Online Marketing Blog

Most children are taught at an early age to share and that everything is NOT all about them. It can be a painful life lesson for some to grasp – especially if they don’t pick it up until later in life – but it’s an important one nonetheless.

This particular life lesson also applies to how brands approach content marketing. In the age of brands-as-publishers and empowered consumers, companies need to understand that what they publish cannot only be about themselves.

Why Drop the Me Me Me Act?

Because you don’t want to be “that guy.” You’re so much better than this.

Are we there yet?

Those four words likely conjure up the thought of a seemingly endless road trip of days past. Luckily for you, I’m not going to be talking about road travels in today’s post. No. I have a very different thought in mind, and that is the notion of ongoing optimization.

Savvy internet marketers work hard to uncover and understand the common characteristics of their buying audiences, segmenting them into groups and even going so far as to develop personas. They do this for a very good reason, how can you optimize your content for an audience if you don’t know who they are or what they want? This customer-centric approach to marketing is one that Lee has been advocating for years (see Chapter 6 of Optimize for some good nuggets).

With the sun starting to warm-up Lake Minnetonka where the TopRank Online Marketing HQ is located, it got me thinking about how the disciplines of customer optimization and fishing are similar. You may laugh at that idea, but given my tendency to leave each fishing trip with 5-7 less lures, an impressive sunburn and zero fish, I have spent a lot time reflecting on how to elevate my fishing ‘game’.

[Note from Brian: Please note that Marketo is a client of TopRank Online Marketing]

When was the last time you heard of a really successful email campaign? Or TV ad campaign? Or a campaign on any channel for that matter? It’s likely been awhile.

The reason that isolated, channel-specific campaigns are rarely discussed these days is simple: they rarely work. That by no means is saying that email, or TV, or social, can’t be incredibly effective platforms to market your messages. Cross channel (see multiple channel) marketing is effective because each of these platforms can have an impact, when integrated into a holistic campaign.

It’s with this in mind that Maria Pergolino, Marketo’s Senior Director of Marketing, led the Marketo Summit panel discussion ‘Engaging with Cross Channel Marketing’.

Jay Baer Keynotes Wednesday Lunch Session at 2012 Marketo Summit

There has long been a widely held (and incorrect) belief that social media is a B2C sandbox. ’Stay out B2B marketers, this social thing has nothing to do with you.’ Of course, there have been countless studies that have documented B2B marketers successes in driving results in social.

With the notion that social is only for B2C debunked, in its place now are new myths. Each chalked-full of misinformation and hyperbole regarding B2B’s ability to implement, engage and monitor social. Jay Baer, President of Convince & Convert, lead a high-impact and high-energy presentation at the Marketo Summit aimed to call-out and ‘destroy’ some of the more prevalent myths.

The session was titled ‘Destroying the 7 Myths of B2B Social Media‘, and here are the 7 myths Jay shared.

At TopRank Online Marketing, we are fortunate to provide consulting to quite a few innovative B2B companies that serve other marketers. An example of that is PRWeb and parent company, Vocus, both long standing clients.

In late 2011 Vocus welcomed Jason Jue as Chief Marketing Officer. As Vocus & PRWeb’s Account Manager at TopRank, I was keenly interested in getting to know Jason better and learning his plans for the future – and what better way than through an interview for all readers of Online Marketing Blog to see?

In this interview Jason talks about the undeniable convergence of PR and marketing, what social media metric is most undervalued by many PR and marketing professionals, where marketers should invest for 2013 and his vision for Vocus.

Linkbuilding has to be one of my favorite aspects of SEO. All too often people use the analogy of linkbuilding being a popularity contest. As someone who views linkbuilding in a somewhat different light – and as someone who was considered by only his parents as ‘cool’ – I think it’s time to put that analogy to bed. Yes, being the sexy-fun brand will undoubtedly drive links for your site. But in my opinion, it’s the quality of the information on the page that will not only help you succeed in proactively acquiring links, but will also inspire others to link to your page. Or to return to the analogy, the cool kid might start out with the lead, but it’s the smart kid (see nerd) who ends up winning in the long run.

Have you worked yourself to the bone on a video marketing campaign only to see the results fall flat? Do you have a wealth of video content but are unsure how to leverage it effectively to serve your marketing objectives? Can your presence on YouTube be summed as ‘well, we have a channel’?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you’re not alone. Getting results through your video marketing efforts can be a challenge if you don’t have the right game-plan. However, you’re in luck! At day 2 of SES New York TopRank CEO Lee Odden moderated a panel discussion with leading industry video marketers.Their stellar tips and insights that can be found below.

If you’re a marketer with business objectives tied to online conversions, landing pages are likely part of your marketing mix. While landing pages have a proven track record of serving as a lead generation funnel and producing solid ROI, not all landing pages are created equal. Enter the process of testing and refining your landing page in order to deliver maximum result – aka landing page optimization.

The “Smart Mobile Marketing” session was a panel discussion, moderated by TopRank CEO Lee Odden. To begin the discussion, Lee opened with a question for the room of 80+, “How many people in the room have developed a mobile version of a site?” 3-4 hands slowly raise. And with that, the stage is set: There is a lot of learning to do surrounding mobile marketing.

The session panel consisted of 2 leaders and veterans of the mobile marketing industry, Deborah Hall and Michael J. O’Farrell.

Deborah Hall

Hall founded web2mobile 3 years ago, frustrated with the user experience when trying to access a site via a smart phone. One of the greatest challenges she noticed was the upload speed, or lack thereof, of sites.

WARNING: This post is based on a Marty Weintraub presentation.  If you have seen Marty present, then you understand the warning and are probably smiling.  For those of you who have not, just remember you were warned, although this text doesn’t do justice to Marty IRL.

All kidding aside, Weintraub, CEO of aimClear, is a talented presenter that has a passion for his subject matter, Facebook.  In “Killer Facebook Targeting Tactics” at SES Toronto, Weintraub focused primarily on behavioral targeting. You know, identifying the behavior of your ideal audience and target/market accordingly. Sounds simple until you consider the millions of ways a marketer can slice and dice audience segments in Facebook.

Facebook marketing is a big topic and this presentation was specifically focused on Facebook ad targeting.

Really, truly understanding the competitive landscape can help pave the way for a successful search engine marketing program.

Chris Boggs led a panel discussion at SES Toronto on Competitive Analysis – What tips and tools can get you the vital competitive information that every SEO needs. According to Boggs, “Competitive analysis is one of the most exciting and important tactics (SEOs) can do.

The session was segmented into 3 areas of focus: on site research,off site research and PPC research.

On Site Research

Marios Alexandrou, Rosetta

When conducting on site (i.e. within your competitor’s site) competitive analysis, start by:

1) Asking yourself, “what companies should I look at?”  Compete.com can come in handy here.  Enter a handful of competitors and look for companies with high traffic. These are the companies that will likely have characteristics that will help inform your SEO approach.