"Net Neutrality & Optimizing For Voice Search:" The IMPACT Show Ep. 29 [Show Notes]

Inbound marketing is always evolving. Could net neutrality and voice search significantly impact your marketing efforts? 

In this week's episode of The IMPACT Show, Bob and Nick talked net neutrality, where digital marketing is heading, how to optimize and rank on voice search, servant leadership, and managing a cross remote/in office culture.

Just in case you missed us live (or if you want to relive the magic), you’ll find the episode’s show notes below as well as the recording.

Enjoy and make sure to share with your peers! 

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Have feedback or questions? We’d love to hear it. Comment on this blog or email us at show@impactplus.com

IMPACT Updates

1. New IMPACT Show time
   • We're seeking your feedback. 
   • Is there a better time to do the live broadcast? Leave a comment in the video thread on Facebook. Is it better to do after 5 pm or in the morning on Thursdays? Or, should consider a different day, like Friday or Monday? Let us know!
2. IMPACT was recently recognized for "Best CEO",  "Best Companies for Women", and "Best Company Culture" by Comparably for small to mid-sized businesses.
   
   • And, we couldn't have done this without all of the efforts and hard work put in by everyone on the team.

What Marketer's Be Talkin' Bout

Where we go over what you're saying in IMPACT Elite.

IMPACT Elite is a community of passionate marketers looking to help other marketers succeed. We’d love for you to join us! Go to impactplus.com/elite or just search the IMPACT Elite Group on Facebook and request to join. 

1. Rick Whittington: "We have a marketing specialist that wants to 'go deep' into Facebook advertising. What's the best conference in 2018 to send her to?"
   • IMPACT Live - August 7 - 8th
   • A conference might not be the best place if you're just learning Facebook. Especially if you want to go super deep. However, a workshop is probably the best use of your budget.
   • Don't forget to define what "go deep" means
   • Ali Parmelee who runs Think Creative in Connecticut is a great resource regarding Facebook Ads.
   • Another great resource is Cat Howell, who has a Facebook Ads Academy.
2. Dan Moyle posted a poll: "Mastermind groups... what's your take?
   
   • There were some great responses from Gabriel Wahhab and John McTigue.
     • Gabriel - Great value if the right people are in the group. Also, from the ones I have been in, there comes a point where the members have shared enough knowledge that there is no longer value and it's time to step away.
     • John - Agee with Gabe. Better a limited time, so there's a sense of urgency to accomplish something. Otherwise, it can just be another meeting with no real purpose.

Digital Marketing News

Where each week, Nick and I share one thing from the world of digital marketing that caught our eye and we found interesting to share.

Comcast Deleted Net Neutrality Pledge

• ARS Technica: Comcast Deleted Net Neutrality Pledge the Same Day FCC Announced Repeal
• Straight from Wikipedia
  • Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication. For instance, under these principles, Internet service providers are unable to intentionally block, slow down or charge money for specific websites and online content.
  • A widely cited example of a violation of net neutrality principles was the Internet service provider Comcast's secret slowing ("throttling") of uploads from peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) applications by using forged packets. Comcast did not stop blocking protocols, like BitTorrent, until the FCC ordered them to stop. 
    • In another minor example, The Madison River Communications company was fined $15,000 by the FCC, in 2004, for restricting their customers' access to Vonage, which was rivaling their own services.
    • AT&T was also caught limiting access to FaceTime, so only those users who paid for AT&T's new shared data plans could access the application.
    • In July 2017, Verizon Wireless was accused of throttling after users noticed that videos played on Netflix and YouTube were slower than usual, though Verizon commented that it was conducting "network testing" and that net neutrality rules permit "reasonable network management practices."

Where Digital Marketing is Headed

• Marketing Dive: P&G's Marc Pritchard on Where Digital Marketing is Headed Now That There's More Transparency
•  It's an interview with a respected marketing leader for one of the largest advertisers in the world, P&G. 
  
  • Always good to get access to their mindset.
• Mark made headlines at Interactive Advertising Bureau's Annual Leadership Meeting in January regarding murky digital media supply chain and insisted the company's marketing partners address issues around transparency, fraud, and viewability
• Why did it resonate at that time?  
  • Mark believes it’s because “the digital media ecosystem started to reach a new level. At the time, it had reached almost $200 billion, which is almost a third of the over $600 billion worldwide in overall advertising spending." 
  • “The second piece is that I think it resonated because a lot of companies were going through the same thing that we were going through. They were seeing increased spending in digital media, but decreased effectiveness; increasing costs, but decreasing sales lift. Then as we started to penetrate that, we were seeing less and less transparency.”
  • “I think what is going to happen now is that everybody will raise their game and I think we'll figure out the ways to get more effectiveness and more efficiency out of digital spending. Also, I think we are going to see a lot more innovation. It is time for the next generation of innovation that is going to occur in this whole ecosystem, particularly with respect to data and using consumer ID data.”
• What has digital marketing gotten right this year and what is it still getting wrong? 
  • Right = transparency and greater rating/regulation
  • Wrong = What still needs to get done is to dramatically improve the content on which we advertise.
  • That's probably the area where the bar needs to get raised pretty significantly because there are still way too many sites with way too much low-quality content.
  • Innovation in advertising formats needs to happen:  augmented reality, virtual reality, machine learning and those things, I think there's a potential to make that happen.
• One-to-one marketing:  
  • The other thing is that more one-to-one marketing at scale is occurring. We work with Google on Pampers Rewards pretty extensively. When a mom to be is pregnant, the second person to know is usually Google because she goes online to search. That sends a signal to Pampers Rewards so we then can connect with her. It's this ecosystem that creates a real one-to-one marketing capability that helps keep her connected to the brand, not just throughout her pregnancy, but throughout her baby's babyhood.
• brands using their voice for good:  
  • The work we’ve done for Always' "Like A Girl" is a classic example of a brand that is always focused on infusing confidence in young women, and through literally turning what was an insult — "you do that like a girl" — into a positive expression, the brand is growing.
  • The important thing to do is to make sure that you really focus on an insight or an area that is important to consumers where your brand or your company matters. That's why Like a Girl works so well because Always is a feminine protection brand and knows women really well and so is able to bring confidence to young women.
• Advice for other marketers:  
  • In our everyday advertising, we make sure that we have gender equality and racial diversity. You've got to begin to make this normal. I would invite every marketer to really think through how they can make a difference in innovation, creativity, transparency as well as using their voice for good and for growth.

Topic 1: How to Optimize and Rank on Voice Search

In all honesty, the same principles of doing great content marketing and SEO apply to voice search.

• You need to create great content that answers questions… they ask, you answer
• They ask a lot of questions, and they want answers back
• Focus more on FAQs, succinct answers
• Build your site authority - get good inbound links
• Be more conversational in your long tail keywords, "Hey Alexa, what are the best restaurants near me?"
• There are more tips in this Search Engine Land Article.

Topic 2: How You Can Be a Servant Leader

• What is servant leadership?
  • We first heard the term from David Cancel
  • the idea that instead of your people working for you, and you delegating tasks down to your organization. You flip the organization upside down so that everyone on the bottom (CEOs, leadership, managers) are working for your front line people.
  • Scrum has taught us more to do this. With the frontline teams working together and trying to solve their own problems. When there are problems and impediments, the issues are brought up to their managers and directors to help them solve the problems. 
• How we do it at IMPACT… Scrum forces servant leadership
• Have a clear vision, metrics, and guardrails
• Get people in place that can do the job
• Be there for them when they need you.

Topic 3: Cross Remote / In-Office Team

• Why we have a cross remote / in office staff?
  • Our area isn't a rich community for inbound marketers and in order for us to find and hire the best talent, we needed to look outside of Connecticut. 
• What did we need to do….. Going to use Nat’s article because she hit all the points and did a great job. 
  • Made video mandatory
    • The first thing we had to improve was the amount of video we used on calls. In the past, we’d sometimes call in on one computer from the office and try to show the whole room, which didn’t feel very inclusive for people remotely, plus it was difficult to see and hear everyone. 
    • We require everyone to individually call in on their own computers, allowing everyone to see faces clearly and hear specific voices. 
    • The video conferencing platform that we use is Zoom
  • Implement remote friendly team activities
    • Signing cards digitally

      • When an employee hits a work anniversary, one of the things they receive is a card signed by the whole team. With a third of the office across the country, getting everyone to sign the cards rarely happened. 

      • The platform we use is Kudoboard

    • Rethinking employee anniversaries

      • Although we had signs and gifts for employee anniversaries throughout the years, we never had a real “process” down that we felt represented our culture. While brainstorming ways to revamp our anniversary gift tradition, we landed on a theme that happened to be quite remote-friendly. Playing off of the popular subscription box idea, we rolled out “IMPACT Anniversary Subscription Boxes.”

    • Drawing from a digital hat
      • Every year, we choose partners for a gift exchange during the holiday season. For years, we drew names out of a hat in the office, and that worked well until we started having remote employees. While it seemed like a small detail, remote people felt pretty left out when they couldn’t be part of the selection process.
      • With a quick online search, we found Elfster.
  • Encouraging and budgeting for get-togethers
    • We schedule out 4-5 weeks each year where we encourage remote employees to come to the office in CT. During these visits, we cover the costs for our remote employees to be in CT, and we also plan group activities so individual teams and the whole team can get to know each other better.
    • Team events
      • Dip day
      • Team retreats
      • Team happy hours
      • Department outings

Next Steps:

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Until next time... get out there and make it happen.