My Engagement-Based Marketing Segmentation Tips

When I started in digital marketing, I ran one channel, paid search. Each channel operated in its own silo, with different creative strategies. That’s when things were just getting started. These days, marketing has evolved towards a consumer-centric approach, with all channels working together in unison. And, I’m not just talking about marketing channels here. I’m talking about any potential touchpoint with the consumer, including your customer care center and also your website itself. Every single impression a consumer has with your brand needs to be managed in tandem, for a truly personalized and consistent experience. Why? We want to add the most possible value to each and every consumer, with the most personally relevant experience possible.

How is all of this possible? What is the hub of this strategy, the brains that dictates which creative, experience, messaging to deliver to each consumer? The hub is your segmentation, arguably the most important part of your modern marketing strategy. Today, I wanted to provide a few tips on how you can build the best possible segmentation strategy, based on engagement with your brand.

Segmentation Tip 1: Your First Party Data Is Golden

Do you already get a reasonable amount of traffic to your website? Do you have existing customers (or at least prospective customers)? Then, you have first party data! First party data is all of the data that you have on your consumers from their interaction with your website and your brand.

Traditional marketing segmentations are based on generalized market data. Traditional segmentations are very important, especially when projecting your overall market strategy. That said, this post is all about consumer experience, delivering a unified experience across all touch points. For this purpose, your first party data is golden.

So, how do you start collecting first party data? A few tips:

Pixel your entire website. Don’t only pixel user flow, but also behavior/interaction with your website. (That said, never pixel anything that is sensitive/PII (personally identifiable information).
Pixel your display advertisements. If your display advertisements are interactive (I recommend you make them so), track the selections consumers make when interacting with your creative.
Pixel your full HTML emails.
Leverage a unified technology to power everything. Your first party data is only as powerful as your ability to house it and segment upon it in a unified technology hub. Some examples are SteelHouse, Kenshoo, and Acquisio.

Segmentation Tip 2: Leverage Lucidchart To Map Out Your Tree

Once you start collecting user data, you need to develop an engagement-based approach. Let’s say you sell shoes. Here’s a sample user flow:

User arrives at your site from Google AdWords.
User lands on the mens shoes section because he selects "Mens Shoes" from your Google AdWords sitelinks.
User specifically browses dress shoes (as compared to athletic shoes, casual shoes, and sandals).
User adds dress shoes to cart: Size 13 Hugo Boss in black leather.
User abandons the process.

You know so much about this consumer from your first party data. Every detail written in the list above becomes core to your engagement segmentation. From a marketing standpoint, it’s a wonderful time to start retargeting this consumer with ads about mens designer dress shoes, potentially even showing the exact Hugo Boss shoes in the cart.

Since the consumer entered the shoes into their cart but abandoned the process, maybe they have questions, or maybe they got sticker shock? Consider running display ads with your customer care phone number, and others with a coupon code. When the consumer comes back to your site (either by clicking your display banner or some other means), the website needs to adapt to display mens shoes and their specific cart.

Obviously, this can get complex relatively quickly. When building your engagement-based segmentation strategy, you need a flow chart to map out all possible scenarios. This is the real strategic work, the work that powers your overall marketing and consumer-facing strategy. I personally leverage Lucidchart when building engagement-based segmentation models. Typically, I like to:

Lock myself in a conference room.
Brainstorm on big sheets of paper, which I place on the wall.
Get a rough draft on paper.
Build out my final engagement segmentation in Lucidchart.

This work that should take you at least an entire week of continuous effort, uninterrupted by meetings.

Segmentation Tip 3: Craft a Unified Creative Approach

Once your segmentation is built, you need creative mapped against each segment for each and every channel (or consumer touch point). This work can get really overwhelming, so consider starting with your most important segments, having a "catch all" for your other segments.

Here’s where you need to take the segmentation and evangelize with your greater organization, because you will need all the help you can get in building the marketing copy, display banners, phone scripts, email templates, and landing pages. Leverage a divide and conquer approach. That said, there needs to be a central owner for consistency.

Segmentation Tip 4: Leverage Technology To Power Your Strategy

When you first test out this engagement-based personalization, it’s ok to be scrappy and nimble. However, as you evolve, I highly recommend a technology-driven approach. There are so many technologies that can help you, and it’s all about finding the one that works best for you. As mentioned above, SteelHouse, Kenshoo, and Acquisio are incredible.

Segmentation Tip 5: Don’t Be Creepy

I’d like to end today with an important piece of advice: It’s ok to keep your creative a level or two higher than the actual intelligence you have about your consumers. You don’t want to create an experience so personalized that it becomes creepy. It’s ok to ignore certain pieces of data in crafting your creative approach. Make sure to test your strategy on normal people (non-marketers) before rolling it out. Be cautious, and always place the consumer’s needs first.

Images in this post © PPCIan.com

My Biggest Investment Yet: My First People Day

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Dec 7 0

If you’ve been reading PPC Ian for a while, you know that I’m a tremendous fan of networking and turning business partnerships into friendships. You’ll often hear me saying, "It’s all about the people." While I have done quite well investing in stocks, pre-IPO companies, and businesses, I have done even better investing in people. I want to take my network to the next level by planning my first people day. Today’s entry outlines what this people day is all about. It will act as my personal agenda and will hopefully spark some great ideas for your own network strategy too!

Before I get into the specifics of my upcoming people day, I wanted to take a moment to explain why people have been so fundamental to my career:

Great mentors have guided me in the right direction.
Great connections have helped me secure new jobs.
Great employees have worked on my team, driving results and making my life wonderful as a manager.
Great teammates have made my workday fun and exiting.
Great people have helped me solve complex business challenges that no single person could solve on their own.
Great partners have brought forth incredible game-changing technologies that have transformed my business operations.
Great PPC Ian readers have provided amazing questions, insights, and ideas (thank you for reading).
Great sponsors have made this blog a reality (thank you for your support).
Great friends have connected me with fabulous consulting opportunities.
Great leaders have inspired the way I do business.
The list goes on!

Aside from your own health/growth and your own family, I would argue that the single most important investment in one’s life is other people. The people investment is more important than saving money. It’s more important than investing in stocks, bonds, and real estate.

Why is it then that I spend so much time obsessing over stocks, but far less time strategizing about people, my network, my most important investment? Why is it that I save every spare dollar for financial investment, rather than allocating a portion of my savings to people investment? I will be holding my first ever people day in the coming weeks, and here’s what I plan to accomplish…

Goal 1: Scrappy People Database [3 hours]

While I have gone to painstaking detail to categorize every imaginable detail on my financial portfolio, I have not taken the time to do the same with my network. I will leverage all data available – business cards, LinkedIn, emails, and notes – to create a centralized database. My database will include as much information as possible: contact details, how I know them, when I last saw them, who paid for lunch last time, fun facts, and more. Part of the process will be identifying all of the columns I require. I will also assign each person a level of priority: friend, super friend, and super best friend.

This step alone will help me be a better business partner, connection, and friend. Having all the data in one place will immediately help me focus on the amazing people in my business life, encouraging me to stay in contact more often and more strategically. Eventually, I may migrate this entire process into a CRM system, but I’ll start out with the quick, scrappy route in Excel.

Goal 2: Take Action With High Leverage Opportunities [2 hours]

Since this is my first people day, I am going to take the quick, scrappy approach to realizing results. This involves really analyzing those that fall into the "super best friend" category. I will look at each super best friend one-by-one. Specifically, I will:

Reach out to them if I have not recently.
Plan lunch (on me) if we have not seen each other recently.
Brainstorm how I can be of assistance to them.
Create a calendar (that I can stick to) for future lunch meetings.

With my incredibly busy life, I feel like I could have been more proactive staying in contact with some of my best friends. This is not acceptable, and a primary goal of my people day is creating a sustainable cadence and schedule going forward.

Goal 3: Lunch Hour Big Picture Strategy On Who I Want To Meet [1 hour]

It has been said that you become an average of the people you surround yourself with. Thankfully, I surround myself with the most incredible, amazing people, and I’m so thankful for that. As someone who’s always looking to grow and expand, I want to carefully brainstorm over lunch 5-10 people who I want to meet (or re-connect with) in the coming 12 months. These will be people with unique skills and accomplishments, people who know things that truly want to learn.

These may be leaders who I worked with in the past or people I don’t know at all. The important element here is these are people who are busy, successful, and really don’t have time for me! There’s an element of challenge here, I want to shoot for the stars. I’m going to spend some time trying to build a relationship with these 5 leaders, bringing value into their lives. However, if only one or two work out, that will be considered success and progress. I want to set the bar high.

Goal 4: Plan, Buy, and Send Holiday Gifts [2 hours]

I’m a big fan of holiday gifts, especially ones with custom engravings that have a personalized message. I’m going to curate my list of super best friends and probably best friends too, planning holiday cards and gifts. I will determine an appropriate budget, and plan to say "thank you" to the people that matter.

These gifts make an incredible difference and strengthen relationships, if they come from the heart. A great example: My team and I sent custom-engraved gifts to our Yahoo! team last year. A very high official at Yahoo! reached out and let me know that we were the only client to do this, out of their multitude of clients. Our gifts made an impact on the partnership/friendship.

As part of the holiday gifts, I also plan to create great documentation so the process is even quicker next year. I’ll certainly build this into the database (Goal 1).

Goal 5: Social Media Network Expansion [1 hour]

I have met an incredible number of business professional and leaders thanks to my blog, PPC Ian. I am so thankful for everyone who reads. I hope I have added as much value to all of your lives as you have to mine. I’m always looking to grow my audience here on PPC Ian because that’s one way to grow my network! In fact, it may be one of the absolute best ways to grow my network, because PPC Ian has no geographic boundaries.

Lately, I’ve been investing in paid social media with incredible success. I want to spend a little bit of time during my people day looking at the numbers, planning budgets, and determining how much I can afford to invest going forward. I’m on a limited paid media budget, and have already blasted through a reasonable sum of money. I need to really understand what I’m willing to invest and challenge myself to go all out on this front.

In the coming weeks, I will be doing a separate blog post outlining the success I have been experiencing via social media, especially Facebook.

As a related note, would you like to me part of my network? I’d really like you to be! Please shoot me an email or message on social media, and I’ll add you to my personal network. I’m always looking to meet new business professionals and friends. Let me now how I can be of assistance to you!

Goal 6: Recapping The Day and Brainstorming For My Next People Day [1 hour]

I will close out the day getting my next people day on the map, and with some high level thinking. My first people day is going to be incredibly scrappy and tactical. I’m getting the basic foundation in place for future success. However, this people day can become so much more! I want to get my next people day on the map, and brainstorm some really clever, big ideas. Things I already want to do that I’ll be skipping this first people day:

Thank-a-Thon: I want to personally call people from my database to reconnect and thank them for being in my life.
Community Service: Part of investing in people is giving back. The perfect way to start off a people day is investing in one’s own community. As a related note, I want to double down and invest in friends who actively participate in community service. How can I donate to their causes?
Summit: I want to get some of my closes friends together for a people day summit. How can we help each other with our networks, partnerships, and friendships? How can we challenge each other?

I recently started my new PPC Ian Quotes Series. One of my most popular quotes is, "Invest in yourself. Carve out the time. Nobody else will." Today, I encourage you to have your own people day. While you’re investing in others, the people in your business life, you’re also investing in yourself, since people are your greatest investment!

Image of people network strategy © iStockPhoto – DigtialStorm

Dollar Cost Averaging In Digital Marketing

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 23 0

I’m an investor and I believe certain concepts within investing apply to all areas of business and life. Today, I want to discuss one of my absolute favorite investing concepts and how it applies to digital marketing. Let’s talk about dollar cost averaging!

I’ll illustrate via example… Let’s say you’ve identified a stock or investment that you want to own. Let’s say you also have a fixed amount of money to invest. Rather than taking that lump sum of money and buying 100% of your shares outright, dollar cost averaging says you should average in over time, on a fixed schedule. Maybe you buy 10% per month for the next ten months. After ten months, you are 100% invested. Why is this strategy so great? While it is easy to identify amazing investments, it is far more difficult to time the market. Since you don’t know where the market is heading, you will likely acquire your investment at a superior weighted average price by averaging in over time.

I believe this same philosophy is incredibly important in digital marketing and business overall. Let’s explore a few use cases…

Case 1: Dollar Cost Averaging Budget Allocation In Seasonal Businesses

If your business is linear with little seasonality, this one is a no-brainer. You’re always going to be dollar cost averaging over time. What about the seasonal business, however, the highly polarized business that experiences the majority of sales during a seasonal spike? Thanks to the wonders of retargeting, I’m a fan of dollar cost averaging as much as possible. Start investing marketing dollars early, building leads. When you leave all of your marketing to a fixed number of days, you create a lot of risk for your company. If you can start building leads and nurturing early, you mitigate risk. Even though you start advertising early, you don’t need to close those sales early. You do, however, need to capture leads and have a mechanism for closing them later (email and retargeting).

Case 2: Dollar Cost Averaging New Hires

These days, digital marketing is an integrated team sport. Teams typically span internally employees within Marketing, internal employees on closely related teams (such as Product), consultants, advisors, and partners. Hiring a new team member requires serious effort and time, both on your part and the employee’s part. Have budget for hiring a large team? Rather than hiring everyone at once, I’m a huge fan of smoothing the start dates over time. That way, you have time to invest in your operations and new employee training, without spreading yourself too thin on either front.

Case 3: Dollar Cost Averaging New Search Engine Marketing Keywords

My roots are in PPC, so I had to do a case about paid search. I’m always generating new keywords. I always generate far more keywords than I can test in a timely fashion. In the short-run, testing can be really expensive and hurt overall margins. In the long-run, it’s always a winner because I discover the true value of each keyword and bid appropriately. As a strategy for mitigating short-term risk and smoothing margins, I’m a fan of dollar cost averaging. Take your test budget and spread it over time. Test a few new keywords each and every day. Rotate new keywords in as you rotate old ones out (and/or bid old ones accurately).

Case 4: Dollar Cost Averaging Your Education and Growth

I just rolled out my Digital Marketing and Business Quotes. One of my favorites is, "Invest in yourself. Carve out the time. Nobody else will." I also recently wrote a blog post called An App A Week where I challenge the reader to thoroughly learn a brand new app each week, expanding their knowledge.

When you work full-time, it’s difficult to have any time left over for your own education and growth. This is precisely where dollar cost averaging enters the scene. Invest a little bit of time each and every day and your investment will compound. If you can’t afford to fall behind in your work, you can still learn! Averaging small amounts of time will compound into great long-term results!

Case 5: Dollar Cost Averaging Display Advertising

Back in the day, you could not dollar cost average display buys. You would pre-negotiate inventory on major publishers like Yahoo!, spending your entire investment in a matter of hours. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love homepage takeovers, and just did a video on the PPC Ian Digital Marketing Academy about this very subject:

(Big thanks to Rocket Clicks Digital Marketing Agency for sponsoring my Digital Marketing Academy.)

That being said, I also recommend smoothing your display advertising investment these days, because you can. Programmatic advertising opens doors that were never possible in the past. Rather than starting with the big, lump sum investments, start with programmatic. Let programmatic build into the bigger buys over time. Mitigate your risk!

Next time you have a large amount of money to invest in digital marketing or business, consider the dollar cost averaging strategy instead of lump sum investment. In which ways do you dollar cost average?

Images of Dollars © PPCIan.com

Launching My Digital Marketing & Business Quotes

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 15 0

After launching my Digital Marketing YouTube Academy last week, I’m thrilled to share another exciting announcement today. With the goal of educating, empowering, and motivating others, I’m pleased to launch my brand new graphical PPC Ian Digital Marketing and Business Quotes. If you follow me on social media, you may have already seen some of my quotes over the last few weeks.

I’ve been in digital marketing, business, and investing for a long time now. I wanted to take this opportunity to succinctly share my personal insights and strategies via fun, easy-to-understand, graphical quotes. I’m now posting them on social media each week (typically on Tuesdays), and also on my new Quotes page here on PPC Ian (easily accessible from my top and bottom navigation bars).

The quotes are typically self-explanatory. If you would like to learn the greater story behind them, however, I provide a paragraph or two of details for each quote on my new Quotes page. When I post my new quotes each week, I also update this page, so please make sure to bookmark it if you enjoy the insights and details behind each quote.

I personally study and reflect upon quotes from great leaders regularly. It’s amazing how much knowledge is out there. Knowledge often comes from leaders in completely unrelated fields. In the same way that others are empowering me, I hope my original PPC Ian quotes empower you!

Images and Quotes © PPCIan.com

Launching My Free Digital Marketing YouTube Academy

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 8 0

I recently posted about my ambitious Social Media Content Calendar Strategy, the plan that outlines how I drive value for those kind PPC Ian readers who follow me across social media. Those who read the entire post (it was a long one), may have noticed that my strategy was a little weak on YouTube.

I’m one of the biggest proponents of YouTube around, and have a YouTube channel for one of my other websites that’s the absolute cornerstone of my overall social media and website strategy. Based on my YouTube Analytics, I am constantly amazed at the tremendous scale and engagement that YouTube offers brands (who add true value to consumers).

I realized I just couldn’t miss this opportunity for PPC Ian and have been thinking about the best way to leverage the PPC Ian YouTube Channel. An idea was born: I’m thrilled to launch my brand new PPC Ian Digital Marketing Academy.

I’m now posting digital marketing videos on a weekly basis, it’s a free academy for anyone interested in digital marketing, personal growth, and business. While I’m modeling many of my videos after my Tumblr Digital Marketing Definition of The Day strategy, I’m also going into vastly more depth. Targeted towards all levels of marketers and businesspeople – new, intermediate, and pro – I am confident you will find value. I encourage you to check out my new digital marketing academy videos, and please subscribe. I’m also thrilled to take suggestions on future video topics, so please speak up!

My Latest Video on Conversion Per Impression and Maximizing Your Ad Copy Testing

My Other Recent Videos

Your Complete Guide To Mobile Website Optimization

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 1 0

Did you notice that I redesigned my blog just a few months ago? In addition to an overall facelift, I wanted to take a mobile-first, responsive design approach. So far, the results of my redesign are great, both from a quantitative/data perspective and a qualitative one too. I hope you noticed and like it too!

Mobile design and optimization are top-of-mind for PPC Ian in everything I do. Whether we’re talking about websites, landing pages, or even marketing creative, it’s all about mobile. When it comes to mobile marketing and mobile design, I’m always learning by testing, sharing strategies with others in the industry, and reading great whitepapers.

I am absolutely thrilled to share with you a free guide from my good friends at 3Q Digital (yes, the amazing agency that just hosted their Digital Marketing Summit at Levi’s Stadium). Today, I’m going to review 3Q Digital’s Mobile Optimization: Reflect User Intent In Site Design.

The guide starts out with some staggering statistics, ones that speak volumes about the mobile opportunity:

U.S. adults averaged 2.8 hours per day on their mobile devices in 2014
Mobile advertising spend is up 34% year over year (outstripping desktop growth)
At the end of 2014, 2.1 billion people owned smartphones

Next, 3Q’s guide transitions into four mobile mistakes. Each mistake contains great detail and great examples of companies making the mistakes, and also those gracefully avoiding the mistakes. 3Q is careful to not only illustrate the mistakes in great detail (with screenshots and analysis), but also solutions with equally clear examples and insights. The guide will help you visualize your own strategy, avoid these mistakes, and turn industry mistakes into opportunities for your business.

My favorite mistake would be Mobile Mistake #3: Not reflecting user device mentality in funnel position. This one really resonated with me because the mobile-first approach is not just about optimizing your homepage. It’s about optimizing every single possible mobile experience with your brand, both on-site and off. These days, the best marketers are segmenting their consumers to a very granular level, a level where it’s almost like one-to-one marketing. Every single personalized experience needs to have a mobile-first approach.

I was especially impressed that Craig Weinberg, VP of Mobile Strategy at 3Q Digital co-authored this whitepaper with Dylan Dullea from Method Hill. Craig just spoke at the 3Q Digital Summit. In fact, you will find knowledge from Craig and team in my Insights From The 3Q Digital Growth Summit.

I highly recommend downloading 3Q Digital’s Mobile Optimization Guide. It’s free and packed with knowledge that is sure to transform your own mobile strategy. Thanks 3Q for another amazing guide!

Image in this post © 3Q Digital

My Social Media Content Calendar Strategy

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Oct 25 1

A strong percentage of my readers arrive at PPC Ian via social media. An even greater percentage arrive via organic search, which is boosted and reinforced by my social media strategy (Google and other search engines value social citations). Social media is not just about gaining a lot of followers. It’s about engaging your audience, and providing your followers true value. In doing so, social media can become one of your strongest sources of traffic, a defensible channel, and a way of diversifying risk.

Today, I want to share how I personally engage my social media audience. The calendar below is a work in progress and continues to evolve. In fact, social media engagement is a huge area of focus for me right now, so I’m writing this blog post as much for myself as for all of you. Follow me in social media to see the below strategy unfold in real time!

Before I dive into my strategy, I wanted to share a fundamental belief of mine: Each social media network is completely different than the next. Therefore, each requires a unique strategy. Of course, there will always be what I like to call "overrides", those campaigns that transcend all social media networks. However, on a day-to-day basis, I like to cater to each network differently, therefore requiring a unique strategy for each. I try not to link my networks together.

Twitter

With over 10,500 followers, Twitter is the cornerstone of my social media strategy. As an early adopter, I’m really thankful for such a strong following on Twitter and the traffic it provides to my blog.
My content strategy on Twitter typically involves a post every single day, and often multiple per day. While audiences on some of the other platforms, such as Facebook, may get overwhelmed with new posts every single day, Twitter can certainly sustain more frequent updates.
While my content schedule varies a bit week-to-week, my calendar typically involves the following Tweets:
A link into my latest PPC Ian blog post (I typically post these late on Sunday nights, on a weekly cadence).
A mid-week link to my latest blog post again, for those that did not see the first Tweet earlier in the week.
Throwback Thursday links into historically popular PPC Ian blog posts. Each blog post takes so much time and effort, and why not rejuvenate posts from the past?
A motivational quote (just text, no image) from yours truly. I like to pepper these in to empower those following.
Links into my latest digital marketing definitions (see Tumblr below).
Links into guest blog posts I have written for other blogs.
Live Tweeting (both text and images) at digital marketing conferences.
Retweets of great articles. I use these sparingly, as I like most of my content to be original.
@ messages to friends in the digital marketing community, it’s fun to spark public conversation on Twitter, and helps those following find others of interest.

Facebook

People are typically on Facebook to connect with friends and family. They are not as interested in consuming digital marketing and business content, from my experience. However, if you make the content truly great and engaging, Facebook can drive a ton of traffic to your site. Moreover, it’s the perfect social media platform to gain support from your personal network.
Due to my sensitivity for over-posting on Facebook, my content calendar is much more sparse than Twitter. I’ll typically do the following:
Link into my latest blog post on Sunday nights. Put some paid "boost" budget behind my best posts, making sure the boost goes all the way through Monday. It’s amazing how much extra engagement this investment can drive and it’s totally worth it, in my opinion.
Throwback Thursday posts on Thursdays. Sometimes I’ll miss a week.
Links into guest blog post I have written on other blogs.
Q&A for anyone in my community who has a question for PPC Ian! I really like Facebook for this purpose because you can easily write long-form responses, and everyone in the community benefits.

As a professional network and my personal online resume, I approach LinkedIn with incredible seriousness. While I see others posting new articles, links, and content to LinkedIn daily, I have opted for a different approach.
I’m exclusively posting new PPC Ian blog posts right now, with a cadence of once per week. Sometimes I’m experimenting with Throwback Thursday, but with a much more conservative cadence than other networks.
In the future, I will probably start experimenting with LinkedIn-specific posts. So far, I have had a difficult time rationalizing posting on LinkedIn vs. my own blog. And, I’m skeptical about reposting content to LinkedIn that already has a home on my blog. My future strategy involves writing pillar content that has an exclusive home on LinkedIn, a few times each year. Again, my LinkedIn strategy is all around my online resume, and incredible quality. I don’t need high frequency on LinkedIn.

Google+

Because Google+ is owned by Google, I know that anything posted on Google+ is likely to be indexed by Google quickly. As a result, I’m always posting new (and old) blog posts on Google+. Basically, anything I’d post on Twitter, I’ll also post on Google+.
My belief is that most Google+ users are more sporadic about their use. Perhaps they login a few times each week. While we are all on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all day every day, Google+ usage is infrequent. As a result, I’m not overly concerned with too much posting. If I have something to post, especially something that I want Google to find, I’ll do it!
My Google+ strategy does not involve much interaction with others. Since I don’t have as many connections on Google+, it’s more of a stream of updates from my end.
If there is one social media network that doesn’t have as clear of a strategy in my overall content calendar, it would be Google+. That said, as Google+ gains popularity over time, I’m sure my own strategy will evolve.

Instagram

I’m a tremendous fan of the Instagram platform and community. My strategy is simple: I post one new photo each day and also comment on someone else’s photo each day. As mentioned before, each network requires a unique strategy. My photos are typically unique to Instagram, and give consumers a reason to follow me on Instagram to gain access to my photo stream.
To add great value, I always include helpful captions with my photos that bring it all back to digital marketing. Hashtags are a big part of my strategy too.
Instagram is a real community that supports each another and I’m careful to weave that into my overall strategy.

I’m newer to Pinterest and have a few boards. The overall hub of my strategy involves pinning my new posts on PPC Ian.
Also, I spend a few minutes each week adding pins to some of my other boards, all related to digital marketing. I especially enjoy adding pins to my boards about digital marketing leaders, digital marketing conferences, and digital marketing companies. Rather than re-pinning content that already exists on Pinterest, I try to bring unique, new content to the community.

Tumblr

I’m a big fan of Tumblr because it’s so easy to publish short blog posts. A few years back, I wanted to start this Digital Marketing Dictionary. I wanted to post definitions of common terms. These definitions would be short and simple, yet incredibly helpful to the digital marketing community. I knew these would be too short for my blog. An idea was born: Create my Digital Marketing Dictionary on Tumblr.
These days, I’m posting on Tumblr several times a week. Each post defines a different digital marketing term. My Tumblr strategy is really unique and has helped me steadily secure more and more followers.
I will sometimes link into my Tumblr definitions from Twitter and Google+, giving more exposure to my dictionary.

Quora

I don’t hear as much about Quora these days, but continue to see huge value on this question-and-answer platform. In fact, my personal answers have received 959 views in the last 30 days and 19,264 all time. That’s a lot of views, and a lot of opportunities to connect with new readers! That’s also a lot of opportunity to empower other digital marketers and businesspeople, the charter of my blog.
While I let my commitment on Quora slide over the last year, I’m taking this network very seriously again. My strategy going forward: I will answer one question per week. I will write very in-depth answers, those that truly add value.

Others

Since this post is more geared towards my recurring/weekly content calendar, I did not include YouTube. YouTube is more about long-form content, epic videos. While YouTube is not part of my weekly content calendar, it’s certainly a platform that is part of my overall content strategy. Historically, I have included videos from speaking events and also occasionally some more impromptu videos.
The social media platforms outlined above encompass the majority of my PPC Ian social media strategy. However, I’m always expanding and have obviously missed some of the big ones. What about Snapchat, for example? As defined in my recent post, An App A Week, I’m actively learning (I mean really learning) a new app every single week. You can bet that many of these apps have a social media angle to them, and that they’ll get folded into my social media content calendar in their own, unique way!
Also, while it’s not considered a social media network, I try to comment on other blogs from time-to-time. Many think blog commentating as a strategy doesn’t work anymore. That is very far from the truth, I get a lot of traffic by leaving valuable comments.

In the world of digital marketing, it’s not only about great strategy, but also about great execution. In your own business, craft a social media calendar that is ambitious, yet also actionable.

I’m going to leave you with one more closing thought: Please, please don’t outsource your social media to a virtual assistant! Speak with your own, authentic voice. Add true value. Post at a rate that is realistic and scalable. I see some high-profile bloggers and businesses fall into this outsourcing and automation trap. They are posting continuous updates across all of their social media profiles 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They are reposting so many articles that I don’t even know if they read them all. While automation and outsourcing has its time and place in your digital marketing strategy, I recommend approaching social media with your own authentic self. This is where you can truly build long-lasting relationships.

Business Lessons Learned From The Oil Market

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Oct 18 2

Before I even get started on today’s post, I want to add the disclaimer that this post is meant to be unbiased, and free of politics. As many of you know, I am an investor and follow many different markets and sectors. It just so happens that the oil market has been incredibly volatile this year, making it a superb business case study. As someone who has been following the oil market closely, today’s post extrapolates some business lessons that I have personally learned from the volatility.

Lesson 1: Never Count On The Status Quo

Price of Crude Oil From Nasdaq

As a technology executive of many years, I have lived this lesson a multitude of times. With the price of oil declining from $100 to the mid-$40s literally overnight, this extreme volatility in an old world sector reminds all of us to never rest on our laurels. Business is dynamic and we need to be prepared for anything.

Knowing that my world can change at any minute, I’m a huge fan of strategic scenario planning. In the moment, it’s too late to formulate your strategy to a major disruption. That’s why I like to plan out all possible business cases ahead of time, having a complete strategy for each. I ask myself: "What would I do if XYZ were to happen tomorrow?" To the extent possible, I also pre-plan and do the work required for each scenario, giving me a head start should I ever have to react to a major disruption.

Lesson 2: Never Underestimate Your Competition

The root of the big decline in oil prices? Many suggest that OPEC decided to ramp up production and flood the market with a surplus of oil. The hypothesis behind their move? They wanted to corner their market, and force some of the higher cost oil frackers out of business. OPEC knows that their aggregate cost of production is a lot lower than some of their newer fracker competitors, and wanted to drive the price to a level where frackers would be unprofitable.

While this may seem like an aggressive, unfriendly move, that is business people. In fact, this reminds me of the classic Amazon strategy in technology. Amazon is known for running low margins to corner markets and grow their business. They are willing to experience some short-term pain in favor of long-term margin and defensibility.

Never underestimate your competition. In your scenario planning (see Lesson 1 above), always consider the aggressive, corner cases. Plan for the day your competition tries to drive you out of the market, and build your proactive and reactive strategies in advance.

Lesson 3: Be Ready To Jump On Great Opportunities

As you may expect, the prices of oil stocks have plummeted. They got to a point a few weeks ago where many investors thought they would never recover. Those buying oil stocks felt in their gut a deep anxiety when executing trade orders. In my experience, this is exactly the moment it’s ideal to purchase shares. The takeaway: Change and volatility often creates opportunity. Be ready for that opportunity and remember to scenario plan for opportunity, in addition to catastrophe.

I’d like to add a disclaimer here that this is not meant to be a politically-charged article and I’m neither in-favor nor against oil and oil stocks for the purpose of this article. I’m merely looking at a sector and extrapolating insights. Although, in full disclosure, I must admit that I do personally own several oil and oil-related companies, and did execute some purchase orders during the lows a few weeks back.

Lesson 4: Run A Tight Balance Sheet

Leverage is a really fascinating concept. In good times, it can do so much to accelerate your growth. In bad times, it can destroy your business. With interest rates at historic lows for many years now, I wanted to offer a reminder to be mindful of your leverage. While interest rates are low for now, they will not always be that way. Carrying enormous debt on your balance sheet certainly doesn’t help when your profits plummet for a sustained period. It hurts even more if your debt needs to be refinanced at higher interest rates in coming years (while your business is suffering).

Will oil prices recover? In my opinion, absolutely. How long will it take? Probably a long time. In analyzing the oil players in the market, I tend to gravitate towards those with very healthy balance sheets and away from those with too much debt. Remember this lesson in good times and bad. You never know when your world will turn upside down and you certainly don’t want to worry about a huge amount of debt when it does.

Don’t use debt? This lesson also applies to tech startups that are not yet turning a profit. Always protect your cash reserves because you may not be able to get more funding during the next downturn.

Lesson 5: Fight On!

Despite the very challenging market, a key oil executive at a super major mentioned that they will not be cutting their dividend. This very bold statement put investors at ease during a rather volatile time. The key lesson here is one of the fearless leader. As a leader, you need to be prepared for anything. If you are mindful of the lessons above (especially around scenario planning and leverage), you can buy yourself a huge amount of confidence, no matter what crazy situation you face. Companies need strong, bold leaders. Be one and always fight on!

Disclosure: Holding long positions on various oil and oil-related companies.
Image of oil price © Nasdaq – http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/crude-oil.aspx?timeframe=18m

An App A Week

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Oct 11 0

There’s a motivational speaker, entrepreneur, and YouTube phenomenon named Tai Lopez. Have you heard of him? If you watch YouTube, I’m sure you have seen at least one of his pre-roll video advertisements. He’s in his garage with his Ferrari and also a multitude of books and bookcases. Tai encourages his listeners to expand their horizons by reading a book a day. He argues that reading brings knowledge and knowledge drives power. As someone who doesn’t read as much as he should (I spend my free time writing), Tai’s message struck home with me. He encouraged me to elevate my reading game, although I’m going to shoot for a book per week instead of per day. Thanks for the motivation, Tai!

Today, I want to do my version of Tai’s message, specifically for digital marketing professionals. I want to encourage everyone reading to install and explore at least one new app every single week. Mobile is at the forefront of everything we do. The better you understand the latest in mobile apps, the quicker you will grow.

In my opinion, the best employees are those that spend some time learning and experimenting during their off-hours. Look how competitive the advertising landscape has become these days. Even with budgets in the millions, you have to be one of the best marketers around to really win the game. It’s even more difficult being competitive when you’re on your own, have next to zero budget, and have no team. The scrappy moonlighter is forced to come up with the most innovative ideas ever, and this is precisely why you always need to be learning in your off-hours. This is when you will generate some of your best ideas, and make some of your greatest advances forward.

In your quest to learn a new app each week, I’m not talking about video games! I’m talking about real apps, those that can add value to your business or expand your horizons as a marketer and technologist. Pick popular apps and new apps. Pick social media apps and productivity apps. Even if you feel like you’re the last person on earth to try an app and you’re embarrassed you waited so long, just go for it! (I was in this very situation with the app I just installed, Instagram.)

Don’t just install the app, but spend some serious time engaging and learning the app. Do your best to maximize the app, treating your personal account as if you are running a business. (Hopefully you are running a business. As long as your side business does not take away from your job and as long as you don’t spend too much time on it each week, the lessons you learn will truly propel your full-time employer and corporate career.)

This past week, I’m thrilled to say that I finally got on Instagram. While it’s honestly a little embarrassing to admit I waited so long, I’m also trying to illustrate a point here. While I probably should have learned Instagram a long time ago, better late than never. It’s not about where I was yesterday, but where I am today. I’m always learning. Just like reading a new book, learning a new app is an empowering and powerful experience.

Please make sure to connect with me on Instagram, and check out my photos. As you can see, I didn’t just install the app and forget it. I’m taking Instagram seriously and trying to maximize and learn everything I can about the platform. While I don’t expect every app I install to be so much fun, I found that Instagram is one of the most addictive social media platforms in existence. I also found that the community on Instagram is so willing to support one another.

What have I learned on Instagram in my first week? A whole lot. In fact, when my good friends at Acquisio offered me an opportunity to guest post, I decided to write an Instagram guide for newcomers, like myself. I highly recommend reading on and checking out my guide on How To Get Started On Instagram. Thanks, Acquisio, for the opportunity! (For those that don’t know, Acquisio is one of the most powerful performance marketing platforms around. They also happen to have a stellar blog, and I’m lucky to guest post from time-to-time.)

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