Blog - Page 15 of 22 - Michael Dillon

February 2, 2017February 2, 2017

Marketing Automation: Batteries Not Included

The sales pitch for investing in marketing-automation software is hard to resist. It goes something like this: “Our software will help you generate leads and then automatically nurture them along their journeys until they become your customers.” It sounds wonderful – a happy prospect skipping along a path paved by magical software. Every business is looking for more effective ways to acquire new customers, and the promise of marketing automation presents a compelling solution. As a result, marketing automation is exploding as the tool of choice for marketers. As of this writing, the 10 most popular marketing-automation platforms are Infusionsoft, HubSpot, Eloqua, iContact, IBM Marketing Cloud, Marketo, Pardot, Teradata, ActOn, and SimplyCast. Over 83,000 companies are using these platforms alone. Marketers need to remember, though, that all marketing-automation solutions – no matter how popular or compelling – present challenges. Challenges related to data quality and integration. Challenges related to […]

Why So Many Large Companies Stink at Innovation

Too many enterprises want it all: to be an established market leader, but with the buzz of a start-up Coca Cola recently closed its Founders start-up incubator , citing difficulties in combining start-ups and the corporation. No doubt a substantial investment to walk away from. But connecting innovation incubators, specialist R&D units and innovation teams into the wider workforce rarely meets with success. Such programs might have short term benefits, but it’s difficult to make them sustainable. Many a big business aspires to be an established market leader with the buzz of a start-up. Plenty of corporate vision statements proclaim innovation as a driving force in their business. Yet the innovation agenda remains aspirational rather than real. All too frequently it gets no further than a statement of intent. Even with significant investment, there is no guarantee the desired change will happen. What Separates the Disruptors from the Disruptees […]

8 Proven Ways to Skyrocket Your Website’s Conversion Rate

Nothing is worse than having a great product or service, but not being able to get anybody on board. You know you’ve got something special, yet you’re having an impossible time convincing anyone else to buy in. You thought that if you just built it, they would come, right? Well, you built it, but the rest didn’t really work out too well. So now what? Good news. You don’t have to remain stuck with a terrible conversion rate. With just a few tweaks, you can start seeing immediate improvements. Suddenly you’ll go from being a door-to-door evangelist, with no conversions, to being a cult leader (of sorts), where you can’t keep people away. Here are 8 ways to increase the conversion rate on your website. 1. A/B test the heck out of everything A/B testing is simply creating an “A version” of a page and a “B version” of […]

How to Make Your Content Marketing Impossible for Competitors to Copy

The more advancements in digital marketing we make and the more information on how to spy on competitors we share, the more those things are being adopted in various industries around the world. That means you’re more likely to be the target of a spying competitor. It’s all fun and games until they start using the same tactics to replicate the work you’ve been doing. Sometimes, competitors will piggyback on your hard work to steal market share and customers. When you’ve got a direct competitor shadowing your content marketing strategy, social engagement, and audience outreach, it’s enough to inspire vengeance and make you lose focus! I speak from experience. This has happened to me several times. It makes you question whether it’s something that should be promoted. Where’s the line between spying to replicate a competitor and just monitoring for awareness? It’s enough to make you question the ethics […]

Why Design and Coding Academies Need to Get in on Inbound Marketing

Supermodels may have ruled the world in the 1990s, but today it’s the creatives . Everyone wants in on disruptive, viral, [insert your own buzz word here] intersecting worlds of design and technology. Especially the savvy students who are looking for challenging, fun, and economically rewarding professions. Design and coding academies are rising to meet these opportunities, but there’s a lot of noise swirling around. If you want your academy’s message to shout out and reach your prospective students, you need to be using inbound and content marketing. Fortunately, your creative natures and enterprises are great fits to achieve great results with content marketing and inbound. You’re Already Flush with Content For a lot of marketing teams, creating quality content on a consistent basis is a big challenge. Not so for design and coding academies. Your faculty and students already create amazing content daily. Student projects, faculty lectures, and […]

How to Write a Case Study: The Ultimate Guide & Template

To help you arm your prospects with information they can trust, we’ve put together a step-by-step guide on how to create effective case studies for your business — as well as free case study templates for creating your own. How to Write a Business Case Study: The Ultimate Guide 1) Find the Right Case Study Candidate Writing about your previous projects requires more than picking a client and telling a story. You need permission, quotes, and a plan. To start, here are a few things to look for in potential candidates. Product Knowledge It helps to select a customer who’s well-versed in the logistics of your product or service. That way, he or she can better speak to the value of what you offer in a way that makes sense for future customers. Remarkable Results Clients that have seen the best results are going to make the strongest case […]

How to avoid a common content strategy pitfall

Melissa is presenting at Confab Central in Minneapolis in June. It has finally happened. After months (or years) of publishing your blog and working your content marketing magic, you finally have a smash hit. A post takes off, and the page views, social shares and comments start racking up. All of a sudden, that one post has twice as many page views as your previous No. 1, seemingly everyone who reads the post is liking, sharing and retweeting, and there’s a spirited, good-natured debate happening in the comments section. Congratulations, you have captured content lightning in a bottle. Now, the temptation comes: That quiet voice inside your head (or the gleeful voice of your boss), immediately insisting, “We’ve done it once; we can do it again! Let’s find out what caused that spike and make it happen again! And again! Bigger! Better! More!” It’s alluring. There is pressure, from […]

Why It’s Time to End Self-Promotional ‘Content Selfies’

Why It’s Time to End Self-Promotional ‘Content Selfies’ “We need to create valuable content that speaks to our buyers’ needs.” “Sell value, not products.” “Our marketing needs to be less about us, and more informative.” Content should be at the center of your marketing efforts. That’s not earth-shattering, but an all too obvious fact in our buyer-centric world. A recent survey from Demand Gen Report and SnapApp found that the majority of B2B marketers are already using or are planning to use content as a central component of their campaign strategy. We can talk the talk but, as it turns out, have trouble actually delivering on what we promise. We’re doing a whole lot of speaking in platitudes like “content is king,” but there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of “doing” actually happening. A small number—just 18 percent—of B2B marketers say they are “extremely confident” in the […]

Stop Killing Your Content Team: 3 Ways to Scale Work With Existing Resources

Year after year, many content teams are asked to deliver more and better content with the same staff and budget. In fact, 73% of B2C marketers say they plan to produce more content in 2017 than they did in 2016. But how? Here are three foundational tips for increasing output without burning out your team and losing the talent you rely on. (You may be surprised that only one tip is directly related to the content.) 1. Learn to say no to unnecessary work One way to scale your work with the resources you have is to let go of any content tasks that aren’t meeting your team and company goals . While this can be tricky to determine, there’s one simple question to ask, according to Michele Linn : Would anyone miss your content if you did not publish it? Ouch. Obviously, if you’re just starting down a […]

User Intent: It’s the Future of SEO

In recent years search engines have been optimized around users needs and their search experience . Google has evolved in rewarding content that is valuable and relevant to readers. Modern-day SEO is all about user intent , and you can improve your online presence by focusing on several key psychological principles to entice your readers, rank well in the search rankings and ultimately, help grow your business. Let’s take a look at some ways you can understand your au $User Intent: It\'s the Future of SEO$ dience and the steps needed to create content that gets found in Google. Customer Personas Should Direct SEO Online marketers love to get into the heads of their customers. We do this with A/B testing, analytics, and other methods to understand what our audience does when they consume our content. One tool to understand the mind of your target audience is to build customer personas.