4 essential steps for planning content marketing

Content marketing is now seen by many as an essential part of the overall marketing strategy of any business. Ignoring content marketing is equivalent to choosing not to engage with a large section of the customer base. This just goes to show how important content marketing can be. So much so that many companies now rely solely on content marketing and related tactics like SEO and social media marketing to get the word out.

However, there are many companies that get content marketing wrong. Months and even years of blood, sweat and tears and a lot of money gets them nowhere. Their content goes unnoticed, there are no new leads generated, there is no increase in the volume of web traffic and barely any customer interaction.

One of the main reasons why content marketing fails for many…

8 tips on how to plan and execute your animated video to support conversion

A tailored marketing video can engage potential customers and start them on their journey through your sales funnel. Since there’s a lot to harmonize on your website and across your marketing channels; often irrelevant, complex and tedious information will drive your visitors away. A video can take the place of text and provide a far more appealing method for communicating with prospective customers. 1.Target your market Appealing to the right consumers with your online content is crucial. An animated explainer video placed across your online platforms can be highly effective at achieving this.  A tailored animation can captivate your audience immediately and tell them about your product or service in an engaging way. Whether your video is viewed on your landing page, on a streaming site like Vimeo, or on one of your social networks, including the right content and style will…

Which content types engage and influence technical buyers?

SterlingKor surveyed over 2,000 key business and IT Decision-makers, to find out how B2B vendors can engage and sell 'their wares'. So how do vendors engage with these IT and tech purchasers and what type of content will they engage with?

The top influencers of purchase decisions are social, mobile and video content

Key takeaways showed that:

45% were influenced by a vendor's social presence and 55% are searching for product reviews.41% purchased the product within six months of being exposed to a mobile ad.B2B companies are looking for information in 'bite sized chunks'.

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Successfully combining paid advertising and organic content on Facebook in 2014

Marketing professionals all around the world, whether online or offline will know that the marketing environment can change significantly at any given time. Social media is a notoriously flexible and changeable medium, as users and owners try to figure out how to best optimise the sites. Just recently we have seen Facebook introduce a new brand page layout. The latest change in the world of social media is one that was perhaps inevitable from the conception of social networking but has now set the bar for the future of social media marketing. In December 2013, Facebook released a document called 'Generating business results on Facebook.' In this document the company advise that they 'expect organic distribution of an individual page’s posts to gradually decline over time as we continually work to make sure people have a meaningful experience on…

5 content governance tips to keep your web experience relevant

When discussing website relaunches and redesigns, a common refrain I hear among the reasons for the relaunches is: 'our old website had grown organically over the years'.

Usually this is a euphemism for navigation becoming more confusing as it is amended and 'content creep'. To tackle these issues in preparation for relaunch, often some customer research is done, some content culled, card sorting exercises undertaken. The new website launches with a cutting-edge design; slimmed down, well written content and a breezy navigation. Big success!

Yet after a while content creep sets in again - the navigation is getting inconsistent and complaints come in about information being inaccurate or hard to find. Sound familiar? What lies behind it, and what can be done to stem the re-emergence of content creep and messy navigation?

Web maintenance, just like…

Specific CTAs now available to increase response for advertisers using Power Editor

Facebook has rolled out a new feature recently that's useful for Facebook advertisers to be aware of since it's specifically to help with boosting direct response.

You can now create ads related to posts that feature a call to action button. In its announcement, Facebook suggests CTAs advertisers may use are:

Shop Now, Learn More, Sign Up, Book Now or Download.

The feature is only available in Power Editor (the free Chrome app for Page editors) and it's well worth checking out.  For those familiar with creating  what I described in a previous post as "dark" (or unpublished) posts using Power Editor this is simply a new option to click through as part of that process. I'd certainly suggest testing posts with this new button rather than simply including the call to action within…

My pick of the 6 of the world’s most creative demonstration videos

Today, demonstration videos are as essential as websites. Consumers searching for a product or service online expect a more interactive experience. They want to know how a product works and what its major benefits are for them. And they want to know quickly, and without wading through a whole heap of written explanations. Demonstration videos give you a chance to show off your new product or service, and reach a wider audience at the same time. After all, you may think your new product is brilliant, but not all products are as intuitive as the iPhone. And while your enthusiasm for it may be infectious when you’re talking to customers, you don’t have the time to talk to everybody, and anyway you don’t want to limit your reach. (more…)…

How video enhances the creativity for engineering marketing

The American author and renowned management consultant, Peter Drucker, once proclaimed that since the only real aim of a business is to create and keep customers, then all businesses could be seen as having only two basic functions; marketing and innovation. ‘Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs,’ he went on to conclude. Whether you agree with Drucker or not, his point highlights that often difficult relationships are found in engineering and technology companies between marketing departments and R&D. Engineers must develop products the market wants, and marketers must communicate complex products to customers effectively. When the product or system being engineered is highly complex or diffuse in nature and your target audience is not necessarily well versed in the technical language of your industry, a bridge is needed to create a connection between consumer and product. Engineering firms…

Recommendations on improving your content marketing capabilities

In our recent Smart Insights - Hubspot research on Managing Content Marketing, we asked five industry experts for their views on how content marketing can be successfully managed. Here they go into more detail of approaches to improve the effectiveness of content marketing. You can learn more ideas on how to better manage content marketing in this free webinar from Dave Chaffey showing examples and 10 techniques and examples to make content marketing more effective (recording available). 10 practical content marketing techniques from Smart Insights

The challenges of managing content marketing

The research showed that there were a common set of challenges of managing content marketing that companies need to manage. …

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?

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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…