Optimising your content journey is critical to content marketing success
A unique collaboration... 14 incredibly talented Dribbble designers... 52 original illustrations… the content journey never looked more appealing…
We thought to try something completely different. We wanted to create a piece of content like no other. A piece of content that is engaging and fun as much as it is informative and insightful.
Inside:
The impact of quality content
Strategizing content pre-writing
The three golden rules of content: context, data, examples
The importance of titles
Post-writing distribution
Extending your content shelf life
Personalized content recommendations
So here it is - The Content Journey, from creation to conversion, in 52 amazing illustrations. A one-of-a-kind guide for how to make the most of every piece of content you create.
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Chart of the Day: Content marketing continues to be a key tactic for B2B lead generation.
Over 600 B2B marketing professionals were asked "How is your content production going to change over the next 12 months?", a whopping 71% said they plan on increasing production, with a quarter saying they will increase production significantly.
Content marketing will continue being a major focus for B2B marketers in 2017. For those implementing an inbound marketing strategy in the year ahead, it is important that you find the right balance between quantity and quality. The production of only a handful of highly engaging pieces of content has the potential to keep you in leads for months with the right amount of promotion.
Source: BrightTalk
Data:over 600 survey responses from B2B marketing professionals.
Recommended Resource: Content Marketing Checklist
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Mobile is radically re-shaping the travel industry
The future of the travel industry is in customers’ hands — at their fingertips, to be exact. With a few apps, some swipes and clicks, and one-on-one conversations with big brands through social media, an entire travel experience will be planned and confirmed by the customer alone.
That’s a complete transformation from how it used to be. Not too long ago, if someone got the itch to visit an exotic location — or his grandmother in another state/country — he would pick up the phone and dial a travel agent. The expert on the other end of the line would then go to work conducting research and collecting brochures.
Fast-forward 10 years, and most travel agencies have closed shop, their agents succumbing to other lines of work. The world of travel has shifted…
How digital innovation is engaging audiences and improving customer experience in the airline / aviation sector
This is the first in a new series looking at digital innovation and transformation in different B2B sectors aimed to inspire business-to-business marketers, this post from regular B2B marketing commentator René Power looks at how digital technologies are being deployed within the blossoming air travel and aviation sector to enhance customer experiences at every stage of the process.
As you read, think about what ideas you might take forward into your own sector?
Air travel is a growing sector
There continues to be an explosion in air travel, which makes it a very lucrative industry to be in. Air travel numbers themselves are mind-boggling. Published forecasts predict the total number of people flying on U.S. airlines will increase by 0.8 percent from 2013 levels to 745.5 million in 2014 and grow to 1.15 billion in 2034.
But it's not just the U.S. The International Air Transport…
Examples of companies successfully using events to generate high-quality leads
Whether you’re organising events or attending them, face-to-face marketing can be one of the most powerful lead gen tools in your arsenal. Pair this up with a killer data capture campaign and you’ve got a recipe for success. We asked four companies to share their lead generation tips so you can follow their success.
Content
According to Demand Metric, content marketing generates three times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing – but costs 62% less. An industry report, for example, is a particularly cost-effective way to capture leads and get eyes on your brand.
Salesforce recruitment specialists Mason Frank International did just that at Dreamforce 2016, when the company unveiled its latest salary survey.
“From a lead-gen standpoint we wanted to engage job candidates by supplying genuinely useful information on how much…
Marketing Automation works best when you are constantly innovating
You, yes you. You're that marketing manager that is using your automation platform to do all your basic tasks. But you're not using it for anything else. Why? I don't know. There are so many elements of marketing automation you could be using, I imagine you don't know where to start. So I'm going to tell you where to start.
Marketing automation isn't going to take your job anytime soon.
My favourite expression from the unaware marketer is "oh but marketing automation will put me out of a job". I can assure you, used correctly, it will not. However, if you continue to use a marketing automation platform like a brain, that is to say only use 10% of it, you could be out of a job for not producing the results you anticipated from your MA platform.
It amazed me in the recent…
The top 5 benefits consumers expect from fashion and apparel brands
Know your audience: That’s the lesson retailers are acknowledging as the key to adapt their business to the reality of today’s rapidly-evolving market. Faced with unprecedented upheaval retail brands must now focus on understanding how to dazzle shoppers and earn their loyalty.
To uncover patterns among shoppers’ often-unexpressed wish lists, retailers are turning to technology, from data analytics to social media listening, for clues on how to improve their brands’ perceived value. They seek to discover what functional requirements shoppers will actually pay for, how to satisfy shoppers’ emotional needs and how to boost word of mouth.
These meaningful consumer insights can help retailers successfully meet consumers’ needs to enhance customer relationships, build brand trust and drive revenue growth.
What fashion and apparel shoppers really want?
New research in Harvard Business Review pinpointed five specific benefits that consumers want most from fashion and…
How to focus your efforts to improve mobile conversion performance by using the full range of mobile user research techniques and tools
For the past few years in the digital industry every year has talked about as ‘the year of mobile’. Despite this, many digital marketeers are still focusing CRO activity on desktop and leaving mobile devices as an afterthought. Latest stats show that mobile continues to be a growth platform for people accessing websites, and that those people are getting more comfortable using their phones for buying online.
As shown on Smart Insights last year, mobile traffic overtook desktop as mobile phone use continued to rise at a staggering rate. Stats from the same report also show that desktop users are around three times more likely to convert than those visiting a site from a smartphone; showing that there’s a lot of potential for improvement for mobile conversion rates.
This …
Affiliate marketing, done well, offers a way to circumvent the ad-blockers
The increased use of ad-blocking software is disrupting the digital marketing industry as we know it. People have grown tired of “interruption advertising,” whereby irrelevant ads are forced upon them or they are tricked into clicking them on their small mobile screens. Successful brand marketing depends on building relationships with consumers, and as customers demand more control over the types of ads they see, affiliate marketing has proven to be an effective way to establish, strengthen, and maintain these invaluable relationships more authentically.
The Affiliate marketing concept is simple: Brands hire affiliates, who may be bloggers, publishers, or other companies, to promote a product or service using their own blogs, websites, or social media channels. Affiliates are paid a share of any sales or a commission resulting from their efforts. Compensation for affiliates may also take the form of incentives, discounts,…
Chart of the day: Neuroscience reveals that for long-term impact ads should appeal to emotion or make us laugh
In this example of neuromarketing, brain responses to over 200 TV ads were analysed. By looking at how the respondents' brains engaged in long-term memory encoding whilst watching the ads, Neuro-Insight were able to establish what makes for effective TV ads.
Since short-term memory only lasts a few seconds and then is lost forever, if you manage to get your ad into someone's long-term memory they'll be able to recall it for years. That means it's critical that your ads are able to make an impact and become part of someone's long term memory.
As the chart shows, information-based ads or discount-related ads make very little long-term impact on our brains. Opting for the 'hard sell' is clearly not effective. Humour stands out as the most effective…
