More than 23 years of experience managing website projects and digital marketing campaigns for large and small businesses, non-profit organizations, associations, and government institutions.
Lou Storiale has been involved in every facet of website development including design leadership, usability, digital marketing including SEM, SEO, organic and paid social, information architecture, product and project management, content writing, and more.
One of my breakthroughs in digital marketing was when I created a 20-point SEO Strategy back in 2006 that took small businesses to Google's first page in 4-6 weeks. Only two years later, that was highly regarded in the small business world, since the economy came to a grinding halt due to the housing market crash.
Small businesses were being duped by savvy sales companies that promised the world, but delivered nothing. After spending several years developing and managing sites, it became obvious what types of content, site development incentives, benefits, and social proof was needed to rank locally.
From 2008-2010, Groupon.com was bilking small businesses by taking 50% of the sales, while those Groupon buyers were not becoming repeat customers. Small business owners were at a loss.
This is when I began harnessing the power of stacking digital marketing strategies like SEM, SEO and social media (which was relatively new at the time). Google had just offered to buy Yelp for $6B, but they refused to sell. Facebook was new and Google reviews were still in their infancy. I worked with small businesses, trained them on social media marketing, began local paid ads and combined them with solid SEO and excellent content.
I am happy to say that some of those businesses were on the edge of bankruptcy and the work I did allowed them to survive and many thrived.
E-Commerce SEO: After 10 years of working with clients, big and small, I began working in e-commerce. E-commerce was the only thing missing in my experience, and I felt like I was ready to tackle it head-on. I began working with an outdoor company that did well, but had unorthodox strategies that got them punished by Google. I fixed those issues, worked 10-14 hour days and every other Saturday for more than three and a half years. That company went from $46M in revenue to $80M in only a few years.
This work led to the discovery of strategic database-driven content using variables and natural language processing to create what I call, "function-driven content".
Discovered or invented in 2017, this technique is still not used by top-level e-commerce companies and big-box stores. Imagine unique, specific, and updatable content that entices and compels a person to click on YOUR LISTING in the search engine result pages and then leads them to make a purchase. I invented that.
After dozens of training sessions with programmers, content writers, usability professionals, merchandisers, and C-suite leadership, I decided to write a book to teach others how to implement it. That book is entitled: Sizzle: An E-commerce Revolution, available on Amazon.com.
