Get Better at Growth Marketing — 5 Myths & Tips
Myth #3 — SEO is not dead
If you’re running an online business or if you’re part of an organisation that does so, you would have worked on a digital platform to generate sales or gather leads.
The main platforms are:
SEM
SEM or Search Engine Marketing refers to a form of marketing where the visibility of the website can be increased by advertising on search engines
The main search engines in which SEM is possible are Google & Bing. Google owns more than 60% of market share in SEM.
Marketers spend over $100 million in SEM ads on a daily basis.
SEO
SEO or Search Engine Marketing refers to improving the quality of your website to
increase the ranking on SERP (Search Engine Results Page) organically.
There are over 2 trillion searches per year Google and the first position gets 30% of the
Clicks followed by 12% in the 3–4 positions, and 1–2% for the 9th and 10th positions.
A popular joke is that if you want to hide a dead body, you should hide it in the second page of SERP!
Social & Display Ads
When you’re scrolling through your feed on Facebook or Instagram, you would have
Come across ads from pages/accounts that you are not following.
These are primarily Social Media ads.
Email Marketing
Email marketing refers to sending commercial messages to prospective customers.
It can also be used in each stage of the conversion funnel.
Often, startups send an email to new customers from the CEO. This can help build credibility and trust.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is considered to be the crown jewel in this process because it can help tie together all forms of marketing.
With content marketing, your prospective customers can get to know more about you through blogs, forums, videos etc. instead of ads.
A survey revealed that 70% of customers prefer to learn about a new company in this way.
Social Media Marketing
Myth 1 — Social Media Marketing is not quantifiable
Fact — Using Google Analytics, you can track the total number of website visitors from Social Media and subsequently the number of conversions from the same.
If the senior executives at your organisation are worried about revenue, you can do an A/B test of 2 ad options and see which one converts better.
Tabulate the data and explain it to them why one option works better than the other one and how it has driven more revenue.
Myth 2 — Social Media Marketing is only for brand awareness
Fact — Social media can be used to build and nurture a relationship with the audience. You’re easily accessible to the audience and they can reach out to you quickly.
It can also be used to build interest and generate leads
Example — MVMT watches
MVMT leveraged influencer marketing and exploded on social media. At a point, it was difficult to scroll through Instagram without seeing a MVMT ad.
Bonus — Developing a Coherent Message Strategy on Social Media
a) Oreo
Remember the viral 2013 Oreo post during the Super Bowl?
There was a 34 minute blackout during Super Bowl 2013 and only 1 brand utilised this opportunity — Oreo.
Within the hour, they posted a creative ‘You can stildunk in the dark’ and it went viral.
In reality, Oreo had a 15 member social media team on standby to check and respond to any special event that happened during the Super Bowl.
In this case, Oreo retained its messaging capability of being a brand that could tie a situation with their brand successfully.
b) Red Lobster
While Oreo grabbed the opportunity, another brand missed the mark completely.
Beyonce had mentioned the Red Lobster in her song Formation and the audience on Twitter took notice of this but 1 person didn’t — the social media team at Red Lobster.
They responded days later after Twitter users called them out for missing an opportunity of a lifetime.
You can test the following on social media:
a) Test the time for the post
- Does morning or evening work for your audience?
b) Test the content
- What content works best? — Images, Videos, GIFs, etc.?
c) Change the CTA
- Make it short (Shop Now) or long (Yes, I want the e-book)
d) Length of URL
- Use bit.ly or the entire website link
e) Test the offer
- Test 2 different offers and see which one works better
Search Engine Optimisation
Myth 1 — Google automatically ranks
The logic behind this myth is that Google should have the capability to automatically crawl websites and rank it as per the quality.
Fact — Google crawls websites but doesn’t automatically rank
You need to put in the work, improve the quality of the website, improve the relevancy based on the keywords and then the ranking happens.
Myth 2 — You should rank #1 for a certain keyword
Fact — You should rank #1 for relevant keywords
It is practically impossible to rank #1 for keywords with really high search volume. So does that mean you shouldn’t carry out SEO activities?
Of course not!
Moz is a popular SEO tool so should Moz try to rank only for the keyword ‘seo’? No, it ranks for relevant keywords like ‘seo guides’, ‘best seo tips’ etc.
They have relevant content for these keywords and rank for them accordingly.
Make sure you choose the right keywords, not necessarily the top keyword.
Myth 3 — SEO is dead
Fact — SEO is alive & kicking!
Google is always trying to improve the customer experience and will not stop anytime soon.
SEO is one of the key ways this is happening (remember 2 trillion yearly searches?)
Hence, SEO is vital and not going anywhere anytime soon!
These are few of the many ways in which you can get enhanced results for your website, business, blog, etc.
Don’t fall for the usual myths, rise above them and put in real work to get real results.
These lessons are explained in detail in CXL Institute’s Growth Marketing Minidegree. The lessons are crafted nicely with tons of additional reading material that enabled me to understand the concepts in depth.
