TRENDING: The All-In-One Digital Marketing Software

Ed takes care of Growth at Hull.io – the B2B customer data platform behind Drift, Segment, Mention & more. He was previously Employee #1 at inbound.org – Founded by Rand Fishkin (Co-Founder, Moz) and Dharmesh Shah (Co-Founder, HubSpot $HUBS). During his time, membership has grown from 5,000 to 165,000+ members between 2012 and 2016.

“Invent your own search demand. Apple didn’t make a “tablet PC”. They made an iPad. The ensuing onslaught of consumer searches was for the “iPad” – a branded term. Since users love brands, and Google says it will continue to serve its user’s interests first, Google will steer out the way.”

“Google has a ridiculous amount of resources and motivation to disrupt your market. They’re going to take your cake and eat it too unless you can fight for your turf.”

“Search is only one step in the chain. You can construct your business to force people and/or Google to come through you before or after visiting Google. There are two ways to do this: you can either win the context war (pre-commercial search) or you can win the fulfilment war (post-commercial search).”

“If Google shopping and Google flights are any indicators of the future, it’s likely Google will put you on a diet of some kind of Adwords-type service you must adopt in order to keep you in the SERPs.”

“Conversion rate optimization is the key to unlocking a prosperous future with Google.”

“Branding isn’t just a name. It’s what other people call it and why they identify with it. How do people identify with your company and products? You need to spend time mapping this out and defining a brand for current and future customers.”

“Turn commercially-focused searches such as shopping into a pay-to-play game.”

“Being remarkable is important. Instead of relying on unbranded search terms for shoes, it’s better to use word-of-mouth marketing by your delighted customers. They might start at Google but search instead for your brand rather than the product they want. Google, outranked!”

“If customers really care about you, they don’t need Google to find you. You need to build a customer base who want to hear from you, and who can buy from you in the future. These customers will be people who will come straight to you because they know and trust you.”

“You need to build a loyal audience and community or customers that will go out of there way for you, even if that means just skipping Google search results. Find the people who will miss you dearly when you’re gone. Those loyal few are your strongest asset. “

“Don’t measure your audience by numbers, but measure their responses instead. How much revenue do they generate? How often do they send enquiries? What kind of email do they send to you?”

“In order to truly win at SEM and the Adwords game, you must conquer conversion rate optimization. “

“SEM is process driven. CRO is process driven, too. The asset you need to build is a process for testing and winning at CRO. You need to bring your developers, designers, other marketers, and C-level execs on board with the idea of incremental benefits to CRO, and get them on board with a continual process of testing new ideas.”

“Focus on targeting places where Google is not inherently strong and is unlikely to invade within the medium term. There will still be good money to be made here, and often these are high-growth, emerging markets. Who in travel doesn’t want to be selling holidays to the emerging middle class in China?”

“Foreign language skills are going to become invaluable for tapping lucrative emerging markets. Like having talented designers, developers, and marketing processes, you either have them or you don’t. Put yourself ahead of the competition.”

“Google can’t create contextual information surrounding a search without degrading their search quality. If Google starts inserting flight and hotel search results whenever you search for “Maui,” maybe looking for pictures for a project or something, it’s going to frustrate users. This is where you can win.”