enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 8 years 8 months ago

t 9 min read

The marketing career path offers room for dedicated workers to achieve their goals, but there are two main areas they need to focus on in their professional development. With the modern shift in consumer-brand relations, digital marketers are more important than ever before. Brands need to find ways to get their sites found and promoted, and this trend will not be slowing down. Our research has found that 51% of the traffic to your website is organic, which means that your placement on the SERPs remains a critical component of the attention and engagement your site receives.

Customers have also begun to rely on the internet with increasing frequency when determining the products and services they need as well as the brands to patronize. Eighty-one percent of customers report that they use the internet to research prospective purchases, and 94% of B2B buyers do the same. The strengthening of the industry means that motivated professionals can find success through the marketing career path. Dedicated junior marketing team members can make their way to leadership positions by improving their understanding of the marketing landscape by molding themselves into qualified hybrid marketers and remaining abreast of the latest changes.  

The importance of the hybrid marketer on the marketing career path

SEO has become an increasingly precise and quantitative exercise. When the industry was first born, it was possible to gain coveted positions on the SERP through the use of intuition and some guesswork. Now, with the increasingly competitive landscape, marketers must understand how to meet the needs of customers in their micro-moment with the exact type of content they want to see to address their pain point.

Google also continues to adjust their SERPs, customizing them for the likely intent of the user and the micro-moment they inhabit at any given moment. When brands also know the keywords and queries that are most likely to be used with particular micro-moments, they can better target prospects with particular intents, such as those interested in making a purchase. This level of precision requires coordination between the SEO professionals, content marketers, video specialists, PPC experts, and data analysts. Marketers who can bring a hybrid skill set from various disciplines make it easier for an organization to achieve this level of coordination and success.  

Hybrid marketers have a solid understanding of the strategies and goals of at least two of these different areas, such as SEO and analytics, strengthening the team and helping them accomplish this goal. Marketers who understand how to balance these different moving parts, and have skills in a few different areas, can help bring their organizations forward, at the same time enhancing their own marketing career path. Those who want to thrive within the industry need to focus on building their expertise across these different areas to become a truly modern marketer: someone who stretches beyond the stereotypical marketing silos. Reading industry books is critical to keeping knowledge up to date.

There are a variety of resources available for marketers to build out their credentials. Google Analytics Academy, for example, can help marketers begin to learn how to analyze site data and then put those insights to work. The BrightEdge certification can also help marketers learn more about the practical uses of analytics as well as how to use our enterprise-level SEO and content platform within your organization. Those who want to succeed on the marketing career path can also take advantage of webinars and similar resources to build their understanding of related aspects of marketing. Looking for more ways to continue your education? Here are a few resources to get started.  

Staying abreast of the latest trends

Marketing continues to change at lightning speed. Those interested in succeeding on the marketing career path need to understand what these changes are and show a keen understanding of the industry to be able to predict what areas might become more important in the near future. Over just the past few years, we have seen the rise of mobile search - which now exceeds desktop at 57% - and it has been followed by the rise in voice search.

Consumers are becoming increasingly dependent upon their devices while multitasking - such as typing searches while riding on a train, asking their personal assistant devices for help while cooking, or looking up information while out with friends.  Those who find success on the marketing career path will also understand how to prepare their websites for these rising trends, such as becoming mobile friendly before Google made it officially part of the algorithm, or creating content in a question-and-answer format once the rising popularity of voice search became apparent. Right now, marketers should be paying attention to a variety of rising trends, including the following:

• The increasing usage of AI to help brands produce effective content that takes rising search interests into account
• The upcoming mobile-first algorithm, which we expect Google to release by 2018
• The importance of data in guiding digital marketing strategies
• Creating content that works well for voice search
• Creating content for hyperlocal customers interested in content on-the-go

To remain up-to-date on these various trends, people interested in the marketing career path should subscribe to blogs and other publications written by thought leaders in the field as well as attending conferences and webinars that will help them move forward. Fine a detailed description of 12 key marketing roles in this blog post. The marketing career path offers room for success for dedicated professionals willing to put in the effort needed to reach the top. Those who focus on developing hybrid skills and remaining up to date on the latest changes and advancements in the industry will position themselves best for their dream job.

enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 8 years 9 months ago

t 9 min read

When it comes to reaching potential customers through search, Google stands head and shoulders above the competitors in the U.S. In the ecommerce world, however, there is a competitor that can have a powerful impact on a brand’s exposure for its products: Amazon. The New York Times reported that in 2009, about 25 percent of people looking to make an online purchase started on a search engine while 18 percent started on Amazon. By 2011, however, nearly 33 percent started on Amazon and only 13 percent started on a search engine. When people are interested in buying products, they increasingly head right for the Amazon site, bypassing Google altogether. For businesses to increase their visibility, therefore, they need to move beyond their marketing on Amazon strategies of focusing almost exclusively on Google - they need to spend some time making sure they are well-represented on Amazon as well. Amazon boasts incredible ecommerce statistics that make it a natural draw for retailers:

• In 2017, the site had a net revenue of $178 billion
• The site also received an average of 310 million monthly users as of August 2015
• Amazon offers buyers an estimated 588 million different products to choose from

The more brands understand about Amazon, the easier it will be for them to take advantage of the opportunities presented by these robust numbers. Amazon has its own internal search algorithm. There are strategies ecommerce businesses can use to maximize their appeal for the popular site and increase their exposure.

Amazon differs from Google

It is important to note that Amazon is not just another Google. The two differ on a fundamental level. Google was developed to return the right content for its users. It wants people to come back to its page so that it can profit through ads and clicks. On the other hand, however, Amazon is all about selling the products. It wants to have a marketplace of the best products at the best prices so that customers continually buy. In other words, while Google focuses on the user experience, Amazon was built around conversion. There are also differences in the basic set-up. Developing your own website effectively gives you a blank page. You can do whatever you want with a new website in terms of layout and content. On Amazon, you are confined by forms. Developing a product page requires a tremendous amount of structured data, where you are given options about the types of information you would like to plug in about your item. The greater the understanding you have about the differences between these two sites, the easier it will be to grasp what the user is looking for and how you can use that insight to maximize your visibility.

Amazon Ranking Factors and How to Improve Standings

The factors that influence organic rankings on Amazon are much more straightforward than Google. There is no such thing as off-page ranking factors - the algorithm, which is known as A9, is only concerned with factors directly on the page. Amazon determines relevancy for a user based on how likely they are to buy a particular product. This means factors, such as the price, are generally considered very important. The site knows that customers are going to be unhappy if they cannot find competitive pricing compared to their other buying options. Amazon also looks at factors such as Sales Rank, which is the number of sales compared to similar products. In other words, the more sales you make in a particular category, the higher you will rank. Customer reviews and your seller record also factor into the order you appear in the results. Other important factors include:

• Number of reviews
• Average rating score
• Number of images
• Characters and keywords in title
• Bullets describing the product
• Amount of text and keywords in the description
• Price and relative price
• Sales velocity (and probably rate of returns)
• Whether the product is fulfilled by Amazon
• The number of answered questions you have on your product page

Ranking well on Amazon, therefore, depends upon you understanding these factors and increasing your relevance to customer queries.

1. Make sure you fill out your form as much as possible. Customers often narrow their queries down based upon factors like brand or color, so the more you fill in the form, the better you will appear.
2. Use high-quality images that clearly show the user what they want to see about your product.
3. To match products with queries, Amazon looks at the forms and the keywords used in the title and description. Use important keyword selection words in these fields.
4. Use the search terms wisely. It is important to note that the search terms do not work the same way they do for SEO or PPC campaigns. You do not need to worry about repeating words, common misspellings, or including multiple variations of the words. Instead, use as many of the allowed 50 characters as possible to describe what you are selling as core terms.

It is also important to keep in mind the value of Amazon’s recommendation features. The site is famous for featuring products that are often bought together or other items that the site thinks you might like. These products are not selected randomly. Amazon uses what it terms ‘item-to-item collaborative filtering’ to customize the site for its users. The system takes into account what the customer has viewed, purchased or liked as well as what other customers have viewed, purchased or liked to better understand the items that pair well together and that are most likely to spark an interest. When brands focus on building a thorough product page using the system above, they can increase the odds of being featured on these recommendation sections as well. Amazon Ad Targeting In addition to organic advertising, Amazon also allows its vendors to pay to target ads. Amazon explains their Internet-based Ads Policy on their site as follows:

On both Amazon-owned and operated sites and unaffiliated sites, Amazon displays interest-based advertising using information you make available to us when you interact with our sites, content, or services. Interest-based ads, also sometimes referred to as personalized or targeted ads, are displayed to you based on information from activities, such as purchasing, visiting sites that contain Amazon content or ads, interacting with Amazon tools, like the Amazon Browser Bar, or using our payment services, like Amazon Pay. Click here for more information about the types of information that we gather. In providing interest-based ads, we follow the Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising developed by the Digital Advertising Alliance (a coalition of marketing, online advertising, and consumer advocacy organizations).

Like other online ad networks, we use cookies, web beacons (also known as action tags or single-pixel gifs), and other technologies (collectively, “cookies”). Cookies enable us to learn about what ads you see, what ads you click, and other actions you take on our sites and other sites. This allows us to provide you with more useful and relevant ads. For example, if we know what ads you are shown we can be careful not to show you the same ones repeatedly. We do not associate your interaction with unaffiliated sites with your identity in providing you with interest-based ads.

Tracking Your Progress

Unfortunately, it can be a bit harder to judge the success of your efforts on Amazon as there is significantly less data available. Under your Reports >> Business Reports, you can receive some detailed information about your page sales and traffic. Amazon will give you your Unit Session Percentage or conversion, which tells you the number of units you sold divided by the number of sessions your listing received. Be careful if you are listing a product that is also sold by other dealers. In this situation you need to pay attention to your buy box percentage.

Amazon will show you the number of sessions a listing received, regardless of the seller who was in the buy box, but will only show you the purchases from your account. This can make your conversion rate seem much worse than reality. By factoring in your buy box percentage, you can have a more accurate picture of your success. You should also pay attention to feedback metrics. This includes your customer ratings and reviews. As you gather positive feedback, you can raise your ranking. You can also use your payments reports to calculate your profit by subtracting the cost of running your business. This will help you see how well your business is performing over time and the influence your optimization efforts are having on the bottom line.

These metrics together will all help you paint a clear picture of how well you are reaching interested customers and your performance. Amazon is an incredible tool that can help ecommerce brands get their products in front of interested customers. Like Google, however, the position that your product appears on the results page is not because of chance, but rather a carefully calculated algorithm that looks at a variety of different factors when determining rank. Brands should take the time to maximize their exposure with Amazon with these guidelines and see how they can improve their ecommerce sales in 2018. Learn more about VSO or Vertical Search Optimization.