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Tag: Content Marketing

  • Position² @ The Marketing Nation Summit, 2014

    ‘The Marketing Nation Summit’ that concluded last week provided a world of insights, knowledge and excitement!

    Team Position2 loved the event and is already looking forward to the next one. We had a lot of fun but, as you know, we’re serious when it comes to business.

    For all you folks who couldn’t attend the summit and for those who can’t get enough, here’s a quick recap…The Marketing Nation Summit Exhibitor Sponsor

    Day 1 – April 7

    Kicked off with an early morning run. Followed by on-site Marketo certifications where users could choose from one of four tracks that included – from basic forms, landing pages, emails to advanced and multi-stream nurturing.

    The day ended with a business mixer where event participants and exhibitors got an opportunity to network and explore new technology integrations.

    Day 2 – April 8

    The excitement went up several notches on the second day with all the high-powered sessions lined up!

    Ann Handley from MarketingProfs on Content Marketing

    The morning session at 8:00 was illuminating with Ann detailing the aspects that content marketers can and can’t take from traditional publishers. She said that though there is plenty to take away, content marketers should go beyond that. Ann’s 5-point action plan:

    • Experiences matter, not just narration: Add real-life examples instead of just narrating to your customers. It makes a lot of difference. Give them a feel of using your product.
    • Talk to your customers directly: Connect with your customers by using words like ‘you’, ‘we’ and ‘us’.
    • Experiment with your content marketing channels: Figure out your ideal content marketing mix. But also invest in different channels and learn what’s best suited for you.

    sam-khandelwal

    • Have a can-do attitude: You can do a lot with even small budgets and teams.
    • Be active in real-time: Participate in conversations as they happen or kick start them yourself.

    Dayna Rothman from Marketo on Lean Content Marketing for Lead Generation

    The session covered a wide variety of topics, from ideation to customers’ buying stages to creating the best content with small teams or budgets.

    But but but…the keynote address by Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was still waiting in the wings.

    Phil Fernandez spoke more about Innovation in the Nation, this year’s theme. Besides highlighting the fact that many strong industry players were Marketo users, Phil also provided cool insights into marketing automation and new features of the Marketo platform:

    • Real-time personalization: This allows marketers to personalize content for every member of the audience and helps succeed in creating unique, individualistic customer experiences.

    sam-khandelwal-1

    • Marketo’s new SEO capabilities & the Marketing Calendar: Marketo’s SEO capabilities will enable you to optimize your site’s SEO and work on competitor comparison. Watch out for its launch by the end of this year.
    • The Marketing Calendar will allow you to view, plan, map, adjust and trigger marketing programs in one place.

    Blog-Featured

    Post Phil’s session, Hillary Clinton took to the stage. She spoke on a number of topics ranging from inclusion of women in the technology industry to the infancy of the internet and how innovation needs a certain level of risk taking.

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    Day 3 – April 9

    The last day of the Summit was not lacking in excitement. The keynote address was by Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez (again) and General Electric’s CMO, Beth Comstock.

    After Phil Fernandez announced Marketo’s Revvie winners for this year, Beth Comstock took center stage and spoke on innovation and rapid changes in marketing:

    • Practical innovation: It’s important to understand what people actually need and keep innovating to satisfy that need. Ideas don’t count unless something is done about them. The future has to be today…
    • Innovation does not end: How do you instill ambition and accountability in your company? Dream big and scale. The journey of innovation involves offering powerful outcomes.
    • Marketing is growing in power: Marketers are innovators and integrators. We need to be where the market is moving to. Marketing needs to be a vital function with a growth agenda.
    • Mind sharing: Join hands with others in your system, solve problems as a group and expand your company expertise. Marketers are incubators of new businesses.

    DJ Waldow from Marketo on Being Human

    Marketo’s Digital Marketing Evangelist, DJ Waldow emphasized the importance of the ‘human’ element in marketing communication with examples:

    • Email subject lines and copy: Make them humorous, conversational and creative.
    • Videos: Personalized videos that help establish a rapport between company and customer are great. Though they may not be scalable, you can try them for important prospects and customers.

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    • Out-of-Office Replies: It helps communicate with your connections better if you’re more human.
    • Email opt-out landing pages: Instead of ultimatums, personalize landing page copy and offer unique options.

    Moz’s Cyrus Shepard on New Opportunities in SEO

    Cyrus said Google has been energizing SEO and the new changes in the field can be good opportunities:

    • Keywords to concepts: It’s the meaning behind the keyword that matters. You need to be contextually relevant to search queries.
    • Schema, markup and meta data: Google promotes sites that follow content structure, like authorship and reviews. The increase in CTR’s is beneficial and social annotations and data make searchers more attentive towards search results.
    • Web pages to awarding authority: Google is now moving away from blindly placing importance on web pages. The trend is to identify and reward experts who provide solutions through their content.
    • Links to endorsements: Google no longer cares about link building activities. Person-to-person endorsements are more important.
    • Page views to user satisfaction: Google measures bounce rate, time spent on the site, pages viewed per visit, shares, mentions etc. to understanding user satisfaction levels.

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    Whew! That’s some heavy lifting! We do hope you’ve picked enough points of interest from this post…

    What was your experience at the Summit? We’d love to hear from you! Get in touch with us!

  • Improve SEO Effectiveness with Google Trends

    Good SEO needs more than an understanding of the technical aspects of search and client’s requirements. It also needs a thorough knowledge of search trends relevant to your line of business.

    Google Trends is a great tool to stay updated on these trends. Yes, it will also give you information on keywords that are not specific to your brand, but that’s how people search. It’s not enough to just optimize your website for brand search terms. You also need to include relevant non-brand related keywords.

    Just think about it. Your target audience may not necessarily be looking for information using your brand name. They may be using search terms related to your industry. Having a wide spread of relevant keywords, though more expensive, can give you a competitive edge.

    Using data from Google Trends will help beef up your SEO efforts as it will help you understand consumer behavior better.

    Google has been emphasizing the fact that, in the future, SEO will be driven to cater to consumer needs. Google is now evolving from being a search engine to an interface which helps users get what they exactly want.

    The settings in Google Trends offer different categories of data:

    • Web, Image, News, Product and YouTube search
    • Worldwide or region-wise search
    • Time ranges (extremely important to know how a keyword evolved)
    • Data is further available by interest categories such as, Arts and Entertainment, Autos and Vehicles etc.

    You can compare up to five terms or even groups of terms at one time with up to 25 terms in each grouping, such as:

    • Social + Icons + networking
    • Analysis + web + tools + spend
    • ROI + campaign

    As with regular search, the + sign here tells Google that you want to cover searches that include ROI and campaign both. Using ‘Hot Searches’ and ‘Top Charts’, you can also find out about the top searches for the day and by popular categories. It is small things like this that can give you a vital edge or insight that makes a huge difference in the effectiveness of your campaign.

    Avenues to Use Google Trends

    Assistance in keyword research

    Google Trends shows popularity of search terms over a period of time with a graph that indicates interest ‘levels’. While it gives you an idea of the trend for those words, it does not provide exact numbers that search marketers can use. However by using Google Trends with the AdWords Keyword Planner, you can check the interest levels for the keywords for a particular campaign. This helps weed out relevant but unpopular keywords you may have picked.

    Worldwide Keyword Popularity

    The above screenshot shows the interest levels for terms ‘social media’ and ‘social networking’. The graphical representation clearly indicates that people have searched using ‘social media’ more than ‘social networking’. For example, if you are promoting a webinar related to social media skills through Google AdWords, you would do better using the phrase ‘social media’ in the title rather than ‘social networking’.

    In geo-targeting for campaigns

    You can access region-wise data on Google Trends and learn about the regions that exhibit the most interest in your keywords.

    Regional Keyword Popularity

    This depiction shows the maximum traction to be coming from Utah and Minnesota. You can even get data on the cities that top in these searches.

    Support in content marketing

    You can use ‘Hot Searches’ and ‘Top Charts’ to learn about trending topics in your industry. Do a quick survey among your clients and find out their real-time problems. Post blogs that answer those problems and build your reputation as an industry thought leader. Let’s pick Google among the social platforms and see the region where the interest has spiked.

    Region wise Brand Popularity

    So, if you are planning on promoting an eBook on best practices for Google search optimization, Oregon should be a top contender in your list.

    Video content generation

    A YouTube search for ‘social media’ and ‘social networking’ reveals that again Minnesota ranks highest again with ‘social revolution’ being the topmost key phrase.

    Maybe, you can convert your webinar on social media into a video or a series on how a brand can kick start a social revolution for itself by making the right moves. You can ensure your video features in YouTube search using these terms in your video title and description.

    Region wise Keyword Popularity on YoutubeTop Ranking Keywords on Youtube

    Another advantage of using Google Trends lies in estimating budgets to be allocated for paid campaigns. Data from Google Trends can be used to bid smartly on key search terms which users are actually using. This would help reach out to a larger section of the audience.

    Can you think of any other ways in which Google Trends can be used to boost SEO efforts? Tell us!

    Images Source: Google Trends

  • Online display vs. TV advertising, Social media impact on B2B buying process and much more…| Best of the Week

    This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.
    Despite Strong Growth, Share of Online Display Advertising Spend Well Behind TV
    From the Position² Blog This Week:
    Despite Strong Growth, Share of Online Display Advertising Spend Well Behind TV
    Online display advertising is a highly sought after form of online advertising and its growing at a strong rate. However, it is still not much compared to the growth of TV, a traditional media form. Read this article to know more.
    Top Stories this Week: Social Media
    Top Stories this Week: SEO, PPC and Digital Media
    Best of the Week Video Best of the Week Video
    Do you make your content simple or scientific?
    Google’s Matt Cutts answers a question on whether keeping your content simpler or including more scientific jargon in it makes a difference to your ranking. Check out this video to know Matt’s take on this.
    White Paper: Increase Visibility for Your Content by 4x
    Today’s traditional SEO is inadequate: Ignite your search results by accelerating visibility in more places than ever before.Download this White Paper and learn:

    • SEO, why the way we know it is not enough
    • Introducing and implementing Enterprise Visibility Accelerator (EVA)
    • Using multi-channel tracking tools for effective monitoring
    • How EVA benefits businesses.

    Download the complimentary EVA White Paper now

    		 Know more about Enterprise Visibilty Accelerator(EVA)
    If you are reading this blog post via a RSS reader, please click here to subscribe.

  • Overcoming the Struggles of Content Marketing

    Percentage of marketers using content marketing
    Content is a very important component of marketers’ strategies. Irrespective of the nature of campaigns being run, every marketer needs content to be a part of his store to inform, engage and convince viewers.

    Marketing the content that you develop is right at the top of the importance scale for marketers. Content marketing continues to shine as a priority area. This trend continues from 2013, when 91% B2B marketers said that they used content marketing to 2014 where the number of B2B marketers planning to use content marketing has inched its way up to 93%.

    In tandem with the increased usage, according to a recent Ad Age survey, 71% marketers are also spending more on content marketing in 2014. It’s important to note that this figure includes 58% B2B marketers.

    Despite such concentrated efforts, the above mentioned survey by Curata found that US marketers are floundering in content marketing waters. How do you counter these roadblocks in content marketing?
    B2B Content Marketing Spending Investment in content marketing

    Let’s look at some of the key issues (identified by the % of marketers facing these) and how they can be tackled.

    Contextualizing content (67%)

    Making sure the content that is developed is appropriate to the context in which it is being received is the biggest problem of marketers according to this survey.

    Solution

    • Use primary or secondary research to delve into your target audience’s minds and know what makes them tick. Also understand how and when they consume content.
    • Knowledge of audience demographics and online behavior are important factors in prepping your marketing campaigns for success.
    • Engage with customers to know them better. This will give you an idea of their deeper motivations that may not be revealed by basic research.

    Organizing content (63%)

    At 63%, organizing their content collateral is the second biggest hurdle for marketers.

    Solution

    • Organizing content is a matter of planning content flow so as to ensure that the marketing messages are being played out in a logical sequence to each audience.
    • This requires creation of a set content calendar to ensure that all campaigns go live at the designated time with the right content.
    • A clear content strategy serves as the backbone of well-organized content. A Content Marketing Institute survey found that only 44% B2B marketers have a documented content strategy!
    • 66% B2B marketers with a documented content strategy thought they experienced more success than those without (11%).

    Finding and discovering content (57%)

    According to an AOL and Nielsen study, 27,000,000 pieces of content is shared every day. That’s a really huge number! Finding and discovering content is this ocean is obviously difficult.

    Solution

    • You can use tools like blog topic generators that can line up topics suited for your business based on keywords you supply.
    • You can scout the web for trending topics from your industry and develop content that is relevant and gives you thought leader status.
    • You also can identify customer pain points that you can address through content. Even if you don’t have solutions it shows you to be thinking on the right lines. This will endear you to customers and show yours to be an empathetic brand.

    How B2B Organizations Tailor Content

    Sharing content (52%)

    Sharing the content developed may rank as the lowest in the list of marketers’ content related problems however it is a significant issue with over 50% marketers saying so. After all, content distribution is as important as developing the right content.

    Solution

    • Identify websites that cater to interests similar to your website and share content there through tactics like white papers, webinar registrations, eBooks, best practices guides etc.
    • You can also use distribution tools like Position2’s EVA that not only distributes your content across relevant sites, but also provides the added benefit of content re-purposing.

    Are you facing any other content marketing related problems? Do you think there are any other ways to tackle the above problems?

  • [Infographic] Digital Marketing Trends & Predictions for 2014

    Digital Marketing Trends & Predictions for 2014


    The year 2014 – digital marketing has reached a whole new level and continues to do so. However, some marketers are still wondering – “What factors are going to influence my marketing efforts this year and to what extent? Are there any surprises waiting?” Find out the answers to these questions and make some informed investment decisions after looking at this infographic.

    Digital Marketing Trends and Predictions 2014 [Infographic]