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"Countless small businesses send out countless emails every day," writes Gary Levitt in an article at MarketingProfs. "If you were to sift through campaigns and results (as I do), the mountains of data would suggest two breeds of email campaign: the outstanding … and the invisible. Your emails need to ... more
"When consumers hear of a local business that is not well known, it's only natural that they conduct some research before making a purchase," writes Nathan Hanks in an article at MarketingProfs. And when they do, they're most likely to choose results that appear first. "Thus," Hanks continues, "'owning' the first page ... more
Not every potential buyer approaches your business with the same enthusiasm or interest. In a MarketingProfs article, Paul McKeon identifies the four stages of the B2B buying cycle—and how to produce content specific to each one. The unaware buyer. "Content for the unaware buyer must be interruptive. It has to cause ... more
It's hard to decide what's appropriate for posting on social networks without an etiquette road map—and harder still when you're doing it as a company, not just as yourself. Amalia Agathou of The Next Web understands. To help marketers get the art of social updating right, she has written an article on ... more
"Blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other online platforms are giving organization like yours an enormous opportunity to engage directly with your customers or would-be customers," write Ann Handley and CC Chapman in their book Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) that Engage Customers ... more
Any successful email campaign begins with a good offer. But you won't close the sale or earn the click-through if your copy doesn't do its job. For instance: Are you discussing features without explaining benefits? Or placing your call to action "below the fold" where subscribers won't see it unless ... more
"There are a lot of things that can go wrong with email marketing—broken links, typos, unoptimized images—the list goes on," writes Magdalena Georgieva at the HubSpot blog. But on the other hand, she notes, marketers shouldn't focus so intently on small technical details that they lose sight of the big ... more
Writing at the Daily SEO blog, Brian Patterson highlights a problem many companies are starting to encounter: "As you began to type our client's brand name into Google Search, Google Suggest displayed our client's brand name + the word 'scam' as the second option, directly below their brand name." Patterson's ... more
We all know purchase confirmations are a great place to suggest complementary products and generate additional sales. But how well does your system work? In a post at the Bronto blog, Fawn Young recounts the story of an online retailer that had the right idea—but the wrong content. After purchasing a ... more
"Not too many years ago, content was produced by analysts, researchers, writers and journalists who spent a great deal of time developing well-written, thoughtful and provocative material," writes Joellyn Sargent at the Fresh Sprouts blog. Sadly, that level of attention to the written word is often lacking these days. With the ... more
In a post at her eponymous blog, Elaine Fogel asks how frequently you receive email with content that has no relevance. "I'll bet it's a lot," she says with certainty. "Let's just look at the ones you receive from companies and organizations that have your permission to send communications. Count ... more
Some 9 in 10 B2B marketing organizations, regardless of company size or industry, say they've used content as a form of marketing in 2011, according to a study by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. Moreover, those marketers also say they employ on average eight separate content marketing tactics to ... more
When subscribers are receiving your general newsletter, what's the best way to get them registered for a newly launched supplement that focuses on a more specific topic? In a post at Email Karma, Matt Vernhout examines the pros and cons of just such an outreach from Beyond the Rack: "To keep you ... more![Will Your Message Be Understood? Only If You 'Speak Human'! [Slide Show]](https://i.marketingprofs.com/assets/images/articles/lg/113011_slide-show_lg.jpg)
According to the 60 Second Marketer blog, email marketing is powerful because it delivers your message to a subscriber's inner sanctum—alongside party evites from friends and photos from recent family trips. Because of this, they argue, "You need to develop a relationship with the consumer as well. Otherwise you are ... more
"Despite some predictions that mobile SEO will be of negligible importance, mobile search has grown 5x in the past 5 years—far outpacing PC searches—and the growth is only set to continue with the rapid uptick in smartphone sales," writes Lior Levin in a guest post at HubSpot. That means if you ... more
We've talked up a storm about "gamification," and here's why: As ShuffleBrain CEO Amy Kim says, "gamers are everywhere; everyone's a gamer." And the best way to engage these fun types in a marketing effort is with smart game thinking—a balance of playfulness and strategic design. Kim has produced a detailed ... more
Professional services companies that generate a large proportion of business leads via online sources grow faster and more profitably than firms without such lead capabilities, according to a new study by Hinge Marketing, which also found that SEO, blogging, and Web analytics are among the most effective online marketing tools ... more
Any SEO strategy hinges on offering relevant, valuable information. But that might not mean what you think it does. According to the Todaymade blog, we content marketers gravitate toward discussions of our core businesses. "But the challenge that we all have in marketing is moving past those spheres of immediate influence ... more
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