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Here are 25 of the questions I’ve been asking to B2B companies about content marketing. Maybe some of these will make you think about your own content marketing program and opportunities to expand, enhance, and optimize it. I sprinkled throughout some of the tools we often use and recommend. I’ll work on a full tools blog post for early next year.
These are listed alphabetically, but I’d love to know which of these are most interesting and relevant to you, so please vote up the ones you like best on this Listly
According to a study by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs only 38% of B2B companies think their content marketing is effective. The same study also states that only 35% of the companies have a documented content marketing strategy.
My guess is that some of these companies do not even know whether they are effective or not. They cannot say what “effective” really is in regard to content marketing without goals, metrics etc. It would certainly help with effectiveness of content marketing to have a strategy at hand.
Here are 9 essential elements any content marketing strategy should include....
Peter Aceto, the CEO of Tangerine, recently said in The Globe and Mail, “I would rather engage in a Twitter conversation with a single customer than see our company attempt to attract the attention of millions in a coveted Superbowl commercial.
”This is the preference of a truly social CEO. Unfortunately, chief executives that embrace and understand the promise of social media are rare, so rare that we call them “blue unicorns” in our book, A World Gone Social. Why blue unicorns? Because CEOs that embrace social as much as leaders like Aceto are still so uncommon that we aren’t just looking for any unicorn, we’re looking for a specific color of unicorn....
Consumers love a deal, and even more so if it’s customized just for them, right? Not so fast, says Itamar Simonson, a marketing professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Simonson has found that rather than being enticed by them, consumers are skeptical of those personalized offers that flood their inboxes.
His research, “Beating the Market: The Allure of Unintended Value,” was published in December 2013 in theJournal of Marketing Research.
Marketers have long assumed that touting a promotion as “customized,” “based on your past purchases” or “especially for you” will persuade customers that the product will fit better, fulfill more needs or otherwise prove more satisfying than others. But “telling consumers that an offer is tailored for them can backfire” and lower the chance that they’ll bite, writes Simonson, who co-authored the study with Aner Sela of the University of Florida and Ran Kivetz of Columbia Business School....
Humans will remember something longer if it made them feel rather than think. They gravitate towards provocative images -- think food, sex and danger. They’re drawn toward images of faces. The color yellow puts them on edge.
Understanding how the human brain works is fascinating, but it’s also good business.
Marketing campaigns rooted in neurology are more likely to get and hold attention. And in the attention economy we are living in, where consumers have access to more emails and tweets than they could ever manage to read and digest fully, being able to get and hold attention is what separates the wheat from the chaff. That’s what gets consumers to spend.
If you are looking to get more of your marketing efforts seen, then have a look at this infographic, embedded below, generated by Nashville, Tenn.-based Emma, an email-marketing software provider. The infographic highlights 12 biological trigger mechanisms that make the human brain light up....
...Looking at dollars in ad spend or marketing support is not indicative of the actual effectiveness of a marketing program. But neither is reducing non-working marketing dollars. In fact, reducing this number may be an indication of being less efficient, and it should be actively discouraged as a strategy for P&G or any other marketer to improve their marketing bang for their buck.
For those wondering “What the heck are non-working dollars?” I’ll explain: All money spent on consumer-facing activities is classified as working dollars (think of paid media spend, sponsorships, in-store activation, etc.). All dollars spent before anything reaches consumers -- like TV commercial production cost, content creation development cost, but also agency fees, strategy development and research, etc. -- is classified as “non-working.”...
A recent report by The Economist Intelligence Unit called “Visions in Marketing” highlights the innovations in Marketing, marketing strategy and the practical applications of those marketing strategies in forward-thinking companies
The report states that “The role of marketing is changing” as companies further leverage data and customer insights to deliver content across a wider variety of consumer channels.
And the role of the CMO “will evolve in response to changes in their business models, the ability to access ever-growing markets and a more detailed understanding of the customer than ever before.”...
There is no shortage of stories and anecdotes to illustrate how the best strategies can nearly always be reduced down to a brief but powerful statement and even more ink has been spilled describing the dangers of strategy statements that read like detailed action plans.
But how do you go about actually crafting — and using — a 15-word strategy statement?
My approach is based on narrative techniques. I begin by working with clients to write a story based on this template:...
“Imagine you’re sitting across from a reporter at lunch. You’re telling them what you do, your story, why they should care about your product. You have to convince this reporter to not only write about you, but that what you’re doing matters. That you’re going to be successful.”
This is Caryn Marooney, Head of Technology Communications for Facebook. But before that, she co-founded OutCast, the elite PR agency that worked with one-time startups Amazon, Salesforce.com, Netflix and VMware. She’s seen firsthand how hard it is for young companies to capture press attention when they have zero brand recognition and limited resources.
Most founders set out to create something iconic but don’t know where to start. At First Round’s recent CEO Summit, Marooney boiled down this massive challenge into an execution plan and guidelines for startups to craft an image that will resonate with the public and the press, launch on a strong note, and build momentum as they grow — regardless of size and resources...
Even before you entered into the world of “business”, you were watching your competition. Whether it was in a classroom or on a sports team, you not only wanted to keep up, you wanted to know where the marker was set so you could go one step further. It was about finding new opportunities and setting new goals based on someone you aspired to beat.
At this time, when search is so important and detailed, and the Internet has grown so extensively, you have tons of different factors to consider when spying on your competition. This is where marketing tools come into play.In many cases, tools that help you monitor your own web performance also can help you gather data on your competition. So, you might be using some of these tools already, without using the features that help you evaluate your competitors. Here are some of the best tools out there...
Content marketing can help grow your business in many different ways. We all know that because it has been repeated about a million times on the marketing blogosphere in the last 5 years.
But really, I’m always impressed with these two most common scenarios when it comes to companies adopting (or not) content marketing: Many companies jump on the wagon to just go through the motions of writing posts, without really knowing why, or having clear goals. Or companies that fail to see the benefits of a content-rich website rather than a virtual static brochure.
And this is why I loved this infographic from Neil Patel (QuickSprout), because it focuses on one clear benefit: Content marketing can help improve your search engine rankings. So I wanted to share it with you....
My client's objective was to design and take advantage of new technologies and trends to develop a new approach to accurately measure media effectiveness.
...There are four stages to follow. Initiation, Integration, Intelligence, and Value Creation.
Every action my client takes – from answering the phone at the front desk to the most complex product installation – makes a statement about how that company values customers. These moments in time are when a brand comes to life, when promises made are either kept or broken. Jan Carlzon, former President of Scandinavian Airline Services called these instances “moments of truth”. He defined them as “any time a customer comes into contact with any aspect of your business, however remote, the customer has an opportunity to form an impression.
”Moments of truth, when repeatedly resulting in positive outcomes and experiences, lead to customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is a state of being that is defined by behaviors and experiences on BOTH sides of the relationship – vendor and customer – that lead to a state of value creation for both parties. Loyalty can’t be measured by repeating business alone...
Public Relations practitioners are familiar with the concept of identifying and building relationships with stakeholders. (Anyone who might have a material impact on your business.) Social media has extended the reach and influence of your stakeholders – they’re on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and they’re connecting to each other.
The Social Graph is the representation of our relationships. In present day context, these graphs define our personal, family, or business communities on social networking websites – Jeremiah Owyang, Industry Analyst, The Altimeter Group....
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We’ve learned by now that B2B marketing often involves targeting a market-savvy and knowledgeable audience. However, usually the selling business is full of knowledgeable experts as well, and quite often they rely on their experience and instinct to make marketing decisions “on a whim.” While there is no denying that industry experience is a powerful resource, B2B companies that rely on instinct rather than data run the risk of generating ineffective or even damaging, marketing strategies and campaigns.
Remember the difference between B2B and B2C consumer buying habits. Do B2B consumers generally make purchases on a whim? Most likely no. Therefore, should your marketing be done on a whim?
Here are some examples of how to conduct data driven marketing and apply it to your marketing strategy.....
When we set out to design, build and deliver a great customer experience or anything else for that matter, we can tend to make assumptions about who it is for, what they like, what they prefer and what they enjoy.
However, in the face of ever changing consumer behavior, can we be sure that our assumptions are correct? Here’s a few examples of assumptions that we many of us may make and some new, alternative and conflicting data that might make us pause for thought....
We have heard about the need for interdepartmental collaboration, but a new 2014 report from Forrester CMOs And CIOs Must Turn Collaboration Into Action published this month points out that there needs to be less talking and more action.
The report follows this year’s annual survey by Forrester and Forbes Insights of 308 marketing and tech management leaders to understand how CMOs and CIOS are collaborating across four core dimensions: people, process, technology, and data.
There were some positives – the survey did show that marketing and tech management leaders were more understanding of each other’s strategic priorities in 2014 than they have been previously and are doing this by better communicating with each other. The survey showed that 70% of tech management leaders and 59% of marketing leaders said their CMO and CIO now meet regularly to review objectives and priorities – a rise on last year....
Could social media have predicted the failure of 3D TVs and its successor 4K? Why did these products fail when they seemed nailed-on to be the next big thing? Naturally, like all tipping points, positive and negative, there was probably a mixture of reasons, but a new report from UK social media analytics company Brandwatch is a good starting-point.
In the company’s Consumer Technology report, it cites how social listening to research meant it knew what consumers felt about 3D TV’s successor, 4K. The data showed that the three target demographics; gamers, TV and film fans, and people with an interest in computing, all had concerns with the technology....
The 16-page guide Content Marketing Institute published on documenting your strategy can certainly help you get started. But, once you’ve gone through the initial documentation process, you’ll need to know how to implement that strategy — and keep it updated on an ongoing basis.
While you will want to follow your strategy closely in order to keep your content marketing focused on your organization’s goals, it should also be flexible enough to account for new insights and information you receive as time goes on. There is no specific template you can use to build a strategy; but below, we share some guidelines you can use to determine what elements should stay consistent and what will likely evolve:
Your goals and mission should be sticky
The first two things you need to identify when building your strategy are the goals and mission of your content marketing program. Coincidentally, these are the same two that should change very little....
Why do some companies achieve things that completely exceed our expectations, defying all our assumptions for what's possible?
This is a question that Simon Sinek asks the audience as he begins his famous Ted Talk. Sinek, a bestselling author and INBOUND 2014 keynote speaker, set out to discover why companies like Apple have been able to achieve such extraordinary success, while others with the same resources have failed.
He explains it through his idea called "Start With Why." And as it turns out, his findings have important implications for inbound marketers too....
Understand and apply Consumer Trend Canvas to any consumer trend. Today.
CONSUMER TREND CANVAS: An easy-to-follow framework that will help you not only unpack and understand any consumer trend, but also help you apply it to launch successful consumer-facing innovations of your own.
Consumer trends are, at their heart, an essential part of uncovering innovation opportunities. Otherwise they’re just intellectual masturbation: diverting, pleasant and entertaining, but with little real purpose ;)
Yet we frequently hear that ‘trends’ feel mysterious and opaque. Which is where the CONSUMER TREND CANVAS* comes in....
Lead generation, lead nurturing, lead scoring, lead grading. The bountiful terms we have to describe different actions we can take with leads show how incredibly pervasive the lead is to sales and marketing. Salespeople are trained to pursue the them, convince them that their product is better than the competition’s, and close out the deal.
But according to Forbes.com’s Amy Morin, that’s where the problem lies. Too many salespeople are spending their energy on trying to get the consumer to choose their product. What they don’t realize is that most consumers are not even at the stage of choosing any product – the prospect of them changing their product is not even on the table.
She says, “About 60% of qualified leads fall by the wayside because the customer doesn’t find value in purchasing something new and therefore, they decide to forgo any type of change.”...
Identifying the right hashtags is critical when it comes to social monitoring and engagement. This allows us to find the conversations where our target audience hangs out.
By adding value to the conversation, we can start to build up a relationship that could possibly leads to a business transaction (or at the very least awareness).
I have developed this three-step method using a few favorite Twitter tools – Twitonomy, Hashtagify.me, and RiteTag....
Working on a kick-butt marketing plan? Be sure you don't forget these five critical elements. Otherwise, your efforts might fall flat!
What’s that you say? You don’t have a marketing plan? Oh, I see. It’s worse than that. You’re not even sure what a marketing plan is, much less how to implement one.
Well, that’s okay. We can help you with that. Before we get started, you need to answer a couple questions.
Who is your target audience? How do they receive information?
Once you have these answers, you’re ready to start building your marketing plan. Remember as you move through the different components that flexibility is good. Making some changes to fit your particular products, corporate culture, and target audience is welcome.
Now, what the heck is a marketing plan? It starts like this...
Social media is used to build brand ambassadors, drive traffic, and convert sales. While building a social media following can be very difficult, one way to speed up the process is to tap into a fan base that is already established – that of your competitors. Yes, you can steal your competition’s followers right out from under their noses.
Stealing is usually a zero-sum transaction, wherein one party loses and the other party wins. But that is not how it works with social media. This guide will show you how to gain followers by leveraging your competition’s social networks. So if you want to accelerate your social media game by getting followers from your competitors, here are several tips you should consider..
Jason Corrigan shares two ways that you can maximize your brand’s exposure and conversion opportunities by developing a coherent system where your offline marketing channels positively influence and support your digital campaign.
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Jay Baer asks some intriguing questions about content marketing.