Online Marketing Blog

What’s a faster way to connect with a target audience than building thought leadership from scratch? Working with influencers that already have authority and credibility with the target audience you want to reach.

Why so many companies focus only on buying their way into new markets and audiences I may never know. But working with industry influencers through networking, surveys and interviews has been an instrumental approach for our boutique and specialized agency to achieving amazing relationships with a substantial number of major brands and industry experts.

This post is an in-depth look at how your business can tap into the power of influencers and co-created content through 7 steps that go from planning to implementation to measurement.

As the search marketing industry continues to feel the sting of Google narrowing down what passes as acceptable search marketing practices, more practitioners find themselves having to defend the channel. This is more true with SEO than Search Advertising, but for many, search marketing isn’t exactly the poster child it once was.

But that’s not how the panel of digital marketers we polled from major corporations including Optum, General Mills, Bank of America, Carlson, Dell, IBM and AOL see it. Their view is far more optimistic.

As companies begin to plan their strategic marketing initiatives, it can be tough sorting through the “propaganda” from search engines and search marketers alike. I’m a fan of going to the source whenever possible for clarity on marketing trends and besides your own data, what better source than companies making choices about marketing budgets, developing strategy, implementing tactics and defending marketing performance on a daily basis?

Continuous learning is the key to stay ahead in the digital marketing and PR world. Besides learning from your own experiments, connecting with other industry subject matter experts and peers can be a great way to expand your knowledge network. You ARE building a knowledge network, right?

Events are a big part of how I stay connected in the industry and create content. I also get to learn a lot from the awesome people I meet at conferences – both offline and online.

In fact, I must REALLY like learning and building my network because over the next 3 months at least 8 events are in store and unlike the top photo from a recent event in London, all are in the U.S.!

Twitter Engagement Study: Top Apps, Content Sources & Profiles Among Search Marketers - The search marketing community is one that can be defined by the topics we write about and share with our colleagues. In its latest report, “How Search Marketers Engage on Twitter,” social insights company Leadtail looked at 521 U.S. search marketers (SEMs) on Twitter to discover what topics they talked about, which content they consumed and shared, and what publications and people were the most influential in the Twittersphere. Search Engine Watch

REPORT: Facebook, Google To Represent 15% Of Total Ad Market In 2016 - Facebook and Google combined will account for a 15 percent share of the total media advertising marketing of $200 billion in 2016, according to the latest projections from market researcher eMarketer. AllFacebook

Have you noticed the phrase “digital marketing” being bounced around a lot more lately? Me too.

I admit that I’m one of the sources of that bouncing. With the rate of change occurring in the marketing world, I think describing what we do is something that isn’t really satisfied by just one phrase.  Content, Search, Inbound, Multi-Channel, Integrated, all seem to have their place, but “Digital” seems to express what most companies are creating in their marketing right now.

As much as people toss around “digital marketing”, I get the impression that we’re not all on the same page in terms of what it actually means. Just a few weeks ago, we posted a digital marketing predictions post that now has nearly 8,000 social shares. Both the answers and the feedback were quite varied.

Understand Globally, Communicate Locally

Literally and figuratively.

While at networking event in Bucharest I met the head of global business development and partnerships for a well known video hosting platform. Working with professionals from so many different countries, cultures and customs requires careful attention to communications and behavior – not entirely unlike how marketers who create content need to flavor their message according to the unique needs of each target audience.

He shared with me how things like accepting a business card from someone in China and then writing on it or not greeting the most senior person first in a Middle Eastern country, can kill a deal. He also talked about the importance of structuring engagements in a way that not only empathizes with the business customs of the region, but also makes money for all involved.

With 35.6 Million Tweets, Germany’s 7-1 #WorldCup Win Over Brazil Sets A New Twitter Record [STATS] - Tuesday, in a match that will be remembered for a long time and likely take the host nation (and its ardent fans) years to recover from, Germany humiliated a Sunday league-esque Brazil side 7-1 in the World Cup semi finals. AllTwitter

How To Be in the Top 5% of Bloggers [Survey] - Orbit Media Studios conducted a survey of more than 1,000 bloggers to better understand the processes of industry experts. Respondents answered questions about time spent on a typical post, frequency, editing, promotional tactics and more. Orbit Media Studios

The influence of search on content beyond Google, Bing and Yahoo is pretty amazing. Just think of all the social media monitoring platforms that have launched – they’re all essentially search engines.

Another category of online tool that relies on search are content discovery tools (just like Google is a content discovery tool).  Except this category of content discovery weights content shared on social media channels more heavily and often provides the ability to organize and flavor search results based on an analysis of what your own social networks are posting and sharing links to.

The obstacle in front of most large, or mature companies of any size when it comes to digital and content marketing, is the battle with status quo. From strategy to tactics and especially measurement, change is often seen as interruptive and risky vs. adaptive. But without adaptation, we can hardly evolve, can we?

As Tom Fishburne implies in the cartoon above, change isn’t risky, safe is risky.

Companies evolving from Stasis to Production and into Utility and Storytelling modes of content marketing maturity begin to broaden the scope of what business goals content can deliver for a company.

Staying competitive in the B2B marketing space seems overwhelming for a lot of marketers right now with all the hype about everything from content marketing to programmatic ad buying.

While I am a firm believer companies do need to stay on top of what’s new, continuously experiment, adapt and evolve, there’s still quite a bit of low hanging fruit when it comes to B2B marketing tactics.

What are those easy pickings you ask? It’s marketing fundamentals! But you say, “Nah, we’ve been to the basics mountain, summited and back. Been there, done that.”

Here’s the thing about online marketing basics: the nature of the tactics persist, but the data that supports them along with execution have undoubtedly changed.

The 13 Most Popular B2B Content Marketing Tactics – Click the above infographic to get insight into what content marketing strategies are being deployed by B2B marketers, and see the gaps in what is being deployed versus what the impact of those strategies might be. Marketing Tech Blog

Email Marketers Need to Do More to Nurture Leads [Study] - A joint report from Bizo and Oracle Marketing Cloud shows email marketing isn’t enough when it comes to nurturing leads and suggests marketers should develop multi-channel strategies instead. ClickZ

45% of Millennials Aren’t Compelled by Content - Savvy marketers recognize the value of content and embrace its future impact. These marketers have devoted countless resources to better serve content to the ever-elusive millennial. Despite all of this, 45% of millennials simply aren’t interested in the content marketers currently serve, according to a recent study conducted by DigitasLBi, Razorfish, Tumblr, and Yahoo. Direct Marketing News

So, a SEO guru, a social media expert and a public relations pro walk into a content marketing bar.

The search marketer says to the bartender, “I’d like 35 shots of of the same tequila, but each needs to be in a slightly different glass, in different amounts and chilled at slightly different temperatures.”

The social media marketer says, “I’ll buy a round for all my friends and get one for yourself too. Oh, and let’s take a selfie while we drink. #socialdrinking”

The public relations pro joins in the fun too and winks at the bartender saying, “I’ve heard you have some really good microbrews here. If I could try a few, I’lll text all my friends this is the place to be.”