As the holiday season approaches, online travel agencies (OTAs) are under enormous pressure to maximize reach and conversions among a massive online consumer base. Travel industry news, meanwhile, is inundated with tips and emerging trends to maximize performance—but not all of this advice is worth taking.
With content, as with most digital strategy, the best approach is to follow the numbers. According to the BrightEdge Industry SERP Report, a key differentiator for those businesses will be figuring out how to use content to respond directly to consumer demands.
BrightEdge says critical guidance in content decisions can be found through the BrightEdge Data Cube Time Machine. The company has developed this predictive technology to offer guidance relevant to Q4 2014, which will help to identify the best areas for travel brands to focus on when making a push for holiday sales.
When it comes to offering consumer savings opportunities, travel sites like Expedia and Tripadvisor have mastered the right content, whereas airlines and hotels haven’t performed as well historically in this category, according to new data by BrightEdge. In fact, nine of the top ten players are OTAs - only Hilton made it into the list.
We’re at the outset of Q4, which means that the holidays are fast approaching. Travel deals, accommodations and hospitality are always in high demand this time of year, as consumers lock down holiday travel plans and make reservations. Whether you’re a travel agency, an airline or a hotel, your company needs to be prepared to capture market share in this highly competitive season. It’s not enough to create content for content’s sake; in such an oversaturated market, marketers won’t be able to move the needle without understanding where the demand lies — and what they can do to take full advantage.
By now -- thanks to Starbucks' widely favorited Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Christmas decorations already on sale -- the holidays are clearly upon us. As families buy gifts, finalize travel arrangements and plan festivities, one thing is for sure: there's never a better time than the holidays to be a marketer.
Take it from Netflix, Target and more, whose marketing efforts fueled millions of dollars in profits: the holidays are a goldmine for engaging audiences, forging new connections and driving revenue. In 2012, almost 130 million consumers shopped online to take advantage of Cyber Monday's deals and steals. In 2013 alone, 49 percent of holiday marketing campaigns were created and launched before Halloween -- and in 2012, 20 percent of marketing budgets was attributed to these holiday campaigns, proving that companies are willing to spend big to see traction during this important time of year.
With over 1,000 companies trying to sell some type of marketing technology in over 40 categories, it’s not surprising that the most common word that marketers use to describe themselves is “overwhelmed.” Indeed, according to my research into 351 mid-market B2B companies, except for companies in software, the adoption rate of marketing technology is very low: companies in other industries are using a median of just 2 out of 9 major marketing technology programs that I identified.
This is a wasted opportunity. Many marketers have reported rapid and significant ROI from adopting these tools; but first, they had to convince higher-ups to make the up-front investment. So, in the interest of helping clear that path, I am suggesting a Marketing Technology Starter Kit: the seven programs that every company’s marketing team should have access to, at a minimum, to grow leads, opportunities, and revenue.
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Over the last 10 years, search has become the user interface for the Internet. Before the era of the search engine began, online users were in charge of remembering URLs and domains, and shopping and research was strictly limited to malls and big-box retailers. Things have dramatically changed since then. In 2013, Google alone hosted almost six billion queries per day.
While it’s easy to see the impact of search on a large scale, day-to-day searches and questions flooding in from around the world prove its massive reach. Search is how people — no matter their corner of the globe — access the world and learn new things. Children as young as four years old know how to take advantage of search engines, as do their much older grandparents. No matter the intent, billions of people flock to prominent search engines everyday, doing research and making purchasing decisions across industries.
With all these searches occurring daily, businesses around the world have a tremendous opportunity for exposure. If businesses are trying to sell a product or service, there’s no better way to reach their target market. Research shows that organic search is the largest driver of traffic across all major industries – driving on average 51% of website traffic, and 40% of website revenue. The potential is there to see major success from search — but brands have to know how to use it.
While this massive opportunity is ripe for the taking, search engines are complex and nuanced areas to explore. And, search is not a one size fits all approach. Search engine results pages (SERP) vary dramatically from mobile to desktop. BrightEdge research has shown a 62% variance in the results from Google desktop vs. mobile device. The only way to truly make the most of search’s massive potential is to find an advanced search technology to assist them. It’s no secret that search content and keywords can be optimized for success — but without a reliable partner, how can marketers know what works and what doesn’t? That’s just the beginning. Throw in the endless amounts of data streaming in from searches, keywords and consumer behavior, spanning rich-media content, and across different device types, and locations, and companies will undoubtedly need insight from a search engine technology to help them analyze this massive data-set and take action.
And let’s not pretend that only a few companies are tapping into the power of search. Understanding the competitive landscape — what competitors are doing, how they’re doing it and where they’re seeing success — is crucial to gaining the advantage. With all the different possibilities for success that search offers, making a solid and sincere investment in technology will help brands manage and win the market.
Seven years ago, BrightEdge realized the need to make organic search a predictable marketing channel. To help businesses realize their true potential, BrightEdge built a sophisticated solution to help marketers move the needle on search. Powered by the DataCube, BrightEdge technology supports helps over 8,500 brands understand search engine-fueled data and maximize the value of their content efforts. With a relentless commitment to innovation, and over 81 product releases, BrightEdge has dozens of features, including Blended Rank, Mobile SEO, and Content Optimizer to bridge the gap between SEO and content efforts, BrightEdge’s suite of advanced technology can help brands take their search and content strategy to new heights.
SEO represents close to 70% of our audience, and we have anywhere from 20-40 MM users come through our channels.
In today’s world brands are dedicating an average 39 percent of their marketing budgets to content marketing and producing 27 million pieces of content every single day. Each brand’s content is fighting a battle for consumer attention, and with this explosion of content the brands need to understand the relative content quality and performance bar.
As brands have become publishers, the digital world has become the most important distribution channel. The BrightEdge Content Performance Marketing platform helps brands Target Demand, Optimize Content, and Measure Results to win on the content battleground.
Watch this video where Oracle, Adobe, Wellbiz Brands, and more discuss Content Marketing:
Wiley partners with best-of-breed solution providers, like Adobe, BrightEdge, Oracle, and Salesforce
whose toolsets ensure we perform at our best.
You have to make sure your messaging is aligned across all channels, and more importantly, they’re all working together to achieve the common business goal; that’s an omni-channel strategy.
I feel as though I am constantly learning something new when I sign in.
I think if you’re not doing Content Performance Marketing, you’re missing the boat.
Learn how:
Developing your brand’s content to reach your target market may seem like a daunting challenge, especially if you’re beginning at the beginning. Factoring in all that needs to go into effective content performance marketing can seem overwhelming - but the good news is that it doesn’t have to be. In this post, we’ll go over what is needed to achieve a successful, sustainable content creation and marketing performance strategy.
As the graphic above shows, there are four essential processes required to grow your brand’s content capabilities. It’s important to note that content creation, management, marketing and measurement is a cyclical process, with measurement informing topic selection from one quarter to the next:
Let’s explore the mechanisms driving these four cylinders of a well-oiled content development engine.
The content ideation and creation process is perhaps the most challenging of all. At this initial stage, your goals are to capture the search intent of your audience with each piece of content, such that it resonates with their needs. Eventually, the goal is to build a steady flow of qualified organic traffic. Here are the mechanics to make it happen …
An informed keyword strategy is central to this quantum first step of SEO analytics, beginning with keyword research. (Sudhir Sharma recently outlined a basic guide to keyword research here on the BrightEdge blog). With access to the BrightEdge platform, you’ll be able to publish content that responds to your customers by:
Understanding how your search (and direct) competitors are faring with their own content marketing efforts is key to giving you the edge. Our SEO platform offers competitive intelligence that allows you to:
Social signals are now an integral part of search engine algorithms, and key to your content’s SEO performance. Besides playing a significant part in SEO overall, social activity also lets you know what content is resonating with your target market (via likes, shares, etc.) versus what is falling flat. Social SEO means making smart content strategy decisions by analyzing social trends not only by your own fans and followers, but also by your target market influencers and competitors’ social networks.
Developing your brand means understanding its intended users. When you work to uncover who your personas are through data from search, social, surveys and more, you can deliver on Google’s “Zero Moment of Truth” directive by developing the right content, for the right person, delivered at the right time.
Coordinating content development and marketing tasks is a second major hurdle most organizations face when implementing an overarching, sustainable content strategy. Key to an economic process, especially with enterprise-level firms, is to build efficiency into your approach with scalable workflow. To make this piece work, you’ll need to:
Clear communications with your content creation staff is a cornerstone of projecting a consistent brand message. Defining the target audience, establishing content goals and clarifying the search intent behind each keyword are all integral to effective content development. You can bring key content creators on board by creating content briefs that:
As any content editor would emphatically state, a content calendar is a must, whether you’ve only one content creator or an entire team. Content calendars with forecasting into each month or quarter serve to establish the cadence and predictable lead times for creators to do their best work, as well as prioritize content where your brand needs to make an impact and bring your top creative team in on the big picture. In this step, you’ll want to:
As alluded to previously, social media sharing is now factored into search engine algorithms as an indicator of trust, authority and credibility. By creating brand awareness and link-building opportunities, social platforms carry SEO weight.
Of course, each social media channel courts a different audience that needs to be reached accordingly. Tapping into your social data, you can readily:
Proving the ROI of organic content marketing may seem like a paper-chase nightmare of endless reports that may or may not be enough to achieve C-Suite buy-in. BrightEdge can help here. Our key performance indicator (KPI) reporting capabilities allow you to readily compare performance quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year so you have the data needed to refuel your content strategy cycle. To secure executive buy-in, BrightEdge also allows you to connect the dots between investment in content marketing initiatives and dollars earned. By building a customized reporting dashboard, you can access key numbers on the fly and on demand. BrightEdge provides ongoing support and training for executives, as well! I hope this overview of how to grow your content capabilities fueled some ideas you can implement in-house. Questions or comments? Let me know in the comments section below!
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