Which WordPress Plugins Should You Use and Why
Every WordPress Site Needs Plugins But which ones? And why? Last night I met someone who was confused about this. I told him I would send him a list of which WordPress Plugins I run on my site, with an explanation as to what they do and why they matter. This morning I decided it…
In Closing: Your High Growth Unique Selling Proposition
Getting your USP right is not quick and is not easy, but when you get it dialed in right, it carries your business. It explains to people in very few seconds what your company is all about. It allows people to know what you can do for them, without requiring them to think. But…. Getting…
How to Communicate Your High Growth Unique Selling Proposition
Communicating your USP starts while you’re testing it, and continues after you think you’ve got it right. When you come to the realization you’ve got a product that solves a real solution and you’ve dialed in your messaging (via A/B testing) to where people are responding and buying, you get active. You talk to people…
How to Test Your High Growth Unique Selling Proposition
Once you’ve developed what you think is a good USP, how do you test it? There are two ways that make sense. Of course, if you think of more, let me know….. Talk to People Which people? With the people you previously interviewed. How do you test it? Setup another interview and this time tell…
How to Craft a High Growth Unique Selling Proposition
Once you’ve got background information on the whole USP thing, how do you craft YOURS? I found a great method described in a blog post titled 5 Ways to Develop a Unique Selling Proposition. The title is, however, a bit misleading. In two ways: 1) It’s not that you pick the one you like best.…
How to Figure Out a High Growth Unique Selling Proposition
So…. How do you create a great USP? The short answer is….. Slowly, through iterations. But…. And this is critical….. If you don’t have data to back up your USP, you don’t actually have a USP. If you’re declaring your USP and you don’t have data to back up with you’re saying, you’re just making…
Examples of Fantastic and Terrible Unique Selling Propositions
Some brands have experienced impressive growth during periods where they used a really effective Unique Selling Proposition (USP), then lost market share later when they stopped. This has occurred often enough that there seems to be a clear pattern. Having said that, the people who changed the USP later thought for whatever reasons, they were…
Very Important Ideas About High Growth Unique Selling Propositions
Sometimes, for your message to get through, it’s necessary to (metaphorically speaking) hit someone over the head with a message that effectively says “What you know is wrong”. Dispelling Myths A YouTube science educator named Derek Muller has a Ph.D. in teaching physics through video. His PhD thesis is titled Designing Effective Multimedia for Physics…
How The Customer Factory Helps You Achieve Massive Growth
When you get your USP right, EVERY “flow” of The Customer Factory is better. Monitoring The Customer Factory for your business tells you if your USP is working. The Customer Factory I learned this idea from Ada Ryland here in Austin, TX who provides consulting services to early stage startups. She did mentioned who she…
How Your Unique Selling Proposition Fuels Massive Growth
How are your USP and your UVP different? It depends who you ask. When you Google for USP vs UVP, you get various answers. Some people say they’re different. Others say they’re the same thing. My personal favorite is from the website of Jill Konrath, a Sales Strategist. Her definitions are: UVP: A clear statement…
Why a Great Unique Selling Proposition Creates Massive Growth
This article provides examples of how a USP that IS MEANINGFUL, has created massive growth for companies. These are real examples taken from real companies (some old, some new), whose USPs helped them achieve dominance in their markets. This article is part of a series of articles. To read the lead article in the series,…
Creating Your Unique Selling Proposition (Brand Strategy)
A great Unique Selling Proposition (USP) will cause the market to pull your business along. You’ll have trouble keeping up. A mediocre one makes you just like everyone else. Your USP, is the simple idea that explains to someone in very few words what your business does for them that they won’t get from someone else. A…
How to generate high quality leads with contextual marketing
What Contextual Marketing is Not Contextual marketing is neither Outbound Marketing, nor Inbound Marketing, both of which provide a lower ROI today. To better understand Contextual Marketing, it’s important to first understand the other forms of marketing. Outbound Marketing Outbound Marketing is composed of “traditional” forms of mass media marketing, such as TV/radio/yellow pages/newspaper ads…
How to increase blog traffic with controversial topics
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics The topic of using controversy to grow blog traffic and generate leads is, in and of itself, controversial. I’ve read articles online that talk about how well it works. I’ve read others about how well it backfires. I’ve seen opinions that you should DEFINITELY do it, and I’ve seen other…
How to increase leads and revenue with Pipeline Marketing
What is Pipeline Marketing? At its core, Pipeline Marketing is nothing more than the attribution of “credit” for generating revenue, across various activities that are required to capture a lead, nurture a lead, close a sale, and even later resell or upsell the customer. How Does it Differ from Lead Generation? With Lead Generation, the…
Link Building Tools for Better SEO
What Are Links? The word “link” is an abbreviation of hyperlink, and hyper means “jump”. A hyperlink is a jump from one web page to another. Components of a Link Links have two parts. Anchor text On the web page the link originates FROM, the anchor text is the text that “anchors” the link. It is…
The Big List of Content Marketing Tools
This post started as a simple rant about how most Content Marketing tools are too expensive and too complicated for small businesses to make effective use of them, and somehow morphed into a Big List of Content Marketing Tools, with a special emphasis on tools that are less expensive, perhaps even in the range that…
What is data-driven content? How is it relevant to your audience?
Data-Driven Content: The New Buzz Phrase Data-driven content is when you pay close attention to the analytics of what you publish (blog posts, social media updates, etc), learn what people show the most interest in, and use that information to guide what you then publish. That’s about it. While it’s a new phrase it’s an…
What is semantic search? How to do SEO like a professional
What is Semantic SEO? The commonly cited concise definition of semantic SEO is a bit cryptic. “Semantic search is a search or a question or an action that produces meaningful results, even when the retrieved items contain none of the query terms, or the search involves no query text at all.” Tamas Doszkocs But I…
How to increase user interaction on your business website
Best Way to Increase Web Visitor Interaction Increasing visitor interaction has a wide range of benefits online. All other things being equal (which is never fully the case, but the guidelines still hold true) websites that have more visitor interaction rank higher. The aspects of user interaction which directly support your SEO are: Links to…
Should you use a script for your videos? if yes, How to..
You WILL be doing video! Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next year (probably by next year), but you will be doing video, and sooner than you think. Why? The cost of creating video has never been cheaper. YouTube is the second most used search engine on the planet. Young people like videos…
How to Sell More Easily and Naturally with Presuppositions
Presuppositional Phrases are the Language of Advertising “Nothing whitens better than Crest” “Why suffer another summer?” “This year, I’ll stop asking ‘Do I look fat’?” Notice the first statement does NOT state that Crest whitens better, yet it is implied. On a marketing and advertising podcast I listened to months ago, the guy who created…
What Is Internal Linking and Why Is It Important for SEO?
Overview The internal link structure of your website has a HUGE effect on your SEO. Ideally your internal link structure should be a hierarchy, not a web. The diagram below shows a nice hierarchy of internal links. Snippet posts link to pillar posts which in turn link to landing pages, which in this example link…
How to choose the right CRO metrics for improved conversions
Conversions and Micro Conversions For a business website, having visitors show up to your website is only the first step. To turn website visitors into prospects, you need some of your website visitors to take the actions you’ve defined. You need to implement conversion (in some form) so you either get contact information which allows…
The importance of creating customer focused content and how to
Better Marketing through Customer Focus We’re busy. We’re bombarded with marketing messages all day, every day. We’re very good at filtering them out. Until we let one through. Customers have different behaviors and preferences. They need to be motivated along their buying journey in a chain of steps for them to make a purchase. Think…
How to continuously improve your content with Deming lessons
Who was Deming? W. Edwards Deming was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, and a management consultant. He transformed Japanese manufacturing after World War II after American manufacturers thought his ideas were a little weird. Too weird to take seriously. Having said that, I’m old enough to remember when Japanese manufactured products were a joke. When…
Need strong SEO? Here is how to set up your WordPress site
Overview While having a website that is properly setup for SEO does not guarantee SEO success, having one that is designed and/or setup poorly can guarantee failure. While the bulk of the work of SEO is publishing quality content at regular (and preferably frequent) intervals, it’s critical the SEO setup of your website be done…
How to… The Anatomy of writing the best blog post possible
Background We all want to write good blog posts, and most of us fail to do so. The vast majority of what businesses publish on the Internet is crap. While it’s important to avoid publishing crap, most businesses fail. The prior post (which is linked to below) describes the advantages I(in terms of content quality)…
How to write the best blog posts possible with storytelling
What makes the best blog post, best? Best is a subjective term, yet the title of this post implies you can follow a “recipe” to create posts of high value that deserve to be called “the best”. To be fair, this post teaches ONE method (not THE method) of creating a high quality blog post.…
Find better citation links with mozbar domain authority
What is Domain Authority? It is an integer, between 1 and 100, that was created by Moz (an SEO tool vendor located in Seattle, WA) that provides an indication of the authority of the domain in question. Higher numbers indicate domains with more authority. Few sites have a domain authority (DA) of 100, and to…
Google Reveals How to Rank High with Quality Website Content
Content Quality? Beyond the obvious idea of higher quality content being “better”, it’s important to understand WHY Google is so focused on the concept of content quality and how this is core to their business model. If you have not yet read part 1 of this article, you should do so as it gives you…
Back links
Back links are links from webpages on sites other than your site, than “link back” to pages on your website. The image above should help illustrate the idea. Back links are critically important to the success of your SEO. In the early days of Google, back links were THE search signal, and while there are now…
![A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is: "[the] version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort" — Eric Ries.](https://i1.wp.com/organicgrowth.biz/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/what-makes-a-good-minimum-viable-product.jpeg?resize=182%2C125&ssl=1)
What makes a good Minimum Viable Product?
Have you (or has anyone you know) failed with “Build it and they will come.”? I’m currently reading The Lean Startup in preparation for us developing a software product which will make content marketing both easier to learn and easier to do on a day to day basis. While I know there is need for…
How to Ensure Your Blog Posts Actually Say Someting
Content is King! Yes we know. We’ve all heard this all before. We don’t need to hear this again. I’m not sure anyone believes that more strongly than I do, having direct experience with the marketing benefits of regular and effective blogging. But unfortunately this belief in the value of business blogging has resulted in…
How to automate social media participatation
Can you really automate social media participation? Not fully. At least not yet. One day Artificial Intelligence will progress to the point where a software bot can read a social media post and draft an excellent and maybe thought provoking reply, but we’re not there yet. You can automate only part of your overall social media participation.…
Lead nurturing: How to get started with marketing automation
Marketing automation is a form of email marketing that is very sophisticated. It is both the most effective and the most difficult to implement of your email marketing options. What makes marketing automation so powerful is the email’s you queue up are “chained together” with if-then statements. When an email is sent, whether it was…
How Social Media Contributes to Your SEO Ranking
According to Google, Social Media likes and shares are not taken into account when Google presents web pages in a search engine result page (SERP). This was first said by Matt Cutts (of Google) in a video in Jan of 2014. In Aug of 2015 John Mueller (also of Google) said the same thing. In…
Can (and Should) You Systematize Your Content Creation?
The short answer is yes. In general (there are a few exceptions, but the rule is) Google provides higher ranking for websites that are both updated more often and contain more content (are larger). You want your website to rank? Within your niche you’ve got to publish frequently and build up a large repository of…
How to make your website your digital hub (under your URL)
Before I get to how, let me first explain why I have personally known business owners who built up an impressive following on their Facebook business page. Lots of followers, lots of engagements, indications it is leading to real business bringing in real money. Then about a year ago Facebook updates their algorithm and almost…
Why Business Blogging is THE CORE to Successful SEO
The discussion of the importance of blogging to SEO can now cease. Robert Ryan, an SEO consultant in Ireland, conducted an experiment whose conclusion is definitive. In summary…. he built up a website to a health level of traffic. He then stopped blogging for 251 days (8 months and 7 days) then compared traffic levels…
How to obtain critically important online reviews
Customer tell you they’re thrilled with your service. You ask them to provide you an online review. They say they will. They don’t. How often does this happen to you? If you’re like most small businesses this happens more often you care to admit. If you’re cracked this nut, please share and let us all…
How to use a parallax website design and not hurt SEO
Parallax scrolling is when the home page of a website is one big page and scrolls up and down and when you select a menu item on the website it doesn’t take you to a new page, it takes you to a different section on the one big page. There are numerous articles on why…
Doing Your Own SEO is Not Crazy, It’s Inexpensive and Effective
The other day the following post crossed my path on social media. How to do SEO on Your Own (If You’re Crazy Enough to Attempt it) The point of the article is that SEO is hard. It’s complex. It requires specialized knowledge. You should use a professional to do it for you. I think they’re trying to…
Why You Need Outbound Links in EVERY Blog Post on Your Website
The discussion about should you link to other sites can now be closed. A company named Reboot SEO & Marketing conducted a structured study on the effect of external (or outbound links) on the ranking of the content containing the outbound links. A link to their published results can be found in their article titled….. Research…
How to Ensure Your Small Business Wins with Content Marketing
Small Business Content Marketing Works We’ve seen time and time again the benefits of effective Content Marketing: Increased organic search web traffic More leads Better leads Engaging with prospects when they’re further down their buyers journey However many businesses (even large businesses) fail to understand the basic mechanisms of Content Marketing and feel challenged to…
Need Engagement? Use the Simple But/Therefore Rule from South Park!
This idea is so simple it’s one of those things that once you know it you wonder why you didn’t already know it. In a video that crossed my path on social media, I saw a short video where the two creators and head writers of South Park are teaching their “but/therefore” rule to a…
How to market your small business on a limited budget: Inbound rescues!
New business? High hopes? Too few leads? You’re not alone. The #1 need for ANY business is a steady stream of quality leads. People who both need what you sell and have the means to pay for it. But… marketing costs and marketing costs big. Some new businesses budget 40% of total expenses to marketing…
What is a content manager? Why does your business marketing need one?
Succeeding at generating leads through Inbound Marketing requires publishing useful content at frequent and regular intervals. But… Small business owners are busy, wear many hats, and constantly juggle priorities. Therefore… Most small businesses I’ve worked with who start with Inbound Marketing, fail. But… It doesn’t need to be this way, as generating quality content takes…
How Quality Educational Content Enhances Your Social Media Marketing
First I wish to point out (or maybe fess up) that the title of this post is intentionally redundant. Per Google’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines, educational content is by definition of high quality as it satisfied one of our basic search intentions, which is to learn something. This article is really about people who focus on…
How to Create Landing Page Forms for High Quality Leads
Before I get to the form part of the landing page, I’ll talk a little about landing page design in general. Landing pages should be sparse and contain only what is absolutely necessary to convey what is needed to encourage a conversion. Value Offer Urgency What problem do you solve? How do you do so?…