Peter O’Neill says, “Peter O’Neill here.  We held our annual research planning meeting the other week and ended discussing yet again the eternal question of B2B marketing versus B2C.  This is also a common discussion point with clients in my experience. Many of the documented marketing stories and best practices seem unsuitable for B2B marketers, they claim. B2C marketers respond that even business buyers are people and so the lessons they have learned apply equally to B2B.  Now, as is always the case with these interminable arguments, both parties are partly right — and they are... [...]

Laura Kane says, “Most marketers know the importance of creating unique content for different social mediums. For instance, would you use the same exact copy in a paid search ad that you did in a tweet? I hope I’m hearing a resounding, “No!” And yet, many marketers aren’t fully prepared for what comes next: when a visitor actually clicks on a link and lands on their website. If a visitor comes from a paid ad promising a coupon — and then they don’t see the coupon as soon as they arrive on your website, how do you think they’re going to feel? Confused; maybe... [...]

Amanda Disilvestro says, “Do you know how to leverage the value of your blog? It’s true that popularity is great for your content because it shows people are interested in your brand and shared content increases your visibility. However, it’s important that your blog transcends popularity and actually contributes to your overall goal – profitability. While it stands to reason that if your content is popular it is more likely to be profitable, there are things you can do to focus specifically on profitability to make sure your content is offering all it possibly can to your business... [...]

Mohit Maheshwari says, “Probably what Bill Gates claimed back in 1996 still holds valid for the digital industry – Content is King; and it will reign for years to come. But what’s the worth of a king without a strong team backing him? Likewise, though content alone takes the throne, content marketing strategies are central to the success of social media. As the year swifts towards its latter half, here’s a look at the good and the bad of content marketing strategies, finally arriving at 10 that have made it to the top of the ‘most effective list” in the world of social media. Businesses... [...]

Ryan Skinner says, “The problems of content marketing apply to you as a marketer whether you’re actually practicing “content marketing” or not. In any enterprise, there’s a New York Times-scale amount of content getting produced.[i] And your customers are hoovering up content (from a brand or otherwise, in many channels, interchangably) and making decisions based upon it.[ii] That means you’re in the content business. And the more customers control the purchase path, the more marketers find themselves in the content marketing business. Which means you will be dealing with the problems... [...]

Sean D’Souza says, “Let’s say you’re choosing between three photography courses covering similar topics. The prices are stacked like this: $200 $250 $2,000 What’s going through your mind right now? Curiosity floods your brain. Even if you’re not sure you can afford the $2,000 course, you want to know why it’s so expensive, compared to the other photography courses. If we were truly happy with lower prices, we would simply snap up the $200 workshop, right? We wouldn’t so much as take a glance at the rest”. Do Lower Prices Lead to More Sales? ‘Copyblogger’ Blog  [...]

Allison Howen says, “Snapchat made a major move this week with the launch of a new feature called “Discover.” With Discover, users are able to find Stories from a variety of editorial teams, such as CNN, Comedy Central and Food Network. According to Snapchat’s announcement, Discover is the result of a collaboration with media partners to build a storytelling format that puts the narrative first. Moreover, Snapchat puts an emphasis on the fact that this feature is not social media. “Social media companies tell us what to read based on what’s most recent or most popular. We see it... [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “The most popular days and times that brands post content to various marketing channels aren’t necessarily the most effective, according to a series of reports from TrackMaven. The data came from a research series released last year by TrackMaven, including a Twitter report (based on 1.7 million tweets from 1,423 brand accounts), blog report (1.2 million posts from 4,618 brands), email report (93,000 emails from 2,000 email lists), Instagram report (accounts of Fortune 500 companies), and Facebook report (1.5 million from nearly 6,000 brand pages). Key findings from... [...]

Brian Clark says, “Now we tackle the eternal question: how do you get traffic to your curation site so you can build an email list? Should we start building a war chest for advertising? Not yet. First we’re going to apply some creativity and sweat into driving traffic. Some of these methods are tried and true, but need to be executed a certain way for a curation project. Others are seemingly a little “outside the box,” and yet they complement a curated email newsletter perfectly. In this 22-minute episode Robert Bruce and I discuss: What makes curated content shareable and linkable The... [...]

Eric Murphy says, “According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2015 B2B and B2C benchmark reports, less than a quarter of marketers are able to prove content marketing ROI. Measurement is a key area of difficulty: 49% of B2B and 51% of B2C marketers were challenged with measuring content effectiveness in 2014. While definitions of effectiveness may vary by team, it should at least be simple to figure out if you’re successful once you define what “success” means. Here are two simple steps to establish a baseline for content effectiveness and prove if it’s failing (or not). Step... [...]