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Lead generation might be a top goal for B2B marketers in 2015, but social media isn’t where they’re expecting to bring in qualified prospects, according to a new BrightTalk report.
In fact, social media and print advertising ranked the lowest on a list of 15 different lead generation tactics. A full 30 percent said these are ineffective lead gen tools and just 12 percent said they’re highly successful. On the contrary, email marketing was cited as the top tool, with 55 respondents saying it’s effective.
In an era when 7 out of 10 people utilize social media (and the average social media user is active 2 hours and 25 minutes daily), this is unsettling data. Marketers who consider social media ineffective for lead gen need to reconsider their current strategies and revamp what they’re doing to both promote the brand and nurture people to take the next step to learn more....
How many benefits of social marketing can you think of?
Social media can be used in so many ways – to develop your brand, increase SEO rankings, distribute content, acquire leads, and more. While many blogs talk about these benefits, there are very few that attempt to outline the “big picture” of social media or a comprehensive list of its benefits.
I decided to take a stab at it and ended up with 75 benefits of social media marketing. Below is an infographic with a compiled list of benefits. Check it out and see which benefits your brand is potentially missing on social media....
Use the examples of how these small businesses use Twitter to create a loyal following for your own business.
Last year, IBM poured some cold water on social advertising when it said social sites like Twitter and Facebook had almost no impact on online Black Friday sales.
This year, things aren’t much better.In tracking traffic and sales at about 800 e-commerce sites, IBM says it found that only about one percent of visits to e-commerce sites this week come from social networks, according to Jay Henderson, strategy director for IBM. And, once again, just a fraction of one percent of overall orders are made by people coming to the e-commerce site directly from a social network, he said.
“I don’t think the implication is that social isn’t important,” Henderson said earlier this week. “But so far it hasn’t proven effective to driving traffic to the site or directly causing people to convert.”...
Small businesses hear all the time how effective content marketing is but often they are resistant to allocating their limited budgets and precious time to it because: 1. Good content takes time to develop; 2. And it doesn’t immediately lead to paying customers.
Even though it’s time-consuming and you won’t see ROI today, content marketing – when done well – can become the driving force in your sales machine for years to come.To help you look at it from different standpoints, I reached out to 6 content strategists with one question: “How can content marketing help small businesses generate leads and drive revenue?”...
Why Social Media & Search Marketing go hand in hand. Taking the example of the Flower & Gifts Industry.
...We believe that Social Media and Search Marketing go hand in hand because Social conversations can lead keyword strategy in a certain direction, and Search keywords can influence Social content strategy. By combining your Search & Social Marketing efforts, you can make sure to provide your audience with the right content, based on what they search for the most and what engages them on Social Media. Today we will take a look at the Flowers & Gifts Industry as an example of Social Media & Search Marketing alignment...
To create and deliver content that attracts and retains customers, you need a strategic framework for conceptualizing, designing, and scaling your content marketing efforts. Use these 6 key elements to guide your strategy....
You might be wondering, what is a content audit? If you don't know what I'm talking about, your marketing team is likely not being as thorough as they could be in developing your brand's content strategy.
A content audit is the process of rereading all the content on your site to evaluate where you have gaps in your overall content strategy. Yes, it's as tedious as it sounds. However, it's a process that has extreme payoff.
...Inevitable is the classic "quality versus quantity" debate. In rebuttal to the pushback that Vaynerchuk's comments received, he astutely asks, "why not both?" Why can't brands create a lot of high quality content? Sure, some of this content will work and some will miss the mark. Not all attempts will result in a viral homerun, but we live in a real-time world, where individuals are increasingly looking for more context from their content.
Content providers are going to have to play a very different game. A personal case study comes to mind. On May 21st, I published my second business book, CTRL ALT Delete. Along with a digital experience to compliment the launch of the book, my digital marketing agency, Twist Image, took the interesting stats and data from this experience and created a SlideShare. Instead of simply tweeting and sharing the link throughout my online social spaces, I shared some of the unique stats (akin to Vaynerchuk's tripling down). I expected this deluge of content to upset my online community, provoking negative comments and pushback.
Much to my surprise, the SlideShare quickly surpassed 100,000 views, and the number of new followers and friends coupled with the retweets and shares sent my overall analytics through the roof. Creating what Monty refers to as "digital clutter" seems to have been the most effective strategy to get the word out. How did this happen? People aren't "on the ready" just because I decided to hit a publish button. The frequency of posting matched with the quality created greater attention and focus on the message. It's a tough lesson for new media thinkers to hear: traditional tactics like frequency and repetition work....
Building a small business content marketing strategy is hard work, but it’s probably about to get much harder. Many subject matter experts believe that our current state of content overload is just the calm before the storm. As Doug Kessler of Velocity Partners spectates, “the rush to content marketing in every industry will make it harder and harder for your brand to rise above the noise.” If your entire strategy to date has relied on doing what you competitors already did, a few weeks later, it’s definitely time to pause and reset. To inspire you to a more original small business strategy that’s built to weather an era where literally every company blogs, Tweets, and pens eBooks, we’ve taken inspiration from some of the hardest-working companies on the block: B2B companiess with brilliant content.
Social Media plays an increasingly important role in many business marketing efforts. It’s one of the pillars of a successful Inbound Marketing strategy, and with as little as 6 hours of dedicated effort a week, a small business can see improved sales results. While increased usage is great sign that business is adapting, there are some all-to-common errors that prevent business owners from taking full advantage of everything social media offers. It’s particularly important since recent research has shown the average time spent using social media is increasing. According to research from HubSpot, more than 85% of Internet users have Facebook accounts and 49% are on Twitter. In other words, your prospects are using social media. Since social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing, it’s important to eliminate the stumbles. Here are 5 simple tips that will help you reach your prospects more effectively using social media:...
Inspired by a reader's question, CMI takes a closer look at challenges B2B marketers face at both small and enterprise businesses. Check out our 9 ideas for solving some of the biggest content challenges... ... Andy’s question inspired us to take a closer look at some of the content marketing challenges faced by North American B2B marketers who work at small businesses (companies with 10 – 99 employees), as compared to their peers at enterprise organizations (companies with more than 1,000 employees). We’ll also share some insights on ways content marketers can address these issues — regardless of the size of the organization they work for. In general, both groups are similarly challenged with producing the kind of content that engages — and it is the top challenge for enterprise companies. In a way, I think it’s encouraging to see this as a top challenge, as it shows that marketers are focusing on the value of quality over quantity. And, there is good reason why engaging content matters: Customers and prospects who engage with content are more likely to reach out or initiate a relationship with your organization....
As Americans turn their attention to the web for both professional and social purposes, marketers will follow suit, as evidenced in Global Web Index’s “A Global Analysis of How Consumers Spend Their Media Time” report. The data found global digital marketing, including social media and mobile internet usage, accounts for 57 percent of daily media time. Overall, consumers spend 5.6 hours per day engaging with digital content. People dedicate 10.7 hours a day consuming all forms of media. While the U.S. market is slightly behind emerging markets like Argentina and Thailand in digital consumption, American brands still see the future of advertising online. In fact, Ascend2 found that social media marketing remains a top priority for many organizations, as both B2Bs and B2Cs use web content to drive website traffic. A significant percentage of businesses also use social media content to improve search engine rankings, despite not fully understanding how social influences SEO.
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This growing mass of information and options–often combined with unrelenting interruption marketing–can be overwhelming. When the distracted consumer is the norm and it becomes increasingly harder to separate the signal from the noise, more is often less.
As our customers’ world grows ever noisier our reflexive response is often to dial things up to 11. Resist that urge.
The new battle ground is for share of attention. And we earn and command attention not through shouting louder than everyone else, throwing more at the wall to see what sticks or defaulting to using price as the only arrow in our quiver.
The antidote to a tsunami of stuff is to know more about our customers than the competition and to turn that insight into intensely relevant products and experiences....
Consumers may tune into TV on a regular basis, but they mentally tune out rather fast in favor of the array of "second screen" options.
On average, television holds a consumer’s attention only 39% of the time, a rate that pales in comparison to the attention rates laptops (70%), tablets (76%) and smartphones (77%) command.
That’s according to a new report from Nielsen and YuMe, a digital video ad tech firm, expected to be released Wednesday morning. MediaDailyNews got an early look at the data....
Marketers are getting so good at journalism that they want it all. The practice of content marketing is simply to create useful content for a specific audience to get new customers. But plenty of corporate content marketers use this approach to do better journalism than journalists - particularly when it comes to focused, tangible news-you-can-use kind of information.
Many content marketers have so much momentum they think they can create a level of trust with the public typically reserved for the Fourth Estate (and with it, transfer that trust to the companies they work for and make them lots of money). Forget about earned, owned and paid media strategies when you can be all three.
But I think that's a Don Quixote-level delusion brought on by the disruptive media times we live in....
Contextual design is a proven approach that we’ve started using for all of our landing pages. I’ll get into more detail in a minute, but essentially you start a conversation in a blog post, in an ebook, in a promotion, in an ecourse, and then continue that conversation on the destination landing page.
Instant gratification for your visitors. Instant increase in conversion rates for you. Smart content marketing for all.In this blog post you will learn how to use landing pages for content marketing...
We love to hear good stories. You probably know “that guy” who commands the attention of everyone around him during a dinner party when he’s telling a story. He’s always with an entourage of people laughing and agreeing with just about everything he says. This might explain why when someone is telling you a good story, you may not even realize it. You are too fascinated with the actual story itself. That’s the power of a well-told story.
From a brand standpoint, storytelling allows a company to be “human” and being human is about having a real, honest connection with people, being transparent, responsive and above all accessible. We can all thank social media for that.Your brand must empower employees to become storytellers, or rather brand journalists. Here’s why:...
B2B firms are natural candidates for inbound marketing and content strategy campaigns. Many entrepreneurs believe that effective inbound marketing efforts require tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of hours, and at least a year to get traction in the marketplace. However, with content marketing, it’s possible to make a significant impact against specific metrics in a short period of time.
Here’s a plan that’s achievable for any content marketer or entrepreneur at a B2B firm. If you’re strategic, you can plan, develop, launch, and begin to reap the benefits of a content marketing campaign in as little as sixty days. Ready to learn how? Read on....
As data gets bigger, more ubiquitous, and more social, you’re right in assuming that at least some of it is important to you and your business. You’re posting regularly and engaged with social media. But are you using it correctly? Getting optimal results for your business? And how, exactly, are you supposed to know?
The trick is to identify specifically what social data is relevant – and to analyze just exactly what that data means. There are a slew of metrics, tools, and services to help you make sense of your business’ social data, as with any other data you’re managing.
As a general rule, seek out rates and more nuanced metrics, avoid overemphasizing simple counts and totals. Here, we highlight five of the most important social media metrics you should be tracking – and they’re not just the usual suspects....
Shift the way you think about content by seeing how it can actually save you time and money in the long run.
Think of content as an investment, if only for the SEO value it will provide. When you create one blog post -- just one day of content creation effort -- it's indexed in search engines forever. If you create one blog post, and create it well, that can drive results for your business in the form of traffic and leads for years and years to come.
So while one hour today may seem impossible, that one hour of work could drive hundreds or thousands of leads in, say, ten years
Talk about ROI.
This concept of creating once, and creating well, should be applied to marketers at any stage -- but none is more critical than marketers undergoing a website redesign. If that's you, now is the ideal time to invest in carefully choosing your page structure, and thoughtfully crafting content to perform well for both readers and search engines. A successful build (or rebuild) will make your website an enduring presence online. A great keyword strategy combined with appropriate content and site structure turns your website into a 24-hour marketing machine for your company!...
Content marketing evangelists have spoken – “Create great content that appeals to your customers and you’ll profit.” While this is true, marketers often forget the importance of promoting their content – people don’t find content by mistake, or by accident. Every content plan needs a complementary promotion plan that combines paid, owned, and earned media....
...The key for B2Bs, especially SMBs, to delight their consumer is by producing, say it with me: content. But, you can’t just throw out content that only serves to clutter an already polluted digital space. It must be delightful. It must give your consumer information and education that they actually want and need. Abigail Posner, Head of Strategic Planning And Agency Development at Google, has some great advice when it comes to delighting the consumer: “Create content that reminds us of our own capacity for excitement, happiness, and vivacity so we want to share in it with others.” That’s delight, folks. How might a B2B do that? Just like a B2C would. Let’s talk about it:
I have been doing a little research on the use of social media for competitive intelligence. I have done this type of exercise in the past but thought I’d be a little different this time and actually make a blog post out of the sites I came across that I found to be useful in some way. These are 30 blog posts that I found that talk about competitive analysis using social media. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think....
Whether it’s your website, blog, brochure, newsletter, Facebook page, press release or newspaper ad, nobody reads your content because they’re simply enamored with your business. Why? Because nobody cares about your business. Don’t take it personally. And please, stop scowling at me because I’m sure it’s not the first time you’ve heard this. People read your marketing content because they’re looking for answers to questions. The first of these questions is usually, “What can your business do for me?”...
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The data is interesting, but "B2B" doesn't make much sense as a single entity from a lead generation point of view. Depending on whether the products and services are horizontal or vertical markets, direct or channel, the strategies and tools are different.
Which audience are we talking about, the ones that find you, or the one's you go out and find. They have completely different characteristics.
The figures above are presumably averages of the two approaches.
Then, both Social and Email marketing can be lead gen tools, but more often used for nurturing, a second stage process.
So, average of different strategies, and an average of different stages.
Is it not like saying "the players in my football team averaged 4 goals each last season". This wouldn't tell us what our striker is worth would it?
So is social media marketing the way of the future? Interesting read...
insight: b2b marketing , lead generation, social media still ranking not on top. Or are the effects just indirect? That is the key question.