whiteboard Friday.

One mistake we do make, though, is considering engagement to be something related only to Social Media.

In fact, engagement is the consequence of a principle, which must be at the basis of every action realized by a brand in every aspect of its relationship with its audience: creating positive experiences for its users.

If we understand this, then we see how all the best practices in every field of marketing have logical meaning, and how all of them have a common purpose: earning such trust and loyalty that when we receive a critique, it will always be a constructive one.

(note: Lego answered to Greenpeace announcing that it will not renew the contract with Shell)

Lego has understood this well, and almost everything I wrote above about Lego proves it.

But there are two areas in which this research of the positive experience is fundamental:

Customer care
Products

Customer care

Lego, even though it also uses its social media profiles for instantly attending to customer care issues, prefers to maintain this facet offline, paying extreme attention to the quality of the service offered.

In some cases, it decides to go further and personalize the experience such a way that a simple customer care answer can become a pure marketing action, as in the case of this letter sent to a kid by a customer care representative, who responds to a problem the child had with the Sensei Wu minifigure:

It is not a surprise that a letter like this saw a viral response on social media last year.

Products

Sometimes we forget that products are marketing. Moreover, sometimes we forget that creating a product that can result in a winning marketing action doesn’t necessarily need a huge budget.

A good example of this is a very simple idea Lego had for this holiday season: the Minifigure Family.

Minifigure Family is based on a simple idea: It offers users the possibility to share on their social media profiles a virtual Happy Holidays postcard, where users and their family are portrayed as Lego figures.

A simple product, a simple idea and a great success on social media (here’s Twitter data by Topsy).

But if we want to find a product that us SEOs know well, and that the most intelligent brands, and Lego is one of them are starting to offer to its prosumers, that is data under the form of APIs.

Moreover, APIs now for us SEOs are starting to have a new interesting consequence: structured data and better Semantic SEO.

In fact the best APIs (and unfortunately this is not the case of Lego’s ones yet, a better example is Marvel’s API) can be available also via JSON, and JSON LD is also a way to inject structured data into a website. Hence, APIs can be a bridge to semantically optimize every website using them, and so making the brand, which owns them, more visible.

Drillability

If experience leads to engagement, and engagement leads to spreadability, then we must add that experience and all its consequences can be achieved also thanks to drillability, or the creation of really targeted content/products, which is able to combine two different passions our audience has in a simoultaneous experience.

In the case of Lego this is achieved mainly through franchising and co-marketing actions with other brands, as is in the case of Lego Star Wars, Lego Minecraft, Lego Marvel, Lego DC Comics, etc.

Having found other passions of its fanbase, Lego was able to expand its audience into new markets.

In cases more like the ones we deal with everyday, this may lead to opportunities for writing a regular column in a website our audience visits, hiring an influencer to write for our company blog, or any other “co-marketing” opportunity.

Takeaways

Marketing has changed. All marketing—not just SEO.

Users now are the main protagonists of every action, and sometimes they even are the ones creating the actions that market the brands.

For this reason everything – from the website performance to the product description, from the content we create and the support we offer – must be focused on offering positive experiences to our audience, so to earn trust and loyalty, and having it becoming our main commercial force.

Lego does it, Mattel does not… and the results are here to demonstrate it:

Conclusion

In the past weeks I have been asked several times what my previews about SEO and marketing are for 2015.

Sincerely, I do not have an answer to those questions.

What I know, though, is that more and more, every marketing channel influences every other, and therefore, SEO must be absolutely aware that it is part of something bigger.

It is increasingly clear to me that the boundary once existing between online and offline no longer exists. We should not talk about multi-device, we should talk about OnOff as the only existing reality.

Google itself is urging us to think this way, since we’ve been many months now with Google Universal Analytics and, recently, with Adwords’ In-Store Conversions.

What I do know is that the best brands have become publishers, and Google is well aware of this evolution and rewards it.

Everything is content, I hope we will understand it once for all.

What I see is that there is no more space for extemporary actions, and that with no strategy behind it even the more resounding success will quickly be forgotten and will not help achieving the goals that we have set.

What my intuition tells me is that we are in a transition phase, in a time when we have to decide what we want to be and really understand what our competitive advantages are. Those are the ways we can actually help businesses and assume a well-defined role in their marketing.

If we do not decide and understand, then we will become nerds at the service of the big media agencies, or working in their shadow.

This is why I hope that, more and more, the strategic component of our work will be considered the foundation of every campaign that we SEOs realize.

That’s why I wanted to describe to all of you what Lego can teach us about marketing: because it responds to a finely defined strategy, which has helped Lego go from near bankruptcy to dominating the toy industry.

Fewer tips and tricks, less looking for short cuts, and more aspiring to think big: this is what I urge to all of us to do, because the greatest successes have always been the dream someone once had and decided to make real.

Only if we do so, 2015 will be awesome (and Google-proof).

Let’s build.

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