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2017 marked the fifth year of NewsCred’s annual #ThinkContent Summit. Over the past five years, the event’s theme has reflected the evolution of the digital marketing space. In 2015, the theme was “Creativity, Technology + The Future of Storytelling.” In 2016, it was “Convergence: The New Marketing Imperative.” When I looked at this year’s theme, its proclamation was even bigger and bolder than years past: “The Marketing Revolution.”Not only was this theme different in the scale of its claim, but it begged the question of what, exactly, made this year a revolution? After listening to the speakers at the event and diving more deeply into the current state of marketing, it was clear that we are in the midst of a marketing revolution....
Luckily, I have the privilege of working on a team of 150+ other marketers who specialize in different functions than I do. And because of that, I was able to curate this list of the top 58 tools every marketer should know about and being using in 2017. I'll make it easy for you. I broke up my list of recommended tools into different sections so you can get a better sense of what tools are available for different functions of the job. At the end, you'll see the whole list of 58 tools that you can skim and bookmark for later....
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) get almost 24 calls a month from marketing providers looking to sell them advertising or marketing products and services. Competition is fierce, and SMBs often have a difficult time choosing a provider.
Last month, I covered how the trend of fake online content leads to a general distrust of digital and online media. But the local digital marketing industry, especially in the area of SEO, suffers from its own share of issues that lead to a lack of trust by SMBs.
LSA (Local Search Association) conducted a survey to examine what challenges SMBs face when shopping for a digital marketing provider and what areas they feel are most important for marketers to address when trying to gain their business.
Below I discuss the results of the survey, data regarding client churn in the industry and ways in which marketers need to respond....
With everyone claiming to be an expert should you listen to? This list of 103 marketing thought leaders is made to help answer that question. It's also incorporated into Twitter lists so you can easily follow everyone with a single click.
Disruptive brands have been making headlines in recent years. Beginning with the emergence of the sharing economy, many companies have entered into markets and spaces that were previously dominated by legacy brands and companies and have completely flipped standards around. Beyond the innovation taking place in products, offerings, and services, many of these companies are embracing innovation in their marketing practices as well. Some of the strongest and most innovative campaigns are from marketers who have embraced content marketing and understand what optimizing a content strategy can do for their businesses. At the 2016 NewsCred #ThinkContent Summit, Marty Swant of AdWeek moderated a panel called, “How We Innovate — Challenging the Status Quo to Disrupt Industries and Ways of Working.” Brand representatives that were involved in the chat included Eric Toda, head of global social marketing for Airbnb, Lauren Drell, director of content at sweetgreen, Mikaela Flynn, marketing manager for Uber, and Greg Fitzgerald, director of acquisition marketing for Blue Apron. These panelists dove into what was driving innovation across their companies as well as how marketing – most specifically content – is fueling their strategies to the next level....
In a study published by the Content Marketing Institute last month, 70% of B2B marketers stated they will produce more original content in 2017 than they did in 2016, and 39% plan to increase their content marketing spending over the next year.
Meanwhile, user-generated content is also expected to explode. The global Internet population grew 62%, from 2.1 billion to 3.4 billion, in just the last four years.
All this means that the amount of content online, including visual content, will only increase exponentially with time–not decrease.
So, with so much noise out there, how can can you still create unique visual content that stands out?....
A quarter life crisis is something that most people can relate to. You wake up, look around, wonder what your purpose is, and come to grips with the idea of actually becoming an adult. Most twentysomethings leave it as that and take a bit of time to wallow, soul-search, and (more often than not) commiserate with friends. Not Samantha Jayne. In her mid-20’s, Jayne was working at an ad agency when she encountered her first taste of a quarter life crisis. She wasn’t happy and needed to decide what to do about it.
Jayne had always loved writing, so she started a Tumblr and Instagram chronicling her struggles. She made up poems about her everyday ups and downs and called her blog and Instagram, “Quarter Life Poetry.” The poems she came up with are about working, shopping, her love life, student loans, and other issues relevant to millennials.
Today, the 26-year-old has over 104,000 followers on her Instagram account, and recently released a book version of her project. One of the promotional videos for the book garnered over 10 million hits on Facebook alone. It’s safe to say that Jayne knows a thing or two about how to capture the attention of millennials. She recently spoke at the NewsCred 2016 #ThinkContent Summit and shared her thoughts on how to really speak to millennials....
It’s an easy mistake to make.
You slap some words on your About page, wrench them apart, shovel in a bit fluff, a pinch of jargon; and give it no more thought. Because it’s not that important, right?
Not exactly.
You see, this is where so many of us get it wrong, and leak piles of cash in the process. Even though we may pay it less attention, our About page is one of our most visited - which makes it low-hanging fruit, just waiting to be plucked.
By which I mean, if your visitors aren’t captivated, bewitched, mesmerized or just plain hungry-for-more after reading your About page, you can grab yourself a hanky and wave them goodbye.
In other words, you just lost a sale.
Because your About page isn’t just about painstakingly-crafted words that make you look good. Your About page is like speed dating
Let me explain.
Are you ready to give content marketing the time, money and resources it deserves?
While your answer may be yes, it’s never easy to get up and running with a new marketing strategy. There are questions to answer, challenges to overcome and various tasks that need addressed.
With 88% of B2B marketers currently using content marketing as part of their overall strategy, neglecting to do so will put you in the minority.
As you get started, you’ll soon find a variety of ways to better research, plan, create and distribute content.
What I’ve created here is a list of content marketing tools that you’ll want by your side as you roll out your first campaign.
These tools cover the most important details you’ll need to address before you get started, as well as in the early days (and weeks) of running your campaign....
Did you know that 59% of B2C marketers and 55% of B2B marketers are planning to increase their content marketing spend this year? Content marketing has become an extremely competitive arena now. For this, you need to understand the buyer’s journey. It’s interesting to note that 70% of the buyer’s journey gets complete before they even reach out to a sales rep. So focusing just on sales would make you miss out on a major part of the buyer’s journey. With marketing automation tools, you can influence this journey at different stages: -. Awareness: This is the start of the buyer’s journey, where your buyer is probably unaware of your business and that they have a need. At this stage, you should focus on creating awareness for your business and offerings so that your buyers start to understand what you do, and how you can help them address their needs/overcome their pain points. -. Consideration: Buyers now have already shortlisted a few companies and start to do deeper research to arrive at a decision. You should use your marketing automation tools to keep track of their growing interest and adjust your content so that they see what can influence their decision in your favor. -. Decision: Buyers are ready to make a purchase and start thinking and comparing about implementation, costs, customer support etc, which will decide the company they’ll finally buy from. This is the time to get brand-specific with your content. You can use customer testimonials and case studies to brag about how others have had a positive experience with your offerings. Let’s have a look at some tools that will help you experience content marketing success, and nurture buyer’s all the way along this journey....
In this post, we’re going to review 15 marketing guides that can speed up your success.
We’ll look at the finer details of each guide, ensuring that you have a clear understanding as to how you can use each one to your advantage.
By the end of this post, you’ll have a better idea of how each guide can push you down the path to reaching all of your content marketing related goals....
Fun fact of the day: the human brain processes imagery 60,000 times faster than text. Despite this, we’re still seeing lots of professional sites whose only image content is their header and ads.
Visual spectacles like Tumblr and Pinterest are simply taking advantage of how the human brain works, making them not only extremely popular but also significantly more engaging than your average blog.
Don’t get me wrong, people are clearly using visual elements. The larger problem is that a lot of people aren’t investing in their image content because they either think their copy is good enough or they really don’t realize they’re costing their site.
Finding the best visual content for your site starts with understanding how powerful an image is, acknowledging your mistakes and finally moving in the direction to make better image choices....
Emails are so easy to send, but they’re also easy to ignore. With more than 120 messages landing in the average office worker’s inbox each day, making sure yours gets read and gets a response can be tricky. To increase your chances of getting of a reply, here are nine tricks you can try...:
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Polar tested different ad formats including image-based content (graphics, image galleries, and slide shows), article-based content, and video-based content. It tested more than 30 pieces of content, with each type tested by a minimum of 1,000 people via desktop, mobile, and both. Among the findings of the study, conducted in March 2017: --Consumer awareness of a brand increased to 69% after engaging with branded content, while purchase intent was 51%. The study also used a control group with no branding. --Incorporating companion display ads next to branded content improved purchase intent by 17% and didn’t have a negative impact on brand perception --Imagery (infographics, image galleries, and slide shows) performed the best among content formats. And notably, video isn’t always needed to tell the story. However, imagery outperformed articles by 11%. "We found that consumers responded a bit more favorably when there was less obvious branding,” Bella said....
As Cialdini puts it, we’re in the age of information overload. We don’t have the time to process all of the information and then to make informed decisions. This incapacity makes us look for signals — signals that help us decide if we want to do something. Cialdini calls these “shortcuts”. But, if you play persuasion techniques well, you can make the most of this exposure. You can make your blog posts not just valuable, but irresistible to your audience. Cialdini suggests shortcuts to do so: Reciprocity Commitment and Consistency Social Proof Liking Authority Scarcity Here’s a breakdown of the actual principles and how you can apply them to your content marketing....
Our content marketing infographic series covers three challenges that most marketers face today: scaling content production, creating a distribution strategy, and earning your audience.
This infographic, “Earn Your Audience,” details how to reach your target audience through engaging content. Marketers understand that they need to provide tangible value in their customers’ lives, and content is one of the last mediums left to effectively do this. Instead of allocating a large portion of marketing budget to traditional advertising, successful marketers are opting to think like consumers and deliver engaging content that creates a two-way conversation with their audiences.
Take a look at the infographic below for more on how to build and retain meaningful relationships with your audience
I found this genuine love for the craft of marketing to be a common thread among marketing experts while I was researching and creating the new list of 103 Genuine Marketing Thought Leaders. I noticed every person on the list had a passion for marketing driving them to explore, push the bounds, and do what marketers do best: be creative. For these marketers, “being creative” means everything from using comics to sell enterprise software (Tom Fishburne, #2) and blowing up the idea of branding (Cindy Gallop #9) to understanding the connection between doorknobs and white papers (Donald Norman #8). Ideas from these passionate marketers are changing the face of marketing and how it is executed....
You might know IBM’s Watson from its famous victory on Jeopardy!, or for revolutionizing data analysis with its ability to crunch millions of pieces at once. Now, IBM is poising Watson to be the next big name in marketing. It’s the technological entity behind IBM’s new THINK Marketing hub, which is updated with nine pieces of thought leadership content every day. The website is part of a long-term strategy for IBM to position itself as a marketing technology leader, and expand its reach into new client territories beyond the Fortune 500s. As IBM’s Chief Digital Officer Bob Lord explains, the company has made big strides in cognitive cloud computing software and services that can fundamentally change the way marketers, entrepreneurs, developers, and many others currently work....
This is how the Internet looks to the advertising business today:
This is how they approach it:
And this is the result:
Fred Wilson calls that result “data pollution.” (See here, starting at about 23 minutes in.)
What’s wrong with this view, and this approach, is the architectural assumption that:
We are consumers and nothing more. Fish in a bowl.
The Net — and the Web especially — is a container.
Advertisers have a right to target us in that container. And to track us so we can be targeted.
Negative externalities, such as the miseries we suffer as a consequence, hardly matter.
This can all be rationalized as an economic necessity.
Perhaps most reflective of this has been the award-winning juggernaut of REI's #OptOutside campaign, which won the Titanium Grand Prix on Saturday. If for some reason you weren't one of its 6.7 billion media impressions, essentially the company closed its doors on Black Friday, encouraging its employees and everyone else to get out into the outdoors. Beyond the ad, starring REI chief exec Jerry Stritzke introducing the idea from a wide-open office, the brand also created a helpful online guide to hiking trails and other outdoor activities around the U.S.
By encouraging us to drop out of the annual shopping day, the outdoor retailer aims for more sales and brand loyalty. The company said the brand's social media impressions went up 7,000%, with 2.7 billion media impressions in 24 hours, while overall the campaign attracted 6.7 billion media impressions, 1.2 billion social impressions, and got more than 1.4 million people to spend the day outdoors. Meanwhile, more than 150 other companies joined REI to close their doors on Black Friday, and hundreds of state parks opened up for free.
If Cannes is the ad and marketing industry's Oscars, than this is arguably Best Picture. The Titanium category is meant to honor work that breaks new ground, crosses boundaries, and pushes the industry forward. The win adds to the campaign's Media and Promotions Grand Prix, picked up earlier in the week, and its run of wins at other industry awards like the D&ADs, and Best of Show at the One Show awards in May....
Have you been thinking about turning your organization's communications into your version of a metropolitan newspaper newsroom? Here are some examples you should look at.
In this volume of our biannual trend publication, we explore the theme of Evolution. Agencies, consultancies, brands and other industry thought leaders largely agree that 2016 is shaping up to be an evolve- or-die year. Or, to put a positive spin on it, we might say it’s a year to thrive through intelligent adaptation. While some agencies are going the way of the dinosaur, a forward-thinking cross-section of shops are reporting increased revenues and profits by partnering with clients in new and innovative ways, by bringing their own IP to market and more. Other industry players need to evolve as major shifts in the way consumers use technology, consume media and engage with the world around them are forcing massive changes. Throughout the 2016 editions of The SoDA Report, we’ll explore top trends and behaviors that leading practitioners in our industry won’t be able to ignore as the year unfolds, and we’ll cast a spotlight on brands, agencies and individuals who are flourishing in this environment. Within Modern Marketer, Industry Insider and via our Digital Outlook Study (conducted in partnership with Forrester Research for the first time), we’ll also explore how the landscape of creativity and the modus operandi for agency-client relationships are shifting in radical ways. Spurred by rapidly changing consumer expectations and behaviors, agency-client partnerships are expanding in incredibly exciting ways beyond the marketing realm to include business strategy, R&D, product development and customer service. We are so proud of the growth and development of The SoDA Report over the past year.
Do you want to pay for a fresh box of golf balls or to get your nails done simply by doing what you are already doing all time time? Well, Pay Your Selfie has just what you need—an app that doles out cash for your moments of mobile narcissism.
The Chicago-based company has attracted 100,000 users since launching in September, accruing 500,000 photos from consumers, many of whom pose with brands. Here's why they selfie up with marketers: They get paid up to $1 when they upload a picture with a brand in it after Pay Your Selfie posts a request for such photos.
Unsponsored selfies—photos in which users do not snap pics with a specific product—pay just a few coins. At any rate, once their digital piggy bank (see below) gets to $20, the company will mail them a check for the amount or donate it, upon request, to their chosen charitable organization.
What's more, brands are forking over cash to Pay Your Selfie on a per-engagement basis, taking the data and utilizing the insights to inform future marketing efforts like creative for ads and packaging for products. The lion's share of the app's users are millennials, the all-important demographic marketers are trying to target....
This past year, we've seen the importance of visual content emphasized by the changes that occurred across almost every major social network, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. At the same time, both video and infographics have become powerful tools for brands looking to communicate more easily with their readers.
To help you keep pace with these trends, let's take a look at some statistics that demonstrate the impact visual content has on reach, engagement, and sales....
In this article, we’re going to take a look at how you can use a landing page to generate customers.
We’ll take a look at what makes a landing page work effectively. But, we’ll also discuss what constitutes a high converting sales funnel.
By the end of this post, you’ll be able to take what you’ve learned and use it to improve the revenues of your own business.
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At #ThinkContent 2017, we heard how marketing revolutionaries are thriving in the current space. Here are the top takeaways for content marketers.