Jeff Rajeck says, “‘Why?’ questions are always difficult to answer, but the current state of customer experience is puzzling.Almost every survey of marketers indicates that improving the customer experience is at the top of the priorities list, yet marketers often lament at their inability to make the changes necessary to do so.In our most recent Digital Intelligent Briefing, survey respondents once again put ‘customer experience’ at the top of the priority list for 2017.But when asked about their strategy in this area only around one in ten (11%) marketers said... [...]

Pratik Dholakiya says, “As all SEO experts know, ranking in the search engines is a notoriously unpredictable pursuit. Each update can result in a strong, unforeseeable impact. The days of ranking by simply adding keywords to your title tags, header tags and content to get a few backlinks are over. The harsh truth is that a great many businesses struggle to keep up with the changes.There are a lot of factors that the search engines take into account when determining your standing. Some of the big ones are:content qualityauthorityresponsivenesswebsite speedKnowing how exactly to improve... [...]

John Steinert says, “Whether you’re a CMO who’s trying to figure out how to make substantive progress in the marketplace (the kind you can point to and say, “We’re really making a difference!”), or an experienced demand-gen pro who’s finding it harder and harder to achieve significant lift for your programs, I want to share something with you:No matter how well you do content marketing, no matter how fantastic your inbound funnel seems to be working, you may be winning those battles, but you’re losing the war.There are several obvious reasons why this could be the case. And... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “In November 2016, Google launched their mobile-first index experiment and hoped to do enough testing to launch it sometime in the near future. Well, it seems this mobile-first index has proven to be a challenge for Google, and they may not even launch it this year.At the Next10x Conference in Boston yesterday, Gary Illyes from Google said that while the team is hopeful that they will launch the mobile-first index by the end of the year, he feels that it is unlikely.We asked Gary to confirm, and he told us that he did indeed say that at the event. He said the team working... [...]

Patricio Robles says, “Can influencers and affiliate marketing be a match made in heaven? Online retail’s 800-pound gorilla is apparently interested in finding out.Last week, it was revealed that Amazon has launched a beta of an invite-only Amazon Influencer Program “exclusively designed for social media influencers with large followings and a high frequency of posts with shoppable content.”According to TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez, the program functions like the company’s affiliate program in that participants are paid a commission for product sales that they... [...]

Seth Price says, “Every day, billions of pieces of content are published like clockwork on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat. Yet the clock has stopped for most marketers when it comes to creating content that breaks through the noise.Despite what some have coined as “content shock,” 77 percent of B2C content marketers expect their organization to produce more content in 2017 than it did in 2016. But scaling content marketing is not only expensive, it’s often mystifying. Most efforts tend to be campaign-based, copycat initiatives; and what’s equally surprising... [...]

Nate Dame says, “There are at least 200 ranking factors in Google’s algorithm (not to mention RankBrain), which means a thorough SEO audit could lead to dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of SEO tasks. Few companies have the budget or resources to complete every potential SEO to-do item — and doing so would be an incredible waste of time and resources anyway. Some SEO tasks are critical and cannot be ignored; others just aren’t worth your time.Prioritizing an SEO task list is crucial. Focus your resources on SEO work that is actually going to improve rankings, increase clicks and... [...]

Ben Davis says, “Are marketers doing enough to prove the ROI of influencers? Do they even need to?Econsultancy has just published a discussion of the topic, titled Measuring the ROI of Influencer Marketing, in association with Fashion & Beauty Monitor.Let’s look at some of the issues.Influencer marketing is now at the top tableThe first point to make is that spending on influencer marketing is not insignificant. The past couple of years have seen high profile campaigns, particularly in fashion and beauty, but also in travel, food and beyond.Sponsored social posts from the... [...]

Paul Randall says, “Be careful what you ask for, is always sound advice. And when you’re briefing an agency to create a new website or ecommerce store you need to be extremely careful.The consequences, good and bad, of that briefing will stay with you for some time. The results of dodgy assumptions or the wrong focus can be costly to fix once you’ve discovered your expensive new site is a flop.Briefs typically go wrong for a very simple reason: they start off focusing in the wrong place. The list of requirements is usually framed along the lines of ‘We need the website to…’... [...]

Jeff Rajeck says, “The Great Firewall of China (GFW), called The Golden Shield Project in China, is a censorship and surveillance project which intends to block information and data which is considered unfavorable by the government.Regardless of the politics behind it, the GFW is a nuisance for Western brands trying to access China as many of the sites which are used in the West are unavailable in the country.  These include core internet services such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube as well as many Western publishers.Recently, however, there have been a number of... [...]