SEO Book Uncategorized

Creating an Experience for Your Product

Eric Covino

In a recent post I talked about the benefits of productizing your business model along with some functional ways to achieve productization.

A product, in and of itself is really only 1/2 of what you are selling to your clients. The other 1/2 of the equation is the “experience”.

It sounds a bit “fluffy” but in my career as a service provider and in my purchasing history as a consumer the experience matters. I would even go so far as to say that in some very noticeable cases the experience can outweigh the product itself (to some extent anyways).

These halves, the product and the experience, can cut both ways.

Sometimes a product is so good that the experience can be average or even below average and the provider will still make out and sometimes the experience is so fantastic that an otherwise average or above average product is elevated to what can be priced as a premium product or service.

Let’s get a few obvious variables out of the way first. It is understood that:

  1. Experience matters more to some people than others
  2. Experience matters more in certain industries than others
  3. The actual product matters more to some
  4. The actual product matters more in some industries

If we stipulate that the 4 scenarios mentioned above are true, which they are, it still doesn’t change the basic premise that you are probably leaving revenue and growth on the table if you settle on one side or the other.

While it’s true that you can be successful even if your product to experience ratio is like a seesaw heavily weighted in one direction over the other, it is also true that you would probably be more successful if you made both the best each could be.

Defining Where Product Meets Experience

I’ll layout a couple of examples here to help illustrate the point:

  • The “Big Four” in the link research tools space; Ahrefs, Link Research Tools, Majestic, and Open Site Explorer
  • The two more well-known “tool/reporting suites” Raven and Moz outside of much more expensive enterprise toolkits

In my experience Ahrefs has been the best combination of product and experience, especially lately. Their dataset continues to grow and recent UI changes have made it even easier to use. Exports are super fast and I’ve had quick and useful interactions with their support staff. Perhaps it isn’t a coincidence that, from groups of folks I interact with and follow online, Ahrefs continues to pop up more often in conversation than not.

To me, Majestic and Link Research Tools are examples of where the product is really, really strong (copious amounts of data across many segments) but the UI/UX is not quite as good as the others. I realize some of this is subjective but in other comparisons online this seems to be a prevailing theme.

Open Site Explorer has a fantastic UI/UX but the data can be a bit behind the others and getting data out (exporting) is bit more of a chore than point, click, download. It seems like over a period of time OSE has had a rougher road to data and update growth than the other tools I mentioned.

In the case of two of more popular reporting and research suites, Moz and Raven, Raven has really caught up (if not surpassed) Moz in terms of UI/UX. Raven pulls in data from multiple sources, including Moz, and has quite a few more (and easier to get to and cross-reference) features than Moz.

Moz may not be interested in getting into some of the other pieces of the online marketing puzzle that Raven is into but I think it’s still a valid comparison based on the very similar, basic purpose of each tool suite.

Assessing Your Current Position

When assessing or reassessing your products and offerings, a lot of it goes back to targeting the right market.

  • Is the market big enough to warrant investment into a product?
  • How many different segments of a given market do you need to appeal to?
  • Where’s the balance between feature bloat (think Zoho CRM) versus “good enough” functionality with an eye towards an incredible UX (think Highrise CRM)?

If the market isn’t big enough and you have to go outside your initial target, how will that affect the balance between the functionality of your product and the experience for your users, customers, or clients?

If you are providing SEO services your “functionality” might be how easy it is to determine the reports you provide and their relationship(s) to a client’s profitability or goals (or both). Your “experience” is likely a combination of things:

  • The graphical presentation of your documents
  • The language used in your reports and other interactions with the client
  • The consistency of your “brand” across the web
  • The consistency of your brand presentation (website, invoices, reports, etc)
  • Client ability to access reports and information quickly without having to ask you for it
  • Consistency of your information delivery (are you always on-time, late, or erratic with due dates, meetings, etc)

When you breakdown what you think is your “product” and “experience” you’ll likely find that it is pretty simple to develop a plan to improve both, rather than beating the vague “let’s do great things” company line that no one really understands but just nods at.

Example of Experience in Action

In just about every Consumer Reports survey Apple comes out on top for customer satisfaction. Apple, whether you like their products/”culture” or not, creates a fairly reliable, if not expensive, end to end experience. This is doubly true if you live near an Apple store.

If you look at laptop failure rates Apple is generally in the middle of the pack. There are other things that go into the Apple experience (using the OS and such) but part of the reason people are willing to pay that premium is due to their support options and ability to fix bugs fairly quickly.

To tie this into our industry, I think Moz is a good parallel example here. Their design is generally heralded as being quite pleasant and it’s pretty easy to use their tools; there isn’t a steep learning curve to using most of their products.

I think their product presentation is top notch, even though I generally prefer some of their competitors products. They are pretty active on social media and their support is generally very good.

So, in the case of Moz it’s pretty clear that people are willing to pay for less robust data or at least less features and options partly (or wholly) due to their product experience and product presentation.

Redesigning Your Experience

You might already have some of these but it’s worthwhile to revisit a very basic style guide (excluding audience development):

  • Consistent logo and colors
  • Fonts
  • Vocabulary and Language Style (the tone of your brand, is it My Brand or MyBrand or myBrand, etc)

Some Additional Resources

Here are some visual/text-based resources that I have found helpful during my own redefining process:

These are some of the tools you might want to use to help in this process:

  • Running copy through Word for readability Scores- Office 2013
  • A Windows tool that can help improve your writing- Stylewriter
  • A Mac tool to help with graphics and charts- Omnigraffle
  • A Windows tool to help with charts and graphics- SmartDraw
  • A cloud-based presentation tool that helps the less artistically inclined (like me)- Prezi
  • Online proposal software- Proposable
  • A text expander for Mac, comes in handy with consistent “messaging”- TextExpander
  • Windows alternative that syncs with TextExpander- Breevy
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Channel: SEO Google: SEO Search Engine Land Top News Uncategorized

Google’s Matt Cutts: Don’t Duplicate Your Meta Descriptions

Barry Schwartz

Google’s Matt Cutts, the head of search spam, released a video today providing an SEO tip on meta descriptions. Matt said, do not have duplicate meta descriptions on your site. Matt said it is better to have unique meta descriptions and even no meta descriptions at all, then to show duplicate…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Channel: Consumer Features: Analysis Google: Business Issues Google: Critics Google: Web Search Search Engine Land Uncategorized

After Two Years Of Broken Promises, Does Google Need To Explain More to Maintain Trust In Search?

Danny Sullivan

For two years running, Google’s broken major promises about search. It began doing paid inclusion in 2012, which it once called “evil.” This year, it’s experimenting with banner ads it said would never be allowed. Both represent major philosophical shifts for the company…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Brands over-dependent on SEO and social for content marketing

Nick Marr

Too many brands are relying on SEO and social in a way which places the onus of branded content discovery on the consumer, requiring them to actively search for the brand’s content or leaving it to chance that they’ll stumble across it through social media platforms.

Given that around 95% of B2B and 97% of B2C companies in the UK are practising some form of content marketing, it pays for brands to take a more active approach to getting their content in front of their target users.

“If you build it, they will come” doesn’t cut the content marketing mustard. 

Brands and marketers with experience in content marketing are aware of the need to actively promote their content to supplement search and social. They also understand that a concerted content marketing strategy is necessary to generate a strong ROI on content creation.

Brands can drive traffic to their content and build positive relationships with consumers by remembering a few content marketing tactics:

1. There’s more to life than SEO

SEO is, of course, fundamental to any digital marketing strategy, but there’s no guarantee on it being sufficient to drive significant traffic to branded content.

Used effectively, good SEO enables consumers who are looking for something specific to find it easily and click through to a website for more information. The best SEO is most effective when executed with extreme precision.

However, brands with a real understanding of content marketing know that the content they create is often only loosely related to the core keywords of their brand. For example, a leading bread brand might create an article for their site on the tastiest lunchtime sandwich fillings.

Yet with recent updates to search algorithms, it’s far more likely that consumers searching “tastiest lunchtime sandwich fillings” will be taken to content from a company who makes the tasty sandwich fillings, not the bread.

That’s one of the reasons why, according to research by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), only 45% of businesses rate their SEO ranking as a top measurement criterion for content marketing success. There’s more to content marketing than SEO alone.

2. Get the content out there

The main organisational goal for UK companies who undertake content marketing is brand awareness. Lead generation and boosted website traffic aren’t even in the top three things companies hope to achieve with content marketing.

According to the research by the CMI and DMA, promoting the content to raise brand awareness is what companies care about most. So it’s insufficient to merely promote it with some tweets if the company has only a few hundred followers.

Equally, there’s little value in brands developing content for their blog if it only receives ten hits per day. The content must be promoted, whether by emailing it to consumers who’ve opted in to receiving information from brands, or to prospective customers via content discovery platforms which enable marketers to place ads linking to branded content natively within relevant digital editorial.

Promoting content with ad formats which sit natively within relevant content ensures that the branded content is seen as part of a user’s browsing experience, rather than feeling like they’re seeing an ad.
CM Tactic

3. Make the most of other relevant editorial

To communicate effectively with consumers, marketers have to seed their branded content around the internet in a way which reflects the many different ways digital content is being consumed.

The content marketing strategy must be compatible with consumers’ content consumption habits. Whilst some consumers actively search for a brand’s content, or come across it via a social media contact, many consumers move from one piece of content to the next via relevant links at the bottom of articles.

Brands and marketers who position their content within relevant editorial are maximising the likelihood of consumers clicking to their content and initiating relationships with the brand.

4. Rework, rewrite, repurpose

The CMI and DMA research discovered that companies in the UK cite ‘producing enough content’ and ‘producing engaging content’ as their top two challenges in content marketing.

It’s an issue partly because of how naively many businesses approach content marketing, assuming that they have to create new, shiny, high-quality content – whether articles, video, or images – on a regular basis and at great cost.

Many companies are overlooking the ways they can repurpose existing content to maximise ROI. A talented copywriter can turn the research conducted in order to write one feature article into several features, each making the same brand-consistent points in a diverse number of ways.

Similarly, a decent video editor knows how to turn a recorded internal meeting on new product developments into an engaging three minute Q&A to go on the company’s YouTube page. Ensuring you have access to talented content creators – whether in-house or outsourced – is crucial to developing a sustainable content marketing strategy for your brand.

5. Listen to your audience

By analysing comprehensive metrics of consumer interaction with the branded content marketers can assess which types of content are having the most impact with consumers and ensure future content fits this mould.

A home gym equipment manufacturer might find that consumers are significantly more likely to share and interact with their “Top 10 Worst Things About Public Gyms” content than their “Top 10 Best Things About Having A Home Gym” article.

£CM+

This insight enables the creative teams to tweak their content creation towards what consumers actively want to engage with. Content discovery platforms which promote branded content enable brands to assess metrics such as duration of interaction with the content, viral activity, and the sources and volume of traffic.

If a certain type of content is failing to generate a response from consumers, it can be retired, in favour of the types of content which are garnering more attention. Good content discovery platforms are also geared for real-time updates, meaning marketers can place ads which display fresh, relevant, on-trend branded content which can display with each refresh of the page.

When executed effectively, content marketing can be a powerful tool in building brand awareness, and enables brands to build and maintain valuable relationships with consumers. Yet brands must be proactive about promoting their content, and can’t afford to simply rely on consumers to find the content.

An SEO and social media focussed content marketing strategy simply can’t provide the same guarantees for brands as actively pushing the content to ensure the quality content marketers have spent time and money creating is going to be seen by consumers.

Channel: Consumer Google: Images Google: Web Search Microsoft: Bing Microsoft: Bing Image Search Search Engine Land Top News Uncategorized

Google & Microsoft Agree To Block Child Sexual Abuse Material From Search Results

Barry Schwartz

The Mail Online reports Google and Microsoft Bing have adjusted their search results to block child pornography and other child sexual abuse content from being accessible through their search engines. The news is being widely covered, some claiming tha…

Channel: SEM checkbox SEM core SEM Paid Search Column Search Engine Land Uncategorized

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David Rodnitzky

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Channel: SEO Google google lionbridge Google: Search Quality Raters Google: SEO Search Engine Land SEO: General Top News Uncategorized

In Quality Raters’ Handbook, Google Adds Higher Standards For “Your Money Or Your Life” Websites

Matt McGee

Google’s continuing push toward identifying expertise and authority on the web takes another step in the form of a new type of website/landing page classification: “Your Money or Your Life.” It’s explained in detail in a new version of Google’s “Search Quality…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.