Where are marketers’ biggest opportunities this year?

Big Data, personalization and precision targeting are trends to watch in 2015.

It’s interesting to think just how far marketing has come since I began in the business more than 30 years ago. If I had tried to describe 2015 then, I don’t think I’d have done much better than Back to the Future II.

That’s why you don’t see many prognosticators predicting trends decades from now, much less 10 or even five years. One year’s a safer bet. Eagle-eyed marketers can spot new trends emerging months before they gain critical mass, and use it to their advantage.

Many of the trends we highlighted in last year’s blog post are still going strong: mobile marketing, branding, integrated marketing – so this year’s may look familiar. Visual marketing continues to be important as businesses fight for their share of fragmented attention spans. Mobile isn’t going anywhere (with a few new developments we’ll discuss), and businesses will keep producing useful content to provide more value to their customers.

Now let’s look at what’s new for 2015.

1. Organic Search – Not What It Used to Be

Organic search listings continue to get pushed farther down the page, as search engines seek to maximize revenue from paid advertising. Many marketers will take this as a cue to invest more heavily in paid search marketing, which will require a larger focus on campaign optimization.

And Google’s recent updates to its search algorithms have made it next to impossible to game the system with old SEO methods like keyword stuffing or creating hundreds of inbound links from low-quality websites. To achieve high rankings in organic search results now requires frequent updates to your website with original and engaging content that’s written for your customers, not googlebots.

2. Data-Driven Marketing Becomes the Norm

There’s never been as much information available about how consumers act online – what’s now known as “Big Data.” And marketers have begun to embrace statistical analysis to stay ahead of both consumers and competitors.

Website analytics, email metrics, first- and third-party data all combine to create an impressively detailed picture of your prospects. Marketing automation tools make it easier to personalize marketing messages and reach those consumers at the right time, across media channels. Digital ads can target ever more granular audiences by leveraging data on geography, demographics, behavior, interests and preferred mobile devices.

Which is why …

3. Hyper-Targeted Advertising Gains Momentum

The buzzword for 2014 was “programmatic,” a system that combines automated ad buying with highly targeted digital ad placement. Programmatic buying is all about precision, resulting in a more efficient use of advertising dollars than the usual process of purchasing digital ads manually through various ad networks.

In general, targeted ads and personalization will continue to grow as the mountains of consumer data let businesses send more and more relevant messages.

4. Social Media Keeps Evolving

Social media channels are constantly devising new types of advertising, both to apply new technologies and stay a step ahead of jaded users. That spells opportunity for marketers. Even platforms like Tumblr and Snapchat – big with Millennials who are wary of marketing – are getting into the ad game. For 2015, marketers will look beyond the standard sponsored ads on Twitter and Facebook and find new, creative ways to interact with their customers through social media.

5. News Media Makes a Comeback

By now it’s accepted wisdom: newspapers are dying. But that’s not entirely true. While print readership is in decline, media companies long ago began migrating their content online.

More recently, savvy newspapers have realized their unique strength lies not just in their large and loyal audiences, but in the data they produce. In addition to regional or local reach, marketers can target more and more specific audience segments based on the content they consume. And newspaper readers now get most news via mobile devices – a terrific opportunity for advertisers who need to connect with audiences on the go.

Which brings us to …

6. Mobile is Still on the Move

The fact that mobile usage outpaced desktops in 2014 is probably no surprise. Mobile search is predicted to surpass desktop search in 2015, too. And that growth won’t stop at just smartphones and tablets.

Wearable technology like the iWatch will find its footing this year, leading marketers to test ways to make the best use of these new platforms. (This will have a big effect on brick-and-mortar, too, as mobile payment systems like ApplePay take off.) Add in the “Internet of Things” – everyday objects connected to the internet – and the possibilities are limited only by marketers’ imaginations.

7. More Human Brands

Today consumers expect more from brands, particularly aging Millennials. Like real-time customer service on Twitter. Accountability and sustainability. Novel experiences or useful tools that enrich their lives. Brand values they can relate to, and companies that are responsive, not empty marketing speak.

Authentic brands are no longer a positioning gimmick, they’re a necessity. (I would argue this has been the best position to take all along.) Both good and bad brand experiences are quickly amplified across the internet, and it’s getting harder to avoid real human-to-human interactions.

Conclusion

In general, marketing in 2015 will be marked by ever-fading lines between marketing channels. The technologies that make this possible will take center stage, helping marketers tell more cohesive brand stories (and at the same time more personalized), everywhere their customers are. And thanks to today’s skeptical, connected consumer, those stories will have to be rooted in transparency and authenticity – your customers will see through anything else.

Think about what you should say, before you decide where to say it.

It’s the foundation of an effective marketing strategy.

In my more than 30 years helping businesses build better marketing strategies, the thing they want to discuss most is marketing tactics: How can we get in front of more potential customers? (Usually followed by: How much will it cost us?)

Tactics and budget are indeed important considerations, but not the most important. Before worrying where your message will appear, you need to first examine what that message should communicate and why. It’s the message at the heart of your marketing strategy that determines whether you’ll ultimately cut through the noise and win a distinct place in consumers’ minds.

In order to accomplish that, your message must be different, unique. It has to make a clear promise your competitors can’t, or at least one they haven’t thought to make yet. In this way, your brand stands for something singular and specific and memorable. It’s called positioning – how you claim a niche and plant your flag in the marketplace.

Take, for example, two of the nation’s leading insurance companies: State Farm and American Family Insurance. State Farm wants you to know it’s “like a good neighbor” – there when you need them. But American Family Insurance wants to “protect your dreams,” whether that’s a long healthy life or the 48’ fishing boat you scraped and saved to buy.

Both companies have staked out a positioning that distinguishes their businesses from competitors in the minds of consumers. Before meeting with an agent or digging into the finer points of insurance plans, consumers can take a shortcut by deciding which brand message resonates with them.

The Unique Selling Proposition

Positioning starts with understanding your target customer, what they want, and what benefit you offer that best meets those needs. Unfortunately, that’s not always enough. Your competitors may offer the same products or services with the same essential benefit. It requires thinking creatively about how you deliver on that promise, and how to do it in a way that sets your solution apart.

One way to find clarity around your positioning is to use a concept called the Unique Selling Proposition (or USP for short).

The Unique Selling Proposition has been around since the 1960s. It was conceived by Rosser Reeves, one of advertising’s most influential figures. First presented in his book “Reality in Advertising,” Reeves says that a successful USP contains four key elements:

1. It must make a specific proposition to the customer: Buy this product and you will get this specific benefit.
2. The proposition must be unique or perceived as unique by your customers. Something your competitors don’t have or offer, and something in which they would not be able to easily imitate.
3. It should be so compelling and relevant to your ideal customers that it entices them to try your product or service because it addresses their needs, fears, frustrations or desires.
4. It must be simple and easy to communicate so your customers quickly understand that your product or service offers them this unique benefit.

You may remember Mr. Reeves’ famous USP for M&M Candies – “It melts in your mouth, not in your hand.” Another example is FedEx’s “When it absolutely, positively has to get there overnight,” and Wonderbread’s “Helps to build strong bodies in 12 different ways.”

Finding Your USP

In order to arrive at your own USP, ask yourself these questions:

• What’s your competitive advantage, if any?
• What value does your business add beyond the primary benefit? What unique approach, philosophy or point of view can you tout?
• What are specific issues your customers face when thinking about, shopping for, or using your product or service? How can you address these with your positioning?
• How can you speak to the emotional, as well as logical reasons people should do business with you?
• What can you do differently than you or doing now to improve on your primary benefit? What new capabilities or services can you add that will make a noticeable impact?
• Somewhere in those answers lies the key to your competitive positioning. List as many possibilities as you can, and winnow the list down to the most distinctive and promising options.

Once you’ve decided on your USP, create a positioning statement for your business that can be referred to when shaping your brand or marketing message. A common formula for a positioning statement looks like this:

For (the target customer) who (customer need or opportunity), the (product or service) delivers (statement of key benefit). Unlike (competitors), our solution (USP – what makes your promise different).

Now you’re thinking strategically. Find creative ways to communicate your positioning in every campaign, across different tactics, and you’re investing in a strong brand message, not just the media that will carry it.

Does your company have a well-defined positioning? How did you approach it? Tell us in the comments below.

Will Panda 4.1 affect your organic search rankings?

The Panda update can work in your favor, if you know what it’s looking for.

A few years ago, Google released an update it called Panda, which aimed to weed out low-quality content in its organic search results. While the intended target was so-called “content farm” websites that had loads of lousy content to boost their search rankings, many reputable businesses also took a hit.

Those businesses then had to go back and reevaluate their website content, based on Google’s guidelines (more on that in a minute). Results were mixed: many regained their former rankings after a while, some surpassed them, and others saw no improvement at all. Subsequent updates often made matters even worse.

Understandably, businesses get gun shy whenever Google announces another Panda update.

With its newest update, Panda 4.1, the search giant is hoping to rectify its negative impact on legitimate websites. In a Google+ post last month, the company said:

Of course, Google didn’t go into details. It has always been “cloak-and-dagger” about the 200 or so search factors it uses to determine search rankings. Just because an earlier update had no effect on your rankings doesn’t mean you won’t be penalized by this one, and vice versa.

If you notice a dip in your rankings, what should you do? First, check to make sure Panda is actually to blame. SEO tools on the market can match your analytics data with Google updates to determine whether or not Panda was the culprit. It might turn out your rankings dropped due to other factors – even a different Google update.

And if it is Panda? Instead of fretting over this particular update (a futile exercise since we don’t actually know what it does), Google suggests you focus on producing the kind of high-quality content Panda was designed to detect. With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at what exactly Panda wants.

Google’s Panda Guidelines for Content

Back in May of 2011, Google posted 23 questions to consider when creating website content. It hasn’t updated or changed them in three years, so it’s a good bet this is still the yardstick Google uses. As some of them are redundant, I’ve included what I consider the 10 most important here:

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it shallow in nature?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic or factual errors?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend or recommend?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?

At this point you may be asking, wait … who is Google to decide the value of my content anyway? Now that anyone can publish anything online, you might say Google has taken on the traditional role of an editor. And the editor always gets the final say.

Want to get on page one? Punch up the copy.

Optimizing Your Website Content

Step 1: Conduct a content audit

Use Google’s content questions as a starting point to conduct a thorough, page-by-page, content audit of your site. Flag pages or posts that don’t conform to a majority of these guidelines. After that, it’s time to clean house.

Step 2: Fix weak pages

If a post or page really doesn’t offer something useful to your visitors, get rid of it. You can:

• Delete it altogether
• Merge it with other pages covering the same topic
• Look for ways to expand what’s there into something more substantial.

If you believe the page is necessary as is, but don’t want search engines to find it, you can utilize “no index meta tags” to keep search engines from crawling that page. (Google has a brief tutorial here.)

Step 3: Eliminate duplicate content

Assuming you’re creating original content, duplicate content shouldn’t be that much of an issue. However, there are times when your pages may use very similar language to describe similar products or services. Or when you’re syndicating content for publication elsewhere.

When that happens, you can use something called “canonical URLs” to tell search engines which page you’d prefer them to index. (Here’s more information from Google.)

Step 4: Create new, valuable content

Before you publish a new piece of content, revisit the questions above. Google’s goal is to please its users, so it wants to return the freshest and most valuable results it can.

In truth, you should always be thinking of ways to answer consumer questions and provide useful information that will make it easy for them to use your product or service. Do that, and you won’t really need Google’s content questionnaire – you’ll have beaten them to the punch.