A Brighter Web | Grow your business with digital marketing

Keeping Up With Key Business Metrics

• 1. Website traffic
  • For us, it's mostly checking for red flags.
  • Basically, that’s any spikes in traffic, either good or bad.
• 2.  Engagement rates
  • This specifically refers to social media.
  • Engagement is when someone actually interacts with your posts.
  • Actions like sharing or commenting are always more valuable.
• 3. Sales Pipeline
  • We'll talk more about this in our next episode.
  • This is a leading indicator for GreenMellen.
  • This is similar to a marketing funnel to track a customer's progress.
• 4. Click-through rates
  • This specifically applies to email marketing.
  • Clicks are more valuable than opens, which aren’t as reliable.
  • Follow the users back to your website to watch what they do.
• 5. Cash balance
  • This is a trailing indicator, but obviously quite important.
  • Try to keep at least a quarter’s worth of expenses on hand.
• 6. Conversions
  • What are you trying to get your audience to do?
  • Eg. fill out a form, download a file, buy a product, call you
  • Find ways to measure these things—eg. Google Analytics events
  • Once you can measure, you can optimize by testing to see what increases conversions
• 7. Support tickets
  • This might not apply to your company, but we do a lot of support and maintenance for our clients.
  • We track both the number of tickets and our average response time.
  • GreenMellen uses Help Scout for that.
• 8. Return on investment
  • It’s difficult to measure but very valuable
  • This is a bit like the marketer's holy grail—elusive and we're not sure if it really exists
  • This is why marketing is often the first thing to get cut—it's hard to accurately measure
  • This becomes easier if you can measure conversions and the customer lifetime value

Maximizing Your Work Productivity

• What is the goal with productivity?
  • Make the most of time
  • Not just to stay busy
• Keeping your mind like water is a key to staying productive.
• Email productivity
  • Is Inbox zero a realistic goal?
  • Emails aren't messages, they're actions
• Task management
  • Task management systems: Asana, Clickup, Teamwork
  • Hundreds of Ways to Get S#!+ Done—and We Still Don’t (Wired Magazine article)
  • Block off time on your calendar to get work done
• Taking notes
  • Disposable notes —> trusted systems.
  • What are the best ways to take notes?
• Deep work
  • Deep Work by Cal Newport
  • Mickey is better about "deep study" than deep work.
    Things like Kindle, reMarkable and Brain.fm help with that.
  • Task switching is tempting, but it's the enemy of productivity. 
  • Deep work takes intentionality, but it always yields the best results.
  • Find a space that's free from distractions. 
  • Shut the door. 
  • Clear off your desk. 
  • Turn off notifications.
  • Put on music or white noise in headphones.

10 Books Every Marketer Should Read

Mickey's List

1. Think Again by Adam Grant
2. Getting Things Done by David Allen
3. The Go-Giver by Bob Burg
4. How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens
5. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Robert's List

1. Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull
2. Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller
3. Everybody Writes by Ann Hadley
4. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk
5. Deep Work by Cal Newport

Other Book Suggestions

• This is Marketing by Seth Godin
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
• Essentialism by Greg McKeon
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Outrageous Marketing by Scott Dikkers
• Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
• Finish by Jon Acuff
• Give & Take by Adam Grant
• Covert Cows & Chick-fil-A by Steve Robinson

Is Blogging Even Relevant Anymore?

We're taking a look at the state of blogging as we head into 2022. Mickey Mellen has been blogging every day for more than a year.

He’s following Seth Godin's advice that everyone should blog, every day. It seems crazy, but it's largely not for the reasons you think. Here’s why to blog daily: 

• Writing daily helps you grow yourself and your thoughts.
• There are some SEO benefits, but that's secondary.
• Really, it helps open your eyes to the world, and then really unpack what you see.

So businesses should blog daily too?

• Almost certainly not, as there are different goals.
• For most of our clients, SEO is a big part of this, which is a different kind of post.
• Research keywords and write more robust (yet focused) content.

About how long should posts be? There’s no hard and fast rules but here are some thoughts:

• As long as they need to be, but that's not very specific.
• Personally, Mickey just writes what's needed.
• For business, we generally recommend a bit longer, perhaps 500-1000 words. 
• Longer form content gives more detail and content for Google to consume.

What are other advantages to blogging for your business in general?

• It's good fodder for your social media and email marketing. Much of what we produce in those channels links to our blog posts.
• It can be good for clients. We frequently send links to clients and leads with blog posts that help them understand a particular problem.

What should people do if they're interested in learning how to blog daily? Just do it. Start a WordPress or Medium blog and just start writing. Learn by doing.

Keeping Your Email Marketing Legit

There are three main reasons why you should care about email legitimacy.

1. Legality: don't get sued
2. Deliverability: Email inboxes are more limiting. 
3. User experience: build customer loyalty

CAN-SPAM is the main legislation for email marketing in the United States. It stands for The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act in 2003. Fair warning, there are a bunch of acronyms in this episode. 

Here are 7 things to know about CAN-SPAM.

1. No misleading info in the header. (From, to, reply to)
2. No deceptive subject lines.
3. Tell recipients where you're located. Usually in the footer.
4. Let people opt-out. Honor the opt-out promptly (within 10 days).
5. Identify unsolicited emails as an ad. (Lots of loopholes)
6. Don't scrape emails. Can still buy lists.
7. Monitor what others (eg. marketing agencies) are doing for you. Still liable.

Where does CAN-SPAM fall short?

 

CAN-SPAM is a joke because it means businesses can spam people.

1. Too many loopholes. Doesn't actually ban spam.
2. You don't have to get permission to email someone.
3. People can't sue you for getting spammed.
4. Too hard to enforce. 
5. Overrules state legislation, which could do more to limit spam.

There are two other pieces of legislation you should be aware of: GDPR and CCPA.

• GDPR is the General Data Protection Regulation.
• This went into effect in 2018 for the European Union.
• CCPA is California Consumer Privacy Act effective in 2020.
• It’s similar to GDPR, but limited due to CAN-SPAM.
• This gives consumers more control over their data, but only in certain instances.

There are plenty of reasons why you should see to be ethical, not just legal.

• Don't send email 'blasts' people. Use different termoniology: campaign, send, etc.
• Use a legit email platform like Mailchimp or Active Campagin.
• Test for email spamminess, like Mail Tester.
• Don't buy lists. Get permission before emailing.
• Send relevant content that people care about. Test out what gets responses.
• Watch your churn rate (% of sends who: unsubscribes + bounces + marked as spam)

Why You Should Bother With Website Accessibility

Website accessibility is an often overlooked, but vitally important part of effective website development. 

Accessibility is essentially making sure that ALL users can consume the content on your website, even if they have disabilities (such as vision impairment) that could make it difficult.

There are more people who 

There are at least three reasons why you should address accessibility on your website.

1. Naturally improve your SEO
2. Avoid unnecessary Lawsuits
3. It’s the right thing to do.

What are some practical ways to improve your website’s accessibility?

1. Don’t use an accessibility overlay: shouldiuseanaccessibilityoverlay.com
2. WordPress Themes
3. Include alt text: Also, pictures of pictures and text of text
4. Don’t open links in new tabs
5. Website Form fields
6. Add an accessibility statement
7. Use #CamelCaseHashtags

Those might seem daunting so here is one small step to get started. Use the WAVE tool at wave.webaim.org to do an accessibility check of your website.

Boost Your Content Marketing with a Content Calendar

On this episode of the podcast, we're examining a tool every digital marketer should use: a content calendar.

Why should we use them? 6 reasons to use a content calendar

1. Manage more content. Don’t try to juggle everything manually.
2. Be more intentional about content. Be proactive, not reactive.
3. See how content works together. Align your strategy over multiple channels.
4. Get the timing right. Manage time, date, and cadence.
5. Stay consistent. Avoid those content dead spaces.
6. Give yourself more margin. Prevent yourself from burning out.

Ultimately, the content calendar is meant to help you out. It can be your marketing best friend if you’re willing to give it a chance.

What can you use a content calendar for?

• Blog posts
• Social media posts
• Email marketing
• Podcast episodes
• Videos
• Events
• Webinars

Having something is better than nothing. That said, we love our tools so what are some you can use to build a content calendar?

• Spreadsheet software like Google Sheets or Airtable
• Notes apps like Notion or Evernote
• Project management tools like Trello or Asana or Clickup
• There are even a few dedicated content management platforms like CoSchedule, StoryChief and Content Cal

What information should be included on the calendar?

• Titles: headlines & subject lines
• Dates: when is the content being shared?
• Audience: who are you targeting with the content?
• Status: where is it in the process of creation?
• Links: provide live links to where the content lives online
• Meta Data: tags, categories, ect.
• Stats: blog post views, engagement, downloads, etc.
• Leave yourself a space for notes or comments

Advanced tips for using content calendars:

• Keep it all organized; make sure that it stays updates
• Collaborate with your team
• Automate where possible: more for Notion and PM systems
• Use content buckets for ideation

Using Growth-Driven Design to Build Better Websites

Company websites can take a long time to create and cost a major piece of your marketing budget. What if there was a quicker and cheaper way to build a website that was also more responsive to your audience’s needs? That’s the idea behind Growth-Driven Design, a more modern way to build websites.

• Growth-Driven Design is a very different approach to web design, more of an iterative approach rather than one big swoop. They have a full course at Growth-Driven Design.com.
• There are three main phases:
  • Strategy with user research
  • Build starting with a launch pad
  • Learn with continuous and proactive improvement
• This new approach is worth considering because it’s faster and has less upfront costs. However, it doesn’t work as well for larger, more established websites. 
• We recently adopted some of the elements of GDD at GreenMellen. This has allowed us to be more strategic rather than being one-and-done. It gives us a more clear path to continue improvements.

Learn more about the process and get certified on HubSpot at their website: Growth-Driven Design | A Smarter Website Redesign Process

Why Should My Business Care About Marketing Funnels?

A marketing funnel is essentially a path for how users could interact with your marketing content as they move closer to becoming a customer with your business.

For example: 

• A business might be found through a search engine by a potential customer. 
• The customer lands on their website and reads a blog post on the topic they searched for.
• They then download a related free PDF resource. 
• This means giving up their email address to get the resource and join the mailing list. 
• This drops them into an automated welcome series of emails
• After the first three emails, they eventually make their first purchase.

The stages of a marketing funnel

• Awareness: getting to know you. Think about meeting a new person.
• Consideration: let me think about that. Think about asking them out on a date.
• Conversion: count me in. Think about a marriage proposal.
• Loyalty: I really like you. Think about staying married.

Tips for getting started.

• List out all of your marketing efforts. Label which stage they fit into
• Map out the connections between platforms.
• Eliminate anything that isn't driving business growth.
• Begin tracking how people move through these stages.
• Optimize places where bottlenecks occur.

Resources

What is a Marketing Funnel and Why Do You Need One?

10 Things You Need to Do Before Launching a Website

We have 55 things on our official website launch list, but this is the top 10 things to check when you launch a site.

1. Set WordPress to allow indexing: Settings —> Reading: "Discourage search engines from indexing this site"
2. Make sure Analytics is installed
   1. Add launch date to Analytics as a "shared annotation"
   2. Along with any other tracking software, like FreshMarketer or CrazyEgg
3. Add new site to Google Search Console
   1. Listen for issues
   2. Make sure to submit your new sitemap
4. Make sure test blog entries have been removed. Remove "uncategorized" category.
5. Check time zone settings: eg. New York vs GMT -5
6. Make sure posts are "by" the site owner
7. Check for special characters. 
   1. Invisible on Mac
   2. You can see them on Windows or Chrome OS.
8. Set up redirects
9. Check API keys for Google Maps and Google ReCaptcha
10. Make sure your forms work

Resources

• What a Website Launch Day Looks Like
• What to Do After Your WordPress Website Launches