Chapter 3
Smart Marketing Requires Intelligence: Research, Audit & Listen
One of the most common problems companies have with their online marketing is an overly tactical approach. Most search and social media marketers tend to focus on optimizing for the most popular keywords, setting up a blog or Facebook page because that’s what their competition is doing. The problem is, those keywords and social channels may not be where customers and key influentials are spending their time. Focusing solely on tactics before customers can result in wasted time and energy because the company may be operating on the speculation of traffic and sales instead of what matters most to the target audience.
This chapter offers insights that will help marketers take a step back and approach their online marketing efforts more strategically and with more insight about the competition, search and social media marketplace. Additionally, an investigation into the technical SEO readiness of the website will help ensure search engines are able to index and crawl all the content intended for high visibility in search results. Through research, a technical SEO audit and listening, data can be leveraged to create a complete strategy focused on optimizing for customers, search engines and business outcomes.