Companies and associations that produce annual meetings, conferences and other events are sitting on a treasure trove of highly shareable content. They can mine events for content to promote overall brand awareness and drum up interest in next year’s event. The key is defining customers’ pain points — what problem are they hoping to solve? — and offering content that explains why your service, product or event is the solution.
Sit down and look around on any commuter train, and you’re certain to see a sea of screens — iPads and Kindles and cell phones occupying the attention of their owners. A decade ago, the scene would’ve included newspapers, books and magazines, leading many to proclaim that print is dead.
How do you make someone fall in like with you?
Think about the last time you really wanted to make a good impression. Take a first date, for instance. You want the person to like you enough to go on a second date, and maybe even more from there. The approach that you’d take in this situation is the same approach that you should be taking in your content marketing strategy.
To better explain, we’ll walk you through a first date/content strategy explained with the four P’s (because everything is better as an alliteration): Prepare, present, participate and pursue.
It’s unlikely that you would roll out of bed and head straight to a fancy restaurant to meet someone for a first date. You want to take some time fixing yourself up so that you look presentable enough to make a good impression. You might also prepare by doing some research on the person beforehand, by checking out out their Facebook page or doing a Google search. Identifying their likes and dislikes will help you engage in better conversations, which will result in a more successful date.
This is exactly what you or your digital marketing agency need to be doing in stage 1 of your content strategy. Before you start reaching out to potential customers, make sure the image you are presenting, online and off-line, is something that you are proud of and something that would make an audience take interest.
Next, research your target audience to find out what kinds of conversations they’re having. This will help determine the best ways to interact with them.
You’ve spent time preparing for the date, and now it’s time to head to the restaurant and present your best self to the person. Your stomach is in knots, because you know that first impressions mean everything, and you don’t want to screw up. You want to appear confident, friendly, personable and authentic, all without seeming like you’re trying to hard. Same goes for your content strategy — It needs to be attractive, but natural.
Gone are the days of shoving your product in people’s faces and listing all the descriptors that will entice them to buy. You need to be delivering content that will peak your audiences’ interest. If you are unsure whether or not they will be interested in something, ask yourself, is this something that my customers would want to share with their friends? If the answer is yes, then you’re likely presenting good content.
Even if you nail the prepare and present stages of the date, it can still be a dud if you’re not able to engage with the other person. There are two key elements of engagement — talking and listening. Several brands are great at the talking part, but fail when it comes to listening to the conversations that their customers are having.
The listening stage is crucial because that’s where you’ll find the best opportunities for new content and conversations. Actively listening and responding to your customers’ also makes them feel valued and appreciated. Just like on a first date, you need to make the other person feel like you’re as interested in them as you hope they are with you.
You just had a great first date, so what’s next? If you never reach out to the person again, that could be the end of the relationship. You know that relationships of any sort take effort, and so you pursue the person by continuing conversation with them through text messages, emails, phone calls, and of course, more dates. Just like a potential partner, your customers also need to be pursued, or they might start checking out your competitors.
Continuing the conversation is easier than ever in the digital age. Some great ways to do this include weekly e-newsletters, updating your blog based on what your audience is most interested in, constantly engaging in social media and even hiring a digital marketing agency to take your content to the next level. However, even though you can easily gauge audience participation by tracking clicks and likes, don’t completely abandon old-fashioned techniques like a phone call or postcard. These methods remind your customers that you’re interested in engaging with them, even when they aren’t online.
Effective content marketing is a relationship and should be nurtured as such. Developing a relationship-focused content strategy will help your customers see you as their most trusted source in the industry.
Don’t settle for the “it’s complicated” phase — you’re ultimate goal should be to end up “in a relationship.”
Your coworker is a subject matter expert (SME) with valuable insight on your company’s latest white paper topic, yet the outside writer you hired has been trying to track her down for weeks, to no avail. She insists she doesn’t have time for the 20-minute interview. How can you make content creation appealing to team members who are more focused on the technical aspect of business?
If there’s one word that can drive fear into the hearts of business owners and individuals alike, it’s “audit.” And, each year at tax season, you’ll see plenty of advice on how to avoid being audited, what to do if you’re being audited and which countries to move to if you find out you’re being audited. (Just kidding on the last one. They’ll still find you.)
In some cases, however, an audit isn’t a bad thing; in fact, when it’s a content audit, it’s actually a great thing. So let’s look at what a content audit is, how it’s done and how it can help you improve your website while increasing traffic and revenue.
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Don’t look now, but the new year is nearly here. If you’re a marketer, it’s time to start thinking about what marketing trends are coming up.
You always need to be on top of emerging marketing trends to stay ahead of the competition, find interesting and new ways to reach your clients, customers and followers — as well as establish yourself as a leader in your industry. It all starts with is a little bit of research.
Here are 10 marketing trends you should be embracing in 2019.
When it comes to content marketing, what’s old is new again.
Working remotely is all the rage. Both businesses and employees are experiencing the huge range of benefits that remote work has to offer.
From the business standpoint, companies can save money on office space, have a more focused workforce, experience less employee turnover and contribute to the sustainability of the planet, since people aren’t commuting to the office.
Employees can enjoy an improved work/life balance and be more productive because they have fewer distractions. This can help them accomplish more in a shorter time, experience less stress and be more engaged.
With these perks, it’s no surprise that remote work is catching on. In 2012, 39% of Americans reported that they worked from home at least some of the time. Today, 70% of employees work remotely at least once a week, and 53% are telecommuting at least half of the week.
Remote work is key to success at our digital marketing agency in Dallas. By opening up our positions to professionals all around the world, we’re able to find the best employees available. They enjoy the flexibility of working from home, and we’ve discovered that they are, indeed, more engaged and happier with their jobs. Happy employees = a better company!
However, we wouldn’t be able to thrive as a remote team without the best communication and workflow management tools and software at our disposal. Here are some of the essential tools for assembling a successful (and happy) remote marketing team.
Sales enablement has moved up the list of priorities for many marketing companies. In its State of Inbound 2018 report, HubSpot noted that 37% of marketing leaders placed it as one of their top initiatives, as it has provided companies with a more efficient and effective approach to the traditional sales process.
When it comes to understanding what sales enablement is, there are a number of different definitions to choose from — so don’t get too caught up in that confusion. Regardless of which definition you choose, sales enablement is essentially the process of sales and marketing agencies or teams working together to achieve a singular goal.
In the past, sales and marketing often operated in silos and, while they supported one another’s efforts in theory, there was little communication or interaction between the two.
Sales enablement provides salespeople the tools and resources they need to maximize their efforts. That support can come in many forms, including technology tools, specific marketing information and resources targeting their ideal customer. One of the best ways to do that is through developing sales enablement content.
It can be tough to keep up with the cool kids of Generation Y, also known as Millennials. But these 79 million teens, 20-somethings, and early-30-somethings have a strong purchasing power of about $170 billion per year, so it’s worth appealing to them if they’re a demographic that makes sense for your products or services.
