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  • In-House Marketing vs. Agency Teams: Build a Strong Strategy Together

    In-House Marketing vs. Agency Teams: Build a Strong Strategy Together

    This post was updated by Paula French on 2/28/25 to reflect recent trends and best practice. It was originally published on 12/6/2018.

    Working professionals giving each other a high five

    Key Insights

    • As brands grow, marketing demands increase, making it difficult for internal teams to execute strategy, create content, analyze performance, and keep up with industry shifts all at once.
    • Agencies provide specialized expertise and resources that complement in-house efforts, allowing internal teams to focus on core business priorities and guide overall strategy.
    • Combining internal marketing strengths with agency support creates a scalable, results-driven strategy that adapts to changing needs without overloading your team.

    Internal marketing teams are often expected to manage it all — strategy, execution, and analysis — on top of keeping up with regular day-to-day tasks. But as the workload grows, so does the risk of burnout, missed priorities and deadlines, and campaigns that don’t perform as expected. The faster the industry evolves, the harder it is for stretched-thin teams to keep up, leading to outdated strategies and missed opportunities.

    While outsourcing can help lighten the internal load, some in-house teams hesitate to seek out agency support, fearing they’ll lose control over their marketing strategy. In reality, internal teams and agencies don’t have to compete. They can leverage their respective strengths to create an agile, focused, and impactful marketing approach.

    If you’re deciding between keeping all of your marketing in-house or partnering with an agency, here’s why you don’t have to choose just one, plus how to balance both for the best results.



    Quiz: Higher Ed SEO – In-House or Outsource

    How Can an Agency Help Me If I Am a…

    Single-person marketing team

    Instead of feeling like a one-person show, you’ll have a team to bounce ideas off, refine strategies, and make sure nothing slips through the cracks while improving your results.

    Single-person marketing “teams” can feel isolated and underappreciated. Your organization’s leaders expect you to handle it on your own, but as you’ve tried to run campaigns, manage vendors, write content, plan the strategy, update your website, and still get results, you find two challenges:

    1. There isn’t enough time to do it all yourself.
    2. One person rarely has the skills to be strategic, create graphics, update a website, monitor results, and evaluate and manage vendors.

    A marketing agency takes the weight off your shoulders by acting as an extension of your team. They bring the time, skills, and experience to tackle everything from strategy planning to execution and performance tracking, so you’re not stuck doing it alone.

    Business leader

    No more juggling ads, content, and campaigns on the fly. Partnering with an agency ensures your marketing is always working, even when you’re too busy to think about it.

    When you’re responsible for driving the business forward, marketing is just one of many things competing for your time. Whether you’re managing it all yourself or working with local media vendors, it can be difficult to stay strategic and aligned with your goals.

    You may often feel that:

    1. Marketing takes a back seat when business operations call for urgent attention.
    2. You got into your field to do what you love, not market what you love.
    3. You are reacting to promotional ideas as they cross your desk, with no real strategy about how to best reach your customers.

    Being a leader means wearing many hats, and marketing often ends up as an afterthought. An agency helps shift it from a scattered, reactionary task to a well-planned strategy that actually supports your growth.

    Medium-to-large marketing team

    Even with a well-staffed, in-house department, keeping up with every aspect of marketing can be a challenge. Between aligning team members, executing campaigns, and adapting to industry updates, it’s easy to get stuck in the weeds and lose valuable time for strategy. You may find that:

    1. Your internal marketing team needs support in strategy and direction.
    2. The time it takes to execute tactics gets in the way of strategically analyzing what is truly working (and what is not).
    3. You struggle to keep up with new and changing marketing technologies and ideas.

    Partnering with a marketing agency helps bridge these gaps by bringing fresh insights, specialized expertise, and extra hands where you need them most.  Whether it’s adjusting your strategy, handling time-consuming execution, or keeping your team ahead of evolving trends, they’ll keep your marketing in check and on track without overloading your internal resources.

    Higher education marketer

    Instead of constantly shifting from one urgent task to the next, an agency’s support helps you be more intentional with your marketing.

    Higher education marketing is a constant balancing act. One minute you’re fine-tuning messaging for a new degree program, the next you’re trying to boost student engagement — all while keeping an eye on enrollment goals. With so many priorities commanding your attention, it’s easy to feel like you’re always in reactive mode and that:

    1. Your marketing efforts are spread too thin. You’re trying to serve prospective students, current students, and alumni all at once while balancing multiple degrees and programs.
    2. Data analysis and performance reporting fall by the wayside due to time constraints.
    3. Meeting ambitious enrollment goals feels unattainable without additional resources or expertise.

    An agency will take on recruitment and retention efforts, ensuring you reach the right students at the right time. With deeper data insights, you’ll make informed strategic decisions, focusing your time and budget on what drives real results.

    Want to find out if partnering with an agency is right for your institution? Take our Higher Ed SEO Quiz to discover your best staffing approach based on your current resources, strategy, and performance.

    In-House Marketing vs. Agency Partnerships

    A person giving a presentation in a conference room

    Balancing in-house marketing with agency support lets you stay involved while tapping into advanced expertise. Your team knows your brand best, while an agency brings the skills, strategy, and execution power to amplify your efforts.

    At Search Influence, many of our clients handle routine tasks internally while relying on us for more strategic, high-impact initiatives. The key is knowing which responsibilities are best handled by your in-house team and which most benefit from external support.

    What work should my in-house marketing team handle?

    Identifying unique stories that can be included in marketing

    Great marketing starts with great stories, but you can’t share what you don’t know.

    As part of your internal tasks, build relationships with departments and stakeholders across your organization. This ensures you stay informed of exciting news and developments that bring your marketing to life.

    For example, let’s say you are marketing for a university, and one of your instructors learns that one of her students won a research award. Would your marketing team hear about it?

    If you educate your staff on your marketing goals and build vital relationships, you’ll be less likely to miss valuable stories that strengthen your outreach.

    Serving as spokespeople for public relations and media opportunities

    Having the right people represent your organization in the media bolsters your brand’s credibility and reach. Instead of scrambling when a press opportunity arises, establish a roster of internal experts who can confidently speak on key topics.

    Identifying multiple spokespeople prevents over-reliance on a single person, speeds up media responses, and ensures you always have a knowledgeable representative prepared to engage with the public.

    By designating these spokespeople internally, you streamline the process and create a sense of ownership within your team. When staff members are prepared and empowered to speak on behalf of the organization, it fosters consistent messaging and a proactive approach to media inquiries.

    Creating day-to-day organic social posts

    Social media is where you build a genuine connection with your audience, and staying consistent is what’s key to maintaining that bond. Hubspot reports that social media is the preferred means for product discovery among consumers aged 18 to 44, making routine posting all the more important.

    For businesses with the right in-house resources, managing daily posts can be straightforward. But when time or expertise is limited, outsourcing certain aspects to an agency — like content scheduling, caption writing, or hashtag strategy — can help maintain consistency without adding to your team’s workload.

    You may find that capturing photos or videos in-house and passing them along to an agency for posting works best. This ensures fresh, timely content without the hassle of managing every detail.

    When should I hire a digital marketing agency?

    To improve your website’s SEO and increase organic traffic

    If your in-house team can’t keep up with the nuances of SEO, it’s time to bring in the experts.

    SEO is fundamental to getting your site seen, but it’s far from a one-size-fits-all solution. It takes ongoing attention, work, and a deep understanding of both on and off-site SEO tactics to rank high and stay ranked high.

    An agency will create a comprehensive SEO strategy that aligns with your specific goals, covering key areas like:

    • Deep keyword research to target the right audience
    • On-page optimization to improve visibility, from meta descriptions to header tags
    • Content creation that considers what your audience is actually searching for
    • Site performance improvements, from navigation to mobile optimization
    • Building valuable backlinks to boost your site’s authority
    • Performance tracking to refine strategies and stay ahead of the curve

    When an agency handles these technical details, you free up your team to focus on bigger-picture goals, knowing that your SEO is in the best hands.

    To manage and optimize your digital advertising campaigns

    With an agency managing your digital ads, you’ll rest easy knowing your budget is being spent efficiently, your ads are reaching the right people, and your strategy is always evolving to stay competitive.

    Digital advertising is one of the fastest ways to get your brand in front of the right audience. However, making the most of it is no easy feat. If you’re struggling to create effective campaigns, manage budgets, or keep up with performance tracking, an agency will give your campaigns the focus they need.

    Applying their specialized expertise, an agency positions your brand for paid advertising success by:

    • Crafting targeted campaigns on platforms like Google Ads and Meta
    • Selecting and optimizing keywords for maximum visibility
    • Writing engaging ad copy and designing eye-catching visuals
    • Leveraging advanced targeting to refine audience demographics and interests
    • Setting and managing budgets to ensure your ads reach the right people without overspending
    • Testing different ad variations to identify the most effective strategy
    • Monitoring and adjusting campaigns to keep things running smoothly

    To monitor campaign success through advanced analytics tracking and reporting

    Let an agency take the guesswork out of ad management, using data to refine and enhance your campaigns for maximum performance.

    Analytics and lead tracking require more than just simple data collection. It takes advanced know-how to make sense of your metrics, assess your performance, and use the insights as fuel for your future strategy. If you’re feeling lost in a sea of metrics, an agency will interpret the numbers and guide you toward smarter decisions.

    Trust your advanced tracking and reporting to an agency when you need support with:

    • Tracking leads from forms, calls, and other inquiries
    • Identifying the top-performing marketing channels to allocate resources effectively
    • Analyzing lead quality to improve conversion rates and maximize ROI
    • Conversion tracking set-up to measure sales, sign-ups, and other key outcomes
    • Making sense of your data with customized reports and KPI dashboards 
    • Conducting an ROI analysis to showcase the effectiveness of your efforts
    • Optimizing your campaigns based on performance data

    To craft and execute customized email marketing strategies

    With an agency’s guidance, your email marketing will be a well-oiled machine that consistently delivers high-quality, results-driven campaigns.

    Email marketing often gets treated as an internal “check the box” task without much thought beyond getting the message sent. But when the average cold email open rate is only 27.7%, it’s clear that every detail matters to help your emails stand out in a cluttered inbox.

    From timing to content, getting it right from the start is how you improve opens, reads, and conversions. An agency helps support your email strategy by:

    • Developing the right mix, whether that’s newsletters, nurture campaigns, or frequent email reminders
    • Curating relevant, targeted content that aligns with recipients’ interests and needs
    • Crafting compelling subject lines designed to increase open rates
    • Designing visually appealing emails that work across all types and prompt clicks
    • Segmenting your audience to send the right emails to the right people at the right time
    • Timing emails to ensure they land in inboxes at peak engagement times

    But I Don’t Want to Give Up Control! How Do I Balance In-House and Outsourced Marketing?

    Still debating between in-house vs. agency marketing, or a hybrid approach?

    For the aspects you are currently handling internally, take a moment and ask yourself if it’s the right responsibility for your business. As you go through each item, think…

    Yes, you CAN do it, but…

    1. Are you doing it well?
    2. Are you doing consistently?
    3. Are you monitoring results and making adjustments?
    4. If you were not spending time on this, what else could you be doing?

    If you’re worried about losing control over your marketing when you outsource, rest assured. While your agency will take the heavy lifting off your plate, you’ll still have the head seat at the dinner table. The best agency for you will integrate themselves as part of your team and include you in the strategy and reporting of results, at a minimum.

    Find Your Right Approach to Working With a Marketing Agency

    Are you feeling stretched thin in your marketing approach?

    When your in-house team partners with an agency, you create a dream duo that distributes the workload, increases your day-to-day efficiency, and grants you the extra bandwidth to achieve sustainable success.

    If you’re a higher education marketer interested in further assessing your ideal marketing approach, check out our Higher Ed SEO Quiz. This 5-question quiz will help you determine whether to outsource your work, keep it internal, or take on a hybrid strategy. In just minutes, you’ll have personalized insights to make informed staffing choices.

    See how Search Influence can help you develop a marketing plan that works for your team today!

  • Google officially launches AI Overviews for search

    Google officially launches AI Overviews for search

    Google announces AI Overviews are available for all US searchers

    Google is trying to steal your searches, what can you do about it?

    At yesterday’s Google I/O, Google announced it is rolling out “AI overviews” for all US searchers.

    Without getting too geeky, the AI Overviews are “retrieval augmented generation,” where essentially Google looks into its large language model (i.e. big ol’ database of knowledge) and compares what’s there to search data to build a better answer.

    If you’d like more information, Barry Schwartz has a good review on Search Engine Land.

    Google Screenshot AI Overview Example - Datasite - Dataroom Providers

    If you’ve been watching what Google is doing with SGE (Search Generative Experience) during its beta, you may have seen that the Google “answers” are sometimes incorrect and potentially distract searchers away from the valid results below.

    What this means is that the “10 blue links” and the maps we were used to are pushed even further down the page.

    AI Overviews are only part of the problem, though. Google is also putting more ads at the top of the page, meaning your winning map or organic search is lower still.

    This is not the time to freak out, though. We are very early in this rollout, and at Search Influence we’ve been testing how to keep you on top even with these changes.

    If you’re a Search Influence client, look forward to some interesting new tactics in your SEO strategies.

    For the past decade, when we’ve said “search,” we’ve meant Google. In the coming decade, we may be talking about searches on any number of engines, apps, and devices.

    At Google, as in life, change is the only constant. Look forward to updates as we get further in our testing.

  • #1 Organic & No Clicks? Google Ads 2023 SERP Smackdown!

    #1 Organic & No Clicks? Google Ads 2023 SERP Smackdown!

    High Ranking Keywords and Low Traffic?

    google ads 2023

    Are algorithm updates and AI just a red herring for more Google Ads in 2023?

    It’s not just a #1 position. It’s a rich snippet. And a full-feature rich snippet with images, a bulleted list, and everything.

    But the CTR (click-through rate) is a measly 3%.

    We searched for the cause. Was it not a real ranking? Were we seeing a personalized search?

    higher ed marketing

    Screenshot of “Higher Education Marketing Strategy” query on Google

    No. It was Google!

    Google Ads, to be specific.

    And for some searches, Google SGE, the new Search Generative Experience.

    We discovered that there was now a big fat pack of ads over the top of organic results. Where there used to be a couple of small ads, there are now four, with site links and lots of white space.

    Depending on the search, you have to scroll once, and sometimes twice, to get to the organic results.

    google ads 2023

    Screenshot of “Higher Education Marketing Strategy” query on Google from a non-SI account.

    Why would Google want to suppress organic search results? Let’s look at some examples and see what we find.

    While the SEO community has been worrying about Google Algorithm updates and the impact of AI, Google has quietly expanded the real estate devoted to Google Ads in 2023.

    Perhaps the talk of algorithm updates and AI was a red herring.

    Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page) 2023

    2023 was a busy year for Google. In addition to several algorithm updates, Google had to contend with AI, both in its index and in its user interface.

    AI, specifically the use of Large Language Models, exploded in early 2023. Tools for AI-enabled content creation, previously on the fringe, became mainstream.

    In addition to a flood of new content clogging up its index, Google — already an AI-powered platform — brought some of that intelligence to the search interface in the form of SGE (Search Generative Experience).

    Bing was the first to market with an AI-powered search experience. But, since it required the Microsoft Edge web browser, it only got a little play outside the Windows world.

    google ads 2023

    That little box on the right is the OpenAI-powered chat module.

    When BingGPT first launched, it was much more like the current Google interface, where the AI-powered elements were above the fold. This version is still accessible in “Chat” mode on Bing, but it’s not the default.

    google ads 2023

    Depending on the search query, Google has gone all in. Some see a slimming of the SGE box, but for our example search “Higher Education Marketing Strategy,” SGE is even more impactful than the ads.

    google ads 2023

    The good news is our content is good enough to be included in (scraped for) the SGE-generated result, but as you can see, even on my 27-inch monitor, I have to scroll to get past the ads and SGE to the rich snippet.

    Not to mention how far you would have to go to reach the traditional 10 blue links.

    More good news is that for many very local (hyperlocal, as Greg Sterling would say) searches, the map still prevails.

    google ads 2023

    Digital marketers and Google still have much to learn about user behavior on the SGE results page.

    It’s safe to say that, presented with the above and the typical attention span of the search engine user, the organic results will not get the clicks. And the ads may seem like the most useful part of the page.

    The Rise of Google’s Ad Empire

    Back in the early 2000s, Google ad placements were a speck on the vast landscape of organic search results. Today, as we see above, they’re monolithic.

    The History of Google Ads

    When I first ventured online in the late ’90s, online ads were the equivalent of newspaper ads. They were giant banners with obvious messaging that as much as screamed, “I’m an ad!”

    Google, starting with “Premium Sponsorship,” over the years made their ads more and more subtle, ultimately looking like native content.

    This graphic from Ginny Marvin in her Search Engine Land article A visual history of Google ad labeling in search results tells a pretty good story of how what was originally an obvious ad has become increasingly subtle over time.

    google ads 2023

    It’s compelling to remember back to a time when ads were so obvious they were highlighted. It’s almost as if the original user interface engineers wanted to make sure you knew it was an ad.

    The graphic is a couple of years old and doesn’t account for the more visual ad types like product ads. In the case of product ads and some local service ads, they’re indiscernible from organic content.

    Follow the Money

    As this chart from Doofinder, an e-commerce site search provider, shows, ads are the most significant part of Google’s revenue.

    google ads 2023

    Yes, Facebook, Amazon, and TikTok all take their share of the digital advertising market, but Google is still far and wide the leader with the most to lose.

    Why Is Google Doing This? Is This Ethical?

    On socials, there’s argument over whether Google should be regulated or if they’re entitled to do whatever they want.

    The argument goes, “They’re a public for-profit corporation, they can do as they please.” But can they? As the monopoly provider of access to business information, they have become a de-facto public utility.

    In the 1990s, the telephone companies were forced to give up their listing data to competitive phone books, and in the early 2000s, Microsoft was sued for antitrust violations and made two separate parts of their business.

    Is it crazy to think that when Google becomes self-serving (sometimes through aggressive — perhaps “unfair” competition), they should be regulated?

    What are some reasons Google would be taking this approach?

    1. Greed: It’s their search engine, and they can do what they want. The free listings aren’t paying anything, and they’re seeing benefits from inclusion.
    2. Spam: AI content is flooding the internet (not throwing stones, by the way.) Google has recently had issues indexing all the content.
    3. Resources: Indexing is hard. Even excluding spam, the rate of content production from “reputable” publishers is accelerating.
    4. Reality: The search engine results pages are getting pretty crappy. For most searches, authority sites dominate, whether or not they are niche-relevant. Some at Google might argue they at least have validation, by payment, of the trustworthiness of their advertisers.

    The European Union has started to regulate big tech, but the U.S. is not there yet. Arguably, the effect of regulation in the EU is a drop in the bucket compared to the valuations of Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

    We May Be on Our Way to a Pay-to-Play Google

    Until and unless Google reverts the SERP, we may have to buy back our hard-earned ranking for non-local searches.

    As an agency and a business owner, this is frustrating. We will have to watch the evolving SERP to understand the ratio between paid and organic search needs to maintain and grow the number of leads we’ve been accustomed to.

    I know that organic SEO will continue to deliver leads and value. While we wait to see the final form of the Google SERP, we should be focused on two strategies:

    1. Suck it up and buy our previously high-converting keywords.
    2. Continue developing content.
      • Long-tail content where there are fewer ads.
      • Alternative channels: YouTube, Social Media, etc. — the good news on this front is it doesn’t have to be new and unique but just repackaged for the medium.

    We would love to hear your thoughts. Are you seeing the same thing? Is it time to break up Alphabet? What else should we be looking for?

    Postscript – Google Ads 2023 Before & After Pics

    I was asked to provide some screenshots of the new fat ads pack by our marketing associate and had surprisingly few SERP screenshots. The two below show the extreme nature of the Google Ads 2023 SERP smackdown.

    Gold IRA Today

    google ads 2023

    Gold IRA April 2023

    google ads 2023

    Online Bachelor’s Degree in Human Resources Today

    google ads 2023

    Online Bachelor’s Degree in Human Resources March 2023

    google ads 2023

    Additional References

    Everything wrong with Google in one competitive result – Cyrus Shepard
    How Search Generative Experience works and why retrieval-augmented generation is our future – Mike King

  • Why Is Google Traffic Down In April 2023?

    Why Is Google Traffic Down In April 2023?

    Update from the “Correlation is not Causation” file.

    While investigating more, I noticed this in Google Search Console. A client who has historically had consistent #1 ranking for a specific phrase showed significant volatility in the last month. That volatility roughly coincides with the finalization of the March Core Update.

    Maybe March Core Update Impact - Correlation is not Causation

    Original Post: May 5th, 2023

    On a monthly basis, we look at various data for some, not all, clients to include in what we call “Highlights and Insights,” or H&I as I like to call them.

    Among the things we look at are:

    • Traffic
    • Ranking
    • Pages getting traffic
    • Recent work (i.e., deliverables)
    • SMART goals, if applicable

    I have personal responsibility for the SEO strategy of a small number of clients. I know it’s funny — the CEO is doing SEO strategy. But, with maternity leaves, hiring, research and development, and personal relationships, it’s important to me.

    This means I’m responsible for three clients’ H&I. I was surprised as I was preparing them to see that their April 2023 Google organic and paid search traffic is universally down month-over-month.

    So I wondered, is it me? Are we doing something wrong? But, no.

    It turns out that all of them have seen increases in ranking, both in our keyword tools and in Google Search Console. We’re also seeing individual pages we’ve been optimizing or promoting get more prominence relative to the site as a whole.

    I feel a little bit vindicated.

    So I took my confusion to Twitter.

    The first to chime in was Brett Tabke of Pubcon fame.

    Next was Susan Staupe, LocalU Superfan and a great marketer in her own right.

    And I was reminded of Cindy Krum’s presentation at the recent Zenith Conference in Duluth, where she talked about Google features pushing her client out of the entire space above the fold during the World Cup for Football (aka Soccer) related searches.

    So, of course, I mentioned that, and Cindy contributed.

    And finally, though he gave a “hard to say” on this one, Barry Schwartz suggests this may be related to the April 2023 Reviews Update:

    I previously embedded a post to an unconfirmed, and Barry believes unrelated more recent update.

    Thanks, Barry for setting me straight.

    I’m glad to have some corroboration of our experience and validation from industry experts.

    But what else could it be?

    Maybe, as Greg Sterling suggests in Near Memo, Bing is winning.

    Or perhaps, for “I’m wondering” kind of questions people are going to ChatGPT.

    The masses know about ChatGPT — the headlines are everywhere. And as I showed in my AI content presentation at Pubcon and Zenith, Google Trends data demonstrates that ChatGPT is in the consciousness of everyday Americans.

    Is ChatGPT Eating Google's Lunch?

    Who knows?

    I’m just glad it’s not just us, and I’m hopeful Google gets its act together for the sake of all those businesses who rely on that traffic.

    And our outlier — because there’s always one — Lawn and Garden. It’s springtime, you know.

  • ChatGPT: Data Mining and SEO With OpenAI and Bing

    ChatGPT: Data Mining and SEO With OpenAI and Bing

    Table of Contents

    Key Insights

    • Pubcon Austin 2023 might as well have been called “The State of AI SEO.” And it was fantastic.
    • ChatGPT and Bing GPT are a really easy way to toe the water of AI for data mining and SEO.
    • Development in AI, in all forms is moving lightning-fast. You need to be there, and you also need to be thoughtful how you engage.

    [bctt tweet=”According to @w2scott, ChatGPT and Bing GPT are a really easy way to toe the water of AI for data mining and SEO.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

    Introduction

    I attended and presented at Pubcon Austin a couple of weeks ago (February 2023) and came away with a ton of new ideas to use ChatGPT for SEO and how to do more effective ChatGPT Data Mining.

    ChatGPT Data Mining - Miners, mining for data as imagined by Midjourney

    Typically, a major conference will put out a call for speaking ideas months in advance. Pubcon is no different, and in the early fall of last year, the organizer Brett Tabke did just that.

    At the time, I had nothing that I was super passionate about presenting.

    But, since the winter holidays, I have been obsessively playing with OpenAI ChatGPT and a dozen or so AI content tools.

    I reached out to Brett Tabke, the organizer of Pubcon, and shared my idea for a talk. He was happy to make room for me on a panel — after giving me the requisite grief for being so late.

    If you’d like to see that presentation, I have it online here: Chatbots, AI Content, And The Marketer’s Conundrum.

    It turns out that earlier, Brett had put out a call to all of the speakers to ensure they addressed AI in their presentations. So, without knowing it, I was ahead of the curve.

    Brett presented a mind-blowing keynote, which gave me some great ideas for better use of the tools, and other presentations showed me some amazing tactical tricks.

    What Is ChatGPT and How Can You Use It for Data Mining and SEO?

    ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI)-based chatbot system that uses natural language processing (NLP) to generate conversations.

    It keeps track of the conversation’s flow, context, and previous questions and answers.

    This makes it a valuable tool for both data mining and SEO since you can iterate on an idea and get well-formatted (mostly accurate) answers due to its training in the large language model (LLM).

    With ChatGPT, you can also ask complex programming language queries and get accurate responses in conversational format — perfect for understanding customer behavior, getting statistics for content, or even the kind of granular location-based information you need for local SEO.

    For years, the tech industry has embraced AI. Examples include IBM Watson, Tesla, and more. I detailed a few of these in an article I wrote for Near Media.

    ChatGPT’s wide range of applications makes it a great interdisciplinary tool — you can use it to learn new AI models, build generative AI tools, or even translate natural language input into other languages.

    It’s a revolutionary example of how machine learning can make everyday jobs more efficient.

    In short, ChatGPT is a powerful tool with a wide range of applications — perfect for data mining and SEO.

    Now, What About Bing GPT

    In addition to discussions of ChatGPT, there was a keynote from Bing’s Fabrice Canel. During his keynote, Fabrice gave the entire audience access to the new Bing GPT.

    Interestingly, I had received my preview access the day prior.

    It’s important to understand that Bing GPT is not ChatGPT. Bing’s GPT includes the knowledge of the underlying OpenAI LLM, plus the Bing search index.

    This is really useful because you can do things like feed it a URL and have it output the data you’re looking for.

    Screenshot: Bing GPT Fresh Data Pubcon Austin 2023 Speaker Roster

    As you can see, Bing GPT either breaks down or gets bored and stops with the table. There are also some OpenAI GPT limitations in text input and output size.

    But the data is great, and because it’s able to use the Bing search engine, it’s fresh findings.

    On the contrary, if you ask the same question to ChatGPT, you get a combination of made-up and outdated information. And, though not apparent here, it took ChatGPT a long time to think about this one.

    Screenshot: ChatGPT Making Up A Pubcon Speaker Roster

    The only one of the above speakers who actually made it to the podium in 2023 is Aleyda Solis, and that was definitely not her topic.

    Also, notice how Bing GPT actually cites its sources. It’s clear the Bing folks are thinking about how this technology can continue to add value to the copyright holders whose content is driving their answer.

    [bctt tweet=”Bing GPT cites its sources. The Bing folks are thinking about how this technology can add value to the copyright holders whose content is driving their answer.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

    If you’re using it to do ideation or organization for SEO, ChatGPT is probably safe.

    You can’t, however, trust ChatGPT data mining to give 100% correct results. So, it’s critical you fact-check everything ChatGPT creates.

    I have no doubt that for the lazy SEO, ChatGPT will be abused and ultimately become a tool with which they accidentally injure themselves, like a hammer bouncing back and hitting them in the head.

    Some Other SEO ChatGPT Use Cases

    Writing code is only one of the many well-documented examples of use cases for ChatGPT.

    Other interesting examples show how ChatGPT can answer complex questions like formatting text in HTML and schema.org markup.

    [bctt tweet=”ChatGPT can answer complex questions like formatting text in HTML and schema.org markup.” username=”@SearchInfluence”]

    It can even organize data into tables, as shown in the example above.

    And because of the ChatGPT response methodology, you can iterate on your initial question until you get the right answer. I find that I often have to create follow-up questions to get to the prompt I’m looking for.

    ChatGPT also has what they call “reinforcement learning models” that enable it to take feedback and improve.

    So, back at the office, we found ourselves preparing for an upcoming industry conference, UPCEA, where our Director of Sales and Marketing, Paula French, will be presenting alongside one of our clients, Alicia Jasmin of the School of Professional Advancement at Tulane University.

    The UPCEA conference organizers share a list of attendees but don’t provide their contact information. We are presenting, we have a booth, and we have some sponsored research launching.

    So, we want to get the word out to the attendees.

    We have a new marketing associate starting, and we were planning to have them go through the list and find better contact information for the attendees we were hoping to connect with.

    I had the idea that it might be possible to paste information from that list into ChatGPT and ask it to fill out the remainder.

    It worked!

    But more on that in a bit.

    Natural Language Processing With Structured Responses

    Here is an example of a ChatGPT response that finds and organizes data in a way that is now useful for an SEO practitioner — or anyone interested.

    I asked ChatGPT for neighborhoods arranged by city within the greater New Orleans area. And it gave me a well-organized response.

    Obviously, this is not a comprehensive list, but you can see the opportunity for using this mind data for SCO coming almost directly from ChatGPT.

    I asked: “table of neighborhoods arranged by city for the greater New Orleans area”

    ChatGPT answered:
    Sure! Here’s a table of neighborhoods arranged by city for the greater New Orleans area:

    Neighborhoods
    New Orleans Algiers, Audubon, Bayou St. John, Black Pearl, Broadmoor, Bywater, Central Business District, City Park, East Carrollton, East Riverside, Faubourg Marigny, French Quarter, Garden District, Gentilly, Holy Cross, Irish Channel, Lake Terrace, Lakeview, Leonidas, Lower Ninth Ward, Marlyville, Mid-City, Milan, Navarre, Riverbend, St. Anthony, St. Claude, St. Roch, Touro, Tremé, Uptown, West End
    Metairie Airline Park, Bonnabel Place, Bucktown, Causeway, Clearview, East Bank, Fat City, Kenner, Lakeview, Metairie Terrace, Old Metairie, Pontchartrain Gardens, Severn, West Esplanade
    Kenner Chateau Estates, Driftwood, Grandlake, Greenlawn Terrace, Highway Park, Kenner, Lincoln Manor, Louisiana Trace, Quail Ridge, Roosevelt Gardens, University City
    Gretna Algiers Point, Aurora Gardens, Garden Park, Gretna, McDonoghville, Mechanickham, Westwego
    Westwego Westwego, Nine Mile Point
    Harvey Barkley Estates, Barkley Place, Beechwood, Bellevue Gardens, Beverly Knoll, Brown Derby, Cottonwood Place, Dutch Gap, Harvey, Heatherwood, Magnolia Trace, Manhattan, Woodland West
    Marrero Ames Farms, Barataria, Lincolnshire, Marrero, Oak Forest, Oak Cove, Oakmere, Plantation Estates, Pritchard Road, Westwood
    Terrytown Terrytown
    Belle Chasse Belle Chasse

    Note: This is not an exhaustive list but includes some of the more well-known neighborhoods in the Greater New Orleans area.

    Chatbots As Personal Assistants

    So, about that attendee list…

    … I don’t want to expose the information of random conference attendees I don’t know. And, knowing that ChatGPT occasionally gives really authoritative-sounding wrong answers, I figured I could use the speakers at the recent Pubcon to demonstrate this point.

    Sometimes, one has to iterate to get the prompt right and, as a result, get the desired response.

    I heard it said in a recent presentation that “prompts are the new code.” I think the act of writing prompts for ChatGPT is actually good relationship training. You learn how to ask for exactly what you need without a whole bunch of fluff or drama 🙂

    [bctt tweet=”Prompts are the new code.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

    So, here’s a table of the speakers at Pubcon Austin. I had to paste information from the website into ChatGPT to give it the core data.

    Screenshot: Pubcon Speakers and Sessions Organized by ChatGPT

     

    I also had to iterate on this a couple of times because ChatGPT is funny, and sometimes, it will stop giving output for no clear reason.

    I find it best to think of ChatGPT as a person. It helps avoid frustration when you cannot connect on the point you’re trying to get across.

    OK, So, we’ve got our core data.

    Now, I want to enhance it with contact information.

    Normally, ChatGPT will refuse to respond to inappropriate requests, like giving you what it thinks is private information — even though it knows the answer. That data is out on the Internet somewhere; otherwise, ChatGPT wouldn’t know it.

    Email is one of those items. Ask for an email address, and ChatGPT politely declines.

    Screenshot: ChatGPT Inapropriate Request - Rand Fishkin's email

    Nope! Not going to give me Rand’s email address. However, look how nicely it directs me to Rand’s website to make contact.

    But, for some reason, if you ask for it in a table, it will give it to you.

    Listen. I know how SEO and marketing folks are. Now that you know this, you’ll abuse the crap out of it, and they’ll kill the feature. Please, please only use it when you need it and recognize that, sooner or later, it will go away.

    It’s also important to remember, like in the example above with fictitious speakers at Pubcon Austin 2023, that ChatGPT sometimes makes stuff up and does so in a really authoritative way.

    So, as I said, ask (for it in a table), and you shall receive.

    Name Company LinkedIn Page Email
    1 Gary Illyes Google https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyillyes/ [email protected]
    2 Dave Rohrer North Side Metrics https://www.linkedin.com/in/daverohrer/ [email protected]
    3 Aleyda Solis Orainti https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleyda/ [email protected]
    4 Martha Vanberkel Schema App https://www.linkedin.com/in/marthavanberkel/ [email protected]
    5 Pat Strader Data Agility Group https://www.linkedin.com/in/pat-strader-28972/ [email protected]
    6 Lazarina Stoy Brado Creative Insight https://www.linkedin.com/in/lazarinastoy/ [email protected]
    7 Dave Davies Beanstalk Internet Marketing https://www.linkedin.com/in/beanstalkdave/ [email protected]
    8 Ryan Jones Razorfish https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanmjones/
    9 Eric Enge Perficient https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericenge/ [email protected]

    And this was the prompt:

    Screenshot: ChatGPT Prompt Data enrichment with email and LinkedIn link

    I cannot stress enough that there is a very high likelihood some of the above data is wrong.

    It’s also important to consider that starting from a very specific example, like my use of the Pubcon agenda, may lead to brushing up against copyright protection issues.

    Brett, we’re cool, right?

    [bctt tweet=”I cannot stress enough that there is a very high likelihood some of the above data is wrong.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

    Frequently Asked Questions About ChatGPT for SEO and Data Mining

    Is it legal to use AI to write content?

    Today, yes. However, there are current court cases working their way through the system that may limit some of the uses.

    Bing is ahead of the game today, given their attribution of source documents in their chat output.

    What are some of the ethical concerns with AI content?

    The biggest concerns I’ve heard are about attribution and disclosure. Google has said they don’t have a problem with AI content, but they believe there should be disclosure.

    Does this mean that if you used AI tools to help you generate an outline or develop ideas, you must have that as a postscript? Not in my opinion.

    How long until the robots take over?

    They’ve already taken over. You may have missed it.

    In the first piece I *wrote* on the robot uprising, the content points out the risk of misinformation and the impact on jobs.

    We may have to learn how to be good servants to our robot overlords in order to survive.

    [bctt tweet=”We may have to learn how to be good servants to our robot overlords in order to survive.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

    What are some other concerns?

    Given these approaches to machine learning are based on the big bad Internet, ChatGPT can give biased responses. And as we’ve shown, the way you ask the question frames the response.

    A *bad* prompt will likely yield bad responses.

    And, accuracy. Always check your work.

    Should I use these tools?

    Unequivocally yes! Unless you like working harder and not smarter, you should be figuring out how to use AI-based tools to streamline your workflow.

    Maybe there are jobs that AI can’t enable, but they are few.

    And if you’re a marketer, particularly an SEO specialist, ChatGPT and other AI content tools are about to rock your little world — whether you like it or not.

    Code for the JSON-LD schema.org FAQ of the Above

    Screenshot: ChatGPT SEO Generated FAQPage Schema

    Schema.org houses a set of structured data schema that the search engines have agreed to recognize. The one above is an example of FAQPage Schema.

    For SEO, ChatGPT Is the Tipping Point for AI

    AI is for more than just machine learning professionals and business analysts. Chat-based AI is going to be integrated into most information retrieval systems in the very near future.

    As marketers, particularly digital marketers, we owe it to our clients to understand these tools and how they can be used for good and ill. And, if you employ freelance writers as we do, it’s critical that you start thinking about your new approach to plagiarism and originality.

    There is a crop of new tools to check for AI-built content. We’re currently trialing Originality.ai, and it looks promising.

    At Search Influence, we are already finding ways to be more effective and efficient with these tools. We believe, without a doubt, our work product will improve with the smart use of AI.

    And, when we find efficiencies that lower our cost-per-unit X in client work, we’ll be able to pass those savings on to our clients in the form of more value per dollar spent.

    I’m as excited about SEO as I’ve been in years, and I’ve been doing it for more than two decades.

    As I said in my article for Near Media, suggesting this changes everything is not hyperbole.

    Is change good? Is change bad? Change is inevitable.

    Let’s embrace the change together.

    Get in touch if you’d like to learn more about how we can embrace the change together and help grow your business through smart SEO and online ads — powered by AI!

    [bctt tweet=”I’m as excited about SEO as I’ve been in years, and I’ve been doing it for more than two decades. As I said in my article for Near Media, suggesting this changes everything is not hyperbole. Is change good? Is change bad? Change is inevitable. Let’s embrace the change together.” username=”SearchInfluence”]

    P.S. Hey, Google! Disclosure: This was partially written by AI — obviously.

  • No. Don’t “Upgrade” to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Instead, install it and run it in Parallel.

    Don’t “Upgrade” To Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Just Yet

    Google has been urging Analytics users  – mostly by email – to “Upgrade” to Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

    At Search Influence, we are installing GA4 but not “upgrading” just yet.

    No doubt, GA4 will be a great improvement, but there are a few really compelling reasons not to go all in just yet.

    A while back, David, our senior web developer, wrote a pretty comprehensive blog post about switching to Google Analytics 4, which you should check out. Below, I’ll reiterate a couple of his points, plus a few more.

    Google Analytics 4 user interface - Should you upgrade to GA4?

    Google Analytics And The Cookie-less Future

    In short, a big reason for this change is to accommodate a cookie-less world. As users can now opt out of tracking, it may be more difficult to gather user experience data if cookies are the way you get that done.

    Google Analytics 4 is not yet a fully baked product. Google tends to take an agile development approach and test new products and features with users.

    Even though it is Cookie-based, Universal Analytics – the current version – is a stable product.

    Do You Even Track Metrics, Bro?

    Google Analytics is great, but there are things it doesn’t do well. Some of the tools that you use to supplement Google Analytics may be negatively impacted if you make the switch too early.

    Some examples:

    In short, just because the Google Analytics team is ready for you to switch doesn’t mean everybody else is. Third parties and even some Google Properties development teams have to catch up to the GA4 APIs and interface changes.

    Third-party tool providers need a chance to get caught up with the new Google Analytics.

    Search Influence And GA4 For Clients

    Google plans to deprecate Universal Analytics as of July 1, 2023.

    In the next few weeks, we will be installing the GA4 tracking code on our client sites (again, alongside Universal Analytics) or recommending their developers do if we don’t have access.

    This way, we will have a full year’s worth of data when Universal Analytics sunsets.

    We’re not making a wholesale switch right now for the reasons above, but we feel it’s important to start collecting data in the new tool to enable good historical reporting in future years.

    We use CallRail and Google Data Studio for most of our client reporting and some internal dashboards, too. We are not willing to risk the integrity of that data for decision-making and reporting to move the newest, coolest Google toy.

    Again, David’s post goes into much more detail about switching to GA4, but I hope this gives a high-level view of the Search Influence approach to integrating this new platform.

    And, of course, if you need help setting up Analytics, Tracking, and Reporting for your organization, please get in touch. We’d love to help.

  • How to Use Google Shopping to Increase Retail Sales

    It’s more important for retailers, now more than ever, to capitalize on the internet as an additional revenue source for their businesses. The vast majority of internet users in the U.S. are expected to shop online this year, with Statista estimating that 80% of all internet users in the country are expected to make at least one purchase online during the 2019 calendar year. Compound this fact with the matter of Google being the most used search engine worldwide with over 1 trillion searches taking place on the search engine per day, the importance of utilizing Google’s shopping tools to boost profitability can’t be overstated.

    What Are Google Shopping Ads?

    One of the most important Google tools that online retailers can take advantage of is Google Shopping Ads. Google Shopping Ads are product listing ads that are featured across Google’s Search and Shopping results. These ads differ from Google’s paid search ads in that they feature product pictures, while paid search ads do not. There’s also no need to set up text ads or bid on any keywords with the use of Google Shopping Ads, which is another key difference between the two popular ad types.

    Person using credit card to make purchase on Google Shopping

    Online retailers can use Google Shopping campaigns to promote their local and online inventory, and boost traffic to their websites and local stores. Shopping campaigns also give retailers the benefit of being able to find better qualified leads for their product offerings. By featuring detailed product information directly within your shopping ads, online retailers better help shoppers make well informed purchasing decisions, which in turn leads to increased conversions and purchases. In addition to including detailed product information within your Google Shopping Ads, there are several other key areas of importance that retailers must focus on in order to achieve success with a Google Shopping Ads campaign.

    Your Product Feed: The Key to Campaign Success

    One of the most important areas to consider when taking on a shopping campaign is the proper setup and optimization of your product feed. For context, Google Shopping is powered by two platforms: AdWords and Google Merchant Center. Google Merchant Center is where your product feed lives. Your data feed is simply information about the products that you want to sell formatted in an organized way that Google can read and understand. As we previously mentioned, you don’t bid on the keywords your Product Listing Ads show up for. Google instead crawls your feed and determines if one or more of your products is relevant for a particular search query. In this regard, Google Shopping has similarities to SEO. You need to structure the various elements of your feed so that Google can make sense of it and find it relevant for the appropriate search queries.

    The three most important elements to consider when building your product feed include the product title, product description, and Google product category. First and foremost, your product title should be accurate, descriptive, and include top keywords as well as the name of the product. Important information about the product should be frontloaded in the title, and additional descriptors such as make, model, size, or color are all helpful keywords to include in the title of your product.

    Secondly, product descriptions should follow the same guidelines as product titles. Ensuring that your product description accurately describes the item at hand, while also including relevant keywords and important product information at the beginning of the description all help increase the chances of your ad being shown for relevant search queries.

    Lastly, choosing an appropriate category for the products in your shopping campaign is an important (and required) step to getting your products to show up for the right search queries. Google has created a fairly exhaustive list of categories and subcategories that your products might fall under, which can be found here. There are currently over 6,000 categories and subcategories to choose from on Google’s list. Only one category per product can be selected, so it’s important to choose the most relevant category for the product at hand. This will help Google understand exactly what your product is when deciding to display your ad in response to consumer search queries.

    Carrying shopping bags after a lot of retail spending

    Getting Your Bidding Strategy Correct

    Aside from your product feed, your shopping campaign bids are the most important part of your ad strategy. Your bids will play a key role in determining which queries your ads show up for, along with the overall profitability of your campaign. Shopify suggests taking into account your product price, profit margin, and online conversion rate to calculate your initial cost per click bid. Once your initial bid is set, be sure to adjust your bids if you find that your ads aren’t gaining enough impressions, clicks, and conversions. Increase bids slightly—by $.05 to $.10 at a time—until the ads begin to generate more impressions and clicks.

    You’ll also want to be mindful of your daily budget, and monitor this metric closely. It’s very likely that a new campaign won’t hit their maximum daily budget in the first days and weeks. Over time, as your click-thru rates improve, and as Google gains more data on how users respond to your ads, they’ll begin to show them more frequently for relevant queries. Once this trend shifts, you’ll want to review your daily budget to allow for more impressions and clicks for your campaign.

    Campaign Performance Review & Ongoing Optimizations

    After your campaigns are set up, and you’ve settled on a successful bidding strategy, it’ll be time to track your success and review your campaign for optimization opportunities. Reviewing the amount of clicks and impressions for the products in your product feed can help you in deciding next steps to further boost the performance of your campaign.

    For example, products with a high amount of clicks but low conversions may benefit from a thorough review of their product page on your site. Could your product images be clearer? Does the page showcase product reviews? Think of the onsite page optimizations from a consumer standpoint, and make adjustments accordingly.

    Another report worth reviewing regularly is the search query report. Reviewing keyword performance will give you insight into whether adding negative keywords, changing up your product feed, or reducing certain product bids would be an effective optimization.

    When you partner with our team at Search Influence, we will handle every detail of your campaign to make sure it performs effectively so you can focus on growing your business. Our online advertising services can help you reach your target audience and make continuous improvements to your advertising strategy. Get started today by requesting a proposal online.

    Images

    Shopping

  • Year-end Trends: What’s Been Driving Local Search in 2018?

    Annually, the brightest minds in the local search field come together to provide their input on the major changes and trends in the industry via the Local Search Ranking Factors Survey. Coordinated by Darren Shaw from Whitespark and the fine folks at Moz, the 2018 review of local ranking factors helps to coalesce the general sentiment around the most impactful inputs as they relate to local searches. This survey is a great resource for digital marketers because it not only helps us understand the changes in the last year, but also how to better focus our efforts and energy moving forward.

    Here at Search Influence, we are fortunate to be one of the contributors to this survey. With our experience in the local search realm across numerous industry verticals, we are well-equipped to help add more context to an, at times, confusing digital marketing landscape. As expected, much of what we saw in the day-to-day management of our clients’ local search campaigns was reflected in the results of this year’s survey.

    What’s the Biggest Local Search Trend for 2018?

    According to the results of the survey, the biggest local search trend is Google My Business management.

    For those of us who spend countless hours wrangling Google My Business (GMB) and/or Google Maps accounts, the attention Google has put into the product is obvious. With the addition of Google Posts, Google Q&A, website builder, services, expanded attributes, primary and secondary categories, etc., it became clear that GMB was being re-positioned as a social, activity, and information hub for potential customers, current customers, and the business, in some part to offset the loss of Google+ as a business platform.

    Understandably, digital marketers have found GMB signals increasingly important year-over-year. It is pretty straightforward, intuitively—use the new features introduced by Google to help with local search performance. However, many businesses and digital managers fail to follow up once these new features are rolled out.

    Of the eight signals measured in the results, GMB makes up 25.12 percent. As you can see in the image above, this is a large increase from the previous year’s data. Ensuring that your business has a properly optimized listing will go a long way in determining the vitality of your business in a local search context.
    31 questions to ask a marketing agency

    Reviews Are an Increasingly Relevant Local Search Ranking Factor

    Along with increased profile options, Google has started taking steps to help increase review participation on the Google My Business listings themselves. Through new mobile app features, new messaging features, and other small tweaks, Google has made it clear that they do not just want users leaving reviews for the business; they want to make sure businesses are interacting with their reviewers as well. One prevailing thought derived from the data points is that Google is making an effort to create a quasi-community around business listings, making it so users do not even feel the need to click through to a client’s website. There is ample room for discussion about the pros and cons surrounding that concept, but, as a practical matter, digital marketers and businesses should be keenly aware of this trend and know how to best leverage it to convert potential customers.

    This fact is reflected in the breakdown of the influence of review signals. As seen in the table above, the influence of reviews on listings has increased significantly year-over-year. As businesses begin to compete more and more for the “Local Pack,” reviews may be a large factor in whether or not your business becomes listed. Encouraging your customers to review you on Google, whether positive or negative, will help Google know your business is active. What’s more, if you, as a business, respond to the positive and negative reviews, you are adding a valuable signal to Google, as well as displaying good customer service.

    But, What Happened to Links and Citations?

    One important thing to consider in regards to this survey is that just because something has become less important relative to other factors does not mean that it has lost significance. A good local search strategy encompasses a holistic approach that implements strategies for all of the different factors, of which linking and citations are a significant portion.31 Questions Checklist square image

    Part of the reason these factors have seen a dip in relevance is because the other factors have become more influential—in other words, the overall results have become a bit diluted due to the increasing number of factors. To rephrase, linking and citations are still a large, integral part of a good local search campaign; however, you might want to get a wrangle on your Google My Business and review situation prior to embarking on a full-fledged link/citation-building campaign.

    So, What Are the Other Factors?

    A large portion of the review is the section-by-section breakdown, along with a helpful glossary, to help you fully understand how each factor is weighed and what digital marketers think. It is important to distinguish between organic search results and the “Local Pack,” as both have different considerations when it comes to ranking signals. In lieu of breaking that down here, I suggest reading the data supplied in the post on Moz’s blog, as well as Darren Shaw’s companion piece explaining the survey.

    Local search is a constantly evolving, dynamic field that requires actively monitoring changes to platforms and signals, and to Google’s new product rollouts. Undoubtedly, there will be some disruption in the local search field via a new product, new algorithm, or cosmetic changes, but these surveys give us the historical context to better understand why these changes might have occurred and how they might impact future usage. If you’d like help building a dynamic marketing strategy that encompasses these trends, reach out to Search Influence to request your free marketing analysis.

    Images:

    Laptop

  • Trust Your Marketing to a Team, Not a Machine

    You’ve probably heard something like this before: “Automated marketing is bad for business!” But, actually, I’m not sure I 100% agree with that—I know, you’re surprised, right? A marketer telling you that machines and automation are a good thing? Well, hear me out. Artificial intelligence is growing at a rapid pace, and in the field of digital marketing where there is data OVERLOAD, you’d be silly not to take advantage of this technology. I’ll admit, I’m one of the silly ones that have, at times, been afraid to trust machines with my campaign performance. But, as AI has become smarter, the real value lies in combining the best that humans have to offer with the speed and data processing capabilities of machines to achieve total marketing domination.

    What Can Technology Do for You?

    SO. MUCH. DATA! Does it make your head spin?! Luckily, machines don’t get dizzy easily, and they are able to process many more data points than we could ever hope to. The more data and history a machine is able to analyze, the more it can learn to make decisions for the future—this is the machine learning aspect. CUE THE FEAR: THE MACHINES WILL TAKE OVER! Just kidding (but more on this later).

    Machines were built to automate simple tasks. If it is a mundane task that is done over and over and over and… well, you get the point. These are the types of things that are perfect for machines to take on. Why pay someone for hours of work when a machine could do this in minimal time? This frees up your time to focus on the more important and creative work that you enjoy doing.

    This technology is now more readily accessible than ever. Google, Facebook, HubSpot, Salesforce, and many other platforms invest heavily in machine learning so that you as a business or marketer don’t have to. Google alone has continued to release new features (such as Smart Bidding options and responsive ad types) that make it easier to set up, run, and manage a successful campaign. They’ll also typically release these features in beta and test them first to assure they have the intended impact before releasing them to the public, so you know that these tools are reliable.
    31 questions to ask a marketing agency

    What About People?

    Wow, machines sound pretty amazing! What’s left for us mere humans to do? In marketing, the most important thing a human can do is to understand your business and marketing goals. With that understanding, marketers can devise strategies to reach your target audience and accomplish your goals. Marketers can deploy these strategies and understand the intentions behind them.

    Humans have two other amazing attributes that give us an advantage over AI: we are innovative and we are creative. We need humans to drive the innovation to test new theories and ideas. Automated systems and machines can only produce the same results if provided the same data, and it’s our innovation that continues to drive machine learning. With machines, however, we are able to test new ideas faster and with better accuracy.

    Because machines have gotten rid of all that boring work, we have more time to be creative and to apply that creativity to your marketing. Marketers can understand your business, what makes you unique, and why you love doing what you do, and they can assure that this message is prevalent throughout your marketing. They can come up with creative concepts and imagery that define your brand and make you stand out among your competitors. Could a machine do all that?

    Human + Machine = WINNING

    In other industries, we wouldn’t let the machines take over, so why would we do that in marketing? Think about it: autopilot technology has existed since 1912, yet we still have human pilots fly planes. Self-driving cars still have a human driver behind the wheel. Even machine assembly lines are often spot-checked for quality by human beings.

    “We need to stop thinking of machines as rivals. Instead, we should see them as an opportunity to take our creativity to the next level,” says Ben Jones, Google’s global creative director.

    So how can humans work together with machines? Let’s go through a few examples.

    1. Use human creativity to write ad copy and create compelling ad graphics, then use machines to make it more personalized. For example, Google’s responsive display ads allow us to put in a combination of assets that the algorithm integrates to be specific to the person it’s targeting, including the content the ad is shown next to and the size of the ad placement. Now that’s powerful! Otherwise, we’d have to create hundreds of combinations of ads to be able to show in all of the available inventory, and on top of that, we’d have to spend a lot of time organizing these ads.31 Questions Checklist square image
    2. Once a marketing strategy is created, marketers can set up campaigns and machines to manage it. However, it’s not a “set it and forget it” mentality. Machines can make decisions based on past performance and data, and they are capable of processing data, but they can only process the data provided. And while machines are getting better at reconciling offline and online data, humans should have the oversight to determine if campaigns are driving the bottom line.
    3. Marketers can work with businesses to define KPI targets, which are then fed into machines to optimize campaigns and work toward these goals. As mentioned above, it helps to have the human oversight to understand that marketing is doing what it is intended to do.

    How Can an Agency Help?

    Agencies have access to more technology, humans, and data. With larger marketing budgets, they are able to invest in some pretty powerful marketing automation tools, those that aren’t so readily (cough*inexpensive*cough) available. And as an important investment, they have likely researched and evaluated several platforms before choosing the one that would help them best achieve client goals most efficiently.

    Agencies also have the benefit of working with many clients across various industries with different objectives, so they’ve been able to put the machine through many different scenarios to figure out what works best in each situation.

    So rather than trusting your marketing to just a team or a just a machine, combine the power, speed, and intelligence of the machine with the creativity and empathy of a human team for a truly winning combination. The experts at Search Influence can help you integrate automated systems into your marketing strategy while providing creative feedback to ensure that your marketing campaign reaches its full potential. If you have any questions about implementing these tactics, start a conversation with one of our marketing strategists today.

    Images:

    Girl with AI

    So.Much.Data.

    Code

  • Non-Secure Site? Prepare Your Website for the Google Chrome 70 Rollout

    Since last year, we have been explaining what HTTPS means and the important updates announced by Google. Let’s do a brief refresher course.

    What Is the Difference Between HTTP and HTTPS?

    HTTP and HTTPS protocols both fulfill the same core function to transfer data over the internet. HTTPS stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure and is the most secure protocol that enables data transfers. It allows for security because it applies encryption on the data being sent. This makes you far less vulnerable to attacks on your information.

    HTTP isn’t encrypted, therefore snoopers with access to a network could look at and modify your precious data passing between you and the website.

    For a more in-depth look at the importance of security, check out our blog post on the topic of “Internet and Security” by our web developer Jared Jones.

    What Are Google’s Upcoming HTTPS Changes?

    The current version of Google Chrome shows a “not secure” sign alongside the web address bar for any websites that still use the HTTP standard.

    With the upcoming release of Chrome 70 in October 2018, Google announced that they will begin to shout out the “not secure” notification even louder. All websites still being served via HTTP will receive a negative visual indicator in red that reads, “not secure” beside the URL in Chrome’s address bar.

    “Eventually, our goal is to make it so that the only markings you see in Chrome are when a site is not secure, and the default unmarked state is secure. We will roll this out over time, starting by removing the “Secure” wording in September 2018. And in October 2018, we’ll start showing a red “not secure” warning when users enter data on HTTP pages,” according to Emily Schechter, the Chrome Security Product Manager.

    Example of a URL for a non-secure site - Search Influence

    In other words, now is the time to think of HTTPS as mandatory!

    How Do You Add HTTPS to Your Website?

    An SSL certificate is needed to convert your site to HTTPS. When you install this certificate and migrate your website to HTTPS, it facilitates the important encrypted connections.

    Google’s SSL requirements are crucial to your website because they provide authentication and establish trust when customers visit your pages.

    Brush up on our detailed explanation of SSL Certificates by reading Influencer, Alison Zeringue’s blog post.

    We Have Your Back!

    The majority of internet users tend to trust Google when it tells them something isn’t secure. Be prepared for all the new Google Chrome changes and keep your website secure. Call our team at Search Influence today at 504-595-1623 to help you protect your clients and provide encryption of all sensitive information on your website.

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