Content is still king when it comes to attracting and engaging customers and prospects. But the real key to success is to identify and produce the right mix of projects with compelling messaging that demonstrates your thought leadership and core competencies. To help you accomplish those goals, here is a brief list of content-driven marketing communications projects and their purposes.
Category: Marketing
10 Questions to Help Guide Your Marketing Strategy
As companies finalize their marketing plans for 2018, it’s important to ask (and answer) some key questions. A marketing strategy combines all of an organization’s marketing goals into one comprehensive plan. While each company has a unique set of goals, the overreaching objectives are to increase business and expand corporate awareness. Here are 10 questions marketers and other executives can ask themselves as part of the marketing strategy development process.
How Contributed Content Fuels the Marketing Effort
It’s no secret that content marketing is a strategy worth investing in, but the success of your content is dependent not only on the message but on its distribution through appropriate marketing channels. A powerful blog, white paper or case study can go unnoticed if it isn’t properly circulated to target audiences. The complicated part is knowing where you will get the biggest bang for your buck. While sharing on social media is a great start, it doesn’t always expose your company and its thought leadership to new and relevant demographics. One effective and often underutilized method of outreach is contributed content or guest posting. As editorial staffs shrink and the demand for content increases, the practice is on the rise, with 61 percent of editors increasing published contributions this year.
How to Avoid These 4 Social Media Marketing Myths
Most marketers understand that social media marketing is a crucial component of their digital marketing strategy. This cross-platform plan involves building company awareness, sharing content and increasing engagement. There are multiple social media sites, and some have been in existence longer than most people realize. While many believe Facebook, introduced in 2004, was the first social media platform, LinkedIn is the true frontrunner as it started a year earlier. Twitter soon followed in 2006, with hashtags introduced in 2007. Pinterest started in 2008, but did not allow business accounts until 2012. Some of the newcomers include Instagram (2010) and Snapchat (2011). These platforms, and others not mentioned here, serve distinctive functions in the marketing realm.
Customer Surveys: A Tool For Better Decision Making
Customer feedback is essential for measuring satisfaction—or dissatisfaction—with a company’s products and services. In addition to learning about what customers like and don’t like, customer surveys can uncover critical needs, reveal marketplace opportunities and strengthen relationships and brand value. Before the growth of digital marketing, companies relied on outbound direct mail surveys, in-store questionnaires and
6 Ways Google Alerts Can Fuel Your Marketing
Google Alerts is one of Google’s hidden treasures. A free tool, it helps you track trends, interesting topics or anything new that appears on the web. The service detects content on the web and automatically sends users email notifications when it finds new results that match preferences. Yet many marketers have missed the memo about how to best leverage this powerful tool.
How to Avoid the 7 Deadly Marketing Sins
Yes, marketing has changed, but so has virtually every other aspect of conducting business. So what’s new? Putting marketing into a different perspective. There are no absolutes, but what is essential is a commitment to agility, innovation and serving the vastly different needs of every customer. That’s a tall order, but it can be accomplished by avoiding these seven sins.
How to Stand Out in the Inbox: Best Practices in Email Marketing
Did you know that U.S. companies send approximately 1.47 million emails per month, and almost 60 percent of them are marketing oriented? To stand out in increasingly crowded inboxes, marketers need to capture readers’ attention in creative ways. Here are two methods to accomplish that goal through email marketing. Email Marketing: Win Them With Words
Marketing Madness: How to Avoid Insanity in a Changing Economy
Social media, data analytics, marketing automation, return on investment, corporate branding, marketing mix and marketing promotion… Addressing these and many other marketing mandates can wreak havoc on even savvy, experienced marketers. To avoid the chaotic marketing madness, here are five marketing management strategies to put your marketing initiatives on an even footing and generate the results you seek.
The Best Marketing Advice You Ever Received
We’ve been blogging for almost 10 years now. During that time we’ve covered a wide range of marketing, communications, media outreach, content development, public relations and general business topics. Along the way, we hope that readers have found our tips, suggestions and ideas practical and informational and can use them in their business and personal lives. To get a different perspective, we’ve asked some of our clients to share the best marketing advice they’ve received through the years. Here’s what we heard.
How to Use Marketing to Retain Customers
Often, the focus of marketing initiatives is focusing on how to bring in more customers. Yet, did you know that it is 6-7 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep a current one? That’s a statistic worth considering.
The reality is that the value of current customers is often overlooked when setting marketing goals and priorities. The process to retain customers should begin after their first purchase to ensure the development of a meaningful relationship, future sales and ongoing loyalty.
How to Generate Leads with WIIFM Marketing
“What’s in it for me?”, also known as the WIIFM factor, is a value proposition that relies on instincts. It is human nature to make changes and decisions based on how a product or service will impact the individuals using the new purchase. So, to generate more leads, here’s what communicating the WIIFM looks like.
A Treasure Trove of Data: How to Use Marketing Analytics
Marketing analysis has come a long way from inserting numbers into Excel spreadsheets. Basic information can come from Google Analytics, surveys, focus groups and input from sales teams. Even better, evolving marketing technologies enable companies to access massive amounts of data about their customers and prospects. This data can tell marketers more about how customers
Why Every CEO Needs to Know About Marketing
CEOs run organizations. They are the highest-level executive officers in the company, and their primary duties include driving revenue and profit, making major corporate decisions and managing the overall operations and resources of a company. Even if the company is small, there’s still only one person at the top responsible for those key functions. As business becomes more competitive, complex and global, the need for CEOs to expand their knowledge beyond finance and operations to sales and marketing is an imperative.
Is Your Marketing Plan Delivering the Results You Expected?
As we approach the second half of 2017, have you thought about reviewing your marketing plan? Even if the company is achieving its goals, it’s still a good practice to assess, evaluate and make course corrections. On the other hand, if your marketing projects are falling through the cracks and causing the company to miss performance benchmarks, there’s no question about it… it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
The 5 Non-Negotiables of Marketing
In our personal lives, we often talk about the non-negotiables of relationships. For example, finding a mate who wants to have children, someone with whom you share chemistry, an individual of high intelligence, a person who has a great sense of humor, and the list goes on. Similarly, there are non-negotiables in business, and more specifically when it comes to marketing.
6 Best Practices for a Successful Email Marketing Strategy
Email continues to thrive as a powerful marketing strategy thanks to its familiarity, flexibility and cost-effectiveness. To stay relevant and stand out in a crowded inbox, consider these six guidelines for building winning email marketing campaigns.
The Nuts and Bolts of Successful Corporate Communications
The term “corporate communications” conjures up a vast array of visual images from brochures to blogs, emails campaigns to event announcements, and press releases to policy statements. Other communications initiatives include content related to marketing strategy, direct mail, advertising, public relations, reputation management, public affairs, investor relations, tradeshows and conferences, social media…. and the list goes on and on.
5 Reasons Getting Published Is Important
Academicians have long recognized the value of publishing. In fact, having a book or series of scholarly articles published was often a requirement for tenure. Hence, the term “publish or perish” became a prominent theme that characterized the need to continually publish to advance one’s academic career. In business, getting published is important for even more reasons.
How to Sabotage Marketing and Individual Success
There are many ways a marketing program can go wrong. Perhaps an email is sent to the wrong audience segment. Or perhaps a budget shortfall derails a campaign before it is finished. Maybe your audience doesn’t respond to your messaging the way you expected. Many work-related challenges involve factors beyond our control. But it’s more common that we sabotage our own efforts.
Make the Most of Multichannel Marketing
Multichannel marketing. Everyone is talking about it. Yet, when all is said and done, there are often more questions than answers—especially when it comes to identifying the right mediums to use to attract the customers and revenue that companies seek. One reason for this complexity is due the vast number of variables to consider in multichannel marketing.
4 Reasons Why Brand Identity Is More than a Logo
A corporate logo is one part of a company brand. This includes the graphic depiction or representation and the consistent use of colors and type fonts. However, a well-conceived and well-developed brand goes much deeper. It represents the totality of who you are as an organization rather than the specific products or services you sell. And it takes into consideration specific components.
2017 Is Here. Is Your Roadmap Ready?
While most business leaders recognize the importance of having a strategic marketing plan that provides a roadmap for accomplishing critical sales and business objects, some companies simply don’t make this initiative a priority. Creating a strategic marketing plan need not be complex or cumbersome. However, it does require the brain power of contributors throughout the organization.
Are Your Skills Keeping Up With Evolving Marketing Technologies?
There’s no denying that the face of marketing has changed dramatically over the past decade—even in the past year. More and more, marketing pros and students are acquiring abilities. In the meantime, however, there’s a skills gap that organization leaders struggle to bridge.
