marketing Archives - Page 5 of 15

March 15, 2017

The Best Way to Get More Results From Your Content

Content marketing has a problem: the content itself. Creating good content is expensive and time-consuming. It requires skill and subject expertise. It’s generally a pain in the … budget. And bad content? It might be less expensive. And easier to create. But it’ll get you almost no results. Fortunately, there are several ways around this: You can outsource your content creation, either to freelancers or influencers. You can hire an Editor to take your in-house rough drafts and make them better. You can create far less content, and just promote, SEO, and advertise the heck out of it. You can curate some of your content. You can just ignore content marketing entirely, and stick with advertising … at least for as long as that lasts. I don’t recommend that last one. And while the other tactics are good, they aren’t actually the best option. But before I get to […]

What CMOs Need to Know About Data Informed Content Marketing

Driven by trends in lower performing advertising and changing consumer behaviors, many marketers have embraced content with the majority of companies adopting the practice. According to CMI and MarketingProfs 2017 Content Marketing Benchmark report, the most successful B2B marketers spend an average of 39% of their marketing budget on content marketing and 39% plan on increasing spending in 2017. However, even with the promise of greater marketing performance through content, organizations are challenged to produce a variety of engaging content on a consistent basis and there are a few key reasons why: 41% of marketers are clear on what an effective content marketing program looks like 36% are somewhat committed or not committed at all 75% are minimally or moderately successful at content marketing What’s missing in the content marketing success equation where clarity is not so clear, commitment is not in full force and most companies think their […]

These Six Content Marketing Tactics Will Give You 142% More Traffic in Six Months

You don’t need me to tell you how potent content marketing is. I could spout off a laundry list of stats, e.g., “ conversion rates are nearly 6x higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters” or “content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads.” You get it. But the term “content marketing” is a wide umbrella, encompassing a nearly infinite number of strategies and variations. What you really need to know is which content marketing tactics will get you legitimate results—which ones will boost your traffic and generate sustained leads. In other words, which strategies are truly worth your time? In this post, I’d like to discuss six key tactics I feel are most pertinent for content marketers in 2017. More specifically, these tactics will give you 142% more traffic in six months. Here we go. 1. Create multiple landing pages […]

The Chief Content Officer Is Dead; Long Live Content Marketing

Although some firms consider hiring a chief content officer (CCO) a best-practice, it turns out that bringing an executive on board at that level hasn’t been realistic at most companies.

Most B2B organizations (other than publishing, communications, and media companies or agencies) don’t have a person with chief content officer title who has a seat at the CEO’s table.

Not to worry, though: similar to the results of a Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs study, a 2016 study conducted by Curata found that 75% of companies are increasing their investment in content marketing, and 43% are increasing staff levels.

Chief marketing officers have recognized the need for a core content marketing team, led not by a CCO but by a content executive (typically with a marketing operations manager or writer/editor title), who develops and orchestrates a content strategy across the company.

5 Content Optimization Mistakes You’ll Wish You Fixed Sooner

By now you know that — technical details aside — SEO is not separate from content marketing; it’s an integrated aspect of content marketing . Optimizing your content for search engines is part of your craft and a skill you can strengthen with practice. But even when you rank well for search terms your audience uses, the real test is what happens when someone clicks through to your website. As Brian wrote on Monday: “There’s nothing worse than a quick bounce.” To avoid a quick bounce, you need to focus on content optimization. Since you don’t want to miss any opportunities to connect with your site visitors, study this list of five common mistakes — and how to fix them. Mistake #1: Your visitors can’t tell if your content’s right for them A row of four new houses that all look basically the same were just built on the […]

It’s time to get rid of FAQ?

The FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page started out, like most information on the Internet, with the very best intentions. Its purpose was to provide a list of questions and answers the site authors would anticipate the user would ask often (albeit, the “frequent” part) thus negating the time the users spent either searching the site for an answer, sending a question through the contact form or *gasp* calling the contact number for an answer. But also like other vanguards of the Internet, it has long outlived it’s usefulness and is time to be retired. The FAQ has gone from a convenience tool for customers looking for quick information, and has turned into a dumping ground of information that: Does not fit within the information architecture of the web site, yet is deemed important enough to stay Is cleverly disguised as helpful information to the user but is in reality […]

Six Surefire Marketing Strategies for eCommerce Websites

Look. Marketing is way more difficult than most people realize. But, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. You’ve got the products. You’ve got the website. You’ve got the payments all set up, and you’ve got everything ready to be packaged and sent out. Now, all you’ve got to do is bring in some website traffic and convert your visitors into paying customers. It won’t happen overnight, and it will be a challenge. But, with some strategies in place, you’ve got a good starting point for successfully marketing your ecommerce website. The following ecommerce marketing techniques are some that really give you the most bang for your buck, and are a great starting point for those who have already spent time building an ecommerce website , have sold some products, and are ready to start bringing in new customers. Strategy One: Guest Post on Quality Sites You may be wondering what […]

The CMS as You Know It Is Already Dead

For the first time since the millennia, both web and enterprise content management systems are setting the same course Over the past year, we’ve witnessed a push to using headless CMSs. While the concept is far from new, the interest reflects a growing recognition that managing content for multiple channels is hard to do well while also managing those disparate channels. Meanwhile, in the enterprise space, there’s growing recognition that the old ECM deployment models have failed and leveraging content services is a better approach for managing enterprise content. For the first time since the turn of the millennia, web and enterprise content systems are setting the same course. The Underlying Problem with CMS What’s driving this two-pronged change is the realization that now more than ever — content matters. Enterprise content management (ECM) emerged as a way of combining the different content applications, including web content management (WCM), […]

16 Time Management Tips for Digital Marketers

The life of a digital marketer is tough. Each day, you face a pile of potential distractions that seem to hit you from all sides: endless social media updates, the launch of the latest and greatest tool, another ultimate guide to becoming an online hero, and more. You know how it is? It’s so easy to feel overwhelmed with everything that’s going on around you. That’s why it’s important to remain disciplined and focus on the things that matter if you’re going to succeed online. In this post, I’m going to share some tips and tools that will help you manage your time and work more efficiently. General Time-Saving Tips 1. Set Time Limits When you allocate a specific amount of time to a specific task, you’ll find that you become more productive. It’s a well-known fact that you can drift and let any given task consume all of […]

The Wise Content Marketer’s Guide to Sensible SEO

Search engine optimization — SEO — is one of those “you love it or you hate it” topics. Some get a charge out of the challenge of keeping up with those wily engineers at Google. Others would rather eat a bug than try to figure out what “headless crawling” means and which redirect is the right one to pick in months that end in R. I have to confess, I’m in the bug-eating camp on this one. Fortunately, although technical SEO is still important for some sites, there’s a crazy-powerful optimization technique that people like me can get really good at. Yes, it’s content. (You already knew that, because you’re smart.) Yes, it has to be good content. And yes, I’m going to talk about what, specifically, “good” means. But first, I’m going to talk about my most important search optimization rule. The great rule of SEO My first […]