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Is Ahrefs A Good Tool Compared To Moz – Semrush

Is Ahrefs A Good Tool Compared To Moz – Semrush: Website audit: Moz and Semrush’s SEO audit tools are more user-friendly than Ahrefs, while Semrush provides more complete data and insights. Semrush wins this category because it combines Ahrefs’ advanced functionality with Moz’s simplicity.

Who are the best among Semrush, Moz, and Ahrefs in 2021?

refs vs Semrush, there are mixed opinions on which one is the best SEO tool. Some people prefer Moz for its simplicity, while others like the advanced features that Ahrefs and Semrush provide.

Keyword Difficulty

Short Tip: Always check the keyword density of a potential keyword before adding it to your list. The keyword difficulty metric measures the degree of difficulty associated with ranking in the top 10 for a certain term. The evaluation is done on a scale of 0 to 100 (with 100 representing the highest level of difficulty).

The first solution offered is Backlink Analytics, which enables you to analyse the backlink profile of any website. It provides metrics for both the quantity and quality of backlinks to your or your competitors’ websites.

 

Youtube Keyword Tool

Excellent user interface and user experience: As with any programme, it may take some time to get used to Ahrefs. However, after you’ve become acclimated to Ahrefs, it’s pretty easy to find what you’re looking for. And it typically takes no more than one or two clicks to get there. For instance, suppose I wish to see a breakdown of a website’s anchor text. I can jump right to this report from the sidebar:

You can discover all the keywords that are relevant to your primary keywords. Additionally, you receive detailed information about those phrases, such as their keyword difficulty (KD) and monthly traffic, so you know which keywords to target to rank higher in Google search results.

Which is the superior SEO tool: Semrush or Ahrefs?

Let me begin by stating that Content Explorer is akin to Semrush’s Content Marketing Toolkit. On the other hand, Moz lacks content-specific capabilities, yet some of its characteristics apply to content optimization.

Is Ahrefs A Good Tool

One of our favourite features of Ahrefs is the keyword data, which includes around 7 billion keywords and 1 billion content pieces (along with the ability to track and analyse over 16 trillion backlinks across the web).

SEMrush’s Keyword Magic Tool is available to its users. This programme provides access to a massive Google keyword database. With billions of keywords, the database is one of the most comprehensive on the market.

Which Seo Tool Is Better In 2021?

As demonstrated above, you can locate all relevant competitors and obtain their backlink data by clicking on their links. This enables you to analyze the backlink profiles of all crucial websites in your industry in more detail.

With all of content marketing’s inherent complexity, it’s critical to grasp how it works to manage a successful campaign. Because without a solid basis, you run the risk of succumbing to crippling content marketing

 

Finding the right web hosting firm for your business may be a lengthy process. It is a critical investment because it has the potential to make or damage your internet reputation.

 

Moz is another prominent all-in-one search engine optimization tool. It began as a blog and SEO community before expanding to include SEO tools. Moz has been on the market the longest of the three platforms covered in this article.

 

When SEMrush is compared to Ahrefs and Moz, it’s evident that SEMrush is the clear winner. With an extensive list of killer features, the most accurate databases, and a plethora of accessible possibilities, this programme is a secure bet for practically anyone who wants to perform SEO.

 

This makes it significantly easier to make the best campaign judgments. You’re aware of which phrases require a more significant portion of your budget, which ones provide the most value for money, and which ones are not worth your time. The platform constantly updates the data, ensuring that you have access to the information you require in near real-time.

 

You can use filters such as “Follow” to retrieve a list of all the do-follow links associated with any site on the Internet. In this manner, you can build links from these sources using various link building tactics such as guest posts, blogger outreach, and broken link building.

 

Ahrefs is a market-leading search engine optimization software suite with a comprehensive feature set that includes backlink analysis, keyword research, and technical SEO audits. When combined with superior data and an intuitive user interface, it’s easy to see why Ahrefs has achieved a leadership position in the search engine optimization software sector.

Competitor’s Analysis

The best feature of using Semrush is the ease with which you can do competitor analyses. You may discover their traffic, the best performing keywords, backlink profiles, and any other information necessary for a thorough analysis of every website on the planet.

When it comes to backlink analysis, both Semrush and Ahrefs excel. However, Semrush offers an exclusive tool for backlink analysis, whereas Ahrefs does not have an exclusive backlink research tool, as it is integrated into their Site Explorer.

 

If you’re looking for a TIEFEN search for a specific keyword, the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer is the perfect tool for you. On a single page, you’ll find nearly everything you need to make an informed decision about a particular keyword.

 

You can assess the value of your keywords. You can compare them to the most critical Indicators of website performance include traffic, search volume, anticipated cost per click, competition, and the number of search results.

 

Examine the Share of Voice (SoV) metric to determine your market share for a particular keyword. You can also obtain a report on cannibalization, which indicates whether your pages are in direct competition with one another for a particular keyword.

 

Additionally, you will see that you can view and analyze the traffic trends above to determine which keywords generate the most traffic (therefore, you may target the RICHTIGEN Keywords to increase your traffic from search engines such as Google).

What You Need To Know About Moz, Is It A Good Tool?

Additionally, Moz has developed other tools such as Page Authority and Domain Authority. These ranking tools are intended to assist you in determining how your website should appear in the SERPs. They are, however, proprietary and have no bearing on your actual rating, so they are not necessary.

Enter your desired keywords, and Semrush will analyse the top 10 pages that rank for those terms. You will then receive recommendations on how to optimise your content based on the material that is presently ranking highly for those keywords.

 

The first is the Phrase Overview Dashboard, which provides you with a comprehensive report on each keyword. This enables you to examine the keywords you’ve shortlisted and determine whether or not to target them.

 

It displays the most famous content for each keyword and provides metrics for each page, such as organic traffic, referring domains, and social shares. In this manner, you can determine the type of material most appropriate for a specific topic and develop more compelling content on that subject.

 

Page Explorer: This function enables you to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the backlinks, traffic, and keywords associated with any website URL, whether your own or one of your competitors’. You receive a comprehensive analysis of all backlinks pointing to your desired domain.

Ahrefs is a competition analysis tool that enables you to conduct keyword research, backlink analysis, and ranking tracking, among other functions. Additionally, you gain access to a massive quantity of data in one location, including over 16 trillion backlinks, 7 billion keywords, and 1 billion articles.

Therefore, concentrate on identifying the keywords that create the most clicks in Google searches. In this manner, even if you rank on the first page, you can enhance your search traffic (more search traffic if you rank in the top 3 search results).

This tool allows you to monitor your website’s or competitors’ rating for the most critical search terms. You may use it to analyse your website’s performance for specific keywords or monitor your competitors’ performance over time.

It is, in my opinion, quite good. And if you’re already running Google Ads for your website and a few clients, that may be plenty. However, when it comes to PPC, Ahrefs is not comparable to SEMrush.

 

If you’re solely concerned with increasing your Google rankings, I’d recommend sticking with Ahrefs or one of the other tools I’ve mentioned. If, on the other hand, you want SEO to be a byproduct of your content marketing, BuzzSumo will be invaluable.

 

When brainstorming fresh keyword ideas, consider the number of clicks for each keyword. For instance, “games” receives 140,000 monthly searches but only 30,000 clicks.

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Enterprise data modeling is nothing new. This tactic has been around for years, but it is still relevant to modern businesses today.

It can feel like an abstract, complex concept at times, but it is an important part of data governance, which helps manage and secure a company’s data assets.

In today’s world, data security is important, as is boosting productivity and efficiency with up-to-date applications and digital processes.

Enterprise data modeling can help ensure company apps and data are standardized, secure and in-line with the business mission.

What is an Enterprise Data Model?

Simply put, an enterprise data model is a visual representation, or graph, of an enterprise business’ data. It focuses on high-level, more abstract components as it tries to define and standardize an entire enterprise business’ data.

That means enterprise data modeling can be a massive task, but it will be important to help reduce duplicates, inaccuracies, and errors in a business’ data.

Why Do You Need an Enterprise Data Model?

There are numerous reasons why you might need an enterprise data model. Let’s dive into four, now. 

1. Improve Data Quality

Even small companies handle a lot of data on a daily basis. Over time, this data can quickly become irrelevant. Errors can slip in unnoticed, as can redundancies. The more issues in the data, the less accurate it becomes. When companies revisit data to inform decisions, data riddled with errors and redundancies can impact company sales and growth. By taking an overarching, comprehensive look at the data and defining it via enterprise data modeling, these issues can be addressed appropriately.

2. Defining All Data

Enterprise data modeling is a massive task, but that’s because it addresses all of an enterprise business’ data. A company can clean up data and align applications, so everything is cohesive and running smoothly, with an enterprise data model.

3. Managing Data

Similarly, managing data is easier when it is all addressed and defined in one graph. The enterprise data model will be more high-level, so deeper dives and more intensive data modeling will be needed to define the specifics. But overall, a company can better manage all the data assets it has when they are all placed in one data model.

4. Data Governance

Businesses rely heavily on technology, as do consumers. The more we move online, the more regulations that need to be in place to maintain privacy and security. Businesses that do not protect consumer data will find themselves in hot water. An enterprise data model can help identify a business’ data, better manage it, and ensure the business is complying with data and privacy laws.

Benefits of an Enterprise Data Model

The benefits of an enterprise data model are similar to the reasons a business needs it.

First, if a company wants to ensure high-quality data, it must remove redundancies and errors, and also apply any business-specific rules regarding the data. This can all be done through the extensive enterprise data modeling process.

An enterprise data model can also help a business be more cohesive and standardized in its processes by aligning the various applications and technologies the company uses daily.

Finally, a huge benefit to enterprise data modeling is its ability to help a business align its data with data governance. For example, GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, addresses how companies use customer data and gives more privacy and data control to the consumer.

When this regulation was implemented, companies needed to ensure that they were properly handling data. This regulation is still in effect, so newer businesses also must comply. Not complying with government data policies can lead to legal implications, which is what makes an enterprise data model so invaluable.

How to Create an Enterprise Data Model

The enterprise data model consists of a few smaller models. Starting with the enterprise subject area model, you’ll move through each of the following steps to create the enterprise data model.

1. Enterprise Subject Area Model

The ESAM is a high-level model that defines the main subject areas of a business as well as the relationships among these subject areas. For example, this could include Accounts, IT, Billing, Finance, Sales.

2. Enterprise Conceptual Model

Next, each ESAM is broken down further into enterprise conceptual models, which consist of major business concepts and how these concepts are related.

3. Enterprise Entity Model

Finally, the enterprise entity model includes the main interests for each business concept and details their relationships with one another.

Enterprise Data Model Example

The enterprise data model can be visualized as a pyramid. The entire pyramid is the enterprise data model, which, let’s say, is a retail store with a brick-and-mortar location and an online shop.

The top of the pyramid is the enterprise subject area model, with 10-20 business subjects defined. Those could include Stores, Staff, Warehouses, Products, Payments, and Customers, to name a few. Arrows would show how these subjects relate to one another.

Below that, the middle of the pyramid is a slightly more fleshed out enterprise conceptual model, which defines eight-15 main business concepts per subject area model. For example, Products could be broken down by ID and type, or Payments could be broken down by credit cards, debit cards, and cash.

Finally, the base of the pyramid is the enterprise entity model, which would identify the main areas of interest for each conceptual model.

Enterprise Data Model Tools

Now that you have a better understanding of enterprise data modeling, you might be ready to dive into this project. These data model tools will help make this process less taxing on your team.

1. Lucidchart

Teams can work together on Lucidchart to create collaborative diagrams and data models. It meets international privacy and security standards, making it a safe option.

Drag-and-drop components allow team members to build data models with ease, and each person can select portions of the diagram and leave feedback comments. You can test it out for free, and prices range depending on business size.

2. Erwin Data Modeler

The Erwin Data Modeler is specifically tailored to visualizing and standardizing enterprise data assets.

All data, whether from a data warehouse or in the cloud, can be handled in one interface, and automated models can help reduce redundancies and errors to improve data quality. Pricing varies by business needs, but you can explore this modeling tool with a free trial before committing.

3. Diagrams.net

Diagrams.net (formerly draw.io) is a free data modeling tool that allows you to make flowcharts and graphs for your enterprise data. Drag-and-drop features make it easy to place shapes, lines and arrows exactly where you’d like on the gridded, blank diagram.

You can also draw free-hand shapes. Newly added in February 21, diagrams.net also offers data governance options, and you can store all data models on your enterprise-level storage platforms, like Dropbox or Google Drive.

4. ER/Studio

Ideal for enterprise businesses, ER/Studio handles company data with ease. This enterprise data modeling software allows for forward or reverse engineering, source and target mapping, naming standards and more. You can model data from various sources and define and enforce standards within this tool. This is a paid tool, and prices vary depending on needs; you can also request a demo.

5. Ab Initio

Another popular tool for enterprise businesses, Ab Initio incorporates self-service and automation into your data models to improve efficiency. Users can model and catalog data securely, complying with data governance. The tool will even generate automated operational data quality rules for data processing. Licensing rates vary.

Improve Data Management With an Enterprise Data Model

Sure, enterprise data models can be intimidating. But they are more important than ever in our data-driven world. Enterprise data modeling can help standardize data assets for a business and better manage and secure these assets.

Most importantly, an enterprise data model can help a company avoid legal troubles by complying with data governance. By using one of many tools for data modeling, this arduous but crucial task can be made simpler and more collaborative.

It feels like just yesterday we were discussing issues like how to dispute Google Ad disapprovals or the new restrictions for Housing, Employment, and Credit policies.

And on July 20, 2021, we learned that come September, there’s going to be yet another twist in the plot of advertiser versus Google Ads policies, with Google’s new three-strike ad policy system. 

Advertisers aren’t surprised, but they do have mixed feelings about this soon-to-be-launched pilot program, and the implications will vary depending on your account. So today, I’m going to cover everything you need to know, including:

• What Google’s three-strike ad policy system is, how it works, and when the pilot will go into effect.
• The varying responses to this announcement within the PPC community.
• Five ways you can prepare and avoid strikes and suspensions come September.

With this information, you’ll have a better grasp of what to expect once the strike pilot gets introduced. Plus, an understanding of what to do if your account gets hit with the new penalties.

What is Google’s three-strike ad policy system?

Google announced on July 20, 2021 that it will be piloting a new policy program in which repeat offenders of three of its current policies will get a series of penalties (strikes)—with the third strike resulting in indefinite account suspension.

If you’re familiar with Google Ads disapprovals, the three specific policies Google is piloting the system with won’t come as a shock to you:

1. Enabling dishonest behavior policy
2. Unapproved pharmaceuticals or supplements
3. Dangerous products or services

How the Google Ads three-strikes system will work

The first disapproval you get for violating any of those three policies is a “warning” that will only impact the offending ads (they will be taken down until you change the copy). If you continue to violate that same policy, you’ll be entered into the strikes system which impacts your entire account.

Strike one

The first strike comes into play if any portion of your ad violates the same policy you were previously warned about within 90 days of the original warning. This will result in a temporary hold on your account for three days—meaning none of your ads will run.

Once your three-day advertising “time out” is up, your account will continue to run as normal—but the violating ad will stay disabled until corrected.

Strike two

You get a second strike if you violate that same policy again within 90 days of the first strike. Once the second strike is initiated, your account will be put into a longer, seven day time out.

For strikes one and two, you’ll be required to submit an acknowledgement form in addition to correcting the ad at fault. 

Strike three

Let’s say you manage to repeatedly violate the same policy again within 90 days of the second strike. The final third strike will result in account suspension for an indefinite period.

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Sounds a bit harsh, right?

Google is so advanced in these policies that it even covers 3D printing of any of the unapproved products.  And remember, it’s not just your ad copy that could get a disapproval, but any content related to your account—including landing pages, images, and ad extensions.

So this may sound harsh, but considering the following details, it may not be not as harsh as you think:

• Whenever a strike or warning is issued, you’ll receive an email notifying you of the violation (on top of the usual notification within the native platform). So it’s not like you’ll wake up to find your account suddenly suspended.
• All advertisers will continue to be able to appeal any enforcement decision.
• All warnings and strikes expire after 90 days. What this means is, you’ll still incur a hold on your disapproved asset until you correct the violation. But once 90 days have passed with no additional violations, your record is wiped clean and any new violations will start back at the warning stage.
• Strikes occur only when the same policy is violated more than once.

When will Google Ads implement the strikes system?

The pilot is going to start as of September 1, 2021 and we don’t yet have information on how long it will last. Until then, the ad approval process will be status quo.

As with any pilot, there is a chance that the new systems will be rescinded depending on the results. But Google sounds like they’re hopeful that the new system will be here to stay:

“In the future, we plan to expand the strikes system in phases to scope more of our policies in. As we roll the program out globally, we hope to learn from early feedback to ensure we’re improving the process as we scale.”

The pilot will apply to all accounts across all countries. Of course, this will especially impact accounts that have struggled with those three policies in the past or already have approved yet questionable content running. But any account can get hit with strikes should they put up any violating content.

Reactions from the PPC community on the strikes pilot

When I browsed around #PPCchat, I found many advertisers unsurprised (as expected), but with varying sentiments.

Frustrated, but entertained

The Google Ads platform has a notorious history of wrongly applied disapprovals and a frustrating support system. So, many advertisers are baffled as to why Google is doing this when the automated review process is already so flawed.

But they are having fun with it:

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You might enjoy these tweets too:

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Frustrated, and wanting improvement

Some advertisers see this as a step in the right direction towards safety and security in the Google Ads space, but are frustrated with its current disapproval process.

A wish list of how it can/should be tweaked seems to be growing.

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Also wanting improvements, but unfazed

My take on all of this? It doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. These three policies are more severe than a minor grammar or capitalization disapproval. If you’re a repeat violator of promoting dishonest behavior, unapproved substances, or dangerous products/services, you probably shouldn’t be advertising on Google anyway.

And while 90 days may seem like a long “probation” period, you’re much less likely to inadvertently violate these pretty obvious policies.

Given my experience, I don’t see the average account being negatively affected because unless it’s in a high-risk industry, it most likely already abides by the rules. However, it could get annoying as more policies get incorporated, so my request to Google? Improve the disapproval detection technology to understand the context of the content. 

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And if you’re thinking this system sounds harsh

I even ran a little LinkedIn poll and the results (even though my sample size is tiny) are pretty aligned with my conclusion that no one is really surprised or worried, but more so wary or unsure.

5 steps to prepare for Google’s three-strike ad policy system

You don’t have to start your September advertising efforts completely in the dark. Here are my recommendations for how you can get ready for this pilot—regardless if your account is at risk or not:

1. Appeal or resolve any outstanding disapprovals

Take this new initiative from Google as an opportunity as well as a reminder to review your account for any outstanding disapprovals.

You may as well sweep through and appeal or apply changes to rid yourself of any disapproved content so that you have less to worry about later—especially since Google mentioned plans for this system to incorporate other policies in future.

2. Check all corners of your account and website for any potentially triggering content

Save yourself a headache later and double check all of your digital assets for anything that could get picked up by the automated review system to play it safe.

As we know, it can be easy to get an incorrect disapproval. While some of that is on Google, we can focus on what we can control by removing or changing any verbiage or images that could even remotely pose a risk to those three policies.

A good rule of thumb is: if you’re questioning it, it’s probably best to change it.

While you’re at it, try our FREE Google Ads Performance Grader to get a full audit of your account!

While you’re in audit mode, run your account through our free Google Ads Performance Grader and learn how to save money and boost performance!

3. Roll out any new content prior to September if possible

This way, if anything does get disapproved for violation of one of those three policies, you save yourself a warning come September.

Remember, any time we make a change to ad copy (or roll out a new ad or ad extension) it automatically goes through Google’s review process. So if possible, try activating those campaigns now to test the waters of what does (or doesn’t) get approved. And if it doesn’t, you’ll have plenty of time to appeal it.

You can then pause the campaign until you’re ready to go live in September.

4. Set up advertising on other channels

As Google continues to build a no-nonsense policy structure, it’s becoming more important than ever to not rely on one single marketing channel. With the process for disapprovals continuing to be automated, you can’t always trust that bots will understand your ad context like a person.

In the event you do get disapproved—or worse, suspended—you’ll have peace of mind knowing you still have your brand awareness growing elsewhere while you resolve your Google issues.

5. DON’T make a backup account now or after your suspension

I’ll admit, I thought of the same exact workaround. If my account gets suspended for repeat disapprovals of these three policies, I can easily create a new account to try again, right?

Wrong. Google thought of everything already. In the same announcement, the platform promises that creating new accounts will result in more suspensions with the following statement:

“We already administer immediate account level suspensions when we detect egregious policy violations such as circumventing our systems (e.g., creating new accounts to bypass multi-strike suspensions), phishing or misrepresenting the product or service to intentionally mislead users.”

So, should you be concerned about Google’s three-strikes ad pilot? 

While advertisers aren’t surprised by the three-strikes program, many feel the disapproval and appeal processes need improvement. In my opinion, the policies it enforces are harder to inadvertently violate, so this shouldn’t have a major impact on the average account. But it all depends on your industry, what other channels you’re advertising on, and more. Either way, follow my tips to prepare and you can feel more confident when the pilot rolls out in September 2021!

Market segmentation is a powerful process because it separates your audience into groups so you can effectively target them based on traits such as the challenges they’re facing and/or how they’ll respond to certain marketing efforts.

The most effective way to determine which traits you’ll use to group your audience is by using segmentation bases.

In this blog post, we’ll cover the definition of segmentation bases, how to apply them at your company, and how you can use multiple segmentation bases at once.

Before we dive into the five segmentation bases, let’s cover the basics.

Segmentation Bases in Marketing

Marketing segmentation assumes all of your customers are unique and can be categorized based on common defining characteristics or traits that you establish. Those characteristics or traits almost always fit within the five segmentation bases, which we’ll review below.

Benefits of Using Segmentation Based in Marketing

By using segmentation bases in marketing, you’ll unlock opportunities that will help you:

• Improve the customer experience.
• Effectively market your products.
• Develop targeted marketing and sales enablement materials.
• Identify areas for product development.
• Show your target audience how you can resolve their challenges.

Segmentation Bases in Marketing Operations

Marketing operations is defined as the, “… people, processes, and technology that power a business’s overall marketing strategy and increase chances of success.”

While working on marketing, data strategy, implementation, and reporting, the marketing ops team can associate leads and contacts with your segmentation bases. That means they can surface strategies to effectively target those customer segments as well as reports, relevant dashboards, and metrics to track your success at marketing to those audience members.

As a result, your greater marketing team will have access to more organized marketing segments, contact data, reports, and relevant metrics. That means better customer experiences that convert more audience members.

Now, let’s look at the five segmentation bases and their defintions.

1. Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographic segmentation refers to someone’s psychological traits. This includes your audiences’ lifestyle preferences and patterns, and why they think the way they do. It also covers their typical activities, interests, and opinions.

2. Demographic Segmentation

Demographic segmentation refers to the statistical description and socioeconomic traits of your audience. This includes age, education, and gender, birth rates, gender, marriage status, income, and employment status.

3. Geographic Segmentation

Geographic segmentation refers to the location in which your audience resides and/ or works. You can go as broad or as granular as you want with geographic segmentation — for instance, you may group your audience by continent, country, state/ city, town, neighborhood, and so on.

4. Firmographic Segmentation

Firmographic segmentation refers to a company’s attributes and is helpful for B2B companies that are developing their segmentation bases. This includes but is not limited to their size, industry, and location.

(You might think of firmographic segmentation as demographic segmentation but for a business.)

5. Behavioral Segmentation

Behavioral segmentation refers to an audience group’s actions, habits, and interactions. If you’re thinking this sounds a bit like demographic segmentation, you’re not wrong. But it goes deeper into one’s buying habits than demographic segmentation does.

For instance, behavioral segmentation provides insight into the benefits that one gets from buying and using a certain product as well as how ready (or not ready) they are to convert into a customer.

Pro Tip: Use HubSpot’s Behavioral Targeting tool to personalize marketing outreach at scale while also making every interaction feel unique.

Other relevant features you’ll have access to with HubSpot’s Behavioral Targeting tool are:

• Insights about the way your audience interacts with your site/ content.
• Active lists for advanced segmentation, targeting, and audience building.
• Event-based triggers for sending audience members messages at the right time.

Using Multiple Segmentation Bases

You don’t have to just use one or two segmentation bases — you can use all five, or a mix of them.

And once you select the segmentation bases you’re doing to move forward with, you aren’t stuck with them forever. As your business evolves, so do your customer base and target audience. That means you’ll naturally want to review, update, add to, and remove from your list of segmentation bases over time.

The key is using the segmentation bases that matter to your business accurately and applying them in a way that allows you to effectively target and reach the audience members within them.

Before we provide some tips on how to use multiple segmentation bases, let’s take a moment to cover why you’d want to use multiple segmentation bases.

Why Use Multiple Segmentation Bases

Businesses use multiple segmentation bases — a process that’s also known as multi-segment marketing — because the product or service that they sell applies to target audience members in different ways.

For instance, a business that sells tennis skirts may sell skirts to customers who play a lot of tennis, and to other customers who don’t play tennis but want a workout skirt for other forms of activity (e.g. running, walking, etc.).

Multiple segmentation bases are also commonly used if your business sells more than one product or service. For instance, the company that sells tennis skirts may also sell tennis rackets and tennis shoes. The customers who need a skirt versus a tennis racket or shoes will need to be targeted differently. Especially if those tennis items are for both men, women, and kids.

How to Use Multiple Segmentation Bases

By using multiple segmentation bases, you’ll get a better understanding of the people who complete your target audience — as a result, you’ll be able to more effectively target them, meet (and exceed) their needs and expectations, and convert more of them into customers.

Here are some tips to remember while using multiple segmentation bases:

• Determine which segmentation bases you want to establish for your unique audience and how granular you want to go within those segments.
• Collaborate internally across marketing (and even sales) while identifying and defining your customer segments to ensure they’re as accurate and helpful as possible.
• Review and update your segmentation bases if and when needed (e.g. take a look at them quarterly to ensure they evolve alongside your business).
• Get feedback from your team members (you can do this across marketing and sales) about the way your segments are organized. You can also survey (and incentivize) your current customers, or those who recently converted in some way, to ask for their feedback around your marketing content and targeting efforts.

Use Segmentation Bases to Grow Better

Using segmentation bases has a number of benefits. You can better understand your audience, target your leads and prospects more effectively, create and offer marketing and sales materials that better meet their needs, identify product development and marketing opportunities, and more. Begin working on your business’s segmentation bases to grow better.

Educator and computer pioneer Alan Kay once said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

If you work for a growing company, be it a startup or scale-up, you’ll know that attempting to “invent” the future isn’t a matter of waiting around for flashes of inspiration and eureka moments — rather, it requires proactive planning, excellent execution, and awesome alignment. You’ll also know that these ingredients aren’t easy to come by. Not by a long shot.

That’s why I swear by a simple, unique framework to help me and my team at HubSpot prepare for the future. It’s called ‘rhythm of the business,’ and it involves visually mapping out the key events, milestones, and activities scheduled across the business year and ensuring that every team is intimately familiar with the plan — or rhythm — for the months ahead.

As a member of HubSpot’s revenue operations team, understanding the ‘rhythm of the business’ is critical for our success. Our team’s north-star goal is to remove friction for our customer-facing teams and help them to pass that friction-free experience on to customers.

The RevOps model sets us up for success because it breaks down silos between operations professionals, unifies them as a central team, and allows them to work collaboratively on the systems and processes that power a business.

As a result, duplicative work gets weeded out, repeatable tasks get automated, and time is spent proactively improving the customer experience, not frantically reacting to glitches in the system.

As the RevOps model aligns teams around the customer, the ‘rhythm of the business’ framework aligns the entire company around key events in the business year — those moments where outsized impact is possible and execution is everything.

Together, RevOps and ‘rhythm of the business’ are greater than the sum of their parts; a combination of mindset and method that enables growing continually to delight customers, even as their internal operating model becomes more complex.

How I Became a ‘Rhythm of the Business’ Believer

It was during my time working for Amazon that I first embraced ‘rhythm of the business.’ I picked up the habit of keeping a record of important milestones throughout the year, noting on my calendar the “fire drills” that occurred during the year and color-coded them.

Annual kick-offs were highlighted in blue, big customer events were orange. I used a printed wall calendar, which I know is “old school,” but it allowed me to visualize the entire year in a nanosecond.

Later in my time at Amazon, when I was in charge of planning, strategy, and enablement, I looked at the previous year’s calendar and noticed that some events had gone well for my team while others should have been given more preparation time. In short, I realized that we needed to plan better for the next 12 months.

So, when the time came to map out our calendar for the year ahead, I was able to take the learnings from the past 12 months and provide some informed structure to what otherwise would have been, in essence, an act of guesswork.

By structuring my team’s year in this way, not only were we able to kick off earlier than most teams, we gained the time needed to develop and refine our hypotheses, test them, and lay out a defensible data-driven strategy for the future.

This in turn enabled us to pursue better investments, see greater returns on those investments, and then be in a position to make greater investments going forward. The process took the form of a flywheel, feeding off its own momentum.

When I joined HubSpot in 2018, I brought the ‘rhythm of the business’ approach with me. Although the company had been growing well, it was about to hit a new phase of scale and we had the opportunity to improve our operating model by taking a step back from the whiteboard and considering the ebb and flow of the year.

This enabled us to kick off planning at the right time and be prepared for major milestones throughout the course of the year.

3 Ways ‘Rhythm of the Business’ Helps HubSpot Scale Better

At HubSpot, we have an annual planning cycle, and we recently observed that there were some areas of misalignment between teams. That was causing internal friction, and where there’s internal friction, it’s never too long before that friction seeps into the customer experience.

For example, at times our engineering team and product team were at advanced stages of their annual planning before other teams had fully defined what they needed from them.

At best, this type of disconnect can lead to a lot of lost time in meetings trying to re-assess plans, and at worst it can lead to ineffective, disjointed strategic execution — a thought that would keep most operations professionals I know up at night.

We turned to the ‘rhythm of the business’ model to root out this misalignment and implemented it with three straightforward steps that are easy for growing companies of any size to replicate.

1. Map the milestones.

The first thing my team at HubSpot did when adopting the ‘rhythm of the business’ was to note on our physical calendar when other teams were doing their annual planning and when their key milestones were due to occur.

We worked backward from those dates to set deadlines for the deliverables we owned for other teams’ key milestones, and once finalized, we distributed the calendar digitally across the company.

That allowed us to align our activities and priorities with those of other teams, giving us a tightly knit strategy for the year ahead.

2. Look long-term.

As important as it is to have the rhythm of the forthcoming year mapped out, it’s just as important to have a long-term plan in place.

At HubSpot, we recently mapped out a three-to-five-year plan, which is critically helpful from a systems perspective — it enables us to build a business strategy that is consistent, coherent, and clear. It also gives us the opportunity to ensure we’re making investments in the right systems at the right times.

Without this foresight, each team would likely pursue its own agenda and strategy, leading to different departments pointing in different directions, fractured investments, and potentially a clunky, cobbled-together tech stack — something that’s deeply detrimental to the customer experience.

3. Be a theme player.

With the key milestones for the year mapped out, it’s helpful to group them together under certain themes or seasons. This makes it easier for teams to organize their work mentally and remain focused on the overarching business purpose of their activities at any time of the year.

Here’s an example of how we at HubSpot group milestones by theme:

Q1: Kickoff Season

We kick the year off, set targets, and make sure that people have a clear understanding of their goals and feel motivated by them.

Q2: Think-big Season

We step back from the business and explore big opportunities and plan long-term. We look at what’s working well, we think about the future that’s not yet illuminated, and we assess the external factors that could impact our business.

It’s one of my favorite seasons because we consider the trends that might emerge three to five years from now. And that thinking helps inform the company in Q3.

Q3: Compass Season

We plan for the next year and identify the big plays we want to make, as well as the opportunities we will omit.

These choices are made with the learnings from Q2’s “think-big” season fresh in our minds, helping us to make decisions in the short term that will set us up for success in the long term.

Q4: Planning Season

You wrap up the year, finalizing the subsequent years’ targets, goals, investments, and divestments…and take some time to recharge!

Alignment Over Strategy

The ‘rhythm of the business’ framework has allowed the revenue operations team at HubSpot ensure that all teams are aligned on not only our priorities for the year ahead but also our vision of the future.

This in turn allows us to effectively create processes, construct systems, and organize data for our customer-facing teams, setting them up to successfully deliver a friction-free experience to our customers.

As our Chief Customer Officer Yamini Rangan often says, “Alignment eats strategy for breakfast.” This has become a mantra for us RevOps professionals at HubSpot as we ride the rhythm of the year.

After all, a strategy is only as good as its execution, and execution is entirely dependent on alignment, particularly at a scaling company.

To get started with “rhythm of the business” in your organization, start by looking back through your calendar — whether print, digital or memory-based — and mark down when key milestones occurred over the course of the previous year.

Then earmark when you began planning for each milestone and assess whether your team’s preparation was adequate or if it would benefit from more time, information, or support next year.

Once you’ve constructed this simple plan, you’ll be able to give your team a clear sense of the rhythm of your business for the next year. And in doing so, you’ll not only be able to prepare for the future, you’ll be able to invent it.

Final Thoughts

If you’d like to look into visualizing the future with the “rhythm of business” model, explore whether your company has rhythm or how to create a rhythm of business model. I also recommend a book we use at HubSpot, “Playing to Win,” which helped us ensure that we were all using similar nomenclature and frameworks.

Ultimately, the specific nomenclature or framework doesn’t matter. What matters is that everyone is on the same page and uses it – this speeds up communication, decision-making, and results.

Disclaimer: This blog post is not legal advice for your company to use in complying with data privacy laws like GDPR. Instead, it provides background information to help you better understand data privacy best practices. This legal information is not the same as legal advice, where an attorney applies the law to your specific circumstances, so we insist that you consult an attorney if you’d like advice on your interpretation of this information or its accuracy.

In a nutshell, you may not rely on this as legal advice, or as a recommendation of any particular legal understanding.

GDPR instilled a catalyst of real change in 2018 — resulting in a permanent change of the data privacy landscape.

It forced companies to really take stock of their data and privacy responsibilities — and double down on the requirements to map out and account for their data practices and put processes in place to manage data and store it compliantly.

COVID-19 has also unleashed a new set of risks in relation to data privacy that companies are currently confronting.

Both significant events force a strong message to be delivered to companies that privacy and data protection should be of paramount corporate responsibility. The changes have impacted conversations around the world with different territories adopting GDPR as their standard in order to outline an internal compliance program.

Data privacy or, in particular, the application of tenets of privacy to data, is often seen as a massive hurdle to cross for an organization. Companies should embed processes as part of their culture and be willing to pivot in order to adapt to regulatory changes and technological advances.

Systemized processes using tools that are designed to instill compliance can set you up for success as well as continuing to educate internally can help with internal adoption and ensure that privacy is everyone’s responsibility.

At HubSpot, we ensure that data privacy is top of mind and built into our practices and products. Upholding respect to the privacy of individuals who use our products is paramount to our corporate responsibility and internal business model. We are continuously identifying ways in which to improve processes to instill trust in our users and creating tools for our users to be compliant in their organizations.

Below are a few examples of how good privacy can be achieved in an organization.

Data Privacy Best Practices

Privacy Program Management

Setting yourself up for success in the privacy arena requires the establishment of a strong internal team, a united front that will continue to make data privacy and GDPR compliance a priority. Close collaboration on a strategic privacy program that outlines your privacy responsibilities is key to see your business scale compliantly.

Knowing how to conduct processes compliantly in relation to your online activities, identifying risks, managing cookie compliance for your web and app products; creating specific disclosures about the treatment of data; offering visitors information on the rights available to them in a privacy policy are all good practices that every organization needs.

Granularity and types of notices that are needed along with the scope of rights that you must provide to visitors under applicable laws depend on the territories where your visitors reside and it is up to you to demystify these and instill good practices in response.

The scope of domestic and foreign privacy legislation that one company may be obliged to comply with may look different than the scope applicable to another, as there is no “one size fits all” approach to data privacy.

Having a team in place to tackle what these mean to your organization and address compliance obligations can help you communicate your commitment to privacy in this area for your users.

Adopt the Use of Compliance Tools and Practices as Part of your Company Culture

Data privacy is not one person’s responsibility.

By embedding it into your company’s culture, it can make all employees feel invested in keeping company data safe and mitigate risk.

Creating ongoing training and communicating important regulatory changes to keep employees up to date is essential to see your privacy program a success. Charging your privacy team with ongoing monitoring of how changes can affect processes and implementing required changes ensures you are kept up to date with evolving legislation and ahead of any changes in responsibilities.

Did you know that ransomware attacks are often a result of a single compromised password? Doubling down on passwords is the most basic way to operate a good privacy program within your organization.

Identifying risks in this area is key and plugging the gaps that appear can be a constant battle.

For example, having inactive accounts present in your network from a former employee can be a fault that bad actors can take advantage of. It’s a good idea for your org to invest in pass-key software to help implement multi-factor authentication and add additional security to the systems you use to reduce risk in this area.

Using tools that are built with compliance in mind can automate much of these processes needed to affect your program management. These tools can monitor your data collection processes and allow you to implement changes in response.

Integration of third-party systems into this monitoring allows you to extend your privacy controls out into a vendor ecosystem. Automating your processes in relation to subject access requests allows you to be effective within the legal timeframe and generate responses to an individual and carry out your responsibilities when you have a 360 view of the data subject’s data points.

Not only that, but you will be ready to meet any request from a regulator should they need information from you consolidated in one source, allowing you to comply effectively within the timeframe.

Privacy Does Not Stand Still — Keep Pace with Evolving Legislation and Technology 

In the European Union, many consumers are actively making use of their data protection rights granted to them under the GDPR and the ePrivacy Regulation.

In the US and beyond, consumers now have higher expectations about online privacy and are starting to adopt GDPR standards. More and more consumers are now openly concerned about how their personal data is being handled by companies. The newly passed CPRA (amending the CCPA), Privacy Acts being launched in Washington and Virginia as well as similar legislation being rolled out globally in countries like Brazil, India, and China are testament to how territories are making moves to uphold data privacy at a local level.

Some of the latest significant legal developments that companies need to know about are:

• Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) — The European Commission adopted revised Standard Contractual Clauses for International Transfers on June 4, 2021. The revised version replaces those that pre-date the GDPR and are intended to be used for cross-border data transfers outside of Europe, including the US. Although these have an effective date in three months, businesses that are governed by existing SCCs have 18 months to enter into new SCCs or find another lawful means to transfer data.

• Colorado Privacy Act — This Act passed the state’s legislature on June 8, 2021. It will be the third US state – after California and Virginia – with a law that provides its residents with protections when it comes to their personal information.

• China’s Data Security Law (“DSL”) — This law takes effect on September 1, 2021. Many of the practical compliance steps are still to be published over the coming weeks and months but organizations can seek to rely on the draft measures until they do.

Keeping abreast of what these legal developments mean to you and what you need to do with regard to your data in response, is your responsibility. You may need to make adjustments internally to comply and work with your teams to ensure that any privacy issues are addressed.

A thorough examination of what is incumbent on you, with adjustments to processes internally or systematically, has to be done to meet changes at both local and global levels. Making sure your processes are flexible for both and having the capacity to scale with your business with such developments is equally important.

Final Thoughts

As our operations become perpetually digitized, building a privacy-by-design company should be a key priority. Implementing a comprehensive and coordinated approach to data privacy can be challenging and time-consuming but setting it out as a strategic priority across all business activities driven by leadership, is a must for future-thinking organizations.

Organizations should understand and prepare for the reputational risks that extend beyond non-compliance with the myriad of data privacy laws and regulations. Being on the pulse of regulatory change in global privacy laws, keeping up to date with enforcement decisions, and making continuous improvements to privacy programs can help create a privacy-first culture that will set you up for success in the future.

You should be asking yourself some of these thoughtful questions to see if your privacy methods are currently up to standard. Unfortunately, the consequences of failure to improve on matters are not kind, but effectiveness in this area will reward you in the long-term improving your brand image as a trusted, privacy-first organization.

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