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In order to attract customers in today’s world you need to give them more than what they would expect. This is common sense nowadays as gone are the days when you can just say whatever you want and the customers will believe you. Today, customers are more savvy and more demanding which means that they demand more than just the most basic – they demand more depth and more engagement.
That’s where content marketing comes in. That’s because content marketing is a way of interacting with the customer without any selling. It’s a marketing technique wherein you offer relevant and valuable content to a pre-defined audience in order to attract them to you and convert them into potential customers. The point is to give potential customers more than they expect in order to lure them in.
That said, doing content marketing can be quite confusing to a beginner. Not surprising since a lot of people who have been doing it for a while also make mistakes. In order to jump start your foray into content marketing here are some resources that can help you plan, create and maximize your content marketing strategy....
Even if you’ve spent countless hours and dedicated resources to developing a thorough social media marketing strategy, you may find that you have overlooked some small, yet critical elements that could end up handicapping your efforts. For this reason, it’s always a good idea to get a second set of eyes to look over your internet marketing strategy, particularly a social media agency (heck, even having a friend look over it may dig up some missing elements).Mashable recently shared some of the most common elements missing from a social media marketing strategy. Check out some of these oversights below to see if your strategy needs some tweaking:...
Learn 10 principles for effective B2B content marketing, including creating content that solves pain points, and repurposing content to save time.
Content marketing does have its drawbacks. It cannot be relied upon to create a direct cause-and-effect; i.e. running a blog piece will usually not result in a direct sale. It is also very difficult to measure the results; content marketing is somewhat like public relations in this respect. However, it is not a “warm fuzzy,” either. Any marketing program should be using a variety of channels to reach customers so that its messages come from multiple different sources.
Content marketing is one of the many tools with which a company can deliver messages to its customers and prospects to “condition” them to purchase...
Your website is the hub of your inbound marketing efforts. Every piece of content you create or campaign you run should be designed to drive traffic to your website and landing pages, giving you the chance to convert visitors into leads and customers. It makes sense, then, to start by looking at insights from your web analytics platform, such as Google’s free Google Analytics, or a paid platform like HubSpot .
Let's review the 8 essential metrics you should be tracking on your website and its landing pages, and how you can use these metrics to optimize and improve your website’s performance....
At almost any given time, it seems, someone is hosting a Twitter chat somewhere. So, how do you decide which ones to attend? To help you decide, I made a list of the best chats for marketers. In this article from MarketingProfs, author Amy Vernon shares a thorough list of top Twitter chats for her fellow marketing professionals. While giving an initial nod to the originals, like #UsGuys and #SMGirlfriends, she shines a spotlight on smaller, sometimes niche, Twitter chats that users should also consider joining.
Chats include: #WGBiz, which discusses marketing for women growing businesses; #Pinchat, which holds Pinterest as its topic centerpiece; and #SWChat, which covers the social media impact on today’s workplace.
Content marketing.” The buzzword of 21st century marketing. But what is content marketing exactly? Check out these 11 definitions from around the web, starting with everyone’s favorite dictionary. “Content marketing is any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers.” - Wikipedia...
...Creating more content” was cited as the biggest challenge for content marketers in 2013. But without a content strategy of some kind, you simply don’t know if that’s true. How can more content fix your problem when you have no concrete plan? It’s like building a house with no architectural plans. So, we are going back to basics here. Expert content marketers with defined and working strategies can skip this article. For the other 90 percent of you, all I ask is that you start thinking about some of the steps below before creating any more content....
The current state of media and marketing is constantly changing. And a forward-thinking approach is necessary. Here are 5 tips to stay ahead: 1. Create More Opportunity You have the ability to make useful things faster and better than any corporation. Relying on publicity to get attention is like bungee jumping off a bridge. The adrenaline is groovy, and Cloud 9 is fun. But…then what? Publicity can bring opportunity. But it shouldn’t be your only path. Why? Fame is fleeting. You want to bubble up from the bottom, not float down from the top....
Open innovation is changing the economics of advertising.... ... while open innovation platforms in advertising lend themselves to creative work, they're also being tapped in the production phase of the business. MoFilm, Poptent, and Tongal, for example, focus on video production for television and web films. In every part of the industry, the open innovation model is changing the economics of advertising by switching significant fixed costs to variable costs and sourcing creative from more relevant and, many times, lower cost sources. Each open innovation agency (and there are many) has its own revenue model, but common to all of them is the basic proposition of expanding the agency's capabilities by tapping the wisdom of a global self-selected crowd of creatives, strategists, and fans. In his research on InnoCentive, the first global Internet-based platform designed to match problems with creative problem-solvers, Harvard Business School professor Karim Lakhani observed that the further a problem was from the solvers' field of expertise, the more likely they were to solve it. Since few companies have the resources to hire the diverse disciplinary expertise found in open innovation networks, agencies will have to tap these networks if they hope to compete on creative output....
With a defined social media strategy in place, marketers can rock social media in 30 minutes a day. Sound too good to be true? It is actually possible if your daily use of social media is built upon a well-developed social media strategy. But, a strong social media strategy does not mean that your brand has to be on every single social media channel out there. Instead, focus on the social media channels that the majority of your customers frequent. The infographic below explains how having an over-arching social media strategy in place can save you time and make you a more effective social media strategist....
Who are the best marketers out there right now? Who are the leaders shaping the way businesses interact with their customers and the marketplace? Big questions, right? ...Put best is how Lisa Gevelber, VP of Marketing for Google and one of the Council Members put it, “it’s about moments that matter. It’s when brands bring the right message at the right time through the right channel to the right customer. It’s no longer pushing out generic messages but instead, delivering relevant, helpful information. As marketers, we’ve always wanted to do that. Now it’s really possible. Things like mobile devices allow us to tailor a message to a person’s context (like location or time of day) in a way that’s more useful to users than has ever been possible. The new digital world has brought greater speed, better data, incredible technology and new creative palettes – they all give marketers a huge helping hand. Our goal is to reach customers with engaging and useful experiences they’ll love, remember, and spread.” Who Are These Marketers on the Forefront? This year’s finalists are included below. To find out who the winners are, you need to wait until April 25th. Congrats to this year’s finalists!...
In the wake of Monday's Boston Marathon bombings, it's apparent that we need to continue the conversation about how people and brands communicate during times of tragedy and crisis. Here are some social dos and don'ts to help prepare for a tragedy.... Let’s face it, social media isn't always in the hands of accredited public relations professionals with years of crisis management experience on their resume. Does your community manager know the answers to these questions? Chances are if they don’t then neither does the organization: - Do we comment when there is a natural disaster or national tragedy? If so, what does that sound like? - Cease all scheduled or planned content for X period of time. - Check ad schedule and pull content promotion or campaigns for X amount of time....
To answer the question about the future of content, I think it’s important to think about the relationship of information, technology and the human experience with content. A good place to start is understanding how your target audience discovers, consumes and acts on information. This effort towards empathizing with the consumer information journey provides the essential cues for meaningful content marketing planning, promotion and performance optimization....
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As digital communication continues to explode more organizations are recognizing its importance within the marketing mix. In order to develop strategy and allocate resources business leaders need to understand the effectiveness of their existing digital initiatives. A great way to do this is to conduct a digital audit – a study of your brand’s digital presence (on its own and in relation to your competitor set) across six key areas: Reach, Architecture, Content, Conversion, Integration and Measurement.
Before launching the digital audit it’s important to establish basic criteria with respect to rating status, structure and performance. To help guide next steps set up a simple decision filter that will aid in prioritizing your findings. One simple way to do this is to assign a color coding systems as follows...
To be successful in reaching Millennials, businesses need to give themselves the freedom to re-think their entire marketing strategy. To achieve their business objectives businesses need to communicate effectively with the values of consumers. Brands that are becoming more socially conscious today will positively affect their bottom-line, their communities, and the world of tomorrow.
In a telephone interview with David Burstein, author of "Fast Future: How the Millennial Generation is Shaping Our World," he said Millennials are highly connected to and are extremely conscious of their values. They "see the world from a values perspective," he continued, "Reaching Millennials requires a real investment [from brands and organizations] in social responsibility."...
A recent study by Oglivy suggests that social media users aren’t showing advocacy or passion for most of the brands that they follow.
What I want to do in this post is take a look at the research behind that assertion and posit an alternative explanation for the chasm between brand advocacy expression on social media and its expression in real life.
Methodology This study looked at between 6 and 7 million social media mentions of 22 major brands and eight feature films in four countries (United States, China, Brazil, and the United Kingdom). They assessed five product categories: coffee, hotels, fashion retail, movies, and skincare....
...The latest research from the Content Marketing Institute showed us that everyone is creating content and yet only about a third of us have a document content strategy. We’re struggling to rise above the marketplace noise and we need a plan to get there. So, we have all have a content problem, whether we have accepted it or not. We need to create more of the kind of content our customers are looking for and less of the stuff no one reads, or acts upon. Are you looking to define your content strategy? Before you start, it’s important to identify the questions you need to ask before you can really get started? In my latest presentation, I outline the questions you need to ask before you can define your content strategy. I have embedded the slides here and also will provide a high-level overview of the main points....
Social media is a delicate proposition for Beer brands. On one hand their product is one of the most social products available. On the other hand, there are regulations about how social the brand itself can be. This article looks at the top Beer brands on social media, and what they are doing to get themselves there. Overall Facebook has been, and continues to be, the strongest platform for promoting beer. It has solid age restriction barriers in place – unlike Twitter, which has a more freewheeling, unrestricted access, philosophy. However, in recent times the Beer companies have started to become more active on Twitter, perhaps in recognition of a characteristic that they with it… the ability to generate Buzz. Here’s a look at the top 5 Beer Brands and how they are using social media....
Small businesses prefer to conduct their marketing efforts on social networking sites over location-based marketing, according to a May 8 article by Fox News. Given the word-of-mouth nature and sharing features of sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest, 97 percent of business owners said that they use these platforms to promote their businesses. Only 17 percent of businesses say they utilize location-based ads, such as Foursquare, in promoting their products and services. Additionally, 66 percent of small business owners are optimizing their website for mobile platforms, reflecting an evolving use of the web and social sites. Just 34 percent of business owners say they have no desire to use social media in the future. Many believe that they don’t have a demand from customers to utilize such platforms.... Most important, 61 percent of small business got no return on investment...
Online analytics can be fascinating. They can provide insight into the quality of your online content, let you know just how engaged your Twitter followers are or simply provide a timely ego boost. However, in amongst all the good news, bad news and insight, there are certain analytics that rarely change. Wherever you go, from B2B service providers to fashion retailers, the most visited web pages are usually the same. The most visited page on almost every website is the “About” page. No matter what you sell, your website visitors, social media followers and online prospects all want to know about you. More than want to know, they actually expect to get information about you. There are common questions every prospect expects to have answered by your online presence....
I recently blogged about consumer brands that had come up with successful Twitter strategies, highlighting ASOS and Nike among others as companies that knew what they were doing with social. Many commenters mentioned that it would be useful to see a similar post focusing on B2B examples and I was obviously happy to oblige. Twitter is a difficult medium for B2B companies as it’s all too easy to simply view the platform as a broadcast medium and churn out dull corporate messages. But here are six examples of businesses that have managed to buck the trend and create interesting or useful Twitter feeds...
Social media as a primary marketing strategy is tempting, but it doesn't work well for everyone. Learn some of the pros and cons here....and the solution... It is no secret that social media is turning into quite the process. It’s becoming more and more important, so many different tools and advice columns keep popping up to help businesses and individuals stay organized and successful when it comes to this newer marketing effort. This has caused many companies to create a full-time social media position for experts to help manage the many social accounts, follow analytics, get creative with engagement, etc. It takes a lot of time and effort, but the payoff is only increasing as social involvement increase, so it’s easy to ask yourself: Can I get away with making my social media strategy my primary marketing strategy?...
Social media lay people may regard LinkedIn as, primarily, a venue for networking and for career advancement—but smart business owners know better. They know that LinkedIn is nothing less than a critical tool for brand enhancement and lead generation. Indeed, when used properly, LinkedIn can actually be used to drive traffic to a company website and ultimately to garner higher sales. The trick, of course, is having the right LinkedIn marketing strategy. Six basic pointers are offered below....
...You see, what’s actually evolving is a new and far more complex role for the store, and online brands like Google, Bonobos and Warby Parker are affirming it, as they each embark on creating their own, branded, physical stores. They along with a growing number of other online pure-plays recognize that in order to “fully actualize” their brands, they need to animate a physical presence and visceral experience for their consumers, not to move products but more critically, to move hearts and minds – to sell the idea, essence and values of the brand – all of which has more traditionally been viewed as the role of media. Which brings us to a critical point....
In a digital and social age, pipes are less important. People are the channel. You don't own or rent them. You can't control them. You can only serve and support them. This new world is disorienting because pipes and people work very differently as channels. Pipes flow out; people flow in. Content is pushed out through pipes, but pulled in through people. This reversal is shifting the balance of power. Individuals have access to information, tools, and resources once reserved for institutions. Externally, this means a shift in the relationship between customers and brands. Internally, this means breaking down the silos that once divided functions and departments. What used to be a hierarchy with the company at the top is now a network with the customer at the center. For marketers, this of course changes everything. As part of an awards program that one of us (Cara) created and the other (Mark) helped judge, we had the opportunity to see how hundreds of top marketers in Silicon Valley are engaging customers and growing revenue in this new era. The two most important principles that emerged are that customers make the best brand advocates, and entire organizations make for the best marketing teams....
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