What Is Content Marketing?
Content is all around us. Whether we’re reading an insightful blog post or watching a goofy YouTube video, we consume content almost everywhere we go and pretty much at all times. Because of this, it should come as no surprise that 70% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing. With a rapidly growing number of companies recognizing the value of content marketing, it’s time to make sure you’re not missing out on any of the potential benefits. The key word here is “valuable.” It’s what changes this definition from one that could describe almost any form of advertising or marketing. You can tell if a piece of content is the sort that could be part of a content marketing campaign if people seek it out, if people want to consume it, rather than avoiding it. So was VW’s 2014 “Game Day” commercial, which has been viewed on YouTube almost 18 million times as of the writing of this post, an ad, or content marketing? The answer is it’s both, depending on how it’s received by each individual who is exposed to it. The same will apply to any piece of content marketing you create, depending on whether the recipient received value from it or not. Of course the goal is to provide as much value from your content marketing to as much of your target audience as possible. At this point, despite this definition and explanation, you’re probably still wondering what exactly content marketing is. We can get more clarity by considering a few examples. How Is Content Marketing Done? Marketers use content marketing as a way to help reach an overarching business goal. Once you know what that business goal is going to be, you need to create a content-driven strategy that helps you achieve the goal. If the business goal that your company is focused on is increasing lead generation, for example, the content you produce needs to reflect that goal. Your content should include strong CTAs that entice someone to want to fill out a signup form, and then deliver on their expectations. Another business goal your company might have is to increase its industry authority. The best way to become a recognized industry expert is through content marketing. Providing high-quality content on a consistent basis will help your audience and those outside of it recognize the value your company is bringing to industry conversations. Infographics. These are generally long, vertical graphics that include statistics, charts, graphs, and other information. If you need some examples, here are 197 infographics on the topic of content marketing curated by Michael Schmitz, head of Content Lab at Publicis, Munich. Infographics can be effective in that if one is good it can be passed around social media and posted on websites for years. You can get a professionally designed infographic by hiring a contractor on a site like oDesk or if you want to remove some of the risk you can go with a company like Visua.ly. A decent infographic will usually cost you at least $1,000 to have designed, but can cost several thousand dollars if you are hiring a contractor or agency to include strategy and planning, research, copywriting, and design. There is also the matter of promoting that infographic to bloggers and the media. Or you could set up a board on Pinterest and curate infographics on a topic related to your business. That is also a form of content marketing, and it costs nothing but your time. Hey, it worked for Michael. Videos. Gary Vaynerchuk is a master of content marketing using online video, just take a look at his YouTube channel. He got his start creating videos to promote his family’s wine store and through those videos and other online marketing he eventually grew it to a $45M empire. Videos and podcasts are a largely untapped form of content marketing because people think it’s expensive and hard. But with the falling cost of professional grade equipment creating high quality video and audio content is easier than ever. Amateur video content marketing has been used to sell blenders, launch new dental products, and market Hong Kong visa consulting services. What video could you throw together for your company that might change your fortunes overnight? It might be easier than you think. .button { background-color: #4CAF50; /* Green */ border: none; color: white; padding: 15px 32px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; font-size: 16px; margin: 4px 2px; cursor: pointer;
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How Marketing Works
Marketing works in steps. There’s no “marketing works best here” area of the brain, so there’s no single, simple way to target people in a way that’ll get them to buy your product, visit your store, or read your pamphlet. That’s why the best ad campaigns diversify – when you want to cover a lot of bases, you’ve got to hit a lot of runs. What’s more, the best marketing works not by simply saying, “Hey! Here I am and I’m the best!” The best marketing works by building relationships and establishing trust. This means generating a surfeit of leads, nurturing friendships with potential prospects, asking for referrals from satisfied customers, and conducting your business in an upbeat and honorable way. Corporate Management Strategy Solution Branding Concept Marketing works by being memorable OK, so maybe the commercial we mentioned in the beginning of this piece wasn’t the best example of “building relationships” or “establishing trust.” Certainly, a headache-remedy commercial that implores you repeatedly to “APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD!!!” is doing very little to earn your trust. But the truth is that both methods work toward the same ends. The reason the annoying headache-remedy ad works is because it combines repetition with irritation – two things that work really well in concert, as anyone who’s ever had “Who Let The Dogs Out?” stuck in his head can attest. It fulfills one of the primary goals of good marketing, which is to firmly lodge your name in the customer’s head. Of course, that’s only the first half; marketing works only if the follow-up is just as memorable as the attack – and in a positive way. If everyone who bought the headache remedy advertised in the annoying commercial got a blistering rash on his forehead, then the marketing plan hasn’t worked. Part of marketing is providing high quality. If you market a cow pie as the best roast beef sandwich in the world, you won’t have to sell many before people figure out that you’re not selling the part of the cow they’re interested in eating. There’s no easy answer Marketing works through a complicated combination of learned experience and trial-and-error. It works when you understand your audience as much as anyone can understand anything, and when you can spot both their needs and wants from a mile away. It works when you know what your client is going to need before she does. And it works when you consistently and creatively turn out a quality product or service. There’s no easy answer, and there’s no magic bullet. Marketing works by hard work alone. BRAND CHOICE IS PSYCHOLOGICAL “Our brand’s success is driven by competitive price and functional features,” a global marketer told me recently. “That’s how we’ll gain penetration and market share.” Translation: customers make their choices logically. Reality check: nearly every contemporary social scientist would disagree. Humans are only partially rational, mostly irrational. Brand choice is made emotionally, with powerful unconscious influences. Marketers want customers to choose their brand over others. Marketing communication depends on how the mind works, versus the logic we think should cause customer choice. SIMPLE MESSAGES FOR THE LITTLE BRAIN Our little 40 bit brains are incredibly overwhelmed. Too many messages, too much complexity. We can only think about 4 things at a time +/- 2 (see Customer Attention). The little brain likes things easy. If you conclude the little brain is lazy, you’d be right! Messages to the little brain suffer from cognitive overload. Direct communication must lower the load and be easily absorbed by the small conscious brain. Many marketers have mastered communication to the little brain with simple, catchy messages repeated over and over. .button { background-color: #4CAF50; /* Green */ border: none; color: white; padding: 15px 32px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; font-size: 16px; margin: 4px 2px; cursor: pointer;
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What Is Marketing?
Some people use ‘marketing’ as a fancy word for ‘selling’. Of course selling is part of the marketing process but marketing is much more than that. Or they use the word for all kinds of promotion and advertising. Again, these are part of marketing but not the whole thing. Actually, marketing is much bigger and broader than promotion, advertising and selling. At its most comprehensive, marketing is an umbrella term that includes an enterprise’s position amongst rivals in the marketplace, its competitive advantage and its selection of viable market segments it will serve. Having selected particular market segments (and by implication, chosen positively not to deal with other market segments), marketing also includes communicating with customers in those selected markets. This communication is a dialogue, not a monologue. In other words, marketing has to include listening to customers – or market research. Is it true that every time people attempt to satisfy their needs by means of an exchange, marketing is involved? Oris it false? I once posed this question to a group of marketing students. Their answers were as varied andentertaining as a circus. The conversations that flowed from this made me to do a rethink about what marketingreally is.What is marketing? Several authors have defined marketing in various ways. The American Marketing Associationdefines marketing as the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution ofideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organisational goals. Cronje, et al(2007:283) define marketing as consisting of management tasks and decisions directed at successfully meetingopportunities and threats in a dynamic environment, by effectively developing and transferring a need-satisfyingmarket offering to consumers, in such a way that the objectives of the business, the consumer and society will beachieved Marketing is more than just banner ads, television commercials, and people standing on roadsides dressed up like the Statue of Liberty during tax time. It’s a complex set of activities and strategies that influences where we live, what we wear, how we conduct business, and how we spend our time and money. Marketing activities are conducted in an environment that changes quickly both in terms of customer demand and the methods by which consumers obtain information and make purchases. The Art of the Exchange In marketing, the act of obtaining a desired object from someone by offering something of value in return is called the exchange process. The exchange involves: the customer (or buyer): a person or organization with a want or need who is willing to give money or some other personal resource to address this needthe product: a physical good, a service, experience or idea designed to fill the customer’s want or needthe provider (or seller): the company or organization offering a need-satisfying thing, which may be a product, service, experience or ideathe transaction: the terms around which both parties agree to trade value-for-value (most often, money for product) Individuals on both sides try to maximize rewards and minimize costs in their transactions, in order to gain the most profitable outcomes. Ideally, everyone achieves a satisfactory level of reward. Marketing Creates Value for Customers According to the influential economist and Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt, the purpose of all business is to “find and keep customers.” Marketing is instrumental to helping businesses achieve this purpose. It’s a way of thinking about business, rather than just a collection of techniques. It’s much more than just advertising and selling stuff and collecting money. Marketing generates value by creating the connections between people and products, customers and companies. .button { background-color: #4CAF50; /* Green */ border: none; color: white; padding: 15px 32px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; font-size: 16px; margin: 4px 2px; cursor: pointer;
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Steps to Run Effective Internet Marketing Campaigns
Know Your Audience & Choose Your Targets Steps to Run Effective Internet Marketing Campaigns The first thing to run a successful internet marketing campaign is- knowing your audience. It is like defining your products and for this, you need to answer below-given questions: Who is my ideal client male or female?Does my ideal client work out of the home or in the home?What is the actual job profile of my target audience- a CEO, a manager, an executive, entrepreneur, worker, freelancer, etc.?What is the net family income of my client?What is the level of education of my perfect customer?Does my ideal client have space in her spending plan for my product or service on occasional, steady or on a one-time basis?How do my ideal clients use my product or services- for themselves or as a gift?How much time my ideal customer spends online?Where do my ideal customers search for the kind of products that my company offers- online or in physical stores? Once you have finalized your questions to know your target audiences, you need to choose your targets wisely. You need to target one specific type of customer, and for this, creating a buyer persona is considered one of the most important techniques of successful internet marketing campaigns. Use Search Engine Optimization SEO or Search Engine Optimization is all about optimizing a website or webpage for search engines so that they can rank good in SERPs. SEO is highly useful in- Designing and developing e-commerce websites that are Search Engine Friendly and ranks good in SERPsKnowing the working of search algorithms and search preferences of your target audiencesOptimizing a website as per the keywords that your audiences use Successful internet marketing campaigns pay heed upon following SEO tips- Choosing SEO Friendly Website DomainKnowing SEO Tactics & MethodsUse of SEO friendly Design & LayoutOptimization of Keywords, Meta Tags, Title and AnchorLink Building and Mobile SEOOn-Page and Off-page SEOSEO Copywriting ESTABLISH YOUR CAMPAIGN GOALS This step will help you to establish the foundation of your digital marketing campaign, outlining everything you want to achieve from the campaign. When establishing your goals you should outline the drive behind the campaign, benchmarks for success and campaign limitations. You’ll also need to establish the message and tone behind what you’re trying to promote through your digital marketing campaign. Examples of successful marketing campaigns include: Blogging within your business nicheSEO marketingSocial media marketingPaid media marketingEmail marketing campaigns – the list goes on. You will need to establish which type of campaign will resonate best with your target audience and best serve your business. CUSTOMER INTERACTION IS KEY Once your campaign has been launched to the public, there’s no time to sit back and relax. This is where customer interaction is key. You may find that your business will receive an influx of queries regarding the campaign. This is your chance to establish a good rapport and customer experience for your audience. Additionally, this is a great way to do a little research on your audience. By tracking their frequently asked questions, you will be able to understand their wants and needs just a little bit better. When creating your campaign, make sure you incorporate a space where customers can interact with you, and prepare for it. Create buyer personas You can’t create an effective digital marketing plan without knowing who you’re trying to reach. The next step of your digital marketing plan is creating buyer personas to define your target audience. Buyer personas are fictional people that represent the traits of the people you’re trying to target to buy your products or services. They embody your ideal customer and the person who is most likely to purchase from your business. Steps to Run Effective Internet Marketing Campaigns To create your buyer persona, collect information like: LocationAgeIncomeJob titleHobbies and interestsGoals These are all great tidbits of information that will help you shape your buyer persona. So, how does creating a buyer persona help your digital marketing plan? Buyer personas help you know who to target when you’re running your campaign. In many cases, you’ll have more than one buyer persona you’re targeting. Creating these personas helps you market to different types of buyers based on their interests and needs. Think about a clothing store that offers clothes for men, women, and children. In that case alone, you’ll have an individual buyer persona for men, women, and parents. The way you market to a single woman is not the same way you’d market to a married woman with three kids. Buyer personas help you keep these different people in your audience separate so you can provide them with the best and most relevant marketing message. Creating buyer personas will help you create a better digital marketing plan because you will know how to better target members of your audience. Measure results A digital marketing plan should always have a strategy for measuring results. Measuring results is crucial in determining whether your business was successful with your efforts. It’s important to constantly monitor your results to ensure you’re putting out the best campaign. Steps to Run Effective Internet Marketing Campaigns You can use key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine your campaign’s success. KPIs are statistics that help you define whether you reached the goals you set. If you aren’t meeting your goals, it provides you with the opportunity to restructure your campaigns to drive better results. You can alter and optimize your strategies to help you reach consumers better. .button { background-color: #4CAF50; /* Green */ border: none; color: white; padding: 15px 32px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; font-size: 16px; margin: 4px 2px; cursor: pointer;
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Email Marketing Tools
Marketing trends and channels evolve over time. While some trends come and go quickly, one of the channels that has remained more or less the same is email. In fact, email continues to be the top channel for content marketing with both B2C and B2B marketers. 87% of B2B marketers and 77% of B2C marketers use it to nurture their audience. It can even help you amplify your other marketing channels such as social. With that said, marketers still face a ton of challenges in their email marketing efforts. One of these key challenges is simply the amount of time it takes to create a great looking email from scratch. Without efficient tools, marketers may end up spending a lot of time creating and sending out emails that don’t exactly look stunning. This hinders productivity while dragging down your email marketing ROI. SendGrid Twilio SendGrid is a leader in customer communications. Our trusted, cloud-based email delivery platform helps marketers and developers send with confidence. We are trusted by over 80,000 global customers, big and small, to drive engagement and growth through their email program. In addition to our award-winning API, Twilio SendGrid’s Marketing Campaigns offers powerful, one-to-many sending, straightforward segmentation, flexible and frustration-free campaign editing and actionable analytics Click here for more information ActiveCampaign ActiveCampaign helps any business connect and engage with their contacts through powerful, easy-to-use email marketing and contact management. Build newsletters, send triggered campaigns, and create personalized messages targeted to each contact’s interests so they get exactly what they want, when they want it. The campaign builder and full template library lets you design beautiful emails with just a few clicks, getting the right emails to the right people. Pricing starts at just $9/month. Clic here for more information Kartra Kartra is an all-in-one marketing platform for your online business. With just a few clicks of your mouse, Kartra will send out high-converting branded emails that keep your audience engaged and buying. Kartra’s email builder comes ready with professionally designed email templates and components so you just need to drag, drop, and click send. Kartra can split-test your email contents and subject lines, track conversions, and finally switch to whichever version converts the best automatically. Clic here for more information EmailOctopus EmailOctopus is the low-cost email marketing platform providing the essential features businesses and individual creators need to grow their mailing list and engage their audience. The easy-to-use email editor makes it possible to build both HTML-rich and simple plain text emails. While the automation and segmentation tools enable users to set up time-based autoresponders and drip campaigns, and deliver tailored messages to specific groups of subscribers. Clic here for more information .button { background-color: #4CAF50; /* Green */ border: none; color: white; padding: 15px 32px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; font-size: 16px; margin: 4px 2px; cursor: pointer;
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About email notifications for your manager account
You’ll receive email notifications when there’s critical information you should see about your manager account. But you can also choose to receive other types of notifications by email. This article shows you how to manage the email notifications you receive for your manager account as well as for your client accounts. Keep in mind that each user on a manager account can set their own notification preferences. Email notifications for manager accounts You can opt in to email notifications when you create your manager account, but you can change your preferences at any time. These are the types of emails you can choose to receive: NewslettersGoogle market researchCustomized help and performance suggestionsReportsSpecial offers Man look graphic chart, business analytics concept, big data processing icon, virtual reality interface, server room admin administrator, isometric illustration vector neon dark Email notifications for client accounts These are the types of emails you can choose to receive about your client accounts: Disapproved ads and policy alertsCampaign maintenanceCustomized help and performance suggestionsNewsletters For the first two, “Disapproved ads and policy alerts” and “Campaign maintenance,” you can choose to receive, all, only critical, or no emails. However, note that if the client account has no other users receiving critical email notifications for the account, you’ll automatically receive these critical emails on behalf of the client account. For the last two, “Customized help and performance suggestions” and “Newsletters,” you can choose to receive either all or no emails. About notifications in manager accounts Notifications in your manager account help you stay on top of important issues that may affect both your manager account and your client accounts. Your “Notifications” page, which you can find in the side navigation from any page in your manager account, displays notifications for all the manager accounts you manage and client accounts linked directly and indirectly to your manager account. Here are the different types of notifications for manager accounts: Payment alerts (including for declined and expiring credit and debit cards)Keyword and Creative alerts (including for underperforming keywords and disapproved ads)Campaign alerts (including for campaigns ending or ended)Budget alerts (including for account budgets running low or running out and account budgets ending)Account alerts (including inactive accounts due to incomplete account information) .button { background-color: #4CAF50; /* Green */ border: none; color: white; padding: 15px 32px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; font-size: 16px; margin: 4px 2px; cursor: pointer;
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