A web marketing campaign is sure to fall flat if it doesn't emphasize on engagement. Ask yourself what’s the point of having a visually entertaining website with smooth navigation and attractive content, if it is not visited by anyone. The answer you’d get is none.

The reason web marketers are often not able to get a solid grip on their campaigns and squeeze the juice out is they take the term engagement in its narrowest sense. Rand Fishkin on his Whiteboard Friday explained the risk that such an ignorant approach carries. If marketers realize how important engagement is and use it for their benefit, the payoff for them will be colossal.

According to Fishkin, the most obvious signs of user engagement are;

• Branded search.
• Direct navigation.
• Traffic referrals.
• PR amplification.

Note the signs insinuate onsite and off-site activities are equally important; that’s an important finding because it changes our very notion of the web. In fact, once we start explaining engagement considering the web as a single entity, the difference between onsite and off-site engagement will simply vanish into the thin air.

But what entitles us to make such a consideration? Fishkin beautifully explains this by “They (Google) have Chrome. They have Android. They have Google Analytics. They have all sorts of plugins. They have the web's biggest advertising network. They can see all of this stuff.”

That’s right. The web is one because that’s the only thing that guarantees symmetry and consistency, which the search engines love. The network of Google for example, is so extended that virtually whatever you do in whichever corner of the web, Google can easily sniff that out.

Once you get a grasp of this and bring necessary changes in the way you view the maze called internet, it won’t be difficult to recognize the obvious signs of engagement. They are pervasive across the web and indicate how robust a campaign really is.

Branded search

“Rolex latest watches” or “Louis vuitton shoes” are examples of branded search phrases. Lesser known brands can’t expect users searching with their names, for which they need to make their presence felt. There are both paid and unpaid ways, which small brands could try out.

In June this year, Google added a new feature to its Analytics that automatically puts branded and non-branded search phrases under different categories. Making use of this and similar tools could help small brands consolidate their branding and increase the number of branded searches that involve their names.

Direct navigation

It’s the second biggest challenge for any brand. Unless the brand is ‘Apple’ or ‘Yahoo’, chances are less users will type its URL in the address bar and press ‘Enter’. But even though a challenge, overcoming it is worth because direct navigation traffic is valued by all search engines. In fact, such traffic makes up 38% of all web traffics, which clearly indicates users do see websites as brands.

You need to make your site indispensable. A user doesn’t visit Google or Wikipedia because their designs or content attract them. They visit those sites because they have to. Your website should also be able to offer them something that they won’t get from other sites. Simply put, you can’t call dibs on direct navigation if you remain first among the equals. You either have to be the best or unique.

Traffic referrals

This aspect of branding points at the importance of networking. The web is like a complex chord arrangement that’s played when several strings are pulled together. No string should be pulled in isolation. Similarly, a website can never become a brand if it fails to form networking ties with other sites.

Networking is the prerequisite of traffic referral; earlier it was used to increase the number of incoming links, but now it has been driven to a more serious and impactful purpose, which is traffic referrals. Traffic referral stands as sending traffic to other sites, not artificially but in natural ways. Think of how Google sends traffic to other sites or how Wikipedia does it, and you’ll get the idea.

To become a de facto channel for traffic referral, you need to make the website second to none. Other sites need a reason to hook up with you, give them that reason.

PR amplification

Think PR is dead? It’s not. Or even if it was, the new waves in content marketing have resurrected it. The term ‘PR amplification’ is crucial. In today’s fast-paced digital industry, PR may not be of much help when it comes to aggressive branding, but it can always amplify your branding or add that undercurrent to your present brand endorsement initiatives that you essentially require to be the turtle that won the race.

The correct strategy for PR amplification is doing something sensational and then publicizing it through PR. If your business hails from the entertainment industry, then you can host an event and bring a celeb in it, and then let the world know about that through PR campaigns. If you run a software company, then launch a new product and then inform the industry what new features the software puts on the table through an ensuing PR campaign.

You might ask why are brands not doing all these to make their campaigns more productive and better performing. One reason behind this is the lack of online tools to make the said strategies work. Another reason is the reliance on today’s technologies and strategies. Thus, in order to pick up, brands need to be innovative and more importantly, they need to come out of their comfort zones.

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