HOOOOOOOOONK.
That’s how our morning started—honking cars as we inched our way through the rush hour traffic moving towards downtown Minneapolis. The gorgeous peach-colored sunrise coupled with the intoxicating smell of coffee helped us relax despite the stress of a morning commute.
Today’s drive was different than the rest. Instead of driving to our offices with views of Lake Minnetonka and the occasional deer, we headed into the bustle of the University of St. Thomas to attend the inaugural Minnesota Search Summit— an event focused on search, social media and digital marketing.
Fourteen of my TopRank coworkers and I are spending the day hearing advice from local experts, gleaning insights from industry thought leaders, and networking with some of Minneapolis’s savvy online marketers.
So far, we’re halfway through the day. Caffeine has kicked in, the tweets are flying, and the gift bags have been opened. And the TopRank Marketing team is impressed. Between CEO Lee Odden’s opening keynote and the two speaking tracks, we’ve already learned several new things about landing pages, search, analytics…the list is endless.
Well…not endless. Check out the list of advice and tips our team found helpful below—and stay tuned for the rest!
Lee Odden’s @leeodden – CEO of TopRank Online Marketing
“Where Does Search Fit in the Digital Marketing Mix?”
- Your customers can be a gold mine of information. Ask them questions, talk to your sales team–learn what questions are being asked and map those to the stages of your buying cycle. Then create and curate content to address those things in order to optimize user experience. – Eliza Steely
- A multichannel customer is worth 2x as much as a customer that shops in one channel. Be sure to create a consistent experience throughout your channels to ensure you’re optimizing all experiences possible. – Kate Heithoff
- People ask their friends for advice on social channels because social is a discovery tool. Search is a validation tool where people cross-check their friends’ suggestions in order to validate the information. – Emily Bacheller
- Be eternally curious. Be an eternal student. Set objectives and goals for yourself to learn every day and there’s no better way to learn that to connect with people who are solving similar problems or problems different than you – Eliza Steely
- Bacon and kittens are not the best approach to digital marketing – Eliza Steely
Oli Gardner’s @oligardner – Co-Founder of Unbounce
“Advanced Landing Page Optimization”
- In order to create “delightful” landing pages, don’t break the “scent trail.” If a person’s searching for something specific, keep the scent trail strong from search engine to your landing page – so they find what they originally searched for (smelled!) and don’t get frustrated and start the search over again. -Brooke Furry
- “If you give me cause to pause, I might not convert.” – Brooke Furry
- People like to be led, so tell them what to do. For instance, after someone signs up for your webinar, ask them to join your email list. Always go for the extra point. – Emily Bacheller
- Our goal as marketers should be to delight and convert our customers. Oli Gardner describes the Attention Ratio as the ratio of interactive elements on a site (links) compared to campaign goals (you campaign goals should always be one). As the Attention Ratio decreases, conversion ratio will increase. Give people one thing to do – your campaign goal (i.e. watch a video, download white paper, etc.). For the ideal landing page experience remove extraneous elements, including social buttons, links to other relevant content and your top navigation. This will increase your conversion rate. The Attention Ratio is more important than button color, short forms or an above-the-fold CTA. – Alexis Hall
- 8% of men are colorblind–so don’t rely on colors – Michael Bak
Justin Cutroni’s @justicutroni – Analytics Evangelist at Google
“Moving to User Centric Measurement”
- You can’t create unique experiences without segmentation. Create segmentation in your analytics and use that as your remarketing list, customize everything for them. Incorporating behavioral data is essential to reach the right type of audience – Eliza Steely
- Opportunities to engage with customers are growing exponentially, so analytics must grow too – what you measure must become more intentional and people-based. – Brooke Furry
- We want to thing about the user and the value they bring our company for years to come. For years we’ve been focused on the singular moment of conversion rates. We need to start looking beyond that to help us decide where to allocate funds based on the lifetime value of a customer, not just their singular purchases. – Eliza Steely
- The secret sauce is identifying your customers through IDs and inputting that into Anaylytics. You can then create a single user profile to identify their interactions through time. – Ryan Rutz
- In one example Justin shared, Google remarketing campaigns that included a behavior signal were 1300% more effective than standard campaigns. The takeaway? Any time you can gain insights (such as affinity) and use them to personalize the experience, do it. – Jesse Pickrain
It’s been a great summit so far! More digital marketing tidbits are coming. Check back later this evening for more insights from the TopRank Marketing team. Follow along on Twitter with the event hashtag: #MNSummit
