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Howdy, Moz Fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to talk about the value of top of the funnel demand creation, sorts of channels and tactics, and how you can actually measure the value behind them.

I'm guilty of doing something. I'm going to own up to it. A lot of the time when I talk about these kinds of tactics, stuff that sits at the very top of the funnel that creates that demand or interest in your potential target market, I call them serendipitous and unmeasurable channels. It is true that many of them are very serendipitous, but it's not entirely true that they're completely unmeasurable. They're just very, very hard to measure, but not impossible.

So today I'm going to walk you through that, not because I actually expect you to go and try and do this with every one of those serendipitous, hard to measure channels, but because I think you need to, as a marketer, have this in your toolbox and in your knowledge kit so that when your CMO, your boss, your client, your manager, your team says, "Hey how do we know that xyz is producing returns," you can say, "Actually, we don't know that." Or, "We proved it once, and we have the data from then. We continue to believe that it will drive investment. But here's how tough it is to measure, and this is why we continue to invest in it and believe in it as a channel even though we don't have the proof."

So bear with me for a second. You've got your classic marketing funnel. Top of funnel stuff is like creating that awareness of the issue, the problem, the challenge, your industry. Your middle of the funnel is where you're showing off your solution. The bottom of the funnel is usually where you're convincing folks to convert and then trying to retain people. So this is fairly simplistic. Most marketers are familiar with it.

The stuff that fits into this creating awareness bucket, that very top of funnel demand creation stuff, those are things like: public relations, getting in news and media and press coverage; a lot of social media engagement, especially social media that is not directly tied to either supporting your product or pushing your product is in that bucket; a lot of conferences, events, trade shows, booths; certainly all those coffee and beer meetings that you might have with people in your field, people outside of your field, and people who are curious; a lot of those serendipitous meetings.

Anything that it fits into what we call top of funnel, which I actually like the shortened acronym there TOFU, TOFU content marketing. Much of the content that content marketers invested in and create is designed to be kind of above the funnel, before people are actually interested in your product or solution. Actually, this includes a lot of things that are brand advertising focused, that are just creating awareness of who you are as a company and that you exist, without specifically talking about the problem folks are facing or your solution to that problem.

So proving the value of this stuff is insanely hard. Let's use public relations as an example. The classic yard stick that PR professionals have traditionally reported on are number of stories and the quality of those stories and pieces, and where they've been published. That's a lot like in the SEO world reporting rankings and traffic. They're very high level metrics. They're sort of interesting to know. But then you have to have the belief that they connect up, that the rankings and the traffic are going to connect up to conversions, or that getting all those print pieces on the web, getting those links, or whatever is going to convert.

This is tough. The way to prove the value of this is you basically have these three options. You can segment, meaning that you segment by something like an industry vertical, by the demographics of your target, pr by geography. I'll give you an example of this.

So Moz might say, "Hey, we really think that among urban professionals in the technical marketing fields, that is who we're going to bias all of our public relations efforts to over the next year." So we're going to tell our PR firm, our in-house PR person, "Hey, that's what we want you to focus on. Get us the publications that are relevant to those folks, that are read by them on and off the Web. That's where we want to be."

This is interesting, because it means that we can then in the future actually go and measure like, "Well yeah, we had this kind of a result with that particular group that we targeted with PR." We had this much lower result with this other group that we didn't target with PR, that we could the next quarter or the next year. This is one way of doing it.

Geography actually is the most common way that I see a lot of startups and technology companies doing this. They basically focus all their efforts around a particular city or a particular state or region, sometimes even a country, and they'll do this.

At one point, I actually did run a split test using Sweden and Norway, which were places where I visited several people from Moz over the course of a couple years, spoke at some conferences and events, and then we looked at our traffic from those countries, our coverage in those countries, our links from those countries, and eventually our conversions from those countries. We did see a lift, kind of suggesting to us that maybe there was some value in those conferences.

Number two, the second way to do this is you can invest in a channel or tactic for only one of your product lines. If we're at Moz, we're going to say, "Hey, you know what? We're going to do a lot of public relations for Followerwonk specifically, but we are not going to do it for our SEO products. We're not going to do it for Moz Local. But let's see how that goes." This is another sort of segmentation tactic and can be effective. If you see that it works very well for one particular product, you might try repeating it for others.

Then the third one is that you can invest for a limited period of time. Now what's sad is this one is kind of the most common, but also the worst by far. The reason it's the worst by far, at least usually, is because most of the work that goes into any of these types of channels, think about it, press and PR, or a coffee and a beer meeting, or going to conferences and events, oftentimes takes a long time to show its value. It builds upon itself. So if I'm doing lots of in-person meetings, some of those will filter back and build on themselves. If you hear about Moz from one or two people in Seattle, well, okay, that's one signal. If you hear about it from 10, that's another thing. That might have a different kind of impact on how our brand gets out there.

So this time period stuff I really don't recommend and usually don't like. There are cases where it can be okay.

In all three of these, though, what makes it so incredibly challenging is that we have to be able to observe a number of metrics and then try and take the segments that we're supposed to be looking at, whether that's time or a product or a vertical or geography, and we want to observe metrics like traffic. We might try to look at mentions, especially for PR and branding focused stuff. We might look at links. We might look at conversion rate and total conversions. Then we have to try and control for every other thing that we're doing in our marketing that might or might not have affected those metrics as they apply to these channels.

This is why honestly that control bit is so hard. Who's to say whether public relations are really because we did a big PR effort and we talked to a lot of folks? Or is it because our products got a lot better, customers started buzzing about us, and the industry was turning our way anyway? We would have gotten 50% of those mentions even if we hadn't invested in PR. I don't know.

This is why a lot of the time with these forms of marketing, my bias is to say, "You know what? You need to use your educated opinion, and you need to believe in and invest in the quantity of serendipity that you believe you can afford or that you can't afford not to do, rather than trying to perfectly measure the value that you're getting out of these."

It's possible, but it is tremendously challenging. These are some ways that you can try it if you'd like to. I'd love to hear from all of you in the comments, especially if you've invested in this type of stuff in the past or if you have other ways of valuing, of figuring out, and of convincing your managers, your clients, your bosses, your teams to go put some dollars and energy behind these.

All right everyone, we'll see you next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Although this guide discusses on-page topic optimization, topical external links with relevant anchor text can greatly influence how search engines determine what a page is about. These external signals often carry more weight than on-page cues, but it almost always works best when on-page and off-page signals are in alignment.

1. Alchemy API

One of the few tools on the market that delivers entity extraction, concept targeting and linked data analysis. This is a great platform for understanding how a modern search engine views your webpage.

2. SEO Review Tools

The SEO Keyword Suggestion Tools was actually designed to return both primary and secondary related keywords, as well as options for synonyms and country targeting.

3. LSIKeywords.com

The LSIKeyword tool performs Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) on the top pages returned by Google for any given keyword phrase. The tool can go down from time to time, but it's a great one to bookmark.

4. Social Mention

Quick and easy, enter any keyword phrase and then check "Top Keywords" to see what words appear most with your primary phrase across the of the platforms that Social Mention monitors.

5. Google Trends

Google trends is a powerful related research tool, if you know how to use it. The secret is downloading your results to a CSV (under settings) to get a list up to 50 related keywords per search term.

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about being intentional about the content investments that you make. Now this is particularly important because otherwise it can lead to doom.

I got to organize the Foundry CEO Summit last week in Boulder, Colorado. I'm not sure when you are watching this. It might be several weeks ago now. But in any case, I'm talking with a bunch of CEOs and we have a number of discussion topics. One of the discussion topics, which was my personal favorite, one of the ones I was moderating was the top of funnel customer acquisition.

So I'm talking with a lot of these CEOs, B2B and B2C CEOs, about their content marketing efforts. Virtually everyone is investing in content marketing or thinking about it, which is awesome because it is very powerful. But many of them are investing in it somewhat unintentionally, or they haven't talked with their CMOs and their marketing teams about precisely what that content is.

So we pulled up a couple of blogs from some of the participants. I'm kind of looking through like, "I'm not sure that there's a strategic initiative behind all of the content that's being produced." That can be hugely helpful, and that's true both for the content side of it and for the SEO side of it.

Many of the folks who are watching Whiteboard Friday undoubtedly are really deep into the tactics and the SEO side. So this video is for your managers, for your bosses, for you to help them understand how to choose content investments and what to expect from different kinds of investments.

Let me show you what I mean. Different kinds of content exist to target people at different sections of their experience with your site: at the consideration phase, where they're close to buying, this is really for people who are thinking about buying your product; at the discovery phase for people who are just learning about your product or company; and at the viral or super broad content phase, where you're not even necessarily trying to attract an audience that might buy from you, you're doing other kinds of things.

So I'm going to try and walk through each of these. I'm actually going to start with the one that's closest to the conversion process or the conversion point in that process.

So let's imagine that I'm going to be the marketer at GeekDesk. GeekDesk sells these great sit-stand desks. I have one at home. I have one here at Moz. I love them to death because I stand up and work. I have sciatica in my left leg that I've had for many years, and I've been trying to work on that. One of the things I did is switch to a sit-stand desk. I actually almost never put it in sit mode anymore. I'm standing all the time. But in any case, GeekDesk makes great ones, ones that I really like.

So if I'm working at GeekDesk, my consideration phase content might be things like the models page, the models of all the different GeekDesks that I can buy. It might be a page on the advantages of the GeekDesk preset heights. GeekDesk has these little settings. I can push one, two, three, four, and it'll go to different heights. I have one at home where I can push it to two, and it will go to the height for Geraldine so she can work at my desk. Then I press one, and it goes to my height. Then I press three, I haven't pre-programmed three or four yet. But in any case, maybe if Elijah comes over, I'll set one for you.

It might be "GeekDesk warranty and return policy," or "sit-stand desks from GeekDesk." These are kind of product-centric things. My content goals here are product awareness and conversion. I'm trying to get people to know about the products that I offer and to convert them to buyers.

This is really about information for those potential buyers. So my audience, naturally, is going to be customers, potential customers, and maybe also some media that's already planning to write about me, which is why I want to have things like great photography and probably some testimonial quotes and all that kind of stuff.

The SEO targets for these types of pages are going to be my branded keywords -- certainly things like "GeekDesk" and "GeekDesk desks" and whatever the models that I've got are -- and then non-branded keywords that are directly, exactly tied to the products that my customers are going to perform when they search. These are things like sit-stand desks or adjustable height desks. That's what this stuff is targeting.

This is very classic, very old-school kind of SEO and almost not even in the realm really of content marketing. These are just kind of product-focused pages. You should have plenty of these on your site, but they don't always have overlap with these other things, and this is where I think the challenge comes into play.

Discovery phase content is really different. This is content like benefits of standing desks. That's a little broader than GeekDesk. That's kind of weird. Why would I write about that instead of benefits of GeekDesk? Well, I'm trying to attract a bigger audience. 99% of the content that you'll ever see me present or write about is not why you should use Moz tools. That's intentional. I don't like promoting our stuff all that much. In fact, I'm kind of allergic to it, which has its own challenges.

In any case, this is targeting an audience that I am trying to reach who will learn from me. So I might write things like why sitting at a desk might significantly harm your health or companies that have moved to standing desks. I'd have a list of them, and I have some testimonials from companies that have moved to standing desks. They don't even have to be on my product. I'm just trying to sell more of the idea and get people engaged with things that might potentially tie to my business. How to be healthy at work, which is even broader.

So these content goals are a little different. I'm trying to create awareness of the company. I just want people to know that GeekDesk exists. So if they come and they consume this content, even if they never become buyers, at least they will know and have heard of us. That's important as well.

Remember television commercial advertisers pay millions and millions of dollars just to get people to know that they exist. That's creating those brand impressions, and after more and more brand impressions, especially over a given time frame, you are more likely to know that brand, more likely to trust them, conversion rates go up, all those kinds of things.

I'm also trying to create awareness of the issues. I sometimes don't even care if you remember that that great piece of content about how to be healthy at work came from GeekDesk. All I care is that you remember that standing at work is probably healthier for you than sitting. That's what I hope to spread. That's the virality that I hope to create there. I want to help people so that they trust, remember, and know me in the future. These are the goals around discovery phase content.

That audience can be potential customers, but there's probably a much broader audience with demographic or psychographic overlap with my customers. That can be a group that's tremendously larger, and some small percentage of them might someday be customers or customer targets. This is probably also people like media, influencers, and potential amplifiers. This may be a secondary piece, but certainly I hope to reach some of those.

The SEO targets are going to be the informational searches that these types of folks will perform and broad keywords around my products. This is not my personal products, but any of the types of products that I offer. This also includes broad keywords around my customers' interests. That might be "health at work," that might be "health at home," that might be broadly dealing with issues like the leg issue that I've got, like sciatica stuff. It can be much broader than just what my product helps solve.

Then there's a third one. These two I think get conflated more than anything else. This is more the viral, super broad content. This is stuff like, "Scientific studies show that work will kill you. Here's how." Wow. That sounds a little scary, but it also sounds like something that my aunt would post on Facebook.

"Work setups at Facebook versus Google versus Microsoft." I would probably take a look at that article. I want to see what the different photographs are and how they differ, especially if they are the same across all of them. That would surprise me. But I want to know why they have uniqueness there.

"The start-up world's geekiest desk setup." That's going to be visual content that's going to be sailing across the Web. I definitely want to see that.

"An interactive work setup pricing calculator." That is super useful, very broad. When you think about the relationship of this to who's going to be in my potential customer set, that relationship is pretty small. Let's imagine that this is the Venn diagram of that with my actual customer base. It's a really tiny little overlap right there. It's a heart-shaped Venn diagram. I don't know why that is. It's because I love you.

The content goals around this are that I want to grow that broad awareness, just like I did with my informational content. I want to attract links. So few folks, especially outside of SEOs and content marketers, really understand this. What happens here is I'm going to attract links with this broad or more viral focused content, and those links will actually help all of this content rank better. This is the rising tide of domain authority that lifts all of the ships, all of the pages on the domain and their potential ranking ability. That's why you see folks investing in this regularly to boost up the ranking potential of these.

That being said, as we've talked about in a previous Whiteboard Friday, Google is doing a lot more domain association and keyword level domain association. So if you do the "problems with abusing alcohol" and that happens to go viral on your site, that probably won't actually help you rank for any of this stuff because it is completely outside the topic model of what all of these things are about. You want to be at least somewhat tangentially related in a semantic way.

Finally, I want to reach an audience outside of my targets for potential serendipity. What do I mean by that? I'm talking about I want to reach someone who has no interest in sitting and standing desks, but might be an investor for me or a supplier for me or a business development partner. They might be someone who happens to tell someone who happens to tell another someone, that long line of serendipity that can happen through connections. That's what this viral content is about.

So the audience is really not just specific influencers or customers, but anyone who might influence potential customers. It's a big, broad group. It's not just these people in here. It's these people who influence them and those people who influence them. It's a big, broad group.

Then I'm really looking for a link likely audience with this kind of content. I want to find people who can amplify, people who can socially share, people who can link directly through a blog, through press and media, through resources pages, that kind of stuff.

So my SEO targets might be really broad keywords that have the potential to reach those amplifiers. Sometimes -- I know this is weird for me to say -- it is okay to have none at all, no keyword target at all. I can imagine a lot of viral content that doesn't necessarily overlap with a specific keyword search but that has the potential to earn a lot of links and reach influencers. Thus, you kind of go, "Well, let's turn off the SEO on this one and just at least make it nicely indexable and make the links point to all the right places back throughout here so that I'm bumping up their potential visibility."

This fits into the question of: What type of content strategy am I doing? Why am I investing in this particular piece? Before you create a piece of content or pitch a piece of content to your manager, your CMO, your CEO, you should make sure you know which one it is. It is so important to do that, because otherwise they'll judge this content by this ROI and this content by these expectations. That's just not going to work. They're going to look at their viral content and go, "I don't see any conversions coming from this. That was a waste."

That's not what it was about. You have to create the right expectations for each kind of content in which you are going to be investing.

All right everyone, I hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday. We will see you again next week. Take care.