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By WittyPen

Millennials are the most educated, open minded and dynamic demographic that exists.

They are independent and have started making their purchasing decisions. For a marketer, they are the most lucrative set of audiences for marketing any product or service.

However, the set of characteristics and traits they possess make them the unique people to market or sell. One can’t use the same marketing strategies to lure them into a brand or acquire, convert and retain them for long. Since they form a huge part of the population, the opportunity is magnanimous.

A marketer can never ignore Millennials and become successful in marketing a brand. Initially, you need to create an excellent brand worth reverence and then implement marketing strategies which millennials respond to.

Let’s see how you can do them right.

Although millennials aren’t as loyal as the older generation is, but they stick to the brand they love.

If they like a brand, they’ll be vocal about it and spread the word. And if they don’t, they’ll be equally expressive about it in any medium they get.

Thus, branding for millennials is a tricky path to tread, but by keeping a few important things in mind, you’ll be able to create a brand they find awesome.

Be authentic to the core

Authenticity breeds trust and trust breeds business. Authenticity matters.

The truthful words said by top LinkedIn influencer and best-selling author, Dave Kerpen.

This stands even truer for millennials who possess an innate ability to sense brands that are fooling around. They look up to brands which are highly authentic in all what they do.

It is very important to create a genuine bond with each of your customers as it helps to evoke a feeling of trust.

Instead of trying to fabricate your brand image, focus on being your self and gain respect for it.

100-brands-market-to-millennials

As per a recent research by Cohne & Wolfe, who are known to conduct studies to measure the authenticity of brands, these are the top 100 authentic brands.

If you notice, they truly have worked hard over the years to create an image which people, majorly millennials think as authentic.

Position yourself to please them

Creation of a great brand depends on its positioning in the market. There are several examples of companies failing miserably just because their position wasn’t right.

To reach your target audience and ensure that they are attracted towards your brand, you need to create a desirable position for it.

Millennials are highly diverse, and most of them have unique choices. While building a brand, you must consider their needs and position accordingly. Good positioning also helps in highlighting the characteristics and core attributes of the brand.

tesla-motors-wittypen

Tesla Motors is a great example of positioning a brand to appeal a particular section of people. Electric cars were quite uncool before Tesla came in and took the market by storm. Right from the beginning, Tesla positioned itself as a high-end electric car maker with exemplary aesthetics, all of which the other brands lacked. Rest of all, as they say, is history.

Exude uniqueness

Millennials believe themselves to be unique and they want their brands to resonate their personalities. No matter what products or services your brand offers, the branding needs to be unique in order to appeal the millennials.

Uniqueness depends on perception, but it takes a lot of efforts to stand as a purple cow in a herd full of common brands.

Staying relevant in an age where people have the lowest attention span needs your brand to exude uniqueness and as a marketer, it is your job to make it happen.

Uber has been a fine testimony of unique branding; their service is as simple as it gets. Millennials are always on the move, and Uber has become their go-to app for whenever they are out of the house. Their product as well as the brand they have created widely captures the instinctive nature of millennials.

This TVC by Uber brilliantly empowers every common man to make their dreams come true through Uber and shows a message to #EmpowerAMillion Entrepreneurs by 2018. This is something millennials immediately connect with.

Be admirably interesting

Being interesting as a brand is a different ball game altogether. The Gen-Y simply can’t stand something boring because they live in a world where the most interesting thing gets all the attention and that is all that they crave.

To seek positive attention – which is one of the core aims of marketing – is to become admirably interesting.

A brand seems alive only if it is interesting enough and keeps making efforts to be so. 

Google is one of the most interesting brands in the world, and it’s difficult to imagine the internet without it. Although the product seems like the simplest tool for consumers, it takes a lot of efforts to make this simple brand admirably interesting.

Be it the extremely creative Google Doodles, the quirky hidden tricks or the infamous April Fool pranks; they have constantly been the most interesting brand on the planet.

Stand up for what you believe

Millennials have strong opinions, and they like to stand up for what they believe. When a brand does the same, the instantly start liking it.

The reason is the resonance of personalities, when your brand believes in something and advocates it through various campaigns, people who believe in the same thing will form an inclination towards your brand.

Standing up for your brand’s beliefs is a sign of strength which has become necessary in the current times.

apple-parade-festival-reuters

Global brands which are loved by millennials have made it a point to strongly voice for the causes they believe in.

Apple Inc. has openly supported the LGBT community by various means, and it won the hearts of many for standing by what it believes in. Although it wasn’t related to the brand or their products the cause affected their consumers, and they showed their unwavering support for it.

This is all you need to build a brand for millennials; these unpredictable personalities can be the biggest source of revenue for your company. Put all your efforts and build a brand which your customers will be proud of. 

Top 6 Strategies for Marketing to the Millennials – Acquire, Convert, Retain!

Once you have created a stellar brand, you need to implement marketing strategies specially designed for millennials. They have a blind eye towards cliched campaigns that are uncreative and don’t ring a bell naturally.

Trying to impress millennials through marketing is no easy job, but with the right tactics, you will be able to acquire, convert and retain them in the long haul.

Let’s see some of the most useful ones.

a) Be where the millennials are

Marketers must have a keen eye on all the places where their customers are. This includes venturing into all the exciting platforms millennials share their daily lives on.

If you want to market your brand to millennials and don’t have a presence on social platforms like Instagram and Snapchat Inc., you are doing it all wrong. These platforms provide enough marketing avenues already, and they will keep upgrading their platforms to offer marketers the ultimate value of their efforts.

Thus, they are huge customer acquisition mediums as far as millennials are concerned.

Taco Bell is widely known for their creative and expressive social media campaigns.

Recently, they came up with some unique strategies to reach out to their target audiences, the millennials. This detailed case study shows how they leveraged the power of social media to tap into the lives of Millennials.

Also, their Twitter handle has been very popular lately owing to a superb interactive presence on the platform.

b) Build a relationship

Relationship marketing is an old technique but works like a charm for millennials.

They are always up for a deep bond which needs nurturing, and brands can use the same humane qualities for building a relationship with their customers like they would do for a person.

Although it takes a tonne of efforts to maintain a good relationship, it is well worth in the long haul.

The core aim of relationship marketing is to allow more customer retention and satisfy them with your product or service instead of focusing on sales transactions.

Building a genuine relationship with your customers or users is the best way to retain them for years. Though Coca-Cola just sells flavored sugary water, they know how to build a long-lasting relationship with their customers better than anyone else.

Over the years, they have consistently tried to build a unique rapport with the customers and succeeded in it.

The TVC shows one of the historical brand campaigns ever done. It was majorly targeted towards millennials since they had started losing market share of that age group in Australia.

After the campaign, their sales saw a huge rise, and it proved the prowess of a nicely executed relationship marketing campaign.

c) Content (marketing) is still the king

Many marketers believe that the era of content has passed and they need new techniques to reach customers. This is far from the truth and content or content marketing for that matter is still one of the most effective ways to reach, educate and convert users.

Although mediums of content have evolved over the years it is still as relevant as it was in the initial days, even more.

The rise of social media along with the increased viewership of videos has led to a shift in the way content marketing happens.

Nike is probably the best brand that gets content marketing right for millennials. It owned the top two spots of the most watched videos on YouTube in the year 2014.

They have diversified their content marketing strategies into videos, manuals, fitness tips and much more.

In fact, it began with content marketing right in the 1960s when it came up with a manual titled “A Jogger’s Manual” which is widely termed as the reason for the growing jogger’s culture in the US, ultimately leading to more sales for Nike.

d) Build an awesome product/service

The best marketing one can do for a brand is to create a superior product or service which speaks for itself, majorly through word of mouth.

Although different techniques of marketing are required to ensure a widespread reach for a good product, nothing beats the authentic praise of a customer.

Millennials believe their friends and family more than what any brand’s marketing campaign conveys. Thus, if you want to impress them, better build an awesome product/service and then let them spread the word.

WhatsApp and Truecaller are two outstanding examples of how a good product successfully acquires, converts and retains users without much marketing efforts. Both these brands had barely marketed their apps, but they both turned out to be revolutionary services which we use on a daily basis.

Word of mouth is a huge advantage any brand can have, and it is only possible by creating a product…

e) Provide an amazing customer service

Providing great customer service is a necessity in a time when customers have become knowledgeable and won’t tolerate someone treating them in a frivolous manner.

Your customer service is put into test when a customer faces a bad experience and the way you handle it shows how good you are. Such responses decide how loyal the customers will be in the future. Nailing such situations is one of the core things a brand can do to retain customers.

Amazon is a champion in providing an exceptional customer service.

You will seldom see a customer switching from Amazon because of a delayed or bad experience; they always make sure you have a good time while shopping at their site.

Non-surprisingly, their mission statement reads that they want to “become the most customer-centric company in the world”.

This amazing TVC by Amazon depicts exactly how they are trying to position themselves when it comes to customer service. They are equating themselves with the people of India, who love helping and it strike a chord with many.

f) Offer something in return

Probably every brand these days uses the strategy of providing discounts, cashback or offers to acquire and convert users.

Although this is not a good long-term strategy to retain users, it can work wonders to acquire new users and give them an opportunity to try your product or service.

Millennials are lured by such deals and would probably give your brand a try which can then convert them into regular customers.

diwali-sale

Consider all the big e-commerce sites, payment wallets, ride-hailing apps or probably any popular internet service in the recent years, and you will find that this is the major strategy they have leveraged to acquire users because it works.

In fact, there are companies specially built to show the most valuable discounts and offers through many verticals of services.

Conclusion

Branding and marketing are two of the most challenging aspects that every business faces and now you have mastered them both.

When it comes to millennials, creating a successful brand and marketing your products to them in a unique way is essential and non-negotiable.

All the above mentioned popular brands which millennials love have rightly adapted to these branding and marketing strategies over the years to be successful.

However, with ever-evolving consumers, you need to evolve as a brand and advance your marketing strategies consistently to stay relevant.

Now that you know the effective strategies for both, simply create an awesome brand and successfully market them to millennials.

By WittyPen

Sourced from iamwire

Sourced from Inbound Rocket

We all know the importance of Content Marketing. We know that when executed well it can help you attract your right target audience and that it can help them turn into leads as a result of your engaging content. But how do you know that you’re on the right track?

Content Marketing Metrics is all about measuring your content and the impact it has on your organisation. It is about measuring the results and taking actions based upon it.

As more and more businesses are getting on board the Content Marketing train and spending ever greater portions of their budget on creating content, they must know that their investments are aligned with their goals with their KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators). This is the only way for them to keep their budget secure.

They need to measure what matters, not just what’s easy to track.

In an earlier post, we already talked about getting started with defining your Content Marketing KPI’s. And as you might remember, it starts with determining your business and marketing goals. Based on those you can select the metrics that will be the most effective for you to track your progress towards achieving these goals.

Over the last couple of years, there has been an explosion of metrics and analytics tools, and a lot of these tools might scare off the average Joe a bit. However, as these tools mature and become easier to understand, it’s becoming easier than ever for everyone in your organisation to look into and understand how agile, metrics-focused marketing works.

Below we’ve compiled a list of the essential tools, tactics, and items to measure, so you too can understand better how your content is performing and if not, what to do about it. We’ve grouped them together in the four most important pillars for you to track:

  • Consumption Metrics
  • Sharing Metrics
  • Lead Generation Metrics
  • Sales Metrics

Consumption Metrics

For a lot of companies, the consumptions metrics are the most important one. However, on our list, we start with the least important one. Although it is interesting to know how many people consumed your content, this is not a metric that is important.

Of course, if you’re running an advertised based product, this is an important metric to show to your advertisers, but in the end, consumption metrics are just vanity metrics. Metrics that may look important, but if can only move to the right and the top.

Questions you need to ask yourself for these metrics:

  • How many people are consuming your content?
  • Which channels are they using?
  • How frequently and how in-depth is their consumption?

You can gather this data by looking into your Google Analytics for example. Things that are more important than just mere views here are the way people are consuming. In your Google Analytics, have a look at:

  • The time spend on site (important to know if they only spent 2 minutes on a page that has an article that typically takes 20 minutes to read, maybe you should structure the article better, include more visuals and subheadings?)
  • How many pages are viewed on average
  • Crawl rate (how often are the search robots coming back to your website to index you again)
  • Bounce rate (how many people visit just one page and leave again, maybe you can include “related articles” in your content, or more internal links to keep people exploring more content)
  • The number of Inbound Links (how many people are linking to your website and are thus helping in to bring traffic, you can check this using the Open Site Explorer from Moz.

Once you’ve identified these five items for your organisation though, don’t stop there. The next step is to see how active people are engaging with your content.

Sharing or Social Metrics

Social media, one of those things that can be scary and great at the same time. So much data, you can quickly get drowned. Between engagement, reach, or even metrics like “share of voice”, social media can deliver you a lot of information without you going anywhere.

Just like with consumption metrics, it is easy to lose track as well from the things that are relevant to your business. Having a bunch of likes on your Facebook page, and followers on your Twitter account is nice, but does it matter?

Those people were liking and following you need to do a bit more than just that. They need to engage with your content; they need to share it, they need to respond to it, etc. Those people who liked your page also need to follow your call-to-action (CTA) you put in place.

So just like with the consumption metrics, you need to measure things, which you can attach a meaning to, things that can help you make informed decisions. As Avinash Kaushik puts it, there are four important things to track; conversation rates, amplification rates, applause rate, and economic value.

The Conversation Rate helps you to understand better how your audience feels about your content. It can be defined by looking at the number of comments (or replies) per post. It helps to bring engagement, to nurture your leads, answer any questions that people might have about your product or services and provide support that could then result in user retention.

The Amplification Rate is another one that can help you measure something intangible as brand awareness. It shows how often people like your content well enough, find it interesting enough that they would want their peers to know about it too. It illustrates how often and how far your content gets shared and the reach it gets as a result. Next to that from a direct ROI point of view, it is a great indicator to tell you what content you should be creating and on what channels to focus on.

The Applause rate identified by Kaushik is the number of “endorsements” people are giving your posts. These can be seen as the “likes” on Facebook and Instagram, or the “favourites” on Twitter for example. If you simple measure this it will not tell you that much (on Twitter there are even bots who like anything with a particular phrase in there in the hopes that person or brand will look at their profile and start following you). But if you use this in relation with the Amplification Rate, it can be another indicator of what your community likes and doesn’t like.

The Economic value at the end is showing you what social sites are driving the most traffic to your landing pages for example. Where are they coming from? Measuring this type of behaviour will show you, which networks are converting better than others. After all, according to research done by digital marketing agency ODM Group, 74% of consumers rely on social networks to help them make a purchase decision.

Tools like Buffer and Followerwonk, for example, help you to extract this information from your profiles.

Lead Generation Metrics

At one point in the life of a potential lead, they have to convert. They have register somewhere via a CTA somewhere to read/watch/download your content. Or even via a plain old contact form on your website.

At this point in the life cycle, we can start to put a projected dollar amount on what we’re doing, and we can see if all your efforts make financial sense.

If you’ve got an online lead form on your site, you can measure how long it takes for people to fill in the form from the moment they first visit your website, like we build up visitor profiles here at Inbound Rocket. If your leads are mostly coming in via phone, and you’ve got a modern Voice over IP (VoIP) system with multiple phone numbers at your disposal, you can show a different phone number on various parts of the website. Or even different phone numbers after your visitors took certain actions, like watching a video, downloading a playbook, etc.

The key questions you need to figure out, what is your:

  • Click-Through-Rate (CTR). The CTR is used to determine how well your CTA’s are performing. It is expressed as a percentage and calculated by the total number of clicks divided by the total number of views
  • Conversion Rate (CR). The CR is used to calculate the rate at which users perform an intended action (for example, make a purchase, download a playbook, sign up for your newsletter, etc.). You then calculate the total numbers of leads by the total number of visitors.
  • Time to Conversion. How long does it take from the moment someone sees your content for the first time, to them turning into a paying customer. Although it might not seem that important, it is an important number because it helps to determine the response time of various leads to a particular lead generation campaign.
  • Average Close Rate. The final question is about keeping track of the quality of your leads at any given period to help you determine if you’re attracting high-quality leads (with high conversion potential) or not

Sales Metrics

All the metrics up until now have been working up to the final moment. The time that you are finally making real money and hopefully turning into a profit for your company.

When you’re using Inbound Rocket for tracking your customer, you’re automatically recording all the information you need about these potential leads. What content are they consuming, what types of content do they seem most interested in, etc. This will help your sales team to come up with warm welcome emails or phone calls to your prospects so they can turn them from leads into paying customers.

In return when the sale has been made, and the final dollar amount is known, you can then use this information to put a value on the pieces of content that helped shape the sales. Let’s say someone consumed five pieces of content and the total amount of money spend on your company is $150,000. This then means you can assign a theoretical value of $30,000 for each piece of content. Knowing how much the actual Return On Investment (ROI) of each piece of content is.

Knowing how much content is consumed, and which content is consumed by a customer is crucial for this final step.

If you know the answer to all of the above fourteen metrics, you have a solid overview of your content marketing system. You can use Excel, Google Sheets, or any other tool of your choice to track, record and review over time how you’re doing. Especially the tracking over time is important if you want to adequately judge how your content marketing is doing and which types of content is performing better than others.

You can put a dollar amount per individual piece, as well as an amount of money generated on the total of all your content efforts.

Content isn’t just about creating and waiting for sales to drop in automatically. So don’t only track consumption. The most important thing at the end of the day is that your business is making money, and the only way to grow your business is knowing where to get the highest amount of returns with the least amount of effort.

Sourced from Inbound Rocket

By Demitra Fields.

Just like the everyday social media user, a successful brand should have its own story and personality.

Brand storytelling, when done properly, allows marketers to build personality and associate emotion with a brand to create (or, at least, attempt to create) a personal connection with the consumer. The prevalence of social media today has driven an interest in leveraging the convergence of content creation and programmatic advertising to tell the story behind a brand.

As co-founder and president of Track Marketing Group, I’ve helped different brands socialize their story using strong visual narratives and integration of live experiences to build engaged communities. Here are five tips to creating your social brand narrative, and hopefully, inspiring your community.

Use Powerful Imagery 

It’s often said that good public speakers take their audience on a journey, hopefully leaving it feeling motivated and inspired. Leveraging the power of photography to take the consumer through a visual journey is one of the most powerful ways to tell your brand story across all social platforms.

  • Use original images. Storytelling is most effective when it’s personalized. Stock images will never do your brand story justice. Make the investment and create original visuals that tell the exact story in your brand voice.
  • Use social platform-specific visual tactics. With the number of social platforms consumers are using today, it’s safe to say that one size does NOT fit all. Instagram profile grids, the act of taking one single image and sharing it as a grid of several broken images to create a big picture when viewed on the main user profile, might work well on Instagram but lose their effectiveness on Twitter and Snapchat. Know your community and apply the best visuals that work within the confines of the different social platforms.

Limit The Use of Hashtags

Being on the agency side, clients are always looking to sum up their entire brand ethos using one hashtag. Unicorn hashtags — simple premises that the consumer can immediately understand and connect to the brand — are far and in-between.

Use hashtags as a way to corral and enhance your brand story along with the extended consumer chapters and plot twists. The hashtag should not be your brand story

Empower Your Community

One of the most popular story structures is called the “monomyth,” also known as “the hero’s journey.” In monomyths, heroes are called to leave their home and set out on a journey to an unknown place. After overcoming a trial, they return home with newfound wisdom or a reward that they can share with and ultimately help their community.

Social media and the power of user-generated content allow marketers the unique opportunity to allow the consumer to finish the monomyth. The brand’s journey into the unknown can be open ended and completed by the consumer in his or her own words and visuals.

Tactically, we can do this two ways:

  • Crowdsourced Content. Leveraging crowdsourced images to show the pillars of the brand story through the consumer’s lens and, in turn, bring the brand story into the real world.
  • Social Listening. Utilize social tools to identify and listen to your brand advocates and engage with them on a one-on-one basis to amplify the story beyond your reach.

Expand Your Message

The greatest stories are those that are broad and relatable to a wide group of people. The best TV shows in history all transcended their specific subject and captured a moment in time in our culture. “Star Wars” is a box office juggernaut because it tells a story that the consumer easily understands.

The best stories are relatable by the average person. Telling your brand story on social means that you have to be unique yet still attainable by the average social media user. If your entire story is only for the one percent on social, that’s not a story – that’s only a chapter.

Let The Words Tell A Story

Storytelling on social media is ultimately driven by words. Whether we are looking to inspire, motivate or galvanize the consumer and community, the copy that we use either as standalone text or as captions to our visuals will dictate the brand story arc(s).

New Balance, one of our agency clients, recently launched its “Always In Beta” campaign telling their brand story of being in a state of relentless improvement — that there is no finish line to what’s possible and that you can always improve with determination.

New Balance has taken its ‘Always in Beta’ brand story to social by creating original content that visually speaks to its performance heritage, yet with words that are broader than footwear and apparel. This has allowed it to become more than just a footwear brand but to enter its consumer’s personal storyline.

Great brands rely on stories to define their brands. With society driven by social media and an “always on” mentality, today’s brand journey must begin, build and extend onto social. Approach your storytelling with an authentic yet broader lens than your brand-specific filter, and you’ll give your consumer the social authority to make your brand story into their personal folktale.

Read more advice on building your brand at Tech.Co

This article is courtesy of BusinessCollective, featuring thought leadership content by ambitious young entrepreneurs, executives & small business owners.

By Demitra Fields

Sourced from TECH.CO

By Robert Morris .

In this article, you will find eight content marketing mistakes you should avoid. Save yourself a lot of time and trouble by learning from the mistakes of others. Learning from your own mistakes is a laudable attitude, but mistakes are costly and time consuming.

1 – Marketing Your Content AFTER You Have Created It

Sell your content before you even write it. Sell the product before you make it. Here is an easy and free test that anybody can run. Come up with three titles for your next piece of content. Create a social media post for each where the title is clearly visible and there is also a suitable picture. Each post should link to its own landing page (you should probably set up a redirect from the landing page to your homepage). Now, record how many people visit the page that is linked to your social media post.

 

The people who follow your link may be disappointed to see that there is no article on the landing page, but they will get over it. The aim is to see which landing page receives the most visits. The attached social media post and title that attracts the most viewers is title that you should choose for your next article.

 

2 – Relying On Social Media To Do The Legwork

 

The most common marketing mistake of new content marketers is to rely on their social media profiles to do all the work. If you do not have a diversified and planned content marketing plan, then you don’t have a plan at all.

 

3 – Pandering To The Lowest Common Denominator

 

Is your content the American Pie of articles? Are you trying to attract the broadest possible crowd by appealing to the lowest in all of us? Consider setting your standards a little higher. It is true that you will scare away quite a large number of potential viewers, but you are more likely to gain long-term and convertible viewers.

 

Take the essay writing industry as an example. Many essay writing companies try to sell to students by claiming their service offers a cheap and easy way to cheat. They push their services onto the laziest students. Whereas, they could just as easily attract a crowd of thoughtful students who are genuinely struggling with their coursework and are looking for help rather than ways to cheat. If you were writing the best essay writing service reviews on the Internet, if you were really concentrating on the quality of your output, would you offer it so freely to the laziest and immoral crowd? Why offer high cuisine to a pig in a sty?

 

4 – Are You Failing To Manipulate Your Content’s Selling Point?

 

In other words, are you focusing so hard on the selling points of the items/services you are promoting, rather than focusing on the selling points of the content itself. For example, if you are producing content that explains how to use power tools, then your selling point is the valuable information you are giving away. Your “Content’s” USP has nothing to do with the selling points of the power tools you sell. Your content sells your products/services, but first, you have to “sell” (market) your content–and you sell your content with your content’s USPs and not your product‘s USPs.

  

5 – Your Content Isn’t Useful

Take the example of PewDiePie, who is the most popular YouTuber to ever live. Some say that his videos are of no use whatsoever. After all, all he does is record himself playing games. But, his videos offer a modicum of entertainment value that appeals to younger people. Does your content actually have a use beyond selling a product or service? If not, it may be time to diversify the focus of your website.

6 – Too Many Adverts On Your Website

It is tragic when you think of all the effort people make to market their content, only to fill their websites full of annoying adverts. People don’t like adverts! Why do you think Sky+ and Tivo were so popular in their day? The same goes for pop-ups. They are irritating and they drive people away from your website. Also, beware of the types of adverts that cause more bounces than other. For example, Moz’s suggests that adverts for Facebook increase bounce rates by as much as 10%.

 

 

7 – Failing To Present A Reader-Friendly Structure

People don’t read on the web – they scan. Your content needs to be highly reader friendly. Take a few tips from the way this article is structured. It features useful and easy-to-understand headers, the font is pleasing to the eye, and the content is separated out into easy-to-read paragraphs.

8 – Not Adding Images To Your Content

Failing to add images will reduce the impact your content has on some users. Some of your website visitors are going to engage with images in a very deep and meaningful way. These same people may be under whelmed or put-off by pages full of nothing but text. Neil Fleming’s VAK/VARK model suggests that people learn via:

 

[o]        Visual learning

[o]        Auditory learning

[o]        Reading learning

[o]        Kinesthetic learning

 

 

You need to hit as many of these learning methods as possible with your content. Here is an example:

 

[+]        Visual learning

Adding images that relate to the content

 

[+]        Auditory learning

Having a video or audio section that reads out the text or main concept

 

[+]        Reading learning

Text will suit most reading learners

 

[+]        Kinesthetic learning

Add videos or interactive elements into your content

 

 Learn From Your Successes And Not Your Failure

People who learn from their failures should be congratulated for their tenacity, but tenacity only gets you so far. Take the time to learn from your successes and leave the failure to other people. You can read articles like this one to learn from other people’s mistakes. Instead, take what works, and try to scale it up. Try to repeat your success rather than trying to repeatedly learn from your failures.

 By Robert Morris

http://askpetersen.com

By

You’re probably aware that content marketing is an integral part of SEO today.

With it, you can improve your brand’s online visibility and generate 3 times as many leads as traditional advertising (and at a fraction of the cost).

But not everyone is profiting from it…

According to a recent survey, only 30% of B2B marketers say their organizations are effective at content marketing.

Plus, 55% say they are unclear on what content marketing success or effectiveness looks like.

If you’re part of that statistic or have been struggling with your content marketing efforts, recently, I’ve got your back.

In this article, I’m going to show you six under-utilized content marketing strategies that will help you generate more organic traffic, improve your conversions and introduce your brand to new audiences.

Let’s get started.

1. Perform a content audit

In today’s content-driven world, many business owners are cranking out more content in a bid to outrank their competitors.

But in doing so, they’re overlooking an important fact:

Not all content serves your website.

If it isn’t high-quality or optimized correctly (on-site or otherwise) your content might be hurting your domain authority (or worse, affecting your rankings).

The solution, then, is to perform a content audit.

According to Neil Patel

A content audit is a careful look at your website’s existing content in order to make sure that it’s doing what you want it to do – driving the right kind of traffic, containing the right kind of keywords, and improving conversions.

While auditing your site’s content might not fill you with enthusiasm, the results that come from it might…

In an interview with Pat Flynn, writer Todd Tresidder revealed deleting a third of his content tripled his traffic.

And he’s not the only one.

When Nick Loper deleted and consolidated 650 articles on his site, he boosted his organic traffic by 65%:

To perform a content audit of your own, login to Google Analytics, go to “Behavior > Site Content > All Pages”, and do an 80/20 analysis of your content.

Ask yourself, “What is the 20% of content that is producing 80% of the traffic?”

Optimize that 20% by adding additional keywords or a content upgrade (more on that in a moment) and improve or remove the 80% that isn’t producing any return.

To learn more about how to conduct your own content audit, read Everett Sizemore’s thorough article on the subject.

2. Relaunch old content

We’ve all been there:

You write an epic blog post, hit ‘Publish’ and…

Crickets.

No comments. No backlinks. And no influx of organic traffic.

If that’s ever happened to you then you might consider doing what Brian Dean calls a “content relaunch.”

Inspired by a HubSpot post, Dean revisited a blog post that dropped in the SERPs (search engine results pages) and improved it by updating its images, restructuring its copy and adding a case study.

The results were remarkable:

He got 260.7% more organic traffic in 14 days.

Experiences like Brian’s reveal an important fact:

It’s not always necessary to create new content; often, you just need to improve what existing content you have.

Here’s how to do that:

Go back into your Google Analytics and view your lowest-performing content.

Ask yourself,

  • Is any of it re-launchable?
  • Could I rewrite, update or improve any of it?
  • If so, how? Could I update its images or stats, or add a case study?

Often, it’s the marginal improvements that yield the maximum results.

3. Repurpose your most-popular content

It’s a common trap many business owners fall into…

They write a blog post, hit ‘Publish’ and then move onto another without considering how they could maximize the reach of their content.

That’s where content repurposing comes in.

As the name suggests, content repurposing involves taking existing content and adapting it for other platforms to reach new audiences and create further link-building opportunities.

As Arnie Kuenn writes,

With so much content being published every day, people are bound to miss a blog post or video once in awhile. However, through repurposing, your audience may come across your content after it has been altered, through a different channel.

A good example of a marketer repurposing content is Eugene Cheng.

After repurposing his existing content on Slideshare, Eugene was able to get over 2 million views for his presentations:

And that’s not all…

Cheng was able to rank an additional page for the long-tail keyword, “presentation design Singapore”:

Whether you repurpose your content into a Slideshare presentation, an infographic, a video, or any other medium, content repurposing expands the life cycle of your content even further, making it evergreen for years to come.

4. Syndicate your content

Have you ever read a popular blog post only to later notice it everywhere?

If you have, that’s because of content syndication.

The idea is simple:

When an article performs well on one platform (driving a ton of traffic and backlinks in the process) it’s pitched to other platforms (often major media outlets) in the hopes of achieving similar results.

The thing is…

You don’t have to wait for other outlets to accept your work.

Take Benjamin Hardy, for example.

By copying and pasting all of his blog posts onto Medium, he was able to get 20,000 subscribers in 6-months:

Image Source: Goins Writer

But growing your email list isn’t the only benefit that comes from syndicating your content; it increases your brand’s reach too.

James Clear illustrates this perfectly.

By syndicating his content on multiple outlets, he’s able to increase his reach and expose himself to new audiences he wouldn’t have otherwise:

Guess what I’m going to ask you to do?

Go into Google Analytics and identify your highest-performing content. Then, pitch it to domain authorities in your niche with audiences similar to yours.

If you can provide screenshots of statistics such as social shares, traffic, and more, you’ve got a good chance of getting it syndicated and improving your brand’s visibility in the SERPs.

5. Add content upgrades to your content (Hint: Not how you think)

You’re probably familiar with content upgrades.

And for good reason:

They’re super effective for increasing conversions.

When done right, it’s possible to boost conversions by as much as 785% (no, that’s not a typo).

But there’s a problem…

Everybody’s using them.

In fact, it’s hard not to visit a site now without noticing the yellow call-out box that’s become a standard feature of the content upgrade:

So, how do you get noticed in a busy online marketplace?

You use content upgrades on other mediums.

Check out this recent YouTube upload from Jack Canfield:

Instead of including content upgrades in his blog posts (something everybody’s doing already) he includes them in the meta-descriptions of his videos:

While it’s impossible to know his conversion rate, it’s safe to assume they’re high with the number of subscribers he has, likes his videos receive, and the fact that so few people are following this strategy.

Add content upgrades to your content, of course, but try thinking beyond blog posts.

How could you use them in ways others haven’t considered?

6. Write case studies

When we think of content, we tend to think of epic blog posts.

After all, long-form content ranks higher in Google.

But long-form content isn’t everything.

If you’re looking for content that converts prospects into customers, you can’t go wrong with having case studies.

In its 2014 B2B Technology Content Survey Report, Eccolo Media found that case studies rank as the third most influential content type in the purchase process for both small businesses and large enterprises:

We utilize case studies at Sleeknote for this very reason.

In fact, we have an entire category on our site dedicated to companies we’ve helped improve their conversions:

Be warned:

Crafting a compelling case study requires a little experimentation on your part. No two companies are alike. Different readers respond to different copy.

Take word length, for instance.

When Neil Patel shortened his case study from 2,286 words to 615 words, he increased the number of leads he generated by 39%.

Case studies aren’t just an under-utilized type of content; they’re an integral part of helping your prospects move through the buyer’s journey, too.

If you have case studies at the bottom of your funnel (BoFu), you’re more likely to nudge prospects into becoming customers and produce measurable returns on your content marketing.

Conclusion

Content marketing is – and will continue to be – an essential part of SEO in 2017 and beyond.

And with more business owners competing for the coveted front page every day, getting noticed is more than an advantage – it’s a necessity.

I’ve given you six proven ways to help you cut through the noise and rise above the fray.

The question is…

Which will you choose?

By

Sam Thomas Davies is the content marketing manager at Sleeknote: a company that helps ecommerce business owners capture and convert more leads without hurting the user experience.

Sourced from jeffbullas.com

By .

You can’t craft a winning content strategy without a solid foundation. Columnist Rebecca Lieb lays out four foundational elements you need to put into place before creating your content strategy.

As we’re (hopefully) all aware by now, content strategy is the foundation of content marketing. But content strategy requires its own foundational elements, too. Without them, that strategy is very, very difficult to architect.

Creating a content strategy obviously must precede content marketing, but your brand must have some marketing fundamentals in place to enable that process to occur. Time and time again I’ve run up against this obstacle with my clients. They’re often smart enough to know not to go ahead and just “do” content without that all-essential strategy, but they’re nevertheless lacking some of the foundational strategic elements a content strategy must hook into.

I’ve identified four essential marketing elements that must precede a content strategy. Am I leaving anything out?

1. Brand

What is a brand? There are various elements in the concept of “brand.” One is what a prospect thinks of when they consider your products or services. Another is the promise your organization makes.

Brand has to do with perception, and companies work long and hard to decide what they want that perception to be, and how to achieve it. Without brand strategy, content strategy becomes unmoored.

I’m currently working on a content strategy engagement for a divisional group of one of the world’s leading financial conglomerates. The overarching business has an established brand and brand strategy, but the brand of the division in question is still in development. Without knowing what the organization wants to be, or how it will represent itself in the marketplace, it’s difficult to come up with strategies that support this utterly central marketing pillar.

2. Messaging

Like brand, messaging is another core element of an organization that underpins content strategy (and most of the rest of marketing). What does the business want to say and convey? What does it not want to address? How will it approach its delivery of messages? Obviously this applies to content, as well as many other forms of communication.

3. Positioning

Has the organization defined where it stands in its competitive landscape? What sets it apart from other banks (or stores, or insurance companies or pharmaceutical manufacturers)? What are its unique strengths? What are its shortcomings? If you asked its staff or clients what was great about the organization, as well as what it could be doing better, how would they reply?

No company stands alone. Everything is relative. So knowing the pros, cons, ins and outs of an organization’s position is an essential content strategy framework.

4. Values

What are the company’s core values? What does it want to promote? Some organizations highlight their innovative side, others corporate responsibility and giving back to the community. Some highlight their people. Values can, of course, be a combination of a number of assets and attributes, but without firmly rooting values to practices, content strategy becomes difficult.

“Innovation” is a value one company I’ve worked with wants to promote. That’s great. But in order to do that, the company can’t just aspire to be innovative; it must be able to point to products, people, processes — something that will provide ongoing fodder for content around the topic of innovation.

It’s hard to push back and ask clients to show you how they walk the walk (rather than just talk the talk). But that’s exactly what a good content strategist will do.

Good content isn’t created out of hopes and dreams. It must be grounded in reality and in fundamental marketing principles.

Just as content strategy is the starting point for content marketing, the basics of branding, messaging, positioning and values must first be in place so content can flourish. The same applies to advertising, communications, social media and every other marketing practice.

By .

Rebecca Lieb has published more research on content marketing than anyone else in the field. As a strategic adviser, her clients range from start-up to non-profits to Fortune 100 brands and regulated industries. She’s worked with brands including Facebook, Pinterest, The Home Depot, Nestlé, Anthem, Adobe, Honeywell, DuPont, Fidelity, Save the Children, and The Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Rebecca was until recently an analyst at Altimeter group, and earlier launched Econsultancy‘s U.S. operations. She was also VP and editor-in-chief of The ClickZ Network for over seven years, also running SearchEngineWatch.com. She’s also held executive marketing positions with major global media companies. Rebecca has written two digital marketing books: The Truth About Search Engine Optimization and Content Marketing.

Sourced from Marketing Land

Sourced from Influencer Today.

You’re one of the marketers out there still struggling for an answer, you’re probably not alone. But what if I told you that there are actually at least 14 different ways that you can measure your content marketing efforts?

1. Unique page visits

One simple measure of your content success is the traffic it’s receiving. Take a look at your unique page visits to see how many people are visiting your page on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

2. Downloads

Downloads can give you, even more, insight into the popularity of your content, since they indicate an elevated level of interest (your reader probably had to fill out a form to download, rather than the level of effort it takes to skim through a blog post).

3. Time on page

A page visit means one thing. But someone actually staying on your page long enough to read an entire article or fill out a form means something else entirely. This says that your content was high enough quality to merit additional attention.

4. Inbound links

Are people linking to your site? This means that your content is improving your credibility. When other sites start viewing you as an authority, it can increase your site traffic and help you achieve a higher spot in search rankings.

5. Shares

While many consider “shares” to be somewhat of a vanity metric, they’re worth keeping track of so that you can see which channels your content is resonating on.

6. Comments and interactions

Comments on your content are great indications that your content is sparking conversation and making an impact on your readers.

7. Cost Per Click (CPC)

In all likelihood, your boss is going to want to see some metrics that correlate with dollar signs. If you’re promoting your content via pay per click ads or sponsored social postings, track your cost per click to see your return on investment for those campaigns.

8. Cost Per Lead (CPL)

Similarly, cost per lead is another valuable metric you can start tracking to measure your content marketing ROI

9. Lead generation

For many companies, content marketing is primarily a lead generation tactic, used to acquire leads through forms and content downloads. Keep track of how many leads originate from a piece of marketing content, so that your content gets credit for that revenue if the deal closes.

10. Annual Contract Value (ACV)

If you’re keeping track of leads that originate from a content marketing campaign, you can also track the ACV (for example: the monthly cost of your service x 12) of the deals that have closed due to your content.

11. Influence

Has your content served as a touchpoint for leads at any point during the sales process? If so, you can judge the number of leads, opportunities, or closed deals that have been “influenced” by your content.

12. Conversion rates

When it comes to content marketing, you’ll want to make sure you’re optimizing your conversion rates at every possible opportunity. If not, you risk losing valuable leads who would have converted, but decided not to for one reason or another.

13. Followers and/or subscribers

The number of followers and subscribers you have is a great indication of brand awareness. If increasing your brand awareness is one of the goals on your list, make sure you’re keeping track of these numbers.

14. Growth

When it comes to content marketing, you’ll want to measure your growth in the following areas: subscribers (for a blog, perhaps), downloads, page views — anything that you can put a number on and measure the percent change over time.

Sourced from Influencer Today

Sourced from Medium.

Hey, first of all, congratulations on your “high-quality content”, this is the most important thing you need if you’re looking for traffic.

If you want the long-term solution, which is most likely going to send organic targeted users to your website in waves of thousands, SEO will help you do this and more. These users are very likely to convert into customers (if you ever decide to do Affiliate Marketing), and/or come back to your site because they actually enjoy your content.

This is the periodic table of SEO — please take a look at it and fully understand it. This table contains everything you should know about SEO; how it works.

See that box? Type your URL in there and you’ll get a complete SEO scan of your site in seconds. This report will tell you exactly what’s dragging you down on search engines, be it your on-page or off-page SEO, and you’ll know exactly how to fix it.

Then, use the free tools they offer on the homepage to continue optimizing your SEO, or subscribe to a premium plan if you really want to take your SEO a step further.

Sourced from Medium

By Davia Temin.

Are you getting tired of all the content-less “content marketing” that pervades the internet in order to “brand” professionals as thought leaders? I know that a lot of the HR heads and CEOs I work with are.

They see this explosion of self-branding “lite” as insubstantial and overly self-promotional. And while the internet does afford everyone a platform to air their thoughts, when done poorly it can backfire and actually take away from your professional reputation and brand equity, instead of building it up.

Unlike a celebrity profile, an executive reputation or brand is forged when you truly stand for something and the totality of your work product, presence, writing, insight, and professional and personal actions support that stance. Whether it is as an A++++ player, a subject-matter expert, a breakthrough strategist, or an inspired leader, these are brands that are built up over time and execution, and validated by the opinions of others, including the media.

True content marketing is leveraging the unique ideas, expertise, opinions, and insight of employees not for the employees’ sake, but to raise the reputation of their organizations.

It is possible for corporate or non-profit professionals to successfully position themselves in public as thought leaders, but not for everyone and not in the wrong ways.

So, to help you avoid some of the pitfalls of over-self-promotion and under-delivery, here is my list of The 9 Worst Ways to Brand Yourself in 2017:

1. Call yourself a Guru

Words like “guru,” “visionary,” “pioneer,” and yes, “thought leader,” are ONLY things others may call you; you can never, ever, say them about yourself.

A random walk through LinkedIn profiles will reveal an unending parade of self-descriptions that are guaranteed to turn off any mainstream potential employer. “Shaman” is my favorite worst self-description. After all, the descriptions you include about yourself on social media and at the top of your resume have to ring true to those who know you, and be believable to those who do not. Don’t trigger the gag reflexes of your audience before they even meet you!

2. Be a “thought follower”

In fact, while everyone is posing to be a thought leader, there is precious little original insight out there. Most of what is promoted as thought leadership is really thought followership renamed. With the internet, it is easy to take someone else’s ideas and pass them off as your own. But doing so, or simply parroting old ideas or advice and calling them new, is sure to backfire.

The world DOES need courageous thought leaders, but if that is not your true identity, then find another one that honestly fits, and work on transmitting that as your “brand.”

3.     Posture; present yourself as too perfect

Very rarely do you look your absolute best when you go on network or local TV: your hair is often a tiny bit mussed, your outfit slightly wrinkled, and you might be “glowing” from the hot lights. But if you’re well-spoken, smart, moderately attractive and put-together, have a nice manner, and have great things to say and observations to share, the interviewers will probably like you and so will the viewing audience. That’s real. And when the media outlet posts the interview on line, you will look real, and like a validated expert. Your brand will strengthen.

But some of the new content marketing videos that are done outside of the news media are too “constructed.” They almost seem filmed through a gauze filter, so that the person showcased looks flawless. But experts are rarely perfectly airbrushed. And airbrushed experts are not always trusted.  So, when you appear that way, you can look posed, or at worst, posturing. Things are changing, but I don’t think they have changed so much yet that audiences will confuse a made-up media interview with a real one. Take care as to the image you project, and too perfect is almost as bad as not perfect enough.

4.     Be superficial. Become the Kim Kardashian of self-branding

Some online content marketing is one step away from clickbait. When there is a really good headline, but after the click there are only two vapid paragraphs that follow, the reader knows that there is no “there,” there.  Some folks think that this kind of superficiality is all that is needed to create an on-line presence.  And for a bold-face name celebrity, perhaps that is true. But, for those who wish to craft an air-tight, substantive professional reputation, more is better than less, and deep is far better than superficial.

5.     Use the “I” word too much

It is always a delicate balance between being too “I oriented” in business, and not “I oriented” enough. The rule of thumb I’ve developed in coaching is that younger corporate associates or executives steer away from using the “I” word too much. And the same is true for non-profit executives. An “I-focus” doesn’t wear too well on them, and often seems inappropriately self-aggrandizing, when in fact at their level, their emphasis should be on the team, their contribution to the team, and “we.”

6.     Use the “I” word too little

However, at the higher levels of management, especially corporate management, acting too humbly assures that you won’t get credit for all that you do. Women, especially, can appear deferential and not powerful or leader-like when they do not use “I” and “me” enough in their speech. And that means they will get less money and fewer promotions than their counterparts who crow a bit more. Again, this is very difficult to get right. But the higher you go, in general, the more credit you should take, while always acknowledging the contribution of your peers, subordinates, and bosses.

7.     Don’t seem dedicated to a higher purpose

Perhaps we are entering into a new era of narcissism, and its public acceptability. But still, narcissism doesn’t work well for the vast majority of professionals. For most, the sense that they feel there is a higher purpose to their work than just lining their own pockets or scrapbook is a very attractive and promotable one. Corporate bosses usually appreciate employees who put the company and its mission first, and have the ability to stay loyal, handle frustration and setbacks, and put themselves second occasionally.

8.     Care too much about your brand and not enough about the brand of your organization

In the same vein, even if you care very much about your brand, don’t let it show. The most alluring trait is to appear effortlessly famous/attractive/successful/accomplished.

But in the world of work, it is seen as highly acceptable to work hard and care very much about the quality of your performance. It is not acceptable to be seen as someone overly interested in your brand, especially if it is at the expense of the brand of your organization. Make sure to put the vast majority of your “branding” efforts into the branding and marketing of your organization, and not yourself. Then you’ll be the kind of employee who is promoted, celebrated, and valued.

By Davia Temin

Sourced from Forbes

By Caitlin Burgess.

As marketers, it’s our job to know our audience. To understand their pain points. To empathize. To provide them with the answers or solutions they’re looking for.

So how do we do all these things? One way is through content marketing.

Over the past few years, content marketing has been increasingly embraced by marketers. In fact, this year 88% of B2B marketers and 76% of B2C marketers said they used content marketing, according to the 2016 Benchmark, Budgets & Trends—North America reports from Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs.

But there are still a lot people out there who are searching for some of the content marketing basics.

Our team recently dug into content marketing related keywords and keyword categories, as well as related SERPs and our own data, to identify what people really want to know about content marketing. As a result, we identified five common questions users have about content marketing—and we’ve answered them all below.

Let’s dive in.

#1 – What is Content Marketing?

Simply put, content marketing is a strategic marketing technique that aligns business and consumer information needs with relevant content.

At TopRank Marketing, we believe in an integrated approach to content marketing, using multiple content marketing tactics to help our clients be the best answer for their customers, wherever and whenever they’re searching.

Wherever your customers are looking, be present, useful and “info-taining.” @leeodden Click To Tweet

From blogging and social media to infographics and eBooks, content marketing is most effective when you employ a variety of tactics to consistently inform, persuade and build rapport with your customers—without trying to sell them something outright.

For a deeper dive into this topic, check out our post What is Content Marketing? Definition, Examples & Resources for Learning More.

Of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the Content Marketing Institute’s (CMI) own resource on what content marketing is. Find that resource here.

#2 – What is a Content Marketing Strategy? (And Why Do I Need One?)

A content marketing strategy provides the answers to the why, who and how a content marketing program will help you achieve your business objectives. It’s your infrastructure. Your game plan. Your roadmap.

Without a strategy in place, you’re throwing content out there and hoping it sticks. With a strategy in place, you’re able to plan, produce, promote and measure the effectiveness of your content, and use that information to propel your efforts forward.

Get more on this topic by checking out our post What is a Content Marketing Strategy (And Why Do I Need One?).

“Build an audience first and define products and services second.” @joepulizzi Click To Tweet

#3 – How Do I Create a Content Marketing Strategy?

Your content marketing strategy is your foundation and it should be uniquely tailored to your brand and audience. Here are some best practices to get you started on creating your content marketing strategy:

  • Identify who your target audience is and their paint points. This will allow you to come up with valuable and relevant content concepts, and address the needs of your audience.
  • Define your objectives. (e.g. more brand awareness, increasing site traffic, increasing conversions, newsletter signups, etc.)
  • Identify the content marketing tactics you plan to use in your strategy. (e.g. blogging, PPC, webinars, social media, etc.)
  • Identify the social channels your plan to use to engage with your audience. Ask yourself: What channels does your audience use the most? What content do they respond to the best?
  • Define how you will measure results. (What metrics and tools will you use to see if what you’re doing is working?)

Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue. @DrewDavisHere Click To Tweet

Resources

#4 – Why Content Marketing?

In today’s digital world, buyers are self-directed. Research indicates that 71% of B2B buyers get their information online. Content marketing is a way to satisfy your customers’ quest for answers and arm them with the information they need to make decisions. Content marketing also creates signals across the web that build credibility, authority and rapport with your audience, along with many SEO benefits.

In addition, research shows that content marketing is typically more cost-effective than other forms of advertising or marketing, can drive higher conversion rates and increases audience engagement.

If your content marketing is encouraging engagement, that’s a sign of relevance. @JasonMillerCA Click To Tweet

Resources

#5 – How Do I Do Content Marketing?

Content marketing is not just one tactical technique—it involves using a myriad of techniques within your strategy to drive toward your goals. We call this an integrated content marketing approach. Below are just some of the content marketing tactics that you can use:

  • Blogging
  • Co-creating content with industry influencers and thought leaders
  • eBooks
  • Social media
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletters
  • Email marketing
  • Content curation

Writing is thinking. And for us as marketers, good writing is good marketing. @marketingprofs Click To Tweet

For more information on all of these tactics, as well as more than 20 others, check out our post: Content Marketing – Tactics and Best Practices. Here we offer pros, cons, best practices, industry expert insights, examples and resources for 30 content marketing tactics.

By Caitlin Burgess

Sourced from TopRank Marketing Blog