Consumers today are a smart and finicky bunch, and nothing turns them off more online than fluff content.
And unfortunately, too many marketers out there believe that all you need to do to rank in Google and other major search engines is simply provide “content,” says Jon Stroker, COO for AdVision.
“The fact of the matter is yes, while keyword-rich content will get your content to rank for your target keywords, rank only counts for so much,” he adds.
Traffic is the result of rank.
Leads and conversions are the result of traffic.
Customers are the result of leads and conversions.
“Rank is a false idol; customers are what matter most,” he adds.
While fluff may help you rank, only remarkable content will get you customers.
We recently checked in with Jon to get more of his brilliant insight on inbound marketing today.
Can you tell us the story behind AdVision?
AdVision was started in 2006 by our Founder and CEO, Matt Walde. For the first five years, AdVision focused exclusively on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, which still stands as a major driving force behind our business today. Over the last three years, we’ve quickly expanded our services to adapt and to cater to evolving client needs. We now offer comprehensive inbound marketing services to over 80 SMBs nationwide to help them generate more revenue online.
What services do you offer?
While we offer PPC, SEO, CRO, and just about every other digital marketing acronym that exists, we truly like to convey that we offer comprehensive inbound marketing. We combine the best of everything we do into a single service that focuses on a few simple thoughts: getting found, converting, and delighting customers online.
What sets you apart from your competition?
At AdVision, we pride ourselves on several “core values” that we practice every day:
1. No BS: We don’t show arbitrary metrics, and we’re good for our word. When we say we’ll do something, we’ll do it … and do it on time.
2. Fearless: Nothing stops us from stepping up to the next big challenge or solving problems we may not have encountered before. This makes us better marketers, better coworkers, better people … every single day.
3. Meaningful results: We implement strategies that address our clients’ wants and needs and ultimately help them grow their businesses. This is unquestionable.
4. Camaraderie: We pride ourselves on our team.
In addition to our core values, we pride ourselves on our reputation and recognition. I believe AdVision has a reputation of being trustworthy, dependable, and most importantly, lacking BS. We’re also a Gold Hubspot VAR, Google AdWords and soon to be Google Analytics certified agency.
Why is client training a part of your digital marketing services? What areas do you focus on teaching your clients about?
While we don’t feel it’s necessary to train our clients in the same way we train our employees, it’s important that they have a functional knowledge of what we’re doing and why. Our clients may not need to know how to work in Google AdWords or Hubspot, but we do like them to be able to have strategic discussions around the efforts being executed and the results being generated by these platforms. As our clients’ knowledge improves, the quality of our conversations go up dramatically. When we’re speaking the same language with our clients, we’re able to act as a more valuable resource for their business.
Why do you believe inbound marketing is the most effective way to deliver information to consumers?
Consumer behavior has changed over the years when it comes to how people seek solutions to their problems. Now more than ever before, consumers are getting smarter and savvier in blocking marketing and advertising “interruptions”; caller ID has rendered telemarketing much more ineffective, DVRs allow us to skip through commercials, and we’ve trained our minds to block out the thousands of print and billboard ads we see every day.
Consumers are doing their own research and using online channels such as search engines for discovering unique solutions to their problems, and this is the perfect entry for inbound marketing. By producing truly remarkable content that helps consumers solve problems and answer questions, you are effectively helping your company get found through the creation of desirable content. Consumers will always be more receptive to marketing messages when received on their terms and not the marketers’.
What types of content do you think keep consumers interested and engaged?
No fluff. This is huge, and really what separates average marketing departments from the best. It’s one thing to cultivate keyword-rich content for the purposes of feeding Google, but it’s another when the content is interactive and thought-provoking and truly helps people solve problems or answer questions. The difference between doing and doing it right can only be experienced once that first hit piece of content has been developed; that one blog post, although potentially taking hours upon hours to develop, could potentially bear fruit for the company every month for several years.
In what areas of content creation and marketing do you think most brands should be spending more time on?
It’s crucial to understand your target buyer’s pain points, challenges and motivations before even starting on content creation. Content that best caters to your buyer’s specific needs will always be the most effective. Content promotion and syndication is extremely important as well; some marketers even say to spend as much as 80 percent of your time promoting the content and only 20 percent to plan it in the first place.
Promotion will only get you so far, though, if your content isn’t remarkable. Remarkable content sometimes will get traction on its own, and promotion of remarkable content will help it spread like wildfire.
What are some best practices for brands for creating an effective content marketing strategy?
Always start with buyer persona development. This should be the backbone of your entire marketing plan and should bleed into everything you do. From your CTAs to your automated email workflows, you should always have your customer in mind.
What brands do you think are masters of digital content? What can we learn from them?
HubSpot is the obvious one I’d call out. Not only have they seemingly coined the term “inbound marketing,” they also live and breathe it and practice what they preach. It’s pretty impossible to Google anything surrounding the inbound marketing space and NOT see a HubSpot blog post or other educational resource in the search results.