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/