My presentation at State of Search in Dallas, TX where I discuss the importance of SEO & The Customer Experience. In this presentation I make the assertion that "Customer Experience" will likely be a top ranking factor in the next 10 years, if not sooner. I also lay out the evidence why this is highly likely. I provide a simple methodology for achieving SEO & customer experience success that not only allows you to be successful now, but also helps guide you in the future with your customer as the north star.
23. CUSTOMER JOURNEY
A visual representation of what a person is
feeling, thinking & doing as they interact
across multiple channels and move through
different stages of the customer experience.
52. @KevinGetch
“Consumers habits will evolve along with technology. But the one
thing all searchers have in common is that they want assistance
every step of the way. Marketers who remember that will be
rewarded with growth.” Ken Wheaton, Editor Google
57. "When you obsess over
your customer
"When you obsess over
your customer, develop a
successful marketing
strategy
"When you obsess over
your customer, develop a
successful marketing
strategy, execute it
effectively
"When you obsess over
your customer, develop a
successful marketing
strategy, execute it
effectively, commit to
providing the best
product/service in your
industry and you measure
meaningful metrics
"When you obsess over
your customer, develop a
successful marketing
strategy, execute it
effectively, commit to
providing the best
product/service in your
industry
"When you obsess over
your customer, develop a
successful marketing
strategy, execute it
effectively, commit to
providing the best
product/service in your
industry and you measure
meaningful metrics your
business will experience
incredible success and so
will your clients."
- Kevin Getch
58. Thank you for your time!
@KevinGetch | kevin@webfor.com
Webfor.com/sos
Hinweis der Redaktion
This is my family… family this is state of search :)
I first want to make a prediction. I believe Customer experience will be a top ranking factor.
Let me ask you a question. If you were referring your friends to a business and they weren’t having a good experience… how long would you do that for? Not long I’m guessing.
It’s as simple as that. When someone visits a search engine like Google if they keep getting bad results or having bad experiences they will try something different. So, just like all of the businesses in here they want to make sure their customers have a good experience. Right… Common sense?
What I’m going to share with you today will not only help you create a more effective SEO strategy, it will also help you provide the best customer experience, and if you continue this simple methodology… it will also allow you to navigate what is likely to be a turbulent future.
For any SEO project you need to have a deep understanding of your target audience.
I’m going to suggest you (and or your client) take it a step further. I want you to obsess over your customer… LOVE your customer.. Know them better than anyone else! Make your customer your north star… This means you know them better than anyone else… you are constantly listening to your customer and utilizing that information to benefit them (and give you a competitive advantage). You know what their asking for… what their searching for… and what they’re thinking… The best advantage you can have over any competitor is knowing your customer better than anyone else. (Why?: Because now you know how to provide more value to them than anyone else.)
The other critical component besides knowing what’s going on in their head is knowing what they’re doing… what path are they taking. (Know their path.) What channels do they frequent, which devices and keywords are they utilizing…
If you know what your customer is thinking and feeling throughout the experience… and you know the consistent path they take… how hard to you think it will be to get the right message in front of them at the right time?
The other big benefit is… if you continue this… you’ll always have this feedback loop where you have finger the pulse of your customer… and this will allow you to better anticipate their needs and adapt as change comes in the future.
(If you’re going to succeed in a constantly changing marketplace you need to be able to adapt) -
Create mental plasticity by focusing on your customer and their behaviours as opposed to just the channels or tactics or platforms. Get to know your customer so well and keep your finger on the pulse so you know what they’re going to need before they know… and then deliver it with more value than anyone else. The platform may change, the channel may change, but you’re following your target customer)
I’m going to share my super secret techniques to help you get in your customers head to pull out tons of great information, keywords and potential topics to create some great content around.
Often customers ask me…
Two critical exercises to empathizing with your customer is building personas and mapping your customer's journey.
Remember the acronym F.U.D.D. so that you can get to understand your customers Fears, Uncertainties, Desires & Decision Making.
This is one of the number one areas for opportunity if you don’t have access to talking to the customer.
For a small business you can literally create a google spreadsheet and have your customer service or sales people put in common questions, concerns (fears), desires, etc.
You should be looking at this and cross referencing your website (online presence) to see how ell it is currently addressing these areas for your customer.
Extracting keywords, opportunities, topics… areas to improve the experience via call recording/transcribing…
Claritas can be used to better understand your target customer.
Besides being able to access all of the most recent census information online which does provide a lot of valuable information… Nielsen has created what they call the Nielsen PRISM which is a system that categorizes U.S. consumers into 14 distinct groups and 68 demographically and behaviorally distinct types, or "segments," to help marketers better understand those consumers’ likes, dislikes, lifestyles and purchase behaviors.
You can write down this url if you want, but it is also available at the url I gave you at the beginning of the presentation. I’ll show it once again prior to the end as well.
Besides being able to browse these different profile types for inspiration you can also pop in a zip code and see the list of these profiles that are more prevalent in that zip code.
This is especially important for brick and mortar stores or anyone that draws their clients from the local area.
So, now you know thyself… and you also know thine peeps.
So, what is the next W in the 5 W’s……. What?
This will allow you to create a feedback loop with your customers, track your Net Promoter Score and also generate more positive reviews.
PollFish is another option - cheaper - but it doesn’t give you the ability to regine down to a local state like say Seattle. You can select country though so if that’s not important is is probably half as much.
Surveying your customers can be extremely helpful, but don’t let it replace actual individual customer interviews.
Now, if you haven’t been building your list (like you’re supposed to)… Or if you have no customer base you can also use a tool like survey monkey to for market/audience research. They have millions of people and you can choose people with specific demographic traits to ask your questions to.
If you’re in B2B this is a great tool to give you a little insight into the personality of your customer.
It uses the DISC personality assessment along with information available about your customer to develop a profile… and it’s eerily accurate!
If you’re in B2B this is a great tool to give you a little insight into the personality of your customer.
It uses the DISC personality assessment along with information available about your customer to develop a profile… and it’s eerily accurate!
If you’re in B2B this is a great tool to give you a little insight into the personality of your customer.
It uses the DISC personality assessment along with information available about your customer to develop a profile… and it’s eerily accurate!
If you’re in B2B this is a great tool to give you a little insight into the personality of your customer.
It uses the DISC personality assessment along with information available about your customer to develop a profile… and it’s eerily accurate!
This is an example of a persona. So, how do you get the information to build your persona(s)?
On one side you have the customer experience that they’re currently having and you want to also look at what is the experience you would like them to have.
This will allow you to find gaps and opportunities.
The analogy I like to give is if you know the path of someone… and they take it everyday… you also know what they’re thinking, doing and feeling as they take that same path everyday… do you think you could position the right message in front of them at the right time? Of course you could.
So, that’s what we’re attempting to do. Now our paths are becoming more fragmented, but we know common high probability paths.
Through your data collection and your thought process you want to ask yourself, what is our potential customer feeling, thinking & doing in this moment. Are there barriers to them purchasing? Is the messaging clear? Do they understand the value? Are there technical issues in the way? Are we showing up in different channels? Does our site architecture support a good UX? Etc.
Rebekah Cancino shared this slide at MozCon… and….
This is where you can map some of your keyword research along with the different stages of their experience, you’ll also do some competitive analysis, uncover what channels are producing and what devices your customers favor.
You can see current mobile traffic, channels.
Top conversion paths to understand channel utilization prior to conversion
If you don’t have any current date because you’re starting a new website or just want to run some competitive analysis to se if there are bigger opportunities you can utilize a traffic estimator to understand…
If you’d like the slidedeck along with some other goodies just throw your email in here and you’ll get an auto-response. You’ll also get our SEO white paper and some additional resources to help you as well.
One of my favorite topics is the future of SEO. Personally I believe it is an extremely positive and exciting future, but I have a broader view of what an SEO does… or at least can do… so let’s jump right in.
The personal computer was a big disruptive trend in the 1970’s and then in the late 1980’s the Web was groundbreaking.
Then in the last 10 years it has been the age of mobile. Well now we are about to go through another major shift.
We are just at the beginning of the AI revolution…
As computing power increases search engines will get even better at processing different types of media including audio, images, video, etc.
This will make for a better overall experience… a more visual experience.
Making the search experience a more visual one…
Visually preview topics with featured videos in Search
Explore within an image using AI with Lens in Google Images
Over the last year, we’ve overhauled the Google Images algorithm to rank results that have both great images and great content on the page. For starters, the authority of a web page is now a more important signal in the ranking. If you’re doing a search for DIY shelving, the site behind the image is now more likely to be a site related to DIY projects. We also prioritize fresher content, so you’re more likely to visit a site that has been updated recently.
Search is becoming very personal. We ask questions like How far did I run… What time should I wake up? What should my heart rate be?
We trust search to answer these questions… and we clearly want it to be personalized to us.
Should I cut my hair… should I get bangs… this clearly wasn’t me searching.
Why is my hair falling out? That could have been me.
There’s been a couple posts from Google recently… that even if you have seen them…. They are worth re-reading..
This next chapter is driven by three fundamental shifts in how we think about Search
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/advertising-channels/search/search-strategy/
Last month Google announced they were changing the name of Google feed to Discover…
No query required… This is a big step towards being more proactive in surfacing information that could be valuable to the user.
You think Voice Search is big… what do we call it when we’re just having a conversation? Is it still search.
Conversational Queryless Search will be
When you’re having a conversation… is it even searching? Yeah… it is when everything is being stored and then it’s utilizing that…
Source: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/advertising-channels/search/search-strategy/
You won’t hear any of the companies going after this market say it outloud because they’re not trying to sound the alarm for any competing companies or provide any competitive insight… but Assistance is much bigger than search. Search is just where the assistant derived from.. But when you have an assistant layer… it can actually “assist” in all channels and interactions making it the largest
The shift I’m referring to is when this personal assistant goes from a “reactive” state to a “proactive” state.
This is what I imagine my personal assistant will look like… living inside all of my devices... constantly working.. Never sleeping (hence the coffee)
I call him Jarvis (for obvious reasons)....
What do I mean by going from a reactive to a proactive state?
Well, currently we have to swipe, click a button or make a voice command to set a reminder or …. In the not too distant future… here is a conversation I see myself having with Jarvis.
While having my morning coffee :)
PROACTIVE ASSISTANCE… is the holy grail.
Easily grow search volume by 20-30X - by switching from reactive to proactive… meaning from only doing a search when I specially request it to constantly reviewing and assessing my needs and surfacing information it deems would provide value to my experience.
What many people don’t realize is… they think of “Assistants” as being part of the search channel. Do you think any of these companies think about them this way? I would venture to say “No… or only partially”.
Much like an executive assistant has a lot of power because they determine what get’s through to the executive…
Assuming there isn’t a major push back in adoption, which is why we’re seeing a very subtle and calculated approach to bringing in proactive features..
“Assistance” has the potential to be the largest gateway channel in the world. Not just for search… but for “All the Things”. Search, Social, Purchases, communications, meetings…
Oh and I also made the assertion that customer experience would be a major ranking factor… I want you to take a quick look at this patent filed by Google back in 2012.
In this patent filed by Google they show that they are wanting to protect the idea of utilizing biometric feedback like facial expressions as a way to determine satisfaction with the search results for a query.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160103833A1/
3. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one of the one or more particular biometric parameters comprises:
data indicating body temperature,
data indicating pupil dilation,
data indicating eye twitching,
data indicating facial flushing,
data indicating blink rate, or
data indicating heart rate.
I personally think Customer Experience should be one of the top priorities of every good company… and not only will it result in a highly satisfied customer that helps you generate more business, but in the future it will have an even bigger impact on how discoverable you are in the consumer experience.
If we want to thrive in this future we need to all think like CEO’s.