Online Marketing Blog

How A Best Answer Content Strategy Drives B2B Marketing Results

Lee Odden on Jan 17th, 2019 B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

For many B2B marketers content is a numbers game, especially as the number of channels for discovery and engagement grow right long with competition for attention.

We all know how the information overload story ends: buyers disconnect, they start to ignore marketing content and they lose trust in the brands trying so desperately to reach them.

Smart voices like Ann Handley in the B2B marketing industry have called for a focus on quality and even brevity over the hamster wheel of content mediocrity. Many have listened and yet many more B2B marketers are still fighting the uphill battle of creating uninspired blog post after blog post, ebooks, white papers, case studies and who knows how many social messages – and to what end?

How A Best Answer Content Strategy Drives B2B Marketing Results

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The Next Level of Influence: 30 Essential Influencer Marketing Statistics

Joshua Nite on Jan 16th, 2019 Online Marketing

Pop Quiz: When influencer marketing is done right, who wins?

a) Your brand
b) The influencers
c) Your audience
d) All of the above

In case you missed the last few classes, the answer is D. In the ideal influencer marketing engagement, your brand gets a boost in credibility, authority, and exposure to a new audience. The influencer gets a cool content asset to promote, association with other thought leaders, and is able to grow their influence in their niche. And the audience gets awesome content neither the influencer nor the brand could have produced on their own.

Getting to that “everyone wins” stage requires strategic planning and execution, though. You can’t just throw money at someone with a big Instagram following and expect results.

The Next Level of Influence: 30 Essential Influencer Marketing Statistics

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How to Choose a B2B Marketing Agency that Can Evolve with Your Needs

Alexis Hall on Jan 15th, 2019 B2B Marketing, Digital Marketing

B2B brands’ marketing departments are constantly evolving. Over the past 10 years, marketing teams have undergone a seismic shift to accommodate changing technology, millennial consumers and employees, and to breakdown silos between marketing and the rest of the business.

To keep pace with the changing marketplace, many B2B brands are working to find the perfect balance between growing out their in-house digital marketing team and partnering with an external digital marketing agency. Most brands are seeking agency partners to provide a spectrum of services, from tactical support to creative strategy and content innovation. And they need a partner that can adapt and evolve along with their marketing needs and opportunities.

So, the question is: To find that partner that can grow and adapt to your needs, what should you be looking for?

How to Choose a B2B Marketing Agency that Can Evolve with Your Needs

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Two Key Marketing Opportunities Amid Stories of Fake Traffic and Fraudulent Metrics

Nick Nelson on Jan 14th, 2019 Content Marketing

“What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.” — Morpheus, The Matrix

~~~~~

“How much of the internet is fake?” pondered the headline of a late-December New York Magazine feature, before answering its own question: “A lot actually.”

What followed was a systematic unpacking of that premise, via author Max Read. Though somewhat cynical and harsh, his argument was backed by facts and evidence at every turn.

He documented case after case of fake traffic and fraudulent metrics.

He shared videos of phony engagement factories known as click farms.

Two Key Marketing Opportunities Amid Stories of Fake Traffic and Fraudulent Metrics

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Digital Marketing News: Facebook Usage Data, Google Teams With Nielsen, AI Is Eating Advertising, & B2B Podcasting Growth

Lane Ellis on Jan 11th, 2019 Online Marketing News

2019 January 11 SocialBakers Image

Inside Google Marketing: 4 ways we’re planning for an automated future
Google plans to seek out better data for a more automated future, the search giant recently announced, along with other insight for users of its Google Marketing Platform, including optimized data points and scalable creative templates. Think With Google

Comscore and Nielsen are racing to become the one true cross-platform measurement provider
2019 will see both Google and Nielsen increase efforts to lead the way in online traffic and usage measurement, using expanded measurement tools each plan to begin rolling out in the coming months. Digiday

AI Is Eating Advertising – And 2019 Will Be Critical For Getting It Right
Artificial intelligence is playing a greater role in digital marketing, utilizing vast amounts of existing demographic data, and AdExchanger takes a look at how this shift has affected the way marketers work. AdExchanger

Digital Marketing News: Facebook Usage Data, Google Teams With Nielsen, AI Is Eating Advertising, & B2B Podcasting Growth

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Rock Your Content Marketing With The Collective Wisdom Codex

Lane Ellis on Jan 10th, 2019 Content Marketing

Ancient codex books.
Our popular Collective Wisdom series has explored the entire B2B content marketing life-cycle. The eight-part series featured information-packed posts covering everything from creative conception to postmortem analytics.

As we settle in to the new year, we wanted to bring it all together here, in one handy B2B content marketing codex, to help jump-start your digital marketing campaigns for 2019. Read on!

The 1st Pillar: The Power of Planning Ahead

Collective Wisdom Series Part 1 Planning Ahead Chess Image

As Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” Take her famous advice to heart, and create an actionable content plan long before beginning to create actual content.

You can boost your content marketing success and plan ahead by:

Documenting your plan
Building a sharer list

Rock Your Content Marketing With The Collective Wisdom Codex

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Take 2019 By Storm: Get Inspired By These 11 Content Marketing Quotes

Anne Leuman on Jan 9th, 2019 Content Marketing

Another year. Another strategy. Another budget. Another long to-do list.

Ushering in the new year is both an exciting and grueling time for content marketers everywhere. We’re celebrating accomplishments from the previous year. We’re taking stock of misses and opportunities. We’re working to weave in emerging content trends into next year’s plan. And we’re setting goals.

But just like New Year’s resolutions, it can be hard to stick to the plan and tick off all of the things you want to accomplish. After all, the year is long and plans change often in today’s evolving digital landscape.

To help you take on 2019 and muster up the motivation and inspiration to achieve your goals, we gathered several inspiring (and perhaps reassuring) quotes from respected and seasoned marketing leaders. From content strategy to execution, they’ll help you find success in the New Year.

Take 2019 By Storm: Get Inspired By These 11 Content Marketing Quotes

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The Content Marketer’s Toolbox: 3 ‘Real-Life’ Tools for Gaining Insight, Inspiration, & Amplification

Caitlin Burgess on Jan 8th, 2019 Content Marketing

In the modern content marketing age, leveraging a diverse set of tools is par for a successful marketing course. Tools help unlock insight. Tools help capture attention and reach. Tools help drive efficiency. Tools help you measure, analyze, and optimize for better success.

The simple truth is: Every content marketer needs a robust toolkit that’s tailored to their unique business and marketing needs—but that toolkit doesn’t begin or end with your martech stack. Uh-oh-oh.

via GIPHY

There’s no denying the importance that marketing technology plays in today’s ever-changing and sometimes tumultuous digital landscape. But your toolbox needs more than software. It also needs more tangible, real-life tools to help you uncover the context and insights that can help you be more effective (and help you use martech tools more effectively).

The Content Marketer’s Toolbox: 3 ‘Real-Life’ Tools for Gaining Insight, Inspiration, & Amplification

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BIGLIST of 50 Top Marketing Blogs for 2019 – Martech Edition

Lee Odden on Jan 7th, 2019 BIGLIST Marketing Blogs, Digital Marketing

During my marketing conference travels I was asked a curious question: Are blogs still a thing in marketing?

In my B2B marketing world, blogs are core to successful content, search, social and influencer marketing. It seems the business world agrees. The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth ongoing study of blogging and social media reported in 2018 that 53% of Fortune 500 companies have a corporate blog (an 11% increase over 2017) and 55% of the Inc 500 companies are blogging,

Blogs are still an effective part of marketing however it can also be argued that many of them are not well maintained or updated very often. But here’s the thing: There’s more useful knowledge about marketing being shared than ever before, so where can marketers find the best marketing blogs to follow?

BIGLIST of 50 Top Marketing Blogs for 2019 – Martech Edition

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Digital Marketing News: Google’s Take on URL Structure, B2B Tech Marketing Trends Survey, NPR’s RAD Podcasting, & Decentralised AI

Lane Ellis on Jan 4th, 2019 Online Marketing News

2019 January 4 MarketingCharts Image

What B2B Tech Marketers Are Planning for 2019
Video marketing, Account-Based Marketing (ABM), and on-demand and influencer marketing strategies lead the list of practices digital technology marketers plan to adopt during 2019, one of several findings in recent survey data. By the end of 2019 influencer marketing strategy adoption is expected to expand to 48 percent, a significant increase over 2018’s 31 percent. MarketingCharts

Instagram CPCs, CPMs drop as click-throughs continue to climb
Instagram advertisers have seen good news lately, as cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM) rates have fallen at the same time that click-through-rates (CTR) have jumped, according the recent report data focusing on the third quarter of 2018. Marketing Land

Digital Marketing News: Google’s Take on URL Structure, B2B Tech Marketing Trends Survey, NPR’s RAD Podcasting, & Decentralised AI

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Explore, Experience, Engage: 6 Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2019

Lee Odden on Jan 3rd, 2019 Digital Marketing

digital marketing trends 2019

With the excitement of every new year comes a new batch of marketing trends and predictions. Marketers all over the world are pondering what trends, tactics and technologies they need to focus on in order to attract, engage and convert towards reaching their marketing and business goals?

From one year to the next, there are often a mix of new trends, technologies and consumer behaviors combined with enduring best practices that marketers have yet to fully adopt. This year is no different.

As I contemplated the evolution of our own marketing efforts for clients reconciled with research on top marketing trends for 2019, I found a concentration of interest in a few specific areas like video, voice, AI and influencer marketing as well as a long tail of sorts ranging from AR/VR to camera marketing to visual search.

Explore, Experience, Engage: 6 Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2019

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