September 14, 2023March 22, 2023 by John Woods

Google Analytics Retirement Update

By John Woods | March 22, 2023

Tick, tock, click, stop – time is running out for the old Google Analytics

I may have, ahem, mentioned this before – but just in case you’ve missed it: there’s not much time left to switch to the new version of Google Analytics.

The headlines: the established version of Google Analytics (“Universal Analytics” or “UA”) will stop collecting data on 1st July 2023. If you want to continue measuring your website with Google Analytics after that date, you need to switch to the new version (“GA4”). And ideally you need to do that well BEFORE 1st July 2023, so that you have some overlap between the old and new systems.

Google have recently announced that they will automatically migrate UA to GA4 in some circumstances – see https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/12938611 for details – but please don’t let that make you complacent. Google admit the automatic migration process isn’t the best choice:

As Google states in their help article:

“We strongly recommend you manually migrate your Universal Analytics settings to GA4. If you do nothing, a new GA4 property will automatically be created for you, and your Universal Analytics configurations will be copied to the new GA4 property. Not all UA configurations have an obvious GA4 counterpart, and the automated process might not make the same choices as you would.”

Emma Walker and I discussed the current state of the UA->GA4 migration in this short (2 minute) video:

As I mention in the video, there are still some frustrating barriers to switching to GA4. In particular some third-party tools with Google Analytics integrations still don’t support the new system. So there are some tough choices to be made in some cases. But the good news is there are always pragmatic compromises that can get you to at least some sort of usable GA4 system.

If you have questions about migrating UA to GA4, or need help with any other aspect of Google Analytics for B2B marketing, please get in touch!

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May 3, 2023March 9, 2023 by John Woods

Our highlights from Search London’s 12th Birthday

By John Woods | March 9, 2023

One of the most useful things I learned in business school is the NIHITO Principle…

There’s no Professor Nihito! Rather, it’s an acronym – Nothing Interesting Happens In The Office.
In other words – if you’re looking for new ideas, get outside your normal work environment.

The Search London event that we sponsored and attended at the end of February was a great example of NIHITO in action. My team and I came away with a bunch of ideas and inspiration about how we can improve our best practices for SEO and related areas of digital marketing.

Highlights from the talks

A reminder of the importance of accessibility for SEO-related content (and indeed for everything else in digital marketing) – it’s not hard to make your content a bit more accessible, and both the search engines and your users will reward you.
An in-depth look at the complexities of technical SEO on dynamic Javascript-based websites. Most of our clients don’t need to worry about this sort of complexity, but it was great to hear the gory details from an expert practitioner.
A fascinating overview of SEO in China, in particular for China’s dominant Baidu search engine. A few of our clients are active in the Chinese market, so some of these ideas are directly relevant for us, but more generally this talk was a reminder about the qualitative aspects of SEO. Whether in China or elsewhere there’s a lot more to the modern SERP than just “ten blue links” and somehow seeing examples in an unfamiliar language helped to highlight this. Our team had some great conversations sparked by this talk!

Google’s EEAT guidelines

We took along a printed version of our recent article and checklist “how to use Google’s EEAT guidelines to win at B2B SEO” and it was great to see so many attendees reading and keeping these. It’s a fantastic resource for anyone working in B2B content marketing. You can download the checklist from within the article.

We still have a few of the printed ones available – if you’d like one to keep handy on your desk please get in touch and we’ll gladly post one to you.

Photos

You can get a flavour of the event from the photos here: meetup.com/search-london/photos/33209538/

Speakers’ Slides

You can access all the speakers’ slides from the event through the following links:

Rejoice Ojiaku
‘Content Inclusivity: The Why and The How’

Ulrika Viberg
‘Javascript SEO – How to Test and Common Pitfalls’

Sophie Moule
‘How to Get Your SEO Recommendations to the Top of the Release Cycle List’

Owain Lloyd-Williams
‘How to Achieve SERP Dominance in China – Ideas For a Dynamic Baidu Strategy’

Massive thanks to the organisers Jo Juliana Turnbull and Tim Sheed for a great event. Hope to see some of you at a future Search London for some more NIHITO action!

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May 3, 2023March 9, 2023 by Nicola Haynes

A blog post exploring the upcoming rebrand from SharpSpring to Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM

SharpSpring and Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM: More than a Rebrand

By Nicola Haynes |

If you are one of our SharpSpring clients, or if you generally dabble in the world of marketing automation, you may notice some changes to the platform over the coming weeks.

What’s happening?

SharpSpring was originally acquired by Constant Contact back in September 2021 with the promise of extended capabilities and better results for smaller businesses.

Things have been quiet since then, but changes are now coming in hot and fast. From the 15th March, the SharpSpring platform will officially rebrand to ‘Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM’ including:

Changing the name
Changing the logo
Updating social channels
Releasing an official PR announcement

What doesn’t change?

It’s important to note that at this time nothing changes in terms of the functionality available to your business or your licence costs.

The SharpSpring website will live on and you will access your account in exactly the same way.

What will change?

While the new name doesn’t quite roll off the tongue (has no one considered ad length??) there are some real benefits that come with the acquisition:

New tools & feature development
Once the rebrand is out of the way, Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM will embark on a pretty exciting roadmap of product releases:

Improvements to their account level CRM functionality
- Life of the account: The life of the lead timeline, but for a whole account! This will enable sales teams to very quickly see individual engagement including email opens, website visits, form submissions and media downloads, company wide.
- Account reporting: Including a whole host of new widgets that can be used for customised reporting and personal dashboards.
- Accounts and opportunities: Linking these two areas of the platform in a much more seamless way.
- More sophisticated reporting: Easier access to analytics and data, allowing more detailed reporting around campaigns and traffic sources.
Email editor: A complete overhaul of their current email builder including more modern design capabilities and a closer working relationship with Outlook and Android, putting an end to some of those design conflicts cross-platform (I have everything crossed).
Integrations: Building on the suite of integrations that they currently offer and ensuring that they are developed in a more robust way.

Greater flexibility
SharpSpring has always worked on a one size fits all licence model, offering customers – no matter how big or how small – a standard package, with price overages for going over your limit on contacts or email sends. Of course, it’s great to be able to offer an all singing, all dancing licence, but if specific features won’t be used or contact limits are double what someone is looking for, it could be a turn-off, particularly for smaller businesses. Greater flexibility around licences allows customers to get exactly what they are looking for at that time, and expand their account as they grow.

Brand power
SharpSpring has always had a much smaller share of the marketplace (around 1% recognition at the time of writing). The acquisition is anticipated to increase brand recognition by over 40 times, allowing them to rub shoulders with the likes of HubSpot and SalesForce. And who doesn’t love an underdog?

So who are SharpSpring?

SharpSpring are a full-funnel marketing automation and CRM system designed for agencies and small to medium businesses, looking to drive growth, simplify processes and free up resource. We’ve been partnering with them for about 3 years now, helping over half of our clients with initial integration, automation strategy and ongoing technical support. We also use it for our own marketing activities (we practise what we preach) – that PDF you clicked on, that wasn’t any old link, and the email you received, that was scheduled when we had resource available and automatically sent while we were making our morning latte – SharpSpring helps you to work smart.

And Constant Contact?

Constant Contact is a digital and email marketing platform designed to help businesses meet their goals. They’ve been in the game for about 25 years now, helping sales and marketing teams to build connections with their customers.

Better together?

Overall, it seems as though things are heading in the right direction! Improved technology, product development and a larger support team – these are all concerns that have been raised over the last few months, so it’s great to see them starting to address issues. It’s still early days, and the first set of changes are on the small side, but I for one am excited to see how things progress over the next few months.

As soon as there are any further announcements, we’ll make sure to keep you up to date via our client communications and newsletters.

Not on the list yet and want to hear more? Sign up to our newsletter on our website to hear more about the acquisition, along with other B2B marketing tips, best practices and new developments.

If you are one of our SharpSpring clients (or if you are reading this after the 15th March, a Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM client!) and you have any concerns, please reach out to your account manager so that we can answer any questions that you might have.

Equally, if you are interested in finding out more about marketing automation and how it can support your sales and marketing strategies, take a look here or get in contact with one of our marketing automation experts.

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January 12, 2023November 24, 2021 by Jennifer Esty

SharpSpring Platinum Certification Marketing Automation

Sharp Ahead Receives Platinum Certification in SharpSpring Partner Certification Program

By Jennifer Esty | November 24, 2021

We’re super excited to announce that Sharp Ahead have achieved platinum-level certification in SharpSpring’s partner certification program!

Through this program, SharpSpring, Inc. (NASDAQ: SHSP), a global provider of cloud-based marketing and email software solutions, empowers its partners to become experts in marketing automation and rewards top performers with referrals, certification badges and additional resources.

Sharp Ahead met all of the requirements within the platinum tier of the certification program, demonstrating an exceptional level of expertise in marketing automation and the SharpSpring platform. With this certification, Sharp Ahead is more equipped to help clients drive qualified leads, convert more of those leads to sales, and optimize the ROI of their marketing campaigns.

“Agencies that are leaders in marketing automation are also far more likely to become leaders in the digital marketing industry,” said Rick Carlson, CEO of SharpSpring. “When a partner goes the extra mile to obtain this level of certification, we know they truly understand the value of marketing automation and that they’re committed to driving the highest results for their clients.”

“We’re very proud of the Sharp Ahead team for achieving such a significant designation. At Sharp Ahead, we aim to provide our clients with the highest level of service and expertise. Obtaining Platinum Certification from SharpSpring is a clear reflection of our approach”, says Jennifer Esty, Director of Sharp Ahead.

Find out more about our marketing automation services or get in touch to request a SharpSpring demo.

Google Analytics Retirement Update

Tick, tock, click, stop – time is running out for the old Google Analytics

If you have questions about migrating UA to GA4, or need help with any other aspect of Google Analytics for B2B marketing, please get in touch!

What’s Google Search Console, and why is it particularly important for B2B?

The impending death of third-party cookies – what does it mean for B2B marketers?

The Impact of Stricter DMARC Policies on B2B Email Marketing