A lot of the issues shouldn’t happen in the first place. With a bit of planning and communication most can be sorted before they become a problem.
Here’s a quick list of the issues I saw a LOT of during the past year.
Modern Search Engine Optimisation
Getting to grips with certain technical aspects of SEO can be tricky for some marketing teams, especially if you haven’t a dedicated SEO person.
Areas such as Schema/Structured Data and Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are becoming much more important, so is website speed and if the awareness of these areas is not there then opportunities can be missed.
I don’t think your team needs to be able to implement these tactics, but having the initial awareness can help you direct third party developers.
If you’re up for a bit of intensive SEO learning then checkout this intermediate SEO training day and a more advanced/technical SEO session. Always happy to customise any training.
For those who like their training online I have an on-demand SEO course available as well.
Web Developer Issues
A lot of marketing teams and agencies seem to have had a bad experience with a web developer. Most of the time it’s to do with bad communication or mismatched expectations.
Many times over the last 12 months I’ve spoken to marketing execs who have contacted their web developer to ask why their site is not working on HTTPS and the developer says, “You never asked me to do it”.
Marketing just wants a fully functioning website. That works, properly.
Other common issues I see relate to mobile readiness, speed of website and not having a flexible enough design to accommodate future functionality.
Say hello if you want someone to watch over or manage a website design/redesign or if you just want a one-off session talking through the design process. It’s much easier to spot problems if you know what they are!
What to track & how to track it
There are so many metrics and quite frankly I get just as confused as you.
The Marketing departments I visit either track & monitor almost nothing or they have so much data they don’t know what to do with it.
There’s a sweet spot in the middle and deciding what you need to track is important and can save you time.
You may find you need to measure different metrics for different brands, products and services. Not every business is the same.
Do you measure how many sales social media brings you? Do you know how many leads are generated from MailChimp campaigns?
Knowing what to track can help you make better decisions.
I include monitoring and tracking in my SEO, Content Marketing, Email Marketing and Blogging For Business training sessions. We can track social, email and almost anything else that lands on your website.
Prove what you’re doing is working!
Finding the best way to report to clients
We’ve all been in a meeting where spreadsheets and charts have been shown to the client and they’ve starred blankly and nodded. This is not good 😉
You probably don’t want to show all the stats you have to your client. A lot of the data you collect will just be for you and will guide changes to your campaigns.
The most important data for a client will usually be sales, leads and exposure. Is my company being seen and where? Is what we’re doing converting into sales or leads?
Being able to create visual reports for the clients helps a lot. Gone are the days of spreadsheets or a list of percentages. It’s fairly easy to create attractive reports so get in touch if you need a hand.
Finding new ideas for content
This is a widespread problem. Putting yourself in the shoes of your client or if you’re an agency, your clients client can be hard work.
When you start to look at areas like searcher intent and answering your clients questions, being able to come up with the right content idea is vital.
You need to be creating content in many different formats that answer the clients questions, leading them on the journey to a sale or lead.
My Content Marketing Training session deals with this and we can brainstorm ideas for future content.
Keeping Social Media channels busy
If only we could afford someone full time on Social Media! I hear this a lot and it’s a luxury that only a few marketing departments and agencies can afford.
Social media needs to be busy so put a strategy in place that mixes live and scheduled content.
If you need a hand then my Social Media Business Training session looks into scheduling, content creation and tracking.
In summary, building a good plan of action, communicating well and trying not to overthink things can really make the job of a marketeer much easier, but everyone needs a little helping hand.
Give me a shout if I can help.