Online Marketing Blog

Marketing software can help companies scale and automate important marketing processes of all kinds, from lead nurturing to data analysis to sales process optimization and beyond. Regardless of the software company behind it, these solutions are typically designed to help companies save time, identify opportunities, and close the gaps internally or externally that keep them from achieving their goals.

The goal in most businesses is pretty straightforward: increase revenue and more importantly, profits. The process to get you there is nowhere near that simple. Marketing software is meant to:

• make it easier to increase multi-channel visibility,
• align sales and marketing efforts (often through CRM integration),
• reach the right people at the right place and time with enhanced targeting, and
• help nurture and maintain relationships.

If you are like most Americans, Sunday night was spent in front of the television watching Seth McFarland sing songs that ran much too long and make awkward jokes.  I was actually one of the few that did not watch the Oscars (I don’t have the attention span) but I did follow the buzz online.

As an online marketer, it’s always interesting to see how companies take advantage of events such as the Super Bowl, Oscars, Grammy’s, etc.  Many viewers are just as interested in seeing the glamorous outfits and train wrecks which can all be found on the red carpet.  Similarly, there were a select number of companies that successfully carried off an integrated Oscars marketing campaign, as well as some that just didn’t hit the mark.  Below you’ll find what I consider to be the best and worst “dressed” social media marketing moments from the Oscars.

Creating original content is resource intensive and while some companies that have all the copywriting resources they need (that’s an exception not the rule) it makes sense to curate content in addition to publishing original articles and media.

Curation is the cornerstone of being useful on the social web by finding, filtering and adding insight to content online and sharing with social networks.

Qualitative curation over time helps associate the topics being curated with the company or person doing the curating. When a company does a good job of defining its unique selling proposition and what it stands for, those key concepts help define editorial themes in everything from a content calendar to topics that drive curated social media content.

Astronauts Tom Marshburn, Kevin Ford and Chris Hadfield chat live from the International Space Station with #NASASocial participants.

February 20th, NASA hosted a special event at their Washington headquarters in which a group of their social fans attended a day of tours, expert talks and even a livechat with astronauts on the International Space Station. My son and I are fortunate to have participated and on top of the insider look we had at NASA research, we learned a great deal about the power of social media advocacy, as well.

So what happens when an organization puts 150 of their loyal social media fans in one room for a fantastic, exclusive experience? Brand building and social reach magic, judging by the results of yesterday’s #NASASocial.

One of the most common problems marketers have with content is ideation. This is especially true with companies that have relied on just a few individuals for things like blogging and social promotions. Eventually, people will run out of their own ideas. It is inevitable and a certainty in most cases.

The solution for business content ideation is to be connected to the interests, goals and purchasing journey of the consumer. By knowing the customer lifecycle, content can be planned for each customer segment according the information needs of buyers as they discover, consume and act on content.

Besides that customer centric approach to content planning, there are a variety of opportunities to get ideas in order to be more creative or to surface concepts and stories that are unique. Here are 5 sources that can give marketers useful and practical ideas for serving their customer content marketing needs:

After a long and stressful week at the office it’s time to kick back, relax, and make the most of your weekend.  The easy option might be to stay in, order take-out, or watch Golden Girls reruns.  However, you might also be ready to blow off some steam.  Let’s face it, as attractive as a lazy night on the couch sounds, you know once you put in the extra effort a night out will be much more fun.

Comparatively, there are two ways to plan a social media strategy.

• Plan 1 consists of a lazy and solo mission where you simply share a few things here and there that are just a regurgitation of social media stories and promotions that your readers have already heard.

With millions of blogs and other social content to compete against, the challenge of standing out can seem overwhelming for business and personal bloggers alike.

But it doesn’t have to be a mystery for customers to find your corporate blog. If you have interesting and useful things to say, there is an audience seeking that very information.

The connection between social media and blog promotion for companies is logical: Publish a blog post and then tweet it out or post a link to Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.

But there’s more to making your business blog findable than just sharing links through social channels. That’s why focusing solely on the promotion of blog content after it’s published is like a hamster running on an exercise wheel. The ideal is to be intentional and planned yet also opportunistic. And to scale those promotion efforts, it’s essential that two or three times as much time is spent growing social networks than actually promoting content to them.

Valentines Day is a holiday that some people look forward to, while others dread it’s very existence.  Let’s face it; no one likes to be alone on Valentine’s Day. Much like personal relationships, business relationships take effort. What are you doing this year to ensure you’re spending time with someone special and keeping your conversion funnel full?

The typical B2B buying cycle is anywhere from 3 to 12 months.  It can be challenging to maintain appropriate touch points throughout a longer sales cycle in a way that will encourage a potential customer to convert, rather than slipping out of the funnel.

Utilizing analytics is a great way for companies to gain insight into customer and prospect behavior and make adjustments to their marketing strategy based on that insight. However, a long sales cycle requires analytics be used beyond simply connecting purchase to channel and adjusting the marketing mix accordingly.

Striking down opponents with your ninja online marketing skills can provide a sense of satisfaction that many marketers crave.  However, there is danger in focusing all of your efforts on the front end of the customer buying cycle.

Do you know how much it costs to acquire new customers versus retaining those that have already signed with you?  According to a recent study it costs roughly six to seven times more to gain a new customer, than to keep an existing one.  Email marketing is one of the many ways that we can communicate with customers on an ongoing basis.  If you’re tired of the same old ninja stars and nunchuks, I’ve uncovered 5 email marketing tips to add to your arsenal.

Within the blogging community there’s a substantial number of bloggers that are independent business people and even more that run a personal blog. With the rise and fall and rise again of blogging as an online communications channel there are the expected debates about best practices and such.

One of the debates is around writing content as a stream of consciousness with the assumption that it will attract the audience that it deserves, causing it to be shared and exposed to even more readers.

Then there are the opportunists that seek to scale the reach of their content though blogging by creating processes for generating topics, keyword optimization and social sharing schemes to blast the content everywhere the internet’s sun doesn’t shine.

In just a few weeks, I’ll be making the pilgrimage to London where I will be speaking at the SES London conference about integrated marketing and content, two very hot topics right now.

As the internet marketing industry evolves with innovations in platform technologies and consumer behaviors changing right along, marketers and brands are trying their best to keep up. This is as true in London as it is here in Minneapolis or New York or San Francisco.

Top of mind these days is “content marketing” and a study from Econsultancy and Adobe reports that content marketing is a top digital marketing priority in 2013 for companies worldwide. Another study conducted by Econsultancy & Responsys shows that UK companies are budgeting accordingly with 99% stating they will increase or maintain their content marketing investments in 2013.

Over the course of my online marketing career, I’ve had the opportunity to participate on both sides of the online PR outreach process, pitching publications on behalf of clients as well as receiving them as a search and social industry journalist. In the course of performing outreach for clients and receiving hundreds of pitches from other PR professionals and in-house marketers, a few important rules became crystal clear.

Companies use online PR in a number of different ways, depending on the desired outcome. You might pitch mainstream media to offer a company executive up as an expert source on a breaking news story, in order to build your company’s credibility. Where the goal is to earn links back to your website, you may offer guest posts or interviews to industry bloggers or digital magazines. Your focus might be increased exposure in your target market, in order to increase sales of a certain product or service.