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ariel lim consulting

Month: January 2020

Speed Up Your Website Without Going Crazy (nor Spend a Fortune) and Achieve a 98 Score on Google PageSpeed Insights

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Google PageSpeed Insights - 98 Score on Desktop

Your website is the most valuable asset when it comes to your business. It’s one of the first places people will check to determine if they will trust you and buy from you. 

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, if you’re not found online, you do not exist. 

If you’ve been following digital marketing best practices, the first thing that is often recommended is to speed up your website. That comes first before spending your time on search engine optimization (SEO). Why? 

Because SEO can only do so much. 

Take a look at this research from Google regarding page speed on mobile. 

Graph showing probability of people bouncing from the page as load time increases

Once people get to your website, if your site doesn’t load in 3 seconds or less, more than half of your mobile site visits will leave the page. Put another way, for every second of impatient agony you’re causing visitors with slow load times, you’re losing conversions and profit.

Now, obviously you don’t want people to just abandon your site without it ever loading first. You don’t even get a chance to make an impression. 

That is why website speed — both desktop and mobile — is very important to fix first before you do any optimization for search engines. 

Is This for You?

I’m not going to talk about the technical details of making websites faster. And frankly, you don’t need to learn about html, css, javascript, and all those mumbo jumbo. 

The only thing you want is fast website speed. And we’ll define what fast means later on and how you can do that without going crazy nor spending a lot of money. 

Table of Contents
Click on any of these to jump straight to that topic
  1. Benchmark your website speed
  2. Switch to a faster theme and web host
  3. Focus on the basics
  4. Remove uncessary plugins
  5. Install Autoptimize and ShortPixel Adaptive Images
    1. Google PageSpeed Insights Results
    2. GTMetrix Results
    3. Pingdom Results
    4. Caveats
  6. Configure the two plugins
  7. (Optional) Install W3 Total Cache
  8. Re-test your website speed

For now, if you meet these criteria, keep on reading:

  • Using a custom WordPress site (wordpress.org instead of wordpress.com)
    • That means you have a web host provider
  • Struggling to get a high score on Google PageSpeed Insights
  • Want to provide the best experience for your customers
  • Planning to create a WordPress website that’s fast
  • Don’t want to hire developers or pay for expensive tools

8 Steps to Speed Up Your Website

1. Check your website speed to establish a benchmark

The first step is to get an objective view of your website’s speed. There are a bunch of free tools to test your website speed. Here’s a list of the most popular ones:

Just type in your homepage URL first to get started. Here’s what it looks on Google PageSpeed Insights. 

Google PageSpeed Insights - 98 Score on Desktop

You can toggle between desktop and mobile tests there as well. Towards the bottom, you will see the actual results and recommendations. 

If your website is like most website, you will see the following areas to improve on:

  • Eliminate render-blocking resources
  • Remove unused CSS
  • Properly size images
  • Defer offscreen images
  • Serve images in next-gen formats

And a whole lot more. But like I said earlier, you don’t need to know every detail about this because I will show you how to get rid of them — making your website faster — without going crazy. 

For now, save your results. I use Firefox as my main browser. There is a built-in screenshot option that allows you to take the entire page, that way have a copy of the entire test. 

Take a Screenshot on Firefox Step 1
Take a Screenshot on Firefox Step 2

2. Choose a fast theme and web host provider

The next step is to take account of your theme and web hosting provider. The two questions to ask yourself are the following: 

  • Are you using a fast and light-weight theme? 
  • Is your website hosted on a reputable web host? 

Now, I won’t get into the details of which themes or web hosts are better than the other. There are already tons of resources out there about those topics. For example, this article describes different WordPress frameworks. They also have this graphic that shows you the breakdown of WordPress sites using different themes.

Pie chart of WordPress sites using different themes and frameworks

My experience with website speed optimization

I was previously using ThriveThemes but recently switched to the Genesis framework. My web hosting provider is InMotion Hosting from day one. 

Oftentimes, you’ll hear great recommendations for the Genesis framework. Then, for web hosts, the most popular and reputable ones are WP Engine and SiteGround. But those may not be for you, so you have to do a bit of research here. 

I’ll leave you with this. 

Generally, drag-and-drop builders (ThriveThemes, Elementor, Divi, OptimizePress, etc) load a webpage slower because of all the stuff they add to the page. But, if you know what you’re doing, this won’t be an issue. In fact, some websites built on these page builders might even be faster than yours if done right. 

3. Determine what functionality you need

The next step you need to figure out to make your website speed super fast is to determine which core functionality you need on your website. Separate the must-have’s from the nice-to-have’s. 

I discussed the 4 key capabilities or features every website must have before (plus a bonus one). If you have other features that you want to add to your website, this is a great time to question whether or not you really need it. 

For a quick recap, here are the key features you need on your website — the rest are just fluff and you can safely discard them:

  1. Information about you and your business
  2. Ability to generate leads
  3. Analytics and performance tracking
  4. Communication or a way to send messages
  5. Revenue generation (bonus item)

Now, since I don’t sell anything online, I don’t need the revenue generation feature. For 90% of businesses, the first 4 items are all you need. But if your entire business is eCommerce, then generating revenues from the site is a necessity. 

If your current website has more than what I listed above, like fancy graphics and animation, then most likely your website has terrible speed. Take them out and your site will speed up immediately. 

4. Limit your plugin usage

Now comes the actual changes you can do to speed up your WordPress website. 

First, if you have plugins that don’t fall into the items above, then you don’t need them. Deactivate and delete the plugins. 

Login to your WordPress CMS, then under Plugins, click on Installed Plugins. Then deactivate and delete those that you don’t need. 

WordPress Plugins

Once you’re done pruning your plugin list, update the plugins that need to be updated. 

5. Install Autoptimize and ShortPixel Adaptive Images plugins

The next step is to install two plugins that will drastically speed up your website: 

  1. Autoptimize
  2. ShortPixel Adaptive Images

Now, there are other plugins that allow you to speed up your website. The most popular is the Hummingbird + Smush combination. But after spending hours testing multiple configurations, I ended up with Autoptimize + ShortPixel. 

Why? 

Because it made my numbers go up on all the three website speed testing tools I share earlier. 

Google PageSpeed Insights

As you can see, by simply changing some of my plugins, I was able to jump a few points for both my mobile and desktop versions in Google PageSpeed Insights.

Google PageSpeed Insights Results: Before and After

GTMetrix

This goes the same for my scores in GTMetrix and Pingdom. Apart from the score, take note of the fully-loaded time and the number of requests.

GTMetrix Results: Before and After

Pingdom

Pingdom Results: Before and After

If you already have other optimization plugins on your site, it’s best that you only use one. That means you have to deactivate the others. 

Caveats

  1. As additional background, the tests aren’t completely 100% controlled. Towards the end of my optimization project, I revamped my homepage. Originally, my homepage displays my blog posts. So, this may have an effect.
  2. I was using the free version of Hummingbird and Smush as well. They have a premium (paid) version that helps with further optimizations. But since my comparison with Autoptimize and ShortPixel is also free, this is still a good comparison. 
  3. Lastly, I’m using the free version of ShortPixel which only allows for optimizing 100 images per month. You can opt to pay for a plan, or for a specific number of images, or you can refer people to signup to get more images. Or, if you’re like me, just wait out the month until the counter resets. It will optimize the images remaining in your website. That’s where I’m currently at. I just implemented this a couple of days ago, so not all my images have been optimized. After a few more weeks, without me doing anything, I’m pretty sure my scores will go up especially on mobile. I’ll update this again once that happens. 

6. Configure Autoptimize and ShortPixel

Again, I won’t go into details here because really, you don’t have to do anything else. 

I’ll just highlight a couple of things here:

Autoptimize

Under the Images tab, check the box for Optimize Images if you aren’t using a CDN (Content Delivery Network). If this is the first time you’re hearing this, then you’re probably not using it. So, enable this setting. 

Autoptimize Image Setting Configration with ShortPixel

Personally, I’m using Cloudflare. My settings are configured differently and the reason why I don’t have this turned on. 

The other setting I want you to make sure that’s turned off is the Lazy-load images. The ShortPixel Adaptive Images will handle this automatically for you. 

After making the changes, hit save. 

Feel free to create an account on ShortPixel. Use this link so you can get an extra 100 images that you can use to optimize your website. The free account only gives you credits for 100 images/month.

ShortPixel Adaptive Images

Under the General tab, you can select the type of compression level for your images. I’m using Lossy because it results in a smaller file size. I don’t need better quality photos. Most of the images I have are screenshots or demos. Plus, to my eyes, the lossy setting doesn’t differ from the original one. 

ShortPixel Setting Configration with Autoptimize

The best way is to make a few tests yourself and determine which setting is for you.

Then, just follow the rest of my settings here. Make sure you turn on the following: 

  • WebP Support
  • Fade-in effect

Now, depending on the type of your business, you might want to crop your images by yourself (e.g. products with a background, you want to make sure your product stays in the middle), so don’t turn on smart crop. 

Also, the Remove EXIF information is something you also have to consider. I’m wary of my privacy. So in case I forget to remove it myself, this guarantees that I don’t accidentally share my information. 

Wondering what EXIF info is? Take out your phone and look at your photos album. I’m using an iPhone. I just took a photo of my dog. When I swipe up, all the EXIF info shows up. So, if I don’t remove that, people could see my address along with other details like time, date, camera model, etc. 

I obviously don’t want to publicly share my address. But, that’s me. I value my privacy highly. 

But if your business is photography and you want to showcase your location, the aperture, ISO, and other settings, then you might not want to remove those. 

7. Optionally Install W3 Total Cache

This step is optional but recommended as well. You can move on to the next and final step, or spend a few more minutes downloading W3 Total Cache and setting it up. 

Caching, in a nutshell, “really means is that your web server has to do less work and can, therefore, serve up your content faster.”1 

And that’s something that you want, because that’s what Google wants. 

The best part is that it’s also free. It can shave off a few more milliseconds on your site speed. And those matter greatly to reaching a high score in the tests. 

I followed the instructions for configuring W3 Total Cache here. Of course, some settings are different for me, so take that into consideration. 

I estimate around 90% of the settings are the same. 

8. Test Your Website Speed Again

Once you’re done with everything, the next step is for you to save all your settings, clear your cache, then run the tests again for the three tools. 

If you did everything correctly and your website didn’t break (LOL), you should see a drastic improvement in your website speed. 

Over to You

After spending hours reading how to speed up my website and playing around with the settings, I decided to write this article so you avoid going through the rabbit hole as I did. 

Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if you do your own research and understand the technicality of what goes into website speeds. But the easiest is to just follow the steps I shared. To recap: 

  1. Benchmark your current website speed
  2. Consider switching to a faster theme and web host
  3. Determine what functionality you need on your website
  4. Keep the plugins that support those functionalities and cut the rest
  5. Install these two plugins: Autoptimize and ShortPixel Adaptive Images
  6. Configure them properly
  7. (Optional) Install W3 Total Cache plugin and set it up
  8. Re-test your website speed scores

If you noticed, I don’t have the perfect scores on all the tools. And I don’t have to. Remember, I’m not paying for anything here. I didn’t pay any of the tools nor hired a premium developer to speed up my website. I did all those stuff by myself and achieved these results. 

But with those scores, my website is already faster than 75% of the web — at least on the desktop version. 

My mobile version is only faster than approximately 25% of the web.

And that’s okay for the time being. 

Why? Because I post content regularly. And the ones that get visited often are my blog pages. My blog pages are AMP-optimized — which is another topic by itself. And AMP pages load super fast right out of the box…

Google PageSpeed Insights for My Website's AMP Page

Website speed is important if you want to rank on search engines. But before you do any SEO stuff, make sure you have a strong foundation — and that is your website speed. 

Have you been trying to improve your site speed? Did you improve your website speed after following these steps? How long did that take? If you have questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below.

4 Must-Have Capabilities of Your Website: The Rest Are Just Fluff

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someone browsing a website on a laptop

A website is necessary if you want to compete in today’s business environment. It gets you to the starting line. Without it, you don’t even get to be in the race. 

Without it, you don’t exist.

But another problem with websites is a lot of people tend to focus on fluff — the pretty things. Instead of focusing on the core functionality and the must-haves, they focus on shiny things. 

That’s why in this article, I’ll list down the essential functionalities of a website. This post is not an SEO article. Rather, it’s focused on the needs of your business. 

4 Essential Elements of a Business Website

1. Information About You or Your Business

The first quality a business website needs is basic information about you and your business. It’s important that you communicate your unique value proposition so that your visitors will:

  1. Understand what you offer
  2. Differentiate you from your competitors
  3. Find a reason to trust you (and eventually do business with you)

Your website should also contain the most basic information about the business like the following: 

  1. Your name (especially if it’s different from the “brand” and domain you are using)
  2. Address
  3. Contact information

It’s also recommended that you include details about key people (or everyone) in your organization. This is one of the trends in modern websites that makes the business more human. 

2. Ability to Generate Leads

As a business, you need leads. Otherwise, you will not have anyone to sell to (customers). And if you don’t have customers who are willing to pay for what you offer, you’ll eventually go out of business.

There are two common ways businesses generate leads from their websites: 

  1. Contact Us Page
  2. Newsletter Subscription

Both have variations of forms that allow visitors to enter their information. This information then goes to whomever is in-charge (usually marketing or sales). Ideally, it should go directly to a CRM or an email marketing software.

The second lead generation source most websites have is a newsletter subscription form. For example, my own website a form like this on every article — which you’d also notice at the side if you’re reading this from a computer.

Sample Newsletter Form

Bottom line: you need to have the ability to generate leads in your website. 

Social fans and followers aren’t leads

In another article, I listed three criteria for what makes up a lead:

  1. Available
  2. Valid
  3. Reachable

Together, these criteria will help you determine what really matters. Take a look at Facebook Page likes or Twitter followers. 

While they may be available and valid, they are not reachable. Meaning, you can’t contact them in a proper way. That’s why you keep hearing that these numbers are vanity metrics. They don’t add value to your business. 

More offers equal more leads

One concept I’d like to highlight is that the more landing pages you have on your website, the more leads you can generate.

The contact us page is an example of a landing page. At its essence, a landing page is a page on your site that allows you to generate leads. In other words, it’s a page on your website with a form that visitors can fill-out. 

According to a survey of more than 7,000 businesses, companies see a 55% increase in leads when their landing pages increase from 10 to 15. The same report also found that those with over 40 landing pages increase conversions by 500%. 

Ask yourself this question, how many landing pages does your website have? 

One contact us form? One newsletter subscription form? 

Quick calculation

Here’s another interesting statistic to consider: the conversion rates for landing pages is between 1-3%. 

If you only have one contact us page as your landing page, how many visits to that page do you need to generate 50 leads? 

The answer is 1,667 visits at a 3% conversion. Or 5,000 visits at 1% conversion rate. 

How many visits does your contact us page get on a monthly basis? Is it even that close? 

The solution is to create more marketing offers.

3. Analytics and Performance Tracking

The next key capability of your business website is performance tracking. After all, if you don’t measure what you do, you can’t improve. 

It’s already 2020 and I still see websites without tracking installed. 

Google Analytics is one of the most well-known analytics software for your website. I’ve written a couple of articles about it already, so I won’t repeat it here again. If your website still doesn’t have Google Analytics, here’s how you can install Google Analytics properly. 

Oh, and did I mention it’s also free? All you need is a Google account (Gmail). 

4. Communication/Messaging

Another key component your website needs is the ability to communicate or send messages to your leads. Technically, this isn’t part of the website itself. Rather, it’s often another system like an email marketing software.

Nonetheless, it is vital that you have the ability to communicate to your leads and customers. Without it, it’s as if you are a business without humans.

One thing to note, though, is that your communication has to be helpful. 

And no, your sales and promos and discounts aren’t helpful. They may be helpful for you to increase your revenues, but not for the recipient. 

Lastly, if you send those types of email, please, don’t call them newsletters. I’ve written a lot about email marketing. So, familiarize yourself with the three pillars of effective email marketing first. 

Then, start sending out these 12 different types of email instead of your promos.

5. Revenue Generation (Bonus)

This is a bonus criterion. 

Why? 

Because not all businesses “sell” online. But if you do, having the ability to generate revenues is definitely something you need to have. 

There are tons of ways you can add this functionality. The simplest one is to add a PayPal buy now button, or use some other provider like Stripe. 

If you sell products, you’d more likely have a complete eCommerce website where you can add products, set prices, different SKUs, manage inventory and order fulfilment. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Over to You

Like I said at the beginning, this article isn’t meant for SEO. This shows the basic requirements any business should have on their website. 

If you’re more advanced in this area, you might notice I didn’t talk about chatbots, or videos, or social media. That’s intentional. Because most often, people tend to focus on those shiny, new things instead of the fundamentals. 

Your website is the most basic requirement for any business today. Without it, it’s as if you don’t exist. 

If you’re missing some key capabilities listed here, go talk to your IT guy, or outsourced provider, or shop around. It’s essential that you have all these if you want to compete in the same arena as your competitors. 

What do you think? Did I miss any must-have functionality of websites? Let me know in the comments below.

The Real Purpose of Business: Why Does Your Business Exist?

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Person sifting through vinyl records

With a brand new year and a new decade, it’s a great time to step back and asses things in our life. No, you don’t need to add this to your New Year’s resolution. Rather, just take a few moments to ask yourself this question and answer it truthfully. 

“What is the real purpose of your organization?”

The reason I ask is that I met hundreds of business leaders like you throughout my entire professional life. And the one thing I noticed they have in common is they seem to have a disconnected view of businesses and organizations. And this includes the people I met when I was taking up my MBA. 

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What is the real purpose of a business?

The real purpose of a business is NOT to create profits. Because a business cannot exist outside of society and must satisfy a specific need in order to stay in business, it has to create or add additional value to the community or individuals. That’s why the real purpose of a business is to create customers.

What is the purpose of business? 

Is it to create profits? Be your own boss? Supporting an advocacy? Provide a community a livelihood? 

All these are great vision and mission statements. 

However, when you look at organizations in the context of society, the real and only purpose of organizations should be to create customers. 

Businesses Exist Because of Its Customers

Business enterprises … are organs of society. They do not exist for their own sake, but to fulfill a specific social purpose and to satisfy a specific need of a society, a community, or individuals.”

Peter Drucker

Peter Drucker, perhaps one of the best management thinkers of all time, said that businesses exist to fulfill a specific social purpose and to satisfy a specific need of a society. 

However, a lot of business owners think of organizations only from a capitalist mindset. Now, that isn’t bad nor wrong by itself. It’s just another way to look at it. But if that’s the only thing that enters your mind — to make money — you are looking at businesses in the wrong way. 

Allow me to provide you with another perspective.

Any organization won’t exist without customers. 

Now, you may hear about startups using fundings at the beginning, but they all die after some time because they can’t create customers who are willing to pay for their products/services. While they may have great ideas or cool offerings, if no one is willing to pay for them, they will eventually close. 

And this is also true even for non-profits. They have their own customers that they serve. Without them, they will also cease to exist. 

Understand Businesses as Part of Society

One of the most first things you learn in economics is the concept of supply and demand. The easiest way to grasp this concept is through the circular flow of income.

Circular Flow of Income (Simple)

In the image above, two things happen:

  1. Individuals supply their talents and skills (labor) to businesses in exchange for compensation
  2. While businesses use this to create goods and services which are then bought/availed by individuals

Of course, this is a very simplistic view of the economy. It’s much more complicated than that. But it is a great way to see the relationship between businesses and their customers. 

Market creation: two sides of the equation

Another concept in economics is that of markets. It’s defined as any structure that allows buyers and sellers to exchange any type of goods, services, and information —with or without money. 

Let’s not go down the rabbit hole here and talk about economics. Rather, what I’d like to highlight here is the market consists of two players — buyers and sellers. Or in our case, businesses and customers. 

Value Exchange

Customers are created when they find value in the product and/or service of the organization. What this means is they find something of value to them that they are willing to spend money in exchange for it. 

At this point, when a customer pays for a product or service, a sale or revenue is created. Two things happen here that is worth noting:

  1. The customer receives value he/she is looking when he/she gets the product or experience the service
  2. The organization receives value in the form of the payment of the customer

If you notice, there is simply an exchange of value from both parties. This is the primary message I want to impart here. 

Without this cycle (exchange of value from the organization to the customer and the customer to the organization), you and your organization will cease to exist. 

The market will cease to exist if value is not created for both parties. And when the value you provide is less than the cost, the business earns a profit.

This is also the reason why looking at organizations outside the context of society often results in failures. 

Most of the time, that happens because the decision-makers believe so much in the novelty of their ideas that it is not grounded in the basic premise of creating value for customers. This is particularly true to those in the tech industry. 

Food for Thought

So, now, let me ask you the question in a different way…

“Does your organization create value for your customers?”

The buyer utility map is one of my most popular articles as of this writing. It’s a great tool every business owner and leader should know. Feel free to check out the article. 

The buyer utility map is from the Blue Ocean Strategy. Its main use is to discover opportunities that your industry (or more specifically, you and your competitors) are missing. It also shows you where every player is investing heavily upon, but might not be providing value to the customers. 

One part of the buyer utility map is the buyer experience cycle. 

Generally, customers go through this cycle sequentially: 

  1. Purchase —> includes the time customers are looking for you until the moment they transact
  2. Delivery —> the moment after they pay to the point before they use it
  3. Use —> involves the usage of the product/service until its useful life
  4. Supplements —> coincides with the use of the product/service
  5. Maintenance —> deals with the useful life of the product/service
  6. Disposal —> starts when the useful life is over

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At each stage of the cycle, there are specific questions you can ask yourself to determine whether or not you are providing value. I’m not going to repeat it here again, so I highly encourage you to read the buyer utility map too. 

Let me end with this. 

The more value you add across the buyer experience cycle, the higher the likelihood of you creating a customer and keeping your business alive. If you don’t, then over the long-run, your customers will no longer find value in the products/services that you offer and eventually leave. 

I hope that you learned something new today. Businesses aren’t meant to be viewed by itself; rather, it should always be viewed as part of a bigger whole — as part of the society we live in. Take this time to think about your business and the value you are creating for your customers.

Personality vs Behavior: Why Focusing on One is Detrimental (Find Out Which One)

by
Man in a Car Driving

If there are things you can do to create better outcomes for your business, would you do it? 

Of course, you would. 

What if I also tell you that it won’t cost you anything extra, would that interest you further? 

Yes? 

Great. 

Before I tell you what to do, watch this video that has gone viral in the US. It’s about a 20-year old who takes orders at a Chick-fil-A store. 

What Exactly Are Behaviors

Before diving in, what the heck are behaviors? 

Manager Tools defines behaviors as any one (or in most cases, a combination) of the following: 

  1. The words you say
  2. How you say them
  3. Facial expressions
  4. Body language
  5. Work products

I won’t get into the weeds of discussing that in this article as they offer the best resource out there about this topic. 

For now, let’s go back to our video. Did you notice of the use of the words “how may I serve you today?” being used over and over. 

Feel free to play it again if you didn’t catch it the first time. 

If you were the customer, how would that make you feel? Me? I’d be delighted. The person doesn’t interrupt me. Prioritized my needs. He’s not focused on upselling, rather, focused on listening to me instead of waiting to speak up. 

Contrast that with your last visit to another restaurant or fast food chain. How many times did the person taking your order interrupt you while you were still ordering? How many times did they focus on saying their “script” rather than listening to you? 

Why Focusing on Personality Is a Terrible Idea

Popular culture often talks about different personality traits and how we should understand the personality of the other person. 

While there’s nothing wrong with that, that statement is already contradictory. 

Personality, by definition, is a combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual’s distinctive character. In short, personality is who you are. Behaviors, on the other hand, can be modified. 

Imagine with me here for a moment. 

Think of an outgoing/extrovert person — a friend, family member, a colleague. Anyone. 

Let’s say you went together to church or a funeral. 

Would you’re outgoing or extrovert friend continue talking in a loud voice or won’t stop talking? 

I highly doubt it. 

Why? Because even if the person has an extroverted personality, he/she can modify their behavior to suit the appropriate environment. That’s why focusing on personality doesn’t get you anywhere in business. It’s what most companies are focusing on. 

And that’s why Chick-fil-A is dominating fast food — all because they focus on behaviors rather than personality. 

Reason 1: Behaviors are repeatable

Let’s go back to our video. 

The person kept repeating the words “how may I serve you today?” 

That’s not by accident, nor is it because the person is outgoing or an extrovert. 

It’s because the company knows that behaviors— more specifically the words you say and how you say them— make a difference. 

That’s how Chick-fil-A claimed the No. 1 spot on the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s annual restaurant report for the fourth year in a row. 

Towards the end of the video, you should also notice the words “our pleasure serving you.” Again, that’s not by accident. It’s a variation of the words “my pleasure” which all employees say instead of “you’re welcome.” 

These things don’t happen by chance. Chick-fil-A has developed an airtight training plan for employees and has added other little details to make locations feel more hospitable and friendly. 

Business Insider

So, regardless of the personality type, the outcomes are consistent to what the Chick-fil-A wants — which is to make their customers want to come back and spend time at their stores. 

Reason 2: Hiring becomes a problem 

Focusing on personality also brings up another problem — hiring. 

You can’t just hire “outgoing” people for your customer-facing roles. Why? Because you’d end up discriminating and won’t have a diverse workforce. 

I personally don’t know the person in the video (identified as Jeremiah Murrill). But from the looks of it, he is not an outgoing person. Rather, he just adapted his training to create better outcomes for Chick-fil-A. 

He smiles. He listens. He doesn’t interrupt. He uses specific words. 

All are behaviors. 

Remember what I told you at the beginning? If there are things you can do that can create better outcomes and it costs nothing, would you do it? 

That’s how the management at Chick-fil-a sees it. 

They don’t just look at personality traits. Rather, they built a program designed to promote customer service that every employee goes through. 

How many of your employees go through such a training? Which words to use and not use? Which body language or tone of voice give you better outcomes? 

Still not convinced about why behaviors are better than personality? 

You don’t have to take my word for it. 

This superior customer service has helped drive massive growth at Chick-fil-A over the past decade. The company went from $3.2 billion in systemwide sales at the end of 2009 to $10.5 billion at the end of 2018, making Chick-fil-A the third-largest fast-food chain in America.

Over to You

Most people don’t think about the words they say because it’s natural to us. We’re not writing anything so whatever we say is correct, right? 

As leaders in your organization, it’s more important to look at your own behaviors. 

Have you ever experienced talking to someone, and they took it negatively? Even with the purest of intentions, the words you say and how you say them carry more weight. Then we shrug it off as someone being closed-minded. 

But we didn’t take into account the words we said or how we said it. 

And that’s why focusing on behaviors is more important than personality. 

What behaviors are important to your business? Are there specific words that make you appear more focused on your customer? Do your staff keep using “I” instead of “we”? 

Don’t leave things to chance. 

If there are specific behaviors your top salesperson is doing, wouldn’t it be better for your business if everybody in your sales team is repeating the same behaviors?

Use the 5 Stages of Awareness to Develop Your Content Strategy

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Person meditating

You know that without a holistic strategy behind your entire digital marketing, you will not achieve great results. 

You also know that content should be at the heart of every digital marketing campaign.

This is also supported by the saying, “If you are not found online, you do not exist” because without content, you will not rank for anything. 

And one of the most effective frameworks for creating content is the 5 stages of awareness. 

If you’re looking for more information on how to use it, you’re in the right place. 

How to Use the 5 Stages of Awareness to Create Your Content Strategy

If you Google “content strategy,” you’ll get millions of results. That just proves how vital creating content is in today’s hyper competitive markets. 

Regardless of which one you look at, the best strategy is the one that affects your bottomline. Your profits. Your customers. Your leads. 

If all the content strategy talks about is to increase your traffic, stop reading that now. That’s useless. You don’t want traffic. You want more leads and more customers. 

Also, an effective content strategy goes beyond customer acquisition. It also includes customer retention and support. 

That’s the main reason why it has to be holistic strategy and not just address one part of the equation. 

With that out of the way, let’s get started. 

Step 1: Decide on one product/service

Start with one product/service that you want to focus on for this quarter. 

It can be anything — a major initiative from management; a new product you want to launch; or simply something you want to because you believe in it so much. 

Once you decide on which one to focus on, proceed to the next step. 

Step 2: Create a table with the 5 stages of awareness as individual rows

If you haven’t already, you can review the 5 stages of awareness here. 

At this step, just take out your notebook or open up a spreadsheet and create a table that looks like this…

How to Use the 5 Stages of Awareness for Content Creation

Step 3: Add keywords or phrases used for each stage

The next step is to add keywords or phrases people use at each stage. For example, for people who are unaware of your company and brand, what do they search for online? What do they ask their friends? 

Example: Magnet App

It easier to explain this with an example. So, I’ll use an app that I absolutely love. It’s called Magnet. If you have a Mac, you can download Magnet here (and no, that’s not an affiliate link — I just love them). 

It’s very simple and only does one thing: resize and/or align the current window (or app) to a certain preset without the need to move your cursor to a corner and drag it to the size you want. This is great for working on two apps at the same time like a writing document on one side then a browser on the other. 

Keywords or phrases people use

Getting started with this is difficult for most people because they are so used to only thinking about the product aware and most aware stages. For a quick recap, here are the 5 stages of awareness again:

  1. Unaware — those who aren’t aware they have a problem, and therefore, don’t need anything
  2. Pain Aware — people who are experiencing problems or issues but not any solutions 
  3. Solution Aware — those who know they have a problem and potential solutions available
  4. Product Aware — people who know you offer the solutions they may need but have yet to choose your offer
  5. Most Aware — those who know you and trust you

The key mindset to get into is this…

What keywords or phrases do people use when ____________. 

For example, ask yourself this question: what keywords or phrases do people use when they are experiencing problems or issues, but don’t know a particular solution or brand yet? (👈 Stage 2: Pain Aware)

Map keywords or phrases to each stage

Or let’s say you want to focus on stage 3 – solution aware. 

What keywords or phrases do people use when they are aware they need something to increase their productivity but haven’t heard of you and your brand yet. 

Map more keywords or phrases to each stage

Then, just continue with the table until you fill it all out. 

Step 4: Map your existing content

At this point, if you’re like most businesses, you probably don’t have content at stages 1 to 3. And that’s okay. 

You most likely only have content in the product aware and most aware stages. 

Content gaps identified

But the great part is now, you are aware of the opportunities you are missing out. More importantly, your competitors are most likely doing the same thing. Since you know that there is a gap, you can take advantage of this. 

Which brings us to the next step…

Step 5: Create content to fill the gap

Start with writing written content to fill the content gap — articles. 

Why? 

Because written content still has the highest chance for ranking on search engines (at least for now). Plus, it’s going to be the heart of everything you’ll be doing in the next step.

Follow the guidelines when creating content for the first time. Don’t worry about stuff you can’t control. Don’t worry about SEO. 

Focus on your customers. Write your content with them in mind. 

Once you finish this step, you are already 80% ahead of your competitors. 

Step 6: Repurpose your content

Once you finished an article and posted it on your website’s blog, it’s now time to think of repurposing your content. 

Repurposing your content means using it in some other way. If the original version is used as an article on your website, ask yourself how can it be used on other marketing channels? 

Ask yourself how you would transform that original article into different formats:

  • How would you send it to your email subscribers? 
  • How would you post it on social media? 
  • Can you make an infographic out of it? 
  • What about a video? 
  • Can you use that video on social media as well? 
  • What about adding the video to your blog too? 

That’s the kind of thinking of you need to have after creating one piece of content so that it doesn’t go to waste. 

Step 7: Distribute your content

While this may seem implicit, I found that a lot of people still believe that once you publish a content on your website, people will find it and get tons of traffic. 

Sorry, but that’s not how it works. 

Maybe 10 years ago when there weren’t as much competition online. But with more than 1.5 billion websites today (and counting), you have a lot indirect competitors (for their time and attention). 

Today, you have to use an omni-channel approach when you distribute your content. 

Post regularly and engage with your fans/followers.

Remember that consistency is more important than perfection. 

Step 8: Analyze performance

Remember the 10,000-hour rule? 

What that means, at its basic level, is that the more you do things, the better you get at it. But that’s under the assumption you’re doing it right. And that’s where analysis comes in. 

Think of it as having a coach to tell you what you’re doing right and what you need to improve on further. 

You can play the guitar for 2 hours a day, but if you’re not hitting the right cords — and you don’t know it — you won’t get any better. 

Analyze your content’s performance. The most common tool marketers use is Google Analytics. 

Step 9: Improve and repeat

After figuring out what works and what doesn’t in the previous step, you now have the data to improve. Without the information, you cannot improve. 

That’s why it’s important for you to analyze your performance. And you cannot analyze your performance if you don’t perform. 

This is actually one of the topics I’ll be writing more about. I found that most people, including me for a very long time, don’t want to do something because it’s not perfect. But that only makes things difficult.

As you already know, ideas are everywhere. 

The real determining factor of success is execution. 

Conclusion

Apart from the 5 stages of awareness, there are other tools to help you create higher quality content faster. 

For example, you can use a content pillar approach where you create a big piece of content (the pillar), then repurpose it into smaller pieces. 

And, if you follow my recommendation of a two-pronged content strategy, you can create content and get results quickly while you brainstorm and plan your content pillar. 

And to make sure you’re creating content across the entire buyer’s journey, you can perform a content mapping exercise.

Content Marketing vs SEO in 2020: How Content and SEO Work

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Content Marketing vs SEO in 2020 - How Google Works

One of the common misconceptions about SEO I often hear from business owners is they think they can rank on search engines without creating content. 

It’s already 2020 — and let me say put an end to that myth right now. 

SEO is one of the fastest changing aspects in digital marketing. Therefore, you have to keep up with the changes if you want your website to rank on page 1 of search engines like Google.

Still don’t believe me? Ask yourself this question, “Without content, what would you rank for in the first place?”

SEO Myths You Should Stop Believing in 2020

In the early days, when search engines first started, your website can rank on them easily because of two simple facts: (1) the way search engines rank websites were straightforward, and (2) there were little to no competition. 

So, by simply adding the “right keyword” to your website, you will get to the first page rather quickly. 

But things have changed. 

A lot. 

Myth 1: Search engine algorithms have changed (and is changing)

These algorithms (the way search engines rank content) have become sophisticated. According to Neil Patel, Google alone considers over 200 factors when it comes to ranking your website. 

And rightfully so. 

Because this leads to better user experience. 

Before, you can just put keywords on a page, even if it’s not related, and you can still rank for them. For example, I type this in Google: “what will marketing look like in 10 years?” Then, I’ll see results on the first page about the future of technology or even recipes about chicken barbecue. 

See how that would be very frustrating for me as a user? 

And that’s what Google (and all other search engines) are trying to avoid. They want users to have a great experience. 

When it comes to search engines, people want answers to their questions. 

So, that’s what they aim to deliver. That’s why these 200+ factors are never fully disclosed to the public, nor are they constant. 

For example, in 2018, Google mentioned that mobile-responsive websites are prioritized on mobile searches since it delivers a better user experience. 

So, the only way for you to rank on Google and provide users the great experience is to create content that answers your customers’ problems.

Myth #2: I just create a website and it will rank on page one

Did you know that there are over 1.5 billion websites today? 

And ~1.4 billion of those aren’t even a decade old. 

over 1.5 billion websites exist today

What does this mean for you? 

If you’re just starting out, that means you have a lot of work to do. 

It also means you probably have a lot of competition in whatever industry you’re in. 

So, don’t delay and start creating content today. 

Content is Necessary to Rank on Search Engines

I’ve been doing digital marketing for almost a decade now. I learned from the beginning that content is what will help me rank on search engines. That’s why I always emphasize content creation and distribution to all my clients (and the companies I’ve worked for). 

In the last three years or so, I noticed a disconnect. 

Business owners keep saying they want to rank on search engines, but are unwilling to do the necessary work. 

I’m attributing this to the popularity of social media. But social media is very misleading. 

It’s very easy to spend for likes and followers. So, follower count isn’t a real metric you should be looking at. That’s why they are called vanity metrics. 

What should you look at instead? Well, that depends on your business. 

But here’s a list of metrics you should be tracking. If you’re not tracking them, or if your marketing efforts aren’t helping you with those metrics, it’s time to evaluate what you’re doing online. 

Over to You

From my experience, it’s not necessary to distinguish between content marketing and SEO. To me, it’s the same thing. 

You create content and apply SEO best practices all at the same time. No matter how much you “optimize” your website, if you aren’t creating new content, you will never rank on Google’s first page.

This site contains affiliate links to products. I may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. However, this does not impact my reviews and comparisons. I only recommend products I’ve reviewed, and in many instances also use, in order to help you make the best choices.

Copyright © 2024 Ariel Lim

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