Insights

From personal to community appeal, retail owners, operators & occupiers look to leverage experiences, services and, of course, places to rise above the competition.

Oh, won’t you stay just a little bit longer? For retail owners to get consumers to stay on property more, they must identify and establish differentiators in their centers. To get that zing, you must do the fresh thing.

Despite major industry and economic disruptors in recent years, retail by and large has forged ahead. What keeps locations relevant in a time of such shifting demands and needs?

Writing in RE Business Online, Barry Caylor, vice president of business development at Outside the Lines Inc., recommends “leaning into what attributes make [retail owners] different. By continually supplying the market with fresh concepts and new ways of presenting them, landlords can keep consumers coming back again and again.” The result is greater foot traffic and increased sales for tenants, as well as enhanced ROI for investors.

Are You Experiential?

“There’s no place like home when you’re this far away,” sang the late, great Jimmy Buffett. Not that retail lifestyle centers are akin to far-off tropical destinations, but they should offer, beyond goods and services, a standout experience and unique sense of place. Yes, e-commerce has become indispensably convenient, but people still need to get out of the house, especially those of us who work, sleep, eat and parent there.

“There is simply no comparison between clicking a few boxes on a screen and visiting a beautifully designed retail center with artfully displayed merchandise that can be tried on and touched,” Caylor asserts. “Adding gourmet food and beverage options and a wealth of enjoyable activities to pass the time in between browsing and buying further enhances the overall experience. The first is purely functional, while the second is a feast for the senses.”

When sales growth and brand loyalty are on the line, retail centers and their tenants must go beyond filling a one-stop need, the mere tick on the shopper’s checklist (which e-commerce typically covers). Attractive outside gathering spaces, interactive elements, live entertainment events and retailer activations appeal to the senses and people’s social nature, adding beyond fun and stimulation a communal component and, of course, keeping visitors on site for hours at a time, thus boosting the sales of tenants.

Service – Upfront & Personal

Need that in a different color? Want to check to see how this fits? Open to alternative suggestions based on your budget concerns or even facial expression? Yeah, chatbots got nothing on in-person service.

While daily-needs retail, including service offerings, have always drawn consistent customer traffic — and investor attention — lifestyle retail centers can take that amenity to a new level, as Caylor puts it, from valet parking to foot massages and coffee. As the saying goes, people may forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. A big differentiator in today’s retail world can come from creatively “pampering and delighting” customers with a personal touch that they obviously can’t find online.

“We love that new school of retail design thought that shifts the focus from spaces to environments, customers to communities and communications to conversations,” said Marcia Homer, infinitee’s Director of Brand Management. “Our team’s belief in great ideas, personal touch and endless possibilities dovetails with that placemaking philosophy and the focus on experiences, quality services and delightful gathering places. If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well — and fresh.”

Multifamily owners and operators are feeling competitive pressure from single-family rentals to upgrade amenity packages.

What happens when more than half of customers would rather be somewhere else? It doesn’t take John Maynard Keynes to figure out that adjustments will need to be made. There’s a new kid in town, so to speak, with single-family rentals (SFR) and multifamily, the former belle of the real estate ball, will have to up its amenity game in response.

While most U.S. renters live in high-density apartments, 51 percent would actually prefer to live in a single-family rental home, Multifamily Dive reported, citing Bethesda, Md.-based real estate consultant RCLCO’s  2023 National Renter Consumer Preferences Report. Furthermore, an additional 21% of respondents said they prefer a townhouse or duplex.

Now we understand that bigger is generally better regarding living space and household sizes only increase, but there’s more to the current SFR hot streak. Take Millennials, the largest generation in the U.S., for a big example: they are in their prime single-family occupancy years and can reap the advantages of renting, including no down payment or maintenance responsibilities, as well as an easier exit strategy when deciding to move.

Economically, the U.S. housing shortage continues to shut many out of the for-sale market. And the COVID-19 exodus away from high-density apartment living to more spacious residences in the suburbs served as a blueprint for this single-family shift.

That’s why it’s never been more important for multifamily owners and operators to stay on top of evolving renter preferences. When it comes to amenities, it’s not how many a community offers, but “whether or not they meet the needs of renters in a way that makes sound financial sense to the owner,” writes Multifamily Loans’ Jeff Hamann.

ML published its top 5 amenities to add to a multifamily property: package lockers, smart home features, green transportation initiatives, pet accommodations and the right outdoor space based on renter demographics. RCLCO’s survey found that new kitchen appliances, walk-in closets and oversized kitchen pantries accounted for the most popular unit features, while security-related items were the top building amenities: a front desk attendant or gated community and a secure package receiving system.

Amenity preferences tended to differ widely by age group — including commute distance and children's play areas — but more than 80% of all renters view green features as important, with over half willing to pay more for them, Multifamily Dive reported. Walkability to surrounding retail, restaurants and open areas gained consensus as well. Pools, fitness centers and other leisure amenities not surprisingly remain popular, according to the study.

How will multifamily owners further differentiate their product? Build-to-rent units making up 6.9% of the nation’s 2022 single-family starts is a trend that should continue, if not expand, asserts an RCLCO principal.

And on the buy side, about one-quarter of homes in Jacksonville (27%) and Atlanta (25%) to nearly one-third in Miami (31%) were purchased by investors in fourth quarter 2022, according  to data from Redfin.

“When both economic expansion and disturbance work to a real estate sector’s advantage like that of the single-family rental housing market, it puts pressure on multifamily, which has plenty of competition in and amongst itself,” said Michael Rivera, infinitee’s creative director. “Change can be daunting, but the apartment sector still has really solid fundamentals. View it as new, exciting opportunity and take it on with a marketing partner that combines a ‘limitless possibilities’ mentality and a commitment to high-impact strategies and innovative tactics.”

One can find evidence to support each side of the RTO-WFH discussion, but work-life balance should be personal and responsive.

Canceling “Summer Fridays” right before Labor Day? While a proverbial slap in the face to workers before the holiday that celebrates their year-round contributions, the timing is no doubt better than before the Fourth of July. Make no mistake about it though: Goldman Sachs’ high-profile push to get its staff to return to the office five days a week is the latest salvo in the ongoing, nationwide return to office (RTO) debate.

We’ve discussed before in this space how a major side effect of the pandemic has been increased employee flexibility as millions were forced into, then embraced remote and hybrid working. That freedom will not be easily (or ever) relinquished. Furthermore, the major labor shortage persists. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, if every unemployed person from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Ore., found a job, the country would still have around 4 million open positions. Work from anywhere has another connotation in this employee’s market.

Still, company bosses, office owners and pretty much any and all stakeholders in the beleaguered sector are making their RTO position heard, especially this long after the end of COVID-19. CNBC reported that major corporations such as Disney, Starbucks and BlackRock are requiring more time at the office for their employees.

As of spring, the amount of companies requiring in-office work had more than doubled year over year. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of corporate real estate executives reported that their companies now require employees to return to the office at least some of the time, up from 31% a year earlier, according to CBRE's Spring 2023 U.S. Office Occupiers Sentiment Survey.

Financial/professional services firms lead the way in that regard at 71% while tech companies are only at 56%, Bisnow reported. Of the 207 corporate real estate executives who participated in the survey, 45% want mostly in-person work, up from 8 percentage points since 2022, versus 22% who want a mostly remote work format, up from 15% last year. Although 40% of survey respondents expect office attendance to increase, more than half at big companies expect to further decrease their office footprints as leases expire.

When it comes to RTO, there’s the good, the bad and the funny. On one hand, office workers are 18% more productive, according to an MIT and UCLA study. On the other, CoStar reported an all-time high office space availability rate of 16.4% after first quarter. Then there’s Zoom, the epitome of remote working, requiring more in-person office time for its workers.

Justin Owings, in his book Exec on the Desk, a play on “Elf on the Shelf,” quips, “[Leaders] hope water coolers and hallway collisions spark innovation. Only when people show up, the heads go down and the headphones go on. How else do you defend yourself from the assault of the open, collision-friendly office?”

The path forward and possibilities for office-using organizations and their employees definitely seem open and collision-conducive.

“We’re still relatively early in this massive upheaval of work life and office use, but we go back to the ol’ truism ‘our people are our greatest asset,’” said Vince Vitti, infinitee’s vice president of business development and the firm’s recruitment marketing guru. “Companies must do right by their people with RTO so they can stay on course to reach their goals.”

The report of on-site retail’s demise has been greatly exaggerated. Let us count the ways.

The saying ‘you had to be there’ didn’t apply to malls in the last decade-plus or any retail place during the pandemic, but people know — even if occasionally having to relearn — that there’s nothing like in-person shopping, dining and entertainment. Retail centers offer more than goods and services; they offer variety, discovery and, perhaps most importantly coming off COVID-19, the opportunity for social interaction and experiences.

GlobeSt. examined how physical stores remain “a vital backbone for the retail industry.” Everyone from lifestyle centers and big box stores to discount shops and mom & pops will like its conclusion: “While you can take retail out of the store, you can’t take the store out of retail.”

By the Numbers

It was not surprising in the least that e-commerce volume jumped significantly during COVID-19. E-commerce grew from 11.1% of total sales in fourth quarter 2019 to 16.4% by June 2020, according to Census Bureau data, but then back to 14.7% by the middle of 2022. By November 2022, the portion of consumers shopping on retail brick and mortar sites was about par with where it had been pre-pandemic, GlobeSt. reported referencing survey data from CapGemini’s 2023 consumer behavior study.

Those industry pundits insisting that e-commerce would become the dominant form of retail ignored the power of the people, specifically indomitable human nature that will always spur people to get out, socialize, and stop and smell the retail roses. Furthermore, stores support communities with necessity products and services and can rally them with on-site activations, which e-commerce obviously can’t.

“If you’re a pure-play e-commerce, it is expensive and time-consuming to reach people,” said Stephanie Cegielski, Vice President of Research at the International Council of Shopping Centers.

More Bricks & Mortar Benefits

Retail brick & mortar is the full complement or, better put, full of complements. The old-school way is harmonizing tenants that trigger walkup customer traffic for each other. The new wave manifests in a halo effect supporting retail omnichannel strategy: when a store opens, online sales for the retailer in that market increases 37%, while if a store closes, online sales decrease 33%, according to Cegielski.

Site selection obviously is critical across the entire commercial real estate spectrum. Students in the first week of Real Estate 101 know that – location, location, location – but in retail, effectively placed stores can also serve as their own advertising.

Getting Smarter

The reality is that with e-commerce consumers have another option if on-site retail is not satisfactory. That has made the latter work to be better. One key lesson learned by store operators is to commit to very good service, with hands-on expertise becoming a “pivot point” for why customers want to come into the store.

“So much of what our customers rely on us for is expertise,” said Craig McNair, Batteries Plus’ chief retail officer. “It’s about experience, multichannel, to get products and services in the ways you want to get them.”

Speaking of multichannel, it’s like experience goes both ways—on the giving or service end as well as receiving or experiential. It all counts for customer experience, which has never been more important in the retail world.

“If you need proof that the social, experiential need of consumers will never go away, just look around at the countless concerts and sporting events, as well as the rebounding travel industry. The same rings true for retail,” said Michael Rivera, infinitee’s creative director. “Whether reimagining your retail space or refining operations based on post-pandemic lessons, keep your eye on the customer and find yourself a good marketing partner.”

Customized incentives, establishing a stakeholder mentality and, above all else, respect will help senior-living operators counter labor market headwinds.

“It May Be Time for Chief Happiness Officers in Senior Living” was the title of the 2018 article. Yes, 2018, well before COVID-19, the “Great Resignation” and quiet quitting. Employee satisfaction and retention were concerns long before the dips and detours of this decade, and seniors housing and care staffing remain a huge challenge for an industry that, as of 2016, needed to attract 1.2 million more workers by 2025.Lument, which recently found that 62% of seniors housing survey respondents named staffing as the sector’s greatest challenge, set out to find ways to counter its labor struggles. Here are a few key strategies for attracting and retaining talent from the commercial real estate finance firm:

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Whatever the industry, when it comes to managing people, the Golden Rule shines every time: treat others as you would want to be treated. That means respect, plain and simple.

Charles Turner, CEO of Kare, a staffing solution company for senior living communities, points to a disconnect between what operators think of as a strong culture and the view from frontline workers. The former operates in terms of mission statements, collective processes and a unified identity, while staff seeks individual respect, empowerment and “never to be treated like commodities,” Lument reports.

Kare found that around 70% of frontline workers are single parents and 35% have adult dependents, “making them caregivers at work and at home,” Turner noted. They deserve empathy and fair compensation.

To put their money where their mouth is, Turner suggests operators consider covering 100% of insurance premiums in exchange for a slightly lower pay. Kare also offers a “real-time pay” feature allowing staff to receive payment immediately after shifts are verified.

Actions yielding positive, personal, tangible results always trump vision statements. Show respect — and the money! — to retain talent.

Open Books, Open Paths

Transparency breeds trust. On the financial front, staff that are kept in the loop about a senior center’s performance are more likely to feel engaged and able to directly connect their work to fiscal results. It’s the substantial difference between merely punching the clock and having a stake in something bigger than self. As Lument reports, communities that offer staff bonuses based on monthly or quarterly performance further establish a sense of ownership across the company, which does wonders for staff morale and retention.

Openness works in another way, too: career advancement. Creating promotion pathways within senior living operations is an effective way to retain talent because it helps establish the staff mindset that good work will be rewarded.

Sevy Petras, CEO and co-founder of Priority Life Care, an Indiana-based seniors housing provider, reminds that there are plenty of expert needs in the industry in addition to nurses and thus many promotional routes, including in marketing and nutrition. Plus, caregivers can get burned out, which further underscores the need for good leadership to help reroute career paths as necessary.

“The days of finding the unicorn employee who wants to stay in that same seat for 20-plus years and do the same thing year after year are over,” said Petras, whose company has established a certification program at the community college level to help individuals and the industry alike. “It’s not a realistic expectation if we want to have top performance consistently.”

Vince Vitti, infinitee’s vice president of business development and the firm’s recruitment marketing guru, said, “Though we’ve yet to hire a Chief Happiness Officer, we are in the unique position of having marketed senior living communities in award-winning ways and helped recruitment marketing clients with their critical strategies. While the answers aren’t easy in this challenging labor market, combining the aforementioned staffing strategies with a time-tested marketing partner will position your organization in a good way.”

Of all commercial real estate pros, marketers might be challenged the most with striking the right balance between artificial intelligence and personal touch.

“This is heavy,” Marty McFly says multiple times in the movie Back to the Future. The future is now for the real estate industry with artificial intelligence and tools such as ChatGPT looking to make a heavy impact, although not including time travel back to the heyday of malls. Real estate people are currently assessing AI, where it fits and how far it can go.

AI’s use to date has been to lighten the load. Until the last year or so, the real estate industry predominantly used it for processing and analyzing large amounts of data. Then came along large language models or GPT tools “that use deep learning to generate human-like text” and training, not surprisingly, on huge amounts of data to “understand and analyze natural language, generate coherent responses, provide insights, and assist in various tasks such as content creation, customer support and data analysis.”

AI’s real estate application seemingly and perhaps dazzlingly blew up overnight. “Everybody wants to experience it,” Amit Koren, JLL Technologies CEO, Leasing & Capital Markets Technology, told Bisnow. “The degree of wonder associated with it is quite high. Relative to any other tech in recent years, it is capturing people’s attention.”

The systematic, time-saving uses for CRE companies include creating marketing materials and site selection based on lack of supply and/or competitor locations. The big opportunity involving such powerful technology does come with some no-no’s though. As Bisnow reports, JLL will roll out staff guidelines for using new AI tools, including the hopefully-goes-without-saying rule against entering confidential client information into one of those systems.

The content-creation side of AI should definitely get the attention of marketing professionals, including brand makers, storytellers and creative advocates for real estate firms. Its current value though seems to be again in time savings, helping things along versus overhauling the process and its parts.

“It’s OK for a first draft, but it’s a long, long way off from replacing any of my team,” WiredScore Global Head of Product, Jules Barker, told Bisnow. “It wasn’t better than if a senior member of the team had written [a commercial real estate company persona], but it may have been better than a new grad.”

There’s so much more than the black and white of the written word, of course. Tone, for example, which can depend on event, platform and more.

“What surprised me most is, while the general messaging was there, the tone was always wrong,” said Yoo Capital Director of Communications and Social Impact, Louise Page-Jennings. “It felt unauthentic, formulaic and almost heartless. We want to truly engage with the communities we invest in, and this should translate across all our communications. ChatGPT didn’t strike that tone for me, and to nurture relationships over written communications, genuine emotion and passion is key.”

Pros across the real estate industry will continue to conduct “their own tiny experiments” to assess and evaluate AI’s utility and applicability, asserts Bisnow. And why not? Tech is there to help companies improve performance, and those passing on a major innovation like AI will be playing at a disadvantage. Yet, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

“ChatGPT can help draft marketing pieces, but it may be a light year or two away from developing an integrated marketing strategy for a luxury residential community or helping a client reimagine the shopping experience,” said Tim Patton, CEO at infinitee. “Our team’s belief in endless possibilities and great ideas and always delivering service with a personal touch is here to stay.”

Multifaceted developments serve consumers with community activations, and  elevated entertainment and dining options, and boost foot traffic while improving land efficiency.

The Great Outdoors was the ‘in thing’ well before the demise of malls and the COVID-19 pandemic, of course, but those events have helped add more momentum to a fit, fresh real estate trend. Consumers increasingly value health and wellness and retail places that not only provide those types of products and services, but also package it all in a visually appealing, walkable and environmentally sound location. They find those things at open-air lifestyle centers.

RE Business Online defined the pedestrian-friendly, town center-like developments as “intentionally designed spaces that are set against beautiful landscapes and house high-quality dining, retail, entertainment, health and wellness uses.” A breath of fresh air literally and figuratively, open-air lifestyle centers have capitalized on the growing number of people prioritizing wellness amenities and services — 4 out of 5 surveyed intend to maintain or increase spending in the retail segment — and on the mall redevelopment trend, while thriving in the warm climate Sun Belt states from California to the Carolinas.

From a developer and owner standpoint, the retail center type lends itself to improved land use efficiency — including mixed-use with its ‘built-in’ consumer populations — a sustainable focus that not only achieves operational savings, but will only grow in importance with younger generations known for demonstrating their values through their spending habits. The walkable, inviting atmosphere at such shopping centers also encourages foot traffic and expands shoppers' time and money on site.

Tanger Outlets continues to transform the shopping experience across its 36 lifestyle centers in the U.S. and Canada. An infinitee client for over 20 years, the operator of outdoor outlet centers is rolling out a refreshed visual identity dubbed "Open Air" across its portfolio. With a goal to reimagine shopper engagement, the elevated mix of offerings may include micro-breweries, gourmet groceries, golf simulators, electric car recharging stations, selfie concepts and even robotic dinosaurs.

In addition to that innovative mix of offerings and a refreshed visual identity, including a new logo, Tanger will expand on the programming that boosts the community hub appeal of its open-air lifestyle centers. From environmental activations to holiday programming, the community events and experiences, coupled with elevated entertainment options, create outstanding and meaningful connections for guests.

This open-air shift is happening everywhere. For example, the Chicago suburbs have lost 40% of its enclosed malls in the last 30 years and could have only five to eight remaining by the end of the decade, according to one projection. A classic example of moving on from the classic, old mall is the Fox Valley Mall conversion in Aurora, Ill., where a vacant Sears store and parking lot will become 304 luxury apartments, part of a mixed-use community with walkable connections to entertainment and shopping.

Whereas many mall department stores back then viewed restaurants and other uses as competitors for parking, now the focus is on cross-shopping with the rising tide of foot traffic lifting all business hopes. A principal of Mid-America Real Estate, which has tracked more than 5 million square feet of lifestyle space over the past decade, told Bisnow that lifestyle centers have never been stronger than in 2023, citing the creative engagement potential of outdoor activations for fitness classes, concert series, outdoor movies and more.

Grand Boulevard in Miramar Beach, Fla., not only offers the multifaceted appeal and resulting commercial commingling benefits of 765,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, Class A office space and three on-site hotels, but the mixed-use lifestyle center also drives greater consumer traffic with year-round happenings, including the 30a Songwriters Festival, ArtsQuest Fine Arts Festival and its signature event, the  South Walton Beaches Wine & Food Festival.

“As creative, people-centric advocates who believe in endless possibilities and great ideas, the open-air center trend is right down our alley,” said Michael Rivera, infinitee’s creative director. “Building unique and compelling brands is what we do, but their activation, especially in cool outdoor environments such as Tanger’s and others, is really one of the best, most exciting things that we get to do.”

Commercial real estate conversions spread revitalizing real estate value from the property at hand to the surrounding submarket and overall property sector.

U.S. office market vacancy recently hit a 30-year high while the housing market still registers a shortage of millions of homes and apartment units. One man's problem is another man's opportunity, it’s been said, and that’s reflected in the real estate world with the increasing number of conversions of commercial buildings into multifamily housing properties.

In the past decade-plus, the retail, industrial and office sectors have all gone through substantial real estate revolutions thanks to man-made (i.e., e-commerce) and pandemic disruptions. Property conversions have been a reality for decades, but those sudden shocks have brought them into greater focus, if not outright need. Behind the Facade: The Feasibility of Converting Commercial Real Estate to Multifamily, a National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) Research Foundation and Urban Land Institute (ULI)  report, explores the feasibility and applicability of converting obsolete or underused commercial properties.

‘Adapt or die’ can seem like a simple (yet stark) decision in business, but with real estate property conversions there are many details to cover. There are many advantages, too, beyond moving from, for example, suburban office, a 23^rd ranked real estate segment for investment and development prospects, to the No. 2 property segment in moderate-income apartments (averaged from its No. 1 and 3 rankings, respectively, in PwC and ULI’s 2023 Emerging Trends in Real Estate report).

According to Behind the Façade, speed and applicability are major benefits in property conversions. One developer said that six to 10 months can be saved on conversion work versus a ground-up project. Secondly, real estate repurposing works well from cities to the suburbs, according to first-hand data from the developers of 29 commercial-to-multifamily conversion projects. Lastly, one perceived disadvantage, dealing with existing occupancy before conversion work, seems to be less of an inhibiting factor. “The developers that needed to negotiate lease terminations with tenants of occupied properties did not report any impediments,” reported RE Business Online.

Adapting a building requires flexibility in planning and process, too. As REBO reported, redesign and reconfiguration can happen in real-time with conversion projects. In the high stakes business of real estate development, it’s always a good idea to have an experienced team of general contractors, architects and engineers. Not surprisingly, property conversions can throw developers a curveball or two. Call it the Forrest Gump-box of chocolates aspect of real estate.

“You really don’t know what you’re getting into until you take off the façade and walls, bring it down to the concrete,” said one developer that was converting a 1960s-vintage property. “Floor plates, column grids, floor-to-floor height, window systems, HVAC, sewer outfall and so much more need to be studied.”

Adaptive reuse and other real estate conversion projects offer great revitalizing value beyond the property in question to the surrounding submarket, sustainable savings, boosted tax revenues and a more balanced overall property sector.

“’Location, location, location’ has been the fundamental rule of the real estate industry, but to be spot on ‘highest and best use,’ another real estate maxim, must follow,” said Michael Rivera, infinitee’s creative director. “In short, be where the demand is and create — and sometimes convert — space that best optimizes the potential of the land or location. From award-winning ground-up development to national chains reimagining their built environment, we’ve been there to assist with innovation and expertise that deliver measurable marketing results.”

In the dynamic world of SEO, brands must stay on top of system changes and industry trends to keep marketing content in place and on pace.

Brands must stay on top of marketing trends, but SEO is a whole different beast as key changes can happen instantaneously, not organically, through algorithm updates by Google. A flip of the switch can leave your website optimization in the dark.

In our last post, we focused on search engine writing tactics to give your website the best chance of being found during web searches, but what if that connection literally changes overnight and your SEO content suddenly is not maximizing the opportunity to rank in results pages?

SEO trends are a content topic that has to be constantly updated “because there isn’t another industry which is as dynamic as SEO,” according to Stan Ventures. The SEO experts offered the following top SEO trends (and more) to keep in mind when optimizing your website content relevance and resulting traffic.

Blogger Outreach & Influencer Marketing

With “the sun setting upon personal blogs” as most struggle to find their true audience, brands may have to reassess their influencer marketing strategy. Most bloggers will shift to reputable sites within their specific niche to publish content so that it gets the desired levels of engagement and traffic. As Google moves more towards being an entity-based search engine, i.e., mapping each author (an entity) to a particular niche (another entity), SV asserts that “authors and brands must ensure that they have enough digital evidence to prove their credibility and experience in a niche.”

Experiential Differential

Speaking of experience, SEO rankings eat it up. Actually, it’s the new addition to Google’s EAT acronym: Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. From online stores to product review sites, Google uses the EAT criteria to understand how accurate, honest, safe and reliable the content is so that its search results will appropriately weight the content and sites for online searchers to be able to make the best, most informed decisions.

Are you experienced? Google will be measuring that. “If I’m reviewing a Stock Market app, in addition to checking my experience in the stock market, Google will now check within the content if I’ve actually used the app,” writes SV’s Dileep Thekkethil.

“Passage Indexing”

Google’s new algorithm called Passage Indexing, in effect, combines the best of “keep it simple” and in-depth, long-form content, which we covered last time. It will now use the natural language processing feature while indexing web pages and try to understand the meaning of each passage within the page, SV reports. That means that short paragraphs or excerpts from a bigger content effort can stand on their own, i.e., stand out in search results, no matter how many sections down the info might be in your long-form piece. Tactically, to benefit the most from this algorithm, brands should commit to highly structured content, including sections that each focus on a subtopic.

“If creativity is intelligence having fun, as Einstein said, then SEO is like the scientific side of the content equation, the power and discipline that ensure a brand’s originality and expressiveness reach the biggest audience,” said Tori Alexis, one of infinitee’s  Brand Managers. “Combining the art and science in your marketing content platform is smart — and can be fun, too. We’re here to help with innovative, creative, highly-engaging and high-impact marketing strategies.”

CLICK HERE for Part 1 of this conversation.

Quality SEO content is the key to finding your digital audience and commencing the conversion funnel.

If a content piece posts in the worldwide web woods, and there’s no one around to see it, does it make a difference? Absolutely not. Like resume sending, audition getting and anything at the start of the marketing sales funnel, you and your content must be seen first. That critical online business priority has led to a global search engine optimization (SEO) market that is expected to reach $122.11 billion by 2028.

To give your website the best chance of being found during web searches you need to produce quality SEO content, which will “please search engines enough” that they’ll rank your work well in results pages. To do that, start with these search engine writing basics:

Learn & Leverage

‘Know your audience’ is the most common rule in the content business, but for SEO it means comprehending search intent and tactically what keywords people will use in their searches. The more content answers people’s questions and addresses their search queries the higher ranking it will get. “It’s almost impossible to create ranking content without finding the right keyword,” writes Smart Blogger’s Liliana Benzel. Find them, know them, a key step and part of your content strategy before the actual writing process starts.

A content corollary to understanding one’s audience is to know your competition. After all, your content is competing against theirs for rankings, clicks and conversions. Reading competing posts already ranking on Google for your keywords is a good way to know the focal and tactical standard that is required.

The Write Stuff

It’s important to write for your intended targets but also for the system. After all, the latter ranks on that search intent, which comes from the people and the keywords they search on.

There’s no second chance to make a first impression, and so it is with headlines in SEO writing. To boost click-thru rate (CTR), try to use the following in headlines: numbers and percentages, the current year and special characters, such as parentheses, brackets and ampersands. Benzel adds that meta descriptions are second only to headers as the first things that readers see on search engine results pages so keep them dialed in and optimized.

Long-form content not surprisingly tends to keep visitors on the webpage for longer, which is a good thing according to SmartBlogger. Size matters per Google’s algorithm, which can even penalize shorter content. And remember the importance of quality subheads to get readers, nearly 80% of which scan a new page before reading it, to commit to a fuller exploration of said content.

Old & New School Elevation

Google likes links. When creating SEO content, make sure to link to external, high-quality content and to other content from your own website. This leverages authoritative sites to boost SEO ranking and, in the latter scenario, maximizes readers’ staying time while also making it easier for search engines to index your site pages.

The old rules of engaging content still apply: visually appealing copy — always optimize images — with multiple entry points will attract the most eyeballs. And commit to multiple rounds of editing as if the world will be viewing your content… because that’s the goal for top-quality SEO writing.

“Your website is your window to the world, but it’s a big place that can be daunting to navigate,” said Marcia Homer, infinitee’s Director of Brand Management. “To find your audience amidst all the commotion and ultimately feed your business, quality SEO writing is essential. Brands must do all they can to maximize connections back to their 24-7 marketing hub, the company website.”

TO BE CONTINUED

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These key marketing metrics will provide insights on volume, activation and costs, while helping to keep tight with sales.

A wise man once said that marketing alone is just art, and sales by itself is “just talking.” But joining forces, the two disciplines “can work magic.” To work wonders or simply better grease the conversion funnel, B2B marketers must crystallize how their efforts are supporting a company’s sales platform. That means cold, hard numbers, better known as key performance indicators (KPI).

Before setting KPIs — and before getting to LinkedIn’s 10 most common B2B marketing KPIs and how to use them — you and your marketing team must get SMART. That means Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound with your campaign goals. Without those important criteria, the KPIs will not provide an effective indication of your progress.

In simple terms, let’s divide the most common B2B marketing KPIs into the following groups: getting people to show up, getting them to participate and, like every business must do, figuring out what the varying degrees of participation and action all cost.

Volume KPIs

Website traffic, the total number of visitors to your website, is a general measure, but it can be helpful as a baseline to compare other metrics, such as organic and paid traffic. The former is the total volume of visitors arriving at your website from a search engine while the latter is the number of people coming to your site through paid promotion. Organic traffic indicates that your content is successfully being discovered in searches while paid traffic tells you how much ads, sponsored content and paid search efforts are driving people to your content and landing pages.

Activation KPIs

Window shoppers might make your store look popular, but it’s not what businesses are all about. The objective is getting customers inside and buying products and/or services or, of course, the virtual equivalent. From a KPI perspective, click through rate, conversion rate and marketing qualified lead (MQL) to sales qualified lead (SQL) conversion rate tell you whether or not your marketing efforts are compelling visitors to take the desired action.

Click through rate (CTR), the number of total impressions divided by the number of clicks, sheds light on how your messaging, creative content or calls to action are getting visitors to take action and respond to your email marketing, paid search, sponsored content or other campaign. Conversion rate measures the number of visitors to a page who take whatever action your campaign intended, whether downloading an ebook, filling out a form or making a purchase. And the MQL to SQL conversion rate reflects “the relevance and readiness of audiences being reached through a campaign,” writes LinkedIn’s Alexandra Rynne.

Cost-Based KPIs

Smart business calls for constant cost-benefit analysis. With cost-based KPIs can come a lot of benefit. After all, it’s not enough to achieve a result; a business must do it efficiently. Cost per click, cost per lead and customer acquisition cost help reveal the level of efficiency and more specifically how well marketing is working together with sales.

“We hear of ROI a lot in business, but it’s important to focus on and commit to KPIs on the tactical front line to be able to properly assess how your marketing efforts and campaigns are performing,” said Tim Patton, infinitee’s CEO. “The big-picture priority we should commit to more is customer lifetime value, how when you’ve successfully moved beyond a transaction to developing a relationship with a customer that not only supports the long-term bottom line but also helps you optimize all of the above.”

The goals of digital marketing may stay the same, but not the how-to, forcing marketers to stay on top of the latest tactical trends to maximize customer connection.

“If the Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me” wasn’t written by a Millennial, but the song might as well have been. In its own, unique and perhaps unintentional way, that generation has taught us there are more effective ways to communicate and connect. So it is with digital marketing, which with its benefits of wider reach, hyperlocal penetration, easier personalization and targeting, better customer connection and higher conversions, has quite a nice ring to it.

The centrality of digital marketing in modern-day business for promoting products and services may not change much, but the practical trends for maximizing a company’s online efforts do. According to Data Science Central (DSC), “if businesses can pay attention to [the following] trends and curate marketing practices to align with them, they will have better opportunities to boost their growth and generate promising leads.”

Top Tools

Let’s face it: making your customers or would-be ones wait for a response or do an often times frustrating search on their own for actionable info is not the way to encourage them to proceed through your marketing-sales funnel. That’s why chatbot use on business websites will continue to grow in popularity as a marketing tactic. Chatbots increase customer engagement, convenience and that sense of reliability, which is a key part of customer loyalty.

And why should bottom line growth stop at the border? Some businesses may cite the language barrier as a reason, but increasingly machine translators on international brand websites are allowing customers to access information from any location in the world, a rising trend according to DSC.

Third & Zero Parties

As we’ve said before in this space, influencer marketing will continue to grow, helping build trust and authenticity with consumers. After all, whom do you trust more about a product or service – a stranger posting on Twitter, a TV advertisement or an established authority on the matter? Influencer marketing aims to leverage influencers, whether creators, subject matter experts, industry pros or others, to that effect.

From the influence of third parties to the data collection of none: “zero-party data” methods, such as form building, are ways brands can better understand their customers by the latter’s intentional sharing of personal information so that companies can then tailor their marketing practices.

Application Elevation

Email marketing, a core competency in any successful digital marketing platform, will see a boost this year, according to DSC. To connect with consumers in a fresh, personal and special way for product launches, remember the e-marketing importance of customer behavior tracking and proper audience segmentation.

On that timely, targeted theme, real-time messaging is becoming an advantageous way for brands to connect with customers. Conveniently and cost-effectively informing and empowering them with promo updates, product news and more is becoming more and more popular with businesses, DSC asserts.

Also, marketing applications are increasingly helping brands advertise products and services. It’s simple, efficient and gets brands in front of new audience segments.

“We need to remember a consequence of this digital marketing age is the decline in consumer patience,” said Vince Vitti, infinitee’s VP, Business Development. “A critical question then follows: how do we as brands react to that reaction? We can help with brand gratification methods to keep customers positively engaged during those times when their expectations might not be met.”