The Marketing Agency Blueprint Part 18

Monthly scorecards are one way that agencies can use a.n.a.lytics to continually adapt and evolve client campaigns. They encourage transparency, demonstrate a commitment to results-driven services, and help to build confidence, trust, and loyalty.

Activate Builders and Drivers

I introduced the concept of builders and drivers in Chapter 1 as a key variable of value-based pricing. Builders are services designed to set the foundation for future success, whereas drivers are intended to produce short-term results. Your agency's ability to succeed and bring value to clients requires a balanced and strategic approach to both.

The Builders Builders lay the groundwork. They create the necessary base on which you will develop your client's brand, differentiate them from compet.i.tors, and expand their reach and influence.

Builders are essential, but often not measurable (at least in the short term), which means many organizations have limited patience and budgets to do them well. As a result, businesses want to rush right into the marketing tactics. They expect immediate gratification and demand results, such as more Facebook page "likes," increased blog subscribers, media coverage, speaking engagements, and leads.

This is dangerous when engaging a marketing agency. Agencies can be a tremendous a.s.set, but they can also be an enormous liability if expectations are not aligned from the beginning. Clients and prospects that do not understand or value the importance of builders will always be trouble. The model agencies get paid to do it right. They refuse to take shortcuts or give in to clients' desperate desires for quick fixes.

Remember, success is a process. Your clients will get the greatest return from an agency relations.h.i.+p if they have a realistic understanding of their current situation, and focus on builders first. Consider the following questions when a.s.sessing the need for builders in your clients' campaigns: Market research: Do they understand their market, and how they fit in the compet.i.tive landscape?

Brand positioning: Have they defined what makes them different, and are they conveying their unique positioning in their marketing and sales materials?

Website development: Is the website user-friendly with distinct calls to action, strong brand messaging, and lots of amazing content to keep people coming back?

Search engine optimization: Has a keyword a.n.a.lysis been conducted to identify the most relevant words and phrases for the website? Is the website properly optimized for search engines, including page t.i.tles, URLs, headings, image ALT text, copywriting, and meta descriptions? Has an inbound link a.n.a.lysis been performed?

Copywriting: Is the organization's copywriting strong, action oriented and buyer-persona focused? Does the website or marketing collateral need to be refreshed?

Social media: Have they established profiles on all the major networks? Do they have existing reach and influence online? Are they engaging with the community or simply broadcasting content? Do they have a social media policy? Are they providing training and education to employees?

If you are working with larger, more established organizations, chances are their internal marketing teams or other agency partners, have already completed most of the foundational work. However, for many agencies, this is where your services begin.

It is also important to note how dependent the builders are on each other, because this demonstrates the ever-growing importance of the collaborative agency ecosystem. For example, consider the case of a website.

The strength and marketing effectiveness of websites is essential to your clients' success, but websites can no longer be designed in a vacuum by web-development firms. These are not brochure sites any more. They are, or should be, dynamic hubs for information and engagement, and the metaphorical front door to brands and businesses.

A powerful website requires professional design, strategic brand messaging, on-page optimization, social media integration, engaging copywriting, landing pages, lead forms, and volumes of original content. It has to enable real-time updates through an intuitive content-management system (CMS), and it needs to connect to a customer-relations.h.i.+p management (CRM) system to automate the collection and processing of online data.

Every agency in the ecosystem, from disruptors to soloists, has to understand that there are no more silos in marketing. Everything is connected. Success depends on the integration of services, and collaboration among firms.

The Drivers Once the foundation is in place, it is time for drivers to make things happen. Drivers are marketing activities that generate traffic, create inbound links, produce quality leads, make connections, establish relations.h.i.+ps, and grow your client's business.

Selective consumption dictates that drivers focus on value creation through web, search, social, content, and PR activities, including link building, case studies, ebook, e-mail newsletters, online videos, podcasts, webinars, mobile apps, social networking, and blogging.

Like builders, drivers must be unified. Clients will increasingly demand hybrid solutions from hybrid agencies. Consider the dependency of these core disciplines on each other: Brand marketing: Organizations are personified through the personal brands of their employees, creating deeper levels of engagement, trust, and loyalty. As we saw with the Matt Cutts example in Chapter 5, powerful personal branding requires content creation, social media engagement, and an adherence to the values and principles of the corporate brand.

Web development: Websites without dynamic, optimized content become static corporate wastelands. Websites have to give visitors the desire to experience and share the site, and reasons to return, over and over again.

Content marketing: Original content-ebook, blog posts, podcasts, case studies, reports, and videos-requires social distribution channels to be discovered and shared. Quality matters far more than quant.i.ty, so the copywriting must be exceptional. Corporations must view themselves as brand journalists, no longer relying on mainstream media to control their messages.

Public relations: Next generation PR professionals-not the traditional flacks that have given the industry a bad reputation-build relations.h.i.+ps and enhance communications with all core audiences. They use social media and content to create transparency and trust. They focus on personalized approaches to media and blogger relations in order to generate third-party validation that builds brand awareness and preference.

The Inevitable Convergence To further validate the inevitable convergence of marketing disciples, let's consider what is happening in the SEO industry.

Search-engine optimization is evolving, in large part due to major algorithm changes from Google and other search engines that value content quality over quant.i.ty, greatly consider user experience, and are continually integrating social circles and recommendations into results. Therefore, effective search-engine optimization (SEO) increasingly requires high-quality original content, social sharing, and engaging site designs that capture and keep visitors.

Every two years, SEOmoz publishes a Search Engine Ranking Factors report in which it surveys the top SEO minds in the industry, and asks them to rank the different elements that go into search-ranking algorithms.4 Following is a breakdown of the highest-ranking factors for 2011, and the overall importance each has on a site's ability to rank on a search-engine result page (SERP), according to the experts. Note that I have consolidated different sections of the report to simplify the concepts.

Inbound Links-42 Percent of SERP Impact Inbound links are continuously mentioned as a key marketing performance metric throughout this book. The SEOmoz report highlights their value to search engine rankings, and demonstrates the importance of agencies offering services that create inbound links.

The report indicates that the number of unique websites considered important by search engines-that is, have a high PageRank or mozRank-that link to a site or page is the highest-ranking factor when it comes to a website's ability to rank for a search query.

As we discussed in Chapter 2, the most effective way to continually generate high-quality inbound links is by publis.h.i.+ng and sharing valuable content, including blog posts, videos, ebooks, and original reports. In other words, SEO requires copywriting and social media strategies in order to maximize its value.

Keyword Usage-26 Percent of SERP Impact Standard SEO on-page elements are still highly relevant to site performance in search engines. At the domain level, search engines look for keywords in the domain and subdomain of a website, and the order in which the keywords appear. For example www.keywordABC.com will likely rank better than www.ABCkeyword.com.

In addition to domain names, agencies have to take a strategic approach to other on-page elements, such as page t.i.tle, internal-link anchor text, headings, and image ALT text.

The key here is that the more optimized pages a site has, the better its chances of attracting traffic and inbound links for specific keyword phrases. So again, it comes down to creating and optimizing content that people will want to share, and then taking actions to get that content found.

Social Media-7 Percent of SERP Impact The SEO experts agree that Twitter is the most important social network in regard to its impact on search engine algorithms, specifically the authority of a user tweeting links and the quant.i.ty of tweets to a page.

Other influential social media factors include Facebook shares; authority of the user who is sharing the links; votes on and comments about a site on social bookmarking sites, such as Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon; and authority and quant.i.ty of links shared on Google Buzz.

Agencies need to the take the initiative to get their clients active in social media, monitoring for discussion opportunities, sharing resources, and engaging audiences. Depending on the situation, including their internal resources and willingness to partic.i.p.ate, your responsibility may be as a social media advisor or actually managing the accounts on their behalf.

Brand Popularity-7 Percent of SERP Impact Brand popularity also plays a significant role in search engine rankings. According to the experts, some of the most important factors are search volume for a brand name; quant.i.ty of brand mentions on websites and social sites; citations for the domain in Wikipedia; and active accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Other Important Factors to Consider The SEO experts also called out the importance of unique, fresh content across the entire site, and the visitor bounce rate as tracked by the search engines; this refers to visitors who go to a site and then use the back b.u.t.ton to return to the SERP. The lower the bounce rate, the better, so make the content worth reading and give them reasons to stick around for more.

The Case for Social Media The SEOmoz report shows how social media is having an increasing impact on search engine results. Social media enables personalization based on a searcher's social graph, in addition to functioning as a publis.h.i.+ng channel for your clients' original content.

Social media also offers marketing agencies the opportunity to build more meaningful relations.h.i.+ps with media, bloggers, and a.n.a.lysts, and take a more personalized approach to PR. For example, by actively monitoring reporters' tweets or Facebook shares, you can get to know more about them than just their beats. As a result, you can tailor pitches to directly relate to their interests and needs, thus improving your chances for success.

Social media has transformed the way that people communicate and gather information online. With more than two-thirds of U.S. Internet users regularly using a social network,5 individuals are more often turning to sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to ask questions, share resources, and research products and services.

Through active social media partic.i.p.ation, your clients can connect with qualified consumers online when they are actively looking for products, services, and information. According to a 2011 ForeSee report, "visitors to websites influenced by social media are more loyal and satisfied customers, and they spend more than visitors who were not influenced by social media."6 There is also correlation between social media involvement and financial performance. A 2009 study from Wetpaint and the Altimeter Group shows that of the 100 brands evaluated, those with the heaviest social media engagement grew company revenues by 18 percent from July 2008 to July 2009, while the least engaged companies saw revenues sink six percent over the same time period.7 In addition, 2010 data from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate suggest that individuals are more likely to buy from brands with which they are friends or followers on social networks.8 The Case for Content Marketing Inbound marketing is powered by content. In order to grow smarter and faster than the compet.i.tion, organizations must maintain powerful and informative websites and continually publish valuable content online.

Content can be used to connect with target audiences on an emotional level-something often lacking in business communications-by addressing consumers' pain points, thought processes, goals, and preferences. As we have seen, it also has the ability to establish your clients' professionals as industry thought leaders and trusted resources, which is especially valuable in business-to-business (B2B) marketing. This increases the likelihood that prospects and customers will turn to them for solutions.

According to a study of HubSpot customers, websites of companies that blog have 55 percent more visitors, 97 percent more inbound links, and 434 percent more indexed pages than the websites of companies that do not-signaling the importance of content to website strength.9 In addition, business-to-consumer (B2C) and B2B companies that blog generate more leads-88 percent and 67 percent, respectively-than their nonblogging counterparts.10 Content has also been proven effective at helping move prospects through long sales cycles.

The Content Spam Epidemic Despite all its tremendous potential, content marketing has a downside. The reality is that it is not easy to regularly produce interesting, high-quality content (thus the opportunity for marketing agencies to become content creators). However, as with anything in business, there are organizations that look for shortcuts and cheap solutions to compete.

They believe that any content is better than no content. Just as link spam infiltrated the SEO industry in the early days, the flood of content spam-low-quality content produced solely for search-engine rankings and traffic-has begun spewing from media organizations and corporations looking to cash in on the content rush.

The good news is that Google has a very public distaste for poor- quality content. In June 2011, Google released its Panda update 2.2, which, according to SEOmoz, "changed s...o...b..st practices forever."11 This, in turn, directly impacts content marketing. In essence, Google is continuing to evolve its algorithm to put a premium on websites that produce trustworthy, credible, high-quality content.

So, when strategizing drivers for your clients, steer clear of ma.s.s-produced, cheap content solutions. Although they may offer short-term benefits, the greater opportunity is constructing an integrated campaign powered by premium content that is worthy of inbound links and social sharing.

The Rise of Content Curation Content curation has become a rising trend in the marketing world, and an essential component of content marketing strategies.

Rohit Bhargava (@rohitbhargava), award-winning author of Personality Not Included, published a blog post in 2009 t.i.tled "Manifesto for the Content Curator,"12 in which he defined a content curator as "someone who continually finds, groups, organizes and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online."

The term content curation stems from traditional museum curation-museum curators collect art and artifacts and identify the most relevant or important to be displayed in an exhibit for the public. Museum curators are subject-matter experts with higher levels of education that guide an organization's overall art collection. Curation has also, historically, referred to overseeing the care and preservation of precious collectibles.

With the overwhelming amount of content available on the Internet today, it is difficult for professionals to efficiently manage their daily reading activities as well as separate useful and accurate content from poor content. This is where content curation comes in, allowing individuals and businesses to provide a valuable service to their audiences by addressing their need for quality content and the lack of available time to find it.

Further, by sharing the most relevant, thought-provoking online content, curation can establish individuals and companies as authorities and thought leaders. Content curation enables your clients to stand out in the marketplace and influence buyer behavior during a time when everyone is fighting for recognition.

To date, curation has been a relatively time-consuming process because it requires significant energy to find, filter, and editorialize the best information. For example, at PR 20/20 we attempt to publish a curated post each week on our blog that highlights the week's most relevant marketing articles. The posts are usually 500 to 700 words, but commonly take one to two hours longer to prepare than a standard post.

Curation will take on increased importance in your clients' marketing strategies as software platforms emerge to make curation more intuitive and automated, so keep an eye on innovations in this s.p.a.ce.

Unplug to Excel

Efficiency and productivity have been recurring themes throughout this book. They are essential to an agency's profitability and the ability of your professionals to deliver results. However, there are barriers preventing professionals from reaching their potential and performing at their peaks.

We have become a society consumed with connectivity-much to our own detriment and that of our clients, coworkers, friends, and family. We are wasting time and money at alarming rates, instead of focusing our energy on what matters.

Unfortunately, although many of us think that we are increasing our value and productivity with our always-wired lifestyles, the inverse is more likely true, especially for marketing-agency professionals whose careers require both strategic and creative thinking.

We are so focused on meeting short-term demands for our time and attention that we have lost sight of the higher-priority outputs that will build our careers and businesses and make us better and happier people.

The Distractors We suffer from channel and information overload. At any given moment during business hours (and often after), we are connected through an array of channels competing for our attention-Twitter, Facebook, Internet, TV, chat, e-mail, phone, text, internal social networks, and Skype-not to mention face-to-face time and meetings. In essence, we are always distracted or antic.i.p.ating distraction, and, therefore, we are never performing at our peak and never achieving flow.

People lived so deeply in the moment, and felt so utterly in control, that their sense of time, place, and even self melted away.

-Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, p. 115.

These channels are important to our daily lives and our ability to consume information, communicate, produce, and grow. However, as author Dr. John Medina explains in Brain Rules, our minds are wired to work and think sequentially, not simultaneously. In other words, it is biologically impossible for us to give our full attention to more than one task at once.13 We cannot process Twitter alerts, e-mail notifications, instant messages, and texts and still efficiently produce outputs. Plus, research has shown that every time we are interrupted, our brains take up to 45 minutes to refocus and resume a major task.14 What is the trade-off? We use our personal time (nights, weekends, and vacations) to make up for lost productivity and poor efficiency.

The Six-Step Unplugged Plan So what can we do about it? How can we improve our performance, achieve better balance, and deliver greater results?

I propose that marketing-agency professionals go unplugged. Set aside time each day to go off the grid in order to regain focus, improve productivity, create more value, and concentrate on what is most important in business (and life).

1. Unplug at Regular (Daily) Intervals For a minimum of four hours every workday, shut off every nonessential application, and focus all your energy and attention on priority tasks and projects. Obviously, you still need to be available for high-priority communications and meetings, but commit to an unplugged schedule as much as possible.

We inst.i.tuted agency-wide productivity blocks (911 AM and 13 PM) at PR 20/20 in spring 2010 after reading Rework by Jason Fried (@jasonfried) and David Heinemeier Hansson (@dhh).15 Those blocks serve as our standard unplugged sessions. They flex as needed, but committing to them has had an incredible impact on our efficiency and performance.

This can be a difficult thing in team environments when communications and ideas are constantly flowing; however, we have found that blocking off periods of our calendars each day as busy, and limiting interruptions such as instant messages and e-mails, enables us, individually and collectively, to be more creative and productive.

2. Create and Communicate in Bursts Use the productivity blocks to create, and use the other times to communicate. This enables you to give people and projects the full attention they deserve, while using your time as efficiently as possible.

Hopefully you will unlock some stifled creativity along the way, and become a better listener.

3. Eliminate Channel and Sensory Overload Be honest. How often do you check and respond to e-mails or take a quick look at Facebook or Twitter to distract yourself from work or delay pus.h.i.+ng through a challenging project? I used to do it all the time-probably dozens of times per day.

Why? Because they were always open and accessible. It is like recess for the mind. Besides, 10 minutes here and there is harmless, right? Wrong! We are cheating ourselves, and anyone who relies on our production.

We have made it agency policy to shut off all desktop notifications, and set e-mail to autocheck every hour.

4. Get Lost to Find Answers Adjust your routine a bit, and maybe seek out a change of scenery more often. Whether it is a local coffee shop, a golf course, or a road trip, we need to quiet our minds and be inspired to think and create.

5. Reset Expectations and Priorities What percentage of communications, specifically calls and e-mails, are truly urgent? Of course, there are exceptions, but I guarantee the vast majority of those messages could wait an hour or two for a reply.

I know if I were paying a marketing agency for its creative work, I would rather they spent 60 uninterrupted minutes straight on my project than 60 minutes over three hours with calls, e-mails, tweets, and instant messages in between. Some agencies/consultants keep the meter running while allowing themselves to be constantly interrupted. That can be a costly situation when you are paying by the hour. I will take efficiency, with higher levels of creativity and attention, every time.

6. Remember What Matters I am consumed by a pa.s.sion for our agency. Since the day I launched it, I have cherished every waking second. The people and the moments have enriched my life, and I would not trade them for the world.

However, the agency does not define me. It is a means to a better life, for me and my coworkers. It affords us the opportunity to work with amazing people, build businesses, and do remarkable things. More importantly, it is our vehicle to create financial freedom so that we can enjoy our lives, improve the lives of those we care about, and affect the causes we believe in.

The more productive and efficient we are, the more time we have for the things that truly matter.

How Will You Know if Unplugging Works?

Simple really. Set goals, establish benchmarks, and measure metrics that matter to your business and life. For example, I track the number of blog posts I publish (goal: write more), hours working on nights and weekends (goal: spend more quality time with my family), and engagement in social networks (goal: build more relations.h.i.+ps and create more value).

Chapter Highlights.

Leading marketing agencies turn information into intelligence, and intelligence into action.

Look for measurement solutions that help you discover and interpret the metrics that matter most to your clients.

Develop professionals who see the big picture and have the ability to make connections that result in actionable intelligence.

Challenge your agency to move beyond the arbitrary measurements of success used by traditional marketing firms, and push the conversation toward more meaningful outcomes that can be tracked in real time and directly connected to sales.

The most advanced hybrid agencies win with speed and agility.

Make a.n.a.lytics a part of your professionals' daily routines in order to foster deeper thinking among your team.

In order to use a.n.a.lytics and constantly adapt to bring greater value to clients, your services must be measurable.