Local Strategies: How Better Online Reputation Drives Revenue via @sejournal, @lorenbaker

Join us as we look at how your online reputation and local marketing strategies can drive revenue for your business, while avoiding pitfalls along the way.

With guest Raj Nijjer of Edge, we’ll dive into the revenue impacts that your online reputation can have, and why this reputation building should be crucial in your planning.

Join your host Loren Baker, as he and Raj discuss how to avoid wasteful strategies of local marketing and multi-location businesses, plus a couple tips on how a good reputation can help attract and retain top talent.

[01:14] – Raj’s Background and Journey to Edge.
[02:44] – Edge’s Concept of Employee-Driven Growth and Its Connection to Google Reviews.
[10:34] – How Reviews Contribute to Local SEO.
[11:27] – Customer-Facing End: In-Depth Reviews and Personalization.
[13:24] – Standing Out in Cutthroat Competition: Franchises and Service Businesses.
[14:37] – Motivating Employees and Transparent Recognition Through Reviews.
[20:49] – Reputation Management and Injecting Employee Recognition.
[45:06] – Employee Retention During Challenges Like The COVID-19 Pandemic.

We encourage businesses to amplify positive reviews and learn from the negative reviews. – Raj Nijjer, 5:34

Now not only does the brand win and the business win, but employees can feel great or a person can feel great about the job that they’ve done. – Raj Nijjer, 9:21

Positive reviews are so important. There’s one stat I read on your site…53% of customers won’t go to a business rated under four stars. – Loren Baker, 15:21

I think the injection of motivating and recognizing your employees while they’re doing this service is something that we’re very proud of, because we can see which employees are doing really well. And then you can duplicate that. – Raj Nijjer, 21:44

Our goal is to marry the marketing with operational excellence. You want to hold people accountable, especially if you’re rewarding them. – Raj Nijjer, 30:53

I think one thing COVID taught every business owner is employee retention and how hard it’s been to find people and when a displacement happens, it really jeopardizes your business if you don’t plan it well. So you want to keep your superstars, don’t ever lose your superstars. – Raj Nijjer – 41:10

Resources Mentioned:

Connect With Raj Nijjer:

Raj is Head of Marketing for Edge, an employee-driven growth platform for service brands. Previously, he was the CMO of Refersion (acquired), and held executive marketing roles at Yotpo and Yext (IPO in 2017). Raj also spent over nine years at Godaddy (IPO in 2015) in leadership roles launching innovative product lines with over ten patents issued and leading to a PE buyout and an IPO.

Raj is also fractional CMO to early and mid-stage technology startups. Raj received his Bachelors of Science degree in International Management and his MBA from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.

Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajnijjer/
Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RajNijjer

Connect with Loren Baker:

Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/lorenbaker
Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenbaker 

Why RevOps Is Essential For Your B2B Marketing Strategy via @sejournal, @alexanderkesler

Revenue operations (RevOps) is an organizational approach that aligns teams, workflows, and strategies through a unified revenue lens with goals and metrics focused on revenue growth.

In past years of economic uncertainty, the need to prove return on investment (ROI) has led many businesses to adopt RevOps as a cross-organizational strategy.

However, its definition and execution vary across companies, influenced by factors such as infrastructure and the strategies that are in place to drive long-term demand.

In this guide, I present the RevOps strategy we implemented at INFUSE and recommend for 2024, which is aligned with go-to-market (GTM) motions and demand generation best practices to fuel predictable and lasting organizational growth.

GTM And Demand: Frameworks To Enable RevOps

The robust and granular nature of go-to-market (GTM) and demand generation frameworks makes both particularly well-suited for steering RevOps initiatives.

Combining both allows revenue teams to craft iterative strategies that prioritize brand awareness and buyer engagement.

Adopting a blended approach with both frameworks for your RevOps strategy is an effective way to guide product/service activation initiatives, as well as sustain demand for these offerings to meet performance goals.

GTM Frameworks For RevOps

Numerous GTM frameworks exist, with the majority emphasizing specific approaches to facilitate growth.

For example, product-led growth (PLG) is a GTM model centered on driving revenue with a specific (often freemium) product motion.

Meanwhile, an inbound growth model is led by driving traffic and lead generation through an inbound channel mix.

Today, full-funnel approaches to GTM are especially effective, given their focus on supporting buyers at every stage of their journey.

Therefore, rather than focusing on a product or channel mix, the priority is to build seamless experiences for buyers that offer a level of precision that is necessary to establish trust.

Demand Frameworks For RevOps

Demand generation serves as a supportive approach to achieving the objectives of a GTM strategy.

Essentially, it acts as a conduit to sustain brand awareness and cultivate a pipeline of sales opportunities for the organization.

In periods of sluggish economic growth, demand generation is crucial for preventing pipeline deceleration and retaining lead interest.

Lead nurturing is a key element of demand strategies as it develops and maintains brand interest among prospects until they are ready to buy.

Therefore, it helps develop growth and conversion forecasts, as well as drive brand referrals through content marketing and thought leadership.

How To Launch A RevOps Strategy In 5 Easy Steps

Below is a five-step process for driving a RevOps strategy that is fit for the market challenges of 2024:

1. Establish RevOps At Your Organization Across Teams

A core element of RevOps is establishing structures to align your team members and anchor the focus of your organization on the activities necessary for revenue growth.

To achieve this, you will first require a well-defined north star (or unified goal), which can be set by following these steps:

  • Clarify your Unique Value Proposition (UVP): Revisit the unique value you offer to clients as a brand in terms of what drives revenue. This will allow you to focus your offerings on what drives organizational growth while also addressing the unique challenges of your target market.
  • Identify organizational obstacles: Evaluate what issues in your organizational culture, tech stack, and staff are currently hindering the full alignment of processes required for RevOps. The goal here is to identify the most common bottlenecks that impede your teams’ agility.
  • Define your purpose and goal: Define your key revenue goal to help plan the steps required to achieve it. This shared vision will sustain all teams’ activities and future strategies. If, for example, the goal is to increase market share by 30%, all business activities should be guided by that end goal.

Functional Vs. Departmental RevOps:

Molding RevOps teams and processes can either be guided by a functional (staff roles) or departmental perspective. Each approach comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages, underscoring the importance of a careful evaluation to determine which one aligns best with the unique needs of your business:

  • Functional: This approach establishes tasks for team members to fulfill based on their skill set. For example, a person well-versed in project management would be responsible for developing RevOps systems.
  • Departmental: This approach assigns RevOps duties for each department of the organization based on their expertise and availability. It is simpler to implement compared to the functional approach, yet presents more risk of creating data silos (therefore, establishing data flows across departments is a must).

2. Adopt The Recurring Revenue Bowtie Model

Developed by Winning By Design, the Recurring Revenue Bowtie Model envisions the buyer’s journey as a closed loop to focus efforts in equal measure on interactions before and after a sale.

This full-funnel approach helps emphasize the importance of onboarding and expanding business with existing clients through upsells, cross-sells, and renewals.

ull-funnel approachScreenshot from Winning By Design, December 2023

The Bowtie Model is well suited for RevOps since it focuses on both sides of the buyer’s journey: the path toward conversions, as well as the nurturing that is necessary to expand client relationships and encourage post-sale growth.

Given the forecast of slow growth for 2024 (Reuters, 2023), this model is particularly well suited to the challenges ahead—namely, the emphasis on increasing client lifetime value (CLTV) and reducing churn to boost ROI.

3. Align Data And AI For RevOps

At the essence of RevOps lies the concept of actionability, underscoring the critical need to prioritize buyer data that can be leveraged to shape strategies that boost conversions.

Enhancing your buyer data with actionable, real-time data points empowers you to adapt campaigns as needed and acquire insights about your audience, guiding future iterations.

Buyer intent data is perhaps the most useful data for RevOps, as it demonstrates when and how buyers interact with your brand.

It can also shape future touchpoints (via lead nurturing or sales teams) to encourage further engagement.

By aggregating buyer intent data and utilizing AI-enriched platforms such as a client relationship management (CRM) system, it becomes feasible to glean insights from RevOps strategies as a whole.

This empowers your revenue teams to make informed decisions for optimizing ROI, which prioritizes prospects demonstrating buyer intent at the right time.

Since this data is timely, it also allows teams to craft content that garners the highest audience interest due to its relevance.

4. Enable And Engage Defensive Buyers

2024 is anticipated as a year of slow growth, a trend stemming from the past few years of economic uncertainty.

This unusual climate is prompting decision-makers to adopt a defensive stance, as well as exercise heightened scrutiny over the risks associated with their purchasing decisions.

Marketers embracing a RevOps strategy in 2024 must formulate comprehensive buyer journeys that address common objections and build trust right from the outset.

Below are three tactics to enable and engage defensive buyers in 2024:

Create Self-Paced Buyer Journeys

According to Forrester 2024 Predictions, the demand for self-service will be greater than ever, especially as Millennials and Gen Z buyers now make up two-thirds of B2B buyers.

Companies should consider developing buyer journeys that allow prospects to discover pricing, watch a demo, or even download a free trial at their own pace – without the need for a salesperson.

Already commonplace in SaaS, this trend is likely to expand to other B2B industries, placing a significant emphasis on the importance of providing digital buying experiences that enable buyers to investigate and finalize purchases.

After all, 75% of B2B buyers prefer a sales experience without sales representatives.

Leverage ABX And Engage All Buying Group Members

Account based experience (ABX) is an approach that adopts client and user experience (CX and UX) best practices to inform account targeting strategies.

At INFUSE, it is the approach we adopt for account based marketing (ABM) due to its ability to enrich buyer experiences with personalized touchpoints.

ABX also helps inform a holistic view of target accounts, developing an outreach strategy that considers all buying group members and the needs of different departments and professionals for approving a purchase.

Thus, ABX proves to be an ideal approach for crafting a buyer’s journey that seamlessly aligns with the preferences of cautious buyers.

This stems from its emphasis on meticulously tailored lead nurturing touchpoints, ensuring a precise level of personalization that directly addresses individual buyer challenges.

Revisit Your Lead Data And Tech Stack

As noted earlier, building efficient data flows is a critical first step in RevOps. Therefore, it becomes imperative to carry out a thorough audit of your tech stack and lead database to ensure a solid foundation for success.

This audit should focus on detecting inconsistencies and incorrect information on buyers, as well as eliminating any redundant tools and bottlenecks.

Since alignment is key for RevOps to truly function, ensure all data and tools are seamlessly integrated and available for all team members to glean insights and inform their strategies.

5. Nurture With A RevOps And GTM Focus

Enable your lead nurturing for revenue growth by benchmarking it against RevOps key performance indicators (KPIs), such as client lifetime value (CLTV) and client acquisition cost (CAC).

These metrics help inform lead nurturing efforts toward revenue generation, which helps teams plan campaigns that will result in continued buyer engagement and a predictable pipeline of sales opportunities.

Five tips for nurturing with a revenue focus:

  • Design touchpoints with revenue KPIs in mind: Guiding lead nurturing efforts through a revenue lens facilitates the development of content and outreach that has been created to maximize returns.
  • Develop nurturing tracks for different pain points and buyer personas: By establishing a lead nurturing cadence for each buyer persona (which addresses a unique set of pain points with solutions best suited for that buying group), you will be more successful in encouraging conversions.
  • Benchmark quarterly growth against nurturing efforts: Measuring organizational growth (such as net new growth) enables the routine tracking of your lead nurturing performance. Keep in mind, however, that lead nurturing is highly dependent on the average length of your sales cycle. So, for organizations with long sales cycles, performance will be difficult to glean quickly. Even so, consistent and early measurement indicators help glean insights to update future lead nurturing campaigns and ensure continued buyer interest.
  • Survey clients of key target audiences: Collect direct feedback from clients within different audiences that you are targeting for a timely overview of their brand perception, as well as market challenges and expectations for 2024. This will help personalize your messaging to better address the concerns of your target buying groups.
  • Analyze conversations with prospects: Record and assess conversations with prospects to determine the success of different approaches, as well as the objections and reactions of buyers toward certain topics. This will help determine which topics and messaging points are most successful in driving conversions.

Key Takeaways

Keep these takeaways in mind when planning your RevOps strategy to ensure the best outcomes:

Develop A Rich Buyer Experience

By leveraging the best practices of ABX, the post-sales enablement of the Bowtie Model, and a personalized touch to your lead nurturing, you can build a rich buyer experience that supports revenue growth.

In other words, to drive revenue, you must align team efforts in a manner that capitalizes on developing a relevant buyer’s journey, which will maintain your brand top of mind throughout the buying group’s potentially lengthy and scrutinous decision-making process.

Align Your Datasets, AI, And Tech Stack For RevOps

Make sure to audit your existing data and technology through a revenue-first lens by eliminating redundancies and unnecessary data that will impede the insights required for driving growth.

Consider your revenue metrics when analyzing this wealth of data and how your tools should function to make sure you are tracking revenue attribution from marketing and sales efforts.

Nurture Leads For Long-Term Revenue Growth

Develop comprehensive and relevant lead nurturing cadences that are custom-tailored to each buyer persona to engage buying groups as a whole.

This will enable future sales opportunities for when buyers are in-market for your solutions.

More resources: 


Featured Image: Viktoria Kurpas/Shutterstock

Big Data Vs. Deep Dives: How To Interact With Studies In Digital Marketing via @sejournal, @navahf

One of the most attractive parts of digital marketing is the built-in focus on data.

If a tactic tends to have positive data around it, it’s easier to adopt. Likewise, if a tactic hasn’t been proven, it can be tough to gain buy-in to test.

The main way digital marketers build that data confidence is through studies. These studies typically fall into one of two categories:

  • Anecdotal: A limited number of data points, however, there’s typically far more detail on the individual mechanics.
  • Statistically significant: A large number of data points (typically 100+) that might be forced into more simple analysis due to the sheer volume of entities being analyzed.

Both data sets have their place in building out digital marketing strategies. This is why it’s dangerous to lean too heavily into one or the other.

As someone who has worked within organizations capable of putting out both types of data sets – and an avid consumer of both – I thought it would be useful to dig into:

  • Minimum criteria for each type of study.
  • What value brands can get out of both types of studies.
  • How to set up your own studies.

This post will look at a few different studies ranging in digital marketing disciplines.

This is because the core principles that govern anecdotal (smaller data) and statistically significant (big data) are fairly similar across marketing disciplines.

Minimum Criteria For Each Type Of Study

A common mistake folks make when setting up studies is thinking the volume of data is the only criterion to make their studies valuable.

Yes, it is lovely when there’s a lot of data, but there are other critical factors:

  • How many variables are being considered?
  • What, if any, mitigation is there for outliers/excess variables?
  • Can the study respond to critics with data vs. emotion?

These three will be minimum requirements regardless of whether you focus on an anecdotal study or a statistically significant one. However, there are some study-specific criteria as well.

Anecdotal Studies

When looking at a smaller data set (i.e., fewer than 10 accounts, less than a year of data, etc.), there’s much more pressure to dig into the before and after impacts of whatever thing you want to test.

People will want as much detail as possible because the study usually shows the results of specific actions taken in one account/for one brand.

This means screenshots will be critical. If you can’t show exactly what happened, it won’t be taken seriously.

However, screenshots do not require you to reveal the client you’re working for. Filtering out brand names is absolutely reasonable.

Leaving out benchmarks, important metrics, and whether an initiative had “unfair advantages” (big budget, branded campaigns, etc.) is not.

A good example of an anecdotal study is looking at the impact of a change over a few months. This graph from Will O’Harra shows the shift in site traffic for “fan” sites vs. big names.

data for sites getting traffic that are fan basedImage from Will O’Harra, November 2023

In this study, we can see sites that would otherwise have lower traffic getting a big spike due to the change in quality content criteria. This is an anecdotal study in that it only looks at five sites.

Big Data Studies

Where folks will be fairly unforgiving of the lack of detail in anecdotal studies, big data studies get a little more leniency.

This is because their main measure is the volume of accounts that speak to a specific trend. However, this doesn’t mean big data studies are free from scrutiny – just that the focus is on different things.

Big data needs to be very stringent in inclusion criteria. Entities included need to be as close to each other as possible.

Additionally, big data studies typically need a lot of entities. If you’re going to make a comment about a particular trend, there needs to be enough volume to back up the claim.

For example, in my Optmyzr study looking at Google match types and bidding strategies, we included roughly 2,600 accounts across multiple countries. (Disclaimer: I work for Optmyzr.) We could have included more accounts if we were more lenient on the criteria.

What Value Brands Can Get Out of Both Types Of Studies

It can be tempting to only focus on one type of study. However, both have their place and can inform meaningful account strategy.

Big data is helpful to understand overarching concepts and trends that can impact your account. These will be the guiding principles, like:

  • Which structure choices have a higher chance of success?
  • Where to focus content generation efforts.
  • How are people spending their money?
  • When to use which type of messaging in the buyer funnel?

What’s useful about these sorts of learnings is that they give you a good starting place for forming your strategy. They also can be useful to sanity check yourself.

For example, the brilliant Mike Ryan (SMEC) conducted a study on how many conversions are needed for successful PMax campaigns. While this data is useful in every context, knowing it’s based on 14,000 campaigns is helpful.

PMax: Conversion Volume vs. ROAS AchievementImage from Mike Ryan (SMEC), November 2023

From this data, we can see that in order to achieve decent results, our PMax campaigns should be getting at least 60 conversions in a 30-day period.

If they can’t, it might be worth evaluating other campaign types. It’s very possible an account can succeed outside the results of this study, but they would be outliers to the general rule.

Similarly, the equal parts clever and entertaining Greg Gifford (Search Labs) did a study on Google Business Profile listings to evaluate if “best practices” actually hold up to analysis.

He and his team looked at 1,000 dealerships and found some best practices held true, while others were correlation instead of causation.

Anecdotal studies will be better at giving you “wild and crazy ideas” to test. They’re also very good for risk-tolerant folks to explore emerging trends.

How To Set Up Your Own Studies

Setting up studies comes down to understanding what the scope of the study will look like and how repeatable it is. If you only do a study once, it’s not as useful because trends are always shifting.

Additionally, if your scope is too narrow or wide, you might muddy the data or not fully address the important question.

Ensure that your hypothesis leaves room for you to be proven wrong.

If you don’t take precautions, data can be made to say anything. It’s critical to maintain strict guidelines of what is included and why.

More resources: 


Featured Image: Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock

How To Reduce Your Email Bounce Rate & Boost Email Marketing Campaigns via @sejournal, @zerobounce1

When you’re reaching out to a mass email list with your business offering, the last thing you want is to see that your last email blast didn’t make it to the full audience you aimed for.

These email bounces waste time and money. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

A bounce rate higher than 2% can shatter your entire email marketing strategy by sabotaging your email deliverability.

In fact, according to marketing standards, you want your bounce rate to be as close to 0% as possible and never more than 2%.

See how many bounces your next campaign may get >>>

The good news? You can take steps to avoid this common problem for good and calibrate your campaigns for better email deliverability.

Read on to find out how bounces hurt your business and what you can do today to boost your email marketing success.

What Is A Bounce Rate?

Your bounce rate is the percentage of emails you send that bounce or do not make it to a recipient’s inbox.

There are two types of bounces – hard bounces and soft bounces – and each has a different effect on your email marketing campaign.

In both cases, however, your message won’t make it to the intended recipient.

What Is A Hard Bounce?

A hard bounce indicates a permanent issue with the email address.

It’s invalid or possibly never existed.

There’s no hope of your email getting through with that address, so make sure to remove it from your email list.

What Is A Soft Bounce?

A soft bounce happens when a temporary issue causes your email to not be delivered.

The mailbox was full, your email was too large, or the domain was down. Your email provider will keep trying to deliver your message, but it may end up permanently bouncing.

Make sure to remove permanent bounces from your database.

What’s Wrong With Getting Email Bounces?

Getting bounces is antithetical to email marketing because you’re sending your emails because you want a real person to open and read them.

It’s frustrating and demoralizing when that doesn’t happen.

  • Bounces waste money. Email services charge based on the number of email addresses on your list, as well as how many emails you send. If you’re getting bounces, you’re pouring dollars down the drain.
  • Bounces waste time. Why would you put all of this work into your emails only to have them result in a pile of bounces?
  • Bounces affect your email deliverability. They send notice to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that you’re likely a spammer and should be treated as such. Fewer people will see your emails because they’re now going to the junk folder.

Is It Possible To Have A 0% Bounce Rate?

Perfection is unattainable, but it is an ideal to strive for.

You may want to achieve a 0% bounce rate. However, there are many factors out of your control:

  • A Full Mailbox: Your customer may have a valid email address, but their mailbox is full. This will result in a soft bounce.
  • Issues With Email Providers: The contacts on your list rely on other email providers, so you can’t dictate what happens on their end.
  • Glitches: You’ve likely witnessed an email that bounced for no discernible reason. Sometimes an unexplained phenomenon or glitch is to blame.

Any of these may be the culprit for a bounce.

They’re why the expected email marketing bounce rate benchmark is 2%, but it’s also why your target should be to reach perfection – 0%.

The concept of “aim small, miss small” applies. If you shoot for 0%, you may get close.

If you try to hit the benchmark, you may veer into the danger zone.

How To Reduce Your Bounce Rate

Now that you know the risks of a high bounce rate, let’s explore the most reliable ways to keep bounces at bay and help your emails reach the inbox.

How To Reduce Your Email Bounce Rate & Boost Email Marketing CampaignsImage courtesy of ZeroBounce.Net, October 2023

Step 1: Validate Your Email List

You can remove invalid email addresses from your list once they bounce, but the damage is already done.

To keep your email deliverability high, you want to avoid bounces in the first place – and the most effective way to do it is by using an email validator.

An email validation service checks your email list for invalid email addresses so you can remove them before they cause harm.

The process is easy and fast – on average, you can verify 100,000 contacts in less than an hour.

Email databases decay at an average rate of 23% a year, so remember to validate your contacts at least once a quarter.

How To Reduce Your Email Bounce Rate & Boost Email Marketing CampaignsImage courtesy of ZeroBounce.net, October 2023

Step 2: Set Up An Email Validation API

After you verify your entire email list, you can go a step further and prevent it from acquiring bad data with an email validation API.

The API is your second layer of defense against bounces, working in real-time to protect the health of your email list.

Once you connect the API to your sign-up and registration forms, it blocks invalid emails right at the point of capture.

For instance, if someone mistypes an email, it prompts them with a message asking them to enter the right address. Aside from that, a trustworthy email validation API blocks bots and fake sign-ups, thus protecting your email deliverability.

Step 3: Remove Unengaged Subscribers From Your Email List

Building an email list takes effort, so many companies want to hold on to the email contacts they gather.

The bigger your list, the higher the ROI is the common mindset.

Mastering Data-Driven Marketing: Insights from 100M Phone Calls via @sejournal, @hethr_campbell

How do you turn the conversations happening over the phone into invaluable data that drives success? 

From understanding customer behavior to identifying conversion opportunities, your phone calls are full of hidden gems and untapped insights

Humans may not have the capacity to analyze data from hundreds of calls or transcripts manually – but with CallRail’s AI-powered technology, it’s possible. 

In fact, the process has been kickstarted, and there is data ready for you!

So, if you’re ready to start mining the golden sales opportunities within your business phone calls, our upcoming webinar is one you won’t want to miss. 

Join us on November 1, as Jason Tatum, CallRail’s VP of Product, shares proprietary insights from more than 100 million phone calls, as well as how to harness them to supercharge your sales strategies. 

You’ll discover consumer communication trends that help small-to-medium businesses and agency marketers increase conversions and boost results. 

We’ll also be covering the past and future state of phone calls, and how you can use AI technology to gather useful data from them and transform your business. 

In this live session, you’ll learn:

  • How to use your conversations to unlock a goldmine of untapped insights. By analyzing customer calls, you can gain a deeper understanding of their customers’ needs, preferences, and pain points. 
  • How you can use AI to mine gold from conversations. CallRail’s Conversation Intelligence technology allows you to transcribe conversations with near-human accuracy, surface key terms and phrases from conversations, and quickly summarize call details. 
  • Ways that AI-mined gold from calls can transform your business. You can use insights from customer calls to further refine your SEO and keyword bidding strategies and respond to customer sentiment appropriately.

This webinar is your chance to learn how to develop data-driven marketing strategies that deliver real results.

Don’t miss this opportunity to uncover the wealth of data hidden within your phone calls and drive your marketing and sales strategies to success.

Secure your spot now and start mastering data-driven marketing today.

Google Offers Publishers Control Over Bard, Vertex AI Access via @sejournal, @kristileilani

Find out how to use Google-Extended to control Google’s Bard, Vertex AI generative APIs, and future AI model’s access to content.

  • Google introduces Google-Extended, a new control for web publishers in the wake of rapid generative AI growth.
  • The control allows publishers to decide how their sites contribute to the evolution of Bard and Vertex AI generative APIs.
  • The initiative highlights the broader challenge web publishers face of managing access to various companies training data.
Unleash Your Campaign’s Potential: Elevate Your Performance Marketing Game via @sejournal, @hethr_campbell

2023 has been a time of significant change in the online space, driven by the increased adoption of AI and other technologies.

Are you doing enough to win over your audience and stay ahead despite these changes?

Looking to employ the right strategies to reach (and convert) your ideal customers with modern digital marketing tools?

On August 2, I moderated a webinar with iQuanti’s Senior Vice President of Digital Solutions, ​​Sreekant Lanka.

Lanka demonstrated the five key performance marketing trends you must master to captivate your audience in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Here’s a summary of the webinar. To access the entire presentation, complete the form.

Key Takeaways

  • Planning: Use data and analytics to assess media channels over time, account for external fluctuations for an optimal media mix, and align campaigns with Smart bidding best practices as AI/ML increases in marketing prominence.
  • Audience: Platforms enhance AI/ML capabilities to target relevant audiences, while marketers can boost outcomes through a robust first-party data (1PD) strategy, optimizing setup, and offering tailored assets for conversion.
  • Creative & Experience: Enhance the user experience by combining fresh visual styles and messaging with AI and human analysis to understand what makes content resonate.
  • Measurement & Optimization: Use Incrementality tests to gauge channel value beyond last-click attribution and focus on business goals for inter-channel optimization.

Key Considerations In Planning Media Channels

When planning media channels, it’s essential to know how the different parts of a campaign usually work together.

What A Typical Campaign Flow Looks Like Today

  • Planning.
  • Audience.
  • Creative experience.
  • Measurement & Optimization.

[Explore in detail what each part looks like.] Instantly access the on-demand webinar →

But how do you drive more performance? Consider strategies to gain a competitive advantage.

Aspects Of The Campaign Flow That Give You An Edge

Gaining an edge hinges on the core considerations of campaign execution.

Planning Media Channels: Key Considerations

When strategizing for media channels, embracing a holistic and data-backed approach is vital.

Leverage these, together:

  • Media Mix Modelling: Media Mix Modelling optimizes media channels through historical data analysis, reactivation of inactive channels, and advanced modeling techniques.
  • Cross-channel Performance Benchmarking: When MMM is unfeasible, planning is aided by benchmarking channels against a baseline and anchoring performance for market adjustments.
  • Piloting New Channels: Allocating funds for ongoing experimentation and setting clear objectives and criteria is essential for piloting new channels when not previously invested in multiple.

[Find out how to plan for Smart Bidding Campaigns] Instantly access the on-demand webinar →

Maximizing Ad ROI: Understand The Role Of Audience

Channels are actively enhancing targeting with advanced features. They are also evolving to leverage first-party data, optimizing AI and machine learning for improved audience conversions.

  • AI can provide insights like “high-indexing attributes” to convert audiences.

[See an example] Instantly access the on-demand webinar →

  • From a meta-perspective, machine learning algorithms simplify campaign structures and ensure privacy compliance, resulting in a 25% reduction in CPA by shifting from specific to broader targeting.
Unleash Your Campaign's Potential: Elevate Your Performance Marketing Game Screenshot by iQuanti, August 2023
  • Leverage first-party data in the cookie-less ecosystem to drive acquisitions.

[Discover the challenges, solutions, and critical highlights] Instantly access the on-demand webinar →

Creative & Experience Optimization

The key to success is enriching the end-to-end user experience with relevant ad copies and landing pages while leveraging AI for creative analysis and improvement.

While creatives are found to impact business results significantly, they are relatively underpenetrated in terms of leveraging data & analytics.

Unleash Your Campaign's Potential: Elevate Your Performance Marketing Game

Experience optimization has significantly improved conversion rates, resolved friction points, and minimized inefficiencies and costs through the seamless alignment of keywords to landing pages.

[See how keyword, intent, & audience alignment in campaigns work]. Instantly access the on-demand webinar →

Creatives should also be diversified in both messaging and visual style. Here’s an ML-led objective approach to creative analysis combined with behavioral nuances that can get data-driven & actionable insights

Unleash Your Campaign's Potential: Elevate Your Performance Marketing Game

[Reveal examples of what worked & what didn’t] Instantly access the on-demand webinar →

Performance Monitoring & Campaign Optimization

Understand the true value of a channel or tactic with Incrementality tests, and perform inter-channel budget optimizations based on business goals.

While getting Incrementality Testing right is vital for brand-building investments, it’s equally important not to limit the assessment to just last-click attribution

Here’s how you can approach it:

  • Geographical Split Testing.
  • Customer List Segmentation.
  • PSA Ads – Holdout.

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[Slides] Unleash Your Campaign’s Potential: Elevate Your Performance Marketing Game

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Secure Your 2024 SEO Budget With These Tips For Executive Buy-in

Join Will Critchlow, founder of SearchPilot, as he gives you actionable strategies to do more with less, and prove the positive impacts of SEO to senior leadership.


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Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

Moz Launches Brand Authority Metric At MozCon With Top 500 US Brands List via @sejournal, @kristileilani

Moz, a pioneering figure in search and digital marketing solutions, introduced Brand Authority™, a new metric designed to gauge online brand strength, at MozCon.

This analytical tool empowers companies to evaluate their competitive environment with a unique brand comparison visualization feature.

Recognizing an industry shift and an unmet need to quantify brand salience, Moz’s search scientists and product team conceived Brand Authority.

What Is Moz’s Brand Authority?

The Brand Authority metric capitalizes on Moz’s esteemed search data and a proprietary algorithm, offering marketers valuable insight into their brand’s performance and untapped growth avenues.

Available on Moz Pro and through the Moz API, Brand Authority provides a measurable brand performance index for marketers and PR professionals.

It should help marketers identify ways to optimize their strategy for higher return on investment (ROI), appreciate the worth of sales prospects and potential acquisition targets, and gauge the influence of media brand mentions.

Brand Authority aims to offer a comprehensive picture, paving the way for more effective strategies and improved outcomes.

According to Dr. Peter J. Meyers, Marketing Scientist at Moz, the new metric has valuable potential for brand marketers.

“By measuring the full power of any brand, including offline influences previously out of reach, users can make more informed decisions and drive better results and higher ROI.”

In the prevailing data-centric world, businesses that can tailor to customer needs and preferences are likelier to outshine their competitors.

Known for its Domain Authority™ metric, Moz has delivered inventive solutions for search marketers since 2004, helping businesses prosper in the digital age.

Top US Brands Based On Brand Authority

Coinciding with the launch of this novel metric, Moz has released a list of the top 500 US brands based on Brand Authority scores.

Marketers and PR professionals can use this list and the new Brand Authority comparison visualization in Moz Pro to strengthen their competitive analysis.

Google, Meta, and Amazon top the list, followed by popular consumer brands and news.

Moz Launches Brand Authority Metric At MozCon With Top 500 US Brands ListScreenshot from Moz, August 2023

Increasing ROI With Brand Authority

The Brand Authority metric officially debuted at MozCon, an annual conference to explore the future of search, gain insights, and connect with fellow marketing professionals.

Moz intends to expand the new brand data with more regions by 2024. Brand Authority’s launch could be crucial for those who aim to improve their brand performance and competitive position.

This new tool should help professionals comprehensively assess brand strength, identify marketing gaps, and strategize more effectively. As Brand Authority can quantify previously elusive offline influences, it could likely lead to more informed decisions and greater ROI.


Featured image: Sharaf Maksumov/Shutterstock

SMART Goals: How To Write Effective Goals With Examples via @sejournal, @kristileilani

SMART goals are well-known for creating achievable and measurable business or personal objectives.

In this article, we’ll look at what SMART goals stand for, why people use them to achieve a desired result, and how SEO and marketing professionals can use them to achieve predetermined objectives.

What Are SMART Goals?

The acronym for SMART goals stands for:

  • Specific.
  • Measurable.
  • Attainable or Achievable.
  • Relevant.
  • Time-Bound.

Each component of a SMART goal is designed to ensure that you have the proper framework to accomplish an objective. Instead of making open-ended wishes for the future, you make a purposeful plan.

For example, most business owners have a common goal of increasing profits. But that isn’t a SMART goal due to its lack of specificity – there is nothing specific to strive for or measure.

We will go deeper into the components of building a SMART goal, but first, let’s discuss the why.

Why Use SMART Goals

Marketing professionals that create a plan are three times more likely to report success than those who do not plan ahead, according to a study by CoSchedule.

This would explain why brands implement SMART goals for more than increasing profits.

SMART Goal Examples

The following examples show the use of SMART goals to reduce environmental impact and increase diversity and inclusion.

IBM

IBM uses SMART goals to help the environment by committing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and become more energy efficient. Here are just a few of its goals.

  • Use of renewable energy for 75% of the electricity IBM consumes worldwide by 2025 and 90% by 2030.
  • A 65% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, using 2010 as the base year with adjustments for acquisitions and divestitures.
  • Achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 with 350,000 metric tons or less of CO2 residual emissions.
  • Implement at least 3,000 energy conservation projects to avoid using 275,000-megawatt hours from 2021 to 2025.
  • Make a 20% improvement in average data center cooling efficiency by 2025.

McDonald’s

McDonald’s uses SMART goals to reduce its restaurants’ environmental impact on the planet. Amongst these goals, you will find the following:

  • A 36% reduction in absolute emissions from McDonald’s restaurants and offices by 2030, using 2015 as a baseline.
  • A 31% reduction in supply chain emissions by 2030, using 2015 as a baseline.
  • 100% sourcing of guest packaging from renewable, recyclable, or certified sources by 2025.

Nestle

Nestle uses SMART goals for sustainability initiatives to minimize the company’s impact on global resources. Here are examples of its upcoming goals.

  • Reduce emissions by 20% by 2025 and reach net zero by 2050, using 2018 as a baseline.
  • Use of 100% deforestation-free primary supply chains for all products by 2025.
  • Use of 100% recyclable or reusable packaging materials by 2025.
  • 200 million trees planted by 2030.

Salesforce

Salesforce uses SMART goals for employment diversity and inclusion initiatives. In addition to showing its current progress, its goals are as follows:

  • A 50% increase of Black, Indigenous, Latin, and multiracial employees in the U.S. workforce by the end of 2023.
  • A global workforce includes at least 40% women or non-binary employees by the end of 2026.

How To Write SMART Goals: A Breakdown Of Each Component

Now that you know why SMART goals matter and a few ways that brands use them, let’s look at how to write them with a breakdown of each part of the SMART goal-setting process.

Specific

A specific goal should be unambiguous – anyone working towards the goal should know exactly what the goal means without needing further context or explanation.

When you create a specific goal, you should clearly define the objective’s what, why, who, and where. What specific objective do you want to achieve, who will help, and where will the objective happen?

How can you include specificity in your marketing team’s goals? Here are some examples.

  • Increase organic search traffic to the ecommerce store by 25%.
  • Increase click-through rate (CTR) for the leading product page by 15%.
  • Increase Instagram followers by 50%.

Measurable

A measurable goal is quantifiable, allowing you to track your progress and know when the goal has been achieved. It should clearly define specific numbers around the objective.

How can you make your marketing team’s goals measurable? Here are some examples.

  • Increase website visits from social media from 1,000 to 3,000 per month.
  • Decrease bounce rate for blog posts from 50% to 40%.
  • Increase email open rates from 23% to 30%.

Attainable

An attainable goal can be accomplished using the skills and resources you have available to you. It should define what resources will be used to achieve an objective.

How can you make your marketing team’s goals attainable? Here are some examples.

  • Increase the number of mentions of our product on social media by 50% by tapping into our brand ambassador network.
  • Increase the number of blog posts published weekly from one to two by utilizing transcripts from weekly podcast episodes.
  • Improve site speed for main product pages to under two seconds by optimizing large images on pages.

Relevant

A relevant goal is important for the survival of your company and aligns with your company’s mission statement and values. It will establish why the goal is important to your company.

How can you make your marketing team’s goals relevant? Here are some examples.

  • Increase organic search traffic to the main services page by 20% to ensure the sales team meets its revenue goals.
  • Increase brand visibility on TikTok by 50% to appeal to Gen Z customers.
  • Increase links to the ecommerce store from blogs by 50% to boost referral traffic to popular product sales pages and increase sales.

Time-Bound

A time-bound goal includes a specific deadline to achieve the objective and offers a timeline to ensure accountability.

It will also ensure that everyone involved stays motivated to accomplish what needs to be done to succeed.

How can you make your marketing team’s goals time-bound? Here are some of the earlier examples modified to be time-bound.

  • Increase website visits from social media from 1,000 to 3,000 per month by the end of the second quarter.
  • Increase the number of blog posts published weekly from one to two by utilizing transcripts from weekly podcast episodes by the end of 2023.
  • Increase organic search traffic to the main services page by 20% in Q1 to ensure the sales team meets its Q2 revenue goals.

Conclusion

SMART goals can help marketing teams create objectives that can be realistically achieved within a specific timeframe utilizing the resources you have to work with.

Create goals with specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound components, and make time to track your progress and review the results once the deadline arrives.

The more analysis you put into your goals and results, the better you can optimize your future SMART goals for overall growth and success.

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Featured Image: patpitchaya/Shutterstock

The Small Business Guide To Reputation Management via @sejournal, @HelenPollitt1

When you hear the phrase “reputation management” your mind might conjure ideas of crisis talks and PR executives looking flustered.

You might imagine boardrooms of busy lawyers and a stressed CEO.

In reality, good reputation management starts long before – and hopefully in lieu of – any PR nightmares.

Reputation management is about making sure your business is highly regarded within its industry by its customers and the general public.

A good reputation management strategy will extend to both the online and offline, but for the sake of this guide, we’ll be focusing on the ways that small businesses can protect and bolster their image online.

Who Should Have A Reputation Management Strategy?

It might feel like a reputation management strategy is only needed by large, public-facing companies. This just isn’t the case.

Any company can be the subject of negative reviews, competitor takedowns, and plain, old misunderstandings. You don’t need to be in a particularly litigious sector or have controversial staff.

Online reputation management is about enabling your business to own as much of the space where it’s being talked about as possible. It enables you to steer conversations about your brand. You can identify and rectify any brewing issues.

Customers

If you have customers, whether B2B or B2C, you are likely subject to reviews. As such, it is really important that you have a reputation management plan in place to deal with any negative reviews or press.

Competitors

If you have particularly aggressive competitors, you might be subject to negative attacks on social media or through reviews.

Just because you haven’t had any trouble with your current competitors doesn’t mean you won’t in the future.

Having a plan in place for how to deal with any negative attacks if they arise can save you a lot of trouble down the line.

Employees

As much as you try to value and honor your employees, sometimes working relationships can sour. Disgruntled employees can be very damaging to a brand.

It’s important that, if you work with staff or contractors, you fully understand the impact they could have on your business’s reputation.

Where Online Should You Focus Your Strategy?

It will not just be the obvious places like social media that you need to consider in your reputation management. There are many places online where both positive and negative brand influences can spread.

Search Engines

Search engines are often the first port of call when a potential consumer or journalist is trying o find out more about your organization.

When your brand is searched for, your website is likely to only take up one or two positions on the search engine results pages (SERPs). There will be many other spaces on the front page of the results where other mentions of your brand will be ranking.

These can be purely informational, like directories, or they could be more influential, like press articles or pages about your brand on competitors’ sites.

Review Sites

There are plenty of sites online that provide consumers with places to share their experiences of your brand, both positive and negative.

These might be industry-specific, as part of marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, or more general, like Trustpilot and Yelp.

Search Engine Profiles

Beyond the pages that mention your brand that the search engines are ranking, there are also features like Bing Places and Google Business Profile that have information about your business and allow reviews to be left.

These profiles may not even have been set up by you, they may have been created by the search engines themselves based on data they have taken from other trusted sources.

Social Media

Your brand is likely being talked about on social media sites if you are a B2C business – even if you don’t have a presence on the platform.

Your customers might be speaking about you and not tagging you.

Social media is a great place to get a sense of what the general sentiment around your brand is, but remember that opinions move quickly on social.

Forums

Platforms like Reddit are almost social media lite.

They allow users to discuss brands and experiences with products and services, all anonymously.

More specialist forums specific to your industry will likely have entire boards dedicated to particular issues with brands and their services.

Why Is Reputation Management Important?

Many potential customers go online to find out more about a business before they engage with it. They may be looking specifically for others’ complaints and problems – or they might be looking for information about your opening hours.

Regardless, if they search your brand and see negative reviews and comments, it may be the difference between winning that new customer and losing them.

Similarly, if a current customer comes across stories of problems with your brand whilst on a forum or social media platform, it will likely color their own experiences with you.

A PR crisis is an obvious reason to care about your reputation, but by the time the media is running with a story, it’s often too late to limit the damage.

When Should You Consider A Reputation Management Strategy?

You need to work on your plan to proactively protect and build your brand’s reputation now. The more you can help to influence the conversations around your company now, the easier it is to present a positive image in the long term.

This means monitoring your brand’s mentions online – not just waiting to be alerted via a social media tag, but carrying out a full audit now and regularly monitoring mentions going forwards.

You should assign a member of your team who can carry out regular checks and also empower them with the right tools to automate it where possible.

This doesn’t have to be expensive; Google Alerts allows brands to select terms they want to be alerted to when they are used online. As a minimum, set these up for your brand name and the names of any well-known people in your company.

How To Audit Your Reputation

Your first step should be to carry out an audit of your brand’s reputation to find out what is being said about you.

Search For Your Brand

Go to the major search engines for your country and search for your brand. See what comes up in the search results.

How much of the first page of the search results are webpages, social media profiles, and review pages that your business controls? The goal is to have as much of that front page of your brand’s search results controlled by your company as possible.

Carrying this out for Search Engine Journal on Google shows the company’s own website, a Google Knowledge Graph entry, and a People Also Ask section.

Google SERP of Search Engine Journal searchScreenshot from search for [search engine journal], Google, May 2023

Knowledge Graph

The Google Knowledge Graph is something that your business cannot control directly, but can influence.

If, when looking for your brand, you notice that yours is incorrect or missing entirely, I’d recommend reviewing Dixon Jones’ excellent guide on the Knowledge Graph here and Aleh Barysevich’s guide here.

People Also Ask

The People Also Ask section on Google SERPs is a great way of quickly identifying any negative sentiment about your brand.

For example, if your brand search reveals a People Also Ask section that contains questions like “Is [company] a scam?” or “Is [company] expensive?” you know that there is potentially some negative sentiment surrounding your brand.

If these negative People Also Ask questions are appearing on your brand search, it is imperative that you see what the SERPs or those questions look like. If they are not positive, you need to try to rank your own content as an answer to those questions.

This will give you the opportunity to give a more favorable answer than is currently being ranked.

Be Brave And Look For The Negative Press

Search for your brand plus “reviews/scam/alternatives/pricing” and look at what is ranking in the SERPs. Also, check if that changes the People Also Ask questions to something more divisive.

You may well uncover some reviews or forums that you aren’t even aware of through these sorts of searches, but they will help you identify if there is more negative content about your brand out there online.

Search Engine Profiles

When searching on Google you may notice your Business Profile appear. This is something that you can directly control.

You are able to correct any misinformation on factual items like opening times and location, but you can also flag inappropriate reviews and answer questions.

It’s very important to keep on top of these business profiles and make sure that you are answering any questions that are asked through them so that the general public, who can also answer them, doesn’t give misleading or unfavorable responses.

Bing Places and Apple Maps are other common business profiles that you may have set up and forgotten about, or that were set up automatically. Make sure you are checking these regularly.

Social Media

Go to each of the main social media platforms that are popular in the countries where your customers are located. This might not just be the platforms you have a profile on.

A search of your brand will help you to identify if you are already being spoken about.

Look at competitors’ accounts, too, and see if they are receiving mentions with your brand included. You may notice favorable or unfavorable comparisons, or recommendations to switch to or from your business.

Reddit And Forums

Reddit is partially a forum and partially a social media platform.

Don’t forget about it when you are auditing your online reputation. Try to be a part of the communities (subreddits) that discuss your industry, or if you are a local business, review what’s being said on your town or city’s subreddit.

You might not be named directly but alluded to as part of these local conversations. For instance, “the shop at the end of the road on King Street” and therefore might not find your business being talked about through a brand search only.

Screenshot of London subredditScreenshot from Reddit, May 2023

In a similar way, make sure you are keeping up with what is being discussed on industry or location-relevant forums online.

Look At Comparison Pages

Whilst you are reviewing what the SERPs say about your brand, you might notice a few of your competitors are comparing your brand with theirs. Comparison pages are not that uncommon, especially in service software and technology industries.

If the comparisons are inaccurate or unjust, you may wish to contact your competitor and have them rectify the information.

If they are outright untrue and your competitor is not willing to correct the misinformation, you may need to seek legal advice.

Own A Presence Wherever You Can Where You Are Being Talked About

A very proactive approach to reputation management for smaller businesses is simply making sure you own a profile wherever your business is likely to be talked about. For example, claim social media profiles on the main platforms where you are being discussed.

This gives you a central place to monitor mentions and also correct misinformation. It will also help you to dominate the first page of the organic SERPs on Google and Bing.

These high-authority social media sites’ brand-owned profiles often rank highly for relevant brand searches.

If you can claim or set up a profile on your relevant review, directory, and comparison sites, you will be able to respond to negative comments and reviews.

You can also answer questions asked about your company that might otherwise be answered by competitors or the public.

Deal Well With Reviews

Something that sounds simple but often doesn’t play out as intended is taking the high road with unfavorable reviews.

It can be hard to respond politely when you receive a review from a disgruntled customer complaining that the music in your café was too loud, or there were too many families at your play center.

It’s rare that a company biting back at negative reviews will come out of the fight unscathed.

Respond Positively To Unfavorable Reviews!

Have a process in place to deal with negative reviews. Assign one or two people who are trusted to respond well.

They will likely need to be fairly senior in the company so that they can objectively investigate the complaint but also offer remediation if necessary.

Have a complaints and escalation process defined and available to your customers. This is to give them an avenue to voice their concerns before it gets as far as a negative review.

Always respond in a way that is polite and reassuring. Remember, you are not just replying to the reviewer but to everyone who reads that review going forwards.

Own up to your company’s mistakes, offer an effective solution, and remain calm!

There may be instances where reviews are entirely unfair or not grounded in fact. You can be honest in your responses to these reviews but remember to be polite and understanding.

A good test is to consider, “Would I say this to them on stage in front of 100 people?”

Know When A Review Goes Against A Platform’s Guidelines

Most review and comparison sites have rules around the type of reviews they will allow on the site. Make yourself familiar with what these are.

This way, if you do receive an untrue or inappropriate review you may be able to flag it for removal.

Respond Positively To Favorable Reviews

Another way to project a strong brand image is to respond to your positive reviews too.

Take the time to thank reviewers and pick out aspects of their review that meant a lot to you and your company.

This will likely help them to remain loyal customers, but will also encourage others to leave positive reviews too.

Have A Crisis Strategy In Place

Reputation management sometimes means dealing with sudden, unexpected negativity. A complaint might make it into the local newspaper, or an unflattering comment might go viral online.

It is always better to plan ahead and know what steps you would take in the event of a PR crisis, rather than waiting until it happens.

At the very least, you may need to consider:

  • Who would be authorized to comment to the media – Choose someone senior, respectful, and able to cope with being interviewed. Make sure that they are given some media training and are well-versed with the company’s employment and health and safety policies.
  • Devise a robust complaints escalation process – This should include who takes ownership of investigating complaints and who is responsible for responding to them.
  • Have some pre-approved responses or tone of voice guides to help.
  • Communicate to the whole team what they are or aren’t allowed to say to the media and what to do if they receive a complaint.

Be Proactive In Presenting A Positive Image

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that the best way a small business can manage its reputation is to work at gaining a positive one.

Support Local Causes

You can get a lot of good press, and deservedly so, by investing in your local community.

Sponsoring a kids’ sports team or working with charities in your area can be beneficial in showing your potential consumers what you stand for and how much you care.

Be Politically And Culturally Aware

Seemingly innocuous comments online from your company, or even what your corporate social accounts re-share or like, can be seen as an endorsement of a particular political or social view.

Be mindful of this when using the internet to engage with your audience.

What might seem like a well-timed joke or topical comment could backfire massively. Make sure your digital marketing team is sensitive and caring in their approach to engagement.

Have Robust Employee Social Media Guides In Place

Your employees may be seen as an extension of your brand. Not only can they be your biggest advocates they also can be seen as speaking on behalf of the company.

You may want to look at social media policies and guidelines to help your employees know what is and isn’t acceptable for them to say, either formally or informally, about your brand.

Make sure to do this in conjunction with local legal advice to make sure you aren’t overstepping your boundaries as an employer.

Conclusion

The simplest way for your small business to manage your reputation is to be proactive and not reactive.

Plan what to do in an emergency and work hard to ensure that never comes about.

Think of everywhere your customers and potential customers might be talking about you, and keep up with those conversations.

Take time to really listen to complaints and respond to them in a way that turns detractors into supporters.

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Featured Image: Olivier Le Moal/Shutterstock