Benchmarks, budgets, and trends to help you streamline your content marketing strategy in 2018

Every year we ask what marketing activity will be in most important for our readers' businesses or clients. In our trends polls for the last 3-4 years content marketing has always been the top topic with 20% of the vote this year. The annual report by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) describes, for the eighth year, the implications of content marketing and how it can be utilized to provide better results and engagement. Content marketing is an important part of any business and fuels all forms of inbound techniques (email, social, paid and organic search). Having a clear and defined content marketing strategy will not only help you create content but audit and set goals, improve content distribution and help evaluate and measure ROI. Findings…

Why new artificial intelligence matters for business, from global trend to maximizing marketing and operations spend

AI has progressed quite away from its early beginnings, and its prevalence in modern business models has increased exponentially. Yet, despite this, our relationship with AI has been a tumultuous one, with ‘automation’ becoming something of a dirty word for traditional businesses. But AI is here to stay — and for good reason. This rise in popularity of utilizing AI in business models comes in part from the development of machine learning and natural language processing. It’s this technology that gives AI the power, when utilized effectively, to aid businesses in numerous practical ways. From increasing staff productivity to boosting customer satisfaction, AI has the promise to meet business objectives at a fraction of the time and cost as with traditional methods like phone and email. Here, we’ll go through some…

Chart of the day: Sales and Content Marketing teams are most aligned on sharing customer questions, but least aligned on personas

Shockingly, the research found that content marketers and sales professionals are least aligned on buyer personas, which would seem particularly important for both parties, as something they should be aligned on. The study conducted by Content Marketing Institute and LinkedIn Research also found that a stronger culture of alignment would be the best way to increase sales and content marketing alignment. As you can see, buyer persona sharing is not very aligned compared with other activities the survey asked about. Target accounts, how to use content and when to use content, along with typical discussions around customer questions, are by far the most aligned activities. Content marketing strategy appears to be shared with the sales team, it's unclear how much integration between sales…

Advantages and drawbacks of different influencer marketing solutions.

Did you know that searches for the term “influencer marketing” increased almost by 200% between 2016 and 2017? And, by just the fifth month of 2018, the average monthly searches have already increased by another 60% compared to 2017. This clearly indicates how influencer marketing has been growing over the past couple of years. And it definitely doesn’t show any signs of stopping. By 2020, the global spend on influencer marketing is expected to be anywhere between $5 and $10 billion. The growing popularity and success of influencer marketing have encouraged many marketers to focus more on it. 85% of marketers are using it, and 90% of them have…

Chart of the day: Benchmarks for Facebook news feed placement ads Q1 2018

Even though Facebook may have recently been on the receiving end of continuous flack and scrutiny, data shows that Facebook ads continue to do well in the world of paid media. Business are still witnessing the fruits of Facebook as a marketing and advertising channel. So, it’s only obvious that understanding how you can leverage Facebook Advertising in the right way has become vital for brands and marketers. Facebook is making it harder and harder for posts to reach audiences organically. If you want to get your posts seen on Facebook, especially at a larger scale, chances are, you’ll need to pay for the reach with Facebook Ads. Recent benchmarking report on paid search and paid social, by AdStage, provides valuable insight into paid media metrics, to enable marketers like you and…

Quora can be an incredibly valuable content marketing tool

In fact, Quora can help with multiple common content marketing goals, such as getting more traffic or boosting your industry authority – plus, it’s an extremely tool for research. But, more on that in a bit. In this blog post, I’m going to show you how to use Quora as part of your content marketing strategy.

What is Quora and why should you be bothered?

Quora is, as they put it, “a place to share knowledge and better understand the world”. In other words, it’s a place where anyone can ask and answer questions about pretty much any topic you can think of. People use Quora to ask for advice for their personal and professional lives, to get recommendations for products and services, to ask for strangers’ opinions on different subjects (both personal and professional), and much more. And, of course, people also use Quora…

Examples of social media workflow to review and respond to online comments about a brand

A while ago, I received this question by email, it describes a common concern of managing brand reputation given the growth in consumer comments in social media: "I would be interested in any case studies or examples of controlling social media discussions, especially in a case of negative flow". The questioner went on to explain that in her case, in the health sector, and many health and looks treatments etc. create a lot of social media input. Experiences, questions, complaints etc. Also, in some cases, competitors are creating negative posts. She explains that example is where companies have faced non-satisfied customers that are creating a lot of noise in social media. [si_guide_block id="13290" title="Download Premium Member resource – Social media marketing playbook" description="A checklist defining 20 key governance activities for strategic management of social media marketing communications."/]

Example flowcharts for managing…

Four ways to tell a story in 6 seconds

In an increasingly mobile-first environment, audiences’ attention is at a premium. Brands are constantly looking for new ways to achieve cut-through and platforms such as YouTube, Google and Twitter are designing new formats to align with consumers’ evolving viewing habits. With mobile as the dominant medium now, user expectations towards advertising have changed. Whilst it will always be important to create great content to make an impact and keep people watching, it’s nevertheless important to acknowledge that content is consumed in different places and contexts, sometimes at home in front of a television and at other times on-the-go, via a mobile device. As a result of these shifting consumption patterns, in 2016 YouTube introduced the 6-second Bumper ad format for brands looking to deliver messages quickly and efficiently to consumers who are likely to be watching one-off pieces of video content in shorter sessions,…

Daunting, time-consuming and expensive. Or is it?

Doing any form of research doesn't always need to be so costly, here are five options to help you recruit participants for surveys.

I've also produced an article on how to get B2B survey responses, the focus of this post is helping you to find B2C participants for your research. We all know that one of the hardest parts of doing any research is often something which is undervalued and that's finding respondents to take part. More importantly getting the right respondents for your research is even harder. Research is essential to help get insight into a variety of business functions. and luckily the word of market research is maturing which means that there are loads of tools available that can help you. I've put together a list below of some of the most reliable places to find respondents for B2C research including surveys, focus groups, depth interviews…

Chart of the day: After Snapchats controversial redesign last year, satisfaction with the app has plummeted

YouGov data suggests the app has erased two years of work in just a few months, as Snapchat's impression score and satisfaction score has dropped significantly. The survey asked users in the Unites States (US) aged 18-34, who'd then fall into the millennial category, to rate how satisfied with the SnapChat brand. YouGov do continuous tracking of brands including Snapchat, as part of their BrandIndex product. As you can see from the chart above those aged 18-34 have reported a massive drop in terms of a positive impression with Snapchat. As you can see from the chart below, there is a massive drop in satisfaction too. Those aged 18-34 have suddenly recorded a more negative impression of Snapchat and a…