Web3's Website Workshop

Have we finally moved past the dreaded phone call waiting line? I can hear you cheering from the other side of the screen because so are we.  Chat support is becoming more common as we advance into a more technologically advanced world. When you visit a website with a burning question, that little pop-up box is the perfect alert to greet you. Cue the sighs of relief!  Throughout this post, we will review two of the most popular customer service strategies for 2021: Live Chat Vs. Chatbots. What is the difference between Live Chat and Chatbots, you ask? We'll highlight everything you need to know as a small to medium-sized business, including:   Live Chat What is Live Chat? Live chat is an online communication app. It allows you to interact with your customers on your website in real-time through messaging compared to email or over the phone. This option is designed to be quick and easy and answers the users within seconds. In other words, Live chat is a real person, managed by service agents within a company. Live chats offer efficient solutions to customer issues with limited frustrations. Most B2B companies have utilised this app on their websites and are converting because of it. Do customers like Live Chat? Consumers like Live Chat because they are greeted with instant responses. Complex queries are interpreted easily with Live chat and can process customers without the difficulty of technical terminologies. It can be significant for customers who do not fully understand your service or product yet.  Live chats also allow for agents to share their screens to further assist with customer queries. This option is not available to Chatbots and can be superior if your product or service requires detailed assistance for your customers.  Is Live Chat important? Customers tend to prefer talking to an actual person when they have genuine questions. Live chat widgets allow for more human connection. Humans can understand, empathize and overall communicate better with other humans. Your customers can get a sense of your brand and the agent's personality. It can help to quickly build rapport and establish an authentic relationship.  You can observe your customer through their online journey through their tone and sentiment. It can give you valuable insights to optimise for further development. Responding quickly to a potential customer or a lead will leave them with a better impression of your business. It will be beneficial when it comes to converting.  Why use a Live Chat? Live chats are a great option to create trustworthy relationships with customers and solve in-depth queries. But, as you scale up your business, handling various chats at once may not be feasible. This is where Chatbots may come into play.    ChatBots  What is a Chatbot? A Chatbot is a programmable addition to your website that imitates human conversation through text to answer questions and queries. The Chatbot works automatically without the need for humans. When programmed correctly, Chatbots have the potential to move customers down the sales funnel more quickly. Are Chatbots really effective? Imagine having to reply to hundreds of customers all at once, often with the same question. If you are a small or even medium-sized business, the chances are you will not have many people available to answer questions all day. It may mean customers are still waiting for a response at the end of the day, who will later switch to your competitors.  Do customers prefer Chatbots? Chatbots bridge human limitations by responding instantly with relevant information and guidance. It can save you money, time, and energy in the long run. These Chatbots are designed to answer questions and continue the conversation to drive customer engagement.  Chatbots generally don't need any human intervention, which is optimal for businesses with a limited budget or employees. Chatbots can bring value to customers by becoming a self-service source of information. This strategy allows your customers to find the information they need at any given moment. This instantaneous interaction will leave your customers feeling satisfied. That means no more listening to telephone music as you wait in line for your call to go through. We have all been there, and we all know it is not a great experience. When to use Chatbots? Businesses usually implement Chatbots as their primary source of information for their customers. They appear on landing pages to introduce the customer to your page and are predominantly on the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page.  If the Chatbot is unable to answer the questions, it gathers enough information regarding the topic summary, customer details and demographic, product data regarding the specific product or service. The Chatbot then forwards this customer to a specific agent who can assist with the customer's query. This approach will save your business time and energy and will result in a simple customer service workflow.  It sounds like having one less thing to worry about. Who needs a Chatbot? There are several reasons why your business should consider using a Chatbot, which includes: 24/7 customer support, scale-up your business, help your customers quicker, targeting millennials, better user interaction, more affordable. Chatbots, however, are programmed and cannot always give answers beyond what they're programmed to say. Although, with more and more advancements in technology, we know that it's only a matter of time before this problem is no longer occurring.  The best thing you can do for a customer is to answer their questions. A Chatbot has a quicker response rate to humans. However, these machines still have their limitations.  How to know when to use Chatbots and when to use Live Chats? Trustworthiness and cost-efficiency are two of the main priorities for most small to medium businesses. When it comes to deciding whether to install Chatbots or rather utilise Live Chat on your website, you must understand your customer, your business goals, and what is feasible. We've learned this in many of our debates where a combination of both is the best solution.  You can use Chatbots to automate otherwise manual processes that a Live Chat agent would have to say "Tell us your name and number." Do you know what I mean? And then save the human-based interaction for things that couldn't be programmed in the Chatbot or through machine learning and AI for the time being that is. Would you agree, Joe? Transcript James Banks:Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show. I'm your host, James Banks. Joseph Chesterton:And I'm your host, Joseph Chesterton. James Banks:And today, we have a niche debate. Live Chat versus Chatbots, which one is better for business? So for this debate, I'll be backing the Chatbots, go the robots! How about you, Joe? Joseph Chesterton:Of course, I'm on the Live Chat side of the ring. James Banks:Alrighty. Well, without further ado, let's get started. So Joe, why would you say... Or actually, I think for this one, we're going to need a definition. Joseph Chesterton:Oh, I was about to say, do we need a definition? James Banks:We need a definition of terms. So, I'll kick this one off. So a Chatbot, you've been on a website where a little bubble pops up in the corner. It asks you, "Hey, how can I help you today?" Or, "Can I help you with ‘blah'?" And it gives you some options, or prompts you to start typing.  You start typing, and then before you know it, it's either answered your question or then it palms you off to a Live Chat operator. Which is a good segue way to explain what we mean by Live Chat, Joe? Joseph Chesterton:So Live Chat is, you type your message into the little Chatbox, and then someone on the other end is sitting there, and they reply back. So it's Live chatting. James Banks:Yeah, of course. And it's obvious why Chatbots is better because it's automated. You're not relying on a human being, and you have to pay by the hour to do this correctly. Or would you say otherwise? Joseph Chesterton:How many times have you gone to a website you've typed in, whatever it is. And then it comes back with a response that was not what you asked in the first place? James Banks:Is it the Chatbots' fault, or did the person programming the Chatbot do a poor job? Joseph Chesterton:Isn't the Chatbot capable of being programmed the right way in the first place? James Banks:Potentially. I mean, that's arguable. But a lot of it goes down to people thinking Chatbots are genius, whizzbang AIs. They're not. They require someone to say, "Okay, when someone says something, say this back." And of course, you can program it for every single thing that some person could have to say, that's not possible yet. It will be with machine learning and AI advancements.  But I think a lot boils down to whoever designed the experience of the Chatbot, which has done a poor job. It can cause the opposite of what you would have a Chatbot in the business to do. That is to improve customer experience, and it does the exact opposite. It takes away from the customer experience.  But I don't see how Live Chat is exactly the solution to that. Joe, it could go the same way you get a poorly trained Live Chat operator and produce a negative customer experience rather than a positive one. Joseph Chesterton:Have you ever been to a bank and used one of the bank Live Chats? James Banks:Yes, it's terrible. Joseph Chesterton:It's a Chatbot. It's not a live person. You can't replicate the customer service of someone answering the questions straight up. I can't remember what I was trying to do on the bank's website, but the response was, "Do you want to sign up for a credit card?" And it was completely different from what I was doing. James Banks:Because the Chatbot was poorly programmed. It shouldn't have asked you that. Joseph Chesterton:Maybe it was perfectly programmed. That's the point of the bank. James Banks:Yeah. The bank, all they care about is bottom lines. They don't care about customer experience. Joseph Chesterton:Yeah, but they should. That's the whole point. James Banks:Exactly. But whose problem is that? Is it the platform, the Chatbots, or how the banks are running their business? Do you see we're comparing apples to oranges here? Joseph Chesterton:Well, there's a reason why the big four banks are in the top five biggest businesses in Australia. James Banks:And most top five hated organisations in the country. But let's not get too sidetracked from what we're debating here. All right. I'm going to throw some spanners in the works. Chatbots can be extremely useful if you understand your audience, have a good track record, and data on every single question that they have either put through from help desk, email support, or so on and so forth. You analyse and make human-driven decisions based on how you can create and build workflows that could potentially be automating a manual activity. That means saving money and arguably producing a better customer experience because the answers are immediate. The person doesn't have to wait to connect with a chat agent. They get their answers immediately. Joseph Chesterton:I was going to say that if you didn't mention it. Which I knew you would but, that is probably the main factor, time. So people want to have the answers straight away. If you look at all the good Live Chats, either services or businesses using it properly, they're almost instant anyway. James Banks:Yeah. Joseph Chesterton:So you could say that if you do it right, then that's a novel point. James Banks:So we've talked a lot about chat and Chatbots for customer support. What about using them for lead generation? Like why would you say Live Chat is better than using a Chatbot for lead generation purposes? Joseph Chesterton:Would you say that it is a suitable lead generation?  James Banks:Well, we've tested this at Web3. We've tested Chatbots on landing pages that drive highly relevant commercial traffic versus ones that don't. Usually, we see at least a 30% increase in customer engagement. So when I say customer engagement, you also take that further to customer conversion.  That is someone giving us their name, email, and or phone number. We would consider that a captured lead. Having Live Chats on the website increases our ability to capture those details by approximately 30% on average. That's through the testing that we've done in the past. Joseph Chesterton:So you're saying that Live Chat wins? James Banks:No. Not necessarily because you've got to have someone on Live Chat, trained that knows how to handle a sales lead. And then if you want people coming into your site and hitting it 24/7, you want to resource that. It gets very costly to do.  You look at the classic multi-step form funnel, that is, we have a choice question. A classic example we use is that a free 120 point SEO audit will point out all of the problems with your website and send it back to you in a report for free in under a day. So the first step in that funnel would be for them to give us your website.  Then once we have their website, we can then usually forward them through to provide their name, email, or whatever it is, a little bit more about their business. So that would be a traditional form-based process.  You can build it into a Chatbot. It creates a more native experience, and there's less resistance there because it doesn't feel like they're being pushed down a marketing funnel, even though they are. So that's where a Chatbot can be very effective from lead generation.   Joseph Chesterton:And I guess it goes back to your original point of, "As long as it's been programmed, right?" James Banks:One hundred percent. I think this is the biggest problem. Even on both sides and particularly with Chatbots, everyone has experienced bad Chatbots. It's not that the idea or the concept of a Chatbot is bad, or it shouldn't be on a website. It's whoever has built the Chatbot and the data that they fed into it, and the pathways and everything in between. They haven't done a good job on the customer's needs, wants, pains and desires, and then being able to provide them efficiently with good quality solutions.  A lot of that is customer experience design and customer journey mapping. We've done this before and do this a lot at Web3. And it's such a critical cornerstone component to make any automated system successful. Whether it be a Chatbot or a multiform process, or even a website customer journey, per se. Joseph Chesterton:What I would say works well is both. So one of our service providers, they have a bot. Initially, you type in the message. If it isn't right, then some other options potentially are. If it isn't, then it says something like, "Speak to support." You type that in and it goes directly to support. James Banks:Yeah, it checks you are a paying customer through the Chatbot. Once it figures out you're a paying customer, it puts you in front of a person. So the person isn't wasting their time with people that aren't actual real paying customers. That's a great example. And I think you're right. We've learned this in many of our debates where a combination of both is the best solution.  You can use Chatbots to automate otherwise manual processes that someone in Live Chat would have to say "Tell us your name and number." Do you know what I mean? And then save the human-based interaction for things that couldn't be programmed in the Chatbot or through machine learning and AI for the time being that is. Would you agree, Joe? Joseph Chesterton:Yeah. For example, they have program responses. So it fits like 60% or even more on a growing basis based on what they're getting, like the data that they're getting from it. James Banks:Yeah. Joseph Chesterton:So, it's constantly improving. And then if they can't, obviously it just falls back to Live Chat, but it means that they then have to hire less- James Banks:Absolutely, at the end of the day, what business problem you're solving, you're making a manual process more efficient, more cost-effective, and creating more scalability in your business.  So if you're interested in implementing Live Chat and Chatbots on your website, and you've got no idea how to approach it. Feel free to drop us a line at web3.com.au. We've done this for many businesses before, and we'd love to help you out.  Joseph Chesterton: Talk to us in our Live Chat. James Banks:Is that still enabled, Joe?  Joseph Chesterton:It's there. James Banks:Awesome. Well, that's a wrap for another episode of the Web3 Marketing and Debate Show. Tune in next time, we'll be talking to you all real soon. Have a nice day. Discover more at: https://www.web3.com.au/ https://web3.com.au/live-chat-vs-chatbots/

Are you currently tossing up between boosting your already made content on social media or creating advertisements for Facebook? In this article, we review two popular social media marketing strategies: Facebook Ads and Boosted Posts. We dive deep into the benefits and disadvantages of both strategies to uncover the good, the bad, and most importantly, the unnecessary.  Throughout this page, we outline the best options and strategies for Facebook marketing. If you want to skip to the action, listen to our marketing debate now. Product overview Before we dive in, here is our simple breakdown of the significant aspects of each option. important  As with most startup businesses, we started with a shoestring budget. Understanding the tricks of the trade and when to spend, spare and save was integral to our success. For over eight years, we’ve learned what works best and what isn’t necessary.  Boosted Posts Have you come across that button on your social media posts saying: Boost? We see many businesses misusing this option of their profiles, costing them large chunks of their marketing budget. But, is it better to create an ad or boost a post on Facebook? Boosted posts offer many targeting options based on specific demographics including, interests, age, and gender. It means reaching people who will most likely be interested in clicking to take further action and drive traffic to your Facebook page or Instagram profile.   Boosted posts are not created in Facebook Ad manager and therefore do not have all the features that come with them. Boosting a post means making sure it shows up in your audience's News Feed as an advertisement on any platform, particularly Facebook and Instagram. The feature optimises engagement with the profile of the brand and its target audience. These posts receive more likes, comments, and shares.  This option is at the top of your post on Facebook or Instagram next to your most recent or most engaging previous content pieces. Is it worth boosting a Facebook Post? Boosting a post does not necessarily mean a higher conversion rate, however it is optimal for creating engagement. Boosted posts are just reusing your previous content to show up in more of your audience's newsfeed.  The majority of those additional views probably won't take action or make a significant impact on your ROI initially. As mentioned before, this is merely just boosting a post. It implies selling your brand, as opposed to selling your product or service.  However, leveraging what Facebook offers means building a better brand presence and getting in front of more people online. If this one boosted post does not translate into a sale, a couple of consistent boosted posts will remind your audience who you are.  How long should I boost a Facebook post? After defining your target audience, your business should set a clear budget. Facebook has a minimum of one dollar per day and a maximum duration of 14 days. It calculates to be quite reasonable for a marketing budget, particularly for small to medium-sized businesses. Ultimately, the span and consistency would depend on the nature of your post, your social media goals and objectives, and your overall budget.  As with most brand awareness campaigns and marketing strategies, your boosted post must have a clear call to action (CTA), brand personality, and a reason for your audience to follow, comment, or share.  Facebook Ads Why is advertising on Facebook better than boosting posts? Boosting posts does not give you as much freedom as creating an ad does.  Facebook Ads contains more advanced tools and features to create lookalike audiences for the target demographic and micro-targeting. Microtargeting involves targeting the smallest geolocations to the specific detail to reach only the intended audience, increasing ROI and reducing cost. With already most of the world on Facebook, it offers a large platform with broad reach and the capability to gain followers in one space. Facebook is constantly updating, which means the platform will continue to improve its advertising options. Users now have the opportunity to conduct a marketing campaign or create an ad. Facebook then optimises your ad and gives valuable data for what performs well and what does not. Facebook ads help to translate your brand's presence into tangible outcomes. Although running Facebook ads translates better, it is much more expensive compared to boosting posts. Fluctuating costs is hard for small to medium-sized businesses with a limited marketing budget. How much do Facebook ads cost in 2021? Facebook ads depend on your bidding model. It is different compared to boosting a post which costs a flat rate per day. These models include Cost-per-click (CPC) and Cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM). Facebook ads charge shy of $1 per click and $7 per 1000 impressions. Businesses can adjust the campaign settings based on their marketing objectives to focus on likes, app downloads, views, or clicks.  How does Facebook advertising work? After selecting your metrics to optimise, Facebook analyses ad quality estimated action rates to determine its effectiveness and relevance. The value of the ad is calculated based on this data, delivering the most effective ad to run. With these insights, businesses are encouraged to improve the ad quality and relevance to decrease the cost.  It is important to note that ad costs fluctuate depending on the options you choose. Audience, placement, quality, and objectives all influence the overall budget. Choosing broad or highly competitive demographics will increase your spending. Why do ads get rejected by Facebook? Ads get rejected for numerous reasons. For example, if your link text does not match where you send your audience when they click on your ad. Ads also get rejected if the content contains any offensive or unethical imagery, text, or intent.  Summary  If you are after both engagement and return of investment, it will be worthwhile to use both strategies. Incorporating a mix of Facebook ads and boosted posts into your social media strategy is the best option to increase engagement and ROI. Your business should map out your marketing strategy objectives before investing in any paid social media advertising.  However, not every brand needs to have an extensive social media presence. It may be worthwhile to invest time into producing well-designed content on your channels initially to increase your traffic organically.  Marketing Debate Podcast Transcript James Banks:Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of The Web3 marketing debate show. I'm your host, James Banks. Joseph Chesterton:And I'm your host, Joseph Chesterton. James Banks:And today we've got another great, great, great topic. Facebook ads, or should I say Facebook ads from within the business manager versus boosting posts or the automated ad bidding. So for this debate, I'll be taking the boosted posts side of the ring. Joseph Chesterton:And obviously, I'll be on the Facebook ads side. James Banks:Before we dive into it, let’s define the difference between Facebook ads versus boosted posts? Joseph Chesterton:So in my mind, or in what I've written down, is that boosted posts are posts on your timeline that you apply money to, boosting them. James Banks:You've probably seen a post on your business's account that Facebook prompts you to boost it. You could then increase your reach by spending a dollar on this post.  Joseph Chesterton:Boosted posting allows you to get your posts into audiences that potentially might not have been able to reach. James Banks:Absolutely. Joseph Chesterton:As well as showing it to more people in the algorithm that Facebook chooses to do so. With Facebook ads, they're like boosted posts, but you have full control with more creative avenues and more platforms and targeting capabilities. And it's done through the Facebook ads manager. James Banks:Yeah, that's right through the business manager. So usually if we want to get very specific, very targeted and you want to do all the manual options and control yourself then through the business manager through Facebook ads is the way to do it. So with that said and done, why would you say that the more manual approach is better than the boosted approach? Joseph? Joseph Chesterton:One more question. Okay. I kind of said it before with my opinion, but why would you boost or use, yeah. Why would you boost the posts in the first place? James Banks:It goes back to objectives. You have to be clear on what your objectives are. Boosting is a very clear objective, which is, you want to increase reach potentially engagement, and impressions on a piece of content that you've released into your Facebook account. It also can be very handy when going through the Facebook business ads manager, and depending on how you build your campaign strategy, you can often get very isolated into a single audience.  After a long term of doing this, depending on your audience size, business budgets, so on and so forth- is that you tend to start burning out your audience. Now you can rotate in creative. That's usually the best way to do it. Rotating in fresh creative, fresh copy so that your audience is being stimulated with new material. However, if you're then not also rotating and testing a new audience's parameters, you can basically make it very narrow and it's like going down a single path on a gold mine. And you don't realise that there was a massive goldmine between another shaft that you just never decided to go down and prospect, whereas boosting posts, helps you to put it out.  The algorithm decides what is most relevant for the audiences that have engaged with you. The information and data can be fed back into your business manager account, to test new creative, new campaigns, new objectives. That's why I believe it's still relevant depending on your objective and goals and also how you are managing and running the campaign and who you have in place managing and running your ad campaign as well. Joseph Chesterton:And how Facebook makes money is through advertising. And of course, with their algorithm, they don't allow your content to be shown to every single person. Otherwise, what's the point of advertising in the first place? So you have to pay to play essentially. James Banks:Yeah, definitely. I think like what we see in the past when someone comes to us like, "Hey, we're advertising on Facebook, but we're getting nowhere and getting no leads." To answer that we asked what the business has been doing and he replied: I've been boosting my posts.  Yes, you are advertising on Facebook, but you're advertising under a mechanism that's designed for reach and engagement, not lead generation. The objectives are completely different and the mechanism and advertising approach changes based upon what your objectives are. So when we talk about lead generation, like going through the business manager or doing the more manual campaign approach, which would be the better option out of the two Joe? Joseph Chesterton:Well, with boosted posts, you're just focusing on volunteer metrics like liking, sharing, and commenting. Whereas with the Facebook ads manager, you do have the final control. So you're able to target specifically to certain demographics and certain platforms like Instagram.  You can boost it on Instagram, but things like Instagram messenger and probably Oculus, which I'm not familiar with, but I'm sure that's only a matter of time before Facebook ads become part of that as well. But yeah, it just comes down to having more control and being able to target specific industries or specific areas. Whereas like I said, with boosted posting, it's getting your content and pushing it out and hoping that it gets the likes. James Banks:Yeah. Well, I think you mentioned vanity metrics there, and let's be clear if your objective for advertising on Facebook is lead generation of sales, likes, and engagement, that might be okay. Maybe they are a little bit vain and they're not necessarily directly correlated to things such as cost per acquisition cost per sale, lead quality conversion rate, click-through rate. But even then, better metrics qualify the performance of a lead in sales campaigns through Facebook ads.  If your objective is to build a brand presence, engagement, and reach audiences you weren't reaching before and get them brand aware. It means having these audiences at the very top of your funnel so that they can then progress down into the mid-funnel, the decision-making process, and then go down to more of the pointy end. It is moving into lead generation sales. Then taking this approach, things such as likes and engagements are metrics to measure its success. So it all depends on your goals and objectives, but the most common mistake we see is businesses using the wrong method to achieve their advertising objective. They then blame the platform or worse, blame their ads.  If the ads manager is using the wrong platform, then you should blame them. But usually, the business owner doesn't themselves say they're not getting results and the platforms broken, but no, their entire approach is actually what's broken.  Joseph Chesterton:Boosting ads can target basic demographics such as likes, interests, age. But when you're wanting to get into the advanced stuff and take that step further into lookalike audiences that's when Facebook Ad Manager comes in. James Banks:Let's say you're a brand new business with no presence or following on Facebook. With a boosted post-campaign, you don't have to go through the business manager. However, a boosted campaign can help you look like a reputable business and page by receiving likes and engagement.  On the flip side though, if you’ve got specific sales and lead generation KPIs, then use Facebook as a mechanism to see and achieve them. This is when you need to have a proper campaign strategy and build out a specific campaign under the business and ads manager and Facebook. So two different objectives, but here are two practical ways of how you could use the two things.  Joseph Chesterton:If you want website clicks, page engagement, local business promotions, then boosted ads are probably a good enough thing for you. With Facebook Manager, you dig deeper, generate ads with objectives, like getting more store traffic conversions and opt-ins so they kind of bleed into each other, but they're different. James Banks:To summarise it might be beneficial to understand what your objectives are and if they can be met through boosted campaigns. If you want to advertise on Facebook or want to approach it again, you might be better off handling that yourself.  However, if you have got more specific goals and objectives to manage through a larger marketing campaign, you're better off sending that to an agency.  Feel free to reach out to us at Web3.com.au, we are here to help. Well, that's another wrap for the Web3 marketing debate show, tune in next time we'll be talking all things chat.  So with that said, have a great day and we'll talk to you again real soon.

If you’re spending your budget on paid advertising, you want the platform to be the right one. Even if you’re aiming for organic reach, the channel you optimise for is essential to the success of your ad campaign.  Throughout the debate, we discuss whether LinkedIn or Google Ads are better for your digital advertising strategy. Both are exceptional choices for providing ROI, but they serve opposing purposes.  What are Google Ads? Google Ads helps marketers expand their reach within digital campaigns using PPC advertising. Google displays your ads on their platform in front of your target audience.  What are the advantages of Google Ads? Google ads are an affordable option for your PPC advertising strategy. It is a viable option for any size business, even though the cost can vary based on the industry. What makes Google Ads an affordable option is a choice to bet on different keywords.  It comes as no surprise that the competitive keywords cost the most. However, this sometimes can be worth the investment. People turn to search engines to find specific answers to their queries, making Google the best place to display your relevant content pieces to your users.  Besides being a cheap and classic option, Google also provides an extensive list of tools that can help heighten your ad campaign. For example, the keyword planner allows you to choose the best keywords based on the type of industry, cost, your existing content, average monthly searches, and more. It makes advertising seem as easy as a couple of clicks.  Once you have produced your ads, you can then easily measure ROI and analyse your results for the success of your future advertising campaigns. Google ads are an investment for the future effectiveness of your digital marketing strategies. What are the disadvantages of Google Ads? Although ‘$1 per click’ sounds cheap on paper, it can add up fast. It does not matter if the click converted into a sale. You will still have to open your wallet for that click. After a while, it may begin to be more expensive in the long run. It can lead to another disadvantage for small to medium-sized businesses. As soon as your ad spend runs out, so will your Google ad campaign.  The price of the keywords is determined based on the competitiveness of that word. So if you want to show up for relevant and frequent queries, you’ll have to prepare a larger budget.  Monitoring your ads is essential to avoid any mistakes and to ensure your campaign is converting. Put simply, you need to be able to easily tweak it if need be, however, it can be a completely time-consuming process.  Google is the largest search engine, and the platform people turn to most when they want something. This comes with so much possibility, but also the stress of mismanaging your account.   What are LinkedIn Ads LinkedIn allows you to network with other professionals online on a business-orientated social media platform. It offers job opportunities, potential client base and allows you to build brand awareness. This network is an essential space to market products or services through LinkedIn ads. Previously it was an easy win for any other platform over LinkedIn, however, over the recent years, LinkedIn has really upped its game in terms of its advertising.  Advantages of LinkedIn Ads LinkedIn advertising is extremely efficient for B2B marketers or other business professionals.  LinkedIn ads let you target users based on specific criteria and data shared by the audience themselves. By narrowing down on who you target, you have a higher chance of capturing quality leads.  The data you can use to target people includes: Age, gender, industry, work history, location, school attended, and everything in between related to their professional history.   It is safe to assume most people who are active on LinkedIn keep their profiles up to date and therefore give confidence to the accuracy of your advertising efforts.  Advertising on LinkedIn is much less competitive, especially in comparison to other social networking sites like Facebook. This means your business has the potential to be in front of potential customers more easily, without your competitors stealing the click from you. It’s a pretty great bonus if you ask us.  These easy targeting options and simple interface provide an instinctive user experience which helps to improve the click rate of your ad. Disadvantages of LinkedIn Ads LinkedIn's reporting dashboard offers only the bare minimum for tools. Marketers don’t have access to the metrics and insights available on other platforms. It's hard to create insights from the data, as well as reporting to justify ad spend. It is vital to test out what works with your audience, especially when only just starting. Understanding what type of content is causing traction is what propels your business forward faster. However, this is something that LinkedIn lacks. Marketers have difficulty bulk editing or duplicating content within the platform through its lack of tools. It makes the process of testing slow.   LinkedIn has a relatively expensive minimum for CPC and CPM. It can sometimes be double what Google offers. They also require a minimum daily budget, which can become hard to commit as a small or startup business. However, due to the high conversion rate of LinkedIn, it makes the high cost-per-click a worthwhile investment.  Summary  Overall, when deciding on which platform to advertise on, it all comes down to user intent. Who are your customers and where are they mainly online? By answering these questions, you’ll begin to understand more about where you need your business to show up. Both Google Ads and LinkedIn ads have their pros and cons, however, it's important to understand which is worthwhile for your budget, especially for small to medium-sized businesses.  Podcast  Listen in to James and Joseph’s heated debate where there can only be one winner. Who will it be? Let’s find out. Be sure to let us know who you agree with within the comments. Transcript James Banks:Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show. I am your host, James Banks. Joseph Chesterton:And I'm your host, Joseph Chesterton. James Banks:And today we have another awesome debate topic, which is Google ads versus LinkedIn ads. Which one is better for business? So for this debate, I'll be defending LinkedIn ads. Joseph Chesterton:And I'll be winning with Google ads. James Banks:Those are fighting words, Joseph. Well, let's see what you're made out of. So, all right, let's kick things off. Why would you say Google ads are better than LinkedIn ads for businesses to use? Joseph Chesterton:There's a big difference between Google ads and LinkedIn ads. With Google ads, it's not just advertising on Google. It's advertising on almost every single website that has ads or uses the Google ads platform.  So, it's 90% of the web versus one website, essentially, which makes this debate very difficult for you. James Banks:Well, site impressions don't necessarily mean great results, Joseph. Heck, you can still outperform one high-converting site versus a whole bunch of shitty ones that produce a better result at the end of the day. So like again, I think there's more to your argument there. Joseph Chesterton:Potentially. So where do people go online? They use social media. What else? Look up things. Recipes. I don't know. Look at pictures of cats. All these different websites have ads on them, more than likely.  If you're looking at social media, then Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn all have advertising. After that, then pretty much, the rest is Google advertising. So it's very hard to answer Google ads vs. LinkedIn ads. James Banks:Oh yeah, I know it's an apple orange comparison. But let's say you had a small marketing budget that you couldn't justify splitting across two different platforms. You need to choose a platform to invest your marketing and advertising budget.  For example, if you decide to move it into LinkedIn ads, well, I think you answered it yourself. Just because Google has the biggest horizontal spread for an advertising network online, it doesn't necessarily mean it's the best place to put your advertising budget. LinkedIn, for example, is very narrow in terms of its breadth, but it's very specific. It's very specialised. There are lots of business and business professionals. You could be very granular around targeting individuals within organisations based upon roles. However, you can't do that with Google ads.  You can go to the keyword on a geographic level. But you can't target these by those profiles and things like that, which puts it as a little bit of a disadvantage for tailoring the ads to the exact person you want to convert, and your dream customer. Joseph Chesterton:Not necessarily. James Banks:Now, what have you got to say? Joseph Chesterton:So, Google uses your demographics from your profile on Google. James Banks:Yeah. When logged into a Google account on Chrome, or, no, if you logged into a Google account on the internet, that's right. Joseph Chesterton:Hmm. The chances of you having a Google account, Gmail, or Google workspace account versus being on LinkedIn, logged in. James Banks:Yeah. But with your Google account, you're not putting in where you work, your exact work position, your work history, where you went to university, heck, what your commercial interests are.  You don't go to that level of depth that you do with LinkedIn. You have got a lot less to work with when it comes to targeting and personalization. Joseph Chesterton:Yes, that is correct. But the thing is, there's a lot more area to play in when targeting geographic location. James Banks:Which you can do on LinkedIn. Joseph Chesterton:Age. James Banks:Which you can do on LinkedIn. All right. I'm going to throw you a lifeline, Joseph. Let's talk about the cost per click. Joseph Chesterton:Yeah. Well, there's no debate there.  James Banks:Why? Why is there no debate? Joseph Chesterton:LinkedIn ads suck when it comes to cost per click because they haven't quite worked it out. The actual cost per click versus Google's cost per click is considerably higher, most of the time. James Banks:Why is it higher? Joseph Chesterton:Potentially because it's targeted to professional people. James Banks:Maybe. I'm just going to jump ship onto your side of the ship because it's sinking a lot faster than mine. But no, you're right. It doesn't make any sense.  There's clear reasoning why LinkedIn's cost per click could never replicate the ad set into Facebook and Google. It just costs so much more. And there's no justification as to why. Maybe because they need to amp up the cost to make it, I don't know. I don't know why.  We've run both platforms before. But often we run multi-channel ad campaigns across LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, and many other platforms. But generally, the budget doesn't get the reach. It doesn't hit as many eyeballs because the cost per click is so high. Although you could say, yes, it's very tailored, specific, unique, and relevant, you could argue the same to any platform. There was an era where algorithmic targeting was a bad thing, was a big no-no on the ad space because they didn't have enough data and they're very stupid.  But now they're getting more sophisticated. It's now becoming almost as good as human-based targeting. What do you have to say to that? Joseph Chesterton:Yeah. That's right, thanks for hitting the nail on the head there. James Banks:Alrighty. Alrighty. So, here's the thing. If you want to experiment with LinkedIn ads, we always encourage it. Always encourage experimenting with new advertising platforms to see if it will resonate with your audience and your business and produce a positive ROI.  Whenever we've tested LinkedIn ads, we generally got more mileage and better returns across the established players. This is very isolated to Australia too. The two big players I'm referencing are Google and Facebook. It doesn't mean LinkedIn ads cannot be effective. We haven't seen it effective in our time. And we don't pretend to have the answer for every advertising network in the world because we don't. No one does.  But if it makes sense for your audience (particularly if you are in a B2B space) it's worth testing to see if you can achieve your objectives through it versus other mediums. But with that said, I think there isn't too much of a debate with this one. Usually, we end up saying it's both, but this one was pretty one-sided.  We prefer Google ads because of the higher ROI for clients. As opposed to LinkedIn and its high cost per click. And that the actual database, the LinkedIn network for the number of people in there is very small.  And you could say, well, I only need to work with 12 clients a year or whatever then, okay, maybe that's okay with you. But most businesses need to have thousands of impressions to start building an engagement, and so forth. And if you have such a small database to work with, it can be difficult. It can be really difficult to produce results. Anyway, that's our position on Google ads versus LinkedIn ads. Do you disagree with us? If so, I'd love to know. If you have a LinkedIn ad campaign that's crushing it, please tell us. Please fill us in, because we'd love to talk to you. And we'd love to see, not copy, of course not, but we'd love to know how you've approached it and the results you've gotten.  But with that said and done, I think that's a wrap for another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show. Any final comments, Joseph? Joseph Chesterton:There is one thought that comes to mind, where LinkedIn may be better. James Banks:What's that? Joseph Chesterton:I don't know why I'm giving this to you. When it comes to hiring, you could potentially find people on LinkedIn and use LinkedIn ads. James Banks:Yeah, definitely. And I think that's probably a little bit, slightly of a different product. That's like the recruitment ads platform, which is not business to business, CPC ad platform that we're talking about.  That's a great example of where it could be very effective. Haven't used that myself, but I know many people that have, and had some pretty good results. But yeah, I think LinkedIn is fantastic and still has a good reach for native content. Non-paid content going straight to your profile tends to tank with companies but tends to go very well in the individual profile. That's what we've seen, at least.  So, LinkedIn, great platform. Maybe not the best for an advertiser. However, we could be wrong. If we are wrong please tell us. We'd love to know. But that's it. I think we don't have anything else to add to this.  So thank you for tuning into the Web3 Marketing Debate Show.  And we'll talk to you again, real soon. Discover more at https://web3.com.au/google-vs-linkedin-ads/

SEO and social media are two strategies known for attracting new customers to your brand. But there is an ongoing debate outside of Web3 about which strategy should take up the majority of your time and effort. Both strategies work for different businesses and are extremely useful at generating a high return of investment (ROI). In order to fully scope this question, this article will explore the pros and cons of SEO marketing and social media marketing, what makes them unique and which is better for your business.   Search Engine Optimisation Search engine optimisation entails optimising content for search engines to rank your website highly. Ranking high in search for certain keywords brings new and existing customers back onto your website and keeps your brand front of mind of your customer when online.  Benefits of SEO Most people look for businesses on search engines and predominantly turn to google. Think about your own habits. When you want to look for something in particular, do you go to your social accounts or head straight to search? It’s an inbound marketing strategy, meaning they come to you. SEO targets quality, organic traffic.  Organic traffic means you don't need to pay a cent. The only investment you will be making is to create valuable and persuasive content for your website that the algorithm will favour and that will keep your customers on your page.  SEO is a staple marketing strategy as it improves your online presence and moves you ahead of your competition within your industry. If fewer people are on your competitor's site, that means more people are going to be buying your products and services. The fundamental difference for why people generally opt for one over the other is audience and intent. With SEO, you have the ability to know what your users are thinking, based on their search queries. These people are normally in a comparative mindset or are ready to buy.   Think about it… Will you remember a post from yesterday as you were scrolling through your newsfeed or will you recall the brand that showed up in search after you looked for help on a specific topic? SEO means you can attract leads that are searching for something that you offer.  Difficulties of SEO Content for SEO is designed to be research-based, as people are intentionally looking for a specific thing. These can include long-form texts, blogs, how-tos and other articles. SEO content is designed for topics that don’t necessarily trend and that will be common search queries in the long run. As the majority of SEO is organic, that means a large portion of your marketing efforts will be put into churning out keyword-rich content. After a while, you might begin to dream in keywords, as we do. SEO is known to take some time being indexing and can be rather uncertain. Ranking well for specific search queries can take days to come into action, this leads to sometimes taking years for the algorithm to regard websites as authoritative and credible sources. This differs completely from social media, which can go viral in minutes.     Social Media Marketing The term social media marketing refers to social networks connecting with audiences and building your brand. It is a way for brands to engage with existing customers and reach new leads by showcasing their company's culture, values and skills. Social Media’s limitations  Social media can be difficult to measure. Although platforms have put in place some on-page analytics, this does not go into as much depth as platforms that analyse your website traffic. Because it is difficult to measure, this means it's hard to know which customers are coming from social media. These time-consuming networks need a lot of engagement while only seeing a small portion of ROI (return of investment). People on social media also might be less likely to act as they were just scrolling through before they found out about you. Benefits of social media marketing for business A key aspect of deciding which strategy you should put your efforts into is understanding your target audience. If you are wanting to target a younger demographic, it’s quite likely they’re predominantly hanging out on social media. They often use the social media account to actually make judgments of brands before making a purchase decision. These people have less intent to purchase but are more likely to share, follow and engage with your brand.  One huge benefit of social media is engagement. Once followers mention your handle, tags your brand, or even likes your page, their connections will then start to see you. Easily infiltrating your target market will get you discovered easily by more people.  The type of content differs tremendously based on what platform. Social media is used to circulate engaging, visual and emotionally charged content, specifically with trending topics. These trending topics have the ability to go viral within seconds. If you jump on certain bandwagons such as Reels, you can guarantee your brand will be in front of fresh eyes in no time.    Is SEO a part of Social media marketing This debate isn’t just black and white, Social media and SEO actually help each other. Your social media can have an indirect, positive effect on your SEO and ranking. Most of the top positions in Google search have a strong presence on social media as well. This might be a good reason to invest in both strategies.  Search engine optimisation doesn’t just occur on-site. Keyword research can also be useful for your social media marketing strategy. Including specific keywords in your social accounts including your bio, name, hashtags and even location will help to direct your account when people engage in similar content on these platforms. Summary There is no reason to not be investing in both social media and Search engine marketing. If budget is of concern, there are many different routes to go to obtain organic traffic without spending a cent of advertising. Overall, it’s important to have a brand presence where your target market is hanging out online. It is the best way of increasing your conversion rates, generating leads and turning those leads into loyal customers.    Transcript James Banks:Hello, everyone. And welcome to another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show. I'm your host, James Banks. Joseph Chesterton:And I'm your host, Joseph Chesterton. James Banks:And today we'll be firing up an all-time classic marketing debate, SEO versus social media marketing, which one is better? So on this side of the debate, I'll be taking the social media side of the ring. Joseph Chesterton:And of course, I'll be doing the SEO side. James Banks:Alrighty. Without further ado, let's kick things off. So Joseph, why would you say, or why is SEO better than social media marketing for small to medium businesses? Why would you say SEO is better? Joseph Chesterton:All right. Need to ask you a question, when people want to find something, where do they go? James Banks:Well, I guess they could be searching on Google or they could be searching on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world after Google. They could be searching anywhere. Joseph Chesterton:Whose side are you on again? James Banks:I'm on the social media marketing side. But when you're saying SEO, you're referring to search engine optimization to help sites rank better in Google search. That's the angle you're coming from, right? Joseph Chesterton:Yes. James Banks:Okay. Continue on. Joseph Chesterton:Okay. So people go to Google to find what they're after. People go to Facebook to chew and post pictures of their cats. All right. Most popular website in the world, Google, second, YouTube, a handful of Chinese websites, and then the seventh spot is Facebook.  So with SEO, obviously you optimise your website, and then that increases your ranking. And then you get to number one where you can start printing money, because basically when you're at the top, people find you.  About 30% of all clicks on Google is the first position in Google. So when you are there, people will find you. And it's just a massive snowball that builds and builds and builds. James Banks:Yeah, but that's not a guarantee, Joseph. I mean, we've come across many sites, and I've worked with many site owners that have got pages and posts on their website that ranked number one, but there's no clear and immediate ROI from those number one rankings.  Whereas opposed to say, if you have a large active and engaged following on social media that's relevant to the products and services and solutions that you're providing, you have a great quality target audience following a profile on your social media, you could argue to say that that's also will help results in generating more sales and income, and as you said, printing money. It can happen on both sides of the fence. Social media requires not only brand presence optimization, but knowing what your audience wants, providing to them across more than, and this is the key I think, more than one single platform.  If you're putting all the eggs in one basket through SEO and Google, all it takes is Google to change the way that they're thinking and no longer like you anymore. And then you lose all of those results.  Whereas if you have a great social media presence across multiple relevant channels, if one of the channels decides to change its game, at least you have other channels to back up upon, which ultimately means it's a more defensible strategy than just comparing it to SEO. Whatever you have to say to that. Joseph Chesterton:I guess social media marketing requires ongoing maintenance and a commitment to keep social marketing happening. Whereas when you optimise for SEO and you're ranking highly on SEO, then it's just a small, or you don't need to actually maintain that position.  Then the ROI is better, because when customers are wanting to buy a product, they either go on social media posts pictures of their cats, or they go and search for the product that they're wanting to buy instead of actually stumbling upon it on social media that's paid. James Banks:Well, I think I threw you a bone there. So I would argue that it requires less maintenance. It's not like you cannot do any maintenance, but it requires less maintenance when you're dealing with an industry that has low search competition, or there are not many professional SEO marketers trying to optimise the same batch of high-value keywords.  But in a competitive industry where there are active SEO campaigns in place, you have to be active constantly and evolving and monitoring the changes to the market, i.e. doing it on a recurring basis, just as a good social media marketing strategy. So I would say that the commitment is similar. It's not a set and forget solution here, it requires ongoing effort to be able to achieve long-term success on either side of the fence. Joseph Chesterton:Well, when you create content with social media, you post something. It's out there and then it's gone. With SEO, you do the right foundations and the right things, and it lasts years, weeks, months, years, depending on how well you've done it, and how much of a niche your product or service is.  So what's better for smaller businesses?  When smaller businesses don't have huge budgets to continually be spending on more and more advertising, then potentially they can see a massive ROI without any ongoing spend. James Banks:Yeah, I think that's not a bad comment to make at all. But where's the attention online today? It's not like we're in 2005 anymore where the attention online was only on the search engines.  The attention of people is across social media and also search to be fair. But any business, regardless of what size can and should have a presence on social media. Yes, you could argue there are a few French cases where 100% of the audience is absolutely not online. But honestly, when businesses think like that, you only have to push them a little bit further to actually ask who their actual audience is and what they're doing.  Everyone is searching online. Everyone is online. There's no questions about it. But I think ultimately, probably what our listeners want to hear is, when we talk about results, what's going to produce the best results, short long-term and medium-term.  Why would you say SEO is a better long-term strategy or has better results in social media marketing, Joe? Or if you think it doesn't, then that's fine. Joseph Chesterton:Both are going to have a cost associated with it. I think with SEO, there's more chance that when you are at the top, the time that you stay at the top is far greater than with social media where you post something, next minute, it's gone, and then you have to post some other thing.  So there is an initial cost to get the SEO potentially unless you're doing it yourself. If you get the SEO or your product to number one, then the SEO cost is almost infinite. Take for example Web3's website, our web design Brisbane page we built that eight years ago... James Banks:Well, we were optimising for the keyword phrase when we first started the business eight years ago. Yeah, that's right. Joseph Chesterton:And for the first, what, three months we were doing SEO on that pretty consistently, which got us to number one in the search results. It pretty much stayed there. Yes, of course, we've adjusted our strategy and changed the pages and things, which has moved the position around. But if you search for web design, we'll be at or near the top. James Banks:Yeah, absolutely. And I think how we were able to achieve that was really, really doing extremely well without on-page optimization, which is all the technicalities, the code, the quality, the content, all the stuff that makes a great website great, nailing that.  We've done a little bit of content marketing like blog writing. Nothing really, I would say a dedicated content marketing strategy. We're changing that now, hence why you're listening to this podcast.  But the reality is, I think I will say our industry has become much more competitive. And for us to stand out, we need to be able to be firing on all cylinders, such as content marketing. So I think to bring this one home, honestly, we don't see it as a debate here at Web3, SEO versus social media marketing. They are actually similar to our content marketing versus SEO debate. We actually believe they're two in the same things.  Joseph, why would you say that SEO and social media marketing work together?  Joseph Chesterton:They are the same thing, but they are a different thing. In my opinion, it's the context of where they are or what you're trying to achieve. So with SEO, it's website based, whereas, with social media, it's obviously Facebook, Instagram, Linked In, whatever, Twitter, whichever platform you're trying to target.  So you go to where your customers are. And when your customers are on Facebook, then that makes sense. And if it is a case where customers are searching for your product, then they'll probably go to Google. So you need both. James Banks:Yeah. And the reason why you need to have both and the point I'm trying to make is social, although minor, is still a ranking signal. That is if you want to rank well in Google, having a social media presence is one of the signals, albeit minor, that Google looks at to figure out how authoritative and real a business is.  So neglecting a social media presence and wanting to rank well on SEO is almost like an idiot in them. And you can't, you need to be able to be playing both fields. From a social media point of view where SEO can help amplify social media, you can use traditional SEO techniques, such as keyword research, to understand the very basics.  What are the questions my audience is searching for and looking for answers that I could then help educate and answer through my social media content or social media marketing efforts? And not just assuming what those questions are, actually having quantifiable real data to back up the facts, that we know this is how many people per month are searching for this exact question that we can answer. For example, what is better to build a website, Wix versus WordPress? That's a classic one. And there are many variations.  So this is how the two actually work very well together. And combined strategies is where we see not only our business but businesses we work with achieve the greatest results. So that said, Joe, is there any other final closing comments? Joseph Chesterton:Yeah. What are your goals and objectives? I'd say they need to be both. James Banks:Yeah, exactly. It's not 2005. Ladies and gentlemen, newsflash, it has to be playing in both fields. If you need help with your SEO and social media marketing effort, even if you'd like us to do a little bit of a review or rundown, pointing out the gaps, we can show you where you're missing out on opportunities that you could be capitalising on for your business.  Feel free to drop us a line, web3.com.au. And with that said, we’ll conclude today's episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show. Tune in next time, where we'll be talking a heck of a lot more social media. So without further ado, thank you very much for listening.  We'll talk to you again real soon. Discover more at: www.web3.com.au

Are you tossing up between Wix and WordPress for building your website? Whether you want a platform that’s easy to use, has exceptional support or has an inbuilt SEO tool, we’ll cover which is best for you for every aspect of your business and website journey. Wix is a website builder. WordPress is a content management system. Although Wix and WordPress are different, they have a lot of similarities. It can be confusing to know which one to choose and, more importantly, why? In a head-to-head comparison, we discuss the pros and cons of Wix vs. WordPress and the factors contributing to their successes. These include: Design & Ease of use Support Plugins, Add ons and Extras SEO Blogging Ecommerce Cost & Hosting Design & Ease of use Do you want to create a website that looks effortlessly professional?  Wix Wix is known to be the best platform for small businesses or people who are just starting. You don’t need any previous knowledge of HTML, plugins, or any of the daunting technical terms. This beginner-friendly software has features that can turn any idea into a professional and creative-looking website. They offer over 500 free designer-made templates to effortlessly create a professional site. These are broken into categories of business to help you even more.  These categories are, for example, blogs, photography, portfolio, restaurants, etc. Their features include a simple drag and drop interface for flexibility of inclusions like buttons, tabs, pictures, paragraphs, and much more. It is so easy to use that you have the freedom to design whatever you want!  A new feature they’ve released is Wix ADI. It provides simple questions to answer that instantly generate a custom-made design for your business. Just like that! WordPress WordPress has a block editor allowing you to easily edit your pages by adding different blocks for images, text, background, and other features. You have access to thousands of different themes and templates to launch your website and customise as you go. WordPress looks to be the more professional software, but also the more daunting. However, this is not the case. You can preview your live website with one click, which lets you view what your customers will see. As well as Wix, they do offer drag and drop usability, although it's not as user-friendly. However, this hasn't impacted its ease of use in other aspects.  Despite popular belief, the ability to code in WordPress is not essential. WordPress, however, is incorporating features of HTML5 into the software, although these updates will not affect the ease of use.     Support Wix Wix provides constant customer support. Their help centre includes features including frequently asked questions, articles, how-tos, free video tutorials, over-the-phone support in a variety of languages, and email.  WordPress WordPress offers a variety of resources to help you and your business get the most out of WordPress. These include: Community-based support forums FAQ Troubleshooting  However, the support for WordPress is significantly lower than what Wix provides, which proves why Wix is more superior, particularly for beginners. Plugins and extras What exactly are plugins and extensions? Plugins, or apps, are third-party extras you can use on your websites to add more features. These are particularly important for your customers and are a crucial part of building your website.  Wix With over 250 web apps, Wix allows you to build your website to integrate professional tools to sell your products and services online.  Some of their apps include: Contact forms Image gallery Social media buttons Email marketing  Comments  Much more! WordPress WordPress offers tens of thousands of free plugins from their directory with even more in their premium plans. I will spare you the endless list. But, it’s safe to say that if there is a feature you want to install, WordPress can make that happen.  Overall, Wix is expanding its inventory of apps. Until then, it is hard to go past WordPress’s endless plugin possibilities. SEO Why is SEO important for choosing a website development software? Search engine optimisation is essential for building an online presence for your business, searchability, and visibility. It helps to get clicks and organic traffic to your website. As well as increasing traffic, SEO also improves user experience through its optimisation layout and design.  WordPress How does SEO work on WordPress, and how to enable it?  WordPress has access to tonnes of plugins that help to increase your SEO efforts. There are two main competitors for WordPress’s top SEO plugin, Yoast SEO and All in One SEO (AIOSEO). WordPress has introduced Categories and Tags that organise your content in said categories, like a table of contents. It helps to manage your content by topic. Users can find what they need, and search engines understand the structure of your website.  Wix Over the last couple of years, Wix has begun to catch up to WordPress for their SEO. Some free tools can boost your SEO on Wix, helping to drive organic traffic to your site. They are more of the underdog, as their biggest competition, WordPress, is known for SEO.  Wix SEO Wiz Features include: SEO analytics to improve your Google search ranking Visitor analytics for traffic insights Email marketing templates for your client base And a personalised SEO plan/checklist   Blogging WordPressWordPress has a long-held reputation, as it initially started as a blogging platform. This website builder now allows all the blogging features you would need.  These features include:  the ability to add tags,  categories and RSS,  plugins for comments,  related posts and poles.  In other words, the sky is the limit when it comes to blogging on WordPress. If you want to incorporate blogging into your business, we’d say WordPress is more superior to Wix. Wix As we mentioned about the drag and drop capabilities, Wix can easily add blog sections to your site. These contain all the basics you’d need, with few variations for formatting options.  If you are focussing on blogging for your business, you’re in luck. You can monetize your free Wix blog for your business. Wix allows different ways to generate income from your blog to help your business.  The only downside to Wix blogging is, unfortunately, the comments section. Wix is slower to use and may impact the usability of your customers. However, you can add apps for commenting such as Facebook to make up for this disadvantage.  Ecommerce Using these platforms to build your site is the easiest way to get started, see your ROI increase, and build up your brand.  WordPress So we know that WordPress was originally a blogging service, but can WordPress be used for eCommerce? WordPress is an eCommerce machine!  A big seller for WordPress is its WooCommerce plugin, which is the most used eCommerce platform in the world globally. It makes it super easy to create and maintain an online store as well as digital subscriptions. It offers flexibility and freedom to sell everything your business can create.  Wix Wix has multiple payment methods, including credit cards, Paypal, Square, offline payment, and many more, all commission-free. They also offer their Wix Store dashboard to see the transactions as they occur.   One of the largest standouts for Wix is the ability to use their Tax Calculator, Avalar. It makes calculating your region's tax rates as simple as clicking a button because that's all it takes. These are prepared based on your business's location for up-to-date calculations.  Cost / hosting WordPress Hosting and Cost Investing in WordPress means you will have to source your hosting provider, which does mean costs can add up. There are many fast and secure WordPress hosting in Australia. These agencies will do it for you, letting you relax knowing your website is being taken care of.  What are the best WordPress hosting in Australia?  There are many hosting providers across Australia that help you connect your business to your user base. At Web3, we use WP Engine to host our Client's WordPress Sites. Our plans are hosted in Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne for network connectivity throughout Australia.  We ensure that your website hosting is as fast and secure as possible, as we know the importance of providing a reputable brand first hand. Hosting your website close to your customer is essential for the best access. If you have any more website hosting questions, we have the answers.   Other WordPress hosting providers in Australia: GoDaddy Hostinger BlueHost Crazy Domains SiteGround How much does it cost to host on WordPress? The price of hosting providers ranges widely. You can expect to pay between $5-30 a month. It depends on your budget and the needs of your business and its website.  Wix Hosting and Cost Wix provides free in-house hosting that delivers globally. It ensures everything is provided for you, completely stress-free. It's perfect for people who have a smaller budget and want to kick-start their business straight away.  Wix offers free and premium plans, ranging from $13 to 50 per month for all your business and eCommerce needs. Each of these plans provides free hosting, consistent reliability, and security. You will have one less thing to worry about.  However, the free hosting plan may be costing your business in the long run. Websites built by amateur users may not be getting found, be lacking in functionality, and will overall be costing your business. It is something to be cautious of for using Wix in the long-term.   Summary At Web3, we are a WordPress development agency and have a conscious bias to the software we use. Why? Because we know that it works best for us and has been successful for our clients over the eight years of hosting for them. Overall, there are clear pros and cons for both Wix and WordPress. These depend on what your business needs are.  Overall, we recommend Wix for beginners to quickly kick start your business with little add ons. However, for upscaling, WordPress is the website software for you.  By the way, we are offering our Web3 WordPress Website Hosting Services starting at $49 per month to help get one less thing off your shoulders and feel confident your website is safe, fast, and secure 24/7.  Listen In James and Joseph go head to head in the debate of Wix Vs. WordPress. This hilarious episode will unveil the secrets no blog will tell you. Stay tuned to find out what software is better for your business and how to get started earning money in less than 15 minutes. Transcript James Banks:Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show. I'm your co-host, James Banks. Joseph Chesterton:And I'm your co-host, Joseph Chesterton. James Banks:And today I cannot wait for this debate, WordPress versus Wix. Which one's better? For this one, I'll be defending Wix. Joseph Chesterton:And I'll be destroying Wix. James Banks:We'll see about that. Well, without further ado, let's start the debate. So Joseph, why would you say WordPress is better than Wix for small and medium business? Joseph Chesterton:Well, I say it every time, it's very similar to our debate on Squarespace versus WordPress. WordPress, it's the most used content management system in the world. About one-third of websites are powered by WordPress, which means people are familiar with it, and they know the platform.  There is a quarter of the number of people employed by Automattic, the company that makes WordPress than Wix. The beauty of WordPress is it's open-source, meaning that millions of people contribute to make it the better platform to build your website on. With the power of WordPress, it's infinitely scalable, which means that whether you have a one-man business or you have a medium or large enterprise, your website will work very well on WordPress. It caters to most use cases. You can build things like static websites, e-commerce websites, forums, and the list goes on. With Wix, however, it's very, "This is what you can do. You can customise it a fair bit, but you can't go outside the bounds of what we say you can and can't do."  I think a big thing is if you're a small or medium business and you have an online store, which I would say most people now do because of COVID, you shouldn't have to pay extra just to sell on your website. It should be included as part of the free offering that you can get with WordPress.  I know you're going to come back and say it is included, but the thing is not everyone wants to sell products on their website, which is why plugins were created, so that they can install any sort of functionality, and get the website that they exactly need without having to have a bloated mess that Wix provides out the box. With WordPress, let's say you use WooCommerce, which is the number one e-commerce platform on WordPress and built by the people that make WordPress, it's free.  You don't have to pay any extra.  Yeah, sure, you have to host, but if you were to host a WordPress website and host a Wix website, I'm sure the cost would be relatively the same. Then if you want to host a Wix eCommerce website, then you have to pay extra.  On top of that, when you do become a larger business, you don't have to pay extra just because you've hit the storage capacity or... I have to be really careful because I know you're going to... You'll bite me back. What's the right way to say this? You don't reach the limitations of Wix. You can scale infinitely with WordPress.  Although Wix has improved a lot, it was notorious for being atrocious when it comes to code, and because I'm a developer, I know what makes a good website. When you have a website that's thrown together with a bajillion scripts that are loaded whether you use them or not, then that's where Wix greatly falls down.  Whereas with WordPress, a Web3 website built on WordPress, you have something built dedicated to your website, to your business's needs, without any bloat and it can be the best website for your business and return the greatest ROI than what you could with a hack job Wix website. I've pretty much summarised it, but if you want to throw in anything else… James Banks:Oh, I'd love to throw my hat in the ring, Joseph. You mentioned the phrase "bloated mess" in your spiel there. Isn't every single WordPress website ever created a bloated mess in comparison to- Joseph Chesterton:That's why I said that's why you should have a Web3 WordPress website because we don't make bloated websites. James Banks:Well, we'll discuss that in the conclusion. Where do I start? Open-source. Yay. Open source, that’s great. Well actually, not really. Not if you don't know what you're doing, if you're not technical, not a developer. Not if you run a web agency or are a small business and you just want a site that works. Open source means that you have a big massive red target painted on your back for hackers to come along, compromise your site and generally make your life misery and hell.  On top of it, go on the comments of bloated and messy code, my God, the number of sites, well, WordPress sites on the internet that look more confused than a bowl of alphabet soup and spaghetti with cheese running through it, is pretty much almost every example.  There's so many of them that are terrible. It's the reason why WordPress can have a negative rap, is that there's a lot of bad examples out there of sites that have been poorly coded, poorly secured, get compromised, get destroyed, get hacked, get sensitive data stolen, get password credit cards leaked, and the list goes on and on and on. When you have a closed source platform such as Wix, where hosting and maintenance and security, platform integrity, coding and updates are taken care of for you. It allows you to just kick back, relax and get on with running your business, not running around in circles, trying to fix your website or throw in a thousand plugins to fix a problem.  You can do this only to realise you're making the problem worse, having one of your plugins conflicting with the other, destroying your entire website. You never have to deal with that with a closed source platform such as Wix. But I guess with that said, if we look at it from an SEO point of view, and SEO is a core component of what both of these platforms sell themselves as, why would you say is WordPress better than Wix at SEO? Joseph Chesterton:I know you tried to stab at the fact that open source is open source, but because it is open-source, there are literally thousands of people improving the code.  WordPress out of the box is good with SEO. It follows a number of best practices. Yes, there are specific things that can be enhanced with a WordPress plugin, such as the most popular one, Yoast SEO. But the beauty of it is that because WordPress is so flexible, you're able to use whichever plugins you need.  They are most likely built by thousands of other people that have continuously improved it until it can't be improved anymore. Yoast SEO has 260 people that are actively working on that single plugin, and there are more than five million installs of that plugin. It's no small beast, it's a large operation that allows you to stay at the forefront of SEO and make sure it changes... You’re rolling your eyes at me. A lot of the thinking is done for you.  James Banks:No, it's not. You have to figure out which SEO plugin to put in, and then you have to figure out how to optimise the damn thing. Then on top of that, you've got to actually know if the right theme you've just selected is actually compliant from a search point of view and doesn't have show-stopping issues and bugs that could affect your site and the search performance. You don't have to deal with that with Wix. It's all out of the box.  You just need to set your meta titles, descriptions and keyword to optimise your site, and off you go. You're off to the races, although it's a lot more complicated than that, you don't have to deal with any of the runarounds.   It's all there, and you can know that through having a centralised source managed by a centralised source of developers, that all the themes and templates and inside Wix have been created with SEO compliance in mind. You don't have to worry about trying to make a non-compliant website compliant, because it's already compliant, to begin with. Joseph Chesterton:What happens if you want to make a specific change, like putting schema into your website and Wix doesn't support it? They probably do support schema, but let's say there's a specific meta tag that you want to put in that's specific to your use case. What do you do? James Banks:Well, I think if that is how you're approaching your site, then it sounds like you're pretty serious about, or you probably would have a dedicated search marketing agency helping you or a dedicated SEO person on your team doing this for you.  If you're a business that had that sort of capacity, you probably wouldn't be like a small micro-ish business. You'd probably be a little bit larger in scale and you probably would need a more serious and robust platform perhaps. Not to say that Wix isn't a serious and robust platform, but different strokes for different folks, right?  Joseph Chesterton:Yeah, there's a lot to SEO and I don't know whether you could say one is better than the other, because there is a whole lot of things that are external to just the platform, but something that is part of the platform is e-commerce and being able to sell online, so why is Wix the better e-commerce platform? James Banks:Well, it's a combination of all of the above. If you're going to be selling online, you going to want to make sure your site's damn secure and all of your customer records, details, are all secure, and you get that, because the platform's closed, it's taken care of. WordPress, again, if you do not know what you're doing, you're not properly maintaining and taking care of your site, and you're selling online, then you have then an even bigger target on your back, as hackers will want to go after you because of the chance of potentially being able to pick up sensitive information that they could use to exploit for monetary purposes.  It's the safer and secure alternative, and if you're going to be building a business on e-commerce, then you want to make sure that your site is as safe and secure as possible because your website is your business. Why would you say WordPress is better than Wix at e-commerce, Joe? Joseph Chesterton:I think a big one is scalability. When you are building a business, you're wanting to scale the business. Being able to choose a platform that allows you to scale a lot bigger than just selling a couple of widgets online.  I was trying to see if there are any big businesses on Wix that are e-commerce, and all I could see was the Hyatt company, but then when I clicked on it and inspected it, I think they've moved platforms.  Whereas with WooCommerce, there's lots of big companies, people like the All Blacks, Singer sewing machines, Weber barbecues and many, many more. There are tens of thousands of small businesses that rely on WooCommerce and WordPress. If you want to see the showcase, then all you need to do is Google WooCommerce Showcase and you'll be able to see there are hundreds of sites listed there that all use WordPress and WooCommerce to sell online. The biggest thing is scalability, and they both can handle e-commerce just fine. I think when it comes to customising it, you are confined to what Wix can do, whereas with WordPress, because it's open source, again, you can do whatever your mind can create. James Banks:Well, at the end of the day, I think it really depends on where you are at with your business journey. If you're just getting started or you're a micro-business or you've just started but you've got no online presence, then I think Wix is a fine solution. It's easy and simple.  You don't need to bring in a developer. You don't need to bring a web agency in for you to be able to, if you're willing to spend the time, that is, put together a simple website that simply displays your website, or enables your business to have an online presence. However, if you're looking to really scale up and go to the next step, professionalise your online presence, increase market share reach, run sophisticated campaigns, you need advanced feature sets. Even things that, as you mentioned with things and companies that you would consider them to be enterprise level companies, are relying on WordPress and WordPress e-commerce to deliver them.  If you're looking for that level of scale, then typically your best use of time as a business person or a marketer wouldn't be trying to cobble together your own website. It makes way more sense from a cost efficiency and results point of view to outsource it to a professional web agency that knows what they're doing and has the case studies and track record to back it up. In that case, and this is why, again, we specialise in the WordPress platform, it's a Swiss Army knife. We can do almost anything with it. All the issues that are commonly plagued with WordPress, such as security vulnerabilities, maintenance issues, breaches, hacks and performance.  All of that stuff can be fixed and removed. In fact, it doesn't even become a problem as long as the company that is building your site on WordPress knows what they're doing and has a track record of producing high performance, secure websites, which is exactly what we do here at Web3. You can check out our site, web3.com.au/casestudies to see where we have deployed WordPress sites for all types of businesses, small, large multinational, governments and beyond. At the end of the day, it boils down to where you're at with your business journey. If you are interested in upgrading your website and you are wanting to take it to the next level, then feel free to reach out to us, web3.com.au to find out more, but other than that, really not much else I have to say on this one. Anything else you want to add, Joe? Joseph Chesterton:Just that it's case dash studies if you want to get to our case studies page. James Banks:Yes. Case dash studies, that's right, thank you. Joseph Chesterton:Put in a redirect so that whether you go to one or the other, it'll still take you down. James Banks:There you go, some homework. Alright everyone, that's a wrap on another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show.  Hope you enjoyed that one and we'll be back at you real soon for another one on SEO versus social media marketing. We'll talk to you again real soon. 

  LinkedIn and Facebook are two of the most popular social networking platforms globally. If this topic doesn’t scream ‘important’, then I don’t know what will.    Throughout this debate, we uncover several factors that will influence your decision when deciding between Facebook and LinkedIn for advertising. These factors to consider include: Who is your target audience? How do they behave online? The different ways to target your audience Your previous business experiences Your budget    Both networks promote different functionalities and reach different audiences. Follow along to learn more about LinkedIn and Facebook advertising and which network you should use for your advertising strategy. These factors will help to decipher your best path to advertise your business directly to your audience, LinkedIn or Facebook. Let’s make this decision as easy as a step-by-step checklist for you.  LinkedIn Advertising  Having an understanding of your audience can help to inform your advertising strategy. LinkedIn has a specific target audience of professionals and people in the workforce. Do you want to target business owners, B2B markets, industry leaders, or people who work in a specific industry or enterprise? Then LinkedIn might be the perfect advertising strategy for you.    Let’s see your options...   Ways to target your audience   Advertising on LinkedIn is not that highly targeted. However, it specifically targets the workplace and other professional information. You can refine your users based on: Job title Current employer Industry Company size LinkedIn groups they’re apart of Education history Demographics Budget LinkedIn charges marginally more for CPC (cost per click) for each advertisement, averaging approximately five dollars per click. It may be more expensive than Facebook, but ultimately, it depends on who to target and what will receive better traction. It is not always about quantity or the number of leads, but rather the quality. Targeting a refined audience will help to translate leads with a higher conversion rate, potentially saving you money in the long run.   LinkedIn Ad formats LinkedIn offers a range of display options for advertising. Although LinkedIn is a more professional network, these formats have not expanded past the traditional online displays. These ad types include:  Links Images Video PDF and carousel images Mail    Facebook Advertising Facebook has over 2.8 billion active users as of the end of 2020. It doesn’t necessarily mean it is the superior option, but the mass audience certainly helps. If you are an e-commerce business seeking to sell your product to specific consumers, Facebook is your way to go.   Ways to target your audience   Advertising on Facebook allows you to target your audience based on more factors. These include: Online behaviour Demographics Geographic location Education and employment history Industry Buying history General interest  Liked pages Their friends and peers Budget Facebook is a more affordable option in terms of cost-per-click. On average, Facebook receives approximately one dollar per click. It equals out to be quite worthwhile, considering the extent of advertising options Facebook offers. However, even though a lead from an email sign-up may in the future translate to a sale. Initially, you may be spending that money on clicks that are not converting because of the more broad reach.    Facebook Ad formats Facebook has recently extended their ad display options to include more engaging, immersive, and fullscreen experiences that entice the audience. These ad types allow customers to subscribe directly through Facebook with ease. These include: Link, image, video Slideshow Playables Instant Experience  Collection  Stories   Summary  Both social network platforms allow you to deliver tailored advertisements to your customers to increase your conversion rate. In general, Facebook is superior for B2C marketing, while LinkedIn is best for B2B. There are some exceptions to this however this is the first step. LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social networking platforms have some downsides to advertising. One potential issue is that you cannot create personalised post-click landing pages to follow.  Transcript   James Banks: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate show. I'm your cohost, James Banks.   Joseph Chesterton: And I am your cohost, Joseph Chesterton.   James Banks: Today, we'll be debating LinkedIn ads versus Facebook ads. Which one is better? So I'll be taking the LinkedIn ads side of the debate.   Joseph Chesterton: And I'm on the other side with Facebook ads.   James Banks: So without further ado, let's start the debate.   So Joseph, why would you say Facebook ads are better than LinkedIn ads when it comes to producing results for businesses?   Joseph Chesterton: Well, at the end of the day, it all comes down to numbers, and you can't beat the two biggest social network platforms in the world.    Facebook has 2 billion users. Instagram has 1 billion users. LinkedIn, something like 700 million, maybe 800 million users.    When you combine Facebook and Instagram, let's say they're all unique, which I'm assuming most of them would double up, that's 3 billion versus 800 million, let's say. That's a lot of people to market to that you miss out on with LinkedIn.   And also, it comes down to context. Facebook has a broad range of people. LinkedIn, typically, is more suited towards businesses and professional connections where the form of marketing is slightly different.    But the reason Facebook is better than LinkedIn is to do with business-to-business marketing. For example, LinkedIn marketing has to start with a person. And where are those people?    These people are on Facebook.    Nine times out of 10, they'll be on Facebook or Instagram over LinkedIn.   And when you compare the time spent on each platform, Facebook and Instagram are light years ahead of LinkedIn. I believe the number of active users on Instagram is double LinkedIn. Facebook is almost quadruple. I haven't said too much about the best results, but when you look purely at numbers and the reach, then Facebook ads are far greater than LinkedIn.    James Banks: But as we know, it's not about the quantity. It's all about the quality. So I think, specifically, for LinkedIn and LinkedIn ads, you would ideally be having some type of business-to-business product and/or service.    It's not really that consumer product friendly, although there's a couple of examples of businesses that have consumer products marketed successfully on LinkedIn, it's predominantly business-to-business as it is a business-to-business social media network.   That's not to say that it is the best place for business-to-business advertising. However, placing an ad on LinkedIn for a business-to-business product or service is going to have higher relevancy than Facebook. Imagine if you aren’t experienced, and letting the algorithm shout out to everyone (even your mother) on those Facebook ads. That is due to the specificity of the network and its site.    When we talk about business-to-business, it’s around lead generation and what is better for business-to-business lead generation. In your opinion, Joseph, why would you say Facebook ads are better than LinkedIn at business-to-business lead generation?   Joseph Chesterton: With Facebook ads, there are multiple platforms. It’s not just one website. You're able to target people on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and even have a gaming platform, Oculus. I'm yet to see Facebook ads on the Oculus, but it's only a matter of time.   James Banks: I think they announced it already because they're forcing people to log in to Facebook to use the Oculus, which, if using their Facebook account, they can plug it into the ad network. They're yet to do that but no doubt that will be the next step.   Joseph Chesterton: It's just like that episode of Silicon Valley, have you seen it, where they've got the video game and all these ads in the video game?   James Banks: Yep.   Joseph Chesterton: It's only a matter of time before Facebook does that if they take the Oculus platform any further than what it got first acquired.    Facebook has a billion users. There's not even a billion on LinkedIn. The benefit of having more than one platform is you can sell across multiple platforms, a larger user base. I think that's where the lead generation is best because you can target, specifically, the people that you need to target where they are hanging out.   And yes, there would be a lot of cross-pollination, is that the word, across LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. But the majority are on Facebook, Instagram, or both.   James Banks: LinkedIn’s advertising manager is similar to Facebook. They've sort of cloned it but made it look like their own. It’s easier to target by occupation title on LinkedIn. You can safely assume that the person's employment history and occupation title is more accurate than on Facebook.    A lot of people can sometimes just put fake ones into Facebook, with little implications.    But, really what we find is it's usually not so much the platform that's the problem when it comes to lead generation through advertising or having just advertising that work. Typically, the biggest problem is the structure of the ad copy, the targeting settings. Does it have a compelling hook? Is creative compelling? Is the call to action and the offer on the landing page optimised for conversion?    It's not necessarily the platform, that's the problem, it's all of these components. They're the ones that need to be improved for the results to be gained from.   LinkedIn generally targets placement and cost-per-click placement more than Facebook. It is because, again, going from the B2B phrases versus general phrases on Facebook, can upswing the cost-per-click.    But as we have seen time and time again, cost-per-click isn't that much of an important metric depending on your campaign. It's the returns netted from your advertising effort, and cost-per-click is just one small component of being able to create a positive ROI.   LinkedIn can, however, be somewhat limited with ad placement and ad creative compared to Facebook. Generally, what do we recommend for small to medium businesses that are wanting to advertise their service? So, noting that your product and service and audience context makes sense to, do it on LinkedIn.    We actually tend to prefer to swing to Google and Facebook over LinkedIn simply because of the size of the network, and generally speaking, the returns, what we've seen generally are better.   That's not to say that LinkedIn ads aren’t worth experimenting with or trialing or even doing with your business. Anything is worth trialing, and if it works, of course, you want to stick with it, but we tend to swing to Facebook and Google over LinkedIn for those reasons as you mentioned, Joseph. Things like audience reach, size, and even to a degree, targeting ad creative placements, selection, options, and different formats as well.   I kind of basically committed hara-kiri on my side there, but anyway, that's what my opinion is between the two. Joseph, there's any more you want to add to this episode?   Joseph Chesterton: I've got a couple of stats for you, James.    Just over 95% of all businesses in Australia are small businesses (one that employs less than 19 people). There are over 2 million small businesses in Australia, and there are about 25 million people in Australia.  About 80% of the population use or have a smartphone.  The current top free apps in the app store are: Instagram - 4th  Messenger - 6th  Facebook - 7th  WhatsApp 12th  LinkedIn is 85th position in the app store, next to Sticker Emojis and Plant Identifier.    It is safe to say that we know what platforms are the most successful or most popular among people.   James Banks: It is from a mobile device point of view, though. And the majority of LinkedIn usage happens on a desktop. It is why the LinkedIn app is pretty much dead and buried because no one uses it on mobile. I mean, it's a good point.    If you know that the mobile ad landscape is where you need to be for your advertising campaign, then LinkedIn can almost be crossed off that list.  People simply do not use it on mobile, it’s a desktop-driven social media network. On the flip side, you can create some interesting advertising opportunities. If you know that from a conversions performance point of view, your desktop advertising efforts dramatically outstrip mobile.   Again, these are just semantics, so you have to test it to know if it works, but some interesting insights nonetheless.   Joseph Chesterton: Essentially, Facebook is an app company. They make apps. And if their mobile apps were to be wiped out, then they'd be left with a website which... you can hardly use Instagram on desktop. It's a mobile app.   But that's all I've got to say, just a few zinger stats just to nail the coffin that Facebook is astronomically larger, and it seems like it's only getting bigger.   So that's it for me. That's a wrap, I'd say.   James Banks: Thanks again, everyone, for listening and tune in next time where we'll be debating WordPress versus Wix, which one's better?   That's another episode of the Marketing Debate show, and we'll talk to you again real soon.

Both Google and Facebook generate over 80% of their revenue from advertising, clearly because of their extensive reach. That’s why Facebook remarketing and Google Display Network comes in handy with generating personalised and targeted ads to users. These tools help to increase brand loyalty, awareness, and click-through-rate.  On one hand, Google is the world’s largest search engine. But on the other hand, Facebook is the largest social network. Both mediums are the perfect place to advertise, but for different reasons.  After marketing for a long time, at Web3 we know that it is never one size fits all.  Does this sound like something you want for your business? We discuss which advertising network is best for you and has the best ROI: Facebook remarketing or Google Display Network.  Within each network, we break down: How it works How it can help Their display features Other factors to consider   Google Display Network Google display ads help to promote and advertise your business on Google web properties, including YouTube, Blogger, Gmail, and more. Google Display Network embeds ads into websites that use Google advertising. GDN can often be confused with Google Search Ads, which display the ads as text-based search results above the organic results. Overall, GDN is an opportunity to build brand awareness and increase the click-through-rate of your site. When your website receives clicks, a portion of your money goes to the service. However, this percentage of money does not come without its pros. Google display ads offer an impressionable global reach. It also allows you to connect with users of over a million websites, such as news articles or blogs. Important Features Google display network offers a variety of display formats. They include text, image, flash image ads, in-video ads, mobile web, and mobile games. They are all designed to capture the attention of potential customers. You are bound to find your desired target marketing through at least one of the available formats. Although, these aspects need to have approved specifications based on their display ad requirements.  How does Google Display Network work? GDN offers a variety of targeting options to ensure your advertisement is targeting your desired and relevant audiences.  I bet you’ve noticed certain ads appearing on the webpages you visit in your spare time and wonder, how did they know I’m interested in that? Well, Google notes its users’ previous site visits and clicks, using cookies to link your interests and demographic categories, showing you these highly targeted sites.   Facebook Remarketing Facebook remarketing includes displaying target ads to audiences who have not progressed on your website or have abandoned their cart. Cart abandonment has recently increased. It can be immensely frustrating pinning down why your audience is clicking through and bouncing around your site or adding items to their cart but not progressing. Facebook tracking pixels will identify these users and deliver them with highly targeted ads to lure them back into where they left off. Cool, right? People spend more time on Google, yet Facebook receives higher pageviews. It is because it can target them more times. Frequency is key to most marketing strategies. Facebook remarketing is the perfect way to win back lost traffic, as it allows you to target specific demographics showing your ads up front and center. Facebook Newest features When it comes to ad creative, Facebook has gone above and beyond over the past couple of years. They introduced their ‘instant experience’ which showcases a product or service from the user’s screen. With the inclusion of a 360 video, mobile devices are now interactive and engaging. This new inclusion makes for a fun, sophisticated and professional experience for your customer to reconnect with your business.  How does Facebook Remarketing work? To target these customers, you must first create a custom audience. These could be existing customers or people who have interacted with you on other platforms. Then add and test your pixels manually or via tools like Shopify. It is a valuable platform that can target your lost leads, increase conversion rate, and cart abandonment issues.  Reasons for Consideration People are, on average, spending about one hour on Facebook, which is significantly lower compared to the combination of Google’s web properties. Facebook remarketing also has a lower click-through-rate, potentially being affected by the minor ad formats and options for display compared to Google Display. The placement of these ads includes newsfeed, sidebar and mobile.  Summary Facebook remarketing and Google Display Network can increase your ROI and rapidly grow your business in conjunction with organic advertising. Overall, it comes down to what your business needs and the behaviour of your audience.  Transcript James Banks:Hello everyone. And, welcome to another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate show. I'm your host, James Banks. Joseph Chesterton:And, I'm your cohost, Joseph Chesterton. James Banks:Today we will be debating remarketing. Specifically about the two gorillas in the room, Facebook versus Google Display Network remarketing, and which one is best? I'll be debating for Facebook remarketing. Joseph Chesterton:And obviously, I'll be talking about the Google Display Network. James Banks:So, Joseph for why is the Google Display Network better at remarketing, or better for remarketing compared to Facebook? Joseph Chesterton:Well, firstly what is Google Display Network and Facebook marketing? Google Display Network is often confused for Google search ads, but it shouldn’t. It's a completely different part of the Google advertising suite.  Display ads can help to promote your business. When browsing online, people see ads on other websites. Those ads are put/injected into those websites via the Google Display Network. These ads can be placed on any website that uses Google advertising, YouTube, Gmail or mobile apps that use Google Display Network advertising.  Websites hosting the Google Display Network script, get a portion of the money once the ad gets clicks. As a result, Google gets to display the ad on their website. The Google Display Network reaches most users worldwide and has millions of websites using it.  What's Facebook remarketing, James? James Banks:Facebook remarketing, is quite similar to how you describe Google Display Network. However, rather than your remarketing ad displayed on any one of the thousand websites in the Google Display Network, it only shows up on one website, Facebook. This will appear if you have the Facebook pixel on your website, and active Facebook ads remarketing campaign. You can configure your settings, controls and marketing scripts via our previous episode on a Google display versus direct integration through Tag Manager. But essentially, with Facebook remarketing, your ad can show up to these users’ Facebook.  When they enter your website, they get ‘cookied’, and once they’re on Facebook, depending on your settings, they will see your ad. That's essentially how it works in a nutshell.  You can also choose your remarketing ads to show up on other Facebook properties, such as Instagram and Messenger. You also can select and choose which platform you wish your ad to show up in. Joseph Chesterton:So, which one produces the best results? The answer to that is like how long is a piece of string. It comes down to what you need.  So, where are your customers hanging out?  Google Display Network, covers 95% of web traffic, so that’s all your news outlets, blogs, and random cat video websites. If they’re using advertising on their website, it’ll most likely be through Google Display Network.  If your customers are on those websites, you can target them using Google Display Network. Whereas, with Facebook remarketing, you're just limited to Facebook’s platforms. So, if that's what you're targeting, then Facebook may be the solution for that. But chances are, your customers won't be just on Facebook, they'll be going across any number of websites. Google Display Network, will cookie the user and display your ads across multiple websites, then you can essentially have a billboard right in front of the user's face, across their entire online journey.  However, with Facebook remarketing, they use the Facebook pixel to track you so they can see where you're going around the web, but it's not until you returned to Facebook when you get remarketed to. Overall, Facebook is essentially just a couple of apps. Whereas with Google Display Network, you're targeting the entire internet. Done deal. James Banks:Well, not quite Joseph. Yes, Facebook might not have the actual width or breadth of individual site placement. However, the activity within its platforms is dramatically higher with higher dwell time.  For example, people spend a lot more time per day on Facebook, as opposed to any one of the thousands of sites in the display network. As the saying goes in advertising, the business that is the most recent and frequent and front of mind is the one that ultimately earns customer loyalty and the sale. So, if your audience is spending a fair bit of time on Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger, and your remarketing messages are showing up in front of them everywhere, you don't want them to get burnt out.  There is a high chance that they could click through and potentially make the sale because they spend most of their time there. But, as you said, it's very situationally dependent on the business, and how they're marketing and advertising. It’s one component of a big piece of the wheel.  So, why would you say Google Display Network is better for lead generation or sale generation, as opposed to Facebook remarketing, Joseph? Joseph Chesterton:It comes back to where your customers are hanging out. They may spend a lot of time on Facebook, but their entire online journey (if you consider every single website that a user visits) will take up the majority of the time.  So, with that said, if you're able to put banner ads or billboards, essentially, in front of people and target them across every single website, then it kind of can feel more natural. Whereas, with remarketing, you have to wait until they return to Facebook.  It just feels like they're stalking you.  The great thing about a display network is if you go to one site you can set triggers, so that if they go to another site, then a different or a similar ad can be displayed.  You can get crafty with your advertising so that it's easier to sell. Customers will then more likely be able to see your ads and buy from you. There's a really good story I heard, it's about a small toothbrush or toothpaste company... This smaller company were trying to get into Walmart or one of the big department stores. They worked out where the head office of Walmart was and their geolocation.  They set the display network to target only people in that specific area. The ad was something along the lines of ‘Walmart staff have stinky breath - that's why they should stock this toothpaste and, all their problems will be gone.’. Something along those lines. They targeted the head office of Walmart who was in charge of the stocking and became visible to the people at Walmart. After seeing it all over the internet, they ended up contacting the toothpaste saying, stop this, you're ruining our reputation, we don't have stinky breath. This then opened up the conversation to stock the toothpaste brand in Walmart.  The amazing thing was that they only spent tens of dollars on their advertising, and were able to target the people in Walmart.  If they had done that on Facebook, then perhaps they wouldn't have been able to have the same effect because that ad was everywhere. And it made the people at Walmart think that this toothpaste company was spending millions of dollars to advertise it. This toothpaste that they stocked was inferior to the one that they already stocked. So, it's a pretty interesting story that they used the Google Display Network to do that. And, they did that with pennies, versus targeting millions of people.  It was a very interesting thing, if you're smart about it, you can target people and cause a big impact. It just depends on your ability as a marketer, I guess, because yes, you can do lead generation on Facebook, but can you target specific people across the entirety of the internet? James Banks:I love that story. But I'd argue, you could probably have gotten a better result by doing it through Facebook. I don't think Facebook ads were in play when that story happened.  But, here's the thing, they could have remarketed to anyone that works at Walmart as an example, or has visited the site and works at Walmart. And then, they show them an ad set of, a Walmart person with stinky breath, or whatever it might be. Which is arguably more targeted than just using a geolocation filter.  This is the thing where I think Facebook wins... when you do the good old Google versus Facebook debate, it still is a tried and tested method. It allows you to target friends of friends. So, you have someone that has entered your site, and their friends meet your targeting criteria. You could then have that remarketing ad show up to the friends of the friends, through custom audiences, things like that. So, it can give you different options of targeting, a little bit more personalised targeting as opposed to the display network.  However, as we have said earlier before, it does depend on how you're marketing your business. For example, if you are using Facebook ads, non remarketing, like straight-up Facebook ads, brand Allegiant campaigns, someone enters your site and it makes sense to remarket to them.  They abandon your site.  You go to e-commerce, they don't check out. It makes sense to remarket to them with a cart abandonment ad through the Facebook platform, cause that's how they originally discovered you. However, ultimately if you're remarketing on Facebook, then why not also include remarketing across the Google Display Network?  As we mentioned earlier in the piece, recency and frequency is a core component to being able to have the brand that wins the brand loyalty of the uneducated customer, at the end of the day. So, being able to combine both of them is typically how we approach things, and then being able to tailor the targeting and the platforms accordingly, depending on the context of the business, the products and services being offered.  So, with that said, Joseph, is there anything else you wanted to add to this debate? Joseph Chesterton:No, I think I'll just echo what you said. It depends on where your audience is and what you're selling. Chances are your clients are going to be in multiple places. They will be on Facebook because it's the largest social network in the world.  But, they also will access dozens of other sites where the Google Display Network will work. So, what better way to sell to them then every single place they go online.  So, I would say both are just as good as each other. You just need to know who to target. James Banks:Well, I think that's a wrap. So, again, thank you so much for shooting into another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate show. Hope you enjoyed that and learned something new. We will be in your earbuds, hopefully again, real soon.  So, with that said and done, have a lovely day. We'll talk to you again real soon.

Want to know the best ways to understand your target market to inform your digital marketing strategy?  There are two ways to extract data from your website to turn it into valuable insights about your users. These script tags come from Integrated Direct Marketing and Google Tag Manager. What do you get when you seat a developer and a marketer in a room to debate marketing tags? Well, stay tuned to this marketing debate episode. It is going to be blazing. We outline the best tool so you can understand your audience and increase your ROI.  Direct integration Tags, otherwise known as pixels, are pieces of code in Javascript that perform specific tasks on your website. These tags collect data to define your target audience on your website and how they behave. This data can form insights into your web development efforts. It is useful for developing deep insights into your target market and create a seamless experience for consumers to interact with your brand.  Direct integration uses various ways and features to communicate with your target audience. It allows you to add these script tags directly to your website. This method has the scripts in specific locations on your website, for example, the header or footer. By doing this, your website will inherently load quicker due to the lack of an additional tag manager doing the work.  Developers tend to lean more towards the Integrated Direct Marketing approach. This method is free from configuring issues and slow load times. Implementing this method yourself is quick, easy, and has no unnecessary complexity.  “I can just code something to say, ‘If it needs to be done, do it.’ -That’s the beauty of integrated direct marketing” - Joseph. Google Tag Manager Do you struggle with tracking your audiences scrolling, form and cart abandonment, video views, exit links, and more? Google Tag Manager can do that all in one place. Google Tag Manager is a free Tag management system. This tool allows you to manage, store and update snippets of code on your website without modifying the code. It includes features such as conversion tracking, site analytics, and remarketing tags. These tags include Google Analytics, Adwords, Heatmap tracking, and Facebook Pixels. It eliminates the complexity of knowing how to code or programming language for web development.  Google Tag Manager is simple, secure, and speedy. It involves implementing a simple Javascript tag into your website. It allows your many other marketing tags to be used in conjunction and stored in one place.  For aspects of advertising and remarketing, Google Tag Manager is the perfect solution. It helps streamline the process for marketers without having to harass developers to do the integration. It is a win-win.  How to implement Google Tag manager You will require the snippet to install Google Tag Manager to your website. Paste the javascript code into your pages. This tool helps to obtain insights into short links on your website. Google Analytics can then further analyse this data.  Caution It may sound great to handle your tags without understanding a line of code. We found it appealing too. However, it is essential to understand the technical implications of tagging as certain elements can hinder the performance, load time, and page structure.  For example, using Facebook pixels is a great start, but you need to know what they are before chucking them in there.    Transcript James Banks:Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show. I'm your host, James Banks. Joseph Chesterton:And I'm your host, Joseph Chesterton. James Banks:Today we'll be debating all things Google Tag Manager versus direct integration of marketing tags on a website, which one is the best way for businesses to do? So for this one, I'll be taking the, you guessed it, Google Tag Manager side of the debate. Joseph Chesterton:I'll be going straight in with the direct integration. James Banks:Alrighty. Well, before we get started, let's start with some definitions of terms. What do we mean by Direct integration, Joseph? Joseph Chesterton:When we're talking about Google Tag Manager versus direct integration, we're talking about analytics or script tags, which- James Banks:Such as the Facebook pixel, the LinkedIn insights tag, the search console snippet thing, overall Marketing tags. Joseph Chesterton:They need to be integrated into your website to be able to track the data on your website. So without them, you won't have the data. So there are two ways to do it.  You can put it into Google Tag Manager and use the Google Tag Manager script. That is essentially Direct integration, but only the one tag or you can put all your scripts in the header or wherever they need to be on your website manually.  So with that said, the one that's better for performance’s direct integration because I chose that topic. No, but seriously direct integration. When we say performance, there are two different performances that you could be asking. One is the ease of use. The other one is I guess, speed of integration and speed of website after scripts have been integrated. With Google Tag Manager, because you're relying on essentially a bucket to hold all the other scripts. You first have to put the bucket in the website, then all the scripts sit inside the bucket, which is one extra step for your website.  Direct integration has the scripts all in the exact spots that they need to be on your website, whether they're in the header or the footer, deferred or whatnot, you can do that directly into your website and the speed of your website will load quicker because there's no need for an additional tag manager to handle any of the loadings. As a developer and with what? With a decade of experience in building websites and online marketing, I want a solution that when I put it in, does the job and then gets out of the way.  There's no additional configuring and things like that that need to be done. You could say that one needs to be configured more than the other. But as a developer, I can do that myself.  I don't need an additional layer of complexity and I don't need little dials to be switched on and off when I need things done. I can just code something to say, "If it needs to be done, do it." I think that's where the performance of direct integration is the winner. You, as a marketer, James, have a different opinion. James Banks:Well, as a developer, Joseph, doesn't anything drive you more up the wall than hotheaded marketers telling you that they need to put in all of these whizzbang marketing scripts into the website you've made and they need it done yesterday and to get on with the job? Doesn't that give you a headache? Joseph Chesterton:No. I love it. James Banks:Sarcasm duly noted. But seriously, this is the reason why Google Tag Manager was invented. It was so marketers can get on the job with doing online advertising and marketing without getting in the way of a developer or trying to do it themselves and making a mess of the situation. Messing around with JavaScript, directly integrating JavaScript into a site, you need to know what you're doing. You have to, at least at the very minimum, understand how to code or the code behind the website to do this right. Google Tag Manager fixes that problem. All that you need to do is put in one clean, asynchronous JavaScript tag into your website. Then, all other marketing tags can then be entered into tag manager without touching the code. Or without disrupting Joseph on his lovely zen coding session with things that have to be done by yesterday.   Even on the point of cleanliness and ease of use, wouldn't you much rather have one single script integration versus say multiple different incisions across the side? I mean, isn't it a lot cleaner just to have the one. Wouldn't you say that that is the truth? Joseph Chesterton:From a visual code perspective? Yes, but if you look at the mess that marketers put into Google Tag Manager, versus the perfection that we web developers create, it's night and day difference and we won't slow the website down because we know how to build it so there's no impact on that or minimal impact.  Whereas if you're throwing in tens of thousands of scripts and there's no control on that, then potentially it would be even worse seeing the results in like Google Lighthouse or whatever tracking tools you're using to see how your website's performing. James Banks:But most modern marketing scripts are handled asynchronously so it doesn't matter the number of them per se. That's not going to leave a noticeable impact on performance if they're all being loaded asynchronously. Joseph Chesterton:Potentially, but there are still scripts slowing the site down. If you're using Google Analytics to track visitors on your website, you should care about the demographics. But if you aren't and you've got all the little dials switched to on, you are making a script be downloaded on your website that's far greater than needed.  If you’re integrating it manually through direct integration, then you know the best way to do it, that will be the least performance impactful. James Banks:But when it comes to, what's going to save you the most time in the long run and arguably be the most reliable solution in the long run. You go to say, Google Tag Manager has it over direct integration. Not only it makes it much faster to correctly set up marketing scripts and then get them to point at the right place at the right time at the right point in your website, as opposed to trying to do that manually, which is just code upon code upon code.  It's a lot more time-efficient to do it. The built-in tools, the tag manager, allow you to do it a lot faster and time is money in business so what saves you more time and things such as trying to get your scripts working, let's face it, it's a necessary evil as part of advertising.  It's not necessarily the fun stuff or the stuff that's going to get the ROI at the end of the day. It allows you to get on with the job so I really can't see how you could say that doing it the old fashioned way, Joseph, could be the most time-efficient or headache efficient way of doing this. Joseph Chesterton:If it means that you don't have to pester me with adding another script into the head, then I'm all for it but if we do it the most performant way for the website, then I guess it's a time versus performance versus cost equation that you have to juggle. James Banks:Well with that said, which one would you say is the better solution overall? Joseph Chesterton:I’m biased towards direct integration. I can't pinpoint exactly why I dislike it. I think it's because it's a layer on top. I don't know if that's anything that we can debate on, but I think it's just because it's lazy or it's too simple that you don't need to think and do things potentially the better way manually.  I don't know if that answers, which one's better overall, but at the same time, I do agree with Google Tag Manager. If you can do something or just flick a switch and not have to bother a developer, then that's potentially time and money-saving. James Banks:So what you're saying is you enjoy getting harassed by hotshot marketers to put scripts into the site yesterday, right? Joseph Chesterton:No. James Banks:Yeah well, I’m biased towards Google Tag Manager. Okay. Let me break that down. If you only need to put Google Analytics into your website, Google Tag Manager is kind of overkill. You don't need a marketing script management solution if you're only ever going to need to put Google analytics as a marketing script into your site.  However, if you're doing things like search advertising, Facebook advertising, LinkedIn, or whatever form of advertising, remarketing in particular, then you ultimately should be using a tag management solution, i.e. Google Tag Manager.  This is what it was invented to do, to make it 10 times easier for marketers to get on the job, get on and do the job well without having to harass and wait for developers to do all of the integration for them. So depending on the actual needs of your site, either which can be the best way, there are many good approaches to direct integration. Firstly, if you have a developer on staff that's fast and efficient and knows what they're doing, such as Joseph.  Secondly, you don't need many marketing scripts integrated into your site at all. Ultimately it depends on what your current needs, wants are, and future needs and wants are with your overall digital marketing efforts.  If you're interested in finding more about Google Tag Manager, I've created an entire YouTube series about it. We will add the link to it in the show notes, or you can jump onto YouTube and just type in Web3 Google Tag Manager, you should see the playlist and enjoy finding more about this quite amazing tool. So with that said and done, that is another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show concluded. Tune in next time where we will be discussing all things remarketing. Thank you, and have a nice day.

Are you tired of spending hours creating engaging content and doing everything right on paper, but still not seeing results? This Marketing Debate highlights some SEO secrets on how to bring a steady stream of organic traffic to your website. Choosing the right tool means getting accurate data and having a fool-proof plan. And obviously, a fool-proof plan will boost your business. Search Console and SEMrush collect and report data differently from each other. Here’s what every digital marketer should know about managing and running SEO Campaigns.  Let us compare the two SEO tools for you.  What is Google Search Console Google Search Console is a free web service for webmasters that optimises visibility, indexing status, monitors, and troubleshoots for your website. Yes, you heard that right, it’s free - one of the largest digital turn-ons this year.  Google Search Console Features We all know that Google doesn’t share its SEO algorithm or give any hints to how you can improve it. After all, that will defeat its purpose. However, Google presents all the data and ideas to let you put the puzzle pieces together to form your analysis. As well as highlighting the technical errors, it has all the necessary features that can improve your website, including:  - Search appearance- performance - Search traffic - Technical status updates - Data crawlability and more The rule maker Google Search Console is, well, a part of Google, surprise surprise. It has laid out the framework, making the data 100% reliable. SEMrush has to play by Google's rules and has a minor lag in scraping the data. Traditionally backlinks, both internally and externally, were a big part of SEO and still are. However, as Google sets the framework, they are now focussing on user experience. New age SEO is about making your website the best it can be for the user. I mean, it is the whole reason for your business. With Google search console, the data you get comes directly from Google, not third party sources. It specifically reports on how you can optimise for that exact feature. Data from their reports can inform you how to improve the user experience of your website. Google has three Core Web Vitals that outline what is essential to your website and its user experience. You can find these in the reports they provide, which are significant factors for ranking well in Google Search. These include: - Loading performance (How fast does it appear on the screen?) - Responsiveness (How fast does the page react to user input?) - Visual stability (Are things moving around on the screen while it is loading?) These are all aspects of mobile visibility issues, which are a significant part of SEO. It is integral to incorporate these elements into strategies for the future success of your rankings. Key Takeaways Google Search Console is focused on the data and improving the user experience of your website. It ensures your website holds the most suited solution for your audience. Overall, we all have to abide by Google's rules.  Google search console, however, can be tricky to navigate initially. It can be destructive if not done well. But, will also do wonders when you get the hang of it. With its limited features, using Google Search Console alongside Google analytics can provide you with all the features you need to track your search engine ranking efforts.  What is SEMrush? Google often makes things completely obscure or hard to interpret on purpose to throw people off mastering their algorithms. It keeps it interesting! But this is where SEMrush comes into play. It specifically tries to fill in the blanks that Google doesn't.  SEMrush Features SEMrush has all the optimisation tools and features you need. It has hundreds of features that will all help you to optimise your website. Some of the stand out features include: - Site audit toolPrioritises SEO issues and highlights the ones that need your utmost attention affecting you currently.  - Keyword magic toolDuplicate pages impact your search rankings. This feature helps to find semantically related keywords and long-tail keywords with high traffic potential. It can help you make your pages more concise. - Competitive analysisIt is a time-consuming task that often costs a lot. SEMrush can easily track competitors at the click of a button. - BacklinksBuild a list of spam backlinks or find ways to get new, relevant links to your site. Much more! SEMrush is extremely good at everything that has to do with analysing backlinks, which is what traditional SEO was all about. It's well-engineered for web agencies, which is why we use it here at Web3.  The ‘Leatherman’ of SEO toolkits In other words, it is not just a one-trick pony. SEMrush is a whole suite of tools. It is easily readable, as opposed to just giving you the data, like Google Search Console. SEMrush has the means to tell you that your meta title tag is not long enough or highlight new and emerging competitors that are threatening to outrank you.  It suggests actionable ways to improve your website, fix issues, and track those changes in search. It joins the dots for you and makes the process of your SEO, digital marketing, and business requirements streamlined.  All in all, it specifically tells you what you are doing right and wrong. It provides you with ideas for future optimisation and ways to mitigate issues. How good is that? Is it worth your money? SEMrush is, unfortunately, a paid tool. The different pricing options can help cover most budgets. However, it is still an ongoing expense.  If you're starting with no prior experience or limited content pieces, we recommend starting with Google Search Console. Then build up to SEMrush when your budget allows for it.  The features can be overwhelming with knowing how to begin. Step-by-step guides that show you how to use SEMrush easily are useful. However, there is free training included in your subscription that helps you to improve your performance.  Transcript James Banks:Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show. I'm your host, James Banks. Joseph Chesterton:And I'm your host, Joseph Chesterton. James Banks:And today we'll be discussing all things SEO related, well SEO software and tracking related. So for this debate, we'll be discussing Google Search Console versus SEMrush. Which one's better? Which one is best for managing and running SEO campaigns?  So for this debate, I'll be taking the SEMrush side of the debate. Joseph Chesterton:And obviously, I'll be on the Search Console side. James Banks:Alrighty, well without further ado, let's kick things off. So Joseph, why is Google Search Console better than SEMrush when it comes to SEO and using the software to help get better the results of your SEO performance? Joseph Chesterton:Google Search Console is a web service that allows webmasters to optimise visibility and indexing status.  So an annoying thing with Google is that they don't share their SEO algorithm. They don't say, this is how you improve your SEO. But, they give you all the data and ideas on what you need to do, and you put the puzzle pieces together to come up and form your analysis.  Google Search Console is Google's tool that has all the necessary tools to improve your SEO. It is focused on the data and improving the user experience of your website.  It is essentially what modern SEO is. It's making sure that your website is the best solution for getting answers, interactivity, or whatever they've come to your site to find.  They won't say things like, ‘your meta title tag is not long enough’, SEMrush will. They will track things like performance and how your website pages are tracking in search results.  You can pull this from SEMrush, but it's not straight from the horse's mouth like Google provides. Of course, they will offer things that will enhance your website if there are any issues like indexing and mobile issues.  Mobile is a massive factor for SEO. As well as that, if your website has a security issue or an issue that you manually need to tell Google to prevent or to stop, then you can do that in the search console. It gives you a summary of links that are traditionally a large part of SEO, backlinks (both external and internal) to your website.  One big thing with Search Console versus SEMrush is that Google sets the standard, and then SEMrush has to catch up and play by Google's rules.  For example, core web vitals is a metric that Google created. They are quality signals of your website that state whether you're delivering a great user experience. You can get that data in SEMrush. But because Google made it, and that's what their new SEO ranking factors are, they have data linked to your website because you've got tracking built into your website. Core web vitals are three different things that Google thinks are core to a good user experience.  The three pillars are loading performance, responsiveness, and visual stability. They call it the largest contentful paint, first input delay, and cumulative layout shift.  It is all techno jumble, but basically, it means how fast does stuff appear on the screen, how quickly the page reacts to user input and if it moves around on the screen while it's loading. Those three things are what you can see inside the reports in Google Search Console, and Google considers those to be significant SEO factors.  So if you can track those things in Google Search Console, and you're able to action those things and improve them, then your website should be SEO performant.  So in saying that, James, why is SEMrush better than Search Console? James Banks:Well, for those who don't know what SEMrush is, it’s a professional SEO, and search engine marketing tool (SEM for short). It also has a pretty significant content marketing and social media marketing component to its toolset that we use, but anyway, we'll stay focused on the SEO/ SEM side of things for this episode.  Search Console is actually progressively getting worse. It refreshed its UI back in 2018, and has actually gotten rid of all the useful stuff. You alluded to the reason a bit earlier in your piece, Joseph.  Google is trying to make things as obscure as it possibly can, whilst throwing out a couple of breadcrumbs to suggest how to make a site better in search. It does this on purpose because it doesn't want people scheming the algorithm, which led to all of these spam sites, and that was very much the 2000s of the internet, so it's kind of a good thing. But at the same time, from my point of view, the tools are becoming increasingly obscure with actually providing meaningful, useful, and relevant data that you can then use to actually better improve the experience of your website, and therefore the experience of the web itself, that's Google's mission.  SEMrush basically has all of the tools and features that someone looking to optimise and improve their website from a search point of view, really needs.  There are two things in Google Search Console that I would say are useful. Firstly, submitting your site map, which isn't really that useful in the grand scheme of things. Secondly, its performance report, which is actually becoming less useful. It used to be way better before they reskinned it back in 2018. Whereas SEMrush offers hundreds of different features that are actually useful for an SEO and search marketer. Okay, so in defence, SEMrush is a paid tool and Google Search Console is free.  If you are serious about SEO and search engine marketing, you really should be investing in a professional SEO SEM tool, such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, and a whole other bunch out there. SEMrush is our preferred tool. We like it, it's not necessarily saying it's the best, but it's our favourite. It's particularly well optimising and engineered for search agencies like Web3.  That's why we choose it above the rest, but in all honesty, I cannot see how you could say Google Search Console is better than a fully-fledged professional marketing suite for SEO such as SEMrush unless you have something to retort on that one, Joseph. Joseph Chesterton:Search Console is all about the data, it's not about creating a profile and seeing results, and things like what SEMrush provides. James Banks:So, the things that are actually useful. Joseph Chesterton:Well, you can get that data, you just have to look at what the reports are telling you. SEMrush is more than just a tool for webmasters to allow for indexing status checking and to optimise visibility, it's a whole suite of tools, hence why we use it in conjunction with Search Console. But I guess the thing is, what one would provide better results, or allow you to improve your website better? James Banks:Well, obviously SEMrush will. That's what it's designed to do. It's designed to not only tell you what the problems are, but also then how to fix them, and then also to be able to track those fixes against your impact and search.  Search Console does it a bit, but it doesn't join the dots between fixing the problems and seeing an impact in search as clearly and as well as SEMrush does. So in my opinion it is superior when it comes to making improvements to a website.  Tools like its content analysis tool, keyword density reports, and technical site audit, are probably the best thing that it does out of everything. Yes search Console can sort of do it, but it's nowhere near as in depth and as useful and as actionable as SEMrush's technical side auditing features are.  Not sure how you're going to be able to beat this one, Joe. Joseph Chesterton:Well, I think SEMrush has a really good feature where it suggests actionable things to do to improve your website. At the end of the day, old school SEO was about links and keywords and things, which is what SEM does really well, obviously.  But the new age SEO, which is what Google is trying to position Search Console around, is about user experience and making sure that your website is the best it can be for the user. So the data that you get in Search Console comes directly from Google, it's not from third-party sources. And so the data that you get, you're able to improve your user experience on, which is essentially the new age SEO. And putting the other useful features of SEMrush aside, when it comes to index status and optimising the visibility of your website, all the features are there for Search Console, you just have to know how to use them and how you will interpret the results. So overall, which one would you say is better? James Banks:Well, honestly it surprises me that the majority of businesses we come across don't even know what Google Search Console is. I think that's a big fail on Google's front. Most people know what Google Analytics is, and most people have Google Analytics installed on their website. However, the mass majority of people have got no idea what the Google Search Console is, and do not have an account or have it set up and integrated into their site.  It's free, it's a no brainer. Even if you don't care about SEO, at the very least Search Console will tell you if you're making any show-stopping issues, mobile usability issues, that is just affecting the overall user-friendliness of your website. So at the very very least, even if you don't care about SEO or SEM, or anything like that, get Google Search Console installed and set up and integrated into your website. As well, if you are brand new to SEO, then Search Console is actually not a bad place to start. It's very, very basic, and that's actually a good thing. The only negative I would say that SEMrush has is unless you're a search professional, the full paid version can be overwhelming and you might not know where to begin. You won't even understand what it's doing.  There's definitely a learning curve to it to be able to fully utilise its feature set. Fortunately, it's got some very in-depth and free training on how to actually use it to better your search performance, but just getting started with SEO Search Console is a good place to start.  However, if you want to take your search marketing seriously, or more seriously, and you're looking to drive and track and measure your results over time, using a professional tool such as SEMrush is definitely the way to go. Do you have any other words on that Joe? Joseph Chesterton:I think the two biggest things that Google Search Console beats over SEMrush is one, it's straight from the horse's mouth. The data comes from Google and your website, so you know that it's 100% accurate.  And two, on your daily ritual of Googling yourself and you type James Banks into search result, if you're tracking the keyword in Search Console on your website, it will show up in the search results as a little widget saying how you're currently tracking on your website. So that's a useful feature rather than having to dig through massive reports in SEMrush. James Banks:But you do realise SEMrush's data is just simply scraping Google's data that is shown in Search Console. It's not its own data set, it's data set, and yes it does populate it with a couple of other publicly known or reputable data sets, but the majority of it is the same data you're seeing in Google. It's not the data is the problem. Joseph Chesterton:Yeah, that's right, but they still have to scrape it, whereas Google it's Google. James Banks:Yeah, that's true, that's a fair point. It does have a little bit of a lag time between what Google tells you and what is shown in SEMrush, but honestly, does it make a difference? Okay, not to sound like we're summarising it best is both, but it kind of actually is.  You can use both together, you can use search console to crosscheck SEMrush to make sure there are no discrepancies there. Joseph is right, Search Console is closer to the single point of truth, and it's more fresh and relevant from a data point of view, but we use Google Search Console to cross-reference the SEMrush data, and vice versa, to make sure we're not getting any false positives between the two platforms. But anyway, I think we have said enough about these two pieces of software. If you're interested in signing up for a free trial to SEMrush and putting your site through a tactical audit to see how it could be improved, we'll put a little link in the episode show notes. So I highly encourage you to jump on, create an account, run an audit, and see where you can improve your website so you can hopefully improve its position in search, get more people to your business, and hopefully turn them into new clients and customers.  So without further ado that's another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show done. Tune in next time for where we will be discussing all things Google Tag manager and analytics integration. Thank you and have a nice day. Discover more at https://web3.com.au/search-console-vs-SEMrush

You’ve heard the saying quality over quantity, right? We are sure it has come about when talking about food at restaurants, television shows, and now even what type of hosting to choose as a business. It’s essential to know when to make the right call for what business expenses need priority.  Is choosing premium hosting worth the higher cost? Or can you get everything you need without spending more than you need to?  In the debate; Premium Vs. Affordable hosting, we uncover the hidden truths behind choosing the right option for your website. Affordable hosting Affordable hosting is often a server with generic software where you can build whatever you want. Thousands of websites opt for this option because of the price. If you are willing to spare one coffee per month, it may be worthwhile. It is perfect for smaller businesses with limited traffic, files, and storage on their pages. They are stored and hosted on a single, shared server. These perks do not always have to mean they lack functionality. But, they're built for any platform which can lead to performance and security issues. Cons The term shared hosting is an interchangeable word for cheap hosting as it does just that. By opting for cheap hostings, you will be sharing the features with others. It may result in a slower load speed. You will also be limited to other features such as security and resources like a personalised domain name.  Your audience may question the authority of your website when it ends with wordpress.com. A clean and on-brand URL will help put the metaphoric cherry on top of your website. Cheaper plans have storage caps and data limits that will restrict your capabilities on your website. Storage caps directly affect your page's performance and can even extend to your search engine ranking efforts.  Nobody likes a slow website. Sharing the same hosting server with other sites will increase your load speed and decrease your click-through-rate. Pros Do you love to hear the bad news before the good, or is it just us?  Shared or Standard websites are more affordable, less complicated, and quicker to finish up. You still get all the necessary features to keep your website up and running in a cheap and obtainable way, letting you focus on other areas of your business in more detail.  The main feature which stands out is the price. You will be saving up to ten times more by relying on shared hostings. The extra money in your pocket can make the difference for other significant business aspects that may not have cheaper options. You can always upgrade at a later stage.  You can look at it like you are renting an apartment - you share the space. It means you cannot use up a lot of space on your pages. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I mean, minimalism is trending after all. Because you are renting this space, that means the landlord will look after any maintenance or updates along the way.  Premium Hosting If you flinch at the words: painfully slow, hacked or crash, you’ve probably experienced this from a cheap hosting service. You are not alone. After receiving increased traffic or running out of bandwidth, your site can often come to a halt. These are some of the reasons why premium hosting may be for you.  The Pros Your website is your most valuable asset. Security is an important feature that drove James and Joseph to invest in premium hosting to grow Web3. Premium hosting servers have reliable measures to ensure your website is safe and secure. They send data through a secure SSL network for monitoring that enhances their reliability. These protocols also mean reduced load time, even while being inundated with traffic. Your website will have 100% allocated for optimal performance, which will aid your Search Engine rankings. You can feel rest assured that your site is in safe hands.  The Cons  Premium hosted websites often cost more and take more time to finalise. At web3, we use WP Engine, which offers several different hosting solutions for WordPress, from around $38 / month. They allow for a generous amount of websites, domains, visitors, storage, and bandwidth. WordPress and other hosting companies tend to charge more. They host on better infrastructure designed for WordPress. They also build for that platform and can offer better support, security, and admin work.  With a new website or business, you don't need all those extra features. You can suffice with a more affordable hosting option. One that will get you up and running without making you break that piggy bank. Now, this is where cheap hosting comes into play.  Conclusion  It is necessary to know what exactly you want from your website. It will allow you to look beyond the price, which is often the feature that stands out the most. If you're after a run of the mill site with no upkeep, the affordable option will suit you nicely. However, to save you future headaches, we recommend investing in a premium hosting service. Transcript James: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Web3 marketing debate show. I'm your host, James Banks.  Joseph: And I'm your host, Joseph Chesterton. James: And today, we will be debating everything and everything about hosting. So premium hosting versus affordable hosting. Unfortunately, I'll be taking the affordable hosting corner of this debate. Joseph: Sounds like you are preparing to lose already, James. James: We'll see about that, Joseph. Joseph: And I'm obviously on the premium hosting side. James: Well, without further ado, let's start the show. So Joseph, why is premium hosting better than affordable hosting? Joseph: Well, James, websites are one of your business's most valuable assets. If your website isn't working for you like it's crashed or it's down, then you potentially could be losing millions or even billions of dollars. You need to invest in really good hosting.  With affordable hosting, you run the risk of having your website hacked, crash, or run out of bandwidth. So as a result, you would lose business and lose reputation for your company.  Good hosting is everything. Yes, of course, it may cost more, but that comes with support, it comes with better infrastructure and it's easier to build your website on.  So that's about all that we need to cover. Thanks for listening in and we'll speak to you next time. No, I'm kidding. James, why is affordable hosting better than premium? James: Probably should have clarified this before we started, but I guess we need to define what is premium hosting and what is affordable hosting. So in your words, Joseph, what would you define a premium web host? What are some examples? How much do they cost? What's the difference? Joseph: A premium host usually is dedicated to the platform you're building for.  So for example, WordPress, you'll find managed WordPress hosting companies, generally have a higher price tag because they are hosting on better infrastructure that's built specifically for WordPress. On top of that, they build specifically for the platform and can then offer better support, security and administrative work. They do that on the server.  Whereas affordable hosting is often just a server with generic software that enables you to build whatever you want. But this isn't specifically built for WordPress or any type of platform. It means that you may run into performance issues, security issues, and the list goes on. James: Okay. And how much would a premium WordPress website hosting server costs per month, approximately? Where do they start at and what's the range? Joseph: Premium hosting depends on your usage requirements. We use a company called WP engine and they offer several different hosting solutions for WordPress, and they start at AUD$38 a month and scale from there.  They allow for many sites and a generous amount of visitors, storage and bandwidth. That is something you probably won’t see on shared hosting or affordable hosting, which is what we're calling it today.  Affordable hosting can cost anywhere from a dollar a month to... I guess it could cost hundreds of dollars, but generally, you would see it priced around $5-20. That's generally the affordable hosting range. James: So what I'm hearing is that for a managed specialised service, such as a managed WordPress hosting environment, it's going to run you the cost of maybe about $40 per month. But you'll have the added benefit of better performance, more security, specialised hosting environments, so on and so forth. But I can get exactly that for $5 a month. So why would I pay four or five times the price for the same thing, Joseph? Joseph: Arguably, if the server was the same as the affordable hosting as far as hardware goes, yes, you probably could get that. But the thing is, you won't get 24/7 support. You won't get prebuilt themes in WordPress.  You won't get automated backups that... Well, you may get automated backups but you can’t guarantee that they will work if your server crashes. With premium and managed hostings, you don't usually see them crash. Whereas with affordable, you run the risk of it crashing.  You get a team of people that manage the server so that if things like security issues become an issue, then they'll fix it for you, and you can rest easy knowing that your business is well looked after online. James: So basically what you're saying is, although you have to pay more, what that added cost means is, added supporting service. But what if I want to take care of it myself and pocket the change? What would be the value in that case? Joseph: I mean, you could do that when you're trying to run a business, you run the risk of your website going down and then having no one to bring it back up, except for yourself.  It might be limited support, but you'll have to wait 24 hours or even pay for support or get shipped to another company. We found this out the other day when we were helping a website recover from being crashed on their own affordable hosting.  When we contacted the provider, they said, "Yeah. We can help you, but it's going to cost X amount, and it's going to go through a third-party provider. We're not going to do the help for you." We had to recover the hacked website that was down for the client on our own, which we could easily do. But if you're on a managed hosting platform, then they will take care of that for you.  They'll be able to restore the website in seconds, rather than a couple of hours that it took to recover.  On top of saving money, the reason why you pay the extra amount for premium hosting is that the platforms that they post on, the software that they provide is fine-tuned. It will run your software better than just the generic software you'll get from the affordable hosting. James: Well, that's a pretty convincing argument, Joseph, but what about my emails? These whizzbang high-performance servers that you're talking about don't allow me to put my emails on it. And I've got emails coming out of the wazoo.  If I were to not have a server without emails, it's going to cost me so much more. Why would I even consider having to go to the server that doesn't allow me to put my email accounts on it? Joseph: It's funny you say that because that was another issue that a client came to us about. They had three websites hosted on their affordable hosting, and they had email accounts on top of that and a dozen accounts that were filling up.  Each account had a couple of gigabytes of emails hosted on it, and when your hosting server only has, in this instance, 20 gigabytes of storage, when your email accounts are on the same platform and each account has a couple of gigabytes, there was no room left for the hosting, which crashed the website and meant that the website wasn't able to be used. And then on top of that, all the emails were bouncing because there wasn't enough space available for the emails to come through.  The better option is you should use a platform like Microsoft or Google or any other email provider. Let them take care of the emails for you.  There might be a cost per account, but if your server goes down, then you will lose not only your website, but you will also lose your emails on top of that.  That's a pretty huge loss to your business if both your emails and your websites go down, especially if you rely on them to make money day today. James: Well, you're probably thinking by now, "Well, geez, there wasn't much of a debate with this show," and why? It's because it's the truth.  Over the past 10 years, Joseph and I have been in the web game, we've dealt with over a hundred different website hosting companies. All of the major ones you can think of having the same rule: you get what you pay for.  You pay for peanuts and you expect diamonds, that's just not how it works.  Particularly in the case of web hosting, you get what you pay for. Hosting for your website is in proportion to all other business, marketing and advertising expenses. It’s one of the last things you'll ever have to worry about. It shouldn't even be a cost consideration.  Of course, if your actual website is working for your business, keep things safe and secure. Rest easy at night and invest in high quality, premium hosting infrastructure. You won’t regret it.  Take it from us, out of dealing with how many retrieved hosting horror stories we've had to help people fix over the years. I can't even think of how many that has been.  So with that said, if you need help with your website, whether that be cheap hosting, poor quality, unreliability, spam issues or you're getting hacked, drop us a line at web3.com.au.  We can help you get set up with an infrastructure that will not let you down.  So with that said and done, we will wrap up another episode of the Web3 marketing debate show. For the next episode, we'll be talking about all things SEM and SEO-related software.  Stay tuned and we will talk to you again real soon.   Discover more at: 

So you’re building a website and want to not only attract but increase all the right customers to your site? This podcast uncovers two of the best ways to increase traffic to your website: Design and Performance. Depending on your goals as a business, your website’s needs will vary completely. This is something we’ve learnt working with many of our diverse clients. Each website we develop is custom-designed and encapsulates the brand's essence to appeal to customers.  Most people think you have to sacrifice one to get the other. In some aspects this is true, but not always. This tug-of-war debate will help to guide your online strategy and make your website easily stand out from the competition.  James: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show. We've got another firecracker of an episode today. What's better?  Is it having a nice, really awesome, beautiful, pretty website that is the benchmark of design?  Or is it better to have more of a stripped-down, not as well designed website, but it performs like a bat out of hell? So I'll be taking the website design side of this debate. Joseph: I'll be taking the website performance side. So let's get stuck into it. James: Awesome. All right, let's get started. So, all right, Joseph, performance. Why do you want to have a high-performing site as opposed to one that looks like it's the Mona Lisa of websites? Joseph: It's funny you say that because you can actually have a nice website and it can be good at performance. There are times we've seen nice websites, but are absolutely trash when it comes to performance.  You need a high-performing website that loads quickly converts customers, and is a true asset to your business. It's super important to have a high-performing website. Now, performance doesn't come out of the box. You do need to tune your website to be performing. Take our website, for example. I would say our website looks quite spectacular, but it's been tuned and built for performance.  The results show when you have a high performing website, the ROI and results you get from the website are night and day. Whereas, if you just have a nice-looking website, chances are you're losing a lot of traffic and performance that your business deserves. So James, tell me why design's better than performance. James: Well, I'm a videographer and have some fantastic 4k high-resolution films that I want to show. I want to have people when they land on my website, to see my video and the high-resolution, detailed work. I don't want to have them click through to some embedded YouTube play. I want them to see it as soon as they load.  It might take a bit of a performance hit, but it allows me to immediately engage my audience with the work in which I do.  Why can't I have that, Joseph? You're a developer. You know that it's a trade-off.  Performance means sacrificing one or the other at some stage. Why can't I be able to achieve the design that I want? Why do I have to make sacrifices when it doesn't make sense for my business to do so, or my audience? Joseph: Well, the thing is, you don't need to make a huge sacrifice in instances like that. There are techniques that you need to use for video to make sure that your website performs how it should.  You can have videos and a pretty website. But out of the box, (particularly on a lot of WordPress themes that buy from marketplaces) are trash when it comes to performance but look nice.  At the end of the day, your website is an asset and needs the best performance it can for the best ROI for your business.  James: Well, you could load a straight HTML document with a couple of words on it and call it your website. But it's all black and white. If your audience lands on a website like that, they're going to have a pretty poor impression of your business.   It will look like you've half-assed it.  It could be the fastest loading site in the world. But if there is no design, there's no professionalism in the brand presence. It doesn't matter how well-performing it is.  You're going to lose your audience. You're going to lose the purpose of why this thing exists.  Your purpose is to engage your audience and inform them about what you do. This will encourage them to take a positive action towards achieving the objectives of your business online. So what do you have to say to that, Joe? Joseph: A good example of performance over design is Amazon. They've got some design, but it isn't the core of what they do. Their core is making money and growing their business, focusing heavily on performance.  They did a study (I can't remember the exact numbers), where they lost tens of millions of dollars because the speed was off by a millisecond. This was a hugely critical aspect of their business.  So if you've got a website, and by the way, it doesn't need to be just text on the page in black and white. You can have a nice design and performs well. But performance has to actually be part of the plan of the website.  It can't be something that you think of afterwards.  Otherwise, you then have to re-engineer certain parts to make sure that it is performing. Website performance is incredibly valuable and you can have both. It comes down to how much you want to sacrifice. James: That was well said. This underlines the importance of what a  professional web design agency should do for you. Because it's actually not a debate of design versus performance.  Do you want to have a nice design or do you want to have a site that loads fast?  No, you can actually have a beautiful, well-designed website that performs and loads quickly if you know what you're doing. And this isn't something that is done once the website has been built or while it's being built.  This goes down to the fundamental planning aspects.  That's the website strategy for you to be able to create a website that's visually appealing to your audience. But also performs and produces a result for your business. This is something that is a skill. This takes experience. This takes know-how in how to do this well. A lot of websites that have been DIY'd, or businesses that come to us with sites that look good but perform terribly is because of what they haven't considered. They've looked at it purely from a design-only angle. They haven't considered the performance angle.  Or you get very fast loading websites that look terrible because they typically have good development capability, but terrible design capability, which also then misses the mark.  You can have both, and this is what we do at Web3. We have both design and development talent in-house. This allows us to bring both worlds together and create something that works the best in both worlds for our clients and our customers. So that's another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show. As always, I hope you learned something new and we'll be back soon with another debate around creativity versus data.  I can't wait to announce this one and yes, rumble in the ring with you, Joseph. Joseph: Can't wait. Bring it on, James. James: Awesome. All right. That's a wrap. We'll see you again real soon.

This podcast addresses two major marketing strategies: Brand Marketing and Lead Generation. This fiery debate discloses what drives sales faster and what is more beneficial for your small to medium-sized business. Want to get more business but don't know the best way to do so? As a digital marketing company, we come across this question almost every day. Businesses get stuck in the loop of wanting brand awareness but needing the leads and audience to progress. Let us help you make the best decision for your business, stay tuned. Brand Marketing  Brand marketing promotes your products or services while highlighting the essence of your business. The goal is to show your business's identity, values, and personality to your audience. Essentially, your brand is the bridge between your product and your customer. Build Brand Awareness Small businesses must build brand awareness and attract customers before lead generation can be successful. Customers won't give out their details if they don't know who you are. Along with brand awareness comes brand reputation. The more people know and talk about your brand, the more likely others will do the same, creating the Butterfly effect. Boosting your brand's reputation will create opportunities to infiltrate large markets.  Brand marketing allows small businesses to compete with big brands to level the playing field.  The Brand becomes the Product What do you think your customers associate your brand with? Having your brand come to mind when customers think of a product or service is the goal. Reputable brands market their name until their name becomes the service.  For example, when people ask for Panadol they're asking for paracetamol. Or if someone mentions they want to buy an Apple, do you think of the fruit or the brand? Sometimes you may even struggle to think of the actual product before these brand names.  What do these brands have in common? Trust. Reputable and trustworthy brands foster brand loyalty, which helps to skyrocket sales.  Brand marketing = Brand loyalty  Digital marketing allows small businesses to keep their customers longer. Brand marketing ensures customer not only remember, but love your brand. Rather than finding you online, the customer associates with your brand, making it easier to sell. This process comes naturally, showing how brand awareness and digital marketing lay the groundwork for lead generation. Having a strong brand means you don't need to chase leads - they chase you.  Do you have enough visibility for lead generation to be as valuable as possible?  Lead Generation Marketing Lead Generation is the process of capturing prospects and turning them into leads by piquing their interest. It allows you to nurture them until they're ready to take action and buy your product or service.  All about Conversion Leads turn into Customers, which then produce sales. The most beneficial aspect of lead generation is increasing your sales.  Lead Generation is perfect if your business offers value to the customer. Most people are wary of entering their details and try to avoid inundating spam emails. This caution disappears once guaranteed beneficial information and resources unique to your brand. A compelling call to action is imperative to generating leads. Identifies prospects & Targets customers Lead Generation allows you to target and understand customers. This broad understanding of their needs and preferences will help to target them more effectively. Your strong brand marketing efforts will help to tailor the value of your product or service to their needs. Cue, lead nurturing and building relationships. Provides Measurable Results  Lead generation marketing is the key to staying current in the competitive market. It is the cheapest direct marketing method that will translate to a better ROI.  "Without leads or customers, you do not have a business." James Banks Marketing strategies are not transferable, especially for different-sized businesses. Larger businesses with a stabilised ROI use brand marketing. But, small businesses need to grow. Generating leads will increase sales, cash, and survivability, establishing an area for growth.  Your Overall Marketing Strategy Here at Web3, we are more lead generation orientated and work closely with some fantastic brand marketers.  Most successful companies invest in both brand and lead generation marketing. They work simultaneously, helping your overall marketing strategy. However, what works for your one business might not be the answer to yours.    Listen In  Do not miss the hot and fiery debate between Joseph and James. We unpack the details of Brand Marketing and Lead Generation and what is better for your business.  We'd love to hear your thoughts, so let us know who persuaded you in the comments below.    Transcript James Banks: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show. I'm your host, James Banks. Joseph Chesterton: And, I'm your host Joseph Chesterton. James Banks: And, today we'll be debating a red, hot, fiery topic:  brand marketing vs. lead generation marketing. I'll be taking the lead generation side of the debate. Joseph Chesterton: And I'll be on the brand marketing side. James Banks: All right, well without further ado, let's start the debate. Why is brand marketing better than lead generation marketing for small to medium businesses? Joseph Chesterton: Before we get into the debate, I think it's probably a good idea to explain what brand marketing and lead generation marketing is. They're quite specific forms of marketing.    Brand marketing promotes your products, or services in a way that highlights your brand. The goal of brand marketing is to link your identity, values and personality with communications to your audience.  Your brand is the bridge between your product and your customer.  Lead generation marketing is the process of stimulating and capturing interest in a product or service. Then developing a sales pipeline, which allows companies to nurture them until they're ready to buy.   So, without further ado, why brand marketing is better than lead generation marketing? Because it's longer-lasting.    When you have a brand, customers will remember and love your business and your products over having to find you online. When customers know you and associate with your brand, it's far easier to sell products.  You don't have to push the snowball up the hill, it's already halfway up the hill. The flow-on effect is that it impacts your entire business. You can then focus on other areas of the business, not having to invest in ongoing advertising as much. Whereas, with lead generation marketing, it's a constant battle. You have to keep pushing uphill, trying to nurture the leads to try and make a sale. With brand marketing, the flow-on effect is that you can charge more. Aside from that, it's just more exciting. When you have a brand that everyone loves, it's exciting. People don't like being sold to when they already love it and have will willingly buy your product. It's better for your business.  Whereas with lead generation, I'm sure you can try and defend to that, but- James Banks: I'd argue that it's even more exciting Joseph. Because we actually have real KPIs to get excited about, no I'm kidding.    But, tell me, what's the lifeblood of all small to medium businesses? What is it, Joseph? Joseph Chesterton: What? Making money? James Banks: Cash, exactly. Cash is the lifeblood, you run out of cash, you're out of time, you're out of business.    What is there to generate cash? Well, you need customers, business development, sales and ultimately, leads. Without leads or customers (putting aside direct sales or online e-commerce businesses), you don't have a business. Because small to medium businesses need practicality, they need to be able to ensure that there's a tangible, or at least some form of intangible (whether it's intangible or not) return of their marketing and advertising and business development spend.    Are they working towards actually growing to the business? Are they generating leads, which then generates sales, cash and survivability for the business for it to grow? Whereas, brand based marketing is often reserved for larger businesses. These have a form of stabilised cash flow and are willing to invest and build the brand.  So, what comes first is the chicken and the egg? Or, is it one or the other? It all comes down to what the best long term strategy is.    Why is brand marketing the better long term strategy than lead generation marketing Joseph? Joseph Chesterton: Yeah, I think it's pretty clear here that I've got the easy corner of this ring. James Banks: I set you up for that one. Joseph Chesterton: Because, when you do brand marketing, it resonates with your customers, and is easier to sell to.    Panadol, Sharpie, Chapstick and PowerPoint are all brands. They aren't actually the product, but people associate those products with the brand name.    When searching for, let's say, paracetamol, do you say: "Oh, I need to get a paracetamol" or, "I need to go get a Panadol"?    It's so much easier when you own your brand and people associate with the brand and marketing is done right. It's just so much easier for the business.   Or, let's say, I'm going to go and get an apple. Would you, somewhere in your brain think, is that an Apple computer or the fruit, apple? With such a strong brand, such as Apple, it's a no-brainer that they have a better long term strategy.    They don't need to be chasing leads and things, the leads chase you essentially.   James Banks: Well, it comes down to what produces the best result.  It goes back to my previous point about intangible vs. tangible KPIs or points of measurement. And how you measure the success of any campaign, whether it be brand marketing or lead generation marketing.    The thing is that we are not in either role or company. Yes, we do a fair bit and we are more orientated towards the lead generation marketing side of things. But we work very closely with some fantastic brand marketers. We've seen this across hundreds of clients and hundreds of accounts over many, many years now.    Ultimately, the most successful companies are the ones that invest in both brand and lead generation marking.   They don't see it as heaven and hell, it's two things that work in simultaneous conjunction with each other. You could have a great sales pipeline, but if you are a nobody, you're a no brand. It's very difficult to build a long term successful company.   On the alternative side of things, if you're only doing brand based activity, and not converting it into sales and cash, then you don't have a business.     It's all sizzle and no steak.    The ultimate position to be in is being able to invest and grow both sides of your business. Evaluate your marketing and advertising campaigns under both umbrellas; brand and lead generation marketing. Is there anything else you wanted to add to that Joseph?   Joseph Chesterton: I would say that when you are first starting out, yes, you do need to be doing both. But, there would probably be a strong emphasis on lead generation marketing.    But, when you do focus on the long term, your brand is crucial. It's something that is hard to create when you're starting out and takes more time than lead generation marketing. James Banks: Brand drives value, and value is the ultimate north star of a business. You're creating a business that is of value. Brand is what drives the value, along with many other pieces. But the public-facing thing that everyone can touch, see, feel and be on the tip of everyone's tongue, is ultimately brand.  You can't get a well-known brand without leads, sales or customers, they work together. Anyway, I think we have covered this topic enough. So with that said, that's a wrap on the brand versus lead generation marketing debate. We hope you enjoyed that episode.  Tune in next time for another red, hot debate.  We will talk to you all again real soon. Discover more at: https://web3.com.au

Are you more left-brained or right-brained? This intense debate about Data-driven vs Content Marketing will have your undivided attention (see what I did there?). James and Joseph find out which marketing strategy is more important for your business and why.    It’s often considered a personal preference to each marketer and business, but there are some guidelines for knowing which way you need to go. Data answers the questions of ‘when’, ‘why’ and ‘what’, whereas creativity comes in to play with the ‘how’. But this isn’t always the case.  So do you think you’re more of a data director or a creative connoisseur? We’ve done the research, you decide who won you over.  Listen in to what we uncover in our intense debate: Data-driven Vs. Creative marketing and what is more beneficial for you. We’d love to hear your thoughts, so let us know who do you agree with in the comments below. Data-driven Marketing Data-driven marketing optimises your brand based on vital information about the customer. This data predicts their needs, desires and behaviours to create insights that aid your ROI. Data-driven marketing emerged with the rise of digitalisation. Before marketers could analyse the online behaviour of their customers, they went primarily on instinct. How times have changed, turning marketing into a quantifiable process. Targeting your audience Insights produced by data turn prospects into buyers. This helps you develop a deeper understanding of who your audience is. Data-driven marketing can then target these demographics that resonate with your brand based on how they interact with you. This is extremely important once you have a following and before you release a big campaign. By understanding how they behave will help not only you but them too. You’re giving them what they want, building rapport and translating that into engagement.  Boost & Measure results As well as boosting your return of investment, data also tells you how you’re performing. Informed insights drive your decisions as a marketer, helping you measure and track future results. Data can give you an understanding of your customers’ response to your campaigns to tweak.  Marketing is constantly evolving, making it hard to keep up, but a lot easier with data to help. If one strategy isn’t performing well, it is easy to analyse and find an alternative. Consistency It’s hard to say data-driven is more important than creativity, but there is evidence that data-driven marketing should come first, followed by creative execution. Consistently hitting a goal comes from data, as we will say again, numbers don’t lie. Long-term strategies tend to collect and measure then refine data in order to execute marketing at a faster rate. Creativity is beautiful, but if done wrong, it can sometimes be hit and miss. In saying that however, using too much data can lead to limited innovation.  Creative Marketing Creative marketing isn’t only thinking outside the box. It involves tactics to leave a memorable and positive experience for prospects. Creative marketing is a big accelerator for brand recognition and long term sales. Creativity is beautiful, but also extremely strategic. Creativity is beautiful, but also extremely strategic - James Banks. Emotions are essential We all make decisions based on our emotions. This is why emotion is extremely powerful when done right. You can have an abundance of data about the time and place to market. But if you don’t have the right, impactful message, you don’t have your sale. Emotion will encourage decision making and push your audience to take action. It is what lets businesses reach milestones in their marketing efforts. When it comes to online engagement, content thrives off shares, clicks and likes. In a fast-paced world, this is exactly what emotion will persuade your audience to do. Your business needs to appeal to your audience’s needs, wants and behavioural instincts.  All numbers, no innovation Common reasons for most brands going viral is because they do something no one else has done before. This concept is particularly important when it comes to standing out from your competitors. To capture attention, your business needs unique, memorable content. The market is saturated with the noise of the competitor’s campaigns and advertisements. It’s time to stand out.  Building brand recognition is essential. This comes from the originality of creative marketing. The tactics of creative marketing will not only make a bang but stick with the public for the long term.  Here to stay When launching big campaigns, you need creativity. Creative marketing will grab your audience’s attention and keep it. Established brands such as Apple and McDonalds have built their brand through creative marketing. Because of these strategies, they’re globally recognised by the even simplest of indicators. If that doesn’t scream long term, I don’t know what will. Another side to ‘long-term’ comes stability. As we progress to a more digitised world, the process of data-driven marketing has the potential to become automated. This progression will allow marketers to save time, effort and energy for big, creative ideas. The role of creatives will never become redundant and is a huge stand out for your brand.  Is ‘Data-driven creativity’ a thing? Short answer, yes. Combining both, data and creativity, is key to ensuring your campaign ticks all the boxes. Creative strategies more often than not, come from the information data insights offer. It is easier creating an astonishing campaign, with the data of who to target, when to launch and why.  Data lays out the path for the creativity to drive it to success.  Here at Web3, we are very much on the data-driven side of things in what we actually provide as a service. Although, we believe we have the perfect mix of creative hearts and analytical minds within our team. Transcript James Banks: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show. I'm your host, James Banks. Joseph Chesterton: And I'm your host Joseph Chesterton. James Banks: And today, we have another spicy, hot out the oven debate on data-driven versus creative marketing. Which one is better for business? So for this debate, I will be taking the creative marketing side of the ring. Joseph Chesterton: And I will be taking the data-driven side. James Bank: Alrighty, well, without further ado, let's start the show. So Joseph, why is data-driven marketing better than creative marketing? Before we get started, it would probably be handy to define what data-driven and creative marketing is. Joseph Chesterton: So data-driven marketing is a process by which marketers gain insights in trends. These insights are based on in-depth analysis, informed by numbers. Whereas creative marketing is, throw some links and see if it sticks. James Banks: Oh, please. Joseph Chesterton: I'll let you back that one up when it comes to it. But anyway, so which one is better? I'm on the data-driven side.  So numbers don't lie.  You cannot (well, you can) fake numbers but when you're tracking something that is giving you data. When done correctly, data will give you insights into the decisions you make with marketing. When you do have the data to track, and you are tracking it and measuring it. Then it's important to test and measure.  From there, you'll be able to produce marketing that is bang on. As well as highly targeted to the specific audience because of the analytics and insights that you have from the data-driven approach. That's why I believe data-driven is super important when it comes to marketing. Obviously, there's the creative side. So I'll throw that over to you, James. James Banks: Yeah, definitely. Creative is a little bit more than just throwing something against the wall and seeing if it will stick. ‘Creative’ in an agency sense means things such as artwork and imagery. Things such as graphics down to the actual tactical level. But also, creative exists on a strategic level.  I'll give an example of one of the most memorable advertising campaigns in history. Apple's 1984 Think Different campaign, an excellent example of creative based advertising. Do you think Steve Jobs and the Apple marketing advertising team pulled up a data-driven report and said:  "You know what? We need to do a reenactment of the 1984 pitcher and have someone throw a sledgehammer into a giant television." None.  No data or reporting would have generated the seed for that campaign to then come into existence. And then become one of the most memorable and successful advertising campaigns of all times. That's the difference between data-driven and creative marketing.  Creative requires genuine human creativity to come up with something that ideally hasn't been done before.  Something that has not been seen or heard from a big picture advertising point of view.  Going down to the tactical execution of campaigns through creative and artwork. It's vitally important for marketing and advertising campaigns to have the creativity to be successful.  Creativity is a lot harder to do than data-driven marketing and is more valuable and important. Not to discredit data-driven per se. But I do believe it is the more valuable and more important form of marketing between the two. What do you have to say to that, Joseph? Joseph Chesterton: Well, it's exactly that. It is far more difficult to do than collecting numbers. So if you are - James Banks: Far more difficult to do well, that is. Joseph Chesterton: Yes. When you're trying to create an ad like what Apple has made, day in and day out, good luck with that. That's going to be very, very difficult to do.  Whereas if you are marketing based on what the data is telling you, then it will give you far greater insight. It allows you to create marketing that resonates with the specific people you're targeting. Not the entire world or whoever they were marketing to at the time.  The strategy of collecting and measuring data is long-term. Refining your marketing based on data will allow you to execute your marketing faster. Especially opposed to ones requiring creative thinking and creative excellence every single time.  That sh*t is expensive.  With that said, why do you say that creative marketing is the better long-term strategy, James? James Banks: Because for the time being, and I hope it stays like this indefinitely. You can't programme an AI or machine learning bot to produce creative marketing. Meaning creative in the sense of breakthrough campaigns.  There are things out there that can produce banners, for example. You can preset some conditions and it starts churning out banner ads and things like that for you. But the big picture creative is going to be something that will and should always hold within the domain of great human advertisers. Data-driven marketing, on the other hand, is exactly that. It is a bunch of numbers inputted, interpreted, then generated. Those insights then lead to action and optimization efforts.  We've already seen for the last five-plus years, the big guys in the field, such as Google and Facebook. They are progressively increasing the sophistication of their algorithms. Specifically, their AIs and their machine learnings around their advertising platform. And the AIs are doing exactly what a good data-driven marketer would be. Interpret the data, generate insights, formulate a hypothesis, then edit, action, and optimise the campaign accordingly.  Which poses the question:  What is the role of a modern marketer and advertiser with the increasing sophistication of these algorithms? Algorithms that are taking time away that could be spent driving and optimising a data-driven campaign?  That's why I believe creative, that is big, shock, creative marketing, will ultimately have a greater life span between the two. What do you have to say to that, Joseph? Joseph Chesterton: I tend to agree that creative will always be a key aspect of marketing. But I believe that there's going to be a hybrid approach where we do utilise things like Facebook and Google that are always collecting our data.  When we utilise the data they're collecting, that's readily available and we're freely giving to them, then we'll be able to make decisions far quicker than having to think of some stroke of genius each time. In which case, creativity can be built on top of data, and ideas can be generated easier.  They go hand in hand. You can't do one without the other.  Although, you can probably do creative once. But to be able to replicate that, you then need to be tracking the data. And to measure the results so that they can be as best as they possibly can be. Do you think that creative marketing is better than data-driven, or do you agree that they go hand in hand? James Banks: I think the big picture ultimately means that data-driven... let's just break this down into specifics. So, data-driven optimization on a marketing and advertising campaign, in the long-term will be taken over.  Machine learning and algorithms will be able to do it faster and better than humans.  It's not the case now. Don't get me wrong. But it will be. I think it will be here in a much shorter timeframe than a lot of marketers and advertisers believe it will come.  But I don't see that as a bad thing. I'm not scared of it. I think that's a great thing.  Marketers and advertisers can spend the time, effort, energy on the big creative ideas. The things that have been sidelined over the last 10 to 20 years with the advent of digital marketing. The focus of digital marketing and advertising since its inception has been able to collect real, meaningful data in the first place. But also, how to understand, interpret and turn it into insights and actions that lead to results. Now that the industry is growing more sophisticated tactics and strategies, they’re starting to test, swipe and deploy. This leaves a massive gap for big picture creativity. I really hope that the industry moves back to big ideas, big creatives.  For us at Web3, we are very much on the data-driven side of things in what we actually do as a service. And I have massive respect for creative marketers and advertisers that do these big picture campaigns. But the future is a combination of both.  Optimization and day to day are going to be taken care of by things such as machine learning. This will allow marketers and advertisers to focus on the big picture, big idea and creative campaigns. This will move the needle and provide what I hope is more value to the audiences that they're looking to serve. Joseph Chesterton: Well said. Okay. That's a wrap. James Banks: I think that's a wrap too, Joseph. So with that said, ladies and gentlemen, thanks again for tuning in to another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show.  Thank you for listening, and have a nice day. Discover more at: https://web3.com.au/data-driven-vs-creative-marketing/

Welcome to the eighth episode of Web3 Marketing Debate - an intense debate where we discuss content versus design.  The debate of Content versus Design is much like the chicken and the egg scenario - which comes first and which is more important? James and Joseph take on an intense debate on which is more important for a business, particularly on landing pages; the content or design. This opens up various questions about what is more important to your own brand and how you measure success.  Poor design can hinder your audience impressions of you, but poorly thought out content is what will break or break a sale. All looks, no leverage. TRANSCRIPT James Banks:Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show. I'm your host, James Banks. Joseph Chesterton:And I'm your host, Joseph Chesterton. James Banks:And today we'll be discussing... We'll be debating more like it, content versus design, which one's better, which one is more valuable. So for this debate, I'll be jumping into the design side of the debate. Joseph Chesterton:I will be on the content side. James Banks:All right, well, let's kick things off. So Joseph, tell me why is content superior or why is it more important for businesses to think about, to spend time, effort, energy and resource in as opposed to design? Joseph Chesterton:Content versus design I would say is almost chicken before the egg. You can't have good design without content. So if we're talking about a website, every page on a website needs content. Sure you can put the design into the website, but without text on the page then it's almost probably going to be useless. I would argue that content is very important for businesses. When people search for your business, they probably go to Google, if they aren't sure of your brand. Google indexes content, it doesn't index your design. So content is what is most important in that aspect for SEO as well, or to rank highly in search. My third point would be content helps people buy. You could have a beautiful design, but without content or actual context of the page by the text, then most likely people won't buy from you. So those are my three points on why content is most important. What do you have to say to that? James Banks:Well, I think it's one of those ones you write about chicken before the egg. How can you craft copy and content when you visually have got no idea what the end outcome is going to look like?  I think just to clarify for our listeners, we're talking about in the case of creating a new website or a landing page or something that's going to go online for you to put in front of your audience.  It makes it very difficult to be able to contextualise what content you actually need to put on the page when you've got no bearing or understanding of visually how this thing is going to look, or what the application is. I think just going to your point as well on search engine optimization, I don't think you're correct in saying that design isn't a factor, it is. And specifically when we break that down, what is design? It's a great user experience. It's great user interface practices. It's being able to create something that's both appealing and on-brand point, that communicates your brand values.  It effectively engages and talks to your audience and pulls them in and magnetises them into one to find out more. And these are the types of things, particularly on the user experience side that Google is actively looking for and policing as part of the algorithm.  So design still has its importance of ensuring that not only can you create an effective web experience, but you can also create one that ranks well in search. But ultimately if we look at both content and design, ‘what is more valuable’, why in your opinion do you believe content is more valuable as opposed to design, Joseph? Joseph Chesterton:Well, if you're getting technical on the certain aspects of search, then sure you could justify it either way, but when it comes to the actual content, it's more valuable. James Banks:This isn't much of a debate. Joseph Chesterton:When you talk ‘value’, are you talking about the cost of content versus design or return of content versus design? Because if you were to buy content versus buy design, you can put a buy price tag on design whereas content is often very undervalued.  Like some of the biggest brands in the world spend tens or even hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars on their brand and logo. Whereas I'm pretty sure they wouldn't spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the actual texts or content that they put on their pages. James Banks:There's a lot of starving copywriters out there Joseph, it goes both ways. Joseph Chesterton:That's right. But what it is on a page is what will make or break a sale.  Sure, the design comes into play but when it comes to actual people buying from you on your website, then chances are they will consume the content on your site.  That's arguably the most valuable thing on your website. What do you have to say to that, James? James Banks:Well, I think the value is very intrinsic and you can't honestly put an exact dollar value to a single word or a design. Of course, we all know what the value of bad content and bad design looks like, which is an exercise that no business ever wants to go down.  But great copy and great content are not uncommon for someone that knows how to craft high converting sales copy that charge $20,000 plus for a sales page. On the flip side, great designers can charge tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars just to design a page because when it gets to the point of the intangibility of these outcomes, you can't necessarily directly connect it to a dollar value, but ultimately both are of extremely high importance.  And I agree with you on the point that businesses are typically greatly undervalued what good design and good content will do for a business, many businesses out there, and I'll even argue our business would say that great design and great content, there's nothing more paramount in what we do for our marketing and advertising efforts, other than great design and great content. Ultimately how we approach things here at Web3 is a little biased with this debate, but we actually take the content-first approach, not mobile-first or design first or functionality first, but content first. Why do we do that?  We personally believe that content is the most valuable thing that you can produce and put online. Content is ultimately queen, and design I'd say is very closely followed in that scenario.  With content and design, the design should mould and work with the content to produce and display it in the most engaging way, shape and form as possible. Getting down into the nitty-gritty. You could have a landing page where you have designed it to have say, a three stacked headline, but after the content has been created it turns out that a more effective headline-only needs two lines. So things like that, then you have to go back and change the design, it actually can be a very inefficient process if you do this at scale.  Hence, why creating the best possible content regardless of constraints of design is the way in which we approach things. The design then emphasises the content, giving it the best chance of it performing its objectives and serving the goals that it needs to serve and achieve for the business. So with that said, Joseph, is there anything else you wanted to add to this debate? Joseph Chesterton:As far as which one produces the best results from straight money in the bank, ROI point of view, content I would argue would win, but it's hard to put an ROI on it and it's very often undervalued. A lot of smaller businesses, especially, that come to us often believe that they can write their own content, which in some cases they can, but when it comes to actually writing it in a way that is conversion-focused for the correct target market rather than writing it from a business owner point of view.  When you do write content, it has to be targeted and it has to be crafted for what the content is being written for. So as long as that is considered, then you will get good results from the content. And then I guess design comes in after that and is what helps convert and sell. James Banks:Absolutely. And not to undervalue the importance of excellent design. We certainly don't take any shortcuts with design, even though we do take a content-first approach here at Web3 but anyway.  With that said and done, we'll wrap up another episode of the Marketing Debate Show. Thank you so much for tuning in and dial in next time for our next episode, which will be all about data-driven versus creative marketing. Who will win?  We will see until then, have a great day. We'll talk to y'all soon.

Episode Transcript: James: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Web3 marking debate show. Today we will be debating content marketing versus SEO. I'm your co-host, James Banks, and I will be taking the SEO side of the ring. Joseph: And I'm Joseph Chesterton and I will be taking the content marketing side. James: All righty, well, let's get the show and debate started. So, Joseph, why does content marketing work better than SEO? Joseph: Content marketing is focused around creating, publishing and distributing content for a targeted audience online. With SEO, SEO actually can't happen without content marketing. So content marketing is the core for marketing to your audience. You could have the perfectly optimised SEO friendly website, but without content marketing, then what's the point? You're not reaching the people that you want to reach. So content marketing is clearly the better option. And on top of that, with content marketing, it's one of the ways to build your brand and to be able to, resonate and grow your audience. And finally on top of that, content marketing, you can see actionable results sooner getting in front of the people where your target market are. Whereas with SEO you have to wait until you've created the content then you can do the optimisations. That's my opinion on it. What's yours, James? James: Well thanks for concluding the show Joseph, we'll see you all in the next episode. Nah i'm kidding. Look. Yes content marketing and SEO are similar, but they're not exactly the same thing. They are different. SEO, ok let's say for example, why will you be doing both of these to begin with? Well, you probably the sole purpose is you want to be discovered. You want your target audience to discover you. Discover your website more than what is currently happening. That's why you would do either one of these two exercises. But here's the thing. You know, content marketing you could be doing videos, audio's, blogging and doing all this stuff and getting it on your website. But if your website is not set up, I.E. the backend, the frontend, the strategy of how your audience is searching to find and discover all of this great content that you're producing If you haven't considered this as part of your traditional SEO strategy, then your content marketing strategy can miss the point. Or you get your content bang on, but because you haven't actually looked and probably audited it and assessed your website from a technical functional UI/UX (User Interface/User Experience) perspective. All of this effort and energy and resources that's going into content marketing gets subdued because of these issues that would of been fixed and solved if you looked at your website from the lens of a traditional SEO campaign. That's why I believe that SEO is the one that should prelude content marketing because of the fact that, if done correctly, will solve these foundational issues that, once solved, will amplify the results of your content marketing efforts. Speaking about results Joseph, why would you say? Content marketing produces better results than SEO. Joseph: I kind of think we're comparing apples with oranges here. One typically starts on the website, then moves into social platforms, whereas the other one is predominantly on your website and moves into other areas. The ROI (Return on investment) is two different things, depending on what your ROI you're targeting. So content marketing works better when you're building a brand and you're trying to reach an audience that is in a certain location not on your website. So really, we need to determine what the ROI is if it is to grow your business than honestly, I think we can draw on this one. James: Well, I'm pretty sure this is the marketing debate Show Joseph. So there will be no fence sitting. There will be no drawing. Ha Ha Ha. Because here's the thing, because. Alright, when we talk about results, all right, let me bring back my original point. If content marking was aligned and precluded by an SEO search and strategy, you can then start attributing an ROI to your content marketing efforts. Because I'll give you an example. Really, really simple example. You create a blog post that blog post ranks well in organic search, the traffic from organic search to that blog post turns into a tangible conversion action such as someone reads it. They then opt in to read more. Perhaps they contact, perhaps they enquire. Perhaps they call, depending on what are the metrics of success that you are measuring for your business when you actually bring these two together, you can actually track and manage a tangible ROI from content marketing. If content marketing is purely just for brand building, then that's a different storey. The return on the ROI isn't necessarily directly lead-gen, it's different. The metrics are different. However, when we talk about results for small to medium businesses for driving growth by combining content marketing together with SEO. That allows you to then track the returns of your content marketing efforts, which can then be attributed to things such as return on an investment so on and so forth. Whatever marketing metric that you are using to gauge the success of your digital marketing strategy. So with that said, Joseph, which one's better for long term success? Joseph: I honestly believe that you actually need to do both to succeed online and to grow your business. I think the better long term strategy is content market and make sure that you're doing SEO. Probably not going to debate this one James. James: Well, it isn't really much of a debate because our point, we've been making this point for years is content marking Is SEO and SEO is content marketing. There really is no point in splitting hairs between these two things because they are in two of the same thing. Similar to what we said on our Google Ads versus SEO debate earlier on in the show. These play on each other. They can amplify and magnitude the results of each other if you combine the strategy together under the one centralist digital marketing campaign strategy. This is what we do for our clients, by the way, because we know that the magnitude of success is so much greater when you bring content marketing together with SEO. And this is what we recommend if you're considering going down either or options, why not do both? Both will allow you to improve your chances of succeeding and reaching your goals and objectives online through digital marketing. So that's a conclusion for the marketing debate show. Again, we will be discussing a really cool topic for the next episode which will be around the whole subject of Brand versus lead generation. So say tuned for that. But without further ado, thank you again for tuning into another marking debate show. We'll talk to you all real soon. If you would like to learn more about anything discussed in this episode then please visit our post at Web3 on Content Marketing VS SEO

  Episode Transcript James: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Web3 Marketing debate show. I am your co-host James Banks. Joseph: And I'm your co-host Joseph Chesterton. James: And today we've got another fire starter of a debate. Landing page software. What is better? Third party standalone landing page software I.e. ClickFunnels, leadpages. Or is building landing pages in your existing content management system such as WordPress the better way to go? Which one is better? Before we kick things off, I'll be taking the, do your landing pages in your existing websites content management system side of the debate and Joseph will be backing the why you should use a third party system to do this and keep it separated out. So, without further ado, let's kick things off. Now, Joseph, I'll let you start. Out of building landing pages in your existing CMS versus building them in a dedicated landing page software. It's the Leadpages, ClickFunnels, so on and so forth. Why is building it in a dedicated landing page software tool better than just building it in your existing website system? Joseph: Well, it all comes down to the software being built for purpose. Take WordPress, for example. Its aim is to be able to blog and create website pages for your website. Creating landing pages that are dedicated for purpose and specifically around converting leads into your business. Then, using landing page software that's built for that is far easier to do. Just the time and cost associated with that. It's far less having things pre-built for you with layouts that have been tried and tested many times over. Not only that, but then being able to track and see what actually is working with the metrics available through the landing page software and then being able to improve on those landing pages that you build. It simply is night and day different to something like doing it yourself in WordPress or any CMS. So that's why I think the landing page software is a better option. What's your opinion, James? James: Well, you mentioned that it's going to save you time, and it's going to be easier. It's not. Because here's the thing. You got to learn another a completely new system. A completely new page builder to then create all these landing pages when, if you've already been able to put a site together or you're familiar with your existing websites content management system. Let's just say, for example, it's WordPress. Most people use it. It's the most popular one. If you can pull together a page in WordPress, then you can create a landing page in it as well. You just have to change the header and the footer and then adjust the body of it to match the intent of what you need it to achieve. You don't have to go and learn another system. You don't have to pay for another tool. You have to do any complex domain mapping between your existing domain on your existing site to a new one. You have to worry about any of that stuff. You just create a new page and subtract a couple of elements. That's the easier way to do it. And you don't have to worry about another system to manage its simpler. Joseph: It sounds too good to be true, James. I'll take your word for it. But at the end of day, which one performs better? Landing page software or WordPress? James: Okay, let's back up. If you're using landing pages, and if your goal and objective is to use landing pages as part of your digital marketing strategy. Then we can safely assume that conversions and the objective to convert your audience and your traffic into some type of conversion goal. Whether be leads whether that be sales, whether that be opt-ins or whatever it might be, is the primary objective. So why should that stop at the leading page? Your entire website should be fast. It should be performant. It should be optimised for conversions as opposed to, Okay, let's just have, like, a brochure Ware website. And let's just make the landing pages conversion optimised. No absolutely not. As we know, the pathway for conversion in the modern era is so multifaceted, so multi disciplinary. It's rare that someone arrives on a landing page and then just converts right there. No, they'll generally check out your website. They'll go across all aspects then check out your business. Any potential page on your site could be a point of conversion. Hence, why when we talk about which one performs better? Okay, yes so fit for purpose. Landing pages do generally perform well but why shouldn't your whole website perform just as well as your landing page if you make your whole entire website perform well then your landing pages built inside your website will also perform well. Then you get the net benefit of having everything perform better, not just one or two pages on your site. Joseph: It's a good point you make about having a website that works for your business, but we're talking specifically about landing pages here, So let's take away the design, let's take away the speed performance and let's talk about why landing pages are better. It's because you can do more things in a easier way and you don't have to potentially know how to code it. Landing page software. It's all about getting landing pages quickly and being able to utilise what the landing pages that have been built or can be built to be able to market to your audience. So the software itself all the major players include things that are easy for you to see the performance, like the metrics. On top of that, you could do things like maybe split testing and being able to do tests to ensure that what your pages are set up to do, will do what you intend. The landing page software companies build these landing pages based on best practises. When you're building landing pages, you can utilise these templates, and the guesswork is taken out of the equation for you because they built it for you. And then you just have to slap in your logo, slap on the images and Bob's your uncle, your away and ready to go. It's as easy as that, whereas with WordPress, you won't get those metrics and things that landing page software will provide you. So marketers and people that are in these platforms day in and day out will love it because you can, easily set up landing pages with drag and drop software and you're away. So that's why landing page software performs better, in my honest opinion. James: Well, I have to disagree with you Joe because the problem is you mention yourself when you're just slapping a logo and slapping some images and hit the go live button. This is the problem because there's a completely foreign system to what your websites built in, even if you load in all of your design, all of your typography, your colour palette. It's a different code base. You will get brand and design inconsistencies with what your main website looks like, which then makes your brand and business look not very professional when you have a website over here that looks one way and another website landing page over here that looks like another way. As long as you've done anything correctly and you build it within your existing website, you'd have to go and reprogram all of your styles and everything is already there, so you have a much more consistent look and feel. Plus, it also saves you time because you don't have to go and redo all these settings again. But ultimately in summary. At the end of the day, these are all tools. These are all tools that are used to solve a job. In some cases, it may actually be simpler and easier and better to create the leading pages in a third party tool. At Web3 we prefer to build our landing pages in our existing client websites where we have designed and developed them from the ground up. That way we make sure the actual core website is fast. It's free of code errors. It's optimised properly, and the design and how it's all put together is optimised for engagement and conversions. That's why when we create landing pages in our existing WordPress theme that we create for our businesses, we know that they're going to work because we make sure the foundation's are done right. This is what gives us a superior performance. And the businesses can save time because they're not having to work between multiple, different business systems to try and achieve the same goal. This is how we do it. But ultimately, at the end of the day, It's what makes sense for your business and how your business has been set up online. If you need any help and advice on understanding what's going to work best for your business, then as always, feel free to reach out to us. Go to web3.com.au and get in contact with us today? So that is another episode of the Web3 marketing debate show. I hope you learnt something new and we will talk to you all real soon. Find out more about this episode and join the conversation at https://web3.com.au/better-landing-pages.

In this episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show, James and Joseph debate whether you should use paid social media or non-paid/organic social media. James is on the paid social media side and Joseph is on the non-paid side. Should you use social media to grow your brand, gain new customers and build your business faster? Obviously we know the answer is yes but is it best to use paid or non-paid methods? Find out what Web3 think in episode four of this great marketing debate. Paid vs organic social media episode show notes James: Hello, everyone and welcome to another episode of the marketing debate show. I'm your co-host James Banks. Joseph: And I'm your co-host Joseph Chesterton. James: And today we will be debating another red hot subject, which is non paid social media versus paid social media. So I'll be taking the paid social media side of the ring, and Joseph will be taking the non-paid organic social media side. Well, without further ado, let's start the debate. So, Joseph, what out of the two out of paid social media verses non-paid social media, why is non-paid or organic social media work better than paid social media? Why is that working the best right now of the too? What's your opinion? Joseph: The thing is, with social networks, they rely on content. So if you're creating content, then obviously that content is what they require. Non paid or organic social media content is number one because the platforms rely on users using the platform to then market to. Yeah of course, there's sponsored or paid posts on social media, but without non paid social content, then the platform simply won't work because it would just be a whole bunch of ads, and that's it. Obviously you have to go to the right platform and your business can reach an infinite number of people on social media. Obviously, they need to go the right platform like, for example TikTok, that's best for millennials and Facebook, possibly the older demographic as well as young. As long as you're content appeals to the audience that you are targeting, then they will engage with it. They'll like, they'll share and they'll subscribe, and then eventually obviously, sell whatever it is you're selling, as long as the content that you're creating is engaging and people are interacting and liking your content, then algorithms will like that and show more of your content so you don't actually need to then pay to keep your rankings or keep your brand in front of the customers that you're targeting. That's why non-paid social media is what's best right now. Obviously, you've got your opinion on paid, James. James: Joseph. I think you're caught in a time machine in the year 2014 because the fact of the matter is organic reach on Facebook for businesses has been killed and they've killed it on Instagram, and they're killing it now. They're starting to kill it now on Linkedin. This is how these platforms work. They give heaps of free organic reach. No, you don't have to pay for it. They get everyone using it, everyone loving it. And when they hit a critical mass and an inflection point, then they pull the organic reach plug out of the system, which then forces the people to have to pay for it. Or forces the businesses to pay for it to be taken seriously. I think the elephant in the room is which one is best for making money. And if you want to use social media to make money, you have to be running paid ads. Relying on organic reach only means that you're going to reach the same, you know, relatively the same amount of audience, with the same amount of message. Growing out and reaching new people at scale, at targeted scale, there's no better or efficient way to do it other than doing it with the paid advertising platforms. Plus it is what the whole objective, the commercial objective of these social media tools is, too get... Oh how they make money is through their advertising networks. So of course they're going to favour and sort of manipulate and manoeuvre businesses into doing it in exchange for them to be able to actually reach new people. So I think it's hands down the only way where if you want to be looking at the context of making money. Brand building something separate and we can address that next. Actually, that's a whole different ball park. But under the subject of making money, you need to pay to play with these platforms. That's very clear. That's very obvious. On the flip side, however, why would, talk to us about brand building, which way is best for building a brand? Is it the paid approach? Is it the organic, non paying approach? What's your opinion, Joe? Joseph: Well, you did mention pay to play. Obviously, there is a certain aspect to social media where you can pay to get in front of your audience. But if you are in the right platform at the right place where your target market are hanging out, so to speak, then content and non-paid ways is a perfectly viable way to grow your business and build your brand. It's not about whether you pay or don't pay. It's about being consistent and getting in front of your target audience wherever they are. To do that, you need to keep your brand presence active and you need to be in front of your target market. All these platforms have metrics where you can view how your content is performing and you use these metrics to improve your content. As long as you're tracking what people are clicking on, what age, what location, All the different metrics and you're continually utilising these platforms, then you can easily build a brand and a huge following from posting content. Just look at all those instagrammers. They don't pay to play. They get paid to play. James: Absolutely because they grew their following back when you could do it organically. And now that they're reaping in the rewards after that Instagram pulled the plug on the platform for new profiles that really genuinely struggle that don't have a pre-existing audience to actually grow to have something of substantial reach. However, in your defence. Ultimately, and this is starting to bring everything together is that organic posting is still the way to go forward with building not only building a brand presence but also remaining front off mind with the audience that's already actively following you, and is already actively engaged. Perhaps they found you and discovered you through your paid advertising efforts. Found you engaging enough to follow you. Then the organic content is what then keeps them engaged. So you don't just become a brand that they forget overnight. It keeps them engaged in, perhaps potentially then down the track. They convert into customers for your business. So in summary and again, no surprises here is ultimately it isn't an either or play here. Businesses that want to win the social media game ultimately need to be firing on both cylinders. That is, having a good organic social media content marketing strategy that's optimised for maintaining and increasing the brand presence with the audience that you're targeting and also using paid social media to not only increase your audience reach. But then also position middle of the funnel content, such as things such as opt-ins, webinars, things that you can then use those details and bring it into your sales funnel to then, for a percentage of the people that opt in, there's a chance that they could convert into leads and customers for your business. So being able to combine both strategies together is where businesses win, that's what we do here at Web3. And this is what we help businesses achieve and succeed online is by bringing both together to a unified strategy that helps grow the business at the end of the day. Allrighty, well, that is another episode of the Web3 Marketing debate Podcast. I hope you learned something new, and we'll be in touch real soon. Joseph, what are we, whats a teaser for the next episode that you can share? Joseph: Yeah, hope you enjoyed that episode. Next episode will be talking about landing pages. Whether you use a third party software or your use WordPress. That's what we'll be debating. See you next week. Find out more about this episode here https://web3.com.au/paid-vs-organic-social-media/

In this episode of the Web3 Marketing debate show, James and Joseph cover the best form of online marketing return on investment for your website. Its Search engine optimisation vs Google Ads Pay-per-click facing off back to back. James is on the Google Ads side and Joseph is covering all things SEO and why SEO is better for small to medium businesses. Who do you think wins this debate? What is the best marketing ROI for your business? Is Search Engine Optimisation or Google Ads Pay per click the better option for your website? Let the debate begin! SEO VS Google Ads episode show notes James: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the the marketing debate show. We've got an absolute fire starter of an episode today. An age old, old as digital marketing, old as the history of digital marketing debate SEO versus Google ads. Which one is better? we'll be debating that today. I'm your co-host James Banks. Joseph: and I'm your co-host Joseph Chesterton. James: And I'll be taking the Google ads side off the debate. So without further ado, let's kick things off. I'll throw the question to Joseph. So Joseph out of Google ads and SEO. Why is SEO better than Google ads for small to medium businesses? Why is it better? Joseph: Okay, well, firstly, Search Engine Optimisation is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to your website. Now that we got that out of the way, with SEO it is far longer lasting than paid ads. With paid ads you have to keep putting money in to keep your ranking in wherever it is the ad is being positioned, whereas with SEO, you do the work and maintain it with, if done right with minimal effort, and it lasts almost infinitely. SEO works best with your marketing strategies, so as you're creating content and marketing to your audience. If you do SEO correctly, then the pages that you want to rank and your website will rank really well, and will stay in front of your target keywords and audience that you're trying to get in front of. So with SEO, there's a formula to it but as long as you follow the formula, then you will get the best results long term for spend, whereas with Google ads, it's based on cost per click and the more money you put in, then the more clicks that you get. But that's not always the best solution for businesses a lot of the time. Where does it actually end? If you have to keep putting money in to be positioned where you want to be positioned, why don't you just use SEO to get there and stay there? James: Well, it shouldn't end as long as it's making the business money. That's the bottom line. And here's the thing is because SEO takes time. You don't just snap your fingers and you're automatically at the top of Google search. It doesn't work like that. Google ads, however, allows you to be at the top of search by simply paying your way there. The businesses don't have to wait. And let's face it, small to medium businesses are often in a rush. We need to grow. We need to get more leads. We need to get more sales. We need to get more people to our website. And that's why Google ads gives you the facility to get in front of your audience for the keywords that they're searching for that you select that you control. Yes, there's a paid factor to it. But you can start getting people to your website immediately and start turning that traffic into leads into sales as long as you know what you're doing and you doing it right. SEO is like the turtle, you have to wait for it. And some businesses don't have the time to wait. They need to hit the market right now. So with that said though, you mentioned earlier before about Google ads isn't necessarily the right solution, or is SEO the right solution for every business. I agree. But why would SEO be better than Google ads to start with Joseph? Joseph: Well, the thing is, SEO, it lasts far longer than Google Ads does by having to put money in to get yourself ranking, whereas, of course, SEO will cost money but once you are ranking highly, especially if you're in a niche industry where there is less competition then chances are, you can stay there almost infinitely as long as you keep maintaining the ranking, which is not that hard if you know what you're doing. If you're a start up business, then SEO is definitely worth your while. A lot of start-up businesses obviously don't have the funds to invest like medium or large enterprises. So SEO can be incredibly effective to get yourself in front of businesses that you otherwise wouldn't. So the best case scenario is you get ranking at number one and you stay there almost infinitely. I don't know if you can do that with Google ads as long as you keep paying for the ranking. James: Well exactly. I mean, you can stay there infinitely with Google Ads. You can stay at the top of search with Google ads, infinitely as long as you're happy to pay for the clicks and to pay for that position. And let's face it with SEO, it still requires ongoing work it still requires someone to maintain it and to be at least the very least tracking your rankings. So should any competitors or threats enter the market, then you can optimise accordingly, like there's still a cost associate. Whether it's not a direct advertising cost, there's still a cost associated with having someone do this for your business. And let's face it for new companies, startup business, they need to get to market quickly. They need to get the wheels turning. They need to validate. They need to get customers in the door. Cash flowing, waiting 6 to 12 months for SEO to kick in, in my opinion, is not a good idea. Unless they're working on a very, very, very long term strategy, and I hope they are and they are cashed up, and they're willing to sort of ride that timeframe through to be able to see the SEO start to produce a return on investment. But most businesses, that's not the case. So what do you say to that Joe? Joseph: There's obviously a place for both, but SEO is the better solution for businesses with a long term strategy, because SEO is a long term strategy that once you utilise, is incredibly powerful for your business. How would you say ROI is compared to SEO and Google ads? James: Well, it depends ultimately. I mean any channel, as long as it's set up and measured correctly and is performing correctly, and has executed correctly can provide a return on investment. However, with Google ads due to the extremely detailed analytics suite that the Google, ads platform provides you can, track it down to the keyword bit level. Which you can do it on an arbitrary level with SEO, but not at the granular level that you can through search advertising, which actually allows you to genuinely track and manage your results and return on investment a lot more accurate than SEO. Not to say that SEO you can't do this, but the in-depth data suite that you get through Google ads allows you, to genuinely truly give you a good arbitrage between what you're doing versus what's producing the leads. What's producing the sales and what's producing the money for the business, which is something you just cannot do, as simply and as easily nor as accurately with SEO. What do you say to that Joe? Joseph: Of course, with SEO, there isn't a black and white, yes and no, whether you're doing the correct thing. But if you follow the common sense best practises and utilise the tools available, like Google Analytics, Google Search Console and any other third party platform then, of course, you're going to get the results that you require. With SEO it's all about long lasting results. So as long as you're doing the best practises with best search engine optimisation practises like keeping your website fast, making sure that there's meta description, title tags, all the key words and things that you are targeting for the pages are correct, then you are going to see long term results. Whereas with Google ads, it only lasts as long as you are spending. So with SEO, improvements are made, and years later you will still see an ROI whether that's high or low depends on how much SEO you are doing. Take Web3 for example. When we first started, we were targeting Web design Brisbane and within a short period of time got it to number one that's had a huge, millions of dollars worth of ROI for our business, and it still continues to play a huge role today, so we could have done that with you Google Ads, but we would have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on getting that same result. James: Well to reply to that and to, I guess, start to conclude this debate. The thing is, is that as an agency, we actually do both. We do both SEO and Google ads. It's not an either or play its not an either or gambit. Search Engine Marketing and being able to grow a business through search engine marketing successfully really does require a combination of both organic SEO and Google Search advertising. Both play hand in hand together and both are used to propel a business forward with its greater marketing digital marketing campaign needs. So ultimately, where we stand on the subject, it's not an either or play. In fact, it's both. Being able to invest into both channels allows your business to grow and scale more rapidly than putting all of your eggs into one single basket. So with that said, that is another episode of the Web3 marketing debate show. Hope you learned something new and, as always, have a nice day. Joseph: And we'll see you next week for another episode where we talk social media. See then.   Discover more at Web3.com.au/seo-vs-google-ads

In this episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show, we talk eCommerce. Arguably the two biggest platforms in eCommerce are WooCommerce and Shopify. We'll assess both platforms from the perspective of small to medium businesses who are considering setting up an eCommerce website or needing to add eCommerce to an existing one. Which platform is the best one for selling physical and digital product and which one is better suited for small to medium business. Listen ahead and we will share our insights in this eCommerce episode. Let the debate begin! WooCommerce VS Shopify Episode show notes James: Hey everyone. Welcome to the Web3 Marketing debate show. I am your co-host, James Banks Joseph: and I'm your co-host Joseph Chesterton. James: And today we'll be weighing in to an all time heavyweight debate, which is WooCommerce versus Shopify. Which one is better? I will be taking the Shopify ring of the corner in this debate. Joseph: and obviously I'm on the WooCommerce side. James: All right, Well, without further ado, let's start. So, which one is better for selling physical products? WooCommerce or Shopify? What's your opinion, Joe? Joseph: Okay, so first of all, WooCommerce. It's built on WordPress. It has a huge open source community made by the people that actually build WordPress whereas Shopify. It's all closed source and you can't actually modify your website to the exact needs that you require, whereas WooCommerce you can. To actually sell physical products. It's a seamless integration with your website. Selling physical products on your website is an end to end solution. It starts from customer coming to your website. Your products are listed on your website, not on a third party platform. The customer chooses the products they wanted buy, clicks add to cart. Person puts in their payment details and is able to pay on your website using payment gateways that you choose. If you're selling products that are physical products then you're obviously going to need shipping. So WooCommerce integrates really well with all the major shipping providers. With WooCommerce you can list an almost infinite number of physical products. Each product has its own product page with all the info that you would expect: description, gallery, variations and so forth. So yes, it's a very good platform for selling physical products. James: So you mention community. I mean, Shopify has probably one of the most, if not the most passionate community of eCommerce merchants in the world over 700,000 of them. Yeah okay, I might agree with you that there's more individual WooCommerce sites per se than Shopify. Data speaking, that is the truth. But are they active in the market? Are they passionately commerce, business people that are there to help each other out? I think a big part of it is the difference between open source versus close source, particularly around selling digital products, is Shopify has everything you need to do to basically get an online store to sell physical products up and running within five minutes or less. Good luck trying to do that with WooCommerce. You're going to be there for a lot longer, trying to figure out the right themes, trying to figure out the right plugin mix to make it work. And on top of that, you have also vulnerability. That open source has versus a close source. Secure platform, like Shopify does not have as much. So that's my point of view why Shopify is superior for selling physical products online. What's your counter argument to that? Joseph: Well, all platforms can be compromised, the fact, that it is a huge community building. The platform means that it's peer review, whereas who knows with Shopify, maybe it would be hacked in a second if someone just did some sort of exploit on the system. Okay, moving on. So it's clear that both platforms can sell physical products, but not everyone needs to sell physical products. What about digital products... James? James: Well Shopify, is not only excellent at selling physical products. It's also great for digital products. It has a whole slew of apps that can be integrated into your Shopify site to allow it to do things such as direct digital download sales, online course sales, selling MP3's, music for your musicians out there. Same with video. And the list goes on and on and on. It has got great community support. These arent sort of hackjob plugins that just some random throws up. These have been verified through Shopify, and they've got a great community support. So it is a fantastic platform for doing this. On WooCommerces front. It's more of a mixed soup off a huge variety of plug ins that all say they do the same thing, and often the case they don't. It's very difficult, in my opinion, to know what is the best way to sell products digitally through WordPress eCommerce such as WooCommerce. WooCommerce is you can switch off its inventory control, but it's still sitting there is still weighing the site down. It doesn't really function as well as a pure play digital products selling platform as opposed Shopify. It can be, it can't be flipped to do that and do it very well. Joseph: OK, so you're attacking, what, the free plugins on the WordPress plugin repository. Whereas, well actually there's a dedicated WooCommerce platform of reviewed plugins that will do exactly what you need with what you're after on your website. WooCommerce does digital products very well. Just as well, as physical products and the checkout process adapts to selling digital products very well. There isn't any need for inventory solutions, but if you do need to then sell products that require inventory, then WooCommerce can easily just integrate straight in. It's part of your website, so it looks like it's just another page on your website. You can integrate with things like memberships and selling courses and membership platforms so that it's a seamless experience for all your customers. James: All right, well, I'm sure the question everyone wants to know is, Why is WooCommerce better than Shopify for small and medium businesses? And in my opinion, is this is the thing is that no matter how hard you try with WooCommerce, you cannot get an eCommerce store up and running. That has a nice, decent design, is well developed. It doesn't break any of the coding and development rules that could hurt your site from things such as organic search ranking point of view. It has a turnkey checkout everything you need to know everything you need to get started and it's so simple to get one up and running. I think I've been able to do it in about two minutes flat and you just simply can't do that with WooCommerce. You know, WooCommerce, yes, it is quite an advanced, powerful tool, but you typically would need professional help. Or you really have to know what you're doing to pull off an effective well optimised online eCommerce store whereas Shopify takes away all of that hard thinking from you and gives you the ability to set it up yourself quickly and easily and get your products to market as fast as possible so you can start making money. That's what we're all here to do as business people. Joseph: Well, James chances are, with 30% websites already running WordPress, you don't actually need to set up a new platform to just sell products online. You can use WooCommerce and integrate directly into your existing website. You don't need to change the entire website, just to sell products. WooCommerce is free to get started. You can do everything that you need to sell products online and it will integrate into your WordPress website just fine. Of course, there's thousands of plugins and things that you can install on your website to increase the amount of flexibility and control on your website, but those are optional paid extra, so you don't need to use them if you don't need them. WooCommerce grows with your business. You're not locked into plans that increase. The problem with Shopify is that as your shop grows, you then have to pay more for all the hosting and platform, whereas with WooCommerce as it's way more flexible and will allow you to scale at a greater rate. James: I think to bring this all together, ultimately both are good, both are very good eCommerce platforms. You can create a successful eCommerce site on either one of them. Either would WooCommerce or Shopify ultimately it boils down and typically our advice is that how do you plan on actually running your eCommerce business. Is eCommerce more of say, like a side extension to your core business, which isn't eCommerce. As Joseph mentioned, typically in that case, the business would probably already be on WordPress. So then extending the existing WordPress site to include WooCommerce to allow for eCommerce sales is often the best way to do it because then you don't have to respin the business. You don't have to relearn how to use a separate platform and then manage a completely separate platform on top of our existing content management system, which just becomes a maintenance and management nightmare long term as organisations grow. However, if you're a pure play eCommerce store and, you know, you're wanting to run and manage the store yourself with the minimal design and development help and you have a relatively straightforward store, no crazy custom integrations that requires sort of custom development. Usually in that case, Shopify is the better solution, particularly for businesses that are starting up. There's Shopify plus, of course, which is for your mid to enterprise level clients. That's a whole other thing we won't get into. But ultimately it boils down to what is the right tool for the right job for your business. If you need any help and assistance and understanding which one will be best for your business, that's what we're here to do. So reach out to us. Web3.com.au. Get in touch and will happily advise you on what will be the best way to get your business selling online and what would be the best way to execute it online. Any final comments on your end Joe? Joseph: Nup. James: Haha, Well, that's a wrap. We'll see you again on the Web3 Marketing debate show real soon. Discover more at https://web3.com.au/woocommerce-vs-shopify/

Episode Summary In this episode of the Web3 Marketing Debate Show, we debate one of the biggest issues in web design: WordPress versus Squarespace. We'll assess both platforms from the perspective of small to medium businesses who are considering redesigning their existing website or creating a new one. Additionally, we'll assess both platforms for SEO performance and eCommerce compatibility. Let the debate begin!  Episode show notes & timestamps  James (00:00): Hey everyone, welcome to the Marketing Debate Show with James and Joseph from Web3. Today, we will be debating one of our all-time favourite topics, WordPress versus Squarespace. I, yours truly, will be on the Squarespace corner of the ring, and Joseph will be on the WordPress corner. Without further ado, let's kick off the debate. What is the best platform? What is the best solution for small to medium businesses? James (00:29): All right, Joseph, tell us why WordPress is the better option than Squarespace for small to medium businesses. Joseph (00:37): Okay. WordPress is used by one-third of the internet. You can't get better than that. I think, versus Squarespace, it crushes in that department. WordPress is so widely used that all marketers should have at least some experience with WordPress, if they're doing web-related marketing. There's a very low barrier to entry with WordPress. It's free. It doesn't cost anything aside from hosting. Shall we just call it a day then? Joseph (01:11): WordPress and Squarespace have been around for a long time. Obviously, WordPress is the most popular, but James, what do you think is the reason why business owners choose Squarespace over WordPress? James (01:22): Yeah. Well, There's a couple of reasons, Joseph, and I think, to get to the point, you mentioned that WordPress is free, and also, simple and easy to get started. The fact of the matter is it's not. Anyone that's worked with WordPress knows that you need a general level of technical competency and knowledge to be able to set up an effective WordPress site. It's an open-source. We're talking about WordPress.org here, not the .com self-hosted platform. WordPress.org, you need to bring your own server. You need to be able to know how to actually install WordPress into the server. Yes, there's a couple of turnkey servers out there, but you still need to set up a server, unlike Squarespace, where it's set and forget. You just sign in. You don't even have to put in your credit card. You just sign up, create an account, and boom, you're up and running. James (02:06): You can publish a site without even having to pay for it. Yes, it's under a branded URL, but you can still go through the entire process without having to set up servers or anything by itself. It's drag and drop. There's heaps of professionally designed templates, whereas WordPress, yes, you can have WordPress themes, but there's still a level of technical know-how and knowledge and a learning curve associated with correctly configuring the theme to fit your exact needs. Where Squarespace dramatically simplifies that process. In my opinion, it creates a much easier to use and user-friendly experience for SMEs to get started with a simple to a moderately complex website. That's why my personal belief is it's a better platform. James (02:52): What's your response to that? Joseph (02:55): The fact that it is so simple and stupid means that you can't really do a hell of a lot of things that are outside the box of just setting it up and putting a few words and images on a screen. Whereas WordPress, because it is open source and highly extensible... Is that the right word? Allows you to do practically anything with the site, and depending on your skill level, obviously, it can be extended to be very, very powerful and fit exactly the needs that you require for your business. Joseph (03:30): To touch on your point with Squarespace, how it requires code... Doesn't require code, sorry, WordPress, you can literally press one button and it installs WordPress for you. You do not need to know code and how we build our websites is so that when a marketing manager or someone like that comes along, they don't need to know code. They just need to know how to click buttons, which is just as good or better than Squarespace. Joseph (03:57): Okay. It's all well and good to just have your website set up, but you actually need to be found, so which one is better in the SEO space? James (04:07): All right. I'll answer from Squarespace's point of view, and the reason being is that it's simple, it's turnkey. SEO can be, for someone that's never done it before, it can be a bit of a minefield. There can be a lot of things, and items, and code, and meta descriptions, and tagging, and schema, and all this type of stuff that you sort of need to be able to be aware and understand of, to then correctly configure it and set it up out of the box with WordPress. Out of the box, WordPress doesn't typically have the core essential components. For example, editing a page's meta title and meta description setting out of the box, you've got to bring in additional software, additional plugins to give you that functionality to do that. James (04:46): You don't have to do that with Squarespace. It's all done there for you. You simply have to go in and make your basic configurations. Site maps are clean, everything's locked down. The code is semantic. The code is clean. Titles are typically tagged correctly. A lot of these things you see with WordPress sites, people that don't know what they're doing just completely get them wrong because there's too much free rein with the platform. They don't know what they're doing. They create a semantically incorrect site, which then hurts their onsite SEO and overall SEO performance. You don't get that problem with Squarespace. It's all done for you. You just put in your content, make a couple of tweaks and edits to the meta titles, and you know everything else, the code base is all fine. It's all done for you. It's foolproof. James (05:26): With that said, Joseph, why is WordPress best for SEO? Joseph (05:32): The fact that WordPress is open source and community-driven means that there is a massive community for people wanting to do SEO on your website. WordPress has a number of SEO plugins that are used by millions and millions of sites. Probably more than the Squarespace user base. Maybe. SEO is extremely powerful, the plugins that are used on WordPress. For example, Yoast SEO is probably the most common one. I think it has 6 million-plus installs and it's updated very regularly. Whereas, I don't know if Squarespace would have that many people working on the SEO side of their platform. That's an assumption, but... James (06:22): Well, if you're saying that there are not many people at Squarespace working on SEO, why is it native in the platform? Why don't you have to then install something into Squarespace to enable SEO functionality? Whereas you have to do with WordPress. Why isn't it native in the platform? Maybe it's because Squarespace understands the importance of SEO, and it's better optimised its platform and experience to allow businesses to be able to have more of a set and forget solution versus a WordPress example. James (06:50): Anyway, with that said- Joseph (06:51): Now, hold on, hold on, hold on. James (06:52): Oh, okay. All right. Joseph (06:54): Very recently WordPress built in the functionality of sitemaps. WordPress out of the box is very SEO friendly. It's built in the way that is very good for SEO out of the box. Yeah, sure, there's meta descriptions and title tags, and things like that, that can be added on, and obviously is a very good thing to have for SEO, but out of the box, WordPress is very good and it's getting better, like with the site map integration that it just did. It automatically builds site maps for you, whereas before it didn't. I would say it's just as strong, if not better because it's got a community back behind it as well. James (07:31): All right. Well, that's the end of the second topic, moving on to the third. It's all about e-commerce. Joseph, why is WordPress better than Squarespace for e-commerce? Joseph (07:41): WordPress has a hell of a lot of flexibility in e-commerce. If you have just a general store, you can set up a website in a matter of seconds, maybe minutes, with all your products and start selling right away. WooCommerce is probably one of the most popular integrations of WordPress, and it's actually owned by the company that makes WordPress, so you know that it's very well supported and integrated with WordPress. Joseph (08:10): Going on the topic of WordPress flexibility and the community behind it, building e-commerce functionality into your website is highly customisable to whatever you need. If there's a store, you can build a store. If you've got virtual products, you can build virtual products, and it's all very integrated and tight to your website. You don't need a third party website to go to, to access selling on your website, and it looks like it's all part of your own website. James (08:41): You said that it takes seconds to set up a WooCommerce store. We know for the fact that it takes a lot longer than that, and you typically need to have made the right prerequisite technical decisions to know that your WordPress theme can actually support WooCommerce. Not all of them do, and if you have an unsupported theme, you then have to develop a WooCommerce site page templates, which then you need to bring in developers and designers, and that adds a whole slew of complexity and cost to it. James (09:05): Squarespace on the other hand, yes, that's the truth. You can set it up in seconds. It's built into the platform. It is a relatively new feature per se, but it is as simple as basically changing your account to allow for commerce, setting up a page as you would, putting a price tag on it, and off you go. You've got yourself a page up and running within seconds that you give the ability to sell for. A big thing, as well, that Squarespace does that I think WooCommerce can do, but it's not as native as what Squarespace has done with how they built the platform, is in-person sales or POS-based sales. They have a really tight, nifty integration with Square, that allows in-store retailers to have their inventory and their e-commerce handled through their, say, tablet-based checkout, and have cards processed through it all through the one inventory management system. James (09:54): WordPress gets a heck of a lot more complicated. You've got to bring in additional software, plugins. Maybe you have to bring in inventory management. There's definitely a high level of technical entry to do it, and it's simply a much... In more cases, often than not, offers a much more steeper learning curve and a more of a difficult onboarding experience to actually get an effective e-commerce store up and running as opposed to Squarespace. Joseph (10:18): Okay. If you're wanting to just have whatever is available out of the box, you'd maybe choose Squarespace, but if you want something that's actually going to work for your business, then you would choose WordPress. James (10:29): Well, I think, in summary of these three points, is if you're getting started and it's a brand new business, or you're just getting started, you're a solo operator, sole trader, and you just need a simple online web presence. You don't have the budget nor timeframe to go through a professional service agency, such as Web3, to make sure that you have a tailored bespoke experience that hits your exact business goals, objectives, and needs and wants. Yes, the solution, the end net solution that we can produce with WordPress, is and will be superior to Squarespace in almost every instance, because it's passing through a full agency, or full design, UI, UX development professionals, marketing professionals, that know how to produce the very best possible website, regardless of platform, for businesses. James (11:16): The reason why Web3 uses WordPress, is that it's extremely flexible and open-ended. Think of it as like a Swiss army knife. It has everything that you could possibly need, which gives you a lot of feature and functionality out of the box. Essentially build the best experience. James (11:30): Squarespace is a more of a closed environment, but it's closed for a reason because it allows people that don't have the timeframe, or money, or budget to hire a developer, to get something up and running themselves that actually does work. That does function as a website. Usually, in our case what we see is businesses, sort of, they start off, they grow, and then they start to outgrow Squarespace. They need a bespoke website solution to fit the needs of their established and growing business. That's when they come to us and we typically flip them to WordPress at that point in time. James (11:59): Hopefully, that summarises sort of our position of this great WordPress versus Squarespace debate. Let us know what you think. What's your opinion? Who do you think won the debate? Which side are you on? Or are you a bit of column A, a bit of column B? Let us know your thoughts, and we will see you next time for the Web3's Marketing Debate Show.

Would you like to learn how to get started marketing your legal practice with Google Search Ads and the Google Display Network? We’ll step you through understanding consumer intent of users searching for lawyers in the legal space and how you can capture that intent with Google Search Ads to drive more sales to your firm.  Google Ads & Google Display Remarketing So, let’s get started! I’m hoping we all know what Google Ads is? Google Ads is a tool that enables you to be there when the audience needs your search, your ads show up and you are paying to get in front of your audience without taking them no more longer form of SEO.  One other tool I want to add is Google Display Remarketing, which I highly recommend, especially for any law firm that is considering to use Google Ads.  Usually, clicks in this space are expensive and paying $6 per click from a Google ad to your website is in comparison to other industries a relatively expensive exercise. That’s why we want to make sure every single click has got the highest potential chance of converting into that enquiry and becoming that potential client, and we can increase this possibility through Google display remarketing.  Especially because people typically don’t convert on the first touchpoint and this is why you need to be able to inform your customers throughout their decision-making cycle on which law firm they are going to work with. This is why we want to be using display ads as the cheapest and more effective way to drive conversions, in cases where your potential customer doesn’t take that conversion offer or they don’t book that call on your website. Content Mix  “It’s not just about an ad but an entire mix of what you are doing! And the key to getting the content, content marketing, SEO and ads correct, is understanding your users’ intent!” James Banks from Web3.  We can look at potential prospective clients in a couple of different scenarios; for example, someone needs a divorce right now and is searching the internet intending to find the answers to, Who can help me right now? Which family law firm can help me right now walk through this with me?  On the other side, a different type of audience might be in a bit of a decision-making process, they are not sure if they can afford a lawyer, do they need a lawyer? Are they looking at options like self litigation versus going with a law firm? This could be something that potential customers would be considering.  Who do they also trust? Professional recommendations and referrals are massive in any form of business, particularly professional services, as well as being able to reinforce trust through search and discoverability.  We are not going to go too far into social media, but this is how you can leverage social media as another channel to create areas of social proof that can help encourage your potential new prospects and new leads. Ad Campaign   Now that we’ve spoken about intent, this is where it starts flowing into the actual design of an ad campaign, for example, we want to be capturing people that know they want a lawyer and know they need a lawyer now. That’s the people we want to be targeting because if we put our firm in front of them, there is a high chance they are going to convert to a lead.  What does that mean? We want to be targeting commercially relevant keyword phrases that have that intent in them. Let’s look at Family Lawyers, family law it’s a great example and there’s a lot of search volume in Google for this area of law. Family lawyers, divorce lawyers, binding financial agreement cost, family lawyers free consultation or free console lawyers for a family trust. These are all search phrases that are achieving hundreds if not thousands of searches every single month in Australia and these allow us to predict the intent of someone searching for a divorce lawyer in Brisbane. So, you got a divorce law firm in Brisbane or a landing page that talks specifically about how you help people overcome divorce or how you work with people to see through a divorce in Brisbane, then this clear message gives you a high chance they are going to convert as leads.  If people are in the discovery process and if it’s more of a longer-form style of law like for example, commercial law where it might not mean they need to get a lawyer immediately, then you could look at potentially creating ads and content around keywords that people are using when they’re in the discoverability process. For example, law firm reviews, best family lawyers, top family lawyers, recommended family lawyers, these are all search phrases that are achieving hundreds and if not thousands of searches per month in Australia. In this scenario, we wouldn’t be wanting to send these people to a book a call landing page, but maybe, we would want to be sending them to a piece of content that does a comparison or shows through client testimonials and case studies why you are the best law firm in your particular needs in that particular location.  Intent Point “Keywords have different intent and your customer will search using specific phrases that have a different intent. This is why is so important to make sure that the intent point is covered with the quality of the value you give with your content”  Mike Bromley from Beyond Billables.  If you’re not making great content or you are on a website that is up the scratch, if you’re not writing blogs or if you’re not sending out traffic to something of value and following that up, then your conversion rate is going to struggle and you are going to fight to get to the endpoint.  More people can convert into calls, more people can convert into a prospective meeting, understanding that intent point goes to making sure that you know you don’t have a hole because the second step is crucial, which might be that landing page or that piece of value. That was an introduction to Google Search Ads, Display Network Advertising and understanding of search intent and how you can capture that search intent to drive more demanding interest to your law firm online. If you’re interested to learn more about how to grow your law firm or your professional service business using Google search and using online marketing, feel free to like, comment, subscribe. Discover more at: https://web3.com.au/google-ads-display-network-search-intent-what-it-means-for-law-firms/

Would you like to know how to best approach growing your law firm using Google search marketing? In this episode, I’ll walk you through expectations and realities on how to approach and capture search intent for your law firm using Google search advertising. Let’s be real: Google Ads & SEO is no new kid on the block. In fact, they’ve been around for over 15 years. A lot of people have tried SEO and Google Ads before with often mixed results. For those reading that have tried either or before and it hasn’t worked, I really want to encourage you to question those thoughts understand that what matters ultimately, with any form of marketing, particularly Google marketing is that your goals, your objectives from wanting to market on Google should be focused around driving bottom line business growth. Most people go wrong by designing their SEO and Google Ads strategies around false positives and vanity metrics. They think that more traffic should equal more leads. They think that bidding on keywords with the smallest cost-per-click is a fine approach. They think that getting into position one in both organic and paid search should be the goal. This is the completely wrong approach and is a sure-fire way to only make Google rich, and not yourself. And let’s face it, Google doesn’t need anymore money! Let’s role play for a second here. Let’s say you increased the amount of leads coming to your firm by an additional 10 per month. If you have a lead-to-sale conversion rate of 50% that is, you meet with two people and out of those two, one of them becomes a client. You know that your average life-time-value per client is around $15,000 over 12-month proceed. Let’s play with this scenario a bit more. Let’s say your website converts at a 1.5% conversion rate. That is, out of all traffic coming to your website, you convert 1.5% of that traffic into a enquiry lead. By the way, this is a typical website enquiry conversion rate we see for most un-optimised B2B professional service websites is about 1.5%. As an example, let’s say you bought the keyword ‘lawyers’ in Google and paid $6 per click and got 670 clicks from Google to your website. Big disclaimer: I would never recommend any law firm to bid with the keyword ‘lawyer’ as it is too broad. I am simply using this as an example to explain this scenario in the most easiest to understand manner possible. Now you might be thinking that paying $6 for a click in Google search is ridiculous and way too expensive. Before you click off this article, let’s look at this situation under the context of driving bottom-line business growth. At $6, you’re getting 670 clicks which means you’re spending about $4,000 bucks per month on Google. You’re converting 1.5% of those clicks to Gove you 10 new enquiry leads per month. If you convert half of those enquiry leads, that’s $75,000 in new life-time revenue to your business. The reason why this scenario is profitable is the unit economics make sense. Professional services, such as the legal sector can typically earn a lot more per lead than say, a consumer business selling widgets via drop-shipping. With that said, even with a higher than average cost-per-click, search advertising can be a profitable exercise if you know what you’re doing and you do it correctly. In summary, the number one thing I want to hit home hard is your search advertising objectives must be aligned with achieving bottom-line business growth in your firm. Measuring the net business success of your lead generation campaign on vanity metrics such as cost-per-impression (CPM) and even cost-per-click (CPC) can lead you down a rabbit hole of pretty reports with no revenue to show. These metrics shouldn’t be ignored in the overall strategy of running a successful search marketing campaign, but they should not be what’s driving the performance of your campaign. Instead, focus on what’s moving the needle with your business’s bottom-line and evolve your strategy from there. Enjoyed this video? Subscribe so you don't miss out on our latest content here: https://web3.com.au/links/  

Would you like to learn how consumers are discovering law firms in Google search and what consumer trends are driving behaviours that are leading to sales online? Having answers to questions such as: is my audience online? are they searching for what I do? are they searching for what my firm does? is critical regardless of which industry you are in and even which field of law that you are in. Fortunately, in this day and age, we can use tools such as Google Trends to identify online search demand and trends. For example, if we look at local search phrases such us, ‘Lawyers Near Me’ or if we look at more specific areas of law such as ‘Family lawyers near me‘ or ‘Criminal lawyers near me’, we can see through the search data that people are looking to find providers in their location. This is something that allows us to take advantage of strategies like local-based optimisation and local SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), which are applicable strategies for the majority of law firms in Australia. Understanding search demand for the legal industry We can use tools such as SEMrush to give us keyword level data of how many searches are happening per month for specific keyword phrases in Google. For example, for the phrase ‘personal injury lawyers‘, there are approximately 1,900 searches happening every month in Australia. SEMrush also provides us with different keyword variations depending on the geographic location of the search. Looking at the data, we can see ‘Family Lawyers’ themed search volume by city such as Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide etc. The only exception we have encountered in the law space when helping firms grow with Google is when dealing with specific niche areas that are not known from the general consumer. In this scenario, consumers would not be aware of that specific niche area of law therefore they would not be actively searching for it. This is typically an edge-case scenario however that does not apply to the majority of legal practitioners in Australia. Consumers are better informed now more than ever Everyone is connected 24/7, this means that your clients are more informed and they are more purposeful and prepared to make better-informed decisions than ever before. Consumers today are better informed about your products and services more than ever thanks to the internet. Having your audience constantly accessing the web uncovers trends that are also driving consumer behaviour today. Two of the biggest trends are: discoverability is crucial if you want to win the sale and generalised offers are meaningless. Having a contact form on your website, getting down on one knee and praying, hoping that someone is going to come on Google and fill it out is not a strategy at all. Statistics show that consumers are becoming loyal to the brands that meet their immediate needs. One out of ten smartphone searchers are certain that they are going to go over a company before they start searching which means that 90% of searchers do not have brand loyalty. Not knowing which provider they are going to go with gives you a great opportunity to win the business if you can be discovered through Google. If you are not visible and there is no chance that you are going to be found, you won’t be able to use Google as a stream to acquire new business and new clients. Furthermore, every two out of three smartphones users agree that when they are searching on their phones, they are looking at the most relevant offer to solve their immediate problem, regardless of the company. Online personalisation & offer relevancy drives sales Today’s consumers expect personalisation and relevancy, this is why nine out of ten consumers would buy from a company that best predict their search intent and suggests highly relevant solutions. Search intent is a really important part to get right and the area that I see most agencies working with law firms getting wrong. We will expand on search intent further on the next part of our law fir marketing series. Understanding the consumer intent, providing a relevant offer and targeting the right keyword phrases are crucial strategies so that when users are searching, they can be presented with an offer that is relevant to their situation and needs. If you are interested in learning how to grow your law firm through Google Search Engine Marketing and how to get more clients on board please reach out to us or feel free to leave a comment below. Discover more at: https://web3.com.au/search-trends-for-law-firms/

Would you like to learn the best ways to get new clients when starting up your own legal practice and also how to scale it so you’re not just relying on professional referrals to get new work?   Learn battle-tested strategies and tactics on how to grow your law firm by industry experts Mike Bromley from Beyond Billables, Karen Finch from Legally Yours and James Banks from Web3.   Get your free video series on how to kickstart your legal practice here: https://legallyyours.com.au/firmup/

In this episode, I’ll show you how to install Google Analytics into Google Tag Manager and how to configure website event conversion tracking Check out our video guide here: https://youtu.be/U9lYIrtFIC4

Following on from our recent episode on data-driven decision making, in this episode I’ll show you how to combine Google Analytics, Google Search Console & Google Tag Manager data together so you can make better marketing decisions. Check out our video guide here: https://youtu.be/vq10y18mqbc

Chances are you probably already have a Google Analytics account. But are you making the most of the latest features for 2019? In this video, I'll show you how to set up Google Analytics the right way in 2019. Check out our video guide here: https://youtu.be/2ztmPxDVka8

The data-driven decision making framework is perhaps the most powerful business hack that I have ever come across in my entire career. In this special episode from a recent presentation of mine, I’ll teach you my version of the data-driven decision making, and how you can use it to grow your business. Link to YouTube episode: https://youtu.be/teeXEtTavmU

Event tracking in Google Tag Manager is one of the most powerful and useful things that you could be doing with the Google Tag Manager platform. In this episode, I'll cover what is event tracking, why you should be doing it, and how to set it up with Google Tag Manager. Link to YouTube episode: https://youtu.be/bQ1UNJNKXLM

You can easily mess up your website & your analytics data if you don't install Google Tag Manager correctly. In this episode, I'll show you how to install Google Tag Manager correctly into your website. If you want to learn more about Google Tag Manager and data-driven digital marketing, subscribe to our podcast so you don’t miss out on any new episodes!   Link to YouTube episode: https://youtu.be/Rt51Jkjl-p0

Google Tag Manager is one of the most powerful tools that you can on your website or mobile application. In this video, we’ll define exactly what Google Tag Manager actually is, why you should use it and how to set it up. What is Google Tag Manager? Picture Google Tag Manager as a bridge that connects your marketing scripts to your website. In a nutshell, Google Tag Manager acts as a bridge between your website and your marketing scripts such as Google Analytics, Facebook pixel and many other tools that track website traffic. Google Tag Manager consists of three core components: - Tags - Triggers - Variables Tags are marketing scripts or measurement codes that collect information such as Google Analytics or Facebook pixel. Triggers to tell your tags where and when to fire. Variables then allow you to set specific controls and functions on how you want your tags and triggers to work. Why you should use Google Tag Manager? The benefits of using Google Tag Manager can be broken down into three things. First, using the tool saves you precious time. Aside from being a time-saver, it also allows you to save on money. If you’re hiring people, you may have developers or marketing consultants on your staff. If the platform is already set up, it will save them a stack of time, therefore you save money and allows you to simply get more done. It unlocks a lot of the functionality that would be very difficult to achieve prior to Google Tag Manager being put in place. It allows you to do more with your marketing scripts and with your tracking and analytics that otherwise would have been difficult to achieve in the past. Setting Up Google Tag Manager & Installing Google Analytics Here’s how to set up a Google Tag Manager account. 1) Create an account – Once you’ve logged into Google Tag Manager, the first thing you’re going to want to do is hit the ‘Create Account’ button. 2) Account name – Next, you want to start filling out the details of your Google Tag Manager account name. For this example, let’s use a demo site, the Google Merchant Store. 3) Country – Since this is actually a global store but it’s headquartered in the U.S, let’s set the United States as the primary country of origin. Container name – Grab the URL and place it in the container name. Don’t include the https component and the backslash (/) and set it as a Web container. Then, click Create. 4) Accept terms – Next, review the terms of service and click ‘Yes’ if you agree to the terms. And you now have your Google Tag Manager container set up. Here's how to install Google Analytics into Google Tag Manager 1) From the tag screen, hit the ‘New’ button. 2) Call the tag ‘GA-Universal Analytics’, where GA is short for Google Analytics. 3) Choose ‘Google Analytics’ as the tag type because you want to track page views of your website. 4) Let’s call the new variable ‘Google Merchandise Store GA’ where GA is for Google Analytics. 5) Set the Cookie domain to Auto. 6) Next, go back to your Google Analytics account to get the Google Merchandise Store demo tracking ID, which in this case is UA-54516992-1. 7) Paste the tracking ID in Google Tag Manager and hit Save. 8) Next, set a trigger for this tag to fire on all pages and hit Save. You’re done! You have created your first tag. If you were to go ahead and drop Google Tag Manager into your website, Google Analytics will load on all pages and will be delivered into the site via the Google Tag Manager script. It’s that simple! If you want to learn more about Google Tag Manager and data-driven digital marketing, subscribe to our podcast so you don’t miss out on any new episodes!

Welcome to Episode Zero, The Trailer Episode for Web through his website workshop. My name is James Banks, and I am the Co-Founder and CEO of Web3. And I will also be the host for this podcast. So what is the Web3 Website Workshop and why should you care? Well, let me answer that by going a little bit back in time to how I first got started in the website industry. So I went to university, I studied Web design as my formal degree in front end development got through and actually never made it through to the end.  I soon found myself toying with websites, building them for people that were interested in them, which then led onto paid work. And that was very much the kick start of my career. Fast forward now well and truly ten years down the track, I've evolved from being a frontend web developer to a fully fledged agency owner and that agency being Web3. Over the course of those ten plus years, I've seen so much, I have done nothing, really, but work directly with websites and specifically help businesses grow by ensuring they had the absolute best web presence that they possibly can have, and then also figuring out how to get their ideal customers and clients to their website so that their business can grow. As a result, that's very much the objective of this podcast is to share with you all of these battle-tested, tried, practical and actionable tips that I've picked up over my career and through our agency Web3. The lessons that we've learned the hard way on how you can take your website and supercharge it to grow your business. That's very much what we will be covering about and not just talking about websites but going a bit brought into the field of online marketing and advertising and how online marketing and advertising can be used in conjunction with an effective web presence to fundamentally grow your business. So if you want to learn how to supercharge your website and grow your business, please subscribe to this podcast right now so you don't miss out on our first episode, which is due to be published very shortly. If you know anyone that needs help with their website and with growing their business online, please share this podcast with them. I’m James Banks from Web3, and I will see in the next episode.