SEO

5 Signs A Client Is About To Break Up With Your Marketing Agency

Published

2 years ago

July 26, 2022

Learn more about how to avoid vanity metrics and beef up your presentations in CallRail’s client retention guide.

Sign 3: Your Client Says They Aren’t Getting The Results They Expected

So, you’ve prepared a detailed report and presented it to the client. You’re proud of your team’s work because you’ve made significant progress on a campaign.

But the client isn’t happy.

They don’t see the results they wanted, or they’re not getting results fast enough.

Somewhere, there’s been a miscommunication.

Properly onboarding and educating your clients is key to a healthy working relationship with them. If they misunderstand something about the process at the beginning, it’s much harder to keep them happy in the long run.

If you identify a misunderstanding within the first weeks of working together, it’s quite easy to address! But later on, more weeks or months down the road, a miscommunication becomes a failure to deliver, in their eyes.

As unpleasant as these conversations can be, you need to understand exactly what went wrong.

The most important question is: Was it a misunderstanding, or is there a real issue with your agency’s performance?

Either way, you may need to adjust your onboarding process.

What To Do: Improve Client Onboarding & Prove Your ROI With Data

If it makes sense, now is the time to defend your work.

Back it up with data, and ensure that the client understands exactly how your efforts benefit them.

Step 1: Think About & Consider The Following:

Are they focusing on the wrong metrics?
Have you explained that not all conversions are equal, and that some are worth more than others?
Do your clients understand that qualitative data can be just as important (or moreso) than quantitative data?
(For example, did you deliver fewer overall leads, but more high-quality leads by refining a landing page’s audience targeting?)

Check out CallRail’s guide for some great examples of these concepts, and how to communicate the intricacies of marketing data to clients.

Step 2: Reassess Your Onboarding Process

It might make sense to redo some portions of the onboarding process for unhappy clients if they’re willing to work with you.

This can introduce new stakeholders to your process, and remind existing ones what the overall goals are, as well as your plans to achieve them.

Step 3: Adjust Your Own Marketing Efforts To Target Clients With Priorities That Match

If you’re running a long-term campaign for a client who wants quick wins, the miscommunication might be in your marketing.

What promises and metrics are you focusing on in your marketing materials?

Are you setting expectations quickly and clearly with SLAs?

Are you taking time to evaluate leads and how well their goals align with your services?

If you’ve got gaps in your marketing and lead generation processes, you might end up with the next sign:

Sign 4: Your Client Is Always Upset

We’ve all had them. Clients who just can’t be pleased. No matter what you do, it feels like they’re always mad at you, always demanding answers, and despite all your best efforts they eventually leave.

This isn’t just a problem for the sales team in having to find a new client. Sour relationships can damage your reputation.

In the end, it might be best to let these clients go, as you’ll find out in CallRail’s guide.

Instead, focus your energy on improving your marketing communications and audience targeting.

If when a client leaves, you breathe a sigh of relief – they weren’t right for your agency in the first place. The relationship was doomed from the start.

What To Do: Use Data-Driven Marketing To Find Clients That Align With Your Services & Goals

Step 1: Decide What Your Ideal Clients Look Like

Who are you targeting and why?

What are their goals?

What are their pain points and how do you plan to solve them?

These are basic questions that you’re familiar with, but if you’ve attracted clients that are difficult to please, then something may have gone wrong with this step.

Step 2: Reassess Your Audiences

It can help to start thinking about the audiences of your audience. Do you specialize in reaching a specific audience? With what cohorts and demographics have previous campaigns seen the most success?

You might want to pivot and focus your marketing based on previous successes. Sometimes, it can take a while to learn what your agency excels at.

Case studies are a vital part of not only your marketing efforts but your understanding of your own success.

Step 3: Implement Lead Scoring To Get A Clear View Of Qualified Clients

Another key process you should implement is lead scoring.

Download CallRail’s client retention guide to learn about lead scoring and other tactics to ensure your clients are a good match.

Sign 5: Your Client Is Reducing Their Spend Or Says They’re Outgrowing You

Sometimes, you haven’t done anything wrong.

In fact, you’ve done your job so well that the client doesn’t need you anymore.

If you notice that a successful client is reducing their spend or having you communicate with newly hired internal experts in digital marketing, these could be signs that they’re outgrowing you.

Often, there isn’t much you can do if a client ends your relationship for budget reasons, or because they’re taking things in-house.

But you should still take a last stab at proving the value of your work.

What To Do: Create Success Story Case Studies

A case study is a great opportunity to remind the client just how effective you are.

Step 1: Ask If They’d Be Willing To Be Part Of A Case Study

Reminiscing on your successes together might just convince them to keep their budget allocated to you.

It’s also an opportunity to talk to them about any new services you’re planning to offer.

If they are going to leave, then a case study is a positive note to end the relationship with. It helps you highlight your successes in future marketing campaigns, and can keep lines of communication open once they leave.

Step 2: Implement An Exit Survey

Make sure to have an exit survey in place.

You can learn what services to offer in the future to keep clients on for longer and give them a final opportunity to talk to you about any pain points.

Step 3: Start A Referral Program

Of course, don’t forget to ask about setting up a referral program. As they move on and grow, they’re bound to encounter businesses that could use your services, and they know exactly how much you helped them.

Relationship-building is key for any agency’s success, and partnerships with current and former clients can help bring in new business. It can also deepen existing relationships.

Armed with data and communication plans, you can create longer, more fruitful relationships and reduce client churn.

Learn more about all of these data-driven strategies in “The Agency Marketer’s Guide To Client Retention” from CallRail.

Related Topics:Agency Break Client Marketing seo Signs

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SEO

How To Write ChatGPT Prompts To Get The Best Results

Published

7 hours ago

April 24, 2024

Max

How To Write ChatGPT Prompts To Get The Best Results

ChatGPT is a game changer in the field of SEO. This powerful language model can generate human-like content, making it an invaluable tool for SEO professionals.

However, the prompts you provide largely determine the quality of the output.

To unlock the full potential of ChatGPT and create content that resonates with your audience and search engines, writing effective prompts is crucial.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the art of writing prompts for ChatGPT, covering everything from basic techniques to advanced strategies for layering prompts and generating high-quality, SEO-friendly content.

Writing Prompts For ChatGPT

What Is A ChatGPT Prompt?

A ChatGPT prompt is an instruction or discussion topic a user provides for the ChatGPT AI model to respond to.

The prompt can be a question, statement, or any other stimulus to spark creativity, reflection, or engagement.

Users can use the prompt to generate ideas, share their thoughts, or start a conversation.

ChatGPT prompts are designed to be open-ended and can be customized based on the user’s preferences and interests.

How To Write Prompts For ChatGPT

Start by giving ChatGPT a writing prompt, such as, “Write a short story about a person who discovers they have a superpower.”

ChatGPT will then generate a response based on your prompt. Depending on the prompt’s complexity and the level of detail you requested, the answer may be a few sentences or several paragraphs long.

Use the ChatGPT-generated response as a starting point for your writing. You can take the ideas and concepts presented in the answer and expand upon them, adding your own unique spin to the story.

If you want to generate additional ideas, try asking ChatGPT follow-up questions related to your original prompt.

For example, you could ask, “What challenges might the person face in exploring their newfound superpower?” Or, “How might the person’s relationships with others be affected by their superpower?”

Remember that ChatGPT’s answers are generated by artificial intelligence and may not always be perfect or exactly what you want.

However, they can still be a great source of inspiration and help you start writing.

Must-Have GPTs Assistant

I recommend installing the WebBrowser Assistant created by the OpenAI Team. This tool allows you to add relevant Bing results to your ChatGPT prompts.

This assistant adds the first web results to your ChatGPT prompts for more accurate and up-to-date conversations.

It is very easy to install in only two clicks. (Click on Start Chat.)

Screenshot from ChatGPT, April 2024

For example, if I ask, “Who is Vincent Terrasi?,” ChatGPT has no answer.

With WebBrower Assistant, the assistant creates a new prompt with the first Bing results, and now ChatGPT knows who Vincent Terrasi is.

Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

You can test other GPT assistants available in the GPTs search engine if you want to use Google results.

Master Reverse Prompt Engineering

ChatGPT can be an excellent tool for reverse engineering prompts because it generates natural and engaging responses to any given input.

By analyzing the prompts generated by ChatGPT, it is possible to gain insight into the model’s underlying thought processes and decision-making strategies.

One key benefit of using ChatGPT to reverse engineer prompts is that the model is highly transparent in its decision-making.

This means that the reasoning and logic behind each response can be traced, making it easier to understand how the model arrives at its conclusions.

Once you’ve done this a few times for different types of content, you’ll gain insight into crafting more effective prompts.

Prepare Your ChatGPT For Generating Prompts

First, activate the reverse prompt engineering.

Type the following prompt: “Enable Reverse Prompt Engineering? By Reverse Prompt Engineering I mean creating a prompt from a given text.”

Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

ChatGPT is now ready to generate your prompt. You can test the product description in a new chatbot session and evaluate the generated prompt.

Type: “Create a very technical reverse prompt engineering template for a product description about iPhone 11.”

Reverse Prompt engineering via WebChatGPT

Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

The result is amazing. You can test with a full text that you want to reproduce. Here is an example of a prompt for selling a Kindle on Amazon.

Type: “Reverse Prompt engineer the following {product), capture the writing style and the length of the text :
product =”

Reverse prompt engineering: Amazon product

Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

I tested it on an SEJ blog post. Enjoy the analysis – it is excellent.

Type: “Reverse Prompt engineer the following {text}, capture the tone and writing style of the {text} to include in the prompt :
text = all text coming from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-bard-training-data/478941/”

Reverse prompt engineering an SEJ blog post

Screenshot from ChatGPT, March 2023

But be careful not to use ChatGPT to generate your texts. It is just a personal assistant.

Go Deeper

Prompts and examples for SEO:

Keyword research and content ideas prompt: “Provide a list of 20 long-tail keyword ideas related to ‘local SEO strategies’ along with brief content topic descriptions for each keyword.”
Optimizing content for featured snippets prompt: “Write a 40-50 word paragraph optimized for the query ‘what is the featured snippet in Google search’ that could potentially earn the featured snippet.”
Creating meta descriptions prompt: “Draft a compelling meta description for the following blog post title: ’10 Technical SEO Factors You Can’t Ignore in 2024′.”

Important Considerations:

Always Fact-Check: While ChatGPT can be a helpful tool, it’s crucial to remember that it may generate inaccurate or fabricated information. Always verify any facts, statistics, or quotes generated by ChatGPT before incorporating them into your content.
Maintain Control and Creativity: Use ChatGPT as a tool to assist your writing, not replace it. Don’t rely on it to do your thinking or create content from scratch. Your unique perspective and creativity are essential for producing high-quality, engaging content.
Iteration is Key: Refine and revise the outputs generated by ChatGPT to ensure they align with your voice, style, and intended message.

Additional Prompts for Rewording and SEO:
– Rewrite this sentence to be more concise and impactful.
– Suggest alternative phrasing for this section to improve clarity.
– Identify opportunities to incorporate relevant internal and external links.
– Analyze the keyword density and suggest improvements for better SEO.

Remember, while ChatGPT can be a valuable tool, it’s essential to use it responsibly and maintain control over your content creation process.

Experiment And Refine Your Prompting Techniques

Writing effective prompts for ChatGPT is an essential skill for any SEO professional who wants to harness the power of AI-generated content.

Hopefully, the insights and examples shared in this article can inspire you and help guide you to crafting stronger prompts that yield high-quality content.

Remember to experiment with layering prompts, iterating on the output, and continually refining your prompting techniques.

This will help you stay ahead of the curve in the ever-changing world of SEO.

More resources:

Featured Image: Tapati Rinchumrus/Shutterstock

SEO

Measuring Content Impact Across The Customer Journey

Published

1 day ago

April 23, 2024

Max

Measuring Content Impact Across The Customer Journey

Understanding the impact of your content at every touchpoint of the customer journey is essential – but that’s easier said than done. From attracting potential leads to nurturing them into loyal customers, there are many touchpoints to look into.

So how do you identify and take advantage of these opportunities for growth?

Watch this on-demand webinar and learn a comprehensive approach for measuring the value of your content initiatives, so you can optimize resource allocation for maximum impact.

You’ll learn:

Fresh methods for measuring your content’s impact.
Fascinating insights using first-touch attribution, and how it differs from the usual last-touch perspective.
Ways to persuade decision-makers to invest in more content by showcasing its value convincingly.

With Bill Franklin and Oliver Tani of DAC Group, we unravel the nuances of attribution modeling, emphasizing the significance of layering first-touch and last-touch attribution within your measurement strategy.

Check out these insights to help you craft compelling content tailored to each stage, using an approach rooted in first-hand experience to ensure your content resonates.

Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or new to content measurement, this webinar promises valuable insights and actionable tactics to elevate your SEO game and optimize your content initiatives for success.

View the slides below or check out the full webinar for all the details.

SEO

How to Find and Use Competitor Keywords

Published

1 day ago

April 23, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Competitor keywords are the keywords your rivals rank for in Google’s search results. They may rank organically or pay for Google Ads to rank in the paid results.

Knowing your competitors’ keywords is the easiest form of keyword research. If your competitors rank for or target particular keywords, it might be worth it for you to target them, too.

There is no way to see your competitors’ keywords without a tool like Ahrefs, which has a database of keywords and the sites that rank for them. As far as we know, Ahrefs has the biggest database of these keywords.

How to find all the keywords your competitor ranks for

Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
Enter your competitor’s domain
Go to the Organic keywords report

The report is sorted by traffic to show you the keywords sending your competitor the most visits. For example, Mailchimp gets most of its organic traffic from the keyword “mailchimp.”

Since you’re unlikely to rank for your competitor’s brand, you might want to exclude branded keywords from the report. You can do this by adding a Keyword > Doesn’t contain filter. In this example, we’ll filter out keywords containing “mailchimp” or any potential misspellings:

Filtering out branded keywords in Organic keywords report

If you’re a new brand competing with one that’s established, you might also want to look for popular low-difficulty keywords. You can do this by setting the Volume filter to a minimum of 500 and the KD filter to a maximum of 10.

Finding popular, low-difficulty keywords in Organic keywords

How to find keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t

Go to Competitive Analysis
Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
Enter your competitor’s domain in the But these competitors do section

Hit “Show keyword opportunities,” and you’ll see all the keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t.

You can also add a Volume and KD filter to find popular, low-difficulty keywords in this report.

How to find keywords multiple competitors rank for, but you don’t

Go to Competitive Analysis
Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
Enter the domains of multiple competitors in the But these competitors do section

Competitive analysis report with multiple competitors

You’ll see all the keywords that at least one of these competitors ranks for, but you don’t.

Content gap report with multiple competitors

You can also narrow the list down to keywords that all competitors rank for. Click on the Competitors’ positions filter and choose All 3 competitors:

Selecting all 3 competitors to see keywords all 3 competitors rank for

Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
Enter your competitor’s domain
Go to the Paid keywords report

This report shows you the keywords your competitors are targeting via Google Ads.

Since your competitor is paying for traffic from these keywords, it may indicate that they’re profitable for them—and could be for you, too.

You know what keywords your competitors are ranking for or bidding on. But what do you do with them? There are basically three options.

1. Create pages to target these keywords

You can only rank for keywords if you have content about them. So, the most straightforward thing you can do for competitors’ keywords you want to rank for is to create pages to target them.

However, before you do this, it’s worth clustering your competitor’s keywords by Parent Topic. This will group keywords that mean the same or similar things so you can target them all with one page.

Here’s how to do that:

Export your competitor’s keywords, either from the Organic Keywords or Content Gap report

Paste them into Keywords Explorer
Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab

For example, MailChimp ranks for keywords like “what is digital marketing” and “digital marketing definition.” These and many others get clustered under the Parent Topic of “digital marketing” because people searching for them are all looking for the same thing: a definition of digital marketing. You only need to create one page to potentially rank for all these keywords.

Keywords under the cluster of "digital marketing"

2. Optimize existing content by filling subtopics

You don’t always need to create new content to rank for competitors’ keywords. Sometimes, you can optimize the content you already have to rank for them.

How do you know which keywords you can do this for? Try this:

Export your competitor’s keywords

Paste them into Keywords Explorer
Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab
Look for Parent Topics you already have content about

For example, if we analyze our competitor, we can see that seven keywords they rank for fall under the Parent Topic of “press release template.”

Our competitor ranks for seven keywords that fall under the "press release template" cluster

If we search our site, we see that we already have a page about this topic.

Site search finds that we already have a blog post on press release templates

If we click the caret and check the keywords in the cluster, we see keywords like “press release example” and “press release format.”

Keywords under the cluster of "press release template"

To rank for the keywords in the cluster, we can probably optimize the page we already have by adding sections about the subtopics of “press release examples” and “press release format.”