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#MozCon 2014: Everything You Want to Know (Including the Kitchen Sink)

Posted by EricaMcGillivray

MozCon is five months away! What?! And besides my daily countdown to MozCon, provided by the lovely Sha Menz, many of you out there have asked for the juicy details of what we’re planning this year. This year, MozCon is July 14-16 at the Washington State Convention Center.

But before I dive further down: While we are sold out of early bird tickets, you can still save some money. For the best deal on MozCon tickets, make sure you’re a Moz Pro Subscriber. If you’re not, you can take a 30-day free trial with us and get the Subscriber rate for you and your team—even on trial day number one! Cancel your trial at any time if it’s not for you, and we’ll see you at MozCon.

Sign up for MozCon today

We say MozCon is “not your typical marketing conference,” but what does that truly mean? Many of you are probably familiar with TAGFEE, our company code, which is woven tightly into MozCon. But what we really aim for is that second E, which stands for Exceptional. Not exceptional in the “really awesome” way, but exceptional as in the exception to the rule (which is in itself really awesome). We want MozCon to be the place where marketers feel the love of being part of this extraordinary community, and where you can spend three days enveloped in new knowledge and actionable information from our forward-thinking speakers to take home with you .

If that’s too mushy for you, just watch the video of what happened last year. 🙂

MozCon 2014 Ticket Sales Promo

It’s all about meeting you!

Before I start talking about the amazing speakers or the bacon, our community—that’s YOU!—drives the force behind MozCon. MozCon humbly started out as the SEOmoz: PRO Training Series because we wanted to meet our community and share face-to-face what we were learning about SEO. As we grew, MozCon became the place for our community to hang out with each other and the industry experts we bring in.

One of our exceptional goals has been to maintain that community camaraderie that much smaller conferences embody. I’m pleased to say that we’ve all leveled up to the challenge.

Roger Hugs Montage

Roger has lots of friends!

Our beloved mascot Roger joins us for every MozCon. He loves giving hugs. Sometimes he even dances around. One time, we hooked up a Kinect with a dance simulator to the main stage, and late into the lunch break, people could come on stage and dance as Roger! And then Roger danced as Roger. Seriously, you have to see it to believe it.

I’m joined by Roger, Roger, and Rand on the stage.

One of the most magical moments from MozCon 2013 was from Wil Reynolds. After giving his hour-long presentation, Wil gave away a bunch of books, aimed to help people with their careers, and doled out advice to conference goers. He sat on stage talking with and listening to person after person during the lunch break. (Well, until I had to play traffic cop and let our a/v crew set up for the next speaker.) It probably could’ve gone on for hours longer.

Wil gives out books and advice

Wil signs books and talks with attendees at MozCon 2013.

We also give you the chance to be on stage and share your insights! At MozCon 2012, we launched our community speaker program where we opened up four shorter speaking slots for everyone in our community (YOU) to pitch for.

Every year, we get a ton of emails pitching to speak at MozCon. And for all those emails, I’ve sadly had to reply that we don’t accept pitches because we have a selection committee. But now that we have community speakers, we have a place for everyone to toss their hat in the ring.

The competition is fierce for these spots. Last year, I kept them open for a week and a half and saw 130 responses! Crazy.

Our past speakers are really successful and amazing people, including A. Litsa, Dana Lookadoo, Darren Shaw, Fabio Ricotta, Jeff McRitchie, Mike Arnesen, and Sha Menz. All community speakers get to attend our speaker’s dinner, get a free ticket to MozCon, and of course, get to speak on the MozCon stage.

Every year, our post-MozCon polling says that you love our community speakers, and many of their talks rank highly. We’ll be opening community speaker solicitations no later than the first week of April. Stay tuned!

Mike on the MozCon 2013 stage as a community speaker

Mike Arneson owns that MozCon stage!

All throughout MozCon, you’ll have the chance to interact with Mozzers. From marketing and help, to engineering and operations, Mozzers of all stripes use MozCon as a chance to learn who you are. Some are looking for direct feedback about products. MozCon 2013 goers got access to the Moz Analytics beta. And some just want to hear about you: the people who use the products we make, read the blog we’ve fostered, attend the Mozinars we host, and come for MozCon. We’re always elated that people truly join us from around the globe.

Group photo of Mozzers

Group photo time! All the Mozzers.

Anyone else ever have problems at concerts where you can’t see that stage? At MozCon, our set-up not only ensures there’s not a bad seat in the house, but also that you have plenty of room. You know for your laptop, your tablet, your work phone, your personal phone, your MozCon swag bag, your moleskine, your coffee, your soda, your water, and your issue of Thor #337, which introduces Beta Ray Bill, that you never leave home without.

Attendees sit at tables with power cords and plenty of leg room. MozCon is a fully accessible conference for all attendees. And before you go asking about internet—we know the wifi never works at any conference ever—we’re coming up with some creative solutions. Just stay tuned.

Our speakers are also comfortable with an extra long stage and three huge, stage-to-ceiling (seriously, maybe a three inch gap up there) screens. The middle screen projects their live image and the other two show their presentations. We do our best to ensure that you—yes, you way in the back—can see every bit of the action.

Attendees listening to the speakers

Attendees listen to speakers, but also have room to move around.

We’re happy to say that people come back to MozCon year-after-year, not to just learn, but to hang out with the industry friends that they’ve made. It’s kind of like a big ‘ole family reunion—at least with the family you enjoy.

Friends hanging out at MozCon

Friends are just the best thing ever.

Learn all the things!

One of my absolute pleasures in life is working with MozCon’s exceptional speakers. Industry leaders from about every niche in online marketing have graced the MozCon stage, sharing their knowledge, tips, and inspiring you. And me too!

Dana DiTomaso rocks the MozCon 2013 stage!

Our MozCon selection committee works extraordinarily hard to vet and handpick the best speakers. And we continually expect more and more from those who we invite back or invite for the first time when the next year’s conversations start about who should speak. The MozCon stage is large; its audience very enthusiastic and particular; and because of that, I’ve seen seasoned speakers—the people I know you’d love to have at a dinner party to pick their brains—send emails panicked that their presentations won’t be enough. Don’t worry, they always deliver.

Get a taste of MozCon sessions and speaker quality with these two free sessions. One from Kyle Rush from MozCon 2013 on conversion rate optimization and Wil Reynolds from MozCon 2012 on Real Company Shit:

MozCon 2013 free video – Kyle Rush – Win Through Optimization and Testing

08-Wil-Reynolds

While we’re still working to confirm and select ~11 more speakers for MozCon 2014, here’s who is already signed up: Annie Cushing, Dana DiTomaso, Jeremy Bloom, Justin Cutroni, Kyle Rush, Marshall Simmonds, Nathalie Nahai, Paddy Moogan, Pete Meyers, Phil Nottingham, Rand Fishkin, Richard Millington, Sarah Bird, and Wil Reynolds.

And don’t worry, since MozCon is a single-session conference and we’re all in one big room together, you won’t miss a single presenter!

Let me give you a brief preview of who these amazing people are:

Annie Cushing

Annie Cushing is an analytics genius and consultant. No, seriously, if there’s something that needs to be reformulated in a spreadsheet and made into a beautifully digestible report for your client, boss, or CEO, she’s your go-to person. Annie’s blog, Annielytics, is full of video tutorials to walk you through the jungles of Excel. This will be Annie’s third MozCon, and in her very popular 2013 session, she spoke about “not provided” and going beyond keywords in your analytics.

Dana DiTomaso

Dana DiTomaso has her finger on the pulse of small business and local marketing. She leads as a Partner at Kick Point Inc, a small agency. There, Dana regularly plays out David and Goliath type stories with the small businesses she represents. At MozCon 2013, she absolutely wowed our community with her talk about taking SMBs to the next level of marketing. Dana also may have moonlighted as Roger one time.

Jeremy Bloom

Jeremy Bloom from Integrate.com, a marketing software company, is new to MozCon, but you might’ve heard of him before. He’s hit the entrepreneur world by storm, raising lots of venture capital and earning kudos and awards from Forbes, American Business Awards, and more. Jeremy is also a three-time World Champion, two-time Olympian, and eleven-time World Cup gold medalist in men’s freestyle skiing. He also had an NFL career with the Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers. I think he’ll be the first Olympian and NFL star on the MozCon stage.

Justin Cutroni

Need another heavy hitter? Google Analytics Evangelist Justin Cutroni will be joining us this year. If you need to learn anything about Google Analytics—the more advanced the better!—he probably has the answer. Justin is the author of two books, both on Google Analytics. He’s also a father, skier, and cook.

Kyle Rush

You know that moment when you find out that quiet person sitting next to you secretly runs the world? That’s Kyle Rush, head of optimization at Optimizely and formerly at The New Yorker and Obama for America. At the latter, he helped the team that transformed how we think about digital campaigns. (Seriously, go watch him talk about this.) Now that’s some serious conversion rate optimization! Kyle also has some adorable dogs.

Marshall Simmonds

Are there ever enterprise-level sites that make your jaw drop at how much freaking amazing work went into them? Marshall Simmonds might’ve been the SEO behind them, sites like all the New York Times properties, USA Today, CBS, Toys-R-Us, Gawker Media, and many more. Today, he serves as the founder and CEO of Define Media Group, Inc., an enterprise-level SEO and consulting group. Marshall likes to remind us that he’s “internet old,” meaning that he gave a talk at the SEOmoz: PRO Training Series in 2010.

Nathalie Nahai

Leading the field of web psychology, Nathalie Nahai, the web psychologist, will be back on the MozCon stage. Her work delves into how to make your site(s) resonate with your audience based on their culture, gender, or other psychological need. Do you need an image of happy people or authority figures? Nathalie’s got the answer. She’s also an accomplished author and musician and is doing an upcoming free Mozinar with us.

Paddy Moogan

Besides having a name that’s just fun to say, Paddy Moogan‘s an accomplished SEO with a knack for link building, and is head of growth markets at Distilled. He took the stage by storm in 2012, skipped 2013 to hang out with Hobbits in New Zealand, and now’s back for 2014. And we’re ready for Paddy and his love of comic books and Aston Martins (James Bond’s car).

Dr. Pete Meyers

Dr. Pete Meyers. Do I really need to intro this guy? Data scientist here at Moz, Pete’s done some killer projects about our collective obsession with changes in Google’s Algo, including MozCast and the Google Algo History. Recently, he did a Reddit AMA and picks Superman as the winner in a fight against Batman. (I may disagree with this.) We’re crossing our fingers that by July Chicago’s dug itself out of snow, and Pete will be able to make it. 🙂

Phil Nottingham

Sometimes a pirate, sometimes a video expert, Phil Nottingham is the video strategist at Distilled. He especially enjoys being able to purchase shiny, new video equipment. Last year, Phil tickled the audience pink with his video where he pretended to be Rand for a Whiteboard Friday. His New Year’s resolution is to drink better whiskey; I’m just putting that out there, MozCon goers…

Rand Fishkin

Rand Fishkin, the guy known for his loud shirts and industry championship. Founder of Moz, former CEO, and now an individual e-team contributor, Rand will be speaking to the changes in our industry this year at MozCon. He’s spoken at every MozCon, delivering all those actionable tips and inspirational words. Despite all this, he still blushed as I made him write his own name on the whiteboard as the first chosen speaker for MozCon 2014.

Richard Millington

Founder of FeverBee, Richard Millington has made community building into a science. Think community is fluffy? Richard will blow your mind. Make sure to check out his recent free Mozinar. Whether you’re wrangling mommy bloggers, gun enthusiasts, or the ever-popular plumbers, Richard will show you how to start, build, grow, and reach critical mass with your community.

Sarah Bird

Our brand-new CEO Sarah Bird will take the MozCon stage again. It’s probably one her new job duties she’s most nervous about. Trained as a lawyer, Sarah has a lifelong passion of learning new things and challenging herself. Good thing; we’ve kept her on her toes since 2007! For MozCon, we’re planning on introducing a new format, a fireside chat, with Sarah, so you’ll be able to hear all the good stuff about her and her new role.

Wil Reynolds

Always a crowd-pleaser, Wil Reynolds, founder of SEER Interactive, will be back to give out inspiration like candy in a suburb on Halloween. The first time I saw Wil speak (SearchFest 2012) his rousing speech somehow made me feel confident enough to drive through a snowstorm in a Prius. And minus the snowstorm, I challenge anyone not to feel transformed by a Wil speech. (Go watch his MozCon 2012 talk. MozCon talks age like fine wine.)

Cyrus Shepard

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Cyrus Shepard, our exceptional emcee. As the Senior Content Lead at Moz, he dreams up ways to drive traffic to our site and pokes people to level up our skills to help. Cyrus keeps speakers on track and facilitates q&a. If you’re worried about his emcee chops, he sent in an audition tape of that time he won a car on Hollywood Squares.

I hope you’re already taking notes of which speakers you can’t wait to see. In the coming months, speakers will be firming up their topics and starting to dive into exactly what they’ll be presenting on at MozCon 2014. They’ll also be joined by around 15 more people, including our four community speakers. While you’ll have to wait for the full agenda until then, you can get an idea of what kinds of talks happen at MozCon through last year’s agenda.

We love hosting you!

We’re excited to bring our community from all parts of the world to MozCon. Whether you live locally in Seattle or have to take two plus connecting flights from either Cape Town, South Africa or Tampa, Florida to reach us, we want to share something new with you.

For those of you boarding planes to MozCon, this year you (or your employer) can save some pennies by flying with either Delta or Alaska Airlines. If flying on Alaska, head to alaskaair.com and use the code ECMV042 for 5% off. If flying on Delta, go to delta.com and use the code NMH7W for 2-10% off, depending on where you depart from.

Once you hit Seattle, we’ve got some special deals with two great hotels, the Grand Hyatt and the Olive 8. Both are located in downtown Seattle, just two blocks away from MozCon, and both are fabulous places to lay your head down after a long day of learning. Not only is there a discount, but MozCon attendees also get complimentary wi-fi and $20 per night parking.

Book your hotel today!

MozCon map

MozCon is the far-right pin, and the two hotels are the other pins. So close!

So we got your shelter and your wifi, your next basic need of bacon is also covered. Did I write bacon? I meant food.

At Moz, we love our food, and since MozCon’s like that big reunion with the good side of the family, we’re going to feed you. Every day of MozCon, you’ll have breakfast, lunch, and two snacks with us. We spare no details. In the past, we’ve had treats like ice cream and crepes for breakfast. Ever dream of conference food? (Are you laughing?) Well, MozCon’s the exception to that.

Okay, what about the bacon? One of our most popular breakfast items is bacon. Last year, two mornings featured all the bacon you can eat. (As a long-time vegetarian, I donate my own bacon portions to one lucky MozCon goer every year.) And for those of us non-bacon eaters, don’t worry, we’ll have that covered too.

Enjoying the grub! Sorry, bacon fans, couldn’t find a bacon-specific photo.

After a day of learning, you’re going to need some downtime. Work hard, play hard, that’s the mantra, right? In years past MozCon’s parties have been hosted at such amazing venues at The Garage, which features a bowling alley, and the Experience Music Project (EMP), Seattle’s own music and sci-fi museum. We’re still nailing down the details, including location, for the Tuesday night bash, but rest assured, you’ll be having the time of your life—while making some great new friends.

Making friends at the MozCon Party!

Hanging out and having fun at the Tuesday party.

Okay, you’ve come all the way here, and you’ve seen photos of the new MozPlex… Yes, we give office tours!

We don’t do them during MozCon, since we all attend it. But in the days surrounding, we open up the office and share our story and our space with you. We’re super thrilled this year to be able to show off our new digs, which will fully be home sweet home by July. The MozPlex is about eight blocks away from MozCon, so just a short walk through downtown.

MozPlex tour sign-ups will most likely go up in June when we’re much closer to the event.

the mozplex

Joel and Abe in their natural environment at the MozPlex.

We’d be remiss to not give you a welcoming gift (or four) to MozCon. Don’t worry, we always try to fill our swag bags with useful, tasteful, and fun stuff. Last year, attendees were over the moon to get Roger figurines as part of their MozCon haul. While I’m under top-secret orders not to mention what we’re giving away this year, let’s just say I let out some squees.

All the Rogers!

That’s a lot of Rogers who went out in the world with you.

While you’re in Seattle, don’t forget to visit Seattle! July is the best time to explore our city and the surrounding area. I know sometimes when we go to conferences that we only see beyond the conference and hotel on the to/from airport-hotel drive (I’m just as guilty!). Don’t deprive yourself of digging into the best of Seattle, whether you want to visit the famous gum wall, discover the troll under the bridge, or head out to hike Mount Si. Whet your appetite with Rand’s restaurant and bar guide, and discover amazing Seattle treasures as crowd-sourced by Mozzers.

The great thing about Seattle is that you can be whomever you want to. Whether you’re looking to attend a Sounders game, reenact Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” (I can tour-guide!), take a hot tub boat on Lake Union, or eat pie and see Snoqualmie Falls, Seattle has something for everyone.

We love Seattle!

Highlights from our party last year include karaoke with a live band.

Take me to MozCon!

For those of you still trying to convince your boss (even if that boss is you!) about the expense, make sure to read the ROI (value vs expense) MozCon post from last year. MozCon’s expenses and our program remains very similar value-wise. And don’t forget to take a 30-day free trial in order to get the Pro Subscriber rate (if you’re not already a Subscriber).

Don’t hesitate to ask me anything about MozCon in the comments; I’ll do my best to answer.

Sign up for MozCon today


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Why Every Business Should Spend at Least $1 per Day on Facebook Ads

Posted by briancarter

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

For the last three years I’ve constantly recommended Facebook ads. I recommend them to both B2C or 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.

How advertising has changed since the 20th century

Before the Internet, it was unlikely that the average person would advertise. Many businesses used the Yellow Pages or radio, but not all. Even in the first decade of the 21st century, only a percentage of companies used search advertising. Many found that pay-per-click was too expensive or too complicated for them.

Why Facebook Ads are the biggest marketing opportunity ever

With Facebook ads, we have a totally unique opportunity. There are several things about them never before seen together:

  • They can reach as many people or more people as radio or TV, and in whatever country.
  • They have sophisticated targeting like AdWords, albeit on different criteria.
  • The minimum spend is just $1 per day.
  • They are the lowest cost per 1,000 impressions ad in history. They average around $0.25 per 1,000, which is only 1% of the cost of TV. Are you kidding me? Nope, it’s for real.

In other words, Facebook ads are mega-awareness raising, have good targeting, require very little commitment, and are unbelievably affordable.

Here’s the one thing I tell people about Facebook ads that usually gets through:

If you just spend $1 per day on Facebook ads, you will get in front of 4,000 people that wouldn’t have seen you otherwise. If you are doing that and your competitors aren’t, you win the awareness game in your niche.

You can’t sell to someone who doesn’t know you exist, and you can’t sell a product or service the consumer has never heard of.

If you can’t spare $30 a month, you shouldn’t be in business.

Facebook Ads for awareness and ROI

In my opinion, because of AdWords, many companies now underestimate the importance and value of awareness and mindshare. I drank the instant-ROI kool aid too; I was Mr. AdWords from 2004 until 2010. We still do it, but we also know its limits. It can harvest the low-hanging fruit and look good in terms of attribution, but it can’t raise awareness affordably.

There are people in SEO and PR who look down on ads. I understand that aesthetic, but it’s not as important as this opportunity. We know that organic Facebook without advertising is a tough road that’s becoming more and more impassable. Pages with millions of fans find themselves only reaching 10s of thousands with their posts. Adding advertising to promote your posts ensures you get 10-100x the exposure of page posting alone. We have one big national brand client that’s receiving $0.01 engagement clicks on several of their most engaging posts.

There are enough case studies of companies getting positive ROI from Facebook advertising to know that it’s feasible. But there are a lot of companies doing Facebook poorly or without sufficient analytics. One stat said that 41% of B2B companies didn’t have the tracking in place to know what Facebook was doing for them either way. In fact, as of a 2013 HubSpot survey, 34% of businesses either cannot or do not calculate their inbound ROI at all.

There’s Facebook conversion tracking code you can use, and you can create ads that automatically optimize for conversions. Here’s how to use it:

  1. Go to the Facebook Ad Manager.

  2. Look on the left for Conversion Tracking, and click on it.

  3. Click on the green box “Create Conversion Pixel.”

  4. Give it a name you’ll recognize, and choose what kind of conversion it is (e.g. a check, lead, or add to cart).

  5. Copy the JavaScript code and give it to your website person, or place it yourself. They actually recommend placing it in the <head> section.

Facebook Advertising targeting options

If you’re not super-familiar, here are some of your targeting options (use one, a combination, or all):

  1. Geography
  2. Language
  3. Age
  4. Gender
  5. Workplace
  6. College
  7. Interests (including job titles)
  8. Categories
  9. Your own email lists
  10. Relationship status
  11. Education level
  12. College major
  13. School
I have worked on and seen other great case studies (a few examples are Marketo, InfiniGraph, Hubspot) of B2B Facebook advertising for lead gen. I’ve targeted media, bloggers, and journalists, and secured interviews I wouldn’t have received otherwise.

Facebook also has retargeting options like AdWords does if you want to diversify your owned media beyond email and fans.

They’re also great for promoting events. You can not only get people to join your event for sometimes as low as $0.15 each, you can also reach the friends of the people who’ve already said they’re going.

Do at least $1 per day!

Altogether, Facebook advertising is a powerful platform with a lot of options, and given its power, your company should have someone testing our Facebook ads for it, even if it’s just at $1 per day!

Do you advertise online? Take our survey

You may also want to participate in The Carter Group’s 2014 Digital Advertising Survey, Sponsored by Moz. Here it is!


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Google Analytics Checklist for New Projects

Posted by GeoffKenyon

When on-boarding a new client, there is a lot that needs to get done. Usually the list includes a tech audit, reviewing content, and combing through back links to name a few tasks. A review of the analytics implementation is often overlooked though.

If you don’t review how the analytics account is set up, you could set yourself up to waste a lot of time down the road, even finding yourself investigating an organic traffic drop that doesn’t exist.

Below is my Google Analytics checklist that I review when starting a new account. Many of these items joined the checklist as the result of previous “learning experiences.” My hope is that this list will help you avoid those same experiences.


The basics

Check BoxExclude internal IP addresses

  • If we don’t exclude internal and partner IP addresses, we will over-report traffic and reduce our conversion rate.
  • To implement, go to Admin > Filters (in the appropriate view) > New Filter.
  • Documentation can be found here.

Pro Tip:
Create a copy of the profile, and apply the filter to that copy. If your filter creates a problem, you won’t be able to get back any lost data, so it’s nice to have a backup.

Check BoxGoogle Analytics code on all pages

  • If GA code is missing from pages, we will get incorrect site engagement metrics and misappropriated conversion data. A quick way to check this is to look at your referrals report. Do you have any self referrals?
  • It is not uncommon for pages in the checkout process to not include GA code. If this is the case, you will see almost all conversions are from “referral” or “direct.”
  • To check this more thoroughly, fire up Screaming Frog and update the custom field to check for the proper UA ID

Check BoxUA account is only listed one time

  • Running two GA codes simultaneously is ok. Two instances of the same code is not.
  • The two separate instances of Track Pageviews will mess up metrics such as pageviews, time on site, bounce rate, and pages per visit.
  • The best way to find this one is to pull up the source code and search for “ua-“.


Linking related accounts

Check BoxLink Google Analytics and AdWords

Check BoxLink Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools


Ensure proper campaign tracking implementation

Check BoxAuto tagging is enabled for Google Analytics

  • If you don’t have auto tagging enabled, odds are your paid search traffic is showing up in Google Analytics as organic traffic
  • To check the status of auto tagging, log into your AdWords account, go to Account Settings, and then to Preferences.
  • Documentation can be found here.

Check BoxNon-Google paid search campaign URLs contain UTM tags

  • If you’re not including UTM parameters in your non-Google paid campaigns, the traffic is most likely being counted as organic search visits.
  • Google Analytics interprets utm_medium=cpc and utm_medium=ppc as paid search traffic, so one of these should be used for the medium.
  • Documentation can be found here.

Check BoxVanity domains redirect using UTM parameters

  • This will allow you to easily attribute visits and conversions from the vanity domain to the campaign associated with the vanity domain

Check BoxEmail campaign links use UTM parameters

  • This will allow you to properly attribute visits and conversions to the right email marketing effort

Conversions and interactions

Check BoxSet up goals

  • This should be a wide range of activities such as purchases, contact form completions, creating an account, time on site, signing up for a newsletter, etc.
  • Associate monetary value with these goals if possible.
  • Documentation can be found here.

Check BoxSet up e-commerce tracking

  • Ecommerce tracking will allow you to understand not only how much revenue you’re making but what channels are responsible for driving revenue
  • Documentation can be found here.

Check BoxSet up event tracking


Content grouping

Check BoxCreate content groupings


What else do you always check in your Google Analytics implementations? Let me know in the comments.


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The Best Way to Suck at Marketing – Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

When we take a data- and profit-driven approach to marketing, we can get so caught up in maximizing returns that we forget we’re dealing with people, treating our customers as simple transactions. If we’re looking for loyalty, we need to change that approach.

In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand details the virtues of marketing for long-term success and moving away from that transactional model.

The Best Way to Suck at Marketing – Whiteboard Friday

For reference, here’s a still of this week’s whiteboard!

Video Transcription

Howdy Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I wanted to talk about something I see from a lot of marketers where we just kill ourselves, people. We’re dying. We’re really sucking at our jobs, and the reason seems to be very consistent. It seems like this is almost the best way, the most popular way to suck at marketing. I’ll show you what I’m talking about.

So here’s our marketer, and he or she has good intentions in mind, but he goes out and looks at every opportunity with the same lens on. So goes out and looks at partnerships and sees only the possibility of business development. Goes out and looks at other blogs and other places in the industry where they might contribute and sees only a guest post opportunity, a chance to earn a link. Goes and looks at their landing pages and sees customers, potential customers coming to their site and thinks only: “How many? What’s the highest percent of those people that I can possibly convert to put in their credit card right now and buy something or make a transaction happen?”

They look at conferences and events and see only, “All right, how do I speak there?” Or “Should I sponsor it?” And “How do I get the most customers I possibly can out of that event? How do I get coverage from press, media, and bloggers? How do I turn this advertising placement into ROI? How do I turn these people on social media, who are interested in my topic, into people who follow me, become my customers, and amplify my content?”

This transactional model of thinking is actually really similar to how we do a lot of discussion in the marketing field. I’m guilty of this myself. I talk about: “Oh, well, if you’re looking for folks on social media, how do you turn them into followers of yours? How do you turn them into amplifiers?”

These are important topics. They’re good tactics, but this view, this idea that all these people are just a chance to make money, just an opportunity, it’s almost like the prostitution of marketing. If you think about the difference between dating and paying for a physical relationship, they’re thought of in such different ways. One has all sorts of positive and romantic and long-term associations in the world, and the other has incredibly negative connotations. I won’t get into the morality of our different views on these things, but this same thinking applies in the marketing world. We’ve all been on the receiving end of it. We’ve all been these people who are reached out to by this transactional marketer.

Transactional marketing results in only one thing — transactional relationships. Those transactional relationships are representative because every interaction is viewed exclusively through this “how are you going to become money for me,” which is an ugly, ugly way to think and an ugly way to be thought of. We all can feel it when it’s coming from someone else. It means treating people merely as conduits. They’re conduits for either attracting or becoming customers. When you think in this model, you prioritize something that’s actually dangerous to your long-term success — your short-term success.

It’s funny how the inverse correlation works. But if you’re constantly focused on the short-term return over the long-term relationship or relationship potential, the transactional model means that people and customers are going to abandon your brand as soon as it’s no longer the best transaction for them because they have no preexisting relationship. They have no loyalty. They have no love for you or your company or your product. It’s merely, “What are you doing for me right now because I’m giving you dollars?”

No one is cheering for your success. That’s so frustrating. How do you build a community? How do you build a social following? How do you attract an audience if no one’s cheering for your success? These folks are somewhere between ambivalent and sometimes antagonistic.

I’m sure you can think of brands. A lot of times people complain about this when it comes to utilities. Think of your relationship with your cable television provider or with an airline with whom you’ve been very disappointed. These kinds of classic transactional models apply. There’s no brand loyalty. Occasionally, when there is, it’s so special, so unique, so rare and weird, that we talk about it and blog about it and tweet about it and share it. Perhaps the worst part is there’s no long-term magnification.

One of the things that I always talk about, that Moz always talks about, and that we’ve had a lot of success in investing in channels of all kinds is that because there is a long-term focus, because there’s a relationship that’s being built, we are essentially biasing to get long-term returns over short-term returns. That means, over the long term, more and more people magnifying, amplifying, saying nice things, helping us out when they don’t need to because they have that connection with the brand.

If you’re missing that, the flywheel that you should be building with things like SEO, with things like social media marketing, with things like content marketing encounters too much friction, and it actually becomes a transactional model, just like paid advertising, and you lose a ton of the benefit that you would normally get from inbound channels. So don’t do it.

Instead of doing this, I would urge you to seek common ground with every kind of relationship that you build and seek common ground apart from purely the relationship, although business and professional topics are certainly great places to start with those. If you can find the things that you have in common — these two for these guys — among any of these kinds of partners that you’re interacting with and any type of outreach that you’re doing, any type of relationship that you encounter, it’s going to remove the purely transactional from the model.

The thing is it has to be authentic. You can’t do this in such a way that you’re sort of going down a checklist of, “Oh, yeah, hi Fred. It’s nice to meet you. Are you also a Seahawks fan, because I am a fan of this football team?” It’s insanity. It’s obvious.

Authentically seeking out relationships as you’re going relationship building, rather than biasing and prioritizing the transactional model, can be felt in every interaction that you have. Go out of your way to help. Go out of your way to help, and do it before you’re asked to do it.

One of the things that I love to do is when I encounter someone who impresses me, a product that impresses me, a company that impresses me, I like to share it. Because I have a reasonably nice social following, that actually turns into a lot of amplification, and those people are often very appreciative. But when someone shares something of mine, even if they have five followers on Twitter, no presence on Facebook, they pinned something on Pinterest, and they have four followers on their Pinterest board, it doesn’t matter. Especially if they’re doing it before there’s any kind of interaction or before there’s any kind of ask from me, it shows me that they truly care and they value something of mine, and that feels good. That’s a great way to start a relationship.

Don’t negotiate hard to get every last penny. I think that one of the things that we’re trained to do again as marketers is, in these kinds of marketing opportunities, we go out and we see, “Well, what’s the maximum that I can possibly get? I’m going to push this other person up against the wall until they’re getting minimum return and I’m getting maximum return.”

This is actually a terrible way to build a relationship. Of course, it results in this feature where people abandon the brand as soon as you’re not providing the best service to them or as soon as you’re not the best transactional option for them.

So if you can follow these things and go and change the way you do outreach, the way you do social media marketing, the way you do business development, the way you do advertising placements, the way you do pitches, generally speaking, I think you’re going to see a much greater return.

All right, everyone. Hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday. We’ll see you again next time. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com


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