Add Rooms To Your Life

Where do good ideas come from? This was the question Steven Johnson took four years to explore. And then distill his findings into an aptly named book: Where Good Ideas Come From.

The main takeaway, one that I recite just about once a month to the team, to myself, or to customers, is that of the “adjacent possible.” Opening doors.

The argument can be summarized in one sentence: at any given moment, there isare a set of ideas, inventions, or opportunities that are just one step away from what currently exists.

Ideas don’t just happen as lightbulb moments: they happen gradually as new steps reveal themselves.

Here’s an example:

Started with landline ->

Moved to mobile chips and batteries ->

That led to your cool flip phone ->

That led to smartphones ->

App stores: there’s an app for that ->

Ride-sharing revolution. You can now DoorDash a vanilla latte.

Travis Kalineck (Uber Founder) couldn’t go from landline to Uber. Too many rooms in between.

There were steps.

Doors to open.

Rooms to explore.

How do you harness the power of the adjacent possible? It’s simple. Open doors.

If you want to advance your career and innovate in your field, you need to ask yourself: Am I opening doors to the connecting rooms? The areas in my profession that are unknown to me and to most. Am I exploring the adjacent possible?

My goal was and still is to open doors. To operate a company on the frontiers.

Where do good ideas come from? Assuming GeoFli (change website content based on visitor location) is a good idea, the path to landing on the idea came from doing exactly this.

Here are the rooms I had to enter.

Enrollment marketing -> college fair circuit (think trade show marketing)-> digital marketing -> conversion rate optimization -> landing page builders -> personalized website traffic based on location.

Pintler Group has a core value to operate on frontiers. Another way of thinking about this: continue to open doors to rooms that didn’t exist three years ago. Or sometimes three months ago.

How to Find a Competitive Advantage:

Here’s the secret. The deeper you go and the more doors you open, the less crowded the rooms.

When you start in a career, you don’t know much. So all you can do is open doors and explore rooms. This is called gaining experience. A lot of people stop exploring. The key is to keep going.

Open doors to uncrowded rooms. This is your competitive advantage.

If the Room is Empty:

It applies to any career, passion, or area of expertise. In entrepreneurship, when I get to a room that doesn’t have a lot of people, the hair on the back of my neck stands up. It can mean a couple of things:

1. There’s actually not much happening. It smells of a college party that happened two days ago. The room used to be full. The party happened. Then ended. Think typewriter mechanics. Empty room. Not a lot of opportunity.

You could still be the best in the world in this room if that’s something that interests you. Typewriter repairman, for example.

2. You’ve actually skipped a couple of rooms. It feels empty because you’re lost. You haven’t spent enough time mastering Google Analytics and creating your own dashboards to know that it’s a solved problem. You’re in a room to build a dashboard that combines Google Ads and Meta Ads without having spent time in Data Studio (which does exactly this). Google owns this room and kicked everyone else out.

3. There’s a blue ocean here. You’ve found something that worked. There are still doors to open, but you’ve got a gut feeling there’s something here. The adjacent possible is on a frontier. And now I’m finding doors that have to be jarred open. Sometimes with a hard pull. Other times with a crowbar.

Think: building a new software to solve a pain point and combining industry knowledge with business acumen.

How this applies to building a business:

Innovate. I grew up in Rochester, NY. When I was born, the company that employed half of Rochester, Kodak, wasn’t based in Rochester: it was Rochester.

From 60,000 employees to 1,200 today (OG hipsters still use film). That leaves an impression on an entrepreneur.

When I moved to Montana and went to business school, at least three times a semester Kodak made its way into a case study, discussion or guest lecture on what NOT to do. It made books about combating complacency really fascinating to me.

The coolest part: the floor plan to explore rooms is friggin’ enormous. Like infinitely big. The AI rooms are filling rapidly. What if you do a 180? Turn around and go the other direction like this crossing guard in Burlington who makes 17k/month sending postcards. Snail mail? Really? Open the analog door. There might be some room.

How this applies to ambition:

You can be the one and only at something. The best in the world. Just keep opening doors until you’re the only one left in the room. Even if the last room is geography-based: “in Montana,” or “in my county,” or “in my school.”

How this applies to risk:

It took Alex Honnold ten years to free solo El Capitan. Started in a climbing gym. Then granite. His comfort zone expanded as he opened more doors. The adjacent possible grew. He free soloed a 100-foot wall. Then a 200 ft wall. Then familiarized himself with hundreds of routes in Yosemite. Lived in a van at the base of his objective. Expand. Expand. Expand. Until the next room was to free solo 3,000 vertical feet.

You don’t have to start a business or climb 3,000 feet without ropes. But your next good idea isn’t found in your current room. The best part? It’s highly adjacently possible that you’re a couple of doors away from an incredible career/entrepreneurial breakthrough.

The Barbell Method: Marketing at the extremes.

The Barbell Method:

Marketing The Extremes

The barbell strategy for investing comes from Nassim Taleb’s book, Black Swan. Though impossible to summarize in one sentence, I’ll give it a try. Essentially, you’re allocating money in two ends of the risk spectrum: low risk (Cash, Rental Real Estate, retirement accounts) and high risk (seed investing, startup of your own, speculative stocks).

We do this at Pintler Group to make our portfolio sturdy. Survive economic downturns while leaving the door open to an extremely high upside, and avoiding the middle entirely.

Okay. Three(ish) sentences.

I’m an entrepreneur, not a financial advisor. I’ll talk a little bit about my investment strategies, but the goal is to talk about how the barbell method can be applied to your marketing.

I’ve run a fair amount of marketing campaigns for companies of all shapes and sizes. Likely thousands of campaigns from retailers in downtown Missoula to onboarding Fortune 500 organizations with our software.

So this article is about the barbell strategy, and how I believe that if you use this concept in marketing, it can result in outsized returns. Insert marketing acronym here: ROI, ROAS, CPL, CAC. GEESH.

Below: example of a barbell investment strategy.

My Theory of the Case:

Companies rolling out the barbell marketing strategy as part of their playbook will enjoy outsized returns on their investment of time, money, and energy. And will separate themselves from the mediocre middle.

Nobody Ever Got Fired Marketing in the Middle.

Marketing in the middle (taking moderate risk investing in “proven” channels) doesn’t get you fired, but it will land you in the middle. Middle management. Middle of the road. Mediocracy.

Imagine you’re in a leadership position tasked with growing the company. Or maybe you’re the executive director of a non-profit.

I would think about allocating an annual marketing budget between the safe and the risky. All while avoiding the middle. The marketing barbell.

Barbell Summary:

Safe Marketing Activities. The “Blocking and Tackling” of Your Marketing Budget:

In investing (again, not financial advice), Taleb makes the case for allocating capital to extremely safe investments so you can weather an unforeseen black swan event: a sharp economic downturn, natural disaster, a global pandemic, or shifting macroeconomic trends.

While at the same time, having a small but focused amount of money in high-risk investments. Most may fail, but if one succeeds, there’s a tremendous upside.

Here’s how the concept can apply to your marketing.

Left Side: Blocking and Tackling

Low-frequency waves. Day after day. Month after month. Slowly compounding.

Lower Funnel Activation: Abandoned Cart Emails.

Retention Marketing: The marketing stuff that equals repeat customers.

Strong organic presence across platforms: LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit (being sure not to put all your eggs in one basket).

Social Monitoring: How is your brand talked about online? Defending the moat.

Tracking net promoter scores: exceeding expectations for and delighting current customers.

Again: very little (if any) risk is involved with the above. The high-interest savings account of a marketing company.

Right Side: Low Down-side, High Up-side

Now, let’s skip the middle for now and up the risk level. It’s time to gamble.

Of course, not all speculative investments return 100x BUT, but marketers can benefit from thinking like venture capitalists who need to return a 100x fund, the VC needs a very small number of extremely successful “winners”, like one or two, depending on deal size and fund.

Highly Speculative: High Risk. High Reward:

This is where you log out of the 100k/yr attribution software. This isn’t about blended customer-acquisition-cost, seven-day-view-through-rates, or reducing the CPM on the streaming TV for the Houston market. This is about hockey stick-type results.

Let’s run through some ideas:

Unconventional PR: Doesn’t have to be jumping out of space, but it is a classic example.

Guinness World Record.

You’re a surfboard upstart (actual employee project!) You’re not going to outspend the Goliaths. You’re not going to out-impress at Outdoor Retailer. So you’ve gotta think differently. How about setting a Guinness World Record for the longest river wave session in history? This might make for some fun headlines. And the downside if it doesn’t work? You’ve got to ride a river wave for a bunch of hours.

Total Loss: 5 Hours? Maybe 25 hours? What is that current record anyway?

Creating a YouTube Series.

Again, log out of the attribution software. This one is gonna be tough to measure the immediate impact. But it’s a right-side-of-the-barbell tactic. It’s difficult to move the boulder (record the first video), but once done, the object is in motion. Here’s an example of zero-to-one with our software RevelForms. And your competition is too distracted with attribution software to grab a camera themselves.

Potential upside? A story worth telling. A captivating founder journey that builds trust, buy-in, and buy-ers.

The potential downside: you have a video series of ten videos with a combined view count of 83. On to the next idea.

Total. Loss: 10k.

*Example of RevelForms YouTube page*

In-Person Events: Large and Small

Host a small event. Pay for it all. Buy the dinner. Add real value to attendees in the form of a quick deck. Hand it out and pay for colored printing.

Upside: You’ve added a ton of value to a small but mighty curated group. You’ve surrounded yourself with people smarter than you.

Downside: You picked up the check and never hear from them again.

Total Loss: 1k-20k.

Time / Resource Allocation?

10% of marketing energy/time/resources toward low-probability-of-success but high-impact tactics.

*Shown above is our very own Ana attending Spryng by Wynter conference in Texas*

Avoid the Middle. Okay. But What’s in the Middle?

“Media Buys”

$250k into an ad campaign with too-good-to-be-true key performance indicators and an account specialist “placing media.”

Audience Expansion. The SQUIRREL! effect.

You haven’t reached 100% of your target audience. Pretend you’re a university that is known for its veterinary science program. People from all over the country apply to it. They seek it out. And you have enrollees from 46 states.

There’s the capacity to grow it to the largest in the country. The tendency at this moment is to direct your gaze to the business school program. This is the wrong tendency. This is the tendency of the middle.

Brand Awareness:

No matter how awesome it is to report 1.7 million impressions. Unless you’re Jurassic Park 9, you don’t actually want to spend money here. There are so many places to spend marketing dollars today with way higher intent. Brand awareness campaigns are squarely in the middle of the barbell.

Top of Mind:

See Brand Awareness.

Chasing Vanity Metrics:

We see this quite a bit and call it out when we do. A blog post from 2019 contributes 30% of total traffic. The problem is, the blog post has nothing to do with the core product or service. New visitors to the site flock to the article. If bouncing from the page without taking any further action was a conversion, that traffic converts 100% of the time.

Things You (or I) Don’t Understand

“Omnichannel Bidtream Intelligence Engine”

“Incrementality-Calibrated Media Mix Modeling.”

“Supply Path Optimization Suite”

If it feels like a foreign language: hang up. Close out. If you’re wondering, the translation is we keep 80% of the marketing dollars you give us. But our reports and conference rooms are going to be glossy AF. Other translations include the middle.

There you have it.

Thanks again to Taleb and his books: Black Swan, Antifragile, Skin in the Game. His arguments inspired this method. Though he argues his approach from an investment standpoint, I believe it also applies to marketing and growing your business. It allows for a more antifragile strategy: one that not only withstands shocks and uncertainties but also thrives on them.

Avoid the middle. Embrace the extremes of safety and speculation. Low downside. High upside. Let’s go.

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Five Skills in Five Weeks: Starting My PG Internship

Here are my five key takeaways from my first five weeks in my digital marketing internship.

Starting a new internship can be both exciting and overwhelming, but my first month at the Pintler Group has been a really positive learning experience. From picking up new skills to getting a behind-the-scenes look at digital marketing: specifically performance marketing, I’ve already learned things that I know will be useful throughout my career. Here are five key skills I am working on.

1: Have a Solid Foundation of Research Before You Dive In

One of the first skills I’ve focused on is building a strong research foundation before starting any project. At Pintler Group, I’ve had access to several helpful tools like Answer the Public, Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, and Reddit Pro. These tools have been helpful because they provide insight into what audiences are actively searching for, talking about, and engaging with online. Using them allows me to identify common questions, trending topics, and relevant keywords when building Google Paid Search campaigns, which helps ensure campaigns are based on real data rather than assumptions. Early in my internship, we worked on a mock campaign for Bloom Nutrition, where we spent a lot of time studying what people were searching for and what was trending in the market. It was interesting to see topics like supplements and health trends come up repeatedly and to understand how that information could shape marketing strategies. This showed me how important research is before jumping into creative work.

2: Content Creation with Strategy in Mind

Another skill I’ve been developing is creating content with a strategy behind it. At Pintler Group, we talk a lot about continuity and how important it is in marketing. Continuity means keeping a consistent brand message, look, and tone across platforms. When a brand looks and sounds the same everywhere, it becomes easier for people to recognize and trust it. I’ve learned how to apply this idea while also using each company’s brand pillars and core values, making sure every post, caption, and landing page stays aligned with the brand’s message. This has helped me understand that good content isn’t just creative, it also has to fit into a bigger plan.

Check out this friggin’ awesome Figma board Lily and I helped build as part of our content Tuesday initiatives. It’s everything you could want to know about continuity conversion optimization and it took us a ton of time. It will take you about five minutes to get through.

3: Be Confident in Your Ideas

Building confidence in your ideas can be really intimidating, especially as an intern when professionals in the field surround you. It can feel nerve-racking to speak up or share ideas when you’re not sure if they are “good enough.” However, I’ve learned that showing initiative and being willing to share new ideas is better than staying silent. One example of this is Content Tuesdays at Pintler Group, where we set aside time to focus on promoting our own business instead of just our clients. This semester, my fellow intern Lily and I have been responsible for creating internal content for Pintler Group’s social media. Each week, we brainstorm and pitch ideas that show off Pintler Group as a brand. While presenting ideas to experienced professionals can be nerve-wracking, the feedback has been really encouraging, and the process has helped us learn new tools and ways to improve our content.

4: Organization + Communication is Key

Staying organized has been a much bigger priority than I expected. Taking time to properly label files, organize bookmarked tabs, and keep track of tasks makes everything run more smoothly and saves a lot of time in the long run. In the marketing world, having a clean and easy-to-navigate computer system is important because projects move fast and information needs to be easy to find. A cluttered workspace can make you seem unprepared or disorganized, even if you are doing good work. Organization can be the difference between a campaign launching on time or missing a crucial deadline.

A bonus key learning in my digital marketing internship:

I’ve also learned that strong organization supports clear communication. Keeping people updated, maintaining a paper trail of conversations, and asking questions early all rely on having information that is easy to access and track. When organization and communication work together, it prevents confusion later and allows teams to move faster with confidence. Being organized and communicating clearly helps The Pintler Group work more efficiently and keeps projects on track.

Below: Click on the image to check out (a template of) my training board in Trello.

5: Ask for Feedback + Grow From It

Another important skill I’ve learned is how to ask for feedback and actually use it to get better. At first, it can feel uncomfortable to hear what needs to be changed, especially when you’ve put a lot of time and effort into something. But I’ve learned that feedback is meant to help you grow and succeed, not take away from your work. When I get suggestions or edits, I try to see them as chances to improve instead of as mistakes. Getting feedback also helps things stick in your mind for next time. Over time, this has helped me feel more confident and better at adjusting my work to meet expectations.

I know there are so many more small skills I will continue to learn during my internship at The Pintler Group, but I hope these are skills you can also take and apply to your own internship or even just your everyday workspace.

Below: One of our weekly professional developments in January was a summary from book club: “Radical Candor” by Kim Scott. Check out the deck below.

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Five Great Examples of Brands Using Content Marketing

From email marketing and digital ads to website personalization and organic social media, there are so many tools you can keep in your digital marketing tool box. One tool that many companies forget to put in their tool box is content marketing. Content marketing is the creation and sharing of digital materials with the goal of generating engagement and interest in a product or service. According to digital marketing expert Neil Patel, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates three times as many leads. Here are five great examples of brands using content marketing.

1- Hubspot

Hubspot, home to inbound marketing, sales, and service software, is a great example of a company using content marketing. Their Marketing Blog is full of high-quality, relevant and educational information for their target market, digital marketers. From how-to guides to research reviews, digital marketers can find answers to nearly any question within the Hubspot Marketing Blog. Because of the relevant information in their blog, digital marketers trust Hubspot. They are seen as a knowledgeable source and are more likely to purchase their marketing software.

2- Red Bull

Red Bull, a popular energy drink company, is another great example of a company using content marketing, but, unlike Hubspot, the content they are creating is not a written blog. Instead, Red Bull is creating high-quality, adrenaline-inducing video series. Whether you want to watch Kai Lenny surf huge waves, see daredevil mountain bikers fly down steep mountain sides or anything in between, Red Bull is creating adventurous content that is perfect for their energy-seeking customers.

When someone watches a Red Bull video of someone building and riding an insanely fast motorcycle or skiing untouched slopes in British Columbia, they are likely to feel the excitement and adrenaline associated with the Red Bull brand. This makes them more likely to pick up a can next time they are in the gas station or store. Red Bull’s content also has a unique viral factor. This means it is content that people like to share with their friends and pass on to other adrenaline junkies. Because of this, Red Bull’s content spreads like wildfire, creating more and more customers as it grows.

3- Lululemon

Similar to Red Bull, Lululemon has an energized, athletic following who is interested in being active. Lululemon changed the content marketing game by creating a community of super fans and encouraging them to create the content. Lululemon Community Ambassadors host events and classes around the world which draw customers and interested onlookers into the brand for a very personal, high-touch experience. Their community also has a large library of stories, tools, and training plans built to inspire customers. When customers participate in live classes and view online content, they are drawn into the brand on a personal level. This increases the possibility that they purchase another pair of leggings or try out a new product in the shop.

4- Moz.com

Similar to Hubspot, Moz.com targets digital marketers as a marketing software company. Specifically focusing on SEO, Moz.com has created a blog that includes anything a digital marketer might need to know about search engine optimization and similar topics. After creating their high-quality blog content they send out daily emails to subscribers. This makes their content a constant part of their subscribers’ lives. As blog readers and email subscribers are reminded of Moz.com’s SEO expertise they are more likely to purchase their software.

5- onX Maps

Similar to Lululemon, another company doing a great job building community and creating content at the same time is the GPS map app company onX Maps. They have two apps, Hunt and Offroad. Both are built for outdoorsmen and women who need ownership, property and road information along with typical map data. These aps assist them in their hunting and vehicle riding adventures. Both the hunting and riding communities have famous influencers and content creators that are heavily followed by onX’s target customers.

OnX has found a way to leverage these influencers to create content for their brand. OnX influencers create Instagram stories explaining their favorite app features to unbelievable images that show off their adventures. They create jealousy-inducing content onX customers love to see. When customers see famous influencers using the onX apps and having fun while doing it, they are more likely to purchase a subscription.

blog examples influencers video

How To: Designing Custom Blog Graphics

You just drafted up a great blog post and don’t want to finish off your masterpiece with a generic stock photo you’ve seen 100 times. Standing out and separating yourself takes digital marketing mastery. This article will break down how to design your very own custom blog graphics for your featured image.

This tutorial uses Photoshop within the demonstration. However, there are many other great graphic editing software and free website tools to use online to design custom blog graphics.

Determining Dimensions for Graphic

The most common dimensions are 1200x600px and 1200x650px (which is a 16:9 aspect ratio) for featured blog images. These dimensions will produce the best display throughout your blog feed.

Your Blank Canvas

Begin with a light background color. A light grey or an off-white works well as a background for your canvas. Locate the color pallet in Photoshop (bottom left corner). Then, use the color overlay effect to change the color of the background.

Border, or No Border?

This is a great debate among designers and creative minds. I would argue, “don’t overthink it!” Borders are great to add a frame to your graphic. There are instances when borders do not fit the rest of the design, so leave it out. At the end of the day it’s all down to preference. The most important thing to keep in mind is to keep your featured blog images consistent. If the rest of your blog features images with borders, the natural thing to design next would include a border around your graphic.

Determining the Subject

Choosing the right graphic for your blog article can be tough. However, there are a multitude of free resources to use when selecting your ideal graphic to edit. Some of the more widely used free graphics websites are:

Once you have found your ideal image or graphic, simply drag and drop it into Photoshop (preferably a jpg or png file).

Color-It-Up Your Way!

Once your graphics are in place within your canvas, have fun overlaying custom colors that reflect your company or brand. This custom design features Pintler Group‘s primary and secondary colors.

Voila!

Upload your graphic for your blog post by going into your website’s settings and uploading it within your article (upload graphic in jpg file format). Here, I am using WordPress for this example.

Make sure to include descriptions within the alt text, title and description for your graphic. This helps with accessibility and readability for all readers.

Now it’s your turn to create your very own blog graphic featured image. Have some fun and let your creativity run free!

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How Much Should I Spend On Content Marketing

Glass of coins with a small green sprout.

Having just completed the SEO (search engine optimization) traction channel, content marketing is fresh on the mind. As the founder of Pintler Group, I’ve always been a believer in content. It’s why early when we started with GeoFli marketing, we didn’t have ad-dollars to spend, so we had to get creative with articles. The product personalizes website content based on visitor location. I had read plenty of articles in 2015 and well before about what constitutes quality content. Of course, Google’s ranking factors seemed to change daily, but what never changed was the emphasis the search engine placed on quality content.

The Evolution of Content as a Ranking Factor:

As we mentioned in the SEO video last week, Google’s algorithm has certainly evolved to rank quality content content in a sophisticated way. No longer does keyword stuffing work. Sure, the way Google and Bing describe their ranking factors use words like search intent and did you meet the customer intent. What is customer intent? Simply put, customer intent asks if your article, video or podcast helps answer their query. The “Why” of the keywords.

What is Search Intent:

According to Blue Corona (marketing solution company, not a blue alcoholic beverage). There are four main types of search queries:

Known Query: Where the user wants information about something.

Example: What is the most durable iphone case?

Do Query: Where the user wants to take action on something.

Example: Fix a broken iphone screen.

Website Query: Where the user wants to go to a website.

Example: Apple Support Page

Visit-in-person Query: user wants to visit a physical address.

Example: Closest iphone repair shop.

All this is to quickly educate you on what it means to match user intent to an end piece of content.

How We Grew From Zero Visits to 100/Day

This headline wouldn’t sell books. 100 per day, that’s it? But for so many businesses, an additional 100 website visitors per day could mean serious revenue gains. When thinking about what 100 clicks from Facebook, Google and LinkedIn would cost in marketing each day, the monetary value of those clicks really ads up (to the tune of about $500/day if you average $5 per click).

Content + Inbound

Below is an example article we guest posted on Trello.com’s blog. We received some great traffic and referrals from the post, but perhaps more importantly, we gained valuable page authority with a link back to our site. A link equity tide that ultimately lifted all of our content-marketing-ships.

We started with content. As mentioned before, our budget for ads was zero because revenue from software sales was zero. We had to get scrappy. We originally knew that we wanted to target higher education with our software: personalize content for enrollment teams during the busy recruitment seasons.

Without too much thinking about SEO implications or meta-tags or descriptions, we started writing about the ways that we had grown digital marketing leads and traffic at the University of Montana. The information seemed on the razor edge of higher-ed marketing. Building custom audiences, retargeting based on inquiry email addresses and how to set up an Instagram ad the second week Instagram Ads were available to the masses. We just wrote about topics we found interesting and knew would help marketers paying attention to what was going on stand out.

Keyword Research and Content Marketing

Tip: sometimes keyword research can lead you down a competitive path. The allure of winning high traffic high competition keywords. Then there are times when writing articles about topics you’re adopting early means you might rank early for keywords that in the future will be competitive. Think: streaming service circa 2005. Google Search console is a valuable tool for identifying your current opportunities in content marketing.

As a result, we launched a lot of articles early. And the traction was slow. What we found, however, was that our traction during that time was slow because we were a little ahead of the keywords. Geofencing wasn’t popular. Website personalization wasn’t popular and geotargeting wasn’t a top search term. Today, that’s changed, and we positioned ourselves nicely.

Our Missoula based marketing firm, Pintler Group grew from a software-as-a-service we built , we had zero organic searches. Over the next two years, we were diligent about producing quality content. Articles about international admissions, articles about personalizing content and articles about Google Analytics tracking and much more. Slowly, we began to see traffic to the website increase organically. I credit a two pronged approach:

Number One: Quality Content:

We have a saying in-house that done is better than perfect. We’ve modified it to emphasize that perfect does not become the enemy of good. That being said, we took time to lay out exactly what we did that worked and how to replicate our systems. We introduced new ideas about geotargeting and we did write in a way that coincided with SEO best practices: internal and external linking.

Number Two: Inbound Link Strategy:

We wanted to make sure people found us. We wrote content but also understood that inbound links from other sites was going to be critical. To obtain links from other sites, we took an approach that included writing testimonials for software we used, contributing as guest authors to websites with page authority. Here’s an article we put together for Trello.

Here’s a testimonial and case study for MaxMind.

And here was an article written about us in the paper without a link, so we emailed and asked if they could kindly add one 🙂

And during this time we continued to write content and continued to think of ways to earn links to our site.

Below: here’s a look at GeoFli analytics landing page report. It shows most all of our top landing pages are articles we’ve written on /blog. Thousands of visitors finding our personalization software and marketing services through organic search.

What Does Content Marketing Cost:

As we grew and actually had, what do you call ’em? Oh yeah, customers. Time spent keeping customers happy trumped writing articles. Predictably, organic traffic plateaued. To try and keep momentum we began running Facebook Ad campaigns. Specifically, we ran Facebook Lead ads targeting higher ed professionals (but we still found time to write an article about targeting geographically on Facebook).

Facebook Ads vs. Content:

We measured lead quality based on traffic. What we found was 75% of leads from organic traffic were considered qualified: intent and ability to purchase software. Facebook generated leads were qualified about 25% of the time. The quality of leads from organic was 3X better than leads from Facebook. Given the choice to spend money on Facebook ads or writing content to drive qualified traffic through organic, I would choose content.

Content Writing and Content Marketing In-House Versus Contracting:

With GeoFli, we have tried both methods with varying levels of success and consistency. While in-housing is amazing for domain expertise and idea generation, it can easily become the thing that drops off the to-do-list because of other client or customer related tasks. What’s the saying, the cobbler’s kids have no shoes? We like to practice what we preach by writing content and improving our organic ranking, but it’s easy to get distracted.

With contractors, you pay for consistency. Each week, they’re tasked with delivering one or two articles, published on the site with a clear checklist. Oh, and here’s our checklist for internal content writing just in-case you were wondering! We have hired about five contractors to help with content writing: we deliver the article ideas in Trello and the content writer completes them in a Google Doc for review to be published.

How Much Does a Contracted Content Writer Make?

We would pay anywhere from $25/hr to $100/article. It usually ends up ultimately costing about $100/article for a contractor produce start to finish. At least that’s the going rate in Missoula, MT. What we started to find, was that the articles produced in-house simply performed better than those completed by contractors. The more time involved in an article, the better it performed. Content truly is king and there are no shortcuts to delivering a quality article. Recently we’ve used UpWork with some success in other contracted areas, but not content writing.

A Content Marketing Strategy That Works:

We’ve shifted away from writing specific geotargeting articles and instead focused on building up a content library for our agency site (this site!) Pintlergroup.com. We are getting very little organic traffic outside of branded search terms, but the consistency of our Content Thursday has really instilled some discipline into our content plan. We have a Trello card with each Traction channel for each week and we have a Google Sheet with the layout of all our Traction Channel goals. The vision for Content Thursday is at the end of 19 weeks, we have a robust collection of traction channels for our users to download via video, whitepaper and podcast.

Spend Money On Advertising or Spend Money on Content Marketing?

We like to say at Pintler Group, don’t celebrate publishing. We say this because too often we see a well thought out and beautifully executed piece of content go unseen. Remember than $15,000 video your company produced four years ago? How many views does it have on YouTube? Our content strategy is one we think is simple, but maybe because we’ve executed it so many times.

One: Write an article with one of your customer personas in mind.

Two: Publish article using our content writing checklist (see above)

Three: For many, step three is attend the closest happy hour.

This is what separates good marketing from great marketing: getting your content in front of the right audience. We use Facebook Ads, LinkedIn, Pintlerest, Google and other platforms to get a content article out into the world.

As you can see, the first three steps require money to be spent on both. Invest in the time to write the article and the ad dollars to promote. Oh, and don’t forget about email marketing!

Content Marketing is a Solid Investment

We’re scratching the surface of content marketing and a lot of smart marketers believe we’re in the golden age of content. We titled our podcast “Cutting Through the Noise.” There’s a lot of noise in marketing today. It’s time to double down on your content efforts and make the investment in people, quality and promotion. Good luck and let us know how we can help!

Check out this video for tips on building a content marketing strategy.

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Readability Goes Beyond the Words

There’s no ignoring search engine optimization (SEO) causes a high level of anxiety for digital marketers. There are many unknowns. Hours of work don’t show immediate results. It’s easy to dive into a rabbit hole only to second guess yourself. With so many ranking factors to consider it’s imperative to focus on the crucial ones. You also want to focus on an overlooked one: content readability.

Part of why marketers overlook readability is it’s less technical than other ranking factors. It’s not as easy as adding alt tags to every image and checking off that box. It requires attention, thought and patience. SEO, after all, is a content strategy. And you want your strategy to be quality, right?

Keep reading for insight on why readability matters and ways to measure quality.

Why Readability Matters

Readable content is more likely to be share-worthy. And that’s a factor in improving search rankings. It also increases the likelihood that people will spend more time with your site and return. So not only are you improving discoverability but you’re improving key site metrics. Thus with smart, readable content, you’ve enhanced the chance of marketing funnel completion.

Additionally, Google tries to act and think like a human. So while forcing as many keywords into a sentence may seem like a good idea it might be creating sentences that normal people wouldn’t say or type. Thus, Google is going to ignore you. Just like any marketing practice, you need to think like the end-user. What would I type if I wanted to find something?

Finally, readability factors into voice search. One of the key indicators of readability is sentence length. When your smart device is reading an answer to your question, would you prefer a quick six-word response or a twenty word one?

What Makes Content Readable?

A service like Yoast looks at a variety of factors when determining readability. Specifically, according to their website:

- - Sentence Length
  - Paragraph Length
  - Subheading Distribution
  - Consecutive Sentences
  - Use of Passive Voice
  - Use of Transition Words
  - Flesch Reading Ease Score
  - Text Presence

They aren’t all ranked equally. And some are more complex than others. For the purposes of this article, we will focus on the length categories. Check back often for additional articles!

Sentence Length: As mentioned above, the goal is to keep sentences under 20 words. This isn’t always going to be possible. So Yoast has set the benchmark of 25% being over. That’s certainly attainable. The importance lies in the ability of readers to quickly consume the content. It’s easy to get lost while scanning long sentences. Especially when followed by a longer one. Also, think about the way content appears in search results. The less that’s truncated, the better.

Paragraph Length: The readability impact can be a visual one. When opening an article to find a specific answer you don’t want to be overwhelmed. First impressions matter. Shorter paragraphs are also easier to comprehend. If you find your paragraphs running on, consider planning each to be topic-based. Shorter paragraphs (Yoast defines as under 150 words) also force you to use subheading. Which is another readability factor!

Bottom Line

Readability is important. Not just for SEO, but for brand legitimacy. However, it’s important to not sacrfice quality or clarity for the sake of SEO. Don’t become repetitive by slipping an extra keyword into a paragraph when it’s already present plenty. Don’t mangle a sentence to the point it doesn’t make a lick of sense for the sake of flipping to passive voice. Instead, study what you’ve written. And pay attention to quality scores in your various tools. Producing quality and readable content will become the norm.

Be sure to utilize Yoast and other tools like Grammarly. They let you know you’re doing well with green dots.

Go Green!

Want to learn more about SEO? Check out our podcast here and watch this video on Google ranking factors.

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Top Business Niches That Must Have a Podcast

Women sitting on the floor recording audio.

With the popularity of smartphones around the world, podcast advertising is projected to double by 2021. Podcasts are most popular among the 18 to 34 age bracket. They make up approximately 44 percent of its audience. Additionally, around 24 percent of U.S. citizens listen to various podcasts on a regular basis.

Different kinds of business niches all over the globe are now leveraging podcasts to place products, services, and information in front of their target audiences. Your business could use a podcast to attract more customers. The information contained in this article could be important if you are operating a business. Here are the top business niches that must have a podcast to get their market’s attention.

Podcast for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs and business owners can stay current with the latest news and trends in their particular market niche by listening to podcasts even while they are on the go. They can increase and update their knowledge about entrepreneurship, business management, financial analysis, local and international markets, and so forth. Podcasts are a boon to businessmen who don’t have much free time to spare. Here are some examples of podcasts for entrepreneurs.

The Digital Entrepreneur – here is a podcast that will educate entrepreneurs in creating and selling digital products and services profitably. This is a weekly podcast that provides listeners with insights and strategies from experts to help entrepreneurs build their digital business correctly.

Entrepreneur Stories 4 Inspiration – this is a podcast that is designed to motivate and help you build your business. Successful business leaders, many of them already millionaires, will give you lessons and advice on how to grow your business.

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders – here is a weekly podcast given by entrepreneurs from Stanford University where they candidly share the lessons they learned in building and growing their businesses. This type of podcast can help entrepreneurs with over 70+ social media statistics proving that it is so.

Podcast for Tech Gadgets

Tech gadgets are now part of our daily lives, whether we are at work or at play. New gadgets are being launched every day with new features and heightened capabilities. This necessitates further education of consumers. Podcasts are great venues for this continuous consumer education. Here are some samples of podcasts for tech gadgets.

Gone Mobile Podcast – this podcast provides information about the latest development in mobile technology. Resource speakers give in-depth knowledge about iOS and Windows as well as Androids development for mobile design and marketing.

Hands-On Tech – this podcast provides hands-on unboxings, previews and reviews of the hottest and the latest wearables, notebooks, smart home devices, and smartphones.

Podcast for the Real Estate Industry

Many real estate websites are now incorporating podcasts on their pages. They must be taking advantage of the fact that 50 percent of all American homes are podcast listeners. That would be equivalent to about 60 million homes. These people, as well as agents and brokers, need tips on buying and selling homes and lands. Podcasts can supply that need. Here are some real estate podcasts available today.

Real Estate Coaching Radio – this podcast gets an average of 100,000 listeners at any time. It is run by the husband and wife team of Tim and Julie Harris. They are dispensing advice to real estate brokers and agents. The podcast also features advice from real estate pros and executives based on their wealth of experiences.

Modern American Realtor – here is a podcast that educates agents and brokers on the important things they need in their real estate careers. They also discuss other marginal issues that affect the real estate industry.

Podcast for Nutrition, Health, and Fitness

Podcasts are a great way to encourage couch potatoes to get up and move. Most people are so busy that they forget to give themselves time to rest, eat nutritious food and exercise to stay fit and healthy. Here are some samples of podcasts that are geared toward making people active and healthy.

Motivated – here is a podcast that will guide listeners in navigating their health and fitness journeys. The tips given by the resource person is based on her weight loss experiences.

Diet Starts Tomorrow – this is a podcast where the resource person talks about her struggles on her way to losing weight and keeping a positive attitude at the same time.

20-minute fitness – this podcast will give listeners information about the latest methodologies, technologies, nutrition, and science to help them stay updated in their fitness routines.

Podcasts for Sports

Sports podcasts are a great way for sports fans to be in tune with the latest game, the latest news, and stats of their favorite teams. These types of podcasts are getting more and more popular these days. Here are some samples of sports podcasts that people are tuning in today.

The Fighter & The Kid – this podcast is for UFC fans. It is a weekly podcast that provides unedited and uncut episodes of interviews of well-known UFC fighters.

The Joe Rogan Experience – this podcast is hosted by comedian Joe Rogan and it features long-form interviews and conversations with MMA fighters, authors, musicians, actors, and other celebrities. Sports personalities in the program may include NFL stars, pro surfers, UFC legends and more.

This guest post was written by Lidia Hovhan from Omnicore Agency.

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Content Is Not King

My assumption is that your first reaction to reading that headline is “Say what?” And then you probably mutter under your breath, “Isn’t content is king a marketing mantra as old as the British Royal Family?”

If you’re asking that question, it’s the right one to ask. And you’re not entirely wrong. Content isn’t King because it’s the King, the Queen and the Jack. Maybe even the Joker every once and awhile. They are the cards you play to achieve your business goals.

At MozCon 2018, Unbounce co-founder Oli Gardner gave a riveting, and sometimes hilarious, talk about ways to fix content marketing. One of the most interesting things he highlighted early on is a big misconception about this type of marketing strategy: someone reads your blog post and converts to a qualified lead. Most the time that’s not going to be the case. And by most of the time I mean somewhere in the area of half a percent, according to one of his examples.

But that doesn’t mean content marketing isn’t an integral part of your strategy. It is, and it serves many different purposes, all of which have value and together will eventually drive lead conversions. Regardless of your business model or definition of a conversion, firing up 500 to 800 words of evergreen content boasting about the services you offer, or just showing off your knowledge base, can become one of the most valuable parts of your marketing playbook along with along with advertising and email marketing.

Articulate Your Value Proposition

While attention spans are shrinking and the amount of time you have to connect with a person digitally is decreasing, sometimes longer content is necessary. Articulating the value of the service or widget your company provides, and showing examples of such, is key when establishing a level of comfort with your visitors. Use your blog to showcase all of your products in ways your homepage might not afford. Pretend this is your shot to impress someone, your pitch, and use plenty of images (insert groan about alt-tags) and videos when it makes sense.

All that said, if you are expanding on your value proposition, make sure what you’re saying is valuable. Even before drafting content you need to ask yourself what the purpose of the article is and will it be most meaningful to readers. And in a lot of cases, that means personalization, which you can read more about here.

And what’s meaningful to readers is also meaningful to Google. Which brings us to the next purpose of content marketing.

SEO

Not only does content marketing, when done correctly, enhance your metadata via smart keywords, it helps make your website seem more authoritative to Google, which is going to get you more visibility. Free visibility. And perception is reality. Writing content that helps get you recognized as an authority makes you an authority. Suddenly you’re a valuable part of your value proposition.

In his talk, Oli shared an incredibly insightful quote from Orbit Media co-founder and chief marketing officer Andy Crestodina. He said:

“The content drives the links, which drive the authority, which drive the rankings, which drive qualified visitors who searched for a “commercial intent” keyphrase. Now you have a visitor who is highly likely to convert, unlike your typical blog reader.”

In this case you’re not even writing for the prospective lead. Andy’s “typical blog reader” probably isn’t even a major consumer. While they may click around on your site and visit product pages, they’re eventually going to bail and become a cold lead. Instead, you’re using the content to enable a qualified lead to find you. Plus, perception is reality. Writing content that helps you get recognized as an authority, makes you an authority!

Creating Content Isn’t as Hard as You Think

The thought of adding content creation to your already overflowing plate may seem daunting, but if it is actually possible to kill two birds with one stone, this would be the way. And we’re not suggesting a magnum opus every time you open up your word processor. Concise and to the point content is going to be the most effective. The best strategy is that each post employs the “less is more” principle. The flip side of that, however, is that when it comes to content marketing, “more of less” is the goal. In other words, five blog posts of 500 – 800 words each over the course of the month instead of a single 3,000-word post constructed over weeks and deployed haphazardly. It’s also important to remember that what you create has to be valuable, or as Jeff Baker calls it in a blog post on Moz.com “quality content.”

There are the obvious next steps in terms of promoting the published content, getting a critical mass of eyeballs and spending time (hopefully) responding to comments. But it’s all worth it. In fact, maybe content isn’t even the King, Queen, Jack and Joker.

It’s the Ace.

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