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Seven step guide to turbo charge growth

August 23, 2019 No Comments

It can be difficult for SMEs to remain competitive today, but AdRoll’s new report ‘The Ultimate Guide to Growth’ provides a detailed step-by-step guide to help small to mid-sized businesses, solopreneurs and entrepreneurs to accelerate their growth. The robust report is split into seven categories with each providing case studies and takeaway lessons.

Identifying audiences

The report stresses the importance of marketers to first determine their ideal customer, knowing this then allows them to accurately target them. It cites various characteristics to look out for when compiling customer profiles and suggests that marketers should also tap into customer geographics and work on understanding their online behavioural habits. Empathising with their customers’ needs will help marketers to capitalise on their audience’s activity.

Understanding competitors

While getting to know your customers is important, the report also urges marketers to understand how their competitors operate, so that they can have a strong understanding of their positioning in the market. Marketers should conduct research and analysis on their competitors to work out where marketplace opportunities and threats lie, as well as keep a close eye on their opponent’s messaging.

Know your USP

Key differentiators set companies apart, so identifying these – no matter how big or small they are – is vital. The guide advises marketers to focus on your key attributes but encourages them to avoid concentrating on replicable differentiators such as new technologies or competitive prices as these can easily be beaten by competitors.

Marketing strategy creation

Marketing strategies should act as a roadmap for growing businesses with clear steps as to how to reach and engage new and existing customers. Working out the company’s value proposition will help. Marketers should consider where their customers are struggling and how they can help relieve their pain through the services they offer. They should then develop messaging to reflect this strategy, set attainable goals and create a realistic marketing budget to ensure that progress can be tracked.

Using marketing tactics

The marketing strategy set out earlier in the guide will provide marketers with clear business goals and budgets. Working out actionable tactics and which marketing channels to push marketing messages out on is essential. The report suggests looking at AdRoll’s digital advertising tactics and offers marketers the opportunity to sync up their e-commerce website with their growth platform to attract new visitors and convert existing prospects.

Creating content assets

Marketers should work out which type of content asset will suit their strategy best; the report provides pros and cons of using visual, written and ad content formats, with advice on how best to combine content assets to save on time and avoid duplication. The guide reminds marketers that ad sizes and formats also vary according to each platform, so messages need to be punchy and to the point for them to be effective.

Implementing and testing

Testing is one of the most important steps in the digital marketing growth journey. The report suggests that ads don’t need to be perfect before going live and encourages marketers to experiment with different renditions of ads to see how audiences respond. Various techniques for testing are listed, ensuring that marketers can get the most out of the experiments they do on ads, so that they know what to look out for.

Measurement

The guide advises marketers to build quantifiable KPIs and metrics that correspond to the business strategy and goals outlined earlier. Marketers should look at various analytics tools and work out which would best suit their business, but the report urges them to continue testing tactics to ensure that processes and information are consistently refined throughout the journey. Attribution models can also help marketers to gain better insight into consumer purchase habits.

Feature Image Credit: The Ultimate Guide to Growth report, with AdRoll

By Olivia Atkins

Sourced from The Drum

In News

What this global B2B marketing chief has to say about transformation

August 22, 2019 No Comments

By Nadia Cameron

HCL EVP of sales and marketing shares how he’s worked to transform the IT service company’s brand, marketing and collaboration approach.

Marketing can’t just be about classical marketing principles today, it has to have a higher-level purpose and be the glue adhering an organisation together, HCL’s Arthur Filip believes.

“You have to fill in the gaps and be the lubrication between a lot of different engine parts,” the global EVP of sales and marketing of the technology services behemoth says. “We’ve really adopted this mentality in our team.

“We don’t just do all the things expected of us; we also get involved in many other areas to support and keep the company moving in the right direction.”

Getting there meant working closely with the CEO, and putting a hand in strategy through to tactics with each major HCL business leader.

“I have specific managers day-to-day interfacing with these leaders and I interface with them formally and informally,” Filip tells CMO. “We know these business leaders don’t care about eyeballs onsite either, or MQLs. It’s about revenue and satisfaction growing, if they can attract more customers in the market, if partners want to work more with us, and if customers want to testify on their behalf. I’m constantly reminding the team that’s our goal.”

Filip joined HCL in 2016 initially as VP of sales, and was tasked with a sales transformation remit. Nearly 18 months ago, he also took on the marketing leadership position. The role comes off the back of more than 25 years in the information technology space, working in sales, strategy and business unit leadership positions for the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard and IBM.

Filip says his approach was always going to be to transform by putting the customer first. “I came in working for the CEO to lead the company’s sales transformation effort. I was an instigator and spark plug but it took all leaders coming together to do that,” he explains.

“We were doing a good job but what we’d realised was that with our biggest customers, where the relationships are just so large and complex, we needed to be even more bespoke and put in more red carpet treatment for those clients.

“At the same time, we’re constantly attracting new clients and it’s a different sales model and motion. We had to think about care and feeding of the sales force, more delineation between sales motions, and how to get granular in our thinking not only about every country, but cities and industry segments.”

Filip focused on honing the new business team and client partner model, and says he’s worked to create a super-class of relationship leaders globally. As leader of the marketing function, he’s since instigated a transformation aimed at taking advantage of HCL’s global footprint while also making sure it’s sympathetic and respond to local cultures and market needs.

“We are very woven into all the sales and business units, from strategy and brand down to how we work with clients on a daily basis, conduct events, marcomms and run analytics throughout the company,” he says of marketing. “My aim was to bring our great marketing leaders together to orchestrate as a team, looking at both global and local challenges we had.”

One of these hurdles was functional break-ups and discrete ways of doing things. “People had their own sciences and crafts to practice, whether it was our internal digital agency, brand team, content team,” Filip says.

“A lot of my focus has been to eliminate stovepipes, and to get the leadership team to take on each other’s challenges. We changed a lot of in-house metrics so we sink or swim together, along with the sales team and rest of the company.”

The biggest change has been around what ‘success’ is with HCL’s customers and in turn, their customers.

“It’s manifested exponentially in how people are working together and teaming together to orchestrate strategy through to specific campaigns,” Filip says.

Filip is also a big believer in getting teams around the table and solving it together. “It was painting the case for everyone –bring all talent together and we can look at the overall experience we can create for customers, and the type of data, analytics and view forward we can bring to the company,” he says.

Marketing strategy

HCL’s big emphasis is on its ecosystem, and Filip and the team have been overseeing internal and external celebrations marking the company’s milestones in different regions. The ‘global to local’ initiative includes celebrating 20 years in the A/NZ region, 30 years in the US and 10 years in the Nordics.

Another emphasis is on telling the stories of how HCL has worked with customers over its 42-year history.

“There are so many human stories where we helped clients be successful in so many communities,” Filip says. “Figuring out how to bring some common denominators together and our heritage, which is not just one country but people from 144 nations, for more of a common story and purpose, is key.”

This has to be a two-way street, rather than corporate reigning down on the local market, Filip says. “It’s an opportunity to both learn and share together and take best practices from different countries, cultural elements and customers to weave into our global brand,” he says.

“We have been known as a strong tech company and innovator, and a world-leading engineering services company, with very strong IT services. We’re the fastest growing company among the top 10 largest tech services companies globally, for eight quarters globally. Customers are buying into the value proposition; it’s now about bringing the whole story together.”

Corporate social responsibility plays a big part here. HCL has always focused on helping all types of people disadvantaged in life. As well as allowing its 137,000 employees to work with platforms they choose to further that cause, and sizeable investments into innovation labs and teams, HCL runs a number of diversity-oriented programs. One of these is Women Lead Australia, a one-to-one mentoring initiative now in its third edition this year.

“Diversity, from boardroom down, has become a key thing for HCL and we know the industry has to get better at this,” Filip says of the ICT sector. “It’s about very disciplined programs – from metrics, to every executive to specific hardcore board-driven programs – and we’ve made good progress. But we’re hungry for more.”

AI and B2B customer power

Filip also acknowledges HCL’s customer base is getting broader and more complex as every enterprise becomes reliant on digital and technology.

“Today, in every relationship it’s still primarily the CIO, or the chief digital officer, we’re dealing with, but the CMO, sales, line-of-business heads and CEOs are also getting involved, especially in strategic decisions. It’s really a collective fabric and that is how we’re trying to enhance our relationships,” he says. “Our goal is to bring our experience into bear to help marry the business problems with the technologies.”

Alongside strategy and partnerships with world-leading tech providers, this increasingly sees HCL tapping into the power of artificial intelligence (AI) via internal R&D, algorithms, partnerships and proprietary methodologies. HCL also partners with 20 companies on overall customer journey as well as how it thinks about markets to not only predict but run and govern its business.

“AI gives you specific technology through partners but also the power to create things you can’t see yet,” Filip says. “We’ve used basic AI to take care of repetitive tasks, speed up different parts of the customer journey. We’re now brainstorming with in-house labs on how we totally redefine how marketing is conducted within the organisation.”

A big area of focus is helping customers better predict their journey with their customers. “The better we get at that, the stronger our marketing is and the more value for the rest of the business,” he says.

Filip also agrees B2B marketers have the biggest ground to catch up on personalisation and says it’s clear enterprises relationships are far more one-to-one than many would previously have credited.

“Having just a relationship with a CIO or 2-3 procurement people, you’ll never be successful. In a very large organisation, there could be 2000 people you need to interact with to truly get a pulse on things and understand what truly makes them successful,” he points out. “If you don’t have those relationships, points of view, data elements around it and the technology to support it, I don’t know how many can remain successful in the next couple of years.”

Helping make this a reality is teams like digital, content and thought leadership along with external communications all working together with common purpose on accounts, Filip says.

“People do now speak in terms of the account, how we help crack the code in the account plan, and create an ecosystem experience that brings together the local community, government players, education players, business partners and we all solve a problem together,” he says. “It’s been a part of our culture; now we’re really doing it from a marketing perspective.”

In terms of ongoing priorities, Filip highlights HCL’s four core pillars of innovation, education, diversity, and CSR and sustainability.

“You’ll see us weave in everything from arts and sports, and the EQ side into our business,” he says. “One of our philosophies is human potential maximised and you’ll see that in campaigns, because that is what we stand for.”

By Nadia Cameron

Sourced from CMO from IDG

In News

6 Outdated Marketing Tactics You Need to Leave in the Past (Where They Belong)

August 20, 2019 No Comments

By Aimee Tariq

Promotional-only social media, paper-based marketing and poorly produced videos are on the “no-no” list. And who can forget that “Domino’s Forever” campaign?

Marketing is complex. With seemingly endless techniques, how do you reach and resonate with your audience? First things first: You need to know what you shouldn’t do. Last year, “Domino’s Forever” was a campaign created by a Russian Domino’s franchise. If customers tattooed the Domino’s logo on their skin, they were told, they’d get 100 free pizzas yearly for 100 years.

Initially, that strategy worked big-time: Although it may sound strange to us, hundreds of customers jumped in and started getting those tattoos. Yet, even as images of their freshly inked images flowed in, Domino’s imposed restrictions on its offer. Suddenly, the tattoos had a size limit; and only 350 newly tattooed people qualified for the reward. As you might guess, people were outraged.

Bad move, because customers who feel wronged don’t soon forget.

There’s science behind that statement: According to reporting in the Washington Post, “Research shows that memories for negative experiences are more vivid than those for positive experiences …” And those Domino’s customers certainly chalked up a negative experience.

So, if you’re the marketer, remember: It’s hard to make a good impression on a customer but really easy to make a bad impression, especially when it comes to marketing. Here are some moves not to make in marketing that date back to the past and shouldn’t still be with us in the present.

1. Trying to serve people en masse

Every person is unique, and you need to cater to that fact. Gone are the days of blanket personalization. According to a 2017 State of Personalization report by Segment, almost half of customers surveyed said they would likely be repeat buyers because of a personalized shopping experience.

If you’re not already collecting data on your customers and using it to target specific demographics through your marketing efforts, it’s time to start. Doing the bare minimum, like addressing a customer by his or her first name when you send a promotional email, simply isn’t enough anymore.

2. Putting ink on paper

What happens with most of the mail that comes to your house? What if a company, religious group or other organization drops off a brochure at your residence … do you read it? Chances are, you don’t.

That’s why experts are moving away from brochures and other paper-marketing techniques. Print marketing is expensive, time-consuming and often ineffective. Digital, on the other hand, can be fast, effective and cost-efficient.

3. Committing video production faux pas

Have you seen This Is a Generic Brand Video by Dissolve? If not, it’s worth watching. The video provides insight into the types of video marketing that don’t add up to much. Videos with stock content, vague business words and optimistic background music are outdated and overproduced.

“As percentages go, 91 percent of customers have watched a video about a product or service they care about,” Rohan Sheth, founder and CEO of GrowRev Digital, wrote in a blog post. If nine out of ten of your customers watch your videos, they need to get real value out of the content they see. Otherwise, they’ll stop viewing and start taking their business elsewhere.

4. Creating promotional-only social media

It’s easy to lose customers because of social media, especially if you use it only to advertise. Sure, marketing on social media is successful: According to Sprout Social, 77 percent of consumers are more likely to buy from the companies they follow on social media. But making money should never be your sole purpose on the app.

After all, customers abandon brands that are overly promotional on social media. Before you think about social as an advertisement, consider how you can use it to drive engagement and strengthen your brand’s following.

5. Moving away from email

Some think email marketing is dead, but the jury is still out. According to a blog post by Keala Kanae, co-founder and CEO of AWOL Academy, “As a business owner at the current times, don’t let the social media frenzy trick you … email marketing isn’t dead … Undoubtedly, marketing your services or products by email can be a quick, manageable and cost-effective method of reaching new clients and keeping the existing ones.”

For example, think of Dell’s MarketingSherpa Email project. Thanks to a GIF-focused campaign, the company increased its revenue by 109 percent. Over email, Dell sent animated images that enticed viewers and led them down the sales funnel.

6. Failing to go beyond the basics

When it comes to analytics, the more the merrier. You’re probably already using some analytics to review your marketing efforts, but there are likely many techniques and metrics you’re not yet putting to good use.

Digital marketing is constantly changing, which means there are more analytics you can put into your marketing strategy than ever before. You may believe that the measures you’re currently using are fine, but they can likely be much better.

The more you study analytics and put them to use, the better your ROI will become.

Another thing: Don’t let outright marketing mistakes happen.

Customers may forgive, but they don’t forget; just ask H&M. Last year, the retailer published a photo of an African American child wearing a hoodie that read, “Coolest monkey in the jungle.” The reaction on social media was swift and angry.

And, though the advertisement was posted in one country, it quickly gained traction around the world. Afterwards, H&M hired a “diversity leader” to try to disprove accusations that the company was at worst racist and at best oblivious.

Needless to say, making it in today’s business world is hard enough without bad marketing. Although outdated marketing tactics won’t always be detrimental to your brand, they certainly won’t help, either. Luckily, with a sound marketing plan, up-to-date tactics and some creativity, you can give customers what they want and improve your bottom line simultaneously.

Feature Image Credit: NurPhoto | Getty Images

By Aimee Tariq

Founder and CEO of A Life With Health

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

In News

Going From Impossible to Inevitable: A Case Study on Inbound Marketing

August 16, 2019 No Comments

By Brandon Redlinger

Startups are hard. In fact, in the beginning, it can seem nearly impossible. But startups are exciting. There’s nothing like the prospect of building something that can change the world. That will keep you going, and when you reach a certain point, your success goes from impossible to inevitable.

Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin know a thing or two about this. They’ve both been successful operators, but both consult countless companies, and they’ve written a book whose title says it all: From Impossible to Inevitable.

Aaron recently swung by the Engagio office, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to do a quick vlog. Aaron and Jason just released a revised and updated version of their book, which contains a lot of new ideas and all new case studies. So, we decided to chat about one of those case studies – how inbound has changed in the last 10 years. Yes, it’s the story of how Jon Miller did inbound in the early days at Marketo versus how we’re doing it at Engagio.

Here’s my conversation with Aaron. Enjoy!

(Watch on YouTube)

TRANSCRIPT:

– Alright, it’s Aaron Ross here, with Brandon Redlinger, who’s Director of Growth at Engagio. Brandon, thanks for hosting me here.

– Absolutely

– I came in off the plane I was like yeah, I’ll come by, let’s do a video.

– Let’s do a video!

– Why not And I couldn’t say no.

– Yeah

– I couldn’t say no.

– Okay

– So, this time for this updated book from Impossible to Inevitable, I can’t even say it sometimes, second edition. There’s a bunch of great new case studies in sections, like it is a pretty massive update. One of them is from my friend Jon Miller founder, CEO of Engagio. And I thought it was really interesting, because he was the original co-founder of Marketo. And so, this section here talks about the difference in 10 years between when Marketo was founded, and today with Engagio. So, I got one of the tips that I liked a lot, and I realize you’re just kind of like a foil for me to hear to talk, So one of the tips I liked, that Jon had to share was 10 years ago, and you can put up a blog post, and he said he could get it on the highly ranked keywords

– Show up on Google

– on page one, you know Jon Miller writes a post and BOOM!

– Boom!

– Then marketing comes flooding in, right.

– Yup

– All the leads come flooding in. So today he’s been working for three years to get on range for Account Based Marketing, he can’t even get on the first three pages or 10 pages. So two things, he said it’s really important to take an accountant-based approach, kinda mixing content marketing, with outbound prospecting, Account Based Marketing. You’re taking ideas, you’re taking to people, and that was much more a spears approach with marketing. And that was, in the book he he goes to these four tiers, so when you have tier one accounts, these big strategic accounts, you know Wales, like the true Wales, how do you treat them, verus tier two where you got the big companies versus tier three which means like mid-market, and tier four which is small business. So, I don’t know if in those different tiers that you guys use and talk about, love to hear maybe like a tip, if I’m trying to target the big enterprise, not like the, lets say the bigger companies.

– What’s a common mistake that you see companies make, whether their customers or not on Engagio? It’s account based marketing

– Yes, absolutely! So I think we run into this all the time.

– I’m putting him on the spot by the way

– Happy to take this on. People choose too many accounts, then when they take on

– That’s a good one

– Too much, and then they don’t have the resources or they don’t have the time, or the budget, or the people, to properly actually go after… ’cause your top tier accounts

– Top, top tiers

– Top, top tier, right

– Yeah

– We don’t have certain budget, we don’t have certain time, certain resources

– Okay, how many accounts, okay pick a number, how many accounts do you think is too many?

– For tier one?

– For tier one, the biggest ones, and then, ’cause you’re gonna guess too many. Like what would you say?

– Don’t go more than five.

– Five, right, five or fewer.

– We do not, I don’t think we have a rep right now that has five. That’s the most we allow, and I don’t think they do it. There are people, they say, I can do five, I can do five, they know what what their resources are, they know the SLAs they have to hit, they know what they need to do. But like a lot of people are like, oh I can easily do five, I can easily do it. And then

– Yup at the end of the day they’re like, you’re like hey, were you able to touch this account? What happened with this account? And like I just didn’t get around to it.

– Yep there’s no shame in saying, ah maybe I’ll do four, maybe I’ll do three.

– Yeah, like it’s not more, is not better.

– Exactly

– So in page 74, they go through the different tiers here, right. Tier one, two, three, or four. And that was something interesting, that at the top level five, and actually per if I remember, per account they might spend $60,000.00 per account, per one company.

– Yep

– Obviously, if you have money to spend.

– Yeah, exactly.

– Yeah, and anyway, tier two you could do more companies if it’s small, that was a really interesting when we talked about it with Jon, and so that was like when I was really excited to get into the book, so.

– A lot of good stuff in there

– Yeah

– So..

– Go pick it up now, it is the Bible in Silicon Valley for growth.

– Yep, it’s on Amazon, or from impossible.com

– Awesome, thanks Aaron!

– Yeah, thanks.

By Brandon Redlinger

Brandon Redlinger is the Director of Growth at Engagio, the Account Based Marketing and Sales platform that enables teams to measure account engagement and orchestrate human connections at scale. He is passionate about the intersection between tech and psychology, especially as it applies to growing businesses. You can follow him on twitter @brandon_lee_09 or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Sourced from Engagio

In News

6 foolproof content creation tips to boost your marketing strategy

August 16, 2019 No Comments

By Dave Brown

Buzzwords like ‘content marketing’, ‘content creation strategy’, and ‘content is king’ mean a lot more to businesses today than they did a few years ago.

In the modern, fast-paced, and highly competitive corporate stratosphere, content marketing has become more than just a technique to gain a competitive edge – it’s become a necessity.

Today, if you want to gain leads and see those leads converting into

Today, if you want to gain leads and see those leads converting into customers, build a relationship with your audience, and present a consistently good image of your business, you need to put in place the bricks of a strong content marketing strategy.

With all ventures aiming for the coveted prize, the competition in content marketing is harder now than ever. The only way to stay ahead of the competition is by giving content marketing the attention it deserves and by ensuring that your content remains unparalleled in all aspects.

So how can you leverage your content to tap into authentic growth?

Let’s dive in to explore a few sure-fire content creation tips and tricks you need to follow.

Stimulate curiosity in the audience

Perhaps the best tip for lead conversions is to combine top-quality content with a premium offer or a bonus that aligns with the topic.

Successful businesses with top-notch content marketing strategy use downloadable checklists and guides, exclusive videos, and detailed analysis reports to push their audience to subscribe to their emails or newsletter. You can use one of two ways to achieve this objective – hire in-house writers or consider a content writing service.

But wait, there’s more!

Ah, caught you!

You can clearly see how powerful this curiosity-piquing trick can be for your content creation strategy.

Well, there’s actually one more crucial point. Make sure that you offer some serious value to your audience before asking them for a favor. Otherwise, you’ll lose their trust!

The safest way to go about this is by splitting your piece of information into half and sharing the first half only, asking the audience to subscribe or click on a link to get access to the remaining half.

Serialize your content

Lengthy, expansive, and never-ending content isn’t just challenging for you to create but is also hard for your audience to digest.

While it’s true that lengthier pieces of content tend to garner more interest of the audience, there are ways to make them more comprehensible and easily digestible for the readers without compromising on their value.

One such trick is to distribute your content into serials. This will additionally allow you to integrate call-to-actions and other conversion points within the content.

To begin with, consider choosing an engaging topic that meets the interest criteria of your target audience, and break it up into a series of content. You may make the most of this technique by offering the serialized content to your email subscribers only.

Do you know what’s the best part of content serialization is? You don’t need to come up with heaps of content in one go – you’ll have at least a week before the next piece of content has to go!

Repackage your content

Immaculate content creation is that which involves thinking outside the box.

One of the biggest reasons why many businesses fall short on the content marketing front is that they see a piece of content as just that. Your content can offer a myriad of opportunities only if you’re smart enough to realize it.

You can repurpose and recycle your ideas to create fresh, valuable, and interesting content each time in so many ways. To put this point across effectively, I’ll present you with some examples:

To promote an eBook, you may recreate one of its chapters into a blog post and utilize the but-wait-there’s-more technique
You may use your package quotes as tweets
You may create a series of blog posts using the content of a webinar

No matter how you decide to recycle your content, just make sure that it doesn’t lose its value and isn’t straightaway plagiarized.

Go over the top

Hundreds and thousands of people create and publish content but not every piece is of a great standard. In fact, most of it is of bad quality. And you can use this to your advantage. Should you ask how, you must have seen how something that’s of superior quality stands out from the crowd instantly.

Your content should be able to do the same!

Sounds like a great idea, right?

But how does one produce content that surpasses every other piece on the internet?

Here’s a rule of thumb to follow: find content that is worthy to be linked, come up with something better and unique, and present it to the right audience.

Although this type of content involves hard-core research and requires a lot of time, effort, and dedication, it’ll help you yield amazing results for much longer.

Make summary posts of big content pieces

Want to set your existing content up for some brownie points?

Consider making a list of the things that your audience will learn from a longer piece of content and use it to create a summary post for a multi-distribution platform, such as LinkedIn. Content, video, and amount of users are a few reasons why LinkedIn is on the rise. Get in early to take full advantage of this platform.

The digestible shorter piece should offer valuable insights into your main longer post. You’ll be surprised how this simple trick will boost traffic rate for you!

Use your predictive eye

Another way to create quality content is by predicting which topics will be popular amongst and well-received by the audience.

This doesn’t mean you’ll have to sit in front of a crystal ball and try to look into the future but by simply being aware of what your competitors are doing that seems to work wonders for them.

Again, you shouldn’t be aiming to copy exactly what they’re doing rather just to use it to your own advantage.

Look for topics and types of content that have done well in the past for similar businesses in the industry, keep track of the keywords that are working best for your competitors, and use learned knowledge to create kick-ass content for your own business.

If you’re ready to step in the corporate stratosphere, make sure that you create your content with the audience and your company’s growth in mind. The key is to deliver content that provides value to your audience while generating value and saving investment for your business at the same time.

With these content creation tips in mind, there’s no reason why your work won’t stand out from the crowd.

By Dave Brown

Sourced from TNW

In News

12 Must-Have Skills for B2B Content Marketers

August 12, 2019 No Comments

By Joshua Nite

Scene from a dinner party:

“So, Josh, what do you do?”

“I’m in marketing.”

“Oh, like Mad Men? Ad campaigns and stuff?”

“No, it’s content marketing.”

“Oh, like the Wendy’s Twitter account?”

“…Sure… like that.”

I’ve had variations on the above conversation more times than I can count. I’ll usually leave it at “Wendy’s Twitter account” in the interest of changing the subject. No one has the patience for, “I write business-to-business content designed to help people do their jobs better, which also builds affinity for a client brand, with the end goal of influencing purchase decisions.”

So most people think I just write fun stuff all day, that it’s a purely creative job. But my fellow B2B marketers know better. Content marketing requires an incredibly diverse set of skills, and “innate writing ability” isn’t even the most important one.

Most people think I just write fun stuff all day, that it’s a purely creative job. But as my fellow #B2B marketers know, #contentmarketing requires a diverse set of skills. @NiteWrites Click To Tweet

Here’s my list of must-have B2B content marketing skills. If you’re looking to get into the career, fill out your team, or, say, hire a marketing agency, keep these in mind.

12 Must-Have B2B Content Marketing Skills

This list is divided into two categories: The “hard skills” that you learn through instruction, and the soft skills that rely more on personal development and human interaction.

Four Hard Skills

#1 – Search Engine Optimization
You don’t have to be a SemRushin’, Google Analytics wizard to be a content creator and strategist. But creating great content does require a solid understanding of modern SEO practices. You should know how to understand search intent, dig into ambiguous keywords, and create best-answer content that meets search demand.

#2 – Social Media Marketing
You may have a dedicated social media person or team, but content marketers should still know how to create compelling B2B social posts that attract attention without breaking the brand voice. You should be up to date on what type of content performs best on each platform.

#3 – Influencer Marketing
Content marketers should know how to co-create content with influencers. That means writing a framework that allows for collaboration, asking the right questions to guide influencer responses, and even conducting intelligent interviews. Content marketers’ expertise makes all the difference in the resulting content feeling cohesive and compelling.

#4 – Measurement
Measurement is what turns content into content marketing. Content marketers should be able to strategize, create goals and metrics that match them, track progress, and ultimately optimize over time.

Eight Soft Skills

#1 – Empathy
The heart and soul of any content marketing is empathy. You have to be able to take the customer’s perspective and make a human connection. Empathy is even more important in B2B content, because it keeps the content focused on people.

It’s easy to lose the human connection when you’re writing about container-based software-as-a-service platforms. That empathy for the people, the buyer, the end user, should be what drives the content.

That empathy for the people, the buyer, the end user, should be what drives the content. @NiteWrites Click To Tweet

#2 – Creativity
I would argue B2B content requires even more creativity than B2C. The difference is having to work within strict limitations. Big B2B brands have whole departments concerned with brand reputation, brand voice, standards and practices, approved image libraries and fonts… Content creators have to produce something eye-catching and meaningful without breaking any of these limitations. And they have to know when it makes sense to push the boundaries.

#3 – Communication
The success of B2B content depends on explaining complex concepts in simple terms. You may know all the ins and outs of your solution, but odds are your audience won’t. Clear, jargon-free, conversational writing that offers value is the only way to succeed.

#4 – Organization
This skill is important for any B2B marketer, but especially if you work at an agency. We’re working on a dozen different clients at any one time, each with multiple assets in various stages of development. Without organizational skills, it would be impossible to get everything done on time (even with a dedicated project manager on staff).

#5 – Motivation
I read recently about a man who had been on the payroll of a major corporation for over a year without ever doing any work. Seriously. Somewhere between restructuring and management turnover, he simply got separated from responsibility without losing his salary.

via GIPHY

That won’t ever happen for a B2B content marketer. There’s nowhere to hide: We’re responsible for concrete, quantifiable, and quality deliverables. There’s no such thing as slacking off, and there’s no such thing as writer’s block. The ability to push past obstacles, buckle down and get the work done is vital.

#6 – Confidence
Part of the job description is defending and explaining your work to stakeholders. For an agency, that includes account managers and clients. For a marketing department, that might include the executive suite, too. B2B content marketers need the (justified) confidence to advocate for content and approach they know will be effective.

#7 – Humility
The flip-side of confidence is the ability to put the content ahead of one’s individual ego. B2B content is bound to go through layers of review, with each stakeholder adding their own critique and suggestions. Humility means that you can take in constructive criticism and apply it with an eye toward producing the best content possible. While confidence is key, knowing your way doesn’t have to be the only way is equally important.

#8 – Collaboration
Finally, B2B content marketing is a team sport. It’s not about making a name for yourself — you have blog posts for that. It’s about partnering across areas of specialty to create something stunning. I found that my content got even better when I involved the design team from the start, for example. Working closely with design, SEO, influencer and social specialists only makes the work better. Here’s a shot of the gang I get to work with every day:

B2B Content Marketing Is a Game of Skill

I’ll admit it: Before I got into the field, I thought content marketing was just getting paid to write all day. Now I know there’s a lot more to the job than just filling buckets with prose. Content marketers are writers, strategizers, empathizers, collaborators, and so much more.

By Joshua Nite

Sourced from TopRank Marketing

In News

How to Market an Event: 15 Event Marketing Tips

August 9, 2019 No Comments

By Michael Brenner

A well-planned promotional strategy is vital for a successful event. These event marketing tips will help you get the word out about your event, reach the right audience, and build buzz for your conference, trade show, or corporate event in the run-up to its launch.

Quick Takeaways

An integrated marketing strategy is essential to maximize attendance and build buzz in the run-up to your event.
You should use a combination of content marketing, social media, email marketing, and video and podcast marketing in order to get the best results.
Marketing should start several months before your event and continue during and after the event, especially if you’ll be running it regularly.

1. Setup a Website for Your Event

While you can just put a basic landing page and contact form on your existing website, setting up a standalone website for your event means you can focus your branding and SEO efforts on the event itself.

Make sure you come up with a memorable domain name and build the design around clear CTAs that funnel visitors to a registration page.

2. Use Pop-ups on Your Site

Pop-ups may be controversial but there’s no denying that they can boost your conversion rate. Putting a pop-up on your website makes sure that visitors find out about your event and you can direct them to your dedicated site or landing page.

3. Include Guest Speaker Pictures and Bios

Popular speakers can be a huge draw for your event. Make sure you include a speaker page that includes photos of your guest speakers as well as their credentials, experience, and why they’re qualified to speak at your event.

4. Create Videos Showcasing Your Event and Speakers

Videos can be a highly effective form of event marketing, particularly when distributed across social networks like YouTube and Facebook.

You can easily put together a basic video to generate enthusiasm for your event using shots of the venue, details of the schedule, and footage of past events if you’ve run them before.

You can also use individual videos to showcase your speakers, including clips of them speaking. This can also set the mood, showing attendees what they can expect at the presentation.

5. Use Email to Market to Your List

Email can be one of the most effective marketing channels if you already have a list of loyal followers.

Start your email campaign several months before the event by announcing early bird ticket prices and the speaker lineup. You should continue sending emails regularly as the event approaches, with reminders about deadlines on discounted tickets and a finalized schedule and the last push for registrations a few days before the event.

6. Create a Hashtag for Your Event

Before you start promoting your event on social media, choose a hashtag that’s short and easy to remember and use it on every post.

This helps people looking for information about the event find all relevant posts easily, and it’s also a great way to boost engagement and buzz in the run-up to and during the event.

7. Rebrand Your Social Media Profiles for Your Event

The banner graphics on your Facebook and Twitter pages are great places to show off your event and make sure the dates, hashtag, and website are always prominent.

If your event is very large, you may want to consider setting up separate social media accounts for the event. This provides a place for attendees to engage prior to the event and is a handy way to distribute news and updates as you approach the launch day.

8. Blog About Your Event

Writing blog posts about your upcoming event is an easy way to increase interest and push for registrations. It also helps to improve your SEO and attract a new audience who may be interested in attending.

Publish posts regularly in the run-up to your event. They don’t have to be detailed articles – just quick updates to the schedule and guest speaker profiles are enough to keep your readers interested and boost engagement.

9. Utilize Influencer Marketing

Inviting influencers in your industry to your event can be a great way to reach a wider audience and boost registration.

Having influencers at your event can also help greatly to promote it, particularly if you plan to run a regular event. Make sure you choose a photogenic venue and encourage attendees to post on social media with photos and live video during the event to get the most out of influencer marketing.

10. Create an Affiliate Program

As well as offering free entry and other perks, an affiliate program can be an effective way to encourage influencers to write and post about your event.

Create a unique promotion code for each partner that offers a discount on registration. Each person signed up for your affiliate scheme can then use this code when they post about the event on social media. Promotional codes not only encourage more people to sign up (everyone loves a bargain) but they also enable you to track who is generating the most referrals. You’ll pay a referral fee to your partners for each ticket sale they generate.

11. Write a Press Release

Distributing a press release about your event is the most effective way to get it picked up by media sites and news portals.

Journalists are more likely to use your press release if you can find a unique, newsworthy angle. Make sure to include all relevant dates, details of speakers, and how readers can register for the event.

You can also invite journalists and local media to your event and offer extra opportunities such as an interview with a guest speaker.

12. Use Paid Ads

PPC ads targeting keyword terms on search engines like Google and paid advertisements on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram can also be a good way to increase awareness of your event and attract more registrations.

Social media advertising, in particular, enables you to target your ads to individual markets, and you can even retarget those who have visited your event website but haven’t bought a ticket yet.

13. Be Interviewed on Relevant Podcasts

Podcast interview marketing can be a fantastic way to build buzz about your event in certain industries. Some studies show that traffic from podcast interviews converts 25x better than blog traffic.

You can also encourage your guest speakers to be on podcasts, talking about their own work and brand, and mentioning your event.

Another option is to sponsor podcast episodes. With this paid method of advertising, the podcast host will introduce and talk about your event before launching into the main topic of the podcast. This can be particularly effective if you offer a promotional code for discounted registration to podcast listeners.

14. Optimize SEO on Your Event Website

Making your event landing page or website friendly to search engines is vital for attracting visitors who may not already know about your event and brand.

Optimizing for terms such as the topic and location of your event is essential as people looking for events like yours will be typing these terms into the search engine. For example: “digital marketing conference Florida” or “baby product trade show Chicago”.

Make sure to include your SEO keywords in the title and headings of your website, and add as much content as you can to create more opportunities for attracting search engine traffic.

15. Submit Your Site to Industry Websites and Directories

Many industry websites include a calendar or list of upcoming events that may be of interest for their followers, for example: Smashing Magazine’s directory of web design conferences.

These lists are often well established and have strong SEO, so it makes sense to get your event listed on as many of them as possible.

Content Marketing for Events

Need help with content marketing for your next event? If you are ready to get more traffic to your site with quality content that’s consistently published, check out our Content Builder Service. Set up a quick consultation, and I’ll send you a free PDF version of my books. Get started today and generate more traffic and leads for your business.

By Michael Brenner

Sourced from Marketing Insider Group

In News

How to choose the best Digital Marketing channel for your Business?

August 1, 2019 No Comments

Sourced from Chainlink Marketing

A Digital Marketing Agency can help you best to grow your business with all needed digital marketing campaign from inbound marketing (such as Web Design, Search Engine Marketing, Website Optimization, Social Media Marketing, SEO and Hyperlocal Marketing) to outbound marketing (such as Traditional Marketing, Email marketing and Search).

In today’s world, online marketing is the best strategy to reach your targeted audience. Traditional media has the power to reach mass audiences, but digital marketing allows you to practice hyperlocal marketing by micro-targeting the exact customer profile for your particular type of product or service. As it reaches few targeted people than mass media, it targets the accurate customers which can mean a smaller overall expense and less waste in your viral marketing. But before hiring a digital marketing agency to help your business to grow more you must keep a few things in mind such as:

Know your budgets
Define your goal
Think thoroughly about how you want to work
Check the online presence of the digital marketing company you are going to hire
Assess the company’s culture and approach
Ask who will work on your account and what experiences they have
Check the credentials
Understand their work strategy
Establish reporting and communication
Demand transparency in everything

In recent times, Online Marketing or Digital Marketing has become very popular and also useful than other Media marketing policies. Perhaps what matters most is to prepare a strategy to establish the brand on a long runway. Finding the right digital marketing agency is not a very tough task. A perfect full-service digital agency will focus on finding the best solutions to market your business and develop specific strategies to provide the best return on your investment based on the criteria of your business.

Chainlink Digital Marketing Agency:

Chainlink is very helpful for digital work and promoting things with excellence and positive attitude with deep insight advertisement. Their work is highly appreciated by most of their users as the quality of work is very high with unique designs and creative ideas. Now Chainlink is becoming one of the top listed digital marketing agencies New York. It is a matter of the huge amount of money for creating your brand value and putting adds on Newspaper, Hoardings, TV ads and Radio ads. In the era of Internet and Digitalization, Chainlink is here for you to assist you through the Digital Marketing channel to create a brand value and promote to your targeted customers in a very short period of time.

Being the best digital marketing agency New York Chainlink implements the most advanced tools available in the marketplace to track every campaign’s results as they believe in marketing attribution and ROI. They provide the service which fits within their customer’s budget. Let’s have a glance over their Digital Marketing Services and Solutions:

Search Engine Optimization – growing the inbound traffic and of website and lead generation
Content Marketing – developing brand-appropriate content that attracts prospects and customers
Email Marketing – dynamic email marketing at scale with advanced automation
PPC (Pay per click) and display ads-AdWords – accelerate your digital advertising with targeted efforts
Social Media Marketing – managing and advertising on social media
Developing Websites
Event Marketing
Integrated Print marketing with a cohesive Digital strategy
Promotion

Marketing Strategy:

Firstly, Chainlink takes a full business evaluation to allow for proper discovery and to identify their customer’s digital marketing objectives and goals. They collaborate with their customers to develop a strategic and precise digital marketing plan to promote your company and accomplish your customers’ needs. Chainlink relies mostly on Analytics and data to plan, execute, optimize and report for assured progress of your digital marketing campaigns.

Return-Focused Marketing:

Chainlink Relationship Marketing has strong and long-term experience for working with clients across industry verticals, B2C & B2B, and various business sizes. In every campaign, one thing is consistent, which is their unwavering focus on maximizing the ROI (Return on Investment) on your digital marketing efforts and advertising spend. Chainlink identifies the most relevant KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to conduct a proper benchmarking, monitoring, and optimizations for every digital marketing campaign. Regardless of your budget, objectives Chainlink helps in implementation of digital marketing efforts that provide consistent and interactive touch points across channels to ensure that every dollar and minute spent on digital marketing and advertising is being deployed as efficiently as possible.

Sourced from Chainlink Marketing

In News

I got mansplained and it changed my marketing

July 31, 2019 No Comments

By Ryan Phelan

We need to think seriously about imagery, messaging and team roles in how we communicate with customers, coworkers and vendors. Here are three ways to start that process.

This column will be tough for me to write because, after 20 years of being in marketing, something happened to me that changed the way I see our industry.

It gave me new insight into situations that women face every day. I’ve heard them talk about it, but I didn’t understand it until it happened to me.

I got mansplained.

Merriam-Webster defines it like this: “When a man talks condescendingly to someone (especially a woman) about something he has incomplete knowledge of, with the mistaken assumption that he knows more about it than the person he’s talking to does.”

Stick with me while I explain what happened and why it made me rethink marketing.

How it happened

I’ve been looking for a service to transcribe calls and online meetings so I can listen more intently to what my clients and co-workers are saying instead of trying to take notes and multitask.

I signed up with one service for a trial. A few days later, I got the expected follow-up email saying, “Thanks for signing up; if you’d like to learn more, I’d love to give you a demo.”

As an entrepreneur and tech-industry investor for years, I’m always open to the opportunity to talk with a company about their business and their tech in this space, what their challenges and struggles are and how they market their services.

So, I scheduled a time. The account exec and I chatted briefly via email about my company and service requirements. So far, so good.

Then, I got the email that shook my world. Here’s what he said:

“I see you’re the co-founder of your org. You also might be looking to test this tool to maybe roll out to others on your team. That’s awesome and you’re obviously one of the top main decision makers, but just to be candid you’re better off delegating the testing/validating aspect to someone else on your team. I’ve been working with CEO’s/Founders of many different orgs for months and 90% of them are too busy and don’t have the bandwidth to incorporate a new piece of tech into their routine yet. [Brand] does need a ramp up time to learn about ones business. [Brand] is not a silver bullet out the gate, therefore please let others do the testing/validating. You’re definitely the right level, but not the right one to do the testing.“ (Emphasis is mine.)

My reaction? “How dare you tell me what my business is and what my skill level should dictate?!”

Now, I have seen some bad sales emails in my time. My inbox is full of them. And I don’t have the patience for people who don’t take the time to communicate well.

So, I fired off a reply: “This is probably the worst email asking for other members to be involved in the process. I could think of a few hundred ways to say ‘hey, do you want to have your tech guys on the call to discuss with them also?’ I will decline the meeting and move on to another technology partner.”

The awakening

After I settled down, I told a friend what happened. The first words out of her mouth?

“You just got mansplained!”

Yes! Yes, I was mansplained. And, suddenly, I understood how insulting and how crass that can be, how frustrating for anyone, especially women who get this all the time.

At that moment, I began to see marketing differently.

Maybe you’re chuckling, too. A man mansplaining another man? Yep, it happened. And what I hope you take away from this incident and my reaction is that you open your eyes to how you communicate with your customers, coworkers, peers, vendors, clients and prospects.

3 ways to overcome bias in marketing

We need to think seriously about imagery, messaging and team roles and responsibilities to change the conversation and not inadvertently offend or belittle the people we work with. Here are three ways to start that process.

1. Review the images you use in your marketing collateral and other materials.

Shortly after this experience, I put together a presentation on a marketing approach for different personas within the dental industry. I had pictures to illustrate job roles such as dentists, hygienists, nurses, receptionists and technology staff.

Then I saw what I had done. I had chosen photos of a male dentist, a female hygienist and a female receptionist. Why did the dentist have to be male and the hygienist female? My own dental office has female dentists. But I subconsciously perpetuated the stereotype.

Look at your sales collateral and marketing emails. Review your personas, copy examples and artwork. See how you communicate to your customers and coworkers with imagery that perpetuates gender stereotypes.

2. Audit the language and content your salespeople use with prospective customers for potentially offensive language and concepts.

Whether you participate in or lead your company’s marketing team, your role is to control how your brand’s voice, message and equity is communicated by your workers.

In B2B, your salespeople and your marketing collateral (presentations, printed slicks, email and web content) are the primary drivers that shape your brand.

In B2C, it happens through your messaging via email, your website, social media, texting and other channels as well as personal interactions in stores and other physical locations.

When was the last time you audited what your salespeople are saying? Have you looked for potential mansplaining in the language you use to describe your product mix? Do you over-explain your value proposition because of gender bias?

How often do you look at what your salespeople say to prospects or your copywriters are writing in white papers, marketing collateral and other customer-facing content?

Speaking of which, here’s a follow-up on my communication with the transcription-company account exec. About 20 minutes after I sent my reply, I got an email that was contrite and apologetic. Did I end up agreeing to a demo after all?

No. Because I suspected he tried to spin this as a funny story to his boss, and the boss said, “You blew it.”

3. Examine the roles and responsibilities of your marketing team.

I have been lucky enough in my career to work with phenomenal women. In the last ten years, more than 75% of my team members have been women. But I also know companies that relegate women to stereotypical jobs. If men lead the group, more often, women are assigned to positions based on gender.

If we’re going to change the corporate landscape, we have to expand opportunities for women. We must look past gender bias in hiring and consideration of women for nontraditional roles.

What are you doing to create equal opportunities? Have you checked yourself, your practices and your communications? Maybe you over-explain in some cases and under-explain in others, such as in training new hires.

This goes beyond mansplaining, which assumes that the man doing the over-explaining is talking to a woman who is either his professional equal or has even more knowledge and experience than him, but it’s still relevant to my point.

A good leader wants the entire team to be as successful as possible and gives everyone the opportunity to do that. It’s not a question of women having to demand equality. The male population must stand up and advocate for it.

In the rapid-fire evolution of our industry, it doesn’t matter whether you’re in print, digital or any other channel. In marketing, we are all moving too fast, whether you’re at the specialist level or the CEO. Sometimes, you need an eye-opening moment, like the one I had with the transcription company, to realize we need to change our perspectives.

Wrapping up

While some might question or contest my experience and say it does not meet the technical definition of mansplaining, don’t discount my point. It’s all a communications problem that attempts to label someone as “not good enough.” This approach, while offensive, is pervasive in our culture and forced me to review how I use marketing and how I interact with others.

My point is this: Are you aligned with breaking gender stereotypes? Or, do you label or discount others because of their gender, role or position? And, ultimately, how does that unconscious bias affect your marketing?

By Ryan Phelan

Sourced from Marketing Land

In News

Strategic Growth Marketing Can Help Your Business Reach Three Goals

July 31, 2019 No Comments

By Haseeb Tariq

Often referred to as “growth hacking,” growth marketing is one of the latest marketing tactics that businesses are using to grow their customer base. The term sounds like a no-brainer — growth marketing means you just market your business to grow, right? Well, sure, but, as you can imagine, it’s more complicated than that.

Here’s everything you need to know about what growth marketing is, along with goals to set for your growth marketing campaigns so you can start measuring your success.

What is growth marketing?

Growth marketing is a type of marketing strategy that’s focused on retaining your customers rather than just attracting new customers. Instead of only focusing on the top and bottom of the sales funnel, as traditional marketing does, growth marketing follows the customer through the entire buying process.

Understanding the life cycle of the buyer helps you figure out where to reach your future customers. It also tells you how to retain your current customers and, most importantly, how to keep them coming back and referring you to their network.

Growth marketing isn’t a “set it and forget it” type of marketing. You’ll need to stay vigilant by running A/B tests, tracking analytics and monitoring trends. You’ll have to be flexible and ready to concede failure quickly when you discover that your marketing tactics aren’t working.

When it comes to growth marketing, businesses tend to have three main goals:

1. Customer Retention

A key difference between growth marketing and traditional marketing is that growth marketing focuses on existing customers first. People who have already bought your products or used your services are more likely to come back to you if they have had a great experience and if you continue to deliver products, services and information they find valuable.

Starting with a customer retention focus is also smart financially. As research has shown, acquiring a new customer can be anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than it is to retain an existing one.

2. Customer Acquisition

Customer acquisition comes second because you want to know how to keep customers before you go out and find new ones. When it comes to customer acquisition, the main goal here is to figure out where potential customers are located and how they’re going to find you. It could be through online marketing, offline marketing or referrals.

Drill down into these components even further, and focus your efforts where you have the highest potential. If your potential customers are on Instagram but not Twitter, focus on Instagram, and forget about Twitter.

3. Increased Profit And Revenue

Of course, at the end of the day, your business needs to make money. A poorly executed growth marketing strategy that relies too heavily on customer acquisition costs might help you increase profits but not revenue. A successful growth marketing strategy, on the other hand, will give you new revenue streams and lead to an increase in both revenue and profits for the long term.

No matter what stage your business is in, developing a growth marketing strategy will help you retain customers and find new ways to attract new customers so you can grow your business.

Feature Image Credit: Getty