Dan Zarrella in his book The Science of Marketing: When to Tweet, What to Post, How to Blog, and Other Proven Strategies consistently leads readers along the route of Internet marketing. The book consists mainly of graphs that are based on the research that the author has conducted. Zarrella analyzes a large amount of data related to Internet marketing, and draws patterns based on this information, and also gives the most effective practical suggestions.
The book is divided into 4 parts: content, channels, middle of the funnel (MOFU) and analytics.
The first part of the “Content” consists of 2 chapters and the author talks about e-books and webinars. The second part is devoted to the main channels of Internet marketing and consists of 5 chapters: SEO, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, blogging. The author on the basis of data gives advice on the more effective use of data channels.
SEO
So, regarding SEO, Dan Zarrella says that this channel as an independent industry is no longer relevant. The function that pop-ups used to take on is now the creation and promotion of good content, which itself attracts traffic and generates links. Nevertheless, search traffic is still important. Search engines are the most relevant tools in finding information and making a purchasing decision. Social networks should be used to strengthen your search engine optimization strategy.
In the list of results of each search engine, there are three main types of text, which can be used to determine how fully the necessary attributes are presented on the website: title, description, and the email address field. Site creators need to think about their content, taking into account not only the relevance of keywords and openness to search engines but also the interests of people. If you write a text for people, the headlines will be short and memorable.
As for Twitter, according to the author, it is an ideal platform for the distribution of marketing content. Studying Twitter, Zarrella concludes that the more actively words such as “I”, “me”, “we” and “us” are used, the fewer readers the user has. It is important to remember that Twitter users do not subscribe to you to listen to endless stories about your life. The more negative, the fewer readers. People come to the social network for entertainment.
If Twitter is a marketing channel for you, and your goal is to gather a wide circle of loyal subscribers who will distribute your content, it is much better to focus on filling your account with interesting content than answering each message.
If you want someone to post your content, you have to report something new that readers haven’t heard about yet. To establish yourself as a source of reliable new information is the most correct strategy to attract new readers and get retweets.
Dan Zarrella gives the following tips for Facebook: Facebook users like to watch photos of other people – if possible, give them more subjects for contemplation and reasons to put a mark. Experiment with different motivations to convince readers to tag your content, but don’t forget that you can directly ask them to do what you need to do.
If creating videos is part of your marketing strategy, use Facebook to promote your videos and think about how to convince your readers to share them. Do not forget that the call to action in the social network should have a context.
Facebook is a place where users relax from the work atmosphere. So you need to adapt your corporate content and talk so that they do not have the feeling that he was back in the office. The more difficult the language is, the fewer the number of users in the census his Facebook. When you write for Facebook, try to avoid clever expressions and jargon. If your company is in the high-tech industry, try to connect your topics with more understandable ideas and stories.
The following observations are interesting on Pinterest: most repins receive images, the description of which consists of 100-200 characters. Words are used to clarify the context of the image, but it should speak about something.
The most frequent words on Pinterest: love, home, items, style, ideas. Often found in repins: recipe, chicken, minute, bake, pie, cheese, cut, bottle, stage, mix, favorite, excellent.
Blogs
According to the author, blog is the main strategy in social networks. You can design your content like blog posts and then transfer them to social platforms.
As a result of the author’s research, it turned out that for most users, the blog plays a significant role in making decisions about buying. But it must be remembered that it is not enough just to subscribe to bloggers. You have to give something unique and valuable to convince people to give you some of their time.
The number of entries is not as important as the time of publication. If you want to choose the right moment when your audience is most attentive, the easiest way is to send several entries every day at different times. And if you want to experimentally find the perfect day, send notes daily for a week and follow the results.
The more blogs published content, the more views they received. Readers want to hear you talk FROM yourself, not About yourself. Publishing relevant news and starting a discussion about current events earlier than other industry representatives is a great way to provide links to your blog.
Part three “Middle of the funnel (MOFU)” is divided into two chapters.
The first chapter is dedicated to email marketing. The study, which the author conducted, showed a qualitative understanding of the priorities and behavior of email users. According to users, e-mail is a daily task that needs to be performed and which they often do not like. The author also found that the primary way users interact with mailboxes is a dropout. The title of the letter is the main selection criterion. And you also need to mention the sender’s name.
Consider e-mail marketing from the point of view of your subscribers – as a way to give them what they want. When developing a marketing proposal delivery mechanism, try to give consumers something exclusive and do not forget to communicate this clearly.
Personalization is a classic and still effective solution to this problem for those involved in email marketing. Experiment with images in emails.
Send letters to new subscribers – this is the most grateful audience.
The second chapter in this part is devoted to attracting potential customers – lead generation. The key concept of inbound marketing is that you offer potential customers some valuable content. If you are trying to attract people and offer them something valuable in exchange for their contact information, you need to find something that will interest them.
People prefer content that teaches them something, or tools that will provide them with convenience and success in their work. To take advantage of this information, marketers must first clearly explain what kind of value they offer.
“Free” is one of the most powerful words in a marketer’s arsenal, but they need to be used carefully. Also, landing pages that use the words “competition” or “winner” have a higher conversion rate than those that do not have these words. Try to make your requests look appropriate. Explain the reasons for your questions and explain how you plan to dispose of the data.
In the fourth part Analytics”, the author talks about the importance of analytical data, and also offers a scientific method in analytics, which consists of the following steps: definition phase, research phase, prototypes, and testing phase.
At the definition phase, you ask and answer the question: “What do I want to improve?”. At the research phase, the question sounds differently: “What does my audience want?”.
At the prototype phase, ask yourself: “What will I test?”. And finally, at the testing phase, you must answer the question: “Which option was more efficient?”. This scientific method is a continuous improvement process, the basis for which becomes your analytical and statistical data.
Dan Zarrella’s book also answers such questions as What to post on Facebook and at what time of the day? How many times a day do tweets? How to use Pinterest to promote your brand? What headlines encourage people to open letters from companies? How to design an effective mailing list? What is better – positive posts or negative? And negative or neutral? All these data are confirmed by studies of the author himself with a large number of graphs, statistical observations, and useful tips.
If you like this book I suggest to read Do it! Marketing or What the ZAG? as a great addition to it.
