Corporate Eye

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Archives for June 2017

Emotional Energy and the Corporate Website

dog - emotional energy metaphorWe live with two dogs:

  • an intelligent and patient collie/lab cross, who can’t resist carrot cake icing (yes, she ate my birthday cake)
  • and a ditsy, hyperactive and very needy springer/lab cross, who struggles with anything new or strange.

Our springer cross has a metaphorical emotional sink into which the stresses of her day (people at the door, other dogs across a field, quadbikes passing in the lane, cows looking at her over the fence, the vacuum cleaner, etc) pour like water from a tap.

Luckily, that sink has a (metaphorical) drain which can reduce the level of stress in the sink based on a variety of stress-relieving activities. The problem is that she starts the day with a sink that is already half-full, and a drain that is partially blocked, because she has some physical problems which can cause her pain.

My task is to ensure that her emotional sink drains more quickly than the additional stress pours in. If the level of stress overflows the sink, we are in trouble: stress flooding all over the place, and she doesn’t know how to handle it.

Why is emotional energy relevant to corporate comms?

Think about your website visitor: they arrive with a certain level in their sink—perhaps they’ve had a stressful day at work; perhaps there’s a task that they don’t really want to do; perhaps they’ve struggled to find the right URL for your site in their country; perhaps their mobile is almost out of charge.

In their mind are certain tasks that they have to complete on your site. Maybe they’re looking for a contact number for recruiting, an image for a piece they’re writing, some detail about your finances or for your views on a particular industry hot topic.

What barriers does your site put in their way? Every additional hurdle will increase the level of stress in the sink (and diminish their emotional energy). Consider:

  • Problematic navigation (where on earth have they put it?)
  • Form filling (why do you need my birthdate and address?)
  • No contact number, only a generic contact form (how will I know it will get to the right person? Or even that the form worked at all?)
  • The need to register to download an image (more form filling!)
  • Inappropriate filters on news items or job listings so it is difficult to find the best match
  • Information hidden in PDFs rather than on the page so the task becomes much bigger (why do I have to download everything to look for what I want?)
  • Search that doesn’t work effectively (I don’t need all these irrelevant results)
  • Design that doesn’t work with the technology she’s using (why is it so slow? Why must I scroll right to see everything? Why won’t the menu work?)

If the sink overflows, you may well lose that visitor. You may not be able to see the stress overflow—because they’re at their desk, not barking and lunging by your side—but it will have an effect on how they think of your company.

And on how she will react next time she comes across your corporate brand.

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For more on this, read this interesting piece on increasing funnel conversion. Darius is talking about making the sale, rather than about corporate comms, but the point is still relevant.

The Surprising Importance of Local SEO for Global Companies

I invited Brad Shorr to write for us today about the importance of local SEO, even for global companies—I hope you’ll find his thoughts on this useful.

global vs local seo shows globe with cities highlighted
When the subject of local SEO crops up, we tend to think about local businesses, such as dental practices, restaurants and HVAC companies. However, global firms also benefit from local SEO, and in a big way. Here at Straight North, we’ve seen this prove out time and time again. Let’s review why local SEO is such a powerful tool.

Easier Wins on Local Keywords

Dominating organic rankings high volume, highly converting national keywords is a tall and expensive order even for very large enterprises with very large budgets. In contrast, a global company has more than enough resources to dominate local keywords with high local-market volume and conversion potential.

Win in Strategically Important Markets

If a company focuses all of its attention on national keywords, it runs the risk of being moderately visible everywhere, even in markets of little consequence. A better option could be to achieve maximum visibility in the key markets and maintain a more modest organic profile elsewhere. So, if for instance, 75 percent of a firm’s U.S. revenue comes from Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta, strong local SEO campaigns in each of those three markets will lift conversions where the greatest number of potential conversions exists.

Expand Strategically — Geographically

Following this line of thinking a bit further, suppose after a period of time this same firm comes to indeed dominate for keywords in those three local markets. At some point, further SEO efforts in those markets will produce diminishing returns, because there are only so many possible conversions in any given market for any given keyword. At this point, the firm is in a position to shift local SEO focus to the next most important geographic market(s), systematically building its organic visibility, rather than canvassing the whole country hoping conversions drift in from somewhere. This approach is also quite useful when a global firm wants to break into a new market or rapidly build its revenue in an underperforming one.

Expand Strategically — Keywords

Along similar lines, if this firm nears its maximum return for target keywords in those three markets, it can expand its keyword target rather than (or in addition to) shifting focus to another local market. Clear-headed keyword research is critical, though. Keyword expansion is an excellent way to generate high-quality conversions as long as there is sufficient volume in those keywords to make the effort worthwhile. In some local markets and/or in certain verticals, this will not be the case.

Local SEO Is Good for the Brand

One of the biggest marketing challenges for a global company is the fact it is global.

People like to buy local, to buy from people they know. Millennials in particular are influenced far more by user reviews and recommendations than by a company’s marketing materials. And what are two key components of a local SEO campaign? Generating positive user reviews and creating web content with a strong and genuine local flavor. A brand that expresses strong interest in a local market and engages local customers through reviews (and other interactions) can overcome the image of being a cold, distant megacorporation. The result is more organic traffic and conversions.

Local SEO Improves Other Marketing Campaigns

Beyond bringing discipline and focus to national (and international) SEO efforts, local SEO enables SEO tactical execution to complement other marketing initiatives, such as new product launches in test markets, with far more impact than what can be achieved otherwise. When on-site and off-site SEO content is added or updated to reflect the firm’s marketing objectives in each individual market, this SEO-driven content becomes more than mere words to impress Google crawlers, it becomes highly effective marketing content that builds revenue.

Thanks Brad!

Brad Shorr is Director of Content Strategy at Straight North, a professional SEO firm in Chicago. With more than 25 years of sales and marketing experience, Brad has been featured in leading online publications such as Entrepreneur, American Marketing Association and Moz.