Tag: Digital & Content Marketing

Customer Discovery vs. Focus Groups
Image courtesy of boomtownboulder.com

During the first night of the Digital Marketing (#DGM4) class at General Assembly Tuesday night, we went down a number of really great rabbit trails. I encourage such Q&A because it really adds to the class and enables us to apply learning to the students’ actual jobs today. One of those quick sessions resulted from a question after I had given a brief introduction to the concept of customer discovery.

The student asked, “What’s the difference between customer discovery and a focus group?” Great question! Below is a list of some of the differences. There are some similarities such as getting responses from numerous potential customers and asking lots of questions, but the differences are more profound.
- Customer discovery occurs prior to any product being built; a focus group tends to seek responses to some idea or stimuli from a group of prospects.
- Customer discovery requires speaking to as many potential customers as possible; focus groups can be fairly conclusive with just a few groups, or maybe even one.
- Customer discovery is about finding a problem in which to insert a product; focus groups typically have the objective of a group’s reaction to an existing product or idea.
- Customer discovery requires the entrepreneur to ask questions whose answers will surprise or even shock; focus groups are seeking specific answers or responses.
- Customer discovery is typically done one-on-one and one at a time; focus groups – by definition – are groups of people that may tend to feed off of one another.
- Customer discovery may take months or longer; focus groups are usually time contained.
This question was a great way to give the group a solid intro into startup world, and specifically into customer discovery. That discussion came on the heels of talking through the basics of digital marketing, which cannot even begin to start until the message is created. And the message starts with the problem you are solving (“Start with WHY”), and that problem is identified through customer discovery.

Great start to DGM4! Can’t wait to see what the next 10 weeks bring.
August 20, 2015
DGM4 Starts Tuesday at General Assembly

If by now you have not made your way down to spend some time at General Assembly at Ponce City Market, you’re pretty much doing it wrong. GA is a great global brand in the digital training space, and they’ve built up a first class operation in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward.

Tomorrow night at 6:30pm, twenty eight (not a typo, but a ridiculously successful class of 28!) new digital marketers will begin their journey towards Demo Night on October 22, at which they will each present their 5-minute pitch of their digital marketing strategy. Each student is required to submit a real project for which to build a DGM strategy. That project can be their own personal blog, their company, or, in this case, a nonprofit that needs some assistance.

This class will be taking on a number of nonprofits curated by GA for just this purpose, giving the students a real time view into a real digital marketing need and giving the nonprofits the help they need attracting their target audiences. In addition, the class members will have the option of preparing for the Google Analytics Certification, something that is a much needed skill and base of knowledge in the digital marketing space.

This will be the second time I’ve taught this class. Last spring, we endured the transition from GA’s temporary space next to Dancing Goats into their sweet new 2nd floor campus in Ponce City Market. I enjoyed teaching most of the sessions last spring, but I’ll be making some cool new changes this time around to make the class even more hands on, and give the students more time to interact and share ideas and learning.

Finally, we’ll be serving up some of the best marketers in Atlanta as guest speakers. We have room for 2 more, so if you are a digital marketing rock star and have a strong desire to share your knowledge with the next generation of digital marketers, I’d love to hear from you. Pick your favorite topic that coincides with any subject on the DGM Syllabus, and we’ll make it happen.

Here we go, DGM4!

August 17, 2015
My process for creating blog content
When you create blog content for a living, you can’t wake up each day and say, “ok, how we gonna do this today?” You have to have a process. Just like the process that we teach in Pitch Practice every week, it’s a construct that you start with and then adjust to your own style, pace, and ability. I walk through a similar process for every blog post I write, whether that blog post is for Atlanta Tech Blogs or for a client. Here are the steps I go through.
1. Idea – I try to keep a handful of ideas in a simple notes file on my iPhone at all times. For my clients, we collaborate to create a list of possible topics within our content strategy. For my blog, most of the time, though, I just get an idea and decide to write a post about it. My ideas are no different from yours, and include many of the things on this list, which is basically the answers to these three questions:
  - What happened yesterday? Sometimes literally yesterday, but most of the time from sometime in the past like the first time you learned the lesson for some challenge that you overcame recently. For example, I recently learned that, if I start off with a solid chunk of someone else’s writing, the end result stinks. I have to start with a clean slate.
  - What’s happening today? Current events in your market space or area of expertise on which you have an opinion or that you want to share. For example, today, I’ll be attending the “Creating Content that Converts” lunch seminar today at ATV.
  - What are you planning for tomorrow? We all look into the future at least a little bit to make plans, share plans, opine on what we think will be in the next iPhone, or whatever. For example, the Digital Marketing class (DGM4) at General Assembly begins next week! It’s full (25 students!) and we’ll have two Teaching Assistants and at least 4 really great guest speakers who are much smarter than I am.
2. Outline – Once I’ve sold myself that I can write a decent piece of content on the idea, I quickly jot down an outline of the major points I want to make. Each major point usually becomes a paragraph, and unless I have at least 2-4 major points, I don’t move on to the next step.
3. Write – Everybody’s work style is different here. I prefer to write everything from start to finish, so I maintain my thought process throughout the time that I’m writing. I really don’t like to start, stop, come back, start again, stop again, come back again. Sometimes that’s required for a series like this one, but most of the time, once I start writing, I shut everything out until I’m done.
4. Step away – When I finish writing the first draft, I make sure it’s saved in the right place (usually not an issue with Google Docs, but if you’ve ever lost an article before, you always make sure), and then step away from the PC. Maybe not literally, but I will close that doc and do something else – anything else – to clear my head of what I just wrote. In college, I used to do something similar before a test or exam. While my friends were frantically cramming the hour before the test, I’d take a nap to clear my head.
5. Review – An hour or so later, I’ll return with a fresh clear mind to read the entire article start to finish as if I am the audience. I’ll notice things I want to change during this step, but I won’t note or change them yet. I want to read it all the way through to see if it flows properly to a solid conclusion.
6. Edit – After that thorough read, I go through it again, start to finish, and make any and all edits that I noticed during that first read, as well as some that I did not see that first time around.
7. Finalize – By “finalize”, I mean re-read the article (3rd time) start to finish to pick up any errors I may have missed on the first two runs (I still always miss at least one), add a relevant and eye-catching image (always use an image!), create the social post text, and publish (or send to the client).
That’s my process. As I say each week in Pitch Practice, “it’s not the Gospel, so you’re not going to hell if you don’t follow it to the letter, but it works.” There’s always deviations from any process and this one is no exception, but I generally follow all these steps. What’s your content creation process?
August 13, 2015
3 Reasons Why Every Digital Marketer Should Learn to Code

This post originally appeared on the General Assembly blog in Digital Marketing, Work Life.

The definition of “marketing” hasn’t changed in 100 years or more. However, the methods, tactics, and tools of marketing have changed rapidly in the last 10 years. Today, if you want to lay claim to the title “digital marketer,” you’d be wise to learn at least the basics of web development. From search engine optimization, email, and landing pages, to web analytics and data analysis–every facet of digital marketing is powered by code, and understanding what’s going on behind the scenes will give you the insight necessary to make informed and strategic marketing decisions. Here are just a few reasons digital marketers should learn how to code.

1. Understand the modern marketing landscape.

Print advertising and marketing has been on a downward spiral for more than a decade, and those who embraced the transition from print to digital early on have survived and even thrived in this ever-changing media landscape. Now, we are immersed in the blazing transition from computer screen to mobile screen, and this is occurring far faster than the previous change.

Now that marketing has become an increasingly digital activity, it’s crucial for marketers to have a deep understanding of the online world and how it functions. Without a basic understanding of how websites are built, along with various apps, tools, and tactics, you’ll be left behind in the race to consumers.

2. Quickly iterate and optimize campaigns.

Digital marketing has the edge over traditional forms of mass media because we can design, execute, and iterate campaigns faster than ever before. Unlike marketers of yore, digital marketers can test a complete strategy in a matter of days, if not hours, and optimize until the desired results are achieved.

With this real-time access to data, we know what changes to need to be made to improve our website, landing pages, or email templates. However, the optimization process can become bogged down if you can’t implement these changes without the help of a developer. And if you work for startup, you may not even have access to a dev team. When we as marketers are able to dig in and make those changes we have the freedom and power to make a huge impact on our organization’s top and bottom lines.

3. Communicate effectively with interdisciplinary teams.

As a modern marketer, you’ll need to communicate with your more technical co-workers—from product managers to UX designers and web developers—often on a daily basis. If you can’t “speak their language,” or communicate your technical needs, you’ll have a hard time executing on your marketing initiatives. This is true when implementing tracking pixels, A/B testing, or setting up analytics and CRM tools like Google Analytics, KISSMetrics, or Salesforce.

Learning to code will empower you to to become a more effective digital marketer—and therefore, an indispensable member of your team. You will develop a firm grasp on the world of online marketing, be able to make quick design or development changes, and communicate more effecitively with your more technical colleagues.

August 8, 2015
7 Upcoming Speaking Events at SuperNova South and General Assembly
Summer is almost over, the kids’ school starts next week, and the fall schedule is about to kick into high gear. I’ll be teaching, leading, and otherwise getting up in front of people on several occasions for various reasons on a plethora of different topics in the coming weeks. Here’s the list of upcoming events. If you can tolerate me blathering on in front of a room for more than a few minutes, I’d love to see you at almost all of these events. Except one. See below.
- Digital Marketing Bootcamp Saturday August 22 from 10am – 4pm – We will crunch the 10-week Part Time Digital Marketing Class from 60 hours down to 6 hours, so this class will move fast, covering branding, metrics, the marketing funnel, owned & paid content marketing, and the marketing funnel. Put your seat belts on and come ready to learn and apply that learning immediately to your organization.
- Blogging for Your Brand Bootcamp Saturday August 29 from 10am – 2pm – We’ll expand on the original “Blogging for Your Brand” seminar, and dive deep into blogging platforms, getting started, writing, best practices, promoting and measuring your blog. You’ll leave this session with a clear road map for creating your own blog, as well as your first blog post (or two!).
- Digital Marketing Bootcamp Saturday September 19 from 10am – 4pm – same stuff as above, different day.
- Advanced Social Media Strategies Monday September 28 from 1pm – 4pm – Take a half day off of your Monday, and dig deep into best practices and new practices for the major social media channels specifically, and your social media marketing strategy in general. Social media is an amazing tool for your organization, if used wisely, properly, and professionally.
- SuperNova South October 5 – 9 at Tech Square – I’m honored to be included in this year’s Startups track. I’ll be speaking on the topic of Product Management Discipline in Startups. David Cummings recently wrote that “there’s an even harder position to fill (than software engineers and sales reps) and that’s the role of the product manager.” We’ll be discussing exactly how one goes about the discipline of product management in the early stages of a startup. My specific time slot is Friday, October 9 at 9am. Register here.
- How to Measure Social Media ROI Monday October 12 from 9am – 12 noon – Social media marketing is not free and, done properly and consistently, social media can generate huge returns. Just like every other arrow in your marketing quiver, social media marketing must be measured, campaign by campaign, so you can properly calculate your ROI. If you don’t measure your ROI, you cannot improve your ROI.
- Digital Marketing Bootcamp Saturday October 17 from 10am – 4pm – same stuff again, different day. This all day class is becoming very popular among folks who are trying to either decide if they want to go deep into learning digital marketing and those who really need to understand what they can and cannot do at their current organization. It’s a fun day, includes lunch, and you’ll learn a lot.
I hope to see you at one or more of these great classes, but there’s another class, too. Unfortunately, for those who didn’t get there in time, the 10-week Part Time Digital Marketing class starts August 18th, and is SOLD OUT! Woo hoo! That’s right, 25 eager students will become new digital marketers before Thanksgiving. And this time we’re doing something a little different, as we engage Atlanta’s nonprofit community, and have each student adopt a nonprofit and create a digital marketing strategy for that nonprofit. Should be a great class, and I’ll be sharing our learning experience as go. If you play in the digital marketing space, and have something unique to share, please send me an email. We’d love to have you as a guest speaker at one of our classes. Here’s the syllabus. Check it out and see where you’d fit in best.
August 6, 2015
The 3 Ingredients for Outstanding SEO

This post originally published on the General Assembly Digital Marketing Blog.

Since Google took over ownership of the search functionality on the internet, the term “SEO” (search engine optimization) has been top of mind for any serious website owner. If you cannot be found easily when someone searches for your product or service on Google, you have a far smaller chance of success in internet sales and marketing.

And, while it’s very true that there are some seriously technical aspects to achieving proper and excellent SEO, there is a simpler recipe for achieving the crown jewel of being above the fold on the first page of the Google SERP (search engine results page). That recipe has three ingredients.

1. Content

Content is king. If you create a small website with good, descriptive copy, that’s a good start. But if you never update the content on your website, Google will eventually penalize you for not updating your content, and as a result, your website will appear lower and lower in the results that are shown when a potential customer searches for whatever it is that you do.

How do you solve this issue? Create new content on a regular basis. The easiest way to do this is your blog. Every business should have a blog, and every organization should update their blog regularly, meaning at least once a week. Back in “Internet 1.0” days, the “about” page on your website was where visitors got to know you. That’s no longer the case. Now visitors go to your blog first to learn who you are, what you do, why you do it, and what you stand for.

When you create content, Google looks for things called “keywords.” These are simply the words that best describe what you do. If you’re a blogger who writes about making adirondack chairs out of teak, then including the words “teak” and “adirondack” and “chairs” naturally in your blog posts will let Google know to show your site first when someone searches for “how to make teak adirondack chairs.”

2. Care

You can’t just toss any old content out there willy nilly. You need a strategy, even a simple one like “we’re going to blog every week to educate our audience on how to use our product.” It really can be as simple as that for your strategy. The larger your business and the more content you create, the more complex your content strategy will be, but it can start out very simple as you learn.

But, that’s not all. When you seek the Holy Grail of SEO domination, you’re essentially saying, “Hey, Google! We love you! Will you please come into our house and then go tell the world about us?” You’re inviting Google into your house, so you need to get your house in order. The good news is that Google offers many tools to help you do just that. The first tool is called “Google Webmaster Tools,” and it gives you everything you’ll need to make simple adjustments and test your site to see if Google likes it.

And, as of spring 2015, you’ll need to test your site for what Google calls “mobile friendliness.” You can do that here.

3. Clock

OK, it’s really “Time,” but I’m a fan of alliteration. SEO magnificence is not an overnight process. It takes time, sometimes months. During those months, you would do well to do regular checks and tests using the Google tools mentioned above. But, most of all, you should be creating great, relevant content on your site every week. Google loves regular updated content, and will reward you for creating and publishing it.

Finally, if you’re like me, you’ll enjoy seeing the fruits of your labor by searching for your keywords on Google just to see where you’re ranked. But be aware that your ranking will change on a daily basis. Unless your business so totally dominates your space that you are #1 every single time (don’t count on that), then you will most likely see your placement on the SERP move up and down. When it takes a big jump up or down, you should try to figure out why, using the Google tools that you’re now so familiar with.

Outstanding SEO is valuable, and it’s not easy, but it is within your reach. Take these first three steps, and you will soon see results. Remember, great content over time will result in higher Google rankings.

August 4, 2015