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What Does ‘Marketing Strategy’ Really Mean?

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By Shannon Prager

John Wanamaker, marketing pioneer of the 19th century, is famously quoted to have said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Though this statement was made more than 100 years ago, I believe it still rings true for many business-to-business technology companies.

As the founder and president of a B2B marketing firm, I know that unlike Wanamaker, modern companies have advanced marketing automation and analytics platforms at their fingertips. But these platforms alone can’t build a solid strategy. They need input.

Why Marketing Strategy Matters 

In the quest to automate marketing journeys with artificial intelligence and machine learning, it’s easy to overlook the essential element that defines your product or service’s value to the market.

“Marketing strategy” is a loose term few fully understand. It’s not the same as marketing planning or a go-to-market strategy. Let’s define the terms:

• A marketing strategy details a company’s long-term marketing goals and objectives.

• Marketing planning aims to achieve marketing strategy goals with tactical activities and campaigns.

• A go-to-market strategy is the value proposition launched to potential customers. It’s often attached to a company, product or service launch.

The challenge most companies run into, especially in the B2B technology space, is failing to create marketing strategies that are supported by qualitative and quantitative research.

Anyone can write a marketing strategy, but if it’s lacking a clear value proposition based on customer research and buyer personas, it’s unlikely to move your business forward.

Elements Of An Effective Marketing Strategy

The most successful marketing strategies contain three core elements: deep customer knowledge, distinct branding and messaging, and market analysis.

Let’s dig deeper.

1. Understand your customers.

This sounds simple. You probably already have some idea of who your ideal customers are. But do you really know them?

Assuming, rather than asking questions, is where many marketing organizations run into trouble. Quality customer research takes time and needs to be updated a least once per year.

To truly know your customers, you must understand:

• What they want.

• What pains them.

• Where they’re searching for in a solution.

• How to reach them (i.e., content, social media, email, website, etc.).

These dynamics change, and without proper feedback loops, you could miss out on important shifts and opportunities within the marketplace.

At many of the companies we work with, time and resources get in the way of creating and updating effective buyer personas. If companies have them at all, they’re often a few years old and at the bottom of someone’s priority list to update. The companies we see generating the greatest return on investment commit to refreshing customer research and buyer personas annually.

If you are performing the customer research yourself, this yearly refresh may take the form of a nice sample size of interviews with your newest customers to evaluate and restudy their buying patterns. The findings should be captured and collected in a consistent way and shared across your teams so they can be operationalized.

2. Know your brand and messaging.

Clearly defined brands are remembered. Think of Apple or IBM: Their iconic branding didn’t pop up overnight. It was clearly defined, consistently presented and intelligently refreshed over time.

Once you know who your ideal customer is, you can use that data to build a strong brand and value proposition that attracts the right audience. Your value proposition is directly tied to the benefit(s) you offer customers and what sets you apart from your competitors. We find that studying buying patterns and asking the right questions about value and differentiation can give you direct insight into how a customer values and speaks about what sets you apart. Then the heavy work becomes storyboarding it and integrating it across your brand and messaging.

3. Keep tabs on your market position.

Anyone can say they’re No. 1 in a product or service category, but can they back it up? Making grand proclamations without supporting data can set your organization up for disappointment. To stay relevant:

• Routinely review competitor strategies.

• Compare your positioning to competitors.

• Identify what makes your organization special.

• Focus on your unique differentiators in messaging.

• Copyright key phrases and language that’s essential to your brand.

• Call out competitors that “borrow” your messaging.

How To Execute Your Marketing Strategy 

Once you understand your customers and have clear branding and messaging and a way to track your market position, you’re ready to go to market. A strong go-to-market strategy should:

• Be multifaceted.

• Tell your story.

• Be scalable.

• Focus on customers.

The Bottom Line: Research First — Or Accept Mediocre Results 

Before investing a dime on any marketing program or content creation, get to know your ideal target customer first. Skipping this essential first step will mean throwing thousands of dollars down the drain.

The companies we see achieving the highest returns on marketing investments spend time on intensive customer and market research to fully understand their customers and prospects before creating a single program or advertisement to try to catch their attention.

The research tools and resources exist to generate holistic buyer personas that will empower your marketing team to craft more powerful and effective campaigns and messages.

It’s simple, really: Either invest the extra time and effort on customer and market research upfront or pay the price later in conversations.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Shannon Prager

Shannon Prager is President of Leadit Marketing, a marketing and demand gen agency focused on B2B tech and professional services companies. Read Shannon Prager’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

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Spotting too many ads on Instagram? Blame Facebook for it

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Sourced from The Economic Times

Facebook exerted more control over Instagram over the last two years.

If you have been seeing more ads on Instagram this year, you are not alone. Parent company Facebook reportedly instructed Instagram to increase the number of ads in the app towards the end of 2018.

According to The Information, Facebook exerted more control over Instagram over the last two years, including the move to rename the app, Mashable reports.

Facebook plans to bring Instagram’s revenue number closer to its own app, and will heavily rely on commerce to achie ..

Click HERE to read the remainder of the article

Sourced from The Economic Times

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How New Disruptive Consumers Are Buying Brands

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Nearly half of consumers today (48 percent of all U.S consumers ages 13 and up) are disrupting the traditional purchase path, from discovery through purchase, the new study reports. These consumers are younger, have higher incomes and choose brands that aid their self-expression.

The new IAB Study confirms that word-of-mouth (WOM) recommendations are the highest-valued prompt for direct-to-consumer buyers before trying a new product.

Greater than reviews or social media Influencers.

But the concept of “brand value” is also transforming. It’s no longer about usage or “better, faster, stronger” efficacies. Rather, brand value for nearly half of today’s consumers comes from their ability to contribute opinions, suggestions and sharing the cool things they buy, wear or use on social media.

The fact that they also like to be the first of their friends to post about a purchase experience — means they’re also your first adopters.

If you’re not opening social portals for your consumers, you’re not just losing business. You’re losing the game.

These disruptor brands cater to the new cohort by building consumer loyalty and lifetime value (LTV) through cross-channel interaction.

Brands like to think of themselves as “personalities”—as a wallboard exercise. But today it’s the new rulebook. Imagine, for example, that your product is a YouTube or Instagram star: it pays to spread content across channels. Internet star Zach King, for example, is huge on Vine and YouTube, but also has a major Instagram following. Beauty blogger Huda Kattan writes blogs, but also has a presence on Instagram. Fitness model Michelle Lewin spreads her messages across a swath of social media channels, increasing her audience count each day.

Omnichannel adjacency pays off back inside the funnel: Search, shopping, plus social media sites bundled together equal traditional TV for brand discovery today. Great ads spark trial, but so do great product plus great social content.

This Is A Tipping Point Moment

How do we define brand loyalty for this new cohort? Key drivers include — following the brand on social media, telling others about the brand (WOM), and having a subscription from the brand.

But if you think Influencers are on their way out, you’re way off track. Today there are at least four types of Influencers:

Celebrity/Professional Influencers, 2) experts, 3) ‘Real’ people, and 4) Super Influencers.

According to the IAB study, Influencers are the “advertising” of the modern consumer economy. They not only wield power during initial purchase consideration — via posts, word of mouth and other methods, but also exercise their power further down the purchase funnel.

Disruptor consumers are over 2X more likely to say they only listen to Expert Influencers and 150% more likely to value online mentions by ‘Real’ people.

Roughly 1 in 3 disruptor consumers qualify as Super Influencers — a newly identified cohort who are strategic, deliberate, and prolific in their postings. They take the time and effort necessary to create brand-centric content to publicly build their personal brand. Some of their verbatims read like, “I like to share cool things I buy, wear or use on social media.” “Content I share online is an important part of who I am.” “Content I share online is an important part of how I want people to think of me.”

Not surprisingly, nearly half of these super consumers want samples and free shipping. But only one in five cares about loyalty programs.

Attention Is The Prize

The industry of attention is the largest, fastest-growing segment of the global economy. There are massive inefficiencies in how people’s attention is being extracted and traded and, for 80% of consumers, simply purchasing a brand is not enough to define loyalty: brand engagement and interaction are required.

As DōTerra CIO Todd Thompson, stated last week in Glossy, “The user experience becomes a strategic driver of revenue. Engagement with the customer sets us apart from other companies.”

Seizing people’s attention and holding onto it, represents the largest investment opportunity for companies in the next decade. It used to be that simply putting a product or service on the shelf (or on your site) put you in the game. Today, brands are not becoming thinner, they’re spreading their brandwidth at scale to become more relevant, meaningful and vital. A statement from the IAB study, “When I purchase a new direct to consumer (DTC) brand, I am expressing who I am,” is not a loose declaration. It is conflating human identity and product.

Brands are people, too.

By

Author of Primal Branding

Sourced from Branding Strategy Insider

The Blake Project Can Help: Get actionable guidance from experts on Brand Differentiation and Growth strategy.

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

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What’s the difference between analytics and statistics?

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By Cassie Kozyrkov

Understanding the value of two completely different professions

Statistics and analytics are two branches of data science that share many of their early heroes, so the occasional beer is still dedicated to lively debate about where to draw the boundary between them. Practically, however, modern training programs bearing those names emphasize completely different pursuits. While analysts specialize in exploring what’s in your data, statisticians focus more on inferring what’s beyond it.

Disclaimer: This article is about typical graduates of training programs that teach only statistics or only analytics, and it in no way disparages those who have somehow managed to bulk up both sets of muscles. In fact, elite data scientists are expected to be full experts in analytics and statistics (as well as machine learning)… and miraculously these folks do exist, though they are rare.

Image: SOURCE.

Human search engines

When you have all the facts relevant to your endeavor, common sense is the only qualification you need for asking and answering questions with data. Simply look the answer up.

Want to see basic analytics in action right now? Try Googling the weather. Whenever you use a search engine, you’re doing basic analytics. You’re pulling up weather data and looking at it.

Even kids can look facts up online with no sweat. That’s democratization of data science right here. Curious to know whether New York is colder than Reykjavik today? You can get near-instant satisfaction. It’s so easy we don’t even call this analytics anymore, though it is. Now imagine trying to get that information a century ago. (Exactly.)

When you use a search engine, you’re doing basic analytics.

If reporting raw facts is your job, you’re pretty much doing the work of a human search engine. Unfortunately, a human search engine’s job security depends on your bosses never finding out that they can look the answer up themselves and cut out the middleman… especially when shiny analytics tools eventually make querying your company’s internal information as easy as using Google Search.

Inspiration prospectors

If you think this means that all analysts are out of a job, you haven’t met the expert kind yet. Answering a specific question with data is much easier than generating inspiration about which questions are worth asking in the first place.

I’ve written a whole article about what expert analysts do, but in a nutshell they’re all about taking a huge unexplored dataset and mining it for inspiration.

“Here’s the whole internet, go find something useful on it.”

You need speedy coding skills and a keen sense of what your leaders would find inspiring, along with all the strength of character of someone prospecting a new continent for minerals without knowing anything (yet) about what’s in the ground. The bigger the dataset and the less you know about the types of facts it could potentially cough up, the harder it is to roam around in it without wasting time. You’ll need unshakeable curiosity and the emotional resilience to handle finding a whole lot of nothing before you come up with something. It’s always easier said than done.

Here’s a bunch of data. Okay, analysts, where would you like to begin? Image: Source.

While analytics training programs usually arm their students with software skills for looking at massive datasets, statistics training programs are more likely to make those skills optional.

Leaping beyond the known

The bar is raised when you must contend with incomplete information. When you have uncertainty, the data you have don’t cover what you’re interested in, so you’re going to need to take extra care when drawing conclusions. That’s why good analysts don’t come to conclusions at all.

Instead, they try to be paragons of open-mindedness if they find themselves reaching beyond the facts. Keeping your mind open crucial, else you’ll fall for confirmation bias — if there are twenty stories in the data, you’ll only notice the one that supports what you already believe… and you’ll snooze past the others.

Beginners think that the purpose of exploratory analytics is to answer questions, when it’s actually to raise them.

This is where the emphasis of training programs flips: avoiding foolish conclusions under uncertainty is what every statistics course is about, while analytics programs barely scratch the surface of inference math and epistemological nuance.

Image: Source.

Without the rigor of statistics, a careless Icarus-like leap beyond your data is likely to end in a splat. (Tip for analysts: if you want to avoid the field of statistics entirely, simply resist all temptation to make conclusions. Job done!)

Analytics helps you form hypotheses. It improves the quality of your questions.

Statistics helps you test hypotheses. It improves the quality of your answers.

A common blunder among the data unsavvy is to think that the purpose of exploratory analytics is to answer questions, when it’s actually to raise them. Data exploration by analysts is how you ensure that you’re asking better questions, but the patterns they find should not be taken seriously until they are tested statistically on new data. Analytics helps you form hypotheses, while statistics lets you test them.

Statisticians help you test whether it’s sensible to behave as though the phenomenon an analyst found in the current dataset also applies beyond it.

I’ve observed a fair bit of bullying of analysts by other data science types who seem to think they’re more legitimate because their equations are fiddlier. First off, expert analysts use all the same equations (just for a different purpose) and secondly, if you look at broad-and-shallow sideways, it looks just as narrow-and-deep.

I’ve seen a lot of data science usefulness failures caused by misunderstanding of the analyst function. Your data science organization’s effectiveness depends on a strong analytics vanguard, or you’re going to dig meticulously in the wrong place, so invest in analysts and appreciate them, then turn to statisticians for the rigorous follow-up of any potential insights your analysts bring you.

You need both!

Choosing between good questions and good answers is painful (and often archaic), so if you can afford to work with both types of data professional, then hopefully it’s a no-brainer. Unfortunately, the price is not just personnel. You also need an abundance of data and a culture of data-splitting to take advantage of their contributions. Having (at least) two datasets allows you to get inspired first and form your theories based on something other than imagination… and then check that they hold water. That is the amazing privilege of quantity.

Misunderstanding the difference results in lots of unnecessary bullying by statisticians and lots of undisciplined opinions sold as a finished product by analysts.

The only reason that people with plenty of data aren’t in the habit of splitting data is that the approach wasn’t viable in the data-famine of the previous century. It was hard to scrape together enough data to be able to afford to split it. A long history calcified the walls between analytics and statistics so that today each camp feels little love for the other. This is an old-fashioned perspective that has stuck with us because we forgot to rethink it. The legacy lags, resulting in lots of unnecessary bullying by statisticians and lots of undisciplined opinions sold as a finished product by analysts. If you care about pulling value from data and you have data abundance, what excuse do you have not to avail yourself of both inspiration and rigor where it’s needed? Split your data!

If you can afford to work with both types of data professional, then hopefully it’s a no-brainer.

Once you realize that data-splitting allows each discipline to be a force multiplier for the other, you’ll find yourself wondering why anyone would approach data any other way.

By Cassie Kozyrkov

Head of Decision Intelligence, Google. ❤️ Stats, ML/AI, data, puns, art, theatre, decision science. All views are my own. twitter.com/quaesita

Sourced from Towards Data Science

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How Customer Segmentation and Targeting Can Increase Your Email Open Rates

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Sourced from https://squareup.com

What exactly are customer segmentation and targeting?

Marketers throw around terms like customer segmentation and targeting a lot, but what exactly do they mean? And more importantly, how can they help your business?

What is customer segmentation?

First things first, let’s talk about customer segmentation. It may sound intimidating, but customer segmentation is a way to separate your audience into groups according to categories like gender, age, and similar interests. By dividing your customers into groups, you’re able to send each group an email with products, promotions, or coupons that they might find interesting and are more likely to buy.

Within Square Marketing, you can access filter options including Last Visited, Hasn’t Visited, Card on File, etc.,which allow you to create groups of customers you’d like to target. You can also filter based by location if you have multiple stores and only want to target customers who have purchased from a particular location.

It’s worth noting, there are also smart groups that are automatically updated for your regular customers and those customers that were regular but have become lapsed. You can view and update the definitions of these smart groups by going into your Customer Directory within your Square Dashboard, clicking on All Customers, selecting Regulars or Lapsed, and going to Edit.

Creating buyer personas, which are profiles of your ideal customer, may help you decide how you want to divide up your audience base to send them the most relevant email. When creating buyer personas you may want to consider the following:

  1. The demographics of your customers: Age, gender and income bracket can impact what products your customers may be interested in. For instance, Millennials and baby boomers are unlikely to have similar interests. (You can find more information on customer demographics using third-party or industry data).
  2. Your customers’ hobbies: Maybe some of your customers are bakers and maybe some are gardeners. No matter their hobby, it’s useful to know how to segment your audience.

What is customer targeting?

Once you’ve identified your customer segments, you can clearly target your ideal customers with the products they’re most likely to buy. Customer targeting can help focus your messaging so your email is most appealing to the specific customer segmentation you want to reach.

Think of customer segmentation as putting your customers into like-minded buying groups and customer targeting as the messaging you use specific to each of those groups. By “targeting” your customers with messages that most resonate with them, you’re more likely to get them to take that next step and click-through to buy your product.

Using customer segmentation and targeting in your business

By identifying and segmenting your customers into groups according to the marketing categories you have identified with buyer personas, your email marketing can go further.

Segmentation allows you to focus on groups of customers and target them specifically, rather than trying to target all of your customers in one group. Your email marketing is much more likely to be successful if you’re targeting individual groups who you know are more likely to engage with a certain product as opposed to blindly sending it to your entire list.

Also, if you’re still on the fence about segmentation, consider that “marketers have found a 760 percent increase in email revenue from segmented campaigns,” according to Campaign Monitor.

Sometimes it’s easier to use a specific example than marketing terms. So, let’s say that you own a chocolate shop. You know through your Square Dashboard that you have a group of customers who buy lots of your dark chocolate sea salt caramel (but of course they would –– who doesn’t love dark chocolate with sea salt?).

You could target this audience segment with an email letting them know about a sale you’re having on dark chocolate sea salt caramels. By sending them a sale on a product you know they love, they are more likely to buy the product (did we mention we would buy your dark chocolate sea salt caramels? Because we will). It’s really that simple—and a method you can start using today in Square Marketing.

Sourced from https://squareup.com

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How to Write the Perfect Guest Post

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By Mathew Richard,

The 21st century is all about creativity. People and companies are finding new ways of marketing. From traditional marketing strategies to blogging and now “Guest Posting” and whatnot. Every company is striving to stand out in the cyber world and want to create value for their platforms. For this purpose, they have found yet another online marketing strategy commonly known as “Guest Posting.”

Never heard of it? Well, keep reading. “Guest Posting” is a relatively new marketing strategy in which a blogger creates unique content and posts it on another website with the name of the author. Most often, the website, the author is writing for has some relevance to that of the author’s blog or website resulting in mutual benefits for both.

Why Is “Guest Posting” Beneficial?

Guest posting is beneficial because it will increase the reach and engagements for your content. It will generate work for you, making your brand or product or work famous. It will open new ways for your business and will satisfy the urge you have for writing.

How to Write a Perfect Guest Post?

If you are willing to increase traffic on your website, guest posting must be the first thing on your mind. If you are wondering how can you do it? Keep reading, and you will find the most natural and essential tips and tricks to create the perfect guest posts.

1.      Plan and Organize:

If you have been writing guest posts for a while now, you must be aware that it is a hassle to choose the website you have to write for. The first thing you need to keep in mind is that you select the sites that have a resemblance to your work. Do not just choose any website, be smart and choose the website that is relevant in some way to generate authentic traffic. Search appropriately before making any plans to write.

2.      Look Out For Credible Bloggers:

People won’t come out of the blue and ask you to write for them. You will have to make an effort if you want to succeed. Google the keyword “Write for us,” “Guest Post Submission,” “Guest Posting”, etc. to find websites that allow external writers to publish content. In addition, you can add a relevant keyword with the ones mentioned above to search for sites that fall under your niche.

3.      Be Yourself:

Know that every writer has a different writing style, and so do you. Make sure you don’t hesitate while writing for a new website and carry on with your unique writing style.

4.      Know Your Audience:

Everybody indeed writes differently, but the audience you are writing for will be different from your blogging website. Before you start preparing your content, it will be helpful if you have a look at the audience of that site, so that you can write stuff that won’t offend them.

5.      The introduction is Key:

The audience on the guest post submission site isn’t familiar with who you are. If you can’t write an engaging start to your post, do not write at all!

Most of the people won’t read the whole blog if the introduction is not good. Use your creativity to make the introduction worth reading. Your introduction will decide whether or not the reader should continue reading or bounce off. An engaging start with an attempt to connect with your readers can put you in a win-win position.

6.      Tell The Audience Who You Are:

While writing the post, make sure you tell them about yourself. If you have a story that can be related to your blog post, you should include that. It makes the audience feel related. You can also introduce yourself and mention your business and expertise in the blog post you are writing. If people don’t know you, they will question your credibility and won’t even bother to go to your website. Storytelling has turned out to be a crucial content marketing strategy in the modern business environment.

7.      Request The Host To Promote Your Post:

If, by now, you have written a guest post for any website, gratefully ask them to promote your post on their social media. The reason being, we live in the era of social media. Using social media is as essential as breathing. If you have written a fantastic piece and haven’t requested the host to share on their social media platforms, the results won’t be good enough.

8.      Keep an Eye on the Analytics

How do you know if anything is working for you unless you see the results? The same goes for your guest posting strategy. You can use Google Analytics to keep an eye on the number of users that enter your site through the recent guest posts you have submitted. That way, you’ll be able to understand what your next move should be or area where improvement is required.

9.      Don’t Stop:

Writing just one guest post won’t lead you to your desired results. You have to keep writing. Write for as many hosts as possible; this will make you create value for your products or brand. However, never ignore quality while going for quantity. No matter how many guest post deals you close, always maintain the quality of your blogs. The better the content, the greater the chance of it getting ranked higher on Google and other search engines.

Ending Words:

Some people still believe that blogging is not a good marketing strategy. We live in the age of digitalization, and if we don’t evolve with the time we will not only be left behind but will also be the ones closing down our businesses.

The competition is intense and to fight with that we do need to learn to market our content and brand. If you want to write and are thinking about your first stop, this article provides you with everything you need to know about guest posting; the ideal content marketing strategy.

Feature Image Credit: Via TradeKey

By Mathew Richard,

Sourced from Thrive Global

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4 Tips for Building a Content Calendar that Converts

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By Casey Strohl  

A content calendar is one of the most vital parts of your content marketing plan. Building a content calendar, however, is just the start. Your content has to be relevant and compelling to attract your target market and encourage conversions.

So, how can you make your content irresistible? Stay tuned for tips to building a content calendar that converts.

Why You Need a Content Calendar

Remember those times when you hustled to write content for a new product that launched the next week? Or what about that event email campaign you almost forgot about?

There’s a lot to juggle when it comes to content creation. And without a hub that tracks everything, stuff will fall through the cracks.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. You could get ahead of your content strategy by building a content calendar. There are many advantages to using a content calendar that can improve the quality of your content. It will keep you focused, consistent, and improve internal communication.

As content marketers, you spend a lot of your time being creative. But you can’t forget about workflows and deadlines. Make it easier on your entire team with a content calendar—one that’s accessible to all stakeholders. It becomes the home to all your content marketing efforts.

To build a content calendar, you first have to choose a content marketing software platform that has the features and functionality you desire. Not sure what’s possible with content calendars?

At a minimum, look for one that has the ability to:

  • Organize by team, region, business unit, or other classification
  • Manage shared and private calendars
  • Filter by category, keyword, team member, or other search term
  • Manage by task, asset, or campaign
  • Send notifications to impacted parties when something is updated or changed

Once you have your tool ready, it’s now time to create a content calendar that promotes conversions. Here are 4 tips to do just this.

1. Define Your Goals

Just putting out content for content’s sake isn’t going to lead to conversions. You need a goal in mind for your content. Determining your content’s goals can be broad or granular. Ultimately, your goal is a conversion, but it’s not that simple.

Most buyers consume multiple pieces of content before engaging. According to a study by Google, 88% of consumers research before they buy, consuming an average of 10.4 pieces of content. Thus, it’s not a linear line from a prospect reading a piece of content and immediately converting.

So, when considering your goals, break it down according to a buyer’s journey. Think about what leads to a conversion. Does a prospect sign up for your newsletter or follow you on social media before they are actually ready to talk about doing business with you?

You should have primary and secondary goals for your content calendar and then develop content to help you meet these goals. For example, if a high-quality conversion for your business is a download of a gated asset like an eBook, be sure to include it as a CTA in associated blogs and promote it consistently on social media profiles.

2. Determine Your Content and Post Frequency

 

One of the most important parts of using content to drive conversions is being consistent. So, you need to determine how much content you will produce per month for each channel, and how many times you’ll post per week/day on social media.

With these guidelines in place, you can focus on developing the actual content you need to meet these goals. You may also want to consider content themes each month. With a content them, you’ll focus your energy on one specific pain point or feature, digging deeper into the subject. It also gives you the opportunity to lead prospects along a content journey.

They start out with your first piece of content on a topic, then have the opportunity to branch out to other related blogs, videos, or infographics.

How much content should you produce each month? Well, there’s not a magic number exactly.

HubSpot performed an in-depth study based on blogging data from over 13,500 companies to try to answer this question. The results identify a link between frequency and increased traffic and leads. The research did indicate that a blogging frequency of around 11 blogs a month had the best return.

However, that doesn’t mean it’s the right number for you. To find the right frequency for your organization, consider these things:

  • How often do you produce content now?
  • How many views does your content receive now?
  • How large is your audience?
  • How many resources do you have to produce content?

3. Understand Your Buyer Personas

You can’t create a content calendar that converts without having a deep understanding of your buyer personas. You should be intimately aware of their pain points and how your product or service can make their lives easier.

Your content needs to be answering questions, presenting key messaging, and driving those readers to consider your organization as the answer to their challenges. Knowing what matters to your audience ensures that you choose the right themes and topics for your content calendar.

4. Ensure Your Content Calendar Includes Ideation

building a content calendar - ideation

Your content calendar is a great place to source ideas from many different perspectives. Typically, the more ideas you have, the more relevant your content can be. Content marketers should not be solely responsible for ideation. Product managers, sales, customer support, and others have insights worth tapping into, as they have interactions with customers and prospects that are currently going through their own journeys.

Having a content calendar that has a place to park ideas ensures that no great idea disappears and, upon review, your team can pick which ideas will likely convert your target buyers.

Whether you have an existing content calendar or are ready to create your first one, it’s imperative that it be built with a focus on conversion. Content is still one of the best ways to attract buyers; it begins a conversation with them focused on helping, not pitching!

And if you’re ready to start building a content calendar that’s flexible, scalable, and user-friendly, consider the DivvyHQ platform. It’s free to get started. Try it out today.

By Casey Strohl  

Casey is an Account Executive at DivvyHQ with a passion for solving problems and helping people. He focuses on helping marketers and marketing teams from companies of all shapes and sizes to simplify their content marketing process. When not busy at work, Casey and his wife enjoy exploring the great outdoors with their dog, Rocky.

Sourced from DIVVY HQ

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5 Print Design Tips to Create Standout Marketing Materials

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Sourced from Inc.

Best practices for creating modern, printed brand ambassadors with staying power.

Vladimir Gendelman, an Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) member in Pontiac, Michigan, is the founder and CEO of Company Folders, an award-winning online printing company specializing in presentation folders. The company made the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America for three consecutive years. As a thought-leader in print design and business, we asked Vladimir about the best ways to transform your marketing materials. Here’s what he shared:

While digital marketing is a significant focal point on the business landscape, print marketing–which started nearly 200 years ago–remains a robust marketing tool. Whether it’s trade shows, in-person networking or direct mail campaigns, print materials elegantly convey information about your company, brand and products.

Unlike their digital counterparts, print marketing materials aren’t instantly deleted with a click. They have staying power. When done well, print materials can work in conjunction with digital marketing efforts to differentiate your company and help customers remember you.

To do print marketing well, there’s pressure to capitalize on the next great design trend. Given how long print marketing has endured, it can be challenging to come up with fresh ideas.

Sometimes, the best way to step up your game is to leverage existing techniques with a unique twist. That’s what our team focuses on when creating new designs for clients, whether it’s finding a cool way to emboss a product or using a coating to highlight a specific design feature.

Here are five ways to create memorable, inspiring print marketing materials.

1. Cut it out

Marketing material designs aren’t limited to square or rectangular shapes. Consider reshaping the piece itself to match your logo or another brand element. Recipients will make the connection when the guitar shop’s business card is shaped like a guitar pick, and round business cards literally stand out from the pack at conferences.

For folders or brochures, you can add multiple curves, change the pocket shape, or create a custom-shaped window. Such windows not only provide a quirky design element–they also encourage recipients to look inside by offering a peek at the contents. Die cuts can outline or accentuate essential design elements such as a company logo or featured product.

2. Give it a lift

Embossing lifts your design from the stock, providing a raised, textural effect. It can be used to create geometric patterns or emphasize specific areas of your design. You can even give your die cut more pizzazz by embossing the border. Nothing is off-limits: You can add embossed elements to folder pockets, envelope flaps and business cards.

Photo courtesy of Company Folders, Inc.

Combining embossing with other imprint methods can transform and refresh a piece. That’s the case with this folder designed for a fine jewelry store. The foil stamp visually communicates elegance, while the embossed logo adds a level of sophistication and calls attention to the flap of the product.

3. Make it feel real

A poignant image stirs emotions, whether by drawing attention to your cause or identifying uses for your product or service. The key is avoiding basic, generic stock images.

Instead of images of your product sitting on a desk or in a field, choose an image showing the product in use or various scenarios in which the products would be ideal. Images must look and feel authentic as if they were plucked from a target customer’s camera roll or social media feed. Authentic imagery makes it easier for people to connect with your brand.

4. Add a coating

Incorporating a stock coating into your design can be the cherry on top of your sundae. In addition to providing extra protection to print marketing materials, it draws the eye to specific design elements by adding unique texture and shine. Coatings also add a level of sophistication and luxury, implying that you use only the highest-quality materials, which can make customers feel more comfortable working with you.

A spot-UV coating makes specific colors pop, or it can create its own element on the stock. A soft-touch coating provides a smooth, suede-like feel, giving recipients a tactile experience that will help them remember your product. For a more subtle look, matte coatings provide contrast and protect your design without the shiny, reflective appearance of a gloss coating.

5. Give it depth

Ever seen a design that makes you want to reach out and touch it? That’s the magic of 3D design, which adds a new level of depth to any element, from fonts to graphics. It adds complexity to an otherwise simple piece. It’s a best practice to use 3D design features sparingly and balance them with 2D counterparts to avoid weighing down your design.

Designer Katt Phatt transformed the Netbee logo to 3D so that it jumps off the screen. The key in this instance is Phatt’s keen attention to detail–showing each individual wire and cog makes the logo more realistic.

While new trends take shape every day, you can make a modern design statement with existing techniques utilized in distinct ways to give marketing materials a sleek twist. A great designer will be able to mix the old and the new to create a timeless printed piece that stands out.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

Sourced from Inc.

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4 Steps To Build Your Career As A Freelance Digital Marketer

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By Abdullahi Muhammed

Digital marketing is one of the top paying remote work niches right now. The compensation will likely remain high as companies keep ramping up their digital marketing spending. This year worldwide digital ad spending is expected to rise by 17.6% to $333.25 billion and reach an astonishing $517.51 billion by 2023. A fair share of those budgets will go into hiring top digital marketers, both in-house and on an ad hoc, freelance basis.

So how do you become one of the top digital marketers for hire? Below are several helpful steps that should help you steer your career in the right direction.

1. Give your mindset a quick check

As an employee, you are probably used to getting things done as per your boss’s requests. Typically, you are given a general direction for a project and you move on from there. As a freelancer, you will often need to become more proactive and actively take initiative yourself. Some clients will come to you with a solid action plan in mind. Others, on the contrary, may seek your expertise to help them devise a successful digital marketing strategy from scratch, or suggest what’s the best growth strategy for their business. You’ll have to jump into new situations all the time – deal with the potential mess left over by the past manager, research and test new tactics, suggest experiments and persuade the client why your advice will work better than what they originally had in mind.

This also means that you’ll need to work on your self-confidence and assertiveness to some extent. Imposter syndrome will be your close companion in the early stages, so make sure that you are not caving to it. You will have to always keep in mind that your success is not defined by what others are saying or some other outside factors. It’s directly attributed to your internal competency. Hence, focus on great execution, not reaching some mythical perfection.

2. Choose the right direction 

Digital marketing is a broad niche, encompassing loads of sub-disciplines – search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing (SMM), conversion rate optimization (CRO), content marketing, email marketing, pay-per-click (PPC) and so on. Perhaps, you’ve already worn several hats during your in-office tenure and juggled several things at once.

But as a freelance “gun for hire,” it’s best if you pick one core specialty and stick to it. This way you can avoid spreading yourself too thin on surface-level tasks in multiple practice areas and develop real mastery in one core area. So rather than being a generalist social media influencer, be an Instagram personality for high end clothing brands, for instance.

“Being a specialist rather than a generalist will allow you to build your personal brand and authority faster, attract a better cohort of clients and command higher rates,” said Dani Owens, CEO of Pigzilla. “Folks who grow to become t-shaped marketers with general knowledge in a broad array of skills and deep knowledge in a few or even a single one command much higher rates and deliver more bang for the client’s buck.”

3. Set up your website and publish a “signature offer” 

Having a portfolio or personal website for digital marketers is non-optional. After all, how you can sell your marketing expertise without actually showing what you can do? So invest in a quick website early on, gather some testimonials and feedback from your past employers or colleagues and set up your social media presence.  This way you’ll have several avenues for attracting leads and a quick reference board for prospects who are considering you against others.

Here’s one other savvy trick you can do: create and publish a “signature offer” on your website – a value-packed, yet easy-to-do service that you can pitch to potential customers. For instance, it could be something as simple as “Discounted 2-hour SEO audit for $150. Available to new clients only.” Your goal is to brainstorm some important, but non-critical task a client can feel comfortable with entrusting to a stranger on the other side of the screen.

Ultimately, such an offer can become your foot in the door and help you start a relationship with a new client and grow it from there.

4. Network a lot 

Securing those first few gigs will be the toughest. So get proactive early on and start putting your name out there before you leave your day job. More specifically, you should:

  • Join and participate in niche marketing communities. The popular ones among the marketing crowd are Growth.org (former Inbound.org) and Moz.
  • Later, send out quick LOIs (letter of introduction) to the people you’ve engaged with online. Explain what you are doing and ask if you can be of any help to their company.
  • You can also reach out to your past colleagues and friends, asking them to make some intros or provide referrals within their organization.
  • Finally, don’t discard offline networking. Mingle with the crowd at your local co-working space and attend workshops and local business events that may help you connect with new prospects.

Most importantly, use all your digital marketing expertise towards promoting yourself (just as you did with your clients’ businesses) and building a buzz around your name.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Abdullahi Muhammed

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

I am a writer, entrepreneur and the proud founder and CEO of Oxygenmat. I graduated summa cum laude from University of Ilorin with a degree in Law, winning the award of the Best Graduating Student in the Faculty of Law. I started writing in 2009 and honed my skills by entering over 100 writing contests, winning 11 of them. I got into freelance writing and grew the business pretty fast, to the point when I had more work than I could handle alone, and started my company, Oxygenmat. Today, I help people succeed at freelancing and content marketing, and I have been featured on World Economic Forum, Entrepreneur, Inc., The Huffington Post, Search Engine Watch, The Next Web, Engadget, among others.

Sourced from Forbes

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What Does Disruptive Marketing Look Like?

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By Adrian Johansen

With so much advertising trying to get consumers’ attention, what breaks through the noise? Disruptive advertising is all about breaking through that monotony, pulling the prospective consumers’ attention, and creating a revision in their perspective.

Being daring or interesting enough to alter someone’s perspective in a short ad is a tall order. While “disruptive marketing” is a newer moniker and we have new forms of media to assist us with disruption, it’s hardly a new concept. Disruptive marketing has long existed, especially in the realm of pop culture.

What is Disruptive Marketing?

Disruptive marketing tends to not only make the viewer stop what they’re doing, but to engage and participate directly, often with their emotions. Disruptive marketing can take the form of a simple black and white advertisement, a three-dimensional video stopping someone in the street, or guerilla marketing tactics, such as flash mobs. All of these examples have the potential to garner attention in fascinating ways, though many of them are now digital.

Specifically, disruptive marketing is identifiable as:

  • Accessible: Things that were once inaccessible to most people due to financial inequity or lack or technology are now available to many, making the product and the means of advertising it disruptive.
  • Innovative: Fresh and new, innovative products require four components: scale (a critical mass using them), frequency in use, an actively engaged audience, and diversity, valuing the contributions of customers as community members.

War is Over: A Classic Example of Disruptive Marketing

In December of 1969, Yoko Ono and John Lennon launched their famous “War is Over!” campaign in twelve cities. The messages, posted on billboards, said:

“WAR IS OVER!

If you want it

Happy Christmas from John & Yoko”

This message delivered:

  • A disruptive statement, which seemed factually untrue: The United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War, and many people who read the sign wanted the war to end.
  • A means for the audience to achieve what’s being advertised (end of war): This is a promise and an invitation for participation in anti-war activities, but it doesn’t initially ask the participant to do much more than change their mindset.
  • A closing of goodwill: The message is intended to leave the viewer with kindness, regardless of their feelings on the advertisement.
  • A personalized and emotional connection: Most knew who John and Yoko were, and their brand already brought with it feelings, visualizations, and familiar sounds.

Additionally, it’s designed to be disruptive in a minimalistic fashion, presented in an uncomplicated way with sans serif font.

Disruptive Advertising: Personal and Local

The old dog of disruptive marketing has learned some new tricks since John and Yoko’s famous billboards. Available technology now bombards consumers with more ads, but also presents unique opportunities for disruption.

Augmented reality (AR) is one such arena for advertising that is both personal and local. Let’s take a look at the free-to-download AR game Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, taking place in the famous Potterverse created by J. K. Rowling.

Wizards Unite utilizes geolocation tracking to present gamers with challenges superimposed onto their real-world phone cameras. When they look at a park bench when the game is active, for example, they might find an evil wizard standing on it, challenging them to combat. This experience is incredibly personal and tailored to the player’s location; the entire experience also draws on a decades-long attachment to the Harry Potter book series and movies.

With this game, the user can become immersed in a world that also evokes sentimental feelings, and possibly feelings of empowerment. Now for the sell: local businesses can appear in the game as respites for the gamers, providing them with free in-game resources. AT&T Wireless stores show up this way, causing gamers to not only head towards those physical locations, but to associate the AT&T brand positively with their beloved favorite, Harry Potter.

This creates an innovative brand association for AT&T as well as repetitive engagement with AT&T stores. Combined with innovation and engagement, this memorable brand experience and positive association creates a successful disruptive marketing strategy.

How to Plan and Execute a Disruptive Marketing Campaign

Since the end of “Game of Thrones,” we all understand the magnitude and impact of the series on our viewing habits and pop culture, but let’s think back to the 2011 series debut. Audiences were just getting used to video streaming services (even Netflix had started with DVD delivery) and the idea of being a geek all about dragons wasn’t entirely cool back then.

HBO changed that. In addition to encouraging consumers to embrace HBO Go for its premium content, they employed dramatic marketing techniques. Like the Potter game, the technology was disruptive, and so was the marketing that went along with it.

Press contacts received immersive press kits with in-world items prior to the launch of the series, and HBO didn’t stop there. By the time the series finale premiered in 2019, HBO co-sponsored a Bleed for the Throne blood drive and a worldwide scavenger hunt. Again, these events were exciting, participatory, engaging and, you guessed it, disruptive.

How did HBO start with a show based on a book series enjoyed by a niche group of fans to marketing one of the most culturally pervasive and popular series of all time? They had a careful, long-term marketing plan that even expanded their core base by making it cool to like dragons.

Behind the scenes, this only happens when marketers communicate well internally, adequately manage sensitive information (no spoilers!) and standardize their process for success. While each marketing effort seems quirky and creative, it’s clearly the result of careful in-house communications and strategic partnerships on HBO’s part.

From a black and white ad in the late 1960s to AR wizards and worldwide scavenger hunts for items of Westeros, disruptive marketing works best for innovative technologies and cultural touchstones. These disruptions help audiences form emotional connections with innovative brands, clearly communicating the nature of the products or services advertised and engaging audiences in the use of forward-thinking technology with thought-provoking messages.

By Adrian Johansen

Sourced from PromotionWorld

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