Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Solar Light – Your Questions, Answered
6 Awesome MailChimp Automation Hacks – Lead Scored Emails, Pre-Filled Forms & More!
Why Your Brand Must Own a Single Word
Why Your Brand Must Own a Single Word written by John Jantsch read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Let’s just start with the fact that every business has a brand – regardless of size, product category or market share. A brand is the collective perception of those that interact with your business – good, bad or indifferent though they may be, they still put their stamp on the overall experience and promise. So,Continue Reading
12 Tools to Help You Optimize Your Social Media Marketing Results
Portable Solar Panels – Tips To Buy The Right One
6 Simple Steps to Creating Your Content Marketing Strategy
Creating a content marketing strategy is no simple task. In fact, 2/3 of marketers feel they aren’t successful with their content marketing. For both small and large businesses, the content you create is the main bridge connecting your brand to your customer.
Last week, the hot topic of the Social Media Marketing World gathering in sunny San Diego was the critical importance of strong content marketing that captures and converts your customer. Captivating, concise, and consistent content is a core part of any brand. Joe Pulizzi, founder of the well-known content marketing hub Content Marketing Institute and author of Epic Content Marketing shared a simple 6-step process to create your content marketing strategy. Although his session was mainly geared toward small, new businesses and entrepreneurs, it serves as a great reminder and framework for big businesses to take a second look at their current content marketing strategy.
Here are 6 simple steps to creating your content marketing strategy:
- Sweet Spot: The key first step to building your strategy is building an audience with a targeted group of people. It is not only about finding the sweet spot of what your audience wants to hear, but also finding the sweet spot of your knowledge and passion, so the content you are creating can connect on a shared level.
- Content Tilt: Because there is such a vast and relentless content overload flooding the Internet, your content needs an edge or a “tilt.” So how do you make your content unique and differentiate yourself from other people out they’re writing about the same topics? When creating content, you should ask yourself: Is this story worth telling?
Your content should be niche. To start, Joe suggests you follow in the steps of every media company and create an editorial mission or as he calls it: A Content Marketing Mission Statement.
In this mission statement there are 3 stages that must be touched on: 1. Define Core Target Audience. You really should only target one. If you target more than one group, you aren’t going niche enough. 2. What will be delivered? 3. The outcome for the Audience. Tip: Add a column to your content marketing calendar spreadsheet called “outcomes”. This will help you define what the audience will get out of the post. - Building the Base: In this step, you actually begin creating your content. You should focus only on one content type, one main platform, having consistent delivery over a long period of time. In this step, consistency is key. Another important thing media companies can’t do is miss deadlines and neither should your brand.
- Harvesting Audience: Building your audience is one feat, but maintaining subscribers is a whole other battle. One of the key metrics you should focus on is subscribers, your frequent flyers. After all, we as brands do not own Facebook or Twitter followers. Subscribers to your blog or email should be your main focus. Next, you should begin building an influencer list. This should consist of a small key base.
However, many marketers make the mistake of thinking that these influencers will become advocates. The key for building this initial influencer list is to use them for reach. After that, you shift your focus on building more authority with your newly acquired eyeballs. - Diversification: Focus on being great at one thing on one platform. Then diversify.
- Monetization: After successfully building your subscribers and you feel confident you have a solid base, then you can begin to think about monetizing your brand. On average, it takes 15-17 months to monetize your content. Your goal in the beginning should not be how to make money. First, build an audience with a targeted group of people. Then, monetize it.
Monday, March 30, 2015
How Big Brands Measure and Communicate Social Media Success
How Onnit Can Use KISSmetrics to Drive Their Growth
Where Does Social Media Fit into the Customer Journey?
Where Does Social Media Fit into the Customer Journey? written by Alex Boyer read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Businesses know that they must have a presence on social media, but they don’t know how to use it. The wonderful thing about social media is that there are multiple platforms and countless ways to use them. It can also be overwhelming for some business owners who begin social media marketing without a plan. ToContinue Reading
Don’t Get Caught with Your Pants Down: 3 Steps to Increase Your Search Traffic with Google’s Next Update
How Content Marketers Can Tell Better, More Strategic Stories
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A Step-by-Step Guide to Generating Leads With Your Content Marketing
Direct from the Source: What a value proposition is, what it isn’t and the 5 questions it must answer
Sunday, March 29, 2015
8 Off the Beaten Path Vegas Attractions to Check out During MME15
Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a special treat, a compilation of recommended Las Vegas attractions recommended by city resident and travel enthusiast, Heather Foeh, Head of Culture and Customer Advocacy at Lattice Engines.
Las Vegas, known to most as Sin City, is also home to some of the world’s most exciting scenic attractions, as well as uniquely themed casinos and night life that can’t be found anywhere else.
This year’s Modern Marketing Experience event takes place in Vegas, where modern marketers will come together to learn and share success stories. The event also will offer a moderated Q&A with actor/director James Franco, and a musical performance by One Republic.
While you’re here, enjoy the finest the city has to offer!
Check out the newly revitalized Downtown Las Vegas. Sure, there are some casinos down there that have better rates for table games than the Strip, but there also are some hidden gems in funky bars and restaurants found in Fremont East. A few of my faves:
The Downtown Cocktail Room, for a bit of a speakeasy feel!
The Gold Spike, a fun place to socialize, hang out and play games in living room and backyard settings.
The Container Park, a unique venue built from shipping containers where you can find a giant praying mantis that made its debut at Burning Man and now comes alive here each night. While you’re there, check out my favorite restaurant, The Perch.
If you have a car and a few hours to spare, take a drive through Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. It’s so unique and beautiful and there are great stopping points along the way for mini hikes or photos. Even if you don’t have a car, you can take a tour with one of the tour companies in town like Pink Jeep.
And if you’re a museum person, here are two good ones:
The National Atomic Testing Museum – we’re only an hour away from Area 51 and in the days of testing you could see mushroom clouds from Las Vegas!
The Mob Museum – plenty of history here!
If you’re looking to take in a show while you’re in town, I recommend Absinthe. I’ve never laughed so hard in my life as I did at this show. There’s not a bad seat in the house and you’re so close to the action that their feats of acrobatics are even more impressive. Disclaimer: This is a very adult show and if you attend with your co-workers you have the potential to be embarrassed. Don’t say I didn’t warn you… If that makes you nervous, go see Le Reve instead. It’s utterly stunning and magical.
Enjoy the event, the city, and follow the hashtag #MME15 for more show and area updates! Tell us, where do you plan to spend your downtime in Vegas?
Highlighted Aspects of the Solar Industry
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Driving SaaS Growth With Customer Success
Weekend Favs March Twenty Eight
Weekend Favs March Twenty Eight written by John Jantsch read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week. I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from Flickr or oneContinue Reading
Will a Solar Power System Work for You?
Friday, March 27, 2015
How To Encourage Employee Advocacy on Social Media
Experiential Design: the Importance of Cohesive Event Branding
Experiential Design: the Importance of Cohesive Event Branding written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Today’s Guest Post is by Tori Atkinson – Enjoy! Event branding offers companies, organisations and collectives a chance to massively amplify awareness – using experiential design best practices to offer an impactful and unforgettable experience. Through the power of distinctive, dynamic design, businesses can harness the immense potential of event branding – but it’s onlyContinue Reading
Solar Energy Risks to Health
How to Boost Your Revenue Through Upselling and Cross Selling
6 Strategic Trends Highlighted at Social Media Marketing World
Social Media Marketing World is back for the third time in San Diego this week. Many of the big names in the social media space are here including Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Mari Smith, and more. A dream for any social media marketer, this event covers every topic from how to take your social media global, to Facebook advertising strategies, and how to get started with your own podcast.
At his opening keynote, CEO of Social Media Examiner, Mike Stelzner, started his presentation with an image of “The Dress” and of course took a poll from the crowd: Blue and black, or white and gold? The crowd was about even for both (I see blue and black), but Stelzner made the point that this is a great example of how we can all be looking at the same thing and come away with something different. It’s important to realize that this same thing can happen with our own social marketing.
Stelzner went on to discuss some of the major trends that we are seeing now in social media, with the main one being video.
1. YouTube is powerful. More than half (56%) of marketers say they want to improve their knowledge of YouTube, and two thirds of marketers plan to increase their use of it. However, Facebook, and even Twitter, are challenging that power. In fact, Facebook is actually degrading YouTube video exposure in the newsfeed.
2. Native video is now the best content to post to Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has noted video is a big priority for the channel right now. Video will now automatically be played in the newsfeed, which helps entice people to stop and watch. Facebook now even allows you to embed your videos into your blog posts, similarly to how you can with YouTube.
Twitter, too, has put an emphasis on video, with the announcement of their new Video on Twitter feature in February. This completely changes the game. Brands just went from 140 characters, to sharing 30 seconds of whatever content they want. This is a big opportunity for brands to not only be better storytellers, but also be able to show their personalities and become more human.
3. The new, cool app Meerkat is also taking video on Twitter to new lengths. Taking SXSW by storm, Meerkat is an app that allows you to stream live video to your followers on Twitter. Guy Kawasaki actually used Meerkat to live stream his entire presentation at Social Media Marketing World yesterday.
Although native video is still somewhat of an untapped frontier, according to Stelzner, 72% of marketers plan on increasing their use of video in 2015. So whether you hire a camera crew, or strap on your GoPro, it’s time to make video a priority in your marketing strategy.
Some other social trends that Stelzner highlighted are:
4.Podcasting is growing. With the booming success of the podcast Serial, we are now seeing more mainstream media outlets and big businesses are all starting to create their own podcasts. Even though it’s still a small space with only 9.7% of marketers participating in podcasts, 42% of marketers say that they want to learn more about podcasting, which is up from 28% in 2014.
5.Social reporting and ROI is on the rise. Nearly half (42%) of marketers are now able to measure and report on social ROI. A vast majority (78%) of marketers are able to show that social media increases traffic to their web properties, although 88% of marketers still say they want to know how to improve it.
6.Facebook is BIG for marketers…still. Even though Facebook has changed, then changed again their algorithms for businesses to get their content seen, 51% of marketers still say that it’s the most important social channel. In fact, the use of Facebook for marketing is actually growing, with 62% of marketers saying that they are increasing their use of Facebook in 2015.
What are some of the biggest trends that you’re seeing in social media today?
Online Marketing News: Facebook Flashbacks, Twitter Rides The Carousel, Google Finds Half The Web Is Broken
The 3 Most Common A/B Testing Problems (And How to Solve Them)
Thursday, March 26, 2015
How Working Collectively Can Create a Better Customer Experience
How Working Collectively Can Create a Better Customer Experience written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Today’s Guest Post is by Duct Tape Marketing Consultant, Jamie Patterson-Kaulmann – Enjoy! The concept of the Marketing Hourglass is ubiquitous in the marketing world. An improvement on the traditional marketing funnel, it expands the traditional funnel by adding a back half to the equation and putting the focus of marketing on the total customerContinue Reading
Case Study: Modern Marketing Meets Storytelling Comic Strips
Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes courtesy of Bill Schilling, B2B marketing director and marketing technologist at Imation, where he leads a revenue-focused digital marketing team responsible for integrating marketing automation with content, website, search, social media and CRM to grow new inquiries, leads and sales opportunities.
Have you ever read a Dilbert comic strip where you laugh, learn and share them with your colleagues? Dilbert creator, Scott Adams shares his top 10 favorite Dilbert strips here, including his all-time favorite below: “Unix Programmers”
Similarly Imation is harnessing the power of storytelling comic strips with high impact messages that speak to our prospects in ways virtually now other medium can, and help them better evaluate the real-world benefits of our data storage solutions in their digital content workflows. This strategy inspires everything we do - from our campaign microsite, advertising and email to how we interact on social media and event.
Powered by Oracle
Dilbert is an engineer cartoon hero that deals with mismanagement in a micromanaged office in Silicon Valley. Our campaign features a Creative Professional audience battling data storage villains living within the digital content workflows in the Communications, Media and Entertainment (CME) industry.
Using Oracle Content Marketing and Eloqua, we’ve created a funny personalized adventure for our audience; it’s about portraying a slice of life (in our case, the work of a Creative Professional) and crafting an entertaining and memorable story (specifically how our Nexsan storage can help them overcome their storage challenges). Through our Nexsan product brand, Imation is a unique position to generate relevant, fun, compelling and highly buzz-worthy content and conversations among geeky and trendy Creative Pros.
Know Your Villains
The Clog- A gelatinous sludge with an unceasing passion for clogging your IT pipeline. Read more about The Clog and Follow The Clog
Deletus Maximus- A cut-throat data center warrior who’s main objective is to make your high-value data ‘no mas’. Read more about Deletus Maximus and Follow Deletus Maximus
Dr. Bloat-icon- A fiend for creating claustrophobic data centers. Read more about Dr. Bloaticon and Follow Dr. Bloaticon
Blending the Art and Science of B2B Modern Marketing
Scott Adam’s Dilbert series came to national prominence because it satirized the social and mental landscape white-collar workers during the downsizing period of the 1990s. Today, Imation’s comic strip campaign comes to life by dramatizing how CME professionals can rely on Nexsan storage to overcome storage challenges imposed by their storage archenemies. It also represents Imation’s first multichannel storytelling campaign that blends the art and science of B2B modern marketing.
Don't miss the opportunity to hear more compelling case study stories in person! Check out the Modern Marketing Mashup networking event coming to a city near you! From Silicon Valley to New York City, register now to join like-minded modern marketers and exchange ideas!
Content Will Never Be King
Yesterday, I had the pleasure to sit down with my friends Darren Rowse and Brian Clark. The last time the three of us sat quietly was in 2008 or 2009 when we launched the Third Tribe group (ah, memories). I joked that I wanted to bring that back and we could call it Sixth Tribe. […]
The post Content Will Never Be King appeared first on chrisbrogan.com.
Social Media Marketing World 2015 – What We’re Looking Forward to Most #SMMW15
Mobile Marketing: What a 34% increase in conversion rate can teach you about optimizing for video
How to Growth Hack Your Content Marketing [PODCAST]
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
How to Generate $100,000 a Month from a Brand New Blog
Are CMOs Poised To Take Over Technology Purchasing?
Editor's Note: Today's post comes courtesy of Daniel Newman, President of Broadsuite, a company dedicated to helping companies be found, seen, and heard online by tying together paid, owner, and earned media to drive meaningful business outcomes. Newman is the author of 3 Amazon Best-Selling Books, “Evolve, Marketing (^as we know it is Doomed), “The New Rules of Customer Engagement,” and “The Millennial CEO.” He is a regular contributor to Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Huffington Post, a global keynote speaker, as well as an adjunct professor and advisor to some of the world’s largest brands.
Today, most tech purchase decisions are still being made in the CIO/CTO suite. There is nothing new about that. With certain initiatives being handed down from leadership, buying and implementation has always been done in the tech department. However, as the debate around CIO-CMO fusion continues, and as data-centric and customer-centric businesses seek to work faster, issues like shadow IT, marketing-led tech, Big Data boom, predictive analytics, etc. have become hot topics in the corporate space. There is also a brewing suspicion that soon CMOs and other revenue focused execs may be driving more tech buying, app implementation, and adoption than ever before. What will that mean going forward?
CMOs Step into Tech Purchases with Increasing Responsibilities
As tech-focused businesses grow in number, tech-spending is no longer confined within the walls of the IT department. Rather, the trend is shifting towards Line of Business (LoB) executives making tech purchase decisions. According to IDC’s predictions last year, CMOs will hold up to 10% of the total tech budget by the end of 2015. Impressive, but this power increases the responsibilities of the CMO. Not only will they be juggling new ways of reaching customers, new data streams, social media, wearables, mobile access and more. Now, they will add making tech purchase decisions to the list. It is not difficult to see the full plate we’ve placed before them. Begging the question: Are CMOs ready to take such a big bite?
Whether they are ready or not, technology is fast becoming an inextricable part of the CMO’s functions, and they need to participate in making tech decisions in order to determine the ROI for purchases. Moreover, it is practically impossible to manage the wide range of customer touch points across all channels throughout the customer’s purchase journey, extract customer behavior from data-based insights, send effective marketing messages, and finally measure the ROI of all of these actions without technology.
CMO and CIO vs. CMO or CIO
With CMOs exalted to such great heights, even overshadowing the CIO, will CMOs still need CIOs to assist them in making the tech decisions? Or will the CMO manage to take on the responsibility alone?
While some extreme assumptions predict that CIOs might be soon replaced by the CMO, it isn’t the reality that we are currently seeing. A Forrester Research Study says that marketing executives who make technology decisions without the CIO are taking a gamble. Technology rarely works without hiccups, calculating the real cost of a technology is a CIO specialty, and signing a contract without the knowledge of proper SLAs could lead the company to a tech nightmare. For those reasons, it is risky business for CIOs to go it alone.
I feel this whole CMO-CIO discussion should lead to a closer collaboration between the two departments, rather than the scenario where one is feeling more empowered and superior at the expense of the other. In fact, many experts think there is no need for the CIO to be threatened by the growing tech-savvy of the CMO. It should rather be viewed as common ground for forging a powerful partnership between the two.
What is your take on the shifting role of the CMO as it relates to tech buying and the role of the CIO?
The Science of Capturing People’s Attention
The Science of Capturing People’s Attention written by John Jantsch read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Marketing Podcast with Ben Parr Capturing attention in an information overloaded, always on world is tough and getting tougher. But, getting noticed is absolutely the first step to getting tried and ultimately getting referred. Some people might take this as a call to creating that great viral cat video, but more than anything it’s aContinue Reading
Content Marketing as a Food Truck: Rethinking Content Marketing In A World of Splintered Attention
With well over a billion users, Facebook must easily rank as most people’s “where I see interesting stories and click” tool of choice. Sure, us nerds might point to Feedly or Flipboard, but that’s not “most people.” That’s the enlightened. Some of us get our favorite sites to our inbox. But that’s more rare than […]
The post Content Marketing as a Food Truck: Rethinking Content Marketing In A World of Splintered Attention appeared first on chrisbrogan.com.
Should We Give Solar Power Another Try?
A 7-Day Course on Generating Leads with Landing Pages
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
5 Steps to Personalize Repurposed Content for Your Target Audience #SMMW15
YouTube Adds More Interaction to Videos With Cards
YouTube Adds More Interaction to Videos With Cards written by John Jantsch read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Cards are all the rage in digital circles it seems, so YouTube has jumped on the bandwagon adding a cards feature as a way of creating greater interaction. Think of cards as ways to add information to another piece of information. For example, Twitter Cards allow you to add a video to a tweet andContinue Reading
4 Lessons in Serving Up Customer Success
We recently launched a new and improved Oracle Marketing Cloud Success Program, a complimentary service-based offering, focused on enabling B2B and B2C marketers who use our products, the ability to assess and enhance their marketing performance.
The program is comprised of several services including: Modern Marketing Assessments, Success Planning, Facilitated Discussions and Applied Concept Tours. And in the spirit of true customer obsession, we thought we’d share some of the objectives of this program that you can apply to your customer enablement efforts and programs, regardless of your business model.
- Provide a platform for assessment – A sound Customer Success Program is built on a foundation that enables customers to assess themselves in ways that are meaningful to their businesses.. The Oracle Marketing Cloud Modern Marketing Assessment tool is focused on allowing marketers to measure their marketing maturity with a web-based assessment that guides them through a series of questions about their organization’s current approach to marketing. The assessment calculates the maturity level of a customer’s marketing practices and provides them with recommendations on how to get to the next level of maturity.
- Tailor offerings specific to supporting your customers’ success. It’s critical to offer customers a means of measuring the success of their efforts in terms relative to their activities and objectives, as well as a means of how to most appropriately move forward. The Oracle Marketing Cloud Success Planning service is a series of sessions that help our team learn about a customer’s business objectives and marketing priorities. Armed with that information and the results of their Modern Marketing Assessment, we provide customer’s with a tailored project plan that includes recommendations and action items for the next 6-18 months.
- Be resource-oriented. If knowledge is power, then a helpful Customer Success Program provides resources that hone in on the specific topics your customers need to know more about. Oracle Marketing Cloud Facilitated Discussions offer customers the opportunity to take part in interactive consultations with a Marketing Advisor to focus on their current marketing practices. Customers can choose from close to 40 topics. The sessions are delivered using an online consulting toolkit designed to guide the conversation. These hands-on exercises will help to apply the marketing practice to real world use cases. Check out our menu of topics!
- Provide help. Collecting information is helpful, but it can be challenging to implement those learnings into a solid course of action. Because it’s not always easy to implement a marketing practice, we’ve created Oracle Marketing Cloud Applied Concept Tours. These tours relate to the marketing practices covered in Facilitated Discussions. A Marketing Advisor will show a customer how to take action using their Oracle Marketing Cloud product so that they are better prepared to execute their plans.
All of our Customer Success services are centered on the declared needs and wants of our customers. You spoke and we listened!
To request any of these services, you can contact your account representative or take a look through our new online catalog to sign up!
Are there other tips you’d advise marketers to incorporate into their Customer Success programs?
Irresistible Reasons To Create Your Own Solar Power At Home
Monday, March 23, 2015
How to Develop “Strategy” In B2B Content Marketing
Winning With Authority Rainmaker – 15 Marketing Influencers Define Authority for Marketing Success
The A to Z Guide on Creating a Memorable Brand (like McDonald’s)
Earning Referrals Takes More Than Luck
Earning Referrals Takes More Than Luck written by Alex Boyer read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
With the madness of the annual NCAA tournament upon us and St. Patrick’s Day behind us, there’s a lot of talk about luck. The luck of the Irish or that team was lucky to pull off the upset. Some of you may be thinking you could use some of that luck in your business forContinue Reading
Environmental Benefits of Using Solar Power
6 Things We All Need to Stop Doing on Social Media Now
Value Prop: How Radio Shack lost its way by losing sight of its ideal customer, Pt. 3
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Are You Going to Social Media Marketing World? SMMW15
I’m going to Social Media Marketing World in San Diego next Tuesday through Thursday. I speak there Wednesday at 3:15pm. Beyond that, most of my time is my own (I’ve got two other formal obligations and a few friend obligations). I thought I’d write out what my hopes are for the event, in case you […]
The post Are You Going to Social Media Marketing World? SMMW15 appeared first on chrisbrogan.com.
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Top 5 CMO Mistakes & How to Avoid Them (The Mistakes, Not the CMOs)
Is Residential Solar Energy Worth It?
How a $200 Chromebook Earned my Company $28,000 in Ten Days
This is the Acer Chromebook 11 CB3-111-C670. It’s about the size of a Macbook Air, kinda. It runs the Google Chrome OS, which means it’s pretty much like a browser-only deal. All the apps you use are web-based. And this device helped me make $28,000 in ten days. Could a Chromebook Make You More Money? […]
The post How a $200 Chromebook Earned my Company $28,000 in Ten Days appeared first on chrisbrogan.com.
Weekend Favs March Twenty One
Weekend Favs March Twenty One written by John Jantsch read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week. I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from Flickr or oneContinue Reading
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Friday, March 20, 2015
Using Customer Data to Inform Your Personalization Strategy
Editor's Note: Today's post comes courtesy of Ashley Chavez, Director of Marketing at Get Smart Content.
In today’s highly-competitive marketplace, it’s never been easier for buyers to be confused by generic company messaging, lose interest in a product, and move on to a competitor that better understands their needs. Savvy marketers realize that in order to gain a competitive advantage, it is critical to create meaningful connections with their buyers from the start and continue to grow this relationship throughout the buyer’s journey.
The foundation for any great relationship starts with insight and understanding — the same is true for building relationship with your clients and prospects. In fact, your buyers begin to share information about themselves, what they’re interested in, and what their pain points are well before they formally introduce themselves. These insights are often times stored in disparate systems like your CRM, marketing automation platform, website analytics, data management platform, and so on; however, as marketers shift focus to creating targeted campaigns across the buyer’s journey, the ability to integrate systems and unlock this customer data has never been more imperative.
Capturing client and prospect data and using this information to segment your audiences provides the insight needed to identify what your buyers care about and informs how you build relevant messaging, or in other words, a personalization strategy. Personalization involves understanding buyer intent and characteristics and dynamically delivering highly relevant content to them depending on their interests, profile or stage in the buyer’s journey. By providing your buyers with the information that meets their needs, we open the door to meaningful, engaging relationships with prospects and clients alike.
Most B2B marketers are very familiar with audience segmentation and personalization as it relates to marketing automation and email nurturing, but the reality is, very little is being done in early stages of the buyer’s journey to create relevant content experiences, especially as it relates to the experience on the website. Think about that — we’re spending a vast majority of our resources and efforts on creating targeted nurture campaigns for contacts in our marketing automation platform that have identified themselves through a form submission or email open; however, even the highest converting forms on our site typically only see a conversion rate of roughly 5%. Therefore, we’re neglecting to create a relevant experiences for the other 95% of visitors to the website, an audience that needs more attention and relevance to engage and take the next steps in the conversion path.
Many marketers when initially brainstorming their website personalization strategy, immediately envision overly complex models where content is hyper-targeted. While this level of personalization is attainable, you would be astonished to see how even the most basic of targeted messages can have a dramatic impact on your website conversion rates. We encourage our clients to take a “crawl, walk, run” approach and initially establish small goals with dramatic impact.
To learn more on how to use data to inform your website personalization strategy, join our upcoming webinar, “Driving The Ultimate Customer Experience With Predictive Marketing & Personalization,” Thursday April 9th at 10am PST.
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Want Life-Long Customers? Design the Customer Experience Through Their Eyes
Want Life-Long Customers? Design the Customer Experience Through Their Eyes written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Today’s Guest Post is by Duct Tape Marketing Consultant, Debra Mendes – Enjoy! The relationship you create and develop with your customer is key to developing a successful business. The experience the customer has with your business is a driving factor in developing this relationship. The experience or relationship is not just about how theyContinue Reading
Online Marketing News: YouTube Does A 360, Facebook Sets New Standards, Mobile Search Spend Soars
Direct Your Landing Pages Like a Hollywood Legend
Thursday, March 19, 2015
The Ultimate Guide: Getting Started with Social Selling [New eBook]
While technology continues to evolve the sales and marketing process, ask yourself: Are you adapting your organizational strategies accordingly? If the slew of cold calls and emails coming through on a daily basis is any indication, there’s still significant room for growth on the social selling front.
The traditional “engagement model” where marketing tells a targeted group what to want, and then sales tells them why they want it and takes the order is far less effective now that buyers are more active in information gathering. They know what they want and why. When today’s buyers have questions, they search for answers online instead of relying on information from a salesperson.
Alignment is not just important to improve the efficiency of marketing and sales, it’s essential in establishing a new, shared set of goals to reach buyers meaningfully. To help marketers harness the power of improved engagement and more efficiently adapt to this critical model, today we’re launching “The Ultimate Guide: Getting Started with Social Selling,” a new eBook created in collaboration with LinkedIn Sales Solutions.
Why Social Selling? And why now?
Your social media presence is your introduction to buyers. In fact, 81% are more likely to engage with a strong, professional brand, according to LinkedIn’s Global Survey of
1,500 B2B Decision Makers and Influencers. The social selling model ensures that your company’s brand will encourage buyers to seek you out.
Additionally, you’re tasked with engaging more than one stakeholder, as research shows the average B2B opportunity has more than five decision makers involved. Helping buyers reach a decision requires multiple points of contact in the company.
We focused the content of this new eBook on defining the core value of social selling as a business practice, but also the practical realities of where to start, who owns it, as well as how to operationalize the strategy, and truly uncover the benefits of it for your company’s bottom line.
The eBook includes case studies from ADP, Comunycarse, Concur, Oracle, PayPal, and Pitney Bowes, to demonstrate how real sales and marketing teams addressed these realities and strategically positioned their companies for success (metrics included!)
Here are 3 key takeaways from the eBook that your organization needs to know about social selling:
1. Who owns social selling? Sales and marketing both can use social selling to influence buyers at any point of their journey. But it’s not just for the sales team. For the model to work most effectively, it should be implemented holistically across sales and marketing.
2. How you can operationalize social selling? Help your team stay authentic online. Concentrate less on the sales angle and more about sharing quality content and building connections.
3. How can you make the practice of “social selling” the new normal? Make sure your team optimizes their time on social networks. Focus on finding good prospects through advanced searches, making connections, and sharing quality professional content.
Get your organization on the fast track to success with social selling! Download the eBook The Ultimate Guide: Getting Started with Social Selling.
What Writing A Great Sales Letter Taught Me About Everything
I can count on one hand the number of times that something I’ve tried to sell has been well-received by the people I serve. You know how some kids are a late bloomer? That’s me with most of the things I sell. People buy them years later sometimes. But this time, I really struck gold. […]
The post What Writing A Great Sales Letter Taught Me About Everything appeared first on chrisbrogan.com.
10 Ways to Capture Email Leads Without Disturbing Your Visitors
A Fascinating Interview with Sally Hogshead on Authority, Marketing Success and Personal Brand #authority2015
Value Prop: How Radio Shack lost its way by losing sight of its ideal customer, Pt. 2
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Five Frequently Asked Questions About Solar Power Generation
4 SEO Data Reports You Haven’t Looked at In a While (and Should)
What I Learned About Content Marketing by Analyzing 614 Posts
Brand Storytelling in a Digital World – Alix Hart, Acting CMO at Symantec
The Art of the Start 2.0
The Art of the Start 2.0 written by John Jantsch read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Marketing Podcast with Guy Kawasaki Officially a startup is any business just getting started but over the last few years the term startup has come to mean a certain kind of business just getting started or perhaps even a certain mindset no matter how old the business is. Personally I lean towards the latter. StartupContinue Reading
How Ron Swanson Can Help You Find A/B Testing Ideas [PODCAST]
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
How to Multiply App Downloads with One Simple Localization Test
How to Efficiently Use Solar Panels for Your Home
New Report: Content Marketing Performance – A Framework to Measure Real Business Impact
3 Ways to Mine a Marketing Pot of Gold
Thanks to silos of data about customers from different channels—such as website visitors and behaviors, search, CRM, purchase data, email, and social— valuable attributes often aren’t unified in one location. As a result, it's challenging for marketers to intersect their knowledge of the customer profile across these channels to better refine their targeting, communications, and strategy over time.
While marketers are harnessing the power of technology platforms to better sort through information, it’s critical to develop and document strategies that will help you react more intuitively to the behaviors and reactions of your audiences.
Think of these strategies as a means of building a “treasure trove” of data that can be used to support your marketing activities, ensure that customers getting the most relevant message, and help progress these important relationships.
In the spirit of the St. Patrick’s Day holiday, here are three tips to help you mine a marketing pot of gold via channels native to your every day marketing activities, as well as the audiences you serve.
1. Dig through social media data- Use data to figure out the sentiment of the conversations happening on social media around your brand. Listen and respond to both positive and negative comments about your brand, products, and services. Whether someone is desperate for help posting to your Facebook wall, or just had a great call with a customer service rep and is tweeting their thanks, users deserve responses, and social sentiment data can help. Take record of the words used most frequently to describe these experiences to refine your reaction strategy.
2. Drill down the rainbow of your assets- Measure the performance of supplementary campaign assets to improve prospecting. For example, create a video to support an eBook launch to entertain and engage. This type of content offering enables demand generation but also can garner significant and repeated engagement with current customers. The use of “reciprocal” content, such as an ungated video with gated follow-up content, can provide lead scoring and interest qualification opportunities that can be strategically used to better prioritize outreach with people from your audience most likely to respond.
3. Excavate better segmenting knowledge via email- Pay close attention to all reactions to your email messages, including open, consumption, and sharing metrics. Understanding email patterns can be helpful in developing a more behavioral-based engagement model. Armed with the proper information about which actions your email recipients are taking, marketers can refine copywriting and design elements to suit a desired course of action. For example, if sharing content appears to occur across one or more specific social channels, highlight an easy-to-use sharing mechanism with language-appropriate calls to action, such as “Like this on Facebook” or “Get connected via LinkedIn.” You then can improve segmenting efforts by sharing behavioral specifically.
Implementing the right data management strategy in more intuitive ways can help marketers be more empowered to use information from disparate channels to define target audiences, understand the impacts of specific behaviors, and act accordingly.
For more tips on mining your marketing pot of gold, check out our SlideShare with tips to “Create Your Own Marketing Luck.”
Would You Rather? The Marketing Edition [Interactive Infographic]
Monday, March 16, 2015
SXSW Preview: Mind the Modern Marketing Vision Gap
Editor's Note: Today's post comes courtesy of Roland Smart (@rsmartly), Vice President of Social and Community Marketing at Oracle.
This Tuesday, March 17th at SXSW, Roland will be speaking on a panel about the future of marketing technology platforms. In Austin? Click here to RSVP for this 3/17, 3:30pm CDT session.
There's a battle going on today in the marketing technology world. On one side, smaller and more agile firms pitch their self-proclaimed "best-in-class" marketing tools. On the other side, the world's biggest enterprise companies (such as Oracle) promise a one-stop shop for integrating your most crucial marketing systems—including CRM, marketing automation, content marketing, data management, and social advertising among other business functions.
The related side story is supposed to play out like this: the enterprise incumbents ultimately use their deep pockets to acquire up-and-comers. By doing so, these acquirers invest in proven tools and rare product talent, and in turn shore up their own platform portfolios.
By all accounts, this story agrees with recent reality. If you're a digital marketer, you've probably witnessed the voracious pace of mergers and takeovers in just the last few years. Arguably, these are simply the moves that established players must make in order to survive your classic and stubborn Innovator's Dilemma.
However, I think there's a bit of hyperbole in this tidy narrative.
When it comes to marketing systems integration, a number of the small guys are getting really smart when it comes to building interoperability into their products. And on the innovation front, large vendors are taking the lead in forging a vision for how consumer and B2B modern marketing should be done. Consider, for instance, the products that enterprise technologists are building to prepare advertisers, publishers, and brand application developers for the Apple Watch and similar smaller-screen devices – even before these wearables hit stores.
In short, a race to the middle—that desirable intersection of best-in-class and most complete—is now fully underway. As enterprise vendors acquire newer technologies and incorporate them into their marketing platforms, they must accept the fact that such projects require a certain amount of time, resources, and process adjustment. And that, in turn, gives marketing technology up-and-comers room to compete on the same terrain (or else pivot drastically if need be).
What does this state of affairs mean for smart marketers? Three things mainly:
1) It's important to heed the modern marketing vision gap. As marketing technology providers compete with each other, it's reasonable to expect that you will continuously dream up ideal-world (if not outright futuristic) scenarios that cannot be accommodated 100% by one or some vendors. Can you currently use permissions-obtained biometric data (heart rates and glucose levels), for instance, to avoid sending messages to customers who are verifiably tired/grumpy/in high-stress mode? Not yet, but perhaps your organization has an opportunity to prepare for such a future. What's more, you should be evaluating your vendors on the basis of their ability to help you manifest your own vision as well as navigate never-ending technological uncertainty and disruption.
2) Don't indulge in the hyperbolized dichotomy of best-in-class versus deeply integrated—because that will lead you down the wrong path. For instance, if you assume that best-in-class solutions are all point solutions, you might spend too much time and money having an agency duct-taping together these disparate tools.
3) In evaluating the current landscape of marketing platforms, consider these additional factors/dimensions:
- Will you develop and manage your organization's marketing stack and services internally—with your own developers, designers, brand strategists, project managers, product marketers, data analysts, etc.?
- Or, will you rely on partners and/or third-party agencies to support the stack?
In fact, the boundaries distinguishing internal management and external management are often times blurred, given the reality that the vast majority of companies rely on hybrid marketing stacks—on both the people and product levels. Maybe your internal marketing team manages the reporting for your main website, while an outside agency generates the reports for your social media channels. Perhaps some of your marketing applications are managed on-premise, while others are powered by a combination of private and public clouds.
One last word: modern marketers have their work cut out for them, especially since they're being asked more and more to take the lead on marketing-related IT procurement. If you need a place to start, I think it makes sense to focus first on the core components of your platform. Namely:
- The foundational technology of any marketing platform is the database—ultimately, structured and unstructured data must be aggregated across all marketing systems in order to extract and deliver insight.
- In addition, the ground level of your marketing stack includes a customer relationship management platform and a marketing automation platform. If your CRM data doesn't have a high level of integrity, and if you're forced to conduct a lot of your marketing activities manually, your chances of being able to handle the rest (i.e., simply giving yourself enough time to write great marketing content) are slim.
By taking good care of this foundation, you'll uncover what you need exactly to build and maintain a first-rate, integrated, and complete marketing technology platform.
How to Make $100,000 a Month Within 1 Year
101 Ways to Source Content Ideas
6 Must-Have Energy Efficient Devices In Your New Home
Value Prop: How Radio Shack lost its way by losing sight of its ideal customer
How to Create the Ultimate New Customer Experience
How to Create the Ultimate New Customer Experience written by Sara Jantsch read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Tell me about your “buy” process. This simple question causes confusion for many of our small business clients. In response they might say: “Once a new customer signs on, we send them a contract and maybe even an invoice and start working with them.” While that does describe the basic process and in some ways isContinue Reading
The Difference Between Brandividuals & Influencers – Why You Need Both
Sunday, March 15, 2015
How Can Solar Electricity Become Even Cheaper?
Weekend Favs March Fifteen
Weekend Favs March Fifteen written by John Jantsch read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week. I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from Flickr or oneContinue Reading