From search ads and SEO to display ads, content, and your social efforts, there's a lot to consider when creating the correct marketing concoction. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand goes over advice on how and why you should be auditing your funnel to ensure you have a balanced, effective marketing mix.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about how to balance your marketing mix. Specifically, I want to talk a little bit more about search ads and SEO versus kind of content and social, those traffic channels that you invest in, either paid or organic, that can drive traffic kind of more at the top of the funnel or more in the conversion process.
But this is actually a complex equation, and the marketing mix overall is something that a lot of folks struggle with and that I find a ton of misplaced energy and misplaced dollars happening. So the way to solve for this, in my opinion, is we can start with a pretty simple auditing process. We can ask ourselves kind of strategically, "Where are we facing funnel challenges?"
Determining where your funnel challenges are.
I see lots of businesses — from tiny, small startups and small businesses on the web to giant companies — having this issue where they say, "We have a problem with the consideration and comparison phase. We feel really good that people are aware of our brand, and they come for that first visit. They come back for the return visit. But then they get to the consideration phase and we feel like we're losing out against our competitors right there before conversion happens."
Well, guess what? If you're spending all your marketing dollars on display or on offline forms of display marketing, which go to awareness, and very little in the consideration and comparison set, where things like search can be great, especially your brand versus competitors, or your competitor versus your own brand, or features, or what to buy, or recommendations, or reviews, all those kinds of things, ranking for that stuff, buying those key terms, having content that serves them and maybe doing some display advertising to people who've already been to your website through a retargeting that's trying to convince them, well, all of those forms of marketing can reach that set. But the problem is you're spending all your time and energy, and people, and dollars up in awareness.
I see this across the board. I've seen people spend a ton on first visit and return visit, and nothing on recidivism and retention. I've seen them spend a ton at the point of conversion, but nothing up here to drive awareness. So they have a great-looking funnel for a very small number of people.
If you know where you have this problem, if you can identify where your issues lie, then you can invest in the right channels. You can change up your marketing mix and your people, your time, and your dollars accordingly.
Also, don't be too narrow. My view here is a little bit narrow. But you should consider whether channels like community building, email marketing, offline advertising, or in-product, in-app marketing can actually be part of this mix and how they should be part of this mix. I don't want you to limit it just to search, social, content, display. There's a lot of opportunity there.
Validate that your investments can actually move the needle.
You can invest a lot of time and energy, and dollars, and people into one of these channels to try and move the needle on something, and get what look like good results in the channel itself. Like, "Oh, search is driving lots of traffic." Or, "We have high rankings." Or, "We are spending a lot on this display channel, and we're seeing lots of people visit."
But then, when you actually dig in, you see that you're not moving the needle on what you need to. You're not improving the problem that you have in your funnel.
So you might ask: "I've got a retargeting ad or a whole set of retargeting ads. Are we effectively improving conversion rate, or are we just bringing people back to the site? Which was our goal? Were we doing retargeting to earn return visits? Or are we doing retargeting so that we can increase conversion or so we can improve consideration and comparison against the competition?"
"Is this piece of content, or our content strategy overall, or the tactic of producing a daily blog post or a monthly report, or a white paper every quarter, is that reaching a broad enough audience? Is it targeting enough of our visitors and their influencers? Is it driving return visits? Is it driving conversion? Is it getting us a lead that we can then follow up with? What's happening there?"
You can ask that question in SEO and in PPC as well. Does ranking for this keyword bring in the right qualified potential traffic? Does it bring us enough?
Are we ranking for a keyword where, you know what, it sounds like a great keyword and it would convert great. But we're not getting enough people because Google has a knowledge graph and an instant answer up top. So the keyword opportunity score is way down low in the toilet, and it's just not going to drive any traffic. So maybe we need to expand that keyword set. Maybe we're doing great with SEO, but we need to do more of it for different keywords.
If you are doing this auditing process and you identify whether the tactics are actually moving the needle in the places you think they are, you can now move on to, "We know our funnel problems, where they exist, where they don't. We know which tactics work and don't."
Analyze your resource allocation to match against the problems and ROI.
Now we can say, "You know what? Let me look at my marketing mix.
Let me look at my resource allocation and say, 'Oh, maybe I'm putting 20% of my budget to display and 18% to paid search. Maybe I'm putting 15% to offline, and I'm putting 12% to social and 8% to content." Whatever the numbers may be, "Is that the right mix? Does that effectively sound like it's doing the right things over here, or should I be changing this up?"
Should I say, "Huh. You know what? We saw that we have a bunch of opportunity in SEO, or we have a bunch of opportunity in content. We have a lot of time and energy and people being spent in display. Could we put that on autopilot for a little bit? Let our display run for a quarter. Maybe do a weekly or monthly check-in from one person. But ask those people to go concentrate on content, and then have our SEOs help them become sophisticated and savvy with how to promote that content."
Maybe. Maybe you can. The questions I like to ask in the resource allocation phase are: Are any of these already purely on autopilot? Are they just sort of running and they haven't been audited? Because that can speak to why the tactic isn't working, or why it's not targeting the right phase of the funnel.
How many people and hours, not just dollars are going to each? Because a lot of folks, when they look at their marketing budget from a CFO level or a chief marketing officer, they'll look purely at the numbers, not at the people. That can be very dangerous too, because if you say, "Hey, we've got a bunch of our budget is allocated to display. We have almost no budget to allocate it to SEO. But that's intentional because SEO is a free channel." Ahh. Pull out your hair. That's crazy.
Or the only dollars that we have assigned to it are our SEO consultants, rather than people and hours, and time, and energy, which is what you need to be successful with an inbound marketing flywheel, like the content, search, social, email, community system.
Are any of these maxing out? If you're seeing that you're putting more dollars, more time against them, but you're getting lower and lower ROI over time, that could be a sign that you're sort of maxed out in that channel, and you either need to get more creative on how you're reaching more people, or you might think about switching some of that expenditure of time and people and dollars.
Then, finally, do any of these have tracking or data issues? I find that in a huge number of organizations the reason they're not solving the funnel challenges that they want to, and pursuing poor tactics and not investing in channels like search and social and content, is because they have no good way to measure it. So the first step might be admitting, "You know what? We're bad at measuring the ROI of content. So that's the first thing we have to do."
We have to be able to say, "Did someone come to visit us for the first time from a piece of content? What happened in the 90-day window, or 120-day window, whatever the cookie lasts, however long we can make the cookie last? Did we see that person come back again and go to consideration and comparison phase, or go to conversion, or become more of a recidivist for our products or a highly-retentive customer who's subscribing to us?"
If the answer to those things is yes, then you know what? Data is the place to invest. When you do that, then you're able to effectively allocate your marketing channels.
So hopefully, this will kick off an exercise in audit for many of you. I'd love to hear from you in the comments with your shares about places you have reallocated dollars, places you've seen present lots of opportunity or present poor opportunity. Then, I'd love to see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
Hair is on point today, Rand! :)
And I love this WBF! Too often I encounter “channel managers” who fight against each other, fearing that letting another channel get a little more attention/spend will hurt their employment/position/value in the company. This is a huge reason why I made a concerted effort to understand, learn & even manage some PPC accounts.
Just last week we presented the idea of shifting AW spend away from certain branded campaigns to focus more on non-branded campaigns. Branded & non-branded organic rankings have skyrocketed since this brand's site overhaul, so we were confident our recommendation would not hurt conversions and revenue, just maybe shift the source.
We basically saw that the AW account was somewhat on “auto pilot,” with almost all non-branded campaigns paused “because they didn’t perform well in the past…and they’re so expensive” and because the branded campaigns were performing great! Well why weren’t they performing well? Have they been turned on since the new site launched, with new ads? We need to audit & test!
The internal PPC manager was very resistant and stated over and over how this is going to hurt AdWords performance, so the key was conveying to him and also the the Marketing Director that moving forward we’re going to look at SEO and PPC as one channel, working together to inform and compensate for wherever the other might be lacking. If the new non-branded AW campaigns don’t perform well over the next few months, we’ll learn from it, adjust & move on, knowing that the branded traffic wasn’t lost but rather captured by the brand’s strong organic presence. I remember specifically saying to him to not worry the paid side has a bad few months - it would not look poorly on him or his team because we’re going to start looking at SEO & PPC revenue as one (an approach the brand-side Director really loved!) & our testing would in no way put us in the red.
I encounter these same conversations no matter the channel team I’m working with. Usually they’re doing something good, with a big “but” that explains why it’s not working as well as it could. Most commonly:
Sometimes it’s difficult to get buy-in to invest in some of these less glorified channels, but I find the GA Multi-Channel Funnels > Top Conversion Paths (set to 1 or more path length) to be an incredibly valuable visual report for sharing the role each channel plays in the path to conversion & justifying proposals to reallocate or increase spend in certain areas.
Sheena,
I'm fairly certain you've laid out a strategy many brands would find great success employing. Thanks for the always-kick-butt comments.
RS
Great additions Sheena! And yeah, I think that GA channels report (if it isn't too heavily sampled) can be a great way to show off what's working vs. not.
Wine Board Friday is getting better and better - well done the Moz team.
Wait, there's a WINE Board Friday?? I need to join!!! haha ;)
I'll have to try that sometime... Maybe themed with grape vines and fancy cheese :-)
Here, in Spain, we have great Wine... ;) is just a suggestion... :D
Thanks for this great WBF :)
We all want that board! hahaha
Rand, thanks for the Whiteboard Friday. Almost all of the time, these videos are amazing and insightful -- however, I must take issue this time. :)
The marketing mix is not a distribution of resources to display / paid search / offline / social / content / SEO / e-mail / community / in-app at all.
Here is the definition of "marketing mix." The marketing mix is product, price, place, and promotion (though some have added more to that list in modern times). Then, under promotion, the promotion mix is a distribution of resources among direct marketing, advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, and publicity strategies. (And each of those five strategies have various tactics under them that can be done over online or offline channels.)
Those five elements of the promotion mix are also used at different times and for different reasons. Advertising and publicity are top-of-the-funnel plays. Direct marketing is in the middle. Personal selling is often in the middle or at the bottom. Sales promotions are often used in retention after the funnel. (There are exceptions to all of these rules -- I'm speaking only in generalities.)
Some notes on your example:
If any Mozzers are unfamiliar with these traditional marcom concepts, I invite you to read my lengthy marcom strategy workflow that I published on the Moz Blog last year.
Great as usual.
Scott, good reply, I would agree with you, albeit, only partially.
You see, the definition of marketing mix you've provided (although I would bet Rand is thinking of marketing mix in another way; as in tools and strategies we can use to achieve our goals) its a bit outdated and well, old. It definitely precedes digital marketing (I've came across that definition while studying marketing, decades ago) and hence its kinda irrelevant. For example the third p is for place - today in digital world place is internet and everything on it.
So social (social networks) can be perceived both as place of communication (even as a place of doing business) and communicating channel.
Which also connects to your other content note... well if I have a paid content marketing campaign on social media, it is a legit marketing strategy (for example promoting paid infographic via paid ads on social networks to raise awareness of new features)... And I've done before it and I can bet numerous digital marketers have done it before.
Bottom line, I think you are using old school terms for modern, digital, marketing environment. And its not your own fault. We've been studying marketing via old examples and strategies. Newer, digital marketing efforts, is completely scarce in official education.
I would not say that older marketing definitions, concepts and strategies are obsolete. Nope, they are still valid and important. But today, in a digital, modern context, there are newer concepts and strategies which are on its own highly successful and independent. The difference should be notable, and old definitions should not be applied automatically on the newer ones. Clear separation should be vivid and tangible, in the same time, mutual conceptual comparisons and justifications should stop, even in the eyes of marketers.
Emails and direct mails are not the same tools (or channels) - nor we should looked at it like that. SEO as a marketing effort, has no precedent and should not be disqualified because of that... nor because it slips on a more technical side; nor for any reason whatsoever.
Thanks for the comment -- just wanted to offer some more thoughts.
if I have a paid content marketing campaign on social media, it is a legit marketing strategy (for example promoting paid infographic)
The definition of advertising is "any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor." (Emphasis added.) If you are paying to transmit an infographic or blog post, you are doing advertising. Your advertisement may happen to inform rather than sell directly, but it's still an advertisement.
But today, in a digital, modern context, there are newer concepts and strategies which are on its own highly successful and independent.
Ninety percent of the time, "digital marketers" are simply using new buzzwords for traditional practices when they describe what they do (and they might not even be aware that they are doing so).
SEO as a marketing effort, has no precedent and should not be disqualified because of that... nor because it slips on a more technical side; nor for any reason whatsoever.
I agree with you on this. The ten percent of marketing that is genuinely new today includes things such as technical and on-page SEO, web analytics, and conversion optimization. Another big change is the fact that all of our creatives and sales collateral can be indexed by and found in search engines. Almost everything else, however, has remained the same.
"Ninety percent of the time, "digital marketers" are simply using new buzzwords for traditional practices when they describe what they do (and they might not even be aware that they are doing so)."
Absolutely right, just because the channels marketers utilise have changed dramatically over the past couple of decades does not mean that the principles have changed too. Marketers whatever field they may be based in still have a lot to gain from studying traditional models such as Porter's Five Forces.
Yes I totally agree...In my region in India, there are a lot of companies doing digital marketing with no marketing background or understanding.. They are most web development companies using on page seo and few technical stuff with out proper Marketing strategy or clear understanding of marketing concepts.
the definition of marketing mix you've provided (although I would bet Rand is thinking of marketing mix in another way; as in tools and strategies we can use to achieve our goals) its a bit outdated and well, old.
I was quoting a marketing textbook that had been last updated in 2012.
Yikes... It must be bad that I'm a marketer working with & leading the digital strategy for a few globally recognized household brands & I've never heard of half of the words you've defined here (or at least understood them specifically as you've defined). I guess that's what happens when you don't go to school for marketing and rely entirely on a decade of experience of just doing what works & what you think is right (whether informed by data or a strong personal opinion). :/
Off to read your marcom piece... although I'll probably still use these different words incorrectly. #NotATraditionalMarketer ;)
Thanks Samuel - I think we're arguing semantics, and while I agree with your classic definition that I was taught in business school in the '90's, I might suggest that it's OK for "marketing mix" to mean something new to digital marketers 15-20 years on. Or, at least, maybe it's OK that I used it in this video, since most folks seem to have captured at least the intent of my meaning.
This is the first article that I am reading since I signed up in this website and I must say, your article is a very good article for me to have read first up. Thank you very much for the insights provided. Looking forward to reading many more articles from you!. Cheers!!.. :)
Thanks for this Whiteboard Friday, Rand. Easy and yet insightful, as always!
As you, I also find that a huge number of organizations have tracking or data quality issues. Even worse, not even recognized as such.
We know that data is to marketing mix modeling what a foundation is to a house. And -following this analogy- it is easier to determine the quality of the house than the foundation is has been built upon. In my experience often resulting in low prioritization and ditto budgets.
I’m curious if you, or any other members, have tips in proving the business value of “data scrubbing” even before diving into step 1 and 2 as describe in your Whiteboard Friday.
Best,
Rob - Cookie Monster
This Whiteboard Friday rocks, as usual!
Thanks Rand, you are truly inspiring us all.
Best,
PopArt Studio
Hey Rand Awesome Tips for Mix Marketing, Know need to worry about investing Time & Money in all channels, The fearless guide for online marketing tricks, Easiest way How we can balance our online business and branding by different online strategy.....Thanks Again for Awesome White Board Rand..:)
great!!..the linkcollider give us more advantage.help us to improve search engine ranking for our site too.so enjoy with linkcollider! ^-^
Enjoyable WBF, The last point resonated with me the most, I definitely agree that having quality data analysis in place will help to determine where you need to focus your efforts. Then once you have identified the loss areas you can help to plug the gap with a variety of marketing techniques.
Emails for me, is one of the best for ROI, but for some others social maybe be the best, I feel it all depends on your niche and data to determine the right mix for you.
Great White Board Friday as usual. We recently saw a decline in traffic through SEO for one of our clients, though they rank top for a few keywords in their domain. We have recently started allocating more funds to their display ads. This is a nice framework to work with. Thanks Rand
Thank you Rand for reminding us to focus on what returns we want and what are we missing!
Hey Rand, Just a random request. Most of the blogs, as far as my understanding, in Moz are for mid to higher traffic level websites. It would be awesome if we could have a WBF which is focussed on helping startups. We ourselves as a company are benefiting hugely through the very informative content in Moz Blogs and YouMoz, but there a number of very interesting startups who are just building their digital landscape. A checklist or strategy framework or do's and dont's, or how/where to start digital marketing efforts for startups could be great. Just my 2 cents. Thanks
Hi Vinodh - we do have a lot of starter-level content here: https://moz.com/learn/seo, and our blog is generally focused on folks who've got a bit more experience. That said, there's also lots of great starter resources for newer sites and folks newer to SEO like:
Hope those help!
Yet another great episode of WBF. I suggest to have mini campaigns for each goal. As every business needs awareness as part of their branding.
Link worthy vs. high conversion
I am always attentive to your post, always help me to raise the level of my website a little more,
thank you very much!
Great to see someone talking about MIX. Everybody else out there seems to find 'the perfect channel' for marketing. I absolutely agree that this is a matter of synergy between channels. Great stuff.
wot Sheena said. Also keep in mind 'stop the slaughter of innocent content' (seo) and write your passion. Lovin you the most Rand!
Great vid. Got me thinking of some new ideas!
All I have to say about this is alright, alright, alright......as funnel challenges is an area that I have directly considered when needed to improve the reasoning behind some of my SEO tacticts for my clients. Well not to sound so elementary about it but when I am looking to better serve a client in search going to the marketing funnel and matching up what is happening and the companies goals are key.
You did a great job doing this by pointing out "are we building awareness, or conversion?". To totally honest if there are new products or services and all the goal mindset has been on conversion then awareness is missing or vice versa.
Also validating that investments are moving the needle is key as so many think they may not even need an SEO to help and just buy ad space but once you really dig in there are many times when those ad spaces are not even producing the results you want and could be accomplished by some organic moves.
Thanks for this WBF it seems that every Friday Moz provides me the resources necessary to have a great Monday meeting.
Excellent Whiteboard Friday Rand. One thing we find helpful when evaluating a business' marketing mix and results is to compare the business results to benchmarks. Benchmarks are especially valuable when you can compare results to benchmarks in the specific industry for peer comparisons.
When thinking about any given channel, the benefit of reviewing that channel in a more holistic context is so important. A good example is to factor in the beneficial lift in search volume for branded search that displays ads have been shown to increase. Another example is building audience with social and/or display ads for awareness then retargeting clickers who are moving into consideration.
Periodic reviews of your marketing mix enables marketers to factor in the new capabilities of the advertising platforms whose targeting capabilities evolve everyday. The most successful marketers stay up to date on the channels that matter then follow the test > measure >> analyze >>> adjust >>>> repeat formula delivering continuous improvement and competitive advantages.
Hi Rand,
It's great to take into consideration all factors implied in a great marketing work. I would always stick with those methods which can be measured and of course those which costs could be also reduced. Between those I am not sure any company would have a great mix with satisfying results if they didn't know them using some data. So basically doing some SEO, and PPC and some clasical email marketing and maybe some direct marketing could have a major impact in one business. The important thing is to know what are the goals, how do you want to achieve them, use the right data and statistics, test every step of the way and redo the whole thing if the results are not those expected.
Great Whiteboard which should keep us in mind that mixing is caring for your actual and future customers.
Best,
M.
Once again! Another smashing Whiteboard Friday. Thanks for all the knowledge you share with us Rand, long may WF continue. I'm sure we'd all agree
Heartily agree with the distributing spending point. Spending money on a site to make it as promotable as possible will surely reap a much greater ROI from the money that you spend to promote your site.
Took a little while to get used to that haircut :-)
Thanks Rand. My question is what are your thoughts on companies who believe that 'social media' is enough for the awareness phase? My issue is that their exposure only goes as far as their followers, but no further so its quite limited.
I like the idea of reallocating time-spent precentages on new tactics while letting older ones run. I think this is a great way to gain accurate data on strategies and determine what your audience likes and doesn't like. It's easy to get excited about a certain campaign and want to coddle it. When, in fact, you should almost let it do it's own thing, unless there is a problem. Excellent WBF!
hlo
this is a good way. we use whiteboard to display some information and other informative news.
thanks
vastav
I totally agree with the spending distribution point. I think that for a company, investing money on a website to make it promotable will for sure be profitable. The return on investment for the money spent on the site's promotion will definitely be greater.
Your last point is also very important. Companies tend to neglect the fact that having quality data analysis gives major information about how to determine where to focus the efforts. Once the loss areas are identified and analyzed, it's possible to fill in the gaps through different marketing strategies. It helps determine the right mix to apply. There lies the importance of setting up precise and measurable goals and knowing when to review them.
Your concept of WhiteBoard Friday is excellent, very interactive and truly interesting! Thank you for sharing, it is indeed inspiring.
Gwenaelle DIALLO
Graduation May 2018
Freeman School of Business / Tulane University
ESSEC Business School
Indeed an enchanting Whiteboard Friday. Many thanks Rand for unfolding the excellent information on marketing mix and conversion techniques. I'm new to the board and find a lot to learn from here. Like I learned about the "consideration and comparison" part of the funnel that you mentioned is certainly the one to be taken care of to increase conversions. And it was a treat to watch your video, a great lesson from the master. Just surfed for a quote and found the one from Richard Bach.
“You're never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true.”
Your last sentence is so inspiring!
Yeah, loved it too!
Excellent video!
I found myself looking 50% of the time to your mustache!
great white board
Awesome whiteboard!
Great Article, good!
thank you