And, when you’re quoted a price it makes it harder to question if you’re overpaying for your service, or getting a bargain. It’s one that you can only really work out when the results start coming in, but even then it’s difficult knowing if you can get the same results for cheaper elsewhere.

Not knowing the price can also make it hard to factor into your budget when deciding whether or not it will be worth the cost for your business.

So, to make this easier, we’ve done the research and found the average cost of agencies in the UK, split into different services. This data was gathered from a range of freely available sources and online pricing information, as well as confidential submissions from various UK based agencies and clients.

Note: these are just averages and don’t take into account the hours or particular offerings that an agency might offer.

This is what we found (click the image for the full-sized version).

TD;LR: Monthly retainer rates are the equivalent of an average 1-3 days of work per month on a long-term ongoing basis. Per campaign/project refers to average pricing based on a single marketing campaign or goal that the agency undertakes for a one-time basis.

SEO

SEO (search engine optimisation) is all about getting your brand found on search engines, sending more organic traffic to your website. It includes services such as link building, technical SEO and on-page SEO, depending on each individual agency.

Our study found that the average prices for SEO are:

• £394.75 per day
• £901.50 monthly retainer
• £1556.25 per project

For specific SEO projects, local SEO came in the cheapest and eCommerce as the most expensive.

Looking for high-quality SEO agencies? Here are some of our top picks:

• Dashword
• SEO PowerSuite
• Advanced Website Ranking
• Mangools
• Answer The Public
• SEMRush

Organic social media

Organic social media services include managing the day-to-day running of social media platforms, social strategies and creating social media campaigns.

The average prices for this service are:

• £650 per day
• £1,120 monthly retainer
• £400 per campaign

Most agencies base this price per platform, so if you have more than one social channel that you want looking after, expect this figure to increase.

Paid social media

Paid social media services are all about building creatives and paid campaigns across social media accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more.

The average prices for this service are:

• £430 per day
• £587.50 monthly retainer
• £266 per campaign

Although these prices may seem cheaper than organic social media management, you need to factor in the cost of paid campaigns on top of this.

Some agencies will also charge extra per creative, so if you’ve got a whole library to create, expect £40+ per creative that’s needed.

If agencies operate using a % pricing model, expect to pay 15% of your advertising spend on fees.

Content marketing

In 2021, content is still king. If you want to engage your audience, build your brand reputation and increase your traffic, you need to be producing new, high-quality content.

If you want to outsource your content marketing to an agency, this is how much you can expect to pay.

• £725 per day
• £817.90 monthly retainer
• £325 per post

Some companies will also charge per 100 words if that’s all you want. However, you might find more luck with a freelancer for this service.

Ready to improve your visibility and brand authority? Check out StoryChief and FatJoe.

Here are our top content marketing agencies for you to choose from:

• StoryChief
• FatJoe

PPC

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) agencies will help manage and create paid advertising campaigns across Google, Microsoft and more, helping you achieve the best conversions or profits for your budget.

Average costs for PPC services come in at:

• £725 per day
• £1040.90 monthly retainer
• £1016.60 per project/campaign

Like paid social media services, some agencies will also adopt a % price model instead. The average fees for PPC services are 10-20% of your advertising spend.

In addition, PPC services also have the most restrictions in place for accepting a client. Nearly every agency has minimum advertising spend per client before they are onboarded.

This minimum advertising spend ranges from £400 per month to £10,000.

Website build

Need a new website to send your traffic to and help convert your leads?

The average cost of a website build in 2021 is £5452.30.

However, there are a lot of different factors that influence this figure. Generally, the more complex your website is, the more expensive it will be.

Simple, one-page websites are a lot cheaper to produce, with prices ranging from £350-£2,000. In contrast, multi-page eCommerce websites can cost as much as £30,000.

Marketing strategy

Marketing strategy is the vaguest service but encompasses anything from consulting, helping build strategies, campaigns and implementing all the elements involved. It’s often tied into other services such as SEO, PPC and more, but sold as one simple package.

The average prices for marketing strategy are:

• £684.28 per day
• £738 monthly retainer
• £2412.50 per project

Marketing strategies also have the biggest number of annual retainers, which range between £40,000-£250,000 depending on the level of work involved.

Why hire an agency?

If these costs look high, it’s worth remembering that you don’t need to hire an agency if you don’t want to. You could do all of this yourself and there’s no one going to stop you from that.

But you need to weigh up what you save in cost, versus the time and effort that you’ll spend doing this yourself. If you don’t have the skills, that also might mean hiring in or extra time spent on training and getting up to scratch. It all adds up.

Hiring an agency will save you this time.

As the picture below demonstrates, hiring an SEO agency can save your business a total of 29 hours a week. That’s just under 4 days that you could use to grow another part of your business. Now, that’s worth the cost.

TD;LR: See the full breakdown of how much time an agency can save your business here.

Find your next agency today

Ready to find your next agency?

We’re here to make that process simple with the Adzooma Marketplace. Just search for the service you need and we’ll bring back a list of trusted, high-quality agencies, freelancers and more that are ready to work on your next project.

Read reviews, dig a little deeper if you need and when you’re ready, get in touch to seal the deal.

Methodology

Data collected from a range of freely available sources and online pricing information, as well as confidential submissions from various UK based agencies and clients.

A big thanks to Spread Like Wildfire Media, My Remote Partner Limited, Ecrubox, Impression, Distinction, Marketing Labs, Internet Sales Drive, Vitty, GM Marketing, Regent Branding, Alba SEO, Generate Leads Online, Pixated, Marble Agency, Plume, Rise Online, Social Thyme, Digital 22, Cabana, Andrew Laws Associates, Adao, Indigoextra, Tom Crowe Digital, HARO Helpers, IFax App, Studio 54, and Daniel Foley for their help and contribution for the article.

When it comes to paid or organic media reports, very few solutions offer white-labeling functionalities, resulting in a disconnect between the data presented and the brand’s identity which can appear unprofessional, careless, or even under-resourced. 

To address this issue, Adzooma introduces Performance Report Branding – a powerful new feature designed to personalize your reports at both the account and Project levels! This dual approach ensures that your reports not only resonate with your clients’ distinct brands, but also positions you as the single source of truth for PPC, SEO, and web metrics insights.

How Performance Report Branding Works

• Account-Level Branding: When enabled, this feature will automatically apply your chosen brand colors and logos to all Adzooma reports. Every report you generate will be customized and branded, making them ready for immediate sharing with colleagues or clients without any extra effort.
• Project-Level Branding: If you are managing multiple clients in Adzooma, you can override the account-level settings to customize the brand colors and logos for individual Projects. Agencies and freelancers will gain the most from this overriding as it allows each report to be uniquely tailored to each client’s brand.

*Note: These features are exclusively available on Adzooma’s Silver & Gold plans! Upgrade today to gain access.

Why This Feature Matters

Adzooma reports go beyond basic metrics – they offer a comprehensive analysis of your PPC, SEO, and web metrics performance and provide actionable recommendations to holistically improve your digital marketing presence. By using this new branding feature, you can present these insights under your own brand, positioning yourself as a marketing expert and trusted strategic partner to your clients!

Personalizing Your Reports

To enable account-level branding:

• Log in to your Adzooma account
• Navigate to ‘Settings’ > ‘Report Branding’
• Choose your brand colors and upload your logo
• Toggle the ‘Enable Report Branding’ switch
• ‘Save Changes’

To enable Project-level branding:

• Log in to your Adzooma account
• Navigate to ‘Projects’ > select desired Project
• ‘Settings’ > ‘Report Branding’
• Choose your brand colors and upload your logo
• Toggle the ‘Enable Project-Level Report Branding’ switch
• ‘Save Changes’

To explore the Performance Report Branding feature and see how it can elevate your client presentations, try upgrading to our Silver or Gold packages today! 

For more insightful tips and updates, please head over to our blog, or get in touch to speak to our team if you have any questions!

You may be wondering where to start, but don’t worry. Although AI technology is a powerful tool, the implementation process doesn’t have to be complicated.  

In this guide, we’ll present you with a clear path to introducing AI to your daily tasks. We’ll also discuss the many uses that your AI could have within a content creation team.

What do you want to achieve?

The first step towards successfully integrating AI into your existing workflow is to identify your goals. 

For instance, do you want to increase efficiency, improve accuracy, or something else entirely? It’s important to keep this goal as your focus. That way, you can start planning with a clear vision on how best to change and adapt your workflow. 

Once you know what you want to achieve, you can take the next steps. It will become clear what solution would work best for you.

Analyse your current workflow

Before making any drastic changes to how your team works, it’s important to take a close look at your current workflow. 

Through analysing how you work, you can identify areas where AI could streamline processes or reduce errors. Ask yourself and your team about pain points in the content creation process. 

Analyse your existing content creation process, including types of content, production time and team roles. Try to identify bottlenecks, repetitive or time consuming tasks and areas where AI content generation could be beneficial. 

Choose an AI solution that works for you

With so many AI content management tools available, it can be difficult to know which one is right for your needs. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. As a result, it can seem like a daunting process. 

However, with some careful consideration and planning you can implement this complex technology with lasting positive results. Keep an eye out for features like content creation, topic ideation or content analytics. If you’re still unsure, take advantage of free trials and demos. This will allow you to test the overall functionality of each tool and whether they fit your requirements. 

As a starting point, these are a few factors to consider:

• How much does it cost?

It may seem like an obvious question, but understanding your budget is crucial. Be mindful of any fees associated with certain options. Otherwise, you may end up overspending on something you don’t need, or not having enough funds for something essential. 

• How easy is it to use?

Will your team quickly learn how to use AI for content creation, or will they need in depth training? If your team needs extensive training, it could be a costly exercise that takes up too much time for it to be worthwhile. Make sure the end decision takes into account the overall user experience. 

It is probably wise to allocate some resources to training your team on how to effectively use these new tools. After all, they will have a huge influence on the overall success of the project.

• Is it scalable? 

The demands placed on your new system may seem constant at the moment, but can potentially change from one moment to the next. It’s best to make sure from the outset that it can handle large amounts of data without crashing or slowing down. 

• Is it compatible with your existing technology?

Before you fully commit, make sure you find out whether any existing infrastructure could help reduce your overall costs. Of course, you should still expect this to support modern AI solutions. If not, you may be creating performance issues for your team down the line.

Implementing your chosen AI solution

Once you’re confident that you have made the right decision it’s time to implement your chosen AI into your workflow. 

Before going ahead with a full overhaul of your processes, why not consider a phased approach to AI integration? By starting with using AI tools for one or two tasks in your workflow, your team will soon get used to the new technology. 

Creative teams can now go ahead and use AI to improve or save time on a host of daily tasks. We have outlined a selection to provide inspiration:

• Generating content strategies and outlines

AI tools for content writing can analyse your input and suggest organised outlines, headings and even brief overviews. Tools such as ChatGPT can save both time and resources when brainstorming ideas and provide a structured starting point for your writing. 

• Creating first drafts

An AI writing tool is an ideal assistant for putting together general information when creating a first draft. It could also provide a boost to content creators suffering from writer’s block. 

You can use the time saved from coming up with basic ideas to refine the content and add further insights from trusted sources. 

• Speeding up content research

Content marketers acknowledge that writing one blog post can take up to 3 hours and 51 minutes. But with AI tools, you could save the time spent on initial research and let AI scan online data for you. 

AI can collect relevant facts and background information in a matter of seconds. This means you will have the time to focus on improving your finished content and flexing your creative muscle. 

• Getting instant feedback on content

If you need instant feedback on a piece of content, where do you turn if your team is busy or unavailable? You can use AI tools.

In just a few moments, AI can automatically generate detailed and objective feedback and suggest recommendations. If you require quick feedback on a draft, it can be a useful signifier of how to move forward with it. 

• Repurposing existing content

AI tools can take your original piece of content and reformat it with ease. For example, turning a blog post into engaging content for social media. By tailoring the language, structure and style to suit different platforms, your content can have a wider reach.

However, it is worth bearing in mind that each platform will have its own consumption patterns and audience expectations. You will still need to change your approach depending on what you want to achieve. 

• Clustering keywords

Clustering keywords is an effective way to create more focused content strategies. AI tools such as ChatGPT can quickly organise and brainstorm content centred around clustered themes. This can save a great deal of time when compared to sorting relevant keywords into groups and themes manually.

• Streamlining the editing process

A typo or grammatical error can undermine all of your hard work. But, sometimes finding the time to proofread effectively can be difficult. Things may slip through the cracks, especially during busy times. 

With the help of an AI editing assistant, you can quickly identify and correct typos and unclear phrasing. All while keeping the content in line with the brand style guide and tone of voice. 

• Personalising content for your target audience

Personalising your content to align with the preferences and interests of your target audience can greatly improve engagement. AI tools can analyse data to fine tune and adjust your messaging. This will make sure it resonates with the specific groups you are trying to appeal to. 

Monitoring the performance of your AI

Once you’ve implemented your AI, it’s important to measure whether it is actually helping you to meet your goals. Make sure you track metrics such as content quality, content production time and audience engagement. This way, you will be able to use data to continue to refine your workflow.

AI tools can be a helpful addition to your workflow, but they are not a direct substitute for human-written content. AI content may lack the emotional resonance and empathy to compete with human writers. Some elements may potentially need fact checking before the approval stage. 

Despite the limitations, you shouldn’t be afraid to experiment with different AI tools in order to find the right one for your needs. 

What to avoid when changing your workflow

A common pitfall made by those wanting to optimise their workflow is not taking the time to plan thoroughly. Making changes without considering the outcome might lead to unforeseen issues and delays further down the line. 

It’s also best to try to avoid implementing too many new systems or processes at the same time. It can become difficult to track the success of multiple changes and team members may become overwhelmed. 

Key Takeaways

By implementing AI content technology at certain points in your workflow, you could save a wealth of time and resources. As AI technology continues to change and evolve, so do the number of ways in which content teams could use this tech. The potential for innovating content strategies and output grows with every development.

By introducing AI tools, you are complementing the existing skills and strengths of your team. And as these tools become more advanced, enhancing capabilities and streamlining tasks. 

At the moment AI generated content is most effective when it has human knowledge and creativity to guide it. But the time saved means other creative projects and strategies can flourish. By finding the right AI solution and monitoring the results, you could find your organisation becoming more agile. 

This blog was written for Adzooma with the support of CTI Digital, award-winning Content and SEO services agency. For more insightful tips, please head over to our blog, or get in touch to speak to our team if you have any questions!

Despite this knowledge, though, many marketers still struggle to put together a comprehensive marketing strategy that really delivers them results.

It’s fair to say that this is likely due more in part to a lack of education than a lack of effort, so we’re going to help our fellow marketers out by providing 11 of the most effective content marketing strategies to help boost your organic traffic.

Did you know? Chatbots can revamp your content marketing strategy through your advertising by delivering a 100% conversion rate. That’s right, everyone who clicks from the ad to interact with your bot becomes a contact in your database that you can send follow-up messaging to.

Let’s start by looking at five of the best kinds of content you can and should be creating.

Types of content that can increase your traffic

1. How-to guides

Consider this scenario:

You’re considering launching a podcast as part of your content marketing strategy, but you have no idea where to start.

So, what do you do?

“Hey, Siri, how do I start a podcast?”

What you’ll get back is something like this post from Buzzsprout, packed with helpful tips on launching a podcast, relevant and inspiring podcasting stats, exploring different platforms such as Spotify’s video podcasts and recommendations for equipment to help you get started.

How-to guides are incredibly powerful content, both because people are regularly seeking out this kind of information and because they are (or at least, should be) packed with detail.

When you’re putting together how-to guides as part of your marketing strategy, make sure that they are:

• Long-form: Don’t be afraid to write 3,000 words or more, as long as it’s relevant and helpful.
• Not too ‘salesy’: This isn’t the time to tell the world why you’re so great; it’s the time to help.
• Related to other posts you’ve written: That way, you can build up your internal linking strategy.
• Design an infographic: A timeline infographic is a great tool to visualize how-to guides and improve audience retention.
• Create a video as an alternative: You can also deliver your how-to guides through short and straightforward videos, such as explainer videos. It helps audiences retain and understand information better.

2. Comparison lists

Publishing well-written, valuable blog posts is an incredibly effective content marketing strategy. Companies that do this see 97% more backlinks to their site than those who don’t.

Of course, there are so many different kinds of blog posts you might write. For example:

• Listicles
• Checklists
• Explainers (answering questions like why and how)
• Interview
• Personal anecdotes

One of the most powerful blog posts you can create is the comparison post. In this type of content, you’re actively comparing your product to competitors.

But wait, you say, don’t I want to steer my prospects away from my competition?

Well, yes, that may be the case, but the truth of the matter is that they’re going to be comparing you regardless.

More than half of buyers choose to buy online simply because it allows them to compare with ease. So you can bet your bottom dollar that your customers will be conducting at least some form of ‘X vs. Y’ search.

And if that’s the case, wouldn’t you rather they come across a blog post that details the pros and cons of all of your competitors and paints your product in the best light possible?

Take this list of the best credit repair companies, for example, which helps readers decide between different products and services in one place. It’s an excellent example of the comparison post in action.

What’s more, you can target keywords that include your competitors to divert some of that valuable search traffic.

For example, check out this blog post on DocuSign competitors by PandaDoc (a DocuSign competitor).

Look who they’ve oh so subtly listed as the number one service:

Those comparison lists can be as long as you wish, but a good strategy is to position yourself as the first best option. Another example is Monday.com who compared themselves with more than 289 other project management softwares. 

3. Comprehensive guides

For search engine rankings and lead generation, you want your written content to be around 2,500 words.

This kind of ground can be covered fairly easily when you’re writing a comparison blog post of 10 different competitors. For narrower topics, you’re going to need to dive deep.

The way to do this is by creating a comprehensive guide. You’ll have no doubt seen titles like these before:

• The ultimate guide to X
• The definitive guide to Y
• The complete guide to Z

That’s what we’re talking about.

Take this example from Propel: The complete guide to value chains.

This post clocks in at 2,748 words, the ideal length for a comprehensive guide of its kind.

It manages to pack in a ton of different keywords and search phrases, maximizing organic traffic reach by allowing customers to find the answers they need in a single post.

Here’s an example of an ultimate guide written on the topic of appointment scheduling software by Genbook. With over 30,000 words this guide is broken into various chapters and also has both audios, graphs and examples, making it an ideal resource on the topic. 

4. Case Studies

Case studies are a great way to showcase your expertise and also give prospective clients a real-life example of how your product helped a company scale (if you’re in the B2B world).

They’re also great opportunities for both internal and external links.

Check out this article on how to write a case study for more details.

5. On-page SEO

Okay, so this one is not so much a type of content. However, it’s something that should be flowing throughout all aspects of your content marketing strategy.

We’re talking about search engine optimization, the backbone of modern marketing. More specifically, we’re referring to the on-page aspect of SEO.

In a nutshell, on-page SEO is about ensuring each page or post you have on your site is best positioned to target a given keyword.

This might include targeted use of that specific keyword verbatim, as well as semantically related words and alternate keywords that tell search engines exactly what you’re writing about.

Take this Swagbucks page for Old Navy coupons, for example.

This could be a pretty bare-bones page, with not much room for content that could house a decent volume of relevant keywords.

However, they’ve craftily added in a ‘How to Save Money at Old Navy’ section, allowing for a description of the store, which, you guessed it, maximizes their ability to write on-topic and boost keyword density.

Analyze your pages for improvements, make the edits, and monitor the results using a rank tracking software to see the impact. 

6 tips to supercharge your content marketing strategy 

So, you’ve got your head around some of the most popular content marketing strategies around, and you have a bit of an idea concerning what types of content you might create.

Before you go diving into content creation, though, let’s look at a few quick tips to really get the most out of your content and boost your organic traffic numbers.

1. Create customer personas

Start by creating customer personas, which are fictional representations of your ideal customer, and include details such as:

• Demographics
• Occupation
• Shopping preferences
• Recreational preferences
• Family situation
• Challenges in the workplace
• Career/workplace goals

Here’s what a simple example might look like:

Creating personas such as these not only allows you to craft content that is more targeted, but it also helps you identify relevant keywords and weed out those that don’t fit.

For example, if you’re selling an online course for entry-level English lessons, then the search phrase ‘English courses for beginners’ would be a good fit, whereas ‘Advanced English course’ probably won’t be.

2. Segment your audience

Larger companies with a more varied service offering (for example, a SaaS product with three or four different solutions) might have more than one customer persona. When this is the case, it’s unwise to assume that a piece of content you create would be suitable for all audiences.

Segment your audience types, then create different content for each that is relevant to that narrow subset of people. Once that’s done, distribute the content accordingly.

3. Make your content adaptive

This is especially important if you’re dealing with millennials or Gen Z buyers.

Customers should be able to browse your content (blog posts and ecommerce platforms alike) on their phone, then switch over to a desktop or iPad and have the exact same experience.

Ensuring your content adapts easily to all devices is a major aspect of this consistent experience.

4. A/B test consistently

Regardless of how well-researched your customer personas are and how well-crafted your content is, you can never be sure that even something as subtle as a color change on a CTA button might result in a significant uplift in conversion rates.

Make A/B testing a regular part of your content marketing strategy. Whenever you release a new piece of content, such as a new landing page, you should run two or more variants side by side until you have a verdict on the best-performing option.

Doing so will also help you create better content in the future, as you’ll start to notice trends in your A/B test results.

5. Create a content calendar

Your content marketing strategy should feed into a more detailed content calendar, which documents all of the content you’re going to create over the next three, six, or 12 months.

You should include:

• Who is responsible for each content piece
• Due dates
• Required assets
• Stakeholders
• Methods of distribution

There are lots of ways to create a content calendar online, but one way to do it is with a project management tool. For example, Hive has lets you display any of your projects in a Calendar view. So if you already use a project or task management tool to keep track of your upcoming content assignments, this will save you from duplicating the work and making a totally new calendar in another tool.

6. Repurpose your content

You’re going to create a ton of content, so why just use it once and be done with it?

There are a number of ways you can repurpose content, which can also boost your ROI.

For example, you might bring a series of blog posts together into a mega-guide or take some learnings from a recent webinar or podcast episode and create a written blog post on the same topic.

Conclusion

Content marketing is a big beast, but it’s one you can tackle easily if you keep the tips we’ve discussed here in the front of your mind.

Let’s recap:

1. Create how-to guides to deliver unparalleled value
2. Build comparison lists to demonstrate your point of difference
3. Write a comprehensive guide to maximize search ranking abilities
4. Develop case studies to prove your experience
5. Make SEO a part of everything you create
6. Create customer personas to better identify relevant key search phrases
7. Segment your audience for maximum impact
8. Make your content adaptive for a better customer experience
9. A/B test consistently to lift conversion rates
10. Create a content calendar to stay on track
11. Repurpose your content to improve ROI
12. Build backlinks to targeted pages

And, don’t forget, you’ll need to promote your content as well!

That’s where we come in. Check out how our AI-driven suggestions can help optimize your ad campaigns.

The results that were generated were fascinating.

There were three pillars that went into it. If you want to jump right to the analysis and the recommendations to help you get more from your PPC ads, these three articles are for you:

• How To Select The Best Digital Marketing Channel For Your Business
  • The University of Cambridge analysts examined a sample of data to determine whether Microsoft, Google and/or Facebook Ads is the best marketing channel for you
• Why Your Content Strategy Is So Crucial To PPC Success
  • The Cambridge team took a deep dive into sentimentality to help shape how you write your PPC ads
• What Makes A Landing Page Convert
  • Using the data, the team took a close look at how to get those extra leads and customers from your landing page

For everyone else, here’s a behind the scenes look at the process.

*Disclaimer – All campaign data provided to study participants was selected at random and anonymised.

What we did

Data analysis and science is crucial for any business in the SAAS space. Sure it’s important to have developers, marketers and business gurus to help shape the product and its direction, but without someone combing through the data on a continuous basis, it’s very easy for that direction to end up on the wrong path.

Afterall, when you create software which utilises AI and machine learning, the person shaping that machine needs to have the right information to hand. That’s why we have a number of data scientists in-house, and why we love undertaking projects like this one.

So how did this project come about? Here’s our Head of Partnerships Sal Mohammed:

“Whilst at Google, I was lucky enough to work with Cambridge Judge Business School to lead a project that was carried out by five of their graduates,” says Sal who completed his Barclays Scale Up programme at Cambridge University.

“Such was the calibre of the candidates, I’ve since been itching to work with a cohort from the university again. So earlier this year, when I was contacted by the Director of Enterprise at the business school to see if we would be interested in hosting a cohort this summer, it didn’t take long for me to say yes.”

Of course, the University of Cambridge is renowned as one of the best institutions in the world. The MBA programme itself is regarded as top 5 worldwide, so to be able to team up with such an impressive group of individuals was something we couldn’t turn down.

The individuals in question? Sunil Grewal, formerly of Amazon, Akanshaa Khare formerly of the World Health Organisation, and Srishti Warman recent MBA Star winner at the Women of the Future Awards.

Each one of the team was tasked with leveraging Adzooma’s data to identify new ways for small to medium sized businesses to maximise their ad spend when using the Adzooma platform.

“The data was not very complex, but required cleansing and adjustments to bring out meaningful business insights,” explains Akanshaa.

Then, once that was done, it was on to the task in hand.

“The aim of the deliverable was to create playbooks that will illustrate what leads to better ad conversion rates,” Srishti tells us. “The problem was viewed from different angles – the three pillars.”

“First pillar – how the content of the ads being shown to the customer yields to better customer engagement, i.e. what type of imagery was being used, what the language and tone was used in the ad copy, and how this would affect the ads’ click through rate.

Second pillar – after the customer clicks on the ad and visits the landing page of the ad, how was the website quality of the landing page impacting the click through rate, i.e. was the page easy to load, was the content on the page matching the expectations of the customer, etc.

Third pillar – if the customer were to view the ad from the same ad provider (business client owning the ad e.g. John Lewis) on different platforms such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft, how would it affect the ad conversion rate.”

Why we did it

Finding out answers to those three pillars of questions would be vital to improving the experience for our users.

Our platform is all about taking a user’s ads to the next level. When you first sign up to Adzooma it’s not unusual to see game changing results, as Phillip Bacon can attest to in this piece which saw him achieve 1100% ROAS using Adzooma in just a couple of months.

Then, once you’re established, it’s all about those incremental gains that keep the ads ticking over nicely and keep the cost per conversion low. From an Adzooma perspective, this is where we have to work hardest, to make sure we find as many incremental gains as possible to keep improving your ads.

If answers to the questions could be found, three crucial steps of the customer journey would be improved massively. And the knock on effect this could have for our users and the industry could be monumental.

I say industry, because Adzooma is special in the fact that we have access to thousands of accounts across three different platforms. No one else has the ability to compare such data, which makes what we’d find in this project entirely unique.

“I knew this project would have massive implications for Adzooma and the MARtech industry as a whole,” says Sal.

“Very few companies have the data and skill set to undergo such a study. Even big players like Google and Microsoft only have the data that pertains to their individual channel. The question of what makes online marketing work is one which very few have the resources to answer – yet a question that has been plaguing marketers for as long as the practice has been around.

Armed with our data and unique view across platforms, matched with the analytics skills and vast business experience of the students, it was a perfect fit to set about revealing key insights to the question.”

The results

I mean, this is the reason you’re here for, right? As mentioned above, we have written full reports of each pillar’s findings, so I’ll again direct you to those

• How To Select The Best Digital Marketing Channel For Your Business
• Why Your Content Strategy Is So Crucial To PPC Success
• What Exactly Makes A Landing Page Convert

So here I’ll just give you a little bit of a snapshot of what we saw with some words from those involved.

Ad sentiment

For Sunil who worked on the project what initially surprised him from Adzooma’s data was, “the breadth of industries and countries that Adzooma customers operate within”, which helped create such a foolproof analysis, one that was relatable for anyone in the world, not just users from a single country.

What was found was really interesting…

• Those with Google and Microsoft ads accounts connected to the Adzooma platform see a much higher CTR than industry average – 6% vs 1.91% and 3.7% vs 2.83% respectively
• Those advertising on Microsoft Ads with positive sentiment in their ads saw a 4.2% CTR, compared to 3.6% for neutral sentimentality and 3.3% for negative sentimentality
• This was in contrast to those on Google ads who saw a 6.5% CTR for negative ads, compared to 5.7% for neutral and negative

“Based on the analysis, the users of different advertising platforms have different responses to ad copy sentiment”, says Sunil. “This is important because it can impact return on ad spend if Adzooma’s clients can refine their ads to capitalise on this.

“Adzooma users can use the findings to tweak their ads to test and learn what works for their target customers in order to maximise their return on ad spends.”

Landing pages

“We have always known that some digital ads end up getting more clicks/customer engagement than others,” says Srishti who conducted the landing page analysis.

“Even amongst the clicked ads, there are a few websites which tend to get a higher conversion rate than others.

“The task was to identify the key parameters that lead to a higher conversion e.g. faster page speed, better optimisation for mobile and web viewing, page responsiveness, etc. This analysis would eventually help understand not only which companies scale quickest within verticals, but critically, why.

“The impact of this project would deliver resounding effects, not just for existing businesses worldwide, but also shape the routes startups and fledgling businesses exercise when looking to scale.”

And some of the results were indeed resounding…

• Landing page best practices have the biggest effect on conversion rate
• Under Lighthouse checks, 0% of tested landing pages had a perfect score for best practices
• Overall, only 5% of landing pages had a perfect score for website performance checks

“I was really surprised to know that best practices to create the landing page is the most important factor that directly impacts the conversion rate,” says Srishti. “I was expecting Performance that audits how fast the page is to open to be the most important factor in affecting conversion rates.”

Which platform is best to advertise on?

“While doing business-level data validation, I discovered that very few SMB customers use multiple channels (Facebook, Google and Microsoft),” says Akanshaa, the lead on this project.

That’s a really interesting piece of analysis, and not something that was part of the main project. But it’s something we’ve stressed the importance of a lot, how being seen across every touch point is crucial to digital advertising success.

Most people just stick to Google as that’s where they’re told to be, but that’s not always the best case for everyone’s business, as Akanshaa can attest, “The analysis pointed out that Facebook seems to be the most conducive channel for SMBs based on cost (CPM, CPC) as well as return (impressions, clicks)”.

• Facebook is the most cost-effective channel on average for SMBs
• Microsoft is the most responsive channel for increasing ad spend
• Only 56% of advertisers are looking to acquire new customers with their online ads

As Akanshaa says, “I believe my findings will help Adzooma’s SMB users form successful digital marketing strategies by helping them to one, select the appropriate marketing channels. Two, plan their ad-budget in a more informed way. And three, know if they are lagging behind competition and seek help from Adzooma’s Marketplace accordingly.”

Improving Adzooma through data analysis

As we all know, getting access to the right data is crucial for any business’ digital success. But one of our missions at Adzooma is to take all that hard work away from you.

As Srishti says:

“Businesses that tend to manage their own ad accounts are usually with limited resources and lack digital expertise.

Adzooma as a platform is currently helping such businesses optimise their digital ads through multiple channels and increase their click through rates. This research in particular will empower them to ensure that once the ads have led the customers to the businesses’ landing page, that they have done all they can to ensure that the conversion rate increases too.

The clients who are technically capable can make such changes such as avoiding deprecated APIs, not logging browser errors to console, displaying images with correct aspect ratios, background and foreground colors to have a sufficient contrast ratio, amongst other things.

Those clients who need some technical help, can again be connected with the right talent through Adzooma Marketplace.

In short, we are providing the mantras for the businesses to improve their conversion rate. If they need help to get it done, they shall be provided support through Adzooma’s platform.”

That’s how you make your online marketing work.

No matter how optimised our campaigns are, there’s always room for improvement somewhere, and that’s why we always need to be humble enough to never rest on our laurels and always keep an eye out for improvements.

But there’s only so much time in the day and there’s only so much resource at our disposal.

Of course these days most marketers you speak to will use some kind of software such as an SEO platform like SEO PowerSuite, a visibility platform like SEMrush, or Adzooma’s free PPC management platform, and these platforms will, of course, save you oodles of time.

But that doesn’t mean the time you saved should be spent on yoga (I’m not slagging yoga off, it’s great, but it’s not going to improve your marketing results).

Instead, it gives us more hours in the day to focus on the bigger picture, on our strategy, and that’s where this article I’ve got for you today comes in.

Working in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, our in-house product and data scientist team alongside three Cambridge MBA programme students, took a deep dive into Adzooma’s treasure trove of data with the intention of using that data to make Adzooma better and to answer the question – What makes online marketing work?

This article is one part of a wider series, here are the rest:

• What Makes Online Marketing Work: The Cambridge University & Adzooma Findings
  • A background look into how and why we ended up working with the University of Cambridge
• How To Select The Best Digital Marketing Channel For Your Business
  • We drove into our reams of data to determine whether Microsoft, Google and/or Facebook Ads is the best marketing channel for you
• What Makes A Landing Page Convert: The Cambridge University & Adzooma Findings
  • Using the data, the team took a close look at how to get those extra leads and customers from your landing page

*Disclaimer – All campaign data provided to study participants was selected at random and anonymised.

So why content?

The question on your mind right now is probably an extension of the one above, “Okay, so if you wanted to answer the question, ‘What makes online marketing work?’, why is this article about content?

Well, that’s just how crucial content is. Once the Cambridge Uni students were aboard, each member of the team was tasked with leveraging Adzooma’s data in a way that would help small to medium sized businesses to maximise their ad spend.

One of the things that jumped out at them? Yep, content.

This probably isn’t the biggest surprise for many of you. It’s something that marketing gurus and thought leaders bang on about all the time often using those three immortal words: ‘Content is King’.

I mean, ever since the invention of the printing press we’ve seen how powerful content can be, so this isn’t groundbreaking stuff.

However, it’s fair to say that not everyone treats it with the respect it deserves. Your content strategy is something that needs to be considered at a business level right alongside your sales strategy, accounting and customer personas.

And by content strategy, I don’t mean your content marketing strategy, I’m talking everything from your tone of voice, to your sentimentality, right through to your imagery.

Let’s start with an example. Say you’re an in-house PPC manager for a UK travel company who specialise in gap year holidays. When your company was created, your founder would have had a typical customer in mind:

• Affluent – able to afford an expensive airfare and sustain themselves for a year
• Adventurous – looking to travel to a region of the world dissimilar to their own for an extended period
• Young – the type of person who doesn’t mind the hostel life, constant travelling, and has no family commitments
• Time to spare – students who’ve just finished university/college or millennials on a career break

Of course, there will be so many more considerations, and not every person going on a gap year will fit this mould. Typically, however, they would, and from this persona is where your tone of voice and sentimentality is created.

So how do you speak to them in your PPC ads? Are you upbeat, are you trying to evoke some excitement from their soul? Or do you want to go the other way and play it cool by impressing them with sophisticated diction?

These types of decisions are crucial, and aligning these decisions across your whole marketing strategy is a key to success.

That’s why I say your content strategy needs to be a business level decision. And if isn’t, and you are that PPC manager as highlighted above, put the word in to your boss, maybe ask them to get a marketing strategist on board. Because it’s fine writing evocative ads, but if this doesn’t align with the type of customer who’ll be seeing your ad or interested in your product or services, that disconnect will show up in your results.

How to get it right & the research to back it up

Getting your brand’s sentimentality right is tough and requires work. You need to be agile, you need to always be abreast of the latest trends, you need to be able understand your audience, you need to understand your niche, and your standing in that niche too.

If you’re a big enough brand, you should be social listening, monitoring social media channels for mentions of your brand and analysing the way people talk about you. That’s a crucial way of understanding your audience. Some great tools I’d recommend:

• Awario – The comprehensive way to monitor your brand’s mentions online. Simple as that. Prices start at $29 per month
• Agorapulse – Near perfect tool for managing your brand’s mentions across social media, and searching for keywords on Twitter. Prices start at $79 per month
• Mention – Really basic, but easy way to monitor your brand’s mentions across the internet, though do be careful as it doesn’t spot everything. Starts at $25 per month
• TweetDeck – A free platform which is basically how I imagine the people at Twitter wish they’d designed Twitter. Super easy to use

If you don’t have that following yet, monitor your competitors, industry trends, certain hashtags and keywords related to your business. Sometimes this might have a wider scope than for just your business too.

Back in March at the start of the pandemic, The Edelman Trust found in a report that customers wanted brands to stop marketing that was “humorous or too lighthearted in tone.” I’m sure you wouldn’t have done it, but imagine if you’d carried on running your travel ads not even taking into consideration the pandemic. Wouldn’t have worked would it?

You may think this out of your scope as a PPC manager, but it really isn’t. The key to stepping up from a good PPC manager to a great PPC manager is becoming a more well-rounded marketer.

But it also gets deeper than that, because you also need to understand the network you’re advertising on too. And that’s where our research comes in.

Studying 3,500 phrases across an even split of Microsoft and Google accounts connected to our platform, we were able to deduce some fascinating data.

First, I’ll start with a bit of a boast, but only because it provides you with little bit of context for the stats to follow.

From the analysis we found for both Google Ads and Microsoft Ads the click through rate for the accounts connected to the Adzooma platform was around 6% and 3.7% respectively, which if you’re up on your industry averages, far exceeds the 1.91% and 2.83% you’re expected to see.

This could obviously be for a couple of reasons: the accounts connected to our platform are of a high quality or our platform drives our users’ CTR up (which is probably the case considering it’s one of the many benefits you get from our Opportunities feature).

But this wasn’t the intention behind our research. What we wanted to do was take a real look into the sentimentality of the ads – whether positive or negative sentiment in the ad copy had an affect on the click through rate.

Going back to the travel example, what kind of ad would you opt for? Negative sentiment like, “Get out of dreary old Nottingham today!” Positive sentiment like, “The golden shores of Brazil await!” Or neutral sentiment like, “Book your holiday now!”

Being off brand will still bring customers in, sure, and the example ads will work in their own way, but writing ads specifically to your brand’s guidelines and the advertising channel you’re using is the key to success.

So, knowing the importance of this, when drilling down into the data, we saw quite the discrepancy. For Google Ads, those ads written with a negative sentiment saw a click through rate of 6.5% compared to 5.7% for neutral and positive.

With Microsoft Ads, that completely switched with positive sentiment seeing a 4.2% CTR, neutral 3.6% and negative 3.3%.

The reasoning? Of course it’s hard to be sure, but it’s important to acknowledge that these aren’t like for like comparisons. Indeed, when you compare any sets of data, you need to appreciate the scope for discrepancies – it’s hard to truly create a full proof test.

Yet whilst acknowledging those potential discrepancies, it’s also wise to look at the demographics of both the Google and Microsoft audiences.

We all know Google to be a beast, the first choice search engine of the majority of internet users, but Microsoft still has over 60 million search users in itself, and these users tend to be a little bit older (45 compared to Google’s 38), more affluent (1 in 3 Microsoft searchers have a household income of $100k, with 35% spending more on online shopping than a Google user), and more educated too (50% have a college degree).

These stats may seem abstract with relation to the sentimentality analysis, but if you cross reference them, we find some correlation.

For example, though people say money doesn’t buy happiness, a Harvard Business School Study found out that those with more money were roughly 0.25 points happier on a 10-point scale. A study by the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry discovered that, “Despite the physical ravages of age, older people are actually happier than younger adults.” While work from Blanchflower in 2008 shows that life satisfaction is higher for the more educated.

Does that mean then that Microsoft users are more likely to click positively worded ads because their userbase are likely to be happier than those who use Google? I think the answer is nuanced.

Nuance in research

Really, that’s how we should evaluate every piece of research we read, with nuance. Stats and datasets are hugely important, but you have to add your own context to them, especially in marketing.

The stats we gleaned from our research are really interesting, but taken in isolation, it’s not going to change your business. Using our research alongside your own research, your own content strategy, and your own brand identity, then that might. These were the recommendations made by the University of Cambridge students.

So keep digging into your audience, keep trying to find out who you truly are as a business. Our free PPC platform will help you immensely by easily telling you about the ads that aren’t performing and why, plus there are one-click optimisations for so many of the Opportunities too, which really allows you to focus on the strategy side.

But at the end of the day, no machine will ever be able to write ads or come up with a better marketing strategy than you could (not even GP-2). That’s why our platform is designed to take the manual side of the business away from you, so you can spend time on the work unique to you.

So much of the research and the questions that you ask yourself, your co-workers, your customers, or your employees may be deep, but that’s what you want, philosophical answers.

As the great business academic Gary Hamel said, discovery is the journey, insight is the destination.

Customers of today want to be enrolled into a brand’s bigger vision. They want to know your why, and how your purpose aligns with their lives.

When you focus your marketing on authentic communication and human-to-human connection, building a personality around your brand that helps you stand out as a business that actually cares. You’ll not only increase your bottom line, you’ll create communities of loyal and passionate brand ambassadors who drive your business forward.

Approaching marketing from a place of purpose has a huge impact on all areas of your business. Read on to explore your why.

What is purpose-led marketing?

The word purpose means intention. It’s a goal, essentially, a desired outcome. Really, every business has a purpose, whether that’s to change something about their industry, make the world that little bit better or increase their profits. Purpose in itself isn’t a particularly inspiring proposition.

So, what do we mean when we talk about purpose-led marketing?

For us, purpose is about being true to a set of clearly defined values. This is the heart of your business, the north star that guides everything from the way you operate to the way you communicate.

If marketing is guiding the flow of information about a business into the world, purpose-driven marketing is ensuring that information has a meaning beyond simply selling a product or service. It is the communication of a business’ values as well as its value, and it talks directly to the values of its customers. This is what enrolls them in the brand far beyond the sale, and is the basis for Hubspot’s flywheel model.

“Today, customers are skeptical, knowledgeable, and have bigger expectations than ever before. And one of those expectations is that businesses should care about more than transactions.” – Hubspot

Rather than a typical sales funnel where potential customers come in the top and drop out the bottom (not unlike sausage meat), the flywheel attracts audiences through engaging communication, delights them with a product or service, and creates a feeling of loyalty that keeps them coming back for more. Bonus points: they bring their pals along for the ride.

Get this right and your flywheel won’t stop spinning, and a spinning flywheel means continued business growth.

Why is purpose so important in business?

According to a Forbes interview with Jeff Fromm, CMO and expert on Gen Z and millennials, “a purpose driven brand is a successful brand.” After all, people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it, and the spirit in which you do it is more important than ever.

The 2018 Cone/Porter Novelli Purpose Study found that “78% of Americans believe companies must do more than just make money; they must positively impact society as well.” And 68% say they would be more willing to share content from purpose-driven companies.

Due to COVID-19 and the global pandemic, purpose in business matters more than ever. And this is only one part of the story. With increasing global pressures, businesses have “an opportunity, and an obligation, to engage in the urgent needs of our planet” (Mckinsey 2020).  

It’s no longer enough to talk a good talk with a set of values slapped to the wall in the staff room. Businesses need to act, and marketing can be the mouthpiece for action. When done effectively, purpose-led marketing will enrol audiences in your vision, putting a stake in the ground for a better way of doing business, all while making a much bigger impact with brand and communications.

So, is purpose-led marketing really worth it? You decide.

• 88% of consumers want to know that the brands they’re supporting have a real impact.  
• 72% of consumers are more likely to recommend a brand that supports a good cause.
• 73% of consumers are willing to swap brands in order to support one that stands behind a cause they believe in.

How to make an impact with purpose-led marketing

The key to purpose-led marketing is authenticity. That means walking your talk. So, before we delve into the tactics of an effective purpose-led marketing strategy, there is one golden rule we need to be aware of. Always be consistent, transparent and back up your claims with action.

It’s not enough to tell people what they want to hear. 88% of consumers want to know the brands they are supporting have a real impact. Purpose-led brands need to be totally transparent and authentic in their marketing to show they are truly driving social change.

Here’s how to make more impact with purpose-led marketing.

1.   Know who you’re talking to

This is marketing 101, and you’d be surprised how many businesses don’t know who they’re talking to. If that’s you, you’re certainly not alone. You may have a vague idea of demographics or an avatar of your ideal customer. This isn’t enough. Purpose-led marketing requires a deep understanding of your audiences as real people with real desires and challenges.

You need to know your audiences like you know your friends. When you understand them fully, you can communicate with them in their language about the topics and values that matter most to them.

One of the best ways to understand your customers is to have conversations with them. This could be one to one, via a survey or even in a social media poll. People love to talk about themselves, so use this as an opportunity to gain some real insight into your audiences, always coming back to that all important question: “How can I help you?”.

Alternatively, social listening is a fantastic tool to get inside the world of your audiences. Hangout where they are online and take note of the sort of topics they talk most passionately about.

2.   Get clear on your values

With buy-in from your whole team, create a clearly defined set of values that encapsulate everything you stand for as a business and relate back to the values of your audience.

Try to avoid being generic. Your values are what should steer your business, and if done right, they inform absolutely every decision from the inside out.

If you feel stuck, get your team together to explore your business and what you stand for and write out every word that comes to mind. Then group these by theme until you’re left with four groups. Choose the word that best encapsulates everything in that group. Those are your four values.

3.   Use the voices of your audience to tell the story

Once you know your values, who your audience are and what they care about, you can create opportunities for them to get involved in the story. This is known as user generated content and  55% of consumers trust it over any other form of marketing.

Billie is a brand that has combined purpose and the voice of the people to create global brand fame. This is a razor company that promotes the freedom to have body hair, and they feature images of their community adorning body hair in any which way they desire.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Billie (@billie)

Their message is the opposite of the traditional approach to ad copy (ie. something is wrong with you and this product is the solution), instead Billie has forged global acclaim through celebrating all people exactly as they are. They’ve succeeded by turning advertising on its head.

4.   Make shared values the core of your communications

The reason for Billie’s success is simple. They have tapped into the values, needs and desires of their target audience. In Billie’s case this is Gen Zs who are sociopolitically forthright, tired of gender expectations and beauty standards, who will often only spend their money at companies they ethically agree with.

Billie delivers a clear, empowering and inspiring brand message. All of their marketing is audience-centric, and anyone who comes into contact with them will know immediately what they stand for, and for whom. This is not just a razor brand.

Dove is another brand who’ve had great success from being purpose-led. Their real beauty campaign came out just on the cusp of a new conversation around beauty standards, and it made a huge impact. This is not just a soap company, and rather than focusing on selling their products, Dove focuses on enrolling audiences into their mission and supporting other campaigns who are doing the same.

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A post shared by Dove Global Channel ???? (@dove)

5.   Have a set of clearly defined messaging pillars

Once you know what your values are and what you stand for as a company, you can build these into clearly defined messaging pillars under which all content sits. Messaging pillars can be seen as the backbone of your content strategy, they are the overarching themes you talk about and each relates to one or more of your core values.

For example, purpose-led marketing is one of our messaging pillars at The Joyful, and you’ll hear us talking about it a lot in different ways with a variety of angles. This builds authority for your brand around specific subjects, creates a consistent message and gives you a really clear direction for your content.

If a proposed piece of content doesn’t fit under a messaging pillar, it doesn’t get published.

6.   Create authority around your purpose

Create more impact with your marketing by talking about your brand’s core purpose regularly and with expert insight.

This includes your own content and could also mean guesting on podcasts, writing guest blogs, offering insights to be used as quotes in articles and white papers. Wherever you choose to take your message, make sure the publication aligns to it.

You can also invite experts with a shared purpose to be interviewed on your blog, podcast or video series. Partnering with individuals or organisations who share similar values will give you more kudos, enrich your content with a variety of views and help you to reach new audiences.

Whichever tactic you use to speak about your purpose, always be consistent.

Purpose-led marketing always comes back to authentic communication

When we share purposeful messages and operate from a set of clearly defined values in business, we create an opportunity for our customers and audiences to make the world that bit better too, simply by voting with their currency. We’re not only changing the way businesses communicate in the world, we’re changing the world.

Whether you are a well-established organisation or a sole trader launching a new venture, expending the appropriate time and resources to create an achievable plan will give you and your business the clarity, confidence, and control to attain your goals.

Check out Artus Marketing on Adzooma Marketplace.

Digital marketing post-COVID

The businesses that have survived and thrived through the pandemic have been the ones that have implemented proactive rather than reactive approaches in the face of external problems. As opposed to adapting, these companies have developed resilience, retaining their new knowledge and tested strategies to equip them for similar situations in the future.

Creating a digital marketing strategy that embraces this resilient mindset will help towards futureproofing its success. However, with competition growing even fiercer online, it will also take an innovative approach to be effective. Only the biggest, boldest, and smartest examples of digital marketing are likely to cut it, providing an opportunity to forge your most creative strategy yet.

The basics of digital marketing

Search online for digital marketing strategies and you will be greeted by an abundance of different approaches. From the more traditional forms of precision planning to contemporary cloud-based constructs, knowing how to improve on your existing strategic methods or to start completely from scratch can be intimidating. 

Whether your company has a fully-fledged digital marketing team or you are going it alone, there is no right or wrong system to use. The best method is to start by identifying your key goals and come up with ways in which they might be achieved. Reflect on your past strengths and weaknesses, establish realistic targets, then try a variety of digital marketing methods to see which ones help or hinder your progress. 

Here are some of the basics of digital marketing that every business should already have in place.

1. Website, blog, and social media channels

These need to be visually engaging, kept up to date, and fully optimised to offer the best user experience. Maintaining an active online presence is crucial, and it works both ways. Your digital marketing strategy should not only include regular and original content updates but also guidance on instigating, encouraging, and maintaining communication with new and existing customers as well as colleagues and even competitors. Your online presence should mirror your business.

2. Search engine optimisation (SEO)

If you think you have already got this nailed, think again. Google regularly update their parameters to ensure more precise results for search engine users. What may have been effective on your website in the past can change literally overnight, resulting in data that no longer performs and a reduction in traffic. Focus on content and links that demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T), as used by Google to determine site values and rankings. You will also find plenty of SEO advice online including this blog by Artus Digital Marketing.

Another way to monitor your SEO is through Adzooma’s SEO Performance Report, which analyses your website and identifies immediate actions you can take to improve. You’ll then get a more detailed breakdown of your performance into 4 key areas: keyword performance, onsite SEO, page speed and backlinks.

The report is available to all Adzooma users, try the basic version for free to get a taste of what this report can offer. Not an Adzooma user? Sign up for free, here. 

3. Online advertising

The next step on from a successful website and active social media channels is online advertising. With its ease to set up and impressive potential for return on investment, using the likes of Google, Microsoft and Facebook adverts is a must in any digital marketing strategy. Try this blog on how to get started with online adverts for practical tips you can implement yourself or contact the Adzooma team for specific support with managing Google and Microsoft campaigns.

Specific strategic objectives

It is also worth keeping in mind that your digital marketing strategy should always be focused on your specific digital objectives rather than merely contributing to your wider marketing end goals. For example, you might want to find new ways to generate leads (have a look at this blog post for ideas), or you could set specific ROI targets for your online adverts.

Resilient digital strategies

During 2020, it was not enough for businesses to merely weather the storm. Being able to adjust to the constantly changing situation was one thing, but for a company to see in 2021 on a high, they needed to have developed a stronger, smarter, and sharper perspective of their aims and audiences. Growing a resilient business became the new buzzword, and the benefits are as applicable to digital marketing strategies as they are to company cultures and teams. 

While much of your latest digital marketing strategy should be specific to your current company objectives, the easiest and most obvious way to futureproof your plans is to employ this resilient approach. You need to understand what scenarios could arise, and plan ways in which you and your team will be able to overcome them (including specific details of any resources required).

Take the time to reflect on what you have learned from the previous twelve months from a purely digital marketing perspective. Evaluate each element in turn and note how or even if your company can replicate or develop these further. Including resilience building into your strategic planning now will pay dividends in the long run when it comes to strengthening your online presence.  

Understand your audience

Creating and updating a profile for your target customers will undoubtedly form a key component of your marketing strategy, but it should not be simply replicated for your digital plans. While there may be many elements of similarity to the audience you attract into your physical workspace, your online audience are likely to have different expectations and needs.

When it comes to e-commerce, many businesses find themselves appealing to completely new customers who are free from the restrictions of geography, time, and accessibility. Companies therefore need to build up detailed information about their existing and new online customers, as well as exploring any potential markets that could be tapped into in the future.

For a more direct approach to data sourcing, social media is ideal for creating opinion polls and encouraging feedback from existing and potential customers. Include links to questionnaires on your blog or in e-newsletters and offer incentives such as prizes or giveaways. You can also collect valuable analytics about your website visitors to inform your audience profiles.

Prioritise content marketing

While digital advertising continues to be incredibly effective, there has been a recent shift in online engagement that has led to a surge in the success of content marketing. Even before lockdown, internet usage had been steadily increasing with many in-person pursuits being replaced by their digital equivalents. Factor in months of enforced time at home and our online worlds have become all the more vital for communicating, learning, working and relaxing.

The difference with content marketing this time is the focus on quality. Just as Google assesses a website for its E-A-T credentials, online users are interested in sources that can provide a voice of expertise. From 2000-word blog articles and free downloadable guides to engaging webinars and professional podcasts, offering exclusive resources has become hugely beneficial to businesses.

An additional advantage is that most companies will already be well versed in digital content marketing, so it may only be a matter of extending wordcounts and demonstrating your industry knowledge to add value to your content. Take a look at these seven top content marketing ideas for inspiration.

Manage your online reputation

Regardless of the sector, type and size, every business has a brand image to build. It is an ongoing process and should feed into all the elements of company practice, including digital marketing. As we have seen time and time again, making even the smallest of mistakes online can cost a company its reputation and customers. It is therefore important for businesses to continually assess and actively manage their online reputation as part of their digital marketing strategy.

When the digital world is not only recording but often amplifying your online activity, keeping track of what you are posting and how it is being received is vital – and it works both ways. While your business should post content responsibly, you also have a duty to respond to content that concerns your company, your customers, and your sector. Negative review on Google? Send a reply. Active feed about changes in your industry? Provide an expert opinion. What you leave unsaid can often do as much damage as what you do say. 

Including a methodology for reputation management within your digital marketing strategy will help you efficiently monitor, improve, and even futureproof your digital brand image for the long-term. Contact a professional marketing agency such as Artus Digital Marketing if you need support.

Going forward with digital marketing

The challenges of 2020 have prompted businesses to be even more forward-thinking when it comes to short- and long-term strategic planning. Having found new and increasingly innovative ways to use digital technology, there is now the opportunity for businesses and professionals to reapproach online marketing with a fresh perspective.

As with any strategy, there are no guaranteed methods to futureproofing your plans. Your digital marketing objectives should be formed with the intention of amendments and improvements being made. Continue with the practices that have benefitted your business in the past, develop some of the suggestions for resilient digital strategies in this article, and ensure you are regularly measuring, analysing, and acting on your metrics.

Digital marketing is developing every single day, and part of the adventure of running a business is being along for the ride. There is no need to be an analytics expert or a coding master to make the most of your online presence. Use the resources available to you, learn from success stories, and above all be creative. For business and buyer alike, there is no greater motivator than originality.

It’s a set of practical advice meant for those who know they should be looking at content marketing more seriously. From this point on, I’ll assume that’s you!

Despite years of looking at trends and thinking, ‘oooo yeh, I really must get on top of it this year’, your content marketing is still ad-hoc and getting patchy results.

Well, let’s get that fixed.

Your content in 2021:

Let’s make it the year of getting it together. No grand plans.

Let’s take simple, practical, successful steps. Lay down process. Nail the basics. Learn what works for you each step of the way.

There’s a mix of advice below. Some of it is at the strategic level, some are really simple tactical pointers. Pick and choose the items that make the most sense for you and your business.

Check out Burning Need on Adzooma Marketplace

Actually have a content marketing plan

What’s a plan that’s not written down?

I don’t know either – but it’s not a plan!

A recent survey found only 41% of B2B marketers had a documented content strategy.

But, want to know something interesting?

69% of those who considered their marketing very successful had a written plan.

On the flip side, just 16% of those who considered their strategies really unsuccessful had a written plan.

It doesn’t need to be long. It can be really simple. But it definitely needs to be written down.

At a minimum, you should understand:

• Why you’re doing content marketing in the first place (your ‘content purpose’)
• What your goals are
• Who your target audience is
• Which topics you create content for
• What your audience wants to know
• What you’re going to create and when (download my free 2021 editorial calendar template to make this really easy)
• How you’re going to promote your content
• How you’re going to measure success.

Give it a go. It’ll make you more organised, more consistent and most importantly, more successful in your efforts to win with content marketing.

Sounding a bit overwhelming? Don’t worry. I’ve put together a step-by-step guide on how to create your own content marketing plan here.

Start working in ‘content packs’

This is my favourite way to work in content marketing. It means you’re never thinking about one piece of content in isolation. Instead, you’re always thinking ‘how do I create a lead-building funnel for this topic?’.

This is important. One of the biggest mistakes businesses make in content marketing is to just blog about ideas that pop into the head of the owner.

Instead, it makes way more sense to start with a topic and a goal.

I personally like to focus on building out ONE content pack per month. Which means I’m deep diving on a single topic. Once the pack is up and running, I can always come back and add more pieces to it in the future.

The point is, it’s a ‘pack’ of content that all works together towards one goal.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Start with your objective. Do you want to add prospects to your mailing list? Create leads or sales for your product? Sell a digital content bundle? Know where you want to finish before you start.
2. Choose one of your major content topics that’s relevant to your objective (these should be in your content marketing plan). E.g. content marketing.
3. Decide for which sub-topic you’re going to create content. E.g. ‘creating a content marketing strategy’.
4. Put your reader’s hat on. What do they want to know? What do they struggle with? What do they wish they could achieve? Make a list of the questions they have in this space. To do that:
   • Start with the questions you know they have
   • Add to the list by checking the ‘people also search for’ section at the bottom of Google’s search results, or checking out answerthepublic.com
   • Ask your audience! Find out what they want to know. Text your best customers, email your list or even ask them on LinkedIn.
5. Build out keywords and check for the most in-demand questions using your SEO platform if you have one (think Moz, Semrush or Ahrefs, for example). If you don’t have one, check out the free Google plugin Keyword Surfer for keyword suggestions right in your Google Search Results pages. Use what you learn to prioritise the questions you want to answer.
6. Arrange the questions you want to answer in the format of an imaginary conversation with your audience. If they sat down to chat to you, how would the conversation go? Think about it from the first question they’d ask about the topic, right through to the questions they’d ask just before they fulfilled your ultimate goal. This conversation effectively becomes your content funnel.
7. Turn questions into content pieces. To do that:
   • Decide if any questions should be grouped into a single piece of content
   • Decide which content format would best answer these questions for your audience
   • Give the content piece a draft title to help you imagine it (this will help when you write the content brief)
   • Assign a call-to-action to each content piece. For example, if you’ve got an introductory blog article and a detailed ‘how-to’ guide, you might want the guide to be the call-to-action at the end of your article. This exercise links your content pieces together to form a funnel. Make sure your later pieces point towards your ultimate objective. But, only when it would make sense to your audience and their journey through the topic.

For example, here’s my content pack to which this blog article belongs:

Ask your customer stuff

How do you know what your customers want to read or watch?

Do you know what their challenges, frustrations and questions are? Do you know what they’re hoping to achieve?

Well, when was the last time you asked them?

Content Marketing Institute has a great piece about this, here. It basically says we as marketers are impatiently ‘waiting to content’ – in other words, we’re not very good at listening, but we’re very good at rushing in and saying whatever we want to say.

They also identified these top challenges we have when thinking about the audience in our market:

Notice a theme?

You could easily solve each of these challenges by talking to your audience.

In fact, they can help you to:

• Understand which content topics are most important to them
• Understand when and where you need to talk about something
• Know exactly what their questions are within a topic
• Empathise with the challenges they’re currently facing
• Envision the ultimate transformation they want to make by busting those challenges
• Prioritise what they want from a business like yours
• Make a list of places people like them are actually likely to see (or hear) your content

Worried about how you speak to them in the first place? Here are ways to have a conversation with your target audience, from least to most involved:

• Use a social listening tool like Awario to see what people are saying
• Jump into relevant forums in places like Quora or Reddit
• Run a quick poll on Twitter or LinkedIn
• Ask the question in relevant groups on LinkedIn
• Send an email out to your mailing list asking for their opinion – incentivise with a small gift or competition it if you want lots of responses
• Set up a quick coffee chat with some of your best customers for a more in-depth view

Keep it light, keep it fun. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how willing people are to help.

Anticipate new needs

Spoiler alert: this is one of those tiresome ‘new normal’ posts you’re fed up of seeing everywhere.

I’ll make this quick!

When planning your content for the year, answer these quick questions:

• Are my customer’s needs the same as they were before coronavirus in my market?
• Do they fulfil those needs in the same way?
• Do they buy things in the same way?
• Would they use our products or services in the same way?
• Do they obtain and digest information in the same way (if they used to do all their research by chatting to people at events, there’s a definite gap to be filled)
• Are their questions the same?

If the answer to any of those questions is ‘no’, then put yourself in their shoes. How can you be as helpful to them as possible?

Guess what? This isn’t about being morose or downbeat – I promise!

We’ve always adapted to our latest situation as marketers. It’s about moving forward with the same cool, empathetic head you would have put on for any other change in your market.

Create a paid-for content piece

Hell yeah, I’m serious. Challenge yourself!

I dare you to create a content piece with the intention of charging for it.

Nothing focuses your mind to the quality of what you’re creating like the realisation that it needs to be good enough for someone to pay for it.

You’ll find yourself asking some great questions:

• How can we add as much value as possible?
• What would make them want to pay for it?
• How will it help them achieve something tangible?

It doesn’t matter how much you charge either – whether it’s £999 or £0.99.

The point is, it forces you to look at what you’re creating through the critical eye of your customer. You have to consider their journey and their experience.

See what you learn about your content, your process and your team by taking up this challenge. Pull those lessons through into your content creation process.

I guarantee it’ll make you a better content marketer!

Focus more on content promotion

76% of content marketers use organic traffic as a key metric to measuring content success. Only 22% use backlinks – Semrush

I love this statistic.

Why?

It highlights one of our main challenges as content marketers.

We love to create content. We do not love to promote our content.

The reality is this:

Content promotion is the unsexy bulk of the content marketing iceberg.

In other words, it’s what keeps a good content marketing strategy afloat.

Using organic traffic to measure content marketing success is like measuring the success of your vegetable patch by how often it rains.

You’re not taking responsibility for things you actually control and you’re not focussing on the growth of the stuff that matters.

If we focus instead on backlinks, it means we’re focusing on content promotion.

‘Which sites might promote my content?’

‘Who has a similar audience to me’?

‘How do I convince them to mention it in their blog, retweet it or even let me guest post?’

For every major content piece you create, you’ll want to put together a mini content promotion plan.

It’s essentially a checklist of all the actions you’re going to take to generate as many mentions and backlinks towards your content as possible.

This is the biggest focus of your content plan. Your content could be incredible. But if nobody sees it, it’s a total waste of your time.

Plus, getting good at this puts you ahead of 90% (probably) of the content creators in your industry.

Show your face

Pop quiz!

People connect best with:

1. Heavy whitepapers
2. Other people
3. Labradoodles

The answer is pretty obvious…

I’d buy anything that dog put in front of me.

Sadly, unless you can teach Bailey to create ‘How-to’ videos about cybersecurity, you’re stuck doing them yourself.

Research by Gensler shows 94% of people will recommend a brand they’re emotionally engaged with.

The easiest, fastest way to connect with your audience is to show them that your brand is made up of real people. And video is the easiest way to bring people to life (until we reach Harry Potter-style photo printing, it’s just the way it is).

So the next time you’re creating content, ask yourself – could this be a straight-forward ‘talk-to-the-camera’ style video?

They cost next to nothing to make, they’re great for social and blogs alike and you can use them over and over again.

Plus, video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year than anyone else.

Wondering how? Check out this great talking head video on how to create a great talking head video.

Summary: Get practical, aim for incremental wins and keep trying new things in 2021

If you need any content marketing advice on how to form a plan, lay down your process and nail the basics, just let us know!

I look forward to seeing what improvements you make to your content marketing efforts across 2021.

There are a number of reasons why you’d do this:

• It’s a great way to drive traffic to your website
• It’s a chance for you to gain excellent exposure for your brand
• It’s a way to build relationships with people in your industry
• It’s a long trusted method of giving your site’s Domain Rating/Domain Authority a helping hand in the form of backlinks

We here at Adzooma have been putting guest blogging into practice for a while now and we’ve seen some great results:

However, these results aren’t all that easy to come by. The seas of guest blogging can be a little choppy, it’s certainly not plain sailing. There are rules to abide by, best practices to follow, and a long list of things you need to know before you start.

In this article I’m going to guide you through all that along with helping you outline your guest blogging goals, what to pitch, how to pitch and where to pitch.

Now let’s get started.

Where should you start?

When you start considering guest blogging for your business you firstly need to define what you actually want from it.

We pointed out the main four reasons for doing so at the top, but I just want to expand on that a little:

1. Increasing your brand’s exposure

Writing guest posts simply puts your brand’s name in front of people. Some sites won’t allow you to sell your services in the article, nor even mention your brand in the article, however you will always be able to feature yourself in the bio and on highly viewed sites this is great exposure – hopefully it’ll culminate in an uptick in brand searches too.

2. Driving traffic to your website

This may come directly or indirectly. Not every site will allow you a link back so that’s where you’ll rely on brand searches to do the job. However most will, and with smart in-post links you may see those referral metrics in Google Analytics skyrocket.

3. Building relationships with people in your industry

It’s always important to be on good terms with those in your industry and those in your industry’s press – I scratch your back, you scratch my back is important in business. Guest posting gives you an excuse to make contact with people and from there who knows what it’ll lead to.

4. Boosting your website authority

Now in 2021, this is a little more difficult than it used to be. Google have recently said that all guest posts should be no follow links, therefore the “link equity” you gain from no follow backlinks is lessened and won’t have as much of an impact on your website’s authority in the eyes of Google – ignoring this can result in manual penalties. However, contrary to what some people say, no follow links are a signal and will still have some impact, so don’t discount them entirely.

You don’t have to just kill one bird with one stone, though. You can go for all four. This may dilute your offering so have a think about it, but once you’ve decided what your goals are (note: it may be hard to put a number by these goals to begin with), it’s important to dig a little deeper if you really want to see the fruits of your labour down the line.

For example, if you want to increase your brand’s exposure, you need to ask yourself questions like:

• “In what way do I want to increase my brand’s exposure?”
• “How do I want to be perceived when people see my brand associated with this content?”

If you don’t define and scope this out properly, your brand may be seen and forgotten, or seen and associated with something entirely different from what you want to be associated with.

The same with driving traffic. Ask questions like:

• “Do you just want people to land onto your website?
• “Do you want people to land on to your website and then buy your product?”

There is no right or wrong answer here, conversions are great but not the be all and end all.

Everything is dependent on what you want to gain.

So start by asking yourself as many questions as you can, like some of the examples provided above. From there you can really drill down into what you want to achieve and why.

This is such a vital step and needs to be in your mind throughout the whole process, because it will make everything else so much easier.

What should I post?

Relevant content, of course. If you’re running a surveying company, you don’t want to write about the intricate details of Tom Brady’s career just because it’s the only way you can get a backlink on a high domain site. This won’t move any of your needles.

It also doesn’t make you look like an expert. Instead, if you’re a design agency and you’re writing an article about UX laws and you’re wowing the reader, that reader is going to go, “Wow, this person really knows what they’re talking about, who are they?!” Then you’ve automatically made yourself look like a thought leader in someone’s eyes.

But more than relevancy and your expertise you need to think a bit wider too, like for example evergreen content. Evergreen content is essentially timeless content, the Pink Floyd or Miles Davis of content, content that won’t go out of date.

Because essentially, if you’ve got a chance of guest posting, you want your article to always be out there so you’re still getting readers, clicks and potentially conversions five years down the line.

This isn’t easy, especially in some industries where things change all the time, plus it’s not a hard and fast rule either. Some sites will only accept newsworthy content, which is fine and newsworthy content has the potential to create great noise on social and via Google News too. But it’s important to get the balance right.

It’s also really important to soft sell your expertise too. Some sites you can overtly sell yourself within the copy, but you’ve got to be smooth with it. If all of a sudden you post a pretty much CTA in the copy, people are going to be wise to what you’re doing and be put off.

Instead, be subtle and make it part of your article. Here’s an example we did for PPC Hero for an article on the Best APIs for SEO & PPC Managers:

We listed all the best solutions, then featured ourselves in the list. This is a great way to make yourself look great while not drawing attention to the fact you’re selling to them in the process.

However, some sites you’ll have to be even more subtle. So when we wrote an article on How to Get National PR Coverage When Starting From Zero for Jeff Bullas it was crucial for us to give context around who Adzooma are so the reader could relate our method to our PR goals. And there was the crucial place to soft sell and bring attention to the Adzooma product:

It’s also important to create content that will resonate with the site’s audience too, but I’m slightly stepping on the toes of the next section so I’ll move on to that now.

How to pitch

This will differ enormously from site to site. Some sites have really strict guidelines when it comes to pitching like Wired for example. While others want you to give them the blog straight off the bat like PPC Hubbub.

Of course, always follow the pitching guidelines where possible, but if there are no pitching guidelines, here are a few tips:

• Thoroughly scout the website you’re pitching to. To create a successful pitch you need to make sure what you’re pitching fits in what they currently publish
• Make your pitch personal. I know sending out mass emails saves time, but people see straight through it in 2021
• Provide more than one topic and include a two, three sentence explainer of what it will consist of and why it will be a great fit for their site
• Be informal, but not over friendly. We’ve received some awful, sickly pitches down the years and there’s nothing more off putting
• Give a little bit of background of who you are and why you’re an expert on the topic that you’re pitching – a link to recently published work or LinkedIn page works here
• Tell them you will follow SEO best practice and include a target keyword. Every site loves it if you can offer them a potential to see growth in the SERPs

All these tips aren’t just a good way of getting published. They will also make your content perform better once it’s live too, especially the scouting of the previous articles. This gives you an idea of what tone to use and what you can include in your content like images, screenshots, stats, infographics, case studies, etc.

You won’t get replies to every pitch you send out, so reach out to people who know you or have mentioned you online to begin with.

Also, this is a long term tactic, but it will pay off. Try to personally interact with journalists, thought leaders and colleagues within your industry through social media. It sounds almost too simple in practice, but what you’re doing is moving from unknown emailer to, “Hey, that person I converse with semi-often on social media emailed me. I like the way they think, I’ll give this a read.”

Because no matter how great your idea, until they know who you are, you’re outside the circle of trust. But by treating these people like actual real human beings and interacting with them online, you’re striking up a genuine personal relationship that could help in a professional capacity too.

It’s important to always have your emotional intelligence dialed up so as not to come across creepy or weird, obviously, and I’m not saying you should start faking being someone’s friend. But just treat them like a real human being, offer them your personality and your insight, then see what happens when you start offering them your work later down the line.

Where should I post and where can I post?

This of course depends on your starting plan, but whatever you’ve decided upon, that word relevancy again is the key for this section.

So when you’re searching for places to post, make sure it relates in some way to your business. It doesn’t have to be a like for like site, say you run a plumbing business you could look to websites who write about small businesses, or maybe go a little bit more out there and go to a site who write about environmental sustainability.

As long as there is something there that fits naturally in with your business and your goals, then that’s the place for you.

But don’t forget to look at traffic and Domain Rating (DR) / Domain Authority (DA) too. If you’re wanting clicks to your site and to build your brand, posting on a site that doesn’t receive any traffic isn’t going to move any needles, and if you’re looking to improve your website’s authority by getting a link on a low DR / DA site, neither will that.

Moz’s SEO toolbar is a free easy way to keep an eye on site DA – you can just add it as an extension to your Chrome browser and everytime you land on a website it will tell you the site’s DA. While adding the free Keyword Surfer to Chrome will give you the estimated monthly traffic for every URL that appears in the SERPs. They’re two great tools that don’t add any time to your research process.

There are no benchmarks you should look out for, it’s best to just judge for yourself by comparing your site’s DR / DA and monthly traffic to a potential guest posting spot. However I’d avoid going for sites with spam scores over 30 (Moz’s toolbar comes equipped with a Spam Score indicator too). These sites can hurt the health of your site so should be avoided.

So where do you find sites that will house your blogs? Here’s a few places you should look and few techniques to finding more:

Adzooma

Of course I had to put this first. I’ll keep it short, but we here at Adzooma are currently open to guest posts across a whole array of marketing disciplines. As long as your piece has some kind of marketing element to it, we’re all ears.

You can find more information here or get in touch today.

Websites to guest post

There are some great resources out there if you’re looking to find loads of sites to contact in one place.

This piece from Solvid features over 300 websites that accept guest posts, including specific categories for business, digital marketing, lifestyle and technology, while they’ve also inserted a column for DA, Alexa (site popularity), and “difficulty” to get published.

Advanced Web Ranking have also created a similar resource, featuring over 150 sites, including specific categories for digital marketing, travel & tourism, finance, sports & fitness, health, home & garden, family & community, business, and much more. They’ve also included the DA beside each one too.

And there is a website called AllTop.com too which is intensely comprehensive, though it is a little bit of a mad site and not quite as structured and neat as the other two, but if you’re willing to dig it’s a great resource.

I must say, some on these sites are outdated (which isn’t surprising given how many sites they’ve collated), but there are certainly more hits than misses, and they definitely give you a head start in your search for publication.

Utilise the search engines

Google is a big friend here, as is Twitter. You’ll find loads of potential opportunities by just using the following search strings on both sites. Let’s say you’re in the finance industry, for ease:

• Finance “guest post”
• Finance “write for us”
• Finance “guest article”
• Finance “contributing writer”
• Finance “submit blog post”
• Finance “articles wanted”
• Finance “contribute to our site”
• Finance “contributors”
• Finance “guest column”
• Finance “submit content”
• Finance “articles wanted”

Then have a think about prolific guest bloggers in your space. You may not know any off the top of your head, so this may require a little bit of searching to find someone

My recommendation would be to have a click around on some authors on your industry’s most well known blogs and then give them a Google search.

I’m going to show you the example of what I found off the bat with Kirk Williams here, he’s a big player in the paid search industry:

These are just the first results that came up, and 4 of the 6 results are guest posts. There are loads more further down and on the following pages.

Analyse your competitors

So, this one you will have to find a paid solution for. Two great ones are SEMRush and SEO PowerSuite.

Once you’ve signed up, though, it’s really easy. Say you’re using SEMrush, you just have to head to the backlinks analytics tab, type in the domain and you’ll get a list like so:

I’ve filtered these by Follow links, initially. Then the process is just clicking each link to try and find the guest posts. Once you’ve found them, head to the contact page and send your pitch over.

Another tool you can use is Adzooma’s SEO Performance Report which will allow you to get ahead of your competitors by finding keywords they’re missing. You can also compare your client’s performance with a competitor, showing how they compare with the competition.

The report is available to all Adzooma users, try the basic version for free to get a taste of what this report can offer. Not an Adzooma user? Sign up for free, here.

How to know if you’re successful

Like I said earlier in the article, it’s hard to put a specific number beside goals you want to achieve when you’re starting out but this will become easier once you have a benchmark to compare yourself to.

But knowing whether you’re successful or not comes down to two things really: being published and an uptick in analytics.

Yes, being published is a success. It’s not always easy to do, especially when you’re starting out and you’re unknown. Don’t let me put you off by saying that, but I don’t want you to think this is an easy process because it’s not.

However, it does get easier. Just like in every aspect of the world, once you’ve got that initial foot in the door, other doors will open.

Then from there, it’s important to keep an eye on analytics. Have a look at those referral stats in Google Analytics and brand searches in Google Search Console, see if your guest posts are making an impact or not.

If they’re not, maybe the site you posted on isn’t great or maybe you didn’t soft sell yourself well in the article.

Whatever it may be, don’t give up. Finesse the formula and get straight back to it.

Or just get a digital PR agency to do it for you.