>Start at the core: the peo­ple already try­ing to find you

In order to cut through the noise of all the things you can do in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, it is impor­tant to ensure you have clar­ity of focus.  We call this start­ing at the core.  Before you try and drive new demand to your dig­i­tal prop­er­ties it is impor­tant to sat­isfy the audi­ence that already is look­ing for you.  Opti­mize the quick wins in order to real­ize short-term suc­cesses. Quick wins can be deter­mined through an audit of your exist­ing organic search traf­fic and analy­sis of their engage­ment with your web­site.

>Align seo con­tent with your audience’s intent

The key goal with your web prop­erty should be to pro­vide the con­tent that matches your audience’s intent.  This will nat­u­rally facil­i­tate your audi­ences’ nat­ural buy­ing behav­ior.  A key to this align­ment is to develop persona’s to val­i­date the stages of your prospects buy­ing cycle and ensure you have the dig­i­tal assets that can meet these needs.

>Make it easy to share your content

In todays search envi­ron­ment social sig­nals are becom­ing a large influ­ence in online vis­i­bil­ity.  But another impor­tant fac­tor is the abil­ity for your cur­rent audi­ence to syn­di­cate your con­tent amongst their peer net­work. As you may already know, peer influ­ence is a largely weighted fac­tor in a pur­chase deci­sion and this type of shar­ing is the new ‘Word of Mouth’.

>Cre­ate a roadmap and inte­grate into workflows

As a mar­keter, you can become schiz­o­phrenic with all of the var­i­ous chan­nels and tac­tics avail­able to you.  The influ­ence your col­leagues and exec­u­tive team can have in your exe­cu­tion can take you off track quickly.  A Dig­i­tal Roadmap is a crit­i­cal tool to estab­lish pri­or­i­ties that align to the busi­ness strat­egy.  A ref­er­ence doc­u­ment that every­one can ref­er­ence will com­mu­ni­cate the cur­rent dig­i­tal strat­egy pri­or­i­ties. For exam­ple, if your CMO wants to build out a LinkedIn strat­egy, when the main web­site con­ver­sion path process hasn’t even been fixed yet.  A Roadmap allows you to man­age your busi­ness, and not let the busi­ness man­age you.

>Lever­age tools and tem­plates to cre­ate scale

Whether you are an enter­prise level com­pany or an SMB, the need to scale your efforts is impor­tant.  Key tools such as Google Ana­lyt­ics, Raven, Bright Edge and Web­mas­ter Tools can help you track and ana­lyze your per­for­mance to improve exe­cu­tion. Allow tools to do the heavy lift­ing when appropriate.

>Evolve met­rics with your audi­ences’ behavior

As search and your cus­tomers behav­ior evolves, it is impor­tant to mea­sure the right KPI’s (Key Per­for­mance Met­rics). Hav­ing the right KPI’s in place can glean the right type of insight to truly under­stand the suc­cess of your seo and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing efforts.  Key­word rank may not be as valid of a met­ric as you may think.


Biography / Resume : Chris has extensive experience and insight into digital marketing, lead generation, channel strategy, and B2B marketing. At Mediative, he has been the lead with key accounts including Allstate Insurance, 3M, American Red Cross, Toys R Us and Deustche Telekom (T-mobile). He leverages Mediative’s knowledge of user behaviour to present both concepts and solutions that will drive on-line marketing efforts forward. Chris is a contributor to the book The BuyerSphere Project – How Business Buys From Business in a Digital Marketplace. He is also a speaker with the Google Engage project, various industry and client events, and is a guest lecturer at the University of British Columbia.