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Author Archives: stevenlambrossi
Microsoft Office 365
Microsoft Office 365 is a Web-based version of Microsoft’s Office suite of enterprise-grade applications.
How The Google Display Network Boosts Search PPC Performance: A Case Study
Using Google Display Networks, one client saw a massive increase in clicks and impressions, though not many conversions. However, display often has a better impact on search campaigns than they appear to on first glance.
Google Maps Now Shareable Across Devices
Google Maps users can now share maps from desktop to mobile, according to a recent
Google+ post.
21 of the Most Inspiring Ad Campaigns of the Last 12 Months
This post originally appeared on HubSpot’s Agency Post. To read more content like this, subscribe to Agency Post.
A great idea can inspire.
But it can also made you jealous of its simplicity, humor, emotion, and elegance.
And no other event in the marketing and advertising industry brings so many jealousy-inducing ideas together as the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The event recently wrapped at the end of June and this year’s top winners — the Grand Prix recipients — provide us with another list of interesting and inspiring work.
To review all the work that impressed the judges, check out the lineup below.
21 of the Most Inspiring Ad Campaigns of the Last 12 Months
Film
1) 100
For Leica, F/nazca Saatchi & Saatchi recreated 35 iconic photos in a visually stunning short film.
2) Family
Geico released a series of innovative pre-roll ads that highlighted the message in the first 5 seconds, before the skip button appears. The Martin Agency and Park Pictures were responsible for the work.
Mobile
3) Cardboard
Google’s virtual reality reader made from cardboard won in the mobile category because it would enable consumers, brands, and agencies to innovate with virtual reality at a low cost.
Cyber
4) I Will What I Want
This memorable campaign featuring Gisele Bundchen for Under Armour has her fighting off a onslaught of negative comments from social media. The campaign was created by Droga5.
PR
5) Never Stop Riding
For the City of Buenos Aires Public Bike System, the community (or la comunidad) created a campaign to promote the 24/7 cycling program.
Radio
6) The Berlin Wall of Sound
To mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Soundcloud and Grey Berlin created an acoustic reconstruction of the Berlin Wall.
Product Design
7) Lucky Iron Fish
Geometry Global created a no-tech, simple product to help the people of Cambodia prevent iron deficiency. The fish-shaped piece of iron, which symbolized hope and good luck in the community, is cooked in the person’s meal for 10 minutes and can contribute 75% of a person’s daily required iron intake. Results from the campaign showed that there was a 55% reduction in iron deficiency in the market wtihin nine months.
Creative Effectiveness
8) Live Test Series
This seriesfrom Forsman & Bodenfors took home theGrand Prixin Cyber and Film at the 2014 festival. Volkswagon to submitted it for this year’s Effectiveness award with details on how the campaign had produced profit and changed consumer behavior.
Film Craft
9) Monty’s Christmas
This short film for retailer John Lewis was a favorite of the holiday season, featuring the special friendship between a child and a penguin. The campaign was created by adam&eveDDB London.
Integrated
10) Emoji Ordering
Crispin Porter & Bogusky created a way for people to link their Twitter accounts to their Domino’s account and order a pizza by tweeting the pizza emoji.
Titanium
11) Re2pect
Wieden+Kennedy created this ad for Jordan to celebrate Derek Jeter’s final season with the Yankees.
Promo & Activation
12) Life Paint
For Volvo, Grey London created a reflective spray that shines in the glare of car headlights at night.
PR
13) #LikeAGirl
MSLGroup and Leo Burnett worked on this famous campaign that was re-released as a Super Bowl ad.
Media
14) Red Light Application
Y&R Istanbul created an app for Vodafone that allowed women in a domestic abuse situation to seek help from three pre-selected friend. But the app couldn’t be mass marketed, so it was promoted within makeup tutorials, on clothing tags, and when the person copy and pasted an offer code.
Glass
15) Touch the Pickle
BBDO India created this campaign for Whisper to challenge women to ignore the taboos surrounding menstruation.
Outdoor
16) World Gallery
TBWA\Media Arts Lab and Apple created a series of billboards that featured photos submitted by iPhone 6 users.
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Direct
17) Interception
For the Super Bowl, Grey New York asked people to tweet who they would give a Volvo to during car commercials.
Lions Health & Wellness
18) Intimate Words
Created by Leo Burnett Mexico, this campaign from Always wanted to change the behaviors of women in Mexican communities to prevent cervical cancer, a leading cause of death.
Lions Pharma
19) Take it From a Fish
For AstraZeneca, DigitasLBi created a YouTube series to educate men on the benefits of consuming triglycerides.
Grand Prix for Good
20) This Girl Can
For Sport England, FCB Inferno created an ad that highlighted women who get moving.
Lions Innovation
21) What3Words
To address the problem of the more than 4 billion people around the world who do not have a reliable address, what3words founders divided the world into 57 trillion three-meter squares. For each of those squares, they assigned three words, such as table.tickles.spoon.
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Help Us Improve the Moz Blog: 2015 Reader Survey
Posted by Trevor-Klein
In late 2013, we asked you all about your experience with the Moz Blog. It was the first time we’d collected direct feedback from our readers in more than three years—an eternity in the marketing industry. With the pace of change in our line of work (not to mention your schedules and reading habits) we didn’t want to wait that long again, so we’re taking this opportunity to ask you how well we’re keeping up.
Our mission is to help you all become better marketers, and to do that, we need to know more about you. What challenges do you all face? What are your pain points? Your day-to-day frustrations? If you could learn more about one or two (or three) topics, what would those be?
If you’ll help us out by taking this five-minute survey, we can make sure we’re offering the most useful and valuable content we possibly can. When we’re done looking through the responses, we’ll follow up with a post about what we learned.
Thanks, everyone; we’re excited to see what you have to say!
Can’t see the survey? Click here to take it in a new tab.
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!
What to See, Do, and More at MozCon 2015 in Seattle
Posted by EricaMcGillivray
One of our favorite things about MozCon is introducing all of you to Seattle. We love our city, and besides three days of marketing learning, we also host three night events and facilitate other fun activities. We are currently 92% sold out with around 100 tickets left, so if you haven’t already:
Check out the full schedule if you’re interested in knowing more about the MozCon sessions.
Birds-of-a-feather tables at lunch
After many requests for more community connecting, this year, we’re launching birds-of-a-feather tables during each lunch. There will be eight labeled tables with different topics each day and a different facilitator each day. (There are also a ton of unlabeled tables for random meeting and gatherings.) Sit down and join a conversation around a professional interest.
Table schedule
Monday tables:
- Real Estate Marketers, hosted by Brittanie Flegle from Realty Austin
- Manufacturing, hosted by Crystal Hunt from WTB, Inc.
- Content Strategy, hosted by Ronell Smith from RS Consulting
- Women in Digital Marketing, hosted by Susan Wiker from Fodor’s Travel
- In-house Marketers, hosted by Andy Odom from Santander Consumer USA Inc.
- Local SEO, hosted by David Mihm from Moz
- Inbound Marketing, hosted by Eric Hess from REI
- SEO Executives, hosted by Benjamin Seror from SimilarWeb
Tuesday tables:
- Women in Digital Marketing, hosted by Heather Physioc from Tentacle Inbound
- In-house Marketers, hosted by Kelly Cooper from Moz
- Independent Consultants, hosted by Lisa Kaneff from The Next Chapter
- Google Penalties, hosted by Michael Cottam from Visual Itineraries
- Local SEO, hosted by Paul Sherland from IX Brand SEO Services Company
- International SEO and Content, hosted by Zeph Snapp from Altura Interactive
- Enterprise Content, hosted by Craig Harkins from InterContinental Hotels Group
- Social Media, hosted by Lala Castro from GigaSavvy
Wednesday tables:
- Moz Q&A Forum, hosted by Christy Correll from Honey Tree Media
- In-house Marketers, hosted by Donna M. Snow from Reputation.com
- Blogging Outside the Industry, hosted by Dustin Nay from Christensen & Hymas
- Local SEO, hosted by Greg Gifford from DealerOn, Inc
- Branding and Metadata, hosted by Misty Weaver from Portent, Inc.
- Growing an Agency, hosted by James Loomstein from Digital Space Consulting
- Women in Digital Marketing, hosted by Jen Lopez from Moz
- MozCon Community Speakers, host TBD
Don’t worry, with all of us in the same room, doing the same things for three days, you’ll never miss a lunch or birds-of-a-feather opportunity!
Our official MozCon evening events
#MozCrawl: Monday night
Join us and our partners for a tour of the neighborhood bars in Belltown. This is our second official MozCrawl, and we’re delighted to show off yet another part of Seattle. Each bar will feature a unique MozCon button. Collect all six and be entered in a drawing for a golden Roger. The crawl runs from 7-10pm. Make sure to bring your ID, US driver’s license or passport.
(Standard disclaimer: Roger is golden, not made of gold.)
Locations
| Buckley’s, 2331 2nd Ave, hosted by | 
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| Clever Bottle, 2222 2nd Ave Ste.100, hosted by | 
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| Rabbit Hole, 2222 2nd Ave, hosted by | 
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| Lava Lounge, 2226 2nd Ave, hosted by | 
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| Wakefield Bar, 2137 2nd Ave, hosted by |
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| The Whiskey Bar, 2122 2nd Ave, hosted by | 
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MozCon Ignite: Tuesday night
You’ve long asked for a networking-focused event, and in a Mozzy spirit, we’re happy to bring our Tuesday night MozCon Ignite. Starts at 7pm with networking and appetizers with talks starting at 8pm.
Ignite talks are 5 minutes in length with auto-advancing slides. All these talks are passion topics—no marketing talks—so you can put your notebook down and relax. Get to know your fellow community members and their interests beyond our shared profession.
MozCon Ignite schedule:
| 7:00-8:00pm | Networking | |
| 8:00-8:05pm | Welcome to MozCon Ignite with Geraldine DeRuiter, aka the Everywhereist | 
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| 8:05-8:10pm | Regales of an Accidental Nightcrawler Stunt Double with Jay Neill from Affiliate Resources, Inc.
Jay Neill is an online marketing consultant who helps businesses get started in the world of local SEO through education and servicing. In his spare time, Jay enjoys jumping on trampolines and playing with his vast collection of vintage Star Wars action figures. |
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| 8:10-8:15pm | Sled Dogs, Northern Lights, and Mushing Tails! with Anna Anderson from Art Unlimited
Anna Anderson is an avid dog lover who owns over 35 sled dogs in Northern MN. Growing up with sled dogs, she and her family now competitively race across North America: training, racing, and traveling for 2-3 months with 20 of her best canine friends across the country! Follow her on Twitter: @boldadgirl |
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| 8:15-8:20pm | Performing a Canine C-Section with Marie Haynes from HIS Web Marketing
Dr. Marie Haynes is recognized as a leader when it comes to dealing with Google penalties and algorithm changes like Panda and Penguin. Prior to her career in SEO, she was a small animal veterinarian for 13 years. It is possible that her strong fear of birds is what launched her in to a new life of battling the Penguins at Google. Follow her on Twitter: @Marie_Haynes |
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| 8:20-8:25pm | Bulltown Strutters: The Band That Married Its City with Mark Traphagen from StoneTemple Consulting
Mark Traphagen is Senior Director of Online Marketing for Stone Temple Consulting. When not disrupting things online, Mark disrupts the sleep of the good citizens of Durham, NC, by making as much noise as possible with the Bulltown Strutters, a New Orleans Second Line style parade band. Follow him on Twitter: @marktraphagen |
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| 8:25-8:30pm | Okay, I Have a Confession: I Was Homeschooled with Garrett Mehrguth from Directive Consulting
Garrett Mehrguth is digital marketing enthusiast and owner of Directive Consulting, which provides SEO, PPC, and Content for small to mid-market companies. When Garrett’s not in the office, you can catch him playing foosball, surfing, or playing soccer. Follow him on Twitter: @gmehrguth |
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| 8:30-8:35pm | Conquering the 100 Best Books of All Time with Kristen Craft from Wistia
Kristen Craft is Director of Business Development and loves connecting with Wistia’s partner community to spread the word about video marketing. In her spare time, she takes epically long walks, swims in ponds, and brews beer. Follow her on Twitter: @thecrafty |
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| 8:35-8:40pm | Tales of Coffee from a Kitchen Window with Scott Callender from La Marzocco Home
Scott Callendar is the Director of the newly launched La Marzocco Home. He is the definition of a coffee geek and spends his time away from his job in coffee with his family and thinks more about coffee. Follow him on Twitter: @incognitocoffee |
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| 8:40-8:45pm | Go Frost Yourself: 7 Basic Frostings & Their Uses with Annette Promes from Moz
Annette Promes has spent the past two decades in and around Seattle working in various marketing roles. She is currently the CMO at Moz, where she and her teams handle everything that is “funnel-related,” such as driving traffic to Moz’s site, converting that traffic into product trials, and reducing customer churn. Annette really loves frosting. Follow her on Twitter: @ahpromes |
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| 8:45-9:15pm | Networking break | |
| 9:15-9:20pm | A Creative Endeavor Inspires & Lengthens a Life with Ralph Legnini from DragonSearch
Ralph Legnini – Senior Creative Strategist at DragonSearch in NY – is an Aikido 5th Degree Black Belt Sensei, former Saturday Night Live music producer, President of the Board of Education in the 2nd largest school district in New York State, funky rock & roll guitar player, and has worked in the recording studio with music icons Mick Jagger, Madonna, David Bowie, Nile Rodgers, & Todd Rundgren. He used these unique combined skills to create a life sustaining environment for a talented 16-year-old boy with incurable cancer. Follow him on Twitter: @ruaralph2 |
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| 9:20-9:25pm | Finding and Embracing Healthy Eating Habits with Carrie Hill from Ignitor Digital Marketing, LLC
Carrie Hill is the co-founder and technical SEO expert at Ignitor Digital. She loves cooking, eating, reading, and Eddie Vedder…not necessarily in that order. Follow her on Twitter: @CarrieHill |
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| 9:25-9:30pm | I Was Told There Would Be Hoverboards. with Dan Petrovic from DEJAN
Dan Petrovic, the managing director of DEJAN, is one of Australia’s best-known names in the field of search engine optimization. Dan is a web author, innovator, and a highly-regarded search industry event speaker. Follow him on Twitter: @dejanseo |
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| 9:35-9:40pm | The Day I Disremembered with Chris Hanson from 3GEngagement
Chris Hanson has been involved in digital marketing since 2006 and is currently Founder and CEO of 3GEngagement. After Hanson worked as a Park Ranger, lived without electricity, raced sled dogs, and lived in Alaska, he felt that digital marketing was the next obvious career move. Follow him on Twitter: @FollowUPsuccess |
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| 9:40-9:45pm | What Did You Expect in an Opera, a Happy Ending? with Chrissi Reimer from Three Deep Marketing
A Green Bay native and Minneapolis transplant, Chrissi Reimer spends her days working as an SEO at Three Deep Marketing. Most nights, Chrissi can be found experimenting with different ways to prepare arugula, trying new brews, or taste-testing every ice cream option in the Twin Cities. Follow her on Twitter: @chrissireimer |
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| 9:45-9:50pm | The Best Practices in Cooking Hot Dogs with Josh Couper from Rafflecopter
Josh Couper is the director of customer happiness at Rafflecopter and long time hot dog aficionado. Follow him on Twitter: @josh_couper |
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| 9:50-9:55pm | Raising My Parents with Jen Lopez from Moz
Jen Sable Lopez is the Director of Community at Moz. She is a renowned Community Strategist who started her marketing career as a technical SEO. Jen is a self-proclaimed geek and faux vegetarian, and she prides herself in having kicked colon cancer’s butt at the young age of 37. Follow her on Twitter: @jennita |
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| 9:55-10:00pm | Stoned Nerd versus the Four-Legged Home Invaders with Ian Lurie from Portent, Inc.
Ian Lurie is founder and CEO of Portent, Inc., a search, social and content agency that helps clients become weird, useful, and significant. He’s also a renowned raccoon wrangler. Follow him on Twitter: @portentint |
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Garage Party: Wednesday night
There ain’t no party like a Moz party, and our annual bash at the Garage is always a blast. Have one last hurrah with us before heading home and back to work.
For those who’ve never been to the Garage, there’s something for everyone: bowling, pool, and karaoke. Plus, a ton of food and drinks—including our featured MozCow Mule Mocktail, as well as well liquor, beer, house wine, and of course, our friend H2O. So whether you’re singing your heart out, playing for the corner pocket, bowling a turkey, or just chatting with your new friends, we’ll see you there.
Coming in early? See and explore Seattle!
MozCon-adjacent activities
The following events are MozCon-adjacent, meaning they aren’t hosted by Moz and attendees must arrange and pay for their adventures.
Paddle around Elliott Bay! At 2:30pm Sunday, for $49/per person, you can head out on the water and make new MozCon friends. You can easily catch the water taxi at Pier 50 ($4.75 one-way) from Downtown to West Seattle. Alki tours is located right next to the West Seattle ferry terminal for your convenience.
Take a distillery tour at 12pm Sunday and learn about Seattle’s unique craft culture. Conveniently, the tour leaves from the Grand Hyatt Hotel. You can call (206) 455-3740 to reserve your spot on the tour, which costs $87.50/per person.
Seattle Mariners vs. Los Angeles Angels
Love baseball? Come see Seattle’s home team play. The Mariners game starts at 1:10pm, and you can see them take on the Angels for $17/per person on the View Level. You must purchase your ticket before 5pm July 10 in order to get the MozCon deal. Enter ‘MOZCON’ as your special offer code.
Citywide events
- Ballard SeafoodFest, Saturday, July 11, 11am-10pm
- Chinatown Seafair Parade, Sunday, July 19, 7-9pm
- Covington Days Festival, Saturday and Sunday, July 18 and July 19, 10am-7pm
- Dragon Fest, Saturday, July 11, 12-8pm
- Kent Cornucopia Days, Friday-Sunday, July 10-July 12, 10am-8pm
- Kirkland Uncorked, Friday-Sunday, July 17-19
- Mercer Island Summer Celebration, Saturday and Sunday, July 11 and 12, 10am-10:30pm
- PCC Natural Markets Seafair Milk Carton Derby, Saturday, July 11, 9am-3pm
- Polish Festival Seattle, Saturday, July 11, 12-8pm
- Seafair Indian Days Pow Wow, Friday-Sunday, July 17-19
- Seattle Bon Odori, Saturday and Sunday, July 18 and July 19
- Shoreline Classic Car Show, Sunday, July 19, 10am-3pm
- Wallingford Family Parade & Festival, Saturday, July 11, 11am-5pm
- Wedgwood Art Festival, Saturday and Sunday, July 11 and 12, 10am-5pm
- West Seattle Summer Fest, Friday-Sunday, July 10-12, 10am-6pm
- ZICO Seafair Stand Up Paddleboard, an Urban Surf Competition, Saturday, July 11, 9am-3pm
Mozzers recommend their favorite Seattle destinations!
Agua Verde, recommended by Rachael Kloek
“Agua Verde serves great Mexican food in a beautiful lakefront setting. You can rent paddleboards and kayaks right under the restaurant to paddle your way around Lake Union.”
Ballard brewery blocks, recommended by Chris Lowe
“A dozen really good breweries all within a few blocks of each other: Stoup, Reubens, Red Envelope, Populuxe, Peddler, Maritime, etc., etc. You can easily walk from one brewery to another. Bonus is that most of these breweries host food trucks on the weekends. The area is also just a few blocks from downtown Ballard and the Burke Gilman Trail.”
Ballard Locks, recommended by Renea Nielsen
“The Ballard Locks are a bit of a trek from downtown Seattle (~ 45 min. by bus), but they are a perfect Seattle maritime adventure. The Locks abut a beautiful park and show off Seattle’s maritime history. If you’re lucky, you may even find some sea lions playing in one of the closed Locks.”
Pike Place Market, recommended by Erica McGillivray
“May seen like a ‘touristy’ spot, but Pike Place Market actually thrives on local business. Every day, there’s a farmer’s market, flowers galore, and artisans on everything from cheese and spices to woodworking and jewelry. There are hidden shops (at least three bookstores) and a ton of great food.”
Elliot Bay Books, recommended by Rand Fishkin
“One of the best indie bookstores in the country, stocked with good stuff to buy and read, and there’s a lovely cafe, too.”
Ferry ride, recommended by Nemecia Kaloper
“Takes you to such cool places and allows you to see the city from different view and get a taste of our awesome islands! It requires usually at least 1/2 a day, but is well worth it to be able to hop over and have lunch somewhere other than the city. It’s easy to never take the trip, but well worth it if you do. I recommend Bainbridge in particular and Nola Cafe.”
The Fremont Troll, recommended by Kevin Loesken
“The Fremont Troll, and Fremont in general, perfectly sums up what’s great about Seattle. The troll itself is an amazing piece of art. It’s also near the Lenin Statue and close to a lot of interesting bars, restaurants, and shops.”
Rodeo Donuts!, recommended by David Lee
“Best donuts ever. Even better than Voodoo in Portland, OR. This needs to be a 150 characters long so once again, best donuts ever. I really like the donuts here. Don’t go to Krispy Kreme or Top Pot.”
Vivace: the Cafe Nico, recommended by Abe Schmidt
“The Cafe Nico best coffee drink in this city. Orange/nutmeg/ cinnamon paired with the greatest espresso pull in the country (only machine in the world capable of the ‘perfect’ espresso shot).”
Starbucks Roastery, recommended by Ben Simpson
“Just a few blocks from the convention center, the Starbucks Roastery is one of biggest new attractions in Seattle. Why? To start, walking it it feels like Willy Wonka had one to many espresso shots and got inspired. Starbucks pulled together its best baristas from around the country to put together some amazing craft coffee creations. And to top it all off, they’ve got a Serious Pie on location making all of their delicious food. If you do nothing else during your visit, the Starbucks Roastery is an absolute must!”
And Mozzer favorite restaurants and bars opened since last MozCon
- Trove, 500 E Pike St
- Nacho Borracho, 209 Broadway E
- Kukai Ramen & Izakaya, 320 E Pine St
- Kracken Congee, 88 Yesler Way
Looking for more options? Don’t miss our quintessential post from last year,
our mega post from 2013, Rand’s personal recommendations, and Jon Colman’s Seattle coffee guide.
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!
Your Daily SEO Fix: Week 5
Posted by Trevor-Klein
We’ve arrived, folks! This is the last installment of our short (< 2-minute) video tutorials that help you all get the most out of Moz’s tools. If you haven’t been following along, these are each designed to solve a use case that we regularly hear about from Moz community members.
Here’s a quick recap of the previous round-ups in case you missed them:
- Week 1: Reclaim links using Open Site Explorer, build links using Fresh Web Explorer, and find the best time to tweet using Followerwonk.
- Week 2: Analyze SERPs using new MozBar features, boost your rankings through on-page optimization, check your anchor text using Open Site Explorer, do keyword research with OSE and the keyword difficulty tool, and discover keyword opportunities in Moz Analytics.
- Week 3: Compare link metrics in Open Site Explorer, find tweet topics with Followerwonk, create custom reports in Moz Analytics, use Spam Score to identify high-risk links, and get link building opportunities delivered to your inbox.
- Week 4: Use Fresh Web Explorer to build links, analyze rank progress for a given keyword, use the MozBar to analyze your competitors’ site markup, use the Top Pages report to find content ideas, and find on-site errors with Crawl Test.
We’ve got five new fixes for you in this edition:
- How to Use the Full SERP Report
- How to Find Fresh Links and Manage Your Brand Online Using Open Site Explorer
- How to Build Your Link Profile with Link Intersect
- How to Find Local Citations Using the MozBar
- Bloopers: How to Screw Up While Filming a Daily SEO Fix
Hope you enjoy them!
Fix 1: How to Use the Full SERP Report
Moz’s Full SERP Report is a detailed report that shows the top ten ranking URLs for a specific keyword and presents the potential ranking signals in an easy-to-view format. In this Daily SEO Fix, Meredith breaks down the report so you can see all the sections and how each are used.
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Fix 2: How to Find Fresh Links and Manage Your Brand Online Using Open Site Explorer
The Just-Discovered Links report in Open Site Explorer helps you discover recently created links within an hour of them being published. In this fix, Nick shows you how to use the report to view who is linking to you, how they’re doing it, and what they are saying, so you can capitalize on link opportunities while they’re still fresh and join the conversation about your brand.
Fix 3: How to Build Your Link Profile with Link Intersect
The quantity and (more importantly) quality of backlinks to your website make up your link profile, one of the most important elements in SEO and an incredibly important factor in search engine rankings. In this Daily SEO Fix, Tori shows you how to use Moz’s Link Intersect tool to analyze the competitions’ backlinks. Plus, learn how to find opportunities to build links and strengthen your own link profile.
Fix 4: How to Find Local Citations Using the MozBar
Citations are mentions of your business and address on webpages other than your own such as an online yellow pages directory or a local business association page. They are a key component in search engine ranking algorithms so building consistent and accurate citations for your local business(s) is a key Local SEO tactic. In today’s Daily SEO Fix, Tori shows you how to use MozBar to find local citations around the web
Bloopers: How to Screw Up While Filming a Daily SEO Fix
We had a lot of fun filming this series, and there were plenty of laughs along the way. Like these ones. =)
Looking for more?
We’ve got more videos in the previous four weeks’ round-ups!
Don’t have a Pro subscription? No problem. Everything we cover in these Daily SEO Fix videos is available with a free 30-day trial.
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!
The Alleged $7.5 Billion Fraud in Online Advertising
Posted by SamuelScott
“This is the biggest advertising story of the decade, and it’s being buried.”
So wrote Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman, the retired CEO and chairman of Hoffman/Lewis Advertising, in June 2013 on a $7.5 billion scandal that has been developing under the digital radar in the advertising world for the past few years. The three main allegations, according to those who are making them:
- Half or more of the paid online display advertisements that ad networks, media buyers, and ad agencies have knowingly been selling to clients over the years have never appeared in front of live human beings.
- Agencies have been receiving kickbacks and indirect payments from ad networks under the guise of “volume discounts” for serving as the middlemen between the networks and the clients who were knowingly sold the fraudulent ad impressions.
- Ad networks knowingly sell bot traffic to publishers and publishers knowingly buy the bot traffic because the resulting ad impressions earn both of them money—at the expense of the clients who are paying for the impressions.
These charges have not seen much discussion within the online marketing community. But the allegations have the potential to affect everyone involved in online advertising—ad agencies, in-house departments, agency and in-house digital marketers, online publishers, media buyers, and ad networks. An entire industry—billions of dollars and thousands of jobs—is at stake.
And it all starts with a single impression.
The impression that you make
Online advertising is based on an “impression”—without the impression, then an advertisement cannot be viewed or clicked or provoke any other engagement. The Internet Advertising Bureau, which was founded in 1996 and “recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising,” defines “impression” in this manner:
a measurement of responses from an ad delivery system to an ad request from the user’s browser
In another words, an “impression” occurs whenever one machine (an ad network) answers a request from another machine (a browser). (For reference, you can see my definition and example of a “request” in a prior Moz essay on log analytics and technical SEO.) Just in case it’s not obvious: Human beings and human eyeballs have nothing to do with it. If your advertising data states than a display ad campaign had 500,000 impressions, then that means that the ad network served a browser 500,000 times—and nothing more. Digital marketers may tell their bosses and clients that “impression” is jargon for one person seeing an advertisement one time, but that statement is not accurate.
The impression that you don’t make
Just because a server answers a browser request for an advertisement does not mean that the person using the browser will see it. According to Reid Tatoris at MediaPost, there are three things that get in the way:
- Broken Ads—This is a server not loading an ad or loading the wrong one by mistake. Tatoris writes that these mistakes occur roughly 15% of the time.
- Bot Traffic—Whenever hackers write these automated computer programs to visit websites and post spam or create fake accounts, each visit is a pageview that results an an ad impression. According to a December 2013 report in The Atlantic, 60% of Internet traffic consists of bots.
- Alleged Fraud—In Tatoris’ words, “People will hide ads behind other ads, spoof their domain to trick ad networks into serving higher-paying ads on their site, and purposefully send bots to a site to drive up impressions.” Noam Schwartz described in TechCrunch two additional methods of alleged fraud: compressing ads into a tiny one-by-one pixels that are impossible to see and using malware to send people to websites they never planned to visit and thereby generate ad impressions. AdWeek found in October 2013 that 25% of online ad impressions are allegedly fraudulent.
Tatoris crunches all the numbers:
We start with the notion that only 15% of impressions ever have the possibility to be seen by a real person. Then, factor in that 54% of ads are not viewable (and we already discussed how flawed that metric is), and you’re left with only 8% of impressions that have the opportunity to be seen by a real person. Let me clarify: That does not mean that 8% of impressions are seen. That means only 8% have the chance to be seen. That’s an unbelievable amount of waste in an industry where metrics are a major selling point.
Essentially: If you have an online display ad budget of $100,000, then only $8,000 of that ad spend has the chance to put advertisements in front of human eyeballs. (And that’s not even taking into account the poor clickthrough rates of display ads when people do see them.)
If you are paying $0.10 per impression, then the $10,000 that you will pay for 100,000 impressions will result in only 8,000 human views—meaning that the effective CPI will actually be $1.25.
How bot traffic affects online ads
Jack Marshall, an alleged reformed fake web traffic buyer, explains in a Digiday interview how the scheme allegedly operates. Here are just three excerpts:
How and why were you buying non-human traffic?
We were spending anywhere from $10,000 to $35,000 a day on traffic. My conversations with [these ad networks] were similar: They would let me decide how much I was willing to pay for traffic, and when I told them $0.002 or below, they made it clear they had little control over the quality of traffic they would send at that price. Quality didn’t really matter to us, though. As a website running an arbitrage model, all that mattered was profit, and for every $0.002 visit we were buying, we were making between $0.0025 and $0.004 selling display ads through networks and exchanges. The biggest determinate of which traffic partner we were spending the most money with was pageviews per visit. Since we were paying a fixed cost per visit, more pageviews equaled more ad impressions. Almost none of these companies were based in the U.S. While our contacts were in the US and had American names and accents, most of the time we found ourselves sending payment to a non-US bank.
In other words, the publisher would allegedly pay an ad network $0.0020 for a visit from a bot, and the resulting ad impression would garner $0.0025 to $0.0040 in revenue—that’s a gross margin of 25% to 100% for the publisher for doing nothing! It’s no wonder that so many websites around the world may be allegedly involved in this practice.
Do you think publishers know when they’re buying fake traffic?
Publishers know. They might say “we had no idea” and blame it on their traffic acquisition vendor, but that’s bullshit, and they know it. If you’re buying visits for less than a penny, there’s no way you don’t understand what’s going on. Any publisher that’s smart enough understand an arbitrage opportunity is smart enough to understand that if it was a legitimate strategy that the opportunity would eventually disappear as more buyers crowded in. What we were doing was 100 percent intentional. Some articles revolving around bot traffic paint publishers as rubes who were duped into buying bad traffic by shady bot owners. Rather, I believe publishers are willing to do anything to make their economics work.
Do networks, exchanges and other ad tech companies do anything to stop this from happening?
We worked with a major supply-side platform partner that was just wink wink, nudge nudge about it. They asked us to explain why almost all of our traffic came from one operating system and the majority had all the same user-agent string. There was nothing I could really say to answer that question. It was their way of letting us know that they understood what was going on. It wasn’t just our account rep, either. It was people at the highest levels in the company. Part of me wished they’d said “You are in violation of our TOS and you have to stop running our tags.” I would have been happy with that. But they didn’t; they were willing to take the money.
If these stories are true, then ad networks do not care that the impressions are from bot traffic and publishers do not care that are getting bot traffic because they are both making money. Who gets hurt? The companies advertising their products and services.
The worst part of it all
It’s not only that online display ads are alleged to be amazingly useless and that many publishers and ad networks are allegedly involved in sleazy deals. A March 2015 investigative report in Ad Age found the following:
Kickback payments tied to U.S. media-agency deals are real and on the rise, according to Ad Age interviews with more than a dozen current and former media-agency executives, marketers’ auditors, media sellers and ad-tech vendors who said they’d either participated in such arrangements or had seen evidence of them. The murky practice—sometimes disguised as (undisclosed) “rebates” or bills for bogus services—is being motivated by shrinking agency fees and fueled by an increasingly convoluted and global digital marketplace. “It’s really ugly and crooked,” said one ad-tech executive who described receiving such requests.
Some arrangements go like this: A large media shop, poised to spend $1 million with that ad-tech executive’s firm to buy digital ads last year, asked for $200,000 to be routed back to the agency’s corporate sibling in Europe. The $200,000 would pay for a presentation or presentations by the sibling’s consultants. But these types of presentations aren’t worth a fraction of the price tag, according to numerous executives dealing with the same issue, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of losing business.
Essentially, here is what is allegedly happening:
- Clients give money to agencies to purchase online display advertising
- The agencies give the money to the ad networks
- The ad networks give a portion of the money back to the agencies
- The clients’ display ads are only 8% viewable
- The 92% non-viewable impressions still earn money for publishers and ad networks
I think we can see who the loser is—everyone is making money except for the clients.
During the same month as the Ad Age report, former Mediacom CEO Jon Mandel reportedly told the Association of National Advertisers Media Leadership Conference that widespread “media agency rebates and kickbacks” were the reason that he left the agency business.
Heads in the digital sand
I have yet to hear about this issue being addressed in any talk, panel, or session at a digital marketing, martech, or adtech conference. Prior to today, I have seen only one article each in two major publications in the online marketing industry. (Mozzers, please correct me if I am mistaken and have missed something major on this topic.)
Why is no one talking about this?
No marketing agency wants clients to know that 92% of its display advertising spend is wasted. No advertising manager wants the CMO to know that only 8% of the company’s ads are reaching people at 100% cost. No CMO wants the CEO to know that 92% of the entire ad budget is being flushed down the digital toilet.
I myself would probably have not been permitted to write this article when I held various agency positions in the past because I managed clients’ online advertising and some PR and digital marketing clients of the agencies were advertising networks themselves.
(Today, I am the director of marcom for Logz.io, a log analytics startup, and I have the luxury of being accountable only for the results of my in-house work—and I do not plan to use online advertising anytime soon. Still, I was a journalist in my first career years ago, and I wanted to write this report because I think everyone in my beloved industry should know about this explosive issue.)
Hoffman, the retired ad agency CEO who I quoted at the beginning, puts it better than I can:
How does an agency answer a client who asks, “You mean more than half the money you were supposed to be custodian of was embezzled from me and you knew nothing about it?” How does an ad network answer, “You mean all those clicks and eyeballs you promised me never existed, and you knew nothing about it?” How does a CMO answer his management when they ask, “You mean these people screwed us out of hundreds of thousands (millions?) of dollars in banner ads and you had no idea what you were buying?”
Everyone is in jeopardy and everyone is in “protect” mode. Everyone wants to maintain deniability. Nobody wants to know too much. If display advertising were to suffer the disgrace it deserves, imagine the fallout. Imagine the damage to Facebook, which at last report gets over 80% of its revenue from display. Imagine the damage to online publishers whose bogus, inflated numbers probably constitute their margin of profit.
If the comScore findings are correct and projectable, it means that of the 14 billion dollars spent on display advertising last year in America, 7.5 billion was worthless and constituted some degree of fraud or misrepresentation.
But clients, CMOs, and CEOs are going to read one of these articles one day and start asking uncomfortable questions. I would suggest that Mozzers—as well as all digital marketers and advertisers—start thinking about responses now.
Responses to the scandal
(Google, to its credit, has disclosed that 56% of its digital ad impressions are never actually seen—of course, the report was also released with the announcement of a new ad-viewability product.
Ginny Marvin summarizes at Marketing Land:
Google’s viewability measurement tool, Active View, is integrated into both the Google Display Network and DoubleClick. Advertisers can monitor viewability rates and buy ads on a viewable impression basis rather than by served impressions.
Google also announced an update to DoubleClick Verification last week, which includes viewability monitoring, ad blocking, a content ratings system and spam filtering capabilities.
The goals of the Media Rating Council (MRC), an industry organization founded in the United States in the 1960s following congressional hearings into the media industry, are:
- To secure for the media industry and related users audience measurement services that are valid, reliable and effective
- To evolve and determine minimum disclosure and ethical criteria for media audience measurement services
- To provide and administer an audit system designed to inform users as to whether such audience measurements are conducted in conformance with the criteria and procedures developed
The MRC has certified “viewable impressions” as a legitimate metric (as opposed to “served impressions”). The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), mentioned earlier, issued guidelines in December that online advertising networks should aim for at least 70% viewability.
Facebook, for its part, announced in February 2015:
We are working with the MRC and a consortium of advertisers and agencies to develop more robust standards for viewable impressions. Our goal is to work with the MRC, our partners, and industry leaders around the world to help apply further standards for feed-based websites like Facebook, mobile media and new ad formats.
The American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers, and IAB announced last year that they would create a new organization, the Trustworthy Accountability Group, to fight problems in the online advertising market and do the following:
- Eliminate fraudulent traffic
- Combat malware
- Fight Internet piracy
- Promote greater transparency
TAG now consists of representatives from Mondelez International, JCPenney, Omnicom, Motorola, Google, Facebook, AOL, and Brightroll.
Canada’s latest anti-spam legislation aims to fight Internet malware and bots—but a big stumbling block is that most of the problem comes from outside the country.
Will these corporate and organizational responses be enough? For the following reasons and more, it’s impossible to know:
- Industry guidelines depend on voluntary compliance. Industry recommendations do not have the force of law—any business that thinks it can still make a lot of money by ignoring the guidelines will likely continue to do so.
- Possible penalties for past behavior. Regardless of what reforms may occur in the future, should those who knowingly engaged in such alleged fraud and deception in the past be held criminally or civilly liable? (I’m not a lawyer, so I cannot comment on that.)
- IAB’s 70% viewability goal. Should advertisers accept this metric as simply the nature of the medium? One estimate of the total display ad market amounted to $14 billion. If the 70% viewability goal can even be reached, should and will advertisers accept that $4.2 billion of their collective ad spend will still be lost before their advertisements are even viewed by human beings?
I have no answer—only time, I suppose, will tell.
But others are coming up with their own answers—those large corporations that are spending billions of dollars a year on online display advertising. As Lara O’Reilly wrote in May 2015 at Business Insider, $25 billion in ad spend is now under review in what Adweek is calling “Mediapalooza 2015.” O’Reilly gives one possible reason:
Media reviews let brands reassess their ad spending, often by offering those contracts out in a competitive bidding process. The companies include General Mills, Procter & Gamble, Volkswagen, Visa, Sony, Coca-Cola, Citi, 21st Century Fox … the list goes on. Some of these — P&G, Sony, and 21st Century Fox — spend more than $1 billion on advertising each year…
It could be that marketers are finally getting fed up with the apparent lack of transparency about where their budgets are actually being spent and why.
What marketers can do
(Image of an Indian online-marketing team I used with rights in a prior Moz essay
on the future of marketing departments)
Regardless of what the future will hold, here are my recommendations on how digital advertisers can respond:
- Stop doing cost-per-impression (CPI or CPM) campaigns. Traditional digital advertising strategy recommends that people use CPM campaigns for brand awareness, cost-per-click (CPC) campaigns for traffic, and cost-per-action (CPA) campaigns for sales and conversions. In light of this scandal, I see no good reason to do CPM at all anymore.
- Revise advertising KPIs and metrics in human terms. Earlier in this article, I calculated the following change to a hypothetical CPI value: “If you are paying $0.10 per impression, then the $10,000 that you will pay for 100,000 impressions will result in only 8,000 human views—meaning that the effective CPI rate will actually be $1.25.” In addition, half of all clicks in CPC campaigns might also be bots. As a result, a $2 CPC result may actually be $4 when reaching human beings is taken into account. Ad campaign analysts may want to take alleged bot and fraudulent activity into account when calculating ROI and whether display advertising is worthwhile.
- Demand full disclosure. Clients should ask agencies and media buyers if they are getting paid directly or indirectly by ad networks. Agencies and media buyers should ad networks how they are combating bot activity and any fraudulent behavior. Ad networks should not turn a digital blind-eye to publishers who intentionally use bots to make profits off of advertisers. If anyone gives vague answers or otherwise disparages such questions, then that is a red flag. Advertisers should demand and receive full, verifiable information in light of what has allegedly been occurring.
- Block certain countries from campaigns. According to a report in Ad Week, China, Venezuela, Ukraine, and Singapore have “suspicious traffic” rates of between 86% and 92%. (The rate in the United States is 43%.)
- Use ad-fraud detection platforms. Companies such as Forensiq, SimilarWeb, Spider.io (which was bought by Google), Telemetry, and White Ops compare visit patterns with industry benchmark behavior as well as check for malicious software proxy unmasking, verify devices, and detect any manipulation.
- Run manual campaigns as much as possible. The only way to reduce wasted impressions significantly is to research and implement digital ad campaigns manually rather than use programmatic ad buying. Digital advertisers should research potential websites on which they want to run advertisements to see if they are legitimate—potentially even running ads on only the largest, well-known sites but doing so continuously. This way, it might be best to focus your ad campaigns on quality viewers rather than trying to maximize the quantity of viewers by also including lesser-known sites.
Beyond the current responses of the ad industry and my present recommendations for marketers, I do not know what will happen. My goal here is simply to explain to digital marketers what has allegedly been occurring. What the future will hold—well, that’s up to we marketers and advertisers.
Additional resources
- The Ad Fraud Wiki
- Bob Hoffman’s blog post with a partial list of his writings on this topic
- Ad Week’s Mike Shields, and Ad Age’s Alex Kantrowitz—two of the reporters who are following this issue closely
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How to Align Your Entire Company with Your Marketing Strategy
Posted by MackenzieFogelson
It’s no secret that building and executing integrated marketing strategies is the responsibility of your marketing team. The problem with that is the actions of everyone in your organization affect your marketing.
Marketing isn’t just what your customers see on the outside. It’s what happens when they get your product home. It’s the experience they have with any one person in your company at any given time and through any specific touchpoint. Whether or not you’re aware, all of the individuals on every team in your organization are contributing to your marketing on a daily basis.
That being the case, it would certainly be ideal to get everyone in your company focused on and aligned with:
- Your marketing goals
- The greater good that the company is working to accomplish
- The real reasons you’re different from your competition
- The value you provide your customers and community
- The customers you’re working so hard to earn and keep
- The most important strategic priorities your marketing team is working to accomplish so that your company will continue to thrive
We recently built a simple tool that has been helping our clients and their teams stay focused in their marketing efforts and also hurdle communication and goal alignment challenges. We call it the Focus Canvas and I’m going to show you how to build one of your very own (you’re so lucky).
The elements of your Focus Canvas
There are 8 key elements to your Focus Canvas. In a nutshell, here’s how they break down:
- Timeframe
How long you’ll focus on the specific components you will identify in your Focus Canvas.
- Our Meaning Beyond Money
The higher purpose your company is meant to achieve.
- Why We’re Different
A short list that defines the valuable characteristics unique to your company.
- The Value We Provide
A clearly communicated statement that helps your customers understand what you do and gives them reason to choose you over your competition.
- What We’re Trying to Accomplish
The goals your teams (and company) are working to accomplish.
- Who Our Customers Are
The very specific audience groups you’re working to earn and retain.
- How We’re Helping Our Customers
The things you’re doing to remain relevant in your customers’ lives.
- What’s Important Now
The most important things (up to three) that you need to focus on over the next 90 days in order to accomplish goals and move the company forward.
And here’s where each of those pieces are going to fit:
What follows is a breakdown of each piece of the Focus Canvas, why it’s important, some examples, and the resources necessary to develop each component of your very own.
If you wish, at this juncture, you may download your very own Focus Canvas skeleton and work through it as you read this guide.
Okay, kids, let’s get started.
Building your Focus Canvas
Timeframe
Why it’s important
One of the most important characteristics of your Focus Canvas is that it’s meant to be a dynamic, living, and breathing thing. At the top left, you’ll find a spot to place the date range for the duration in which you’re focusing on the things that you’ve identified in your Focus Canvas.
Ideally, you will stay focused on the specific components of your Focus Canvas for 90 days at a time. Keep in mind, however, that not all of the elements will change every quarter. Some — like your meaning beyond money, your goals, and your audience groups may remain the same across many iterations of your Focus Canvas.
After you’ve used your Focus Canvas to drive a few strategy cycles, you can decide on your frequency for updating. Just make sure that you continue to revisit and evolve it as your company, your customers, and your strategy progresses.
Our meaning beyond money
Why it’s important
Your meaning beyond money is the cornerstone of your Focus Canvas. It’s the reason your company exists. It’s the higher purpose your company is serving by being in business and doing what it does every day.
Your meaning beyond money is an extremely important component to all of your marketing efforts because it’s the essence of your entire brand and it’s why people are attracted to your community. If this isn’t something your company has defined, or isn’t leveraging in your marketing, it’s time to start.
Operating from your meaning beyond money provides many benefits to your company and your team. The most important is that employees are more engaged in purpose-driven companies because they know the work they do means something.
When it comes down to it, leading with meaning beyond money is what makes your company human. And the more you have the courage to be real, authentic, and genuine in everything your company does both on- and offline, the bigger the strategic advantage you’ll gain over your competition.
Examples
Here are a couple of examples of how meaning beyond money can be communicated effectively through marketing:
Patagonia
Patagonia’s meaning beyond money is working to be a responsible company: both socially and environmentally. They are probably one of the best examples of a company that leads with purpose, and it bleeds through everything they do, especially in their marketing.
In the recent months, Patagonia has been building an experience with their brand through an integrated campaign called “Worn Wear.” With Worn Wear, you can have your Patagonia gear repaired to help it last longer—which means the people who do this are helping Patagonia leave less of a footprint on our world, living up to the higher purpose they have as an environmentally responsible company.
Patagonia lives their meaning beyond money so much so that they have been driving across country in a bio-diesel truck to spread the word. When they came through Fort Collins, I got a taste first-hand. And sure enough, they had people inside their bio-diesel truck repairing gear. Some of it wasn’t even made by Patagonia. That’s how deeply they believe in achieving their higher purpose (and it has helped their company to continue to be profitable).
Traveling Vineyard
Serving a very different purpose as a company than Patagonia, Traveling Vineyard is a direct selling organization that sells wine. Their meaning beyond money is to help the people who sell wine for them find more personal and professional satisfaction in their lives.
Before profit comes Traveling Vineyard’s desire to support their Wine Guides in finding their passion and providing them with the resources and training necessary to build their own businesses, no matter what the bottom line looks like.
One of the ways Traveling Vineyard conveys their meaning beyond money is by telling the stories of the real people in their community and how their careers have changed their lives.
The biggest impact of a company’s meaning beyond money is the fact that it doesn’t have to be at scale. You can use your company as an agent for change one person at a time.
Whatever your company determines your higher purpose to be, this part of your Focus Canvas will keep your teams focused on accomplishing that greater meaning. Then it’s clear to them that this needs to guide the decisions they make since they are part of a company that stands for something bigger than simply making money.
Resources
As you prepare your meaning beyond money for your Focus Canvas, these resources may help your company define what that is (or compel you to become more purpose-driven):
- Why Your Company Must be Mission-Driven – Gallup
- How to Lead with Meaning in Your Marketing – Mack Web
- Building Your Company’s Vision – Harvard Business Review
- Using Focus to Build Long-Term Momentum in Marketing – Mack Web
- Mission Based Businesses – Business Insider
Why we’re different
All of the elements of your Focus Canvas are interdependent, but the next two will build on each other. The reasons that you’re different will inform the value that you provide your customers.
Why it’s important
It’s rare that companies find themselves in markets that are not saturated by steep competition. As a result, it’s imperative that you identify, and that everyone in your company understands, how to effectively communicate the reasons your company is different from your competition. Why should someone choose to be your customer? Why not just choose the other guy?
When completing this part of your Focus Canvas, list up to five unique characteristics that you know to be true only to your company (and that make you valuable and relevant to your specific customers). Be careful that you’re not just listing all of the stuff that every company in your industry offers vs. what truly makes you stand out. This will also help keep your teams focused on delivering those very important promises of value.
Examples
Warby Parker
Warby Parker has many unique selling propositions (or USPs and sometimes may even be called a UVP or unique value proposition). The most noteworthy is the fact that they’ve disrupted the entire eyewear industry by using non-traditional methods to make glasses so that their product could be the alternative. They not only compete on price but also by giving back (for every pair you buy, they give to a pair to someone in need).
M&Ms
If you happen to like M&Ms (peanut kind, please), one of the USPs of their product is that it won’t melt in your hands. Lucky for you, they made this sweet commercial about it in 1981 (and you get to re-live the magic now).
Moz
One of Moz’s USPs is how they infuse their TAGFEE values into everything they do. It’s become an unmistakable part of their identity which their customers know they can’t get anywhere else. Same with Roger (as a mascot) and Rand (as a thought leader and approachable personality).
This is my favorite example of a USP because it’s not solely functionality or product based. Many companies list technical components of their products as USPs, but that means they’re continually playing the competitor catch-up game; revising their USPs every time their competitors match functionality or features.
Although you definitely want to broadcast key features that your company alone has cornered the market on, look for ways to communicate USPs that won’t go out of style and also tie back into your meaning beyond money.
Resources
Here are some additional USP resources for y’all:
- How to Stand Out When You’re Drowning in a Sea of Competition – Help Scout
- The Ultimate Guide to Finding Your Unique Selling Proposition- Fizzle
- Compare a Unique Selling Proposition to a Unique Value Proposition – Business Models for Dummies
The value we provide
Why it’s important
This spot on your Focus Canvas is for the full version of your value proposition (which is inclusive of the unique characteristics you defined in your USPs above). This will help your team properly communicate what you do and how it benefits your customers.
According to ConversionXL, your value proposition is a clear statement that:
- Explains how your product solves customers’ problems or improves their situation (relevancy),
- Delivers specific benefits (quantified value),
- Tells the ideal customer why they should buy from you and not from the competition (unique differentiation).
Try to keep this sucker brief at 2-3 sentences (with possibly a few USP bullet points to support).
Examples
Here’s one of the value proposition examples that Peep provides from Campaign Monitor. This example makes it very easy to tell what they do, who they do it for, and how that’s unique to them:
Help Scout also has some great guidance on how to create great value propositions that work well. They provide these two examples of value propositions for Stripe and Synthesis:
The biggest thing about your value proposition is that it needs to be incredibly clear and very easy to understand. Sometimes that can be easier to do on your website because you can take all the time you need to craft the perfect words, place the perfect images, and test how this affects your customers.
Where your value proposition really gets put to the test is how your employees use it in person when people ask them what they do. Your Focus Canvas is a great spot for this. Provide your team with a very brief, value-fueled elevator pitch that helps them to communicate the right things in their daily interactions with customers, colleagues, and friends.
Resources
For your convenience, here are the posts I mentioned above, plus some additional resources that will help you to build or revise your existing value proposition (that’s informed by your USPs):
- Useful Value Proposition Examples (and How to Create a Good One) – ConversionXL
- Writing Value Propositions that Work – Help Scout
- How to Craft the Ultimate 60-Second Startup Pitch – Forbes
- Value Proposition Design – Strategyzer
What we’re trying to accomplish
Why it’s important
When you’re aligning teams, getting everyone on the same page, and working toward the visionary goal of the company, things can get messy. This requires a great deal of collaboration across channels and teams of people, all with their own agendas, goals, and expectations of results. All the more reason to use your Focus Canvas as a tool for…wait for it…focus and alignment.
Keep in mind that when you’re identifying what you’re trying to accomplish, your teams can have different goals, but ultimately everyone should be working toward achieving the overarching vision of the company.
Before you place your goals into your Focus Canvas, make sure you’re using your meaning beyond money to inform them. Those goals will then help you build an integrated marketing strategy that determines the tools and tactics you’ll use (like content, SEO, video, social, email marketing, paid channels, etc.). That way, your teams will be working on accomplishing the right things in the short term in order to reach your long-term goals.
Ultimately, everything you’re producing in your marketing strategy is working toward becoming the company you’re meant to be, and at the same time, connecting your community to your higher purpose and more fully to your brand.
Examples
When looking at what you’re trying to accomplish, consider three categories of goals: visionary, business, and brand. Place these goals on your Focus Canvas so that you can continue to work towards these goals until you’ve accomplished them. As mentioned, your goals (especially visionary goals) will most likely carry over several cycles as you revise and refresh your Focus Canvas.
Visionary
Visionary goals are the longer term ones that your entire company is working toward. It’s the bigger, more audacious goals that may take 2-3 years (or longer) to complete. If you’re using this Focus Canvas inside of a large company, you can set a visionary goal for your team or division. Just make sure it’s aligned with the greater visionary goal of the company as a whole.
If it helps, as a company, Mack Web has two visionary goals:
- Change the way companies build their brands
- Change the way marketing is measured
Ultimately we exist to help companies build better businesses, so our visionary goals are part of making this happen.
Business
Business goals are the stuff that’s related to your team and company’s financial goals. When identifying these goals, consider the financial benchmarks that must be accomplished in order to reach your department’s, and ultimately your company’s, revenue goals.
Currently, Mack Web’s business goals are to:
- Diversify revenue streams (we specify actual numbers per stream internally)
- Work with responsive, purpose-driven companies
- Keep Mack Web running smoothly and profitably
Brand
Brand goals are the qualitative benchmarks that your team is held accountable for. When identifying these goals, consider questions like:
- What is your meaning beyond money?
- Who does your company really want to become?
- How does the above inform your team’s goals?
- How does all of this fit into the vision of your company’s brand?
Mack Web has many brand goals that we’re working to accomplish:
- Help our clients feel valued
- Ensure clients are reaching their goals
- Earn long-term partnerships and mentorships
- Earn reputable speaking and blogging gigs
- Attract companies who align with our values and approach
Essentially, if Mack Web accomplishes our brand and business goals, we will be well on our way to accomplishing our visionary goals, and most importantly, realizing our higher purpose and the reason we exist as a company.
Resources
One of the ways we often get to goals (and also tactics to accomplish those goals) is by working through a visioning exercise we learned from working with the Paterson Process. Here’s how that works:
Where are you today?
In the first part of this exercise, you’re going to paint the picture of where your team or company stands today. Are you having a lot of conflict and roadblocks? Are you finding synergy? Are you short-handed? Do you have everything you need to be great? Are you lacking resources or training? Paint the picture, positive or negative, of your team’s status as it stands today.
Where are you going?
Now you want to think about where you want your team (and company) to be in a year. In two years. In three years. What does that mountain look like that you want your team to stand on? Is everyone certified in Google Analytics? Have you reached a certain level of profitability and brand awareness? Did you develop a tool or resource for your customers? Paint the picture of that mountain that you’d like to summit. These desires will become your goals that you will categorize into visionary, business, and brand as detailed above.
How will you get there?
Lastly comes the action. How the heck are you gonna make that stuff happen? What needs to be put into place? Do you need training? Do you need to hire more people? Do you need better communication with other teams? Write down all of the things that will help your team get up your mountain. As you work to build your integrated strategy, these things will become the tactics that you execute.
Once you’ve worked through these exercises and worked with your team(s) to identify goals, you can place your visionary, business, and brand goals on your Focus Canvas. Next, we’ll focus on your customers.
Who our customers are
Why it’s important
When you’re considering how you’re going to reach your goals, it’s probably a good idea that everyone, not only those on your team but also in your company, knows who they’re talking to. Getting to know your audience is an in-depth, ongoing process of connecting, validating, and refining so that you’re continually giving your audience what they need.
When identifying who your customers are, it’s important to remember that it’s not everyone. Earning and retaining customers requires a great deal of bandwidth and resources from your team. If they know which audience groups are a priority, they can focus their strategy and efforts there, making it more likely that they’ll accomplish goals.
Examples
If you haven’t yet done so, take a long look at this slide deck from Mike King. It’s got some really important stuff in it about validating personas (and not just guessing that who you’ve identified as personas are the people you think you’re talking to).
As Mike would put it:
The entire deck is full of instructions on how to build data-driven persona that will help you verify whether these people are actually coming to your website, or other touchpoints in their experience, and whether you’re giving them what they need.
Once you’ve identified your top three customer groups, you can place their details in your Focus Canvas (perhaps with a link to any additional context you may want to provide). Your teams can then build their strategies and focus their efforts around them.
Resources
Here are some additional resources for you that will help you identify your top three customer groups (in addition to Mike’s deck):
- Actionable Data-Driven Personas for CRO – Mike King
- The Essential Persona Lifecycle: Your Guide to Building and Using Personas – Tamara Adlin & John Pruitt
- Personas: The Art and Science of Understanding the Person Behind the Visit – Mike King
How we’re helping our customers
This part of your Focus Canvas is going to evolve as you continually work to create the resources that are relevant to your customers’ lives.
What you see on your Focus Canvas skeleton are just some sample phases of a possible customer’s journey. You’ll want to identify what these phases are for your customers before you can decide the resources that will fulfill their needs during each phase and where you will need to provide them (on your website, on social, via email, offline, etc.).
Like personas, how you’re helping your customers requires continuous effort and validation. And, with other parts of this Focus Canvas, how you’re helping your customers must change based on the data you collect and the experiences you have with them.
Why it’s important
When it comes down to it, your company exists to help other people; to improve their lives in some way. In order to do this, you’ve got to continually stay relevant in their lives. Each phase in your customer’s journey is going to require a different level of support in order to earn their trust and business. Being adaptive to their needs ongoing is what will keep them with you long term.
Examples
One very simple way to help your customers is to identify each of the stages of their experience with your company, and then determine what questions you may need to answer (or resources you need to develop) during each phase. Joanna Lord has developed a very simple and effective guide that will take you through how to do this. You can then map those phases, questions, and their touchpoints in this spreadsheet, and then place the ones you’re focusing on in your Focus Canvas.
If you haven’t already identified customer touchpoints, then you’ll want to first look at your customer’s behavior phases and then determine the questions they may ask (or wouldn’t have enough knowledge to ask) during those phases. It may take you a few cycles to get through all of the questions, but you can use your Focus Canvas to keep track of the ones you’re focused on answering.
If you’ve already done this, then you can focus your team’s efforts elsewhere, like developing resources your customers can download and use. Whatever the task, place it in the Focus Canvas so that you can easily communicate what the focus is at this time.
Resources
In addition to Joanna’s guide, these resources will help you map your customer’s journey and identify some important things that you can be doing to better serve them:
- A Quick Guide to Customer Journey Mapping – Joanna Lord
- How to Measure the User Journey with Content Groupings, WordPress & GTM – Mike King
- The 4 Types of Customer Journey Maps – Kerry Bodine
What’s important now
Why it’s important
Knowing what to focus on in order to accomplish your company’s goals is probably one of the toughest parts of strategy. Within every company, no matter how big or small, there are always many things that are broken, stuff that has to get done to earn customers, and an ever-changing world to contend with.
The difficulty this presents is the temptation to do too many things at once, which will only dilute your efforts, keep you focused on nothing, and ultimately get you nowhere.
At the bottom of your Focus Canvas you’ll find three spots to identify the most important things to focus on now, over the next 90 days. These are your strategic priorities; the things you need to cross off your list so that your team and company can get closer to getting up that mountain and achieving its goals.
Notice that there are only three spots on your canvas. If one of your strategic priorities is really big, you can even choose to focus on just one of them. The point is to focus. And, as you’re executing your integrated strategy and shiny things start to surface, come back to your Focus Canvas, all of the elements, and especially your strategic priorities, to determine whether it’s more important to take that detour or exercise some self-control and stay focused right where you are.
Examples
Right now, Mack Web has two pretty big strategic priorities that we’re working through: a rebrand and the improvement of our company operating system (we’re testing and implementing some holacracy components). These two things alone are plenty for us to chew on, so we’re capping our strategic priorities, or what’s important now, for the next 90 days on only these two things.
These things are communicated on our Focus Canvas so that when unexpected challenges arise or shiny things present themselves, we can weigh them against what we’ve identified as priorities and either say “no” or “not now.” And, because what we’re focusing on is recorded on the Focus Canvas, it helps to take the emotion out of decisions and keep us on track.
Resources
If you need a little assistance figuring out where your focus should be for the next 90 days, we’ve adapted an exercise we learned from the Paterson Center called Four Helpful Lists.
In a nutshell, here’s how it works (if you’d like some additional guidance, this post will help you better understand how we’ve worked through this exercise and applied it with our team):
Start with a question
Before we break down what’s most important to focus on, we start with a strategic question so that we can get to the underlying issues that need to surface (and then we can work on them). So, for example, if your team is challenged with available resources, instead of asking, “who are we going to hire next?” we would ask, “how is the team functioning?” That way, we can then go right into each of the prompts in the lists: what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s missing, and what’s confused.
Complete the four lists
Each of the four lists will help you uncover a variety of things that your team or company needs to focus on in order to accomplish your goals. The columns work this way:
- What’s right
Always start with what’s going right. Exhaust all of the positive aspects of your current situation.
- What’s wrong
This is anything that is typically putting up roadblocks. Or it’s the stuff that is taking you way off track that you probably need to consider putting on pause.
- What’s missing
These are the opportunities you can explore, and also the things you wish you had. A lot of times we find what’s missing are things like processes, systems, and resources.
- What’s confused
This is what you’ll need to get figured out in order to move forward. It’s what requires additional info in certain places in order to proceed.
Once you’ve gone through each list, you can then map out the items that are the most important to handle in order to move the company forward. You then choose three that will become your strategic priorities for the next 90 days. Make sure the priorities you’ve selected match your goals and align with the other elements of your Focus Canvas.
What’s next?
As you work through building your Focus Canvas, you may have unearthed some things that have been holding your team or company back. You may have noticed some gaps in many of these simple elements. That’s okay. One of your strategic priorities could be working on resolving the holes so that you know you’re focusing on the right things. Just know that it could take a few months to fully develop your first Focus Canvas.
Once you’ve got your Focus Canvas in place, you can meet with the other teams in your company to help them understand all of these important elements. Even better, maybe those teams will be inspired to be part of building the next one, or even build one that’s specific to their team but that also aligns with the focus of the marketing department.
With the awareness of what your company is here to do, who they’re doing it for, and what’s important to do now, you’re ready to develop a strategy that aligns with all of these components. We typically build strategies that recycle and reset every 90 days (this post will help you better understand how that works). You’ll want to test whatever works best for your team and company.
Final words
Not many companies work on focus because it’s hard. It means you probably have to face some conflict and work through challenges with the people on your team and in your company. It can be tough at first, but putting in the effort to get your teams focused and aligned will make a huge impact on your company.
As you work on developing and integrating your Focus Canvas within your company, I’m happy to answer any additional questions you have. Please ping me in the comments below.
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