5 key issues to consider to make your content marketing more effective

I recently recorded a short series of short videos for TFM&A Insights where I selected just five factors to focus on to improve key digital marketing techniques. 

In the first video I cover Content Marketing. If you were picking just 5 factors to help make content marketing successful which would you choose?

[youtubevideoembedder id="fvRSE8Jp3o8" parameters="start=2"]

The five practical success factors I cover in the video are:

Success Factor 1. Set goals and KPIs so you can prove the commercial contribution of Content Marketing. For ideas on KPI selection, see Dan Bosomworth's post on KPIs for content marketing and Stephen Bateman's Content Marketing Evaluation guide.Success Factor 2. Prioritise content for different audience needs using the content marketing matrix. See the Content Marketing infographic for how you can audit and brainstorm content ideas and the persona toolkit for how to create…

Taking the example of using rich snippets for hotels

In my experience, many local businesses miss out on the opportunity of SEO since they don't focus their efforts in the use and implementation of structured data.

Rich snippets on SERPs attract the attention of users and this means that the CTR is improved than the ones of your competitors.

In this guide I will take the example of Hotels to show how structured data can be used. Let's take an example. Here are 2 cases, decide which one would grab your attention.

Case 1

Case 2

We should note, that at least for now, the appearance of rich snippets on SERPs…

Five implications for B2B Content Marketing

The Content Marketing Institute recently published its latest 2014 B2B Content Marketing Report, which contains some interesting insights about the role content marketing plays in successful B2B marketing strategies.

The implications for content marketing in 2014

Viewing the report got us thinking about the way the content marketing realm has broadened for B2B marketers. Here are our top five take-aways from the report which B2B enterprises can use to leverage your content marketing strategies for the next year. 1. Content marketing is increasingly accepted in the marketing strategies of all B2B businesses Now we need no special marketing report to believe that. The rate of acceptance however comes as a surprise. A wonderful surprise that is. The report found that 93% of all B2B marketers use content marketing in their marketing mix.

…

Performance marketing valued at £14bn in the UK showing the continued contribution of affiliate marketing

The IAB recently released their annual survey into the size of the Online Performance Marketing Channel. The industry, which includes Affiliate Marketing and Lead Generation, saw £1bn spent by advertisers in 2013 (an increase of 15% compared to 2012). Some of the interesting top level numbers  I picked from the report include: UK consumers made 150 million purchases via affiliate websites (this works out at almost 3 for every British adult), Advertisers saw a return of £14 for every £1 spent, 39% of the UK population visited a comparison site 35% visited a voucher site 21% visited a cashback site, Online Performance Marketing can now claim to account for 10% of UK e-commerce retail sales, Up to 20% of OPM advertiser spend comes via mobile and tablet devices. The return of investment from Affiliate Marketing is impressive, with £14 returned for every £1 spent based…

How does your use of key email tactics compare?

Following on from the post by Becky Hesilridge summarising adoption and examples of different email marketing strategies, Pure 360 have released an infographic from their research to share more insight on how email marketing is being used in 2014. Companies were asked how they are are using email marketing, and if they have an email marketing strategy. 57% have an email marketing strategy, and 65% feed back on results. The sector most likely to have a strategy is the Retail Sector and the fourth most likely to be implementing one. Thanks to Becky Hesilridge for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Becky…

4 quick tips for shorter, successful social updates

My dream is to open a clothing store for online marketers. So content marketers can wear t-shirts with the slogan "I repurposed this from a blog post". And copywriters will proudly declare "I kept it short".

Short is beautiful in the online world.

Though that's not quite correct. The right length for text depends on many factors. But if you can make your text shorter while communicating the same message, then that's a good thing.

Why?

Because you don't have a lot of time to capture attention and draw people into and through your text...whether it's a blog post or a product description, email copy or a sales page.

Cutting text down is a particular issue when you have a character limit or space is at a premium, such as with a Tweet or subject line. It's one of the many topics I cover in a new Smart Insights video…

Getting the website design style balance right

There’s often a preconception that designers and digital strategists do battle on a daily basis, but in our experience, this is simply not the case. Great websites require both sides to debate their points to reach the best conclusion – a healthy balance between design, functionality and persuasion. There are many different page types which make up a great website, each requiring a different strategic and design approach. In this blog post, we will look at a sample of pages from both perspectives with a view to finding that sweet spot where both are balanced and both combatants are happy.

The Homepage

Creative-led design example

This is where you grab the viewer’s attention. This may be your only chance to keep the new visitor on your site / side, so you need to be direct and achieve an…

5 ideas to help your journey to nirvana

Optimisation, it’s an important and hot topic. Whether SEO, advertising, email or conversion rate. We want more, we have to. Is it possible to reach an ‘optimised’ place, is it ever done, can we ever arrive at an optimised nirvana of continuous optimisation as we suggested in our recent 7 Steps to Digital Nirvana infographic? Whenever I talk to people, and listen to myself talking sometimes, you’d think that we are seeking a destination, a place where it’s all done. We're optimised! We asked about how optimised businesses are in their digital optimisation in our recent research on managing digital marketing - it's good to see a fair proportion in the top 2 categories, but the majority don't optimise continuously.

My experience is that in reality we never arrive. It’s a little…

Continuing our briefing on how to apply Big Data for Marketing

In the first post in this short series I gave an introduction to using Big Data for marketing.  That introductory post included an overview of the concept and looked at the three core elements Volume, Velocity and Variety. In this second post in the series, I will look at the impact of the increase volumes of data associated with Big Data - what does this mean in practice for real-world marketing? Of the 3 V’s, Volume is the easiest to relate to Big Data, as it is about the amount of data, which as of 2012 stood at ~2.5 zettabytes and is expected to grow to almost 7.9 zettabytes by 2015. It is however a controversial area with many differing opinions on what constitutes ‘big volume’. To my 5 year…

Practical tips based on how 1500 small business owners manage their marketing

Aweber.com surveyed over 1500 of their customers, to find out the views of SMEs on online marketing, of which 96% had 5 or fewer employees and felt like 'an army of one'. Is it true that they feel overwhelmed or are embracing it? The infographic below shares the findings, including insight into how many hours are allocated to social media, which channels they are sticking too and where they will increase their marketing efforts. …