How to use a B2B blog to generate leads

Our last post on business blogging looked at seeding and distribution and how to get people to your blog. However, the end goal of a business blog (or any customer facing content asset) must be to stimulate demand and generate enquiries. In this final post of this business blogging series we look at how companies can use blogs to drive demand generation. For more information you can see our demand generation definition.

Create a compelling call-to-action

There needs to be a compelling call to action to take a visitor's fledgling interest in your business to the next level. It is commonly accepted that it takes time to build traffic to a blog, and even longer for people to interact with it. So, assuming it is almost impossible to encourage blog visitors to engage with a corporate blog, how can you keep them there and get…

Agile and real-time marketing campaigns needs planning for if your going to get it right

There’s one thing that’s certain on the internet: things move fast. And those early bird online marketers, so to speak, get the worm (meaning the traffic). Staying ahead of the game is very important when it comes to standing out from the sea of content and advertising available to modern consumers. To capture the attention of target audiences, companies need to employ a good agile marketing strategy. Agile marketing exploits topics that are trending on the internet and social media to remain relevant at any given time. Basically, agile marketing means that a company or a brand quickly produces small amounts of content tailored to whatever topic that has the public captivated at the moment. Agile marketing is timely, flexible, and attention grabbing. Companies absolutely must invest in developing an agile brand to quickly adapt to changing…

Get more from TV ads by optimising them for greater engagement

Online video advertising can be an expensive and time consuming investment, but what factors will increase engagement to avoid viewers from skipping the content or just plain ignoring it? A study carried out by Hub Entertainment Research investigated what it takes to maintain engagement with online TV content, they surveyed 1206 participants who have broadband at home and watch five or more hours of online TV content every week. The research used MaxDiff analysis, therefore the greater the number the larger the impact on engagement. The research found that having a greater control of the ads, the ads being more relevant and targeted as well as being able to control the ad load could lead to increased engagement. Earning points and getting promotional rewards for watching the ads led to increased engagement. Ads should be more…

Are you making any of these 5 common Instagram marketing mistakes?

300 million active users! 1.2 billion likes per day! 1000+ comments per second! Who would have thought that the Facebook-owned app could drive such a massive amount of social media engagements within a short period of its inception! Humans love visuals, and that has played a key role behind Instagram's huge popularity. Instagram unveiled itself to the world of social media in 2010, and since then it has become one of the fastest growing social channels with more than 300 million active user count. Instagram's impressive growth rate has made many online marketers, entrepreneurs and social media influencers to realize the huge potential that it presents. As a result, more and more businesses today are taking the advantage of Instagram's extensive reach to engage their target audiences like never before. Being a fairly new platform on the marketing scene, there are some rookie…

Our interview with Jim Conning, the head of Data Services at Royal Mail

I spoke to Jim Conning, Managing Director of Data Services at Royal Mail about how marketers need to master the use of customer data to deliver the right message at the right time

Q. Personalised messaging based around customer’s life events is a great way to cut through the noise and reach customers in a way that is meaningful to them. Can you give some idea of what capabilities marketers need in place to be able to achieve this kind of messaging?

First and foremost, marketers need to understand the value of their customers’ life events, and what life events are relevant for your business and products. For example, moving home represents a major opportunity for the utilities providers because around 65% of consumers switch…

Apple's iPhone 7 may yet be a success, but that doesn't mean it deserves to be.

This week I came to the conclusion that I have officially gone mad. Either that, or the entire world is mad, and I am in fact sane (which, in terms of probability: 7.4bn to 1 just doesn’t add up. So it must surely be me who is mad whilst the world is sane). Here's the evidence for my supposition –you decide which, or what it is. As is now customary, the month of September saw Apple launch its latest ‘must-have’ gadgets and upgrades. As you, me and a stray aardvark in some distant land know by now, the September headline Apple news for 2016 was the launches of the iPhone 7 and IPhone 7 Plus. (Additionally, the September event focussed on an Apple Watch system upgrade, as well as release of new IOS and Desktop software). Like…

How Do Thought Leaders & Social Media Influencers Use Hashtags On Twitter?

Last week I published a seemingly controversial article and infographic about how hashtags have become almost worthless for businesses. I found that many generic hashtags like #Marketing or #SocialMedia were magnets for bots or spammers. What I did not expect was such a fevered pushback from some of commenters and readers. They felt I took to harsh of a stand on hashtags and that they were still the best thing since sliced bread. And there were a lot of people who believed that.

Since so many people thought that hashtags were still relevant in business, I decided to take a look at how thought leaders and influencers are using them. For this sample I selected 30 thought leaders analyzed 15k of their most…

Looking to use video marketing as a tool to grow your business? Use these 10 tips and strategies

By 2017, video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic, according to a study done by Cisco. Video is the future of content marketing. That is, if it's not the here and now. YouTube currently receives more than 1 Billion unique visitors a month and is the second largest search engine after Google. Video can give you access to a huge audience but video marketing is frequently an afterthought while it's value demands top priority in your content marketing plan. Online video is quickly becoming a key means for people to satisfy their information and entertainment needs, businesses that fail to include it in their online marketing strategy will do so at their peril. In this article we'll dive into 10 actionable tips to increase your YouTube presence so you can…

The essentials of social listening and brand management

Thanks to today’s technology, it is now easier than ever to project your opinion online and use the opinions of others in your buying processes. In less than a few minutes, you can learn what people believe about a product or service, why they hate or love it, and what their experience with it was like. As a consumer, this is great news – there’s a world full of opinions and reviews opening in front of your eyes before you even consider making a purchase. As a business owner, though, this may not be so great if you don’t handle your online reputation properly. But what is online reputation management anyway–and, more importantly, how do you make sure you correctly apply it to your particular business?

The Construction and De-Construction of Online Reputation

To understand how online reputation works, imagine a house being built, brick by brick. What…

Tips for brands adapting to Digital from the author of Youtility

Many brands are struggling to adapt to a digital first culture and more seriously, struggling to remain relevant. It’s clear that brands moving from the industrial revolution to the connected economy need to be doing a lot more than creating a digital marketing dept in their organisational chart. Rather, they need to be adjusting and adapting their culture. I interviewed Jay Baer, author of the New York Times best seller, Youtility and one of my favourite business books. We discuss the challenges for brands that struggle to grasp “digital”, what brands can do to differentiate themselves in competitive markets and Jay’s latest book, Hug Your Haters.

Q. Many brands struggle to grasp how “digital” is structured within their organisation with many treating their digital activities within a silo -what words of wisdom could you provide brands to adapt a digital…