Archives for September 2015

140 B2B Content Marketing Statistics for 2016 Strategy Planning

The best content marketing strategies are informed by data and one of the most consistent B2B marketing research reports chock full of data comes from Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs.

Today the 6th edition of the B2B Content Marketing – 2016 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America report was published revealing a canyon of difference between successful content marketers and those that seem to be lost in the wilderness. This report is also a reality check for content marketers that drink too much of their own kool-aid, offering a mix of slightly downward trend data right along with numerous reasons for future content marketing optimism.

What do I mean by reality check? Fewer marketers have a documented content marketing strategy than last year 32% vs 35% and less marketers see their content marketing as effective 30% vs 38%.

140 B2B Content Marketing Statistics for 2016 Strategy Planning

7 Traits for Successful Digital Marketing Agency Client Relationships

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The relationships that we form with other people are an inherent part of being human. Some relationships stand the test of time while others become a distant memory. Relationships (good and bad) are not bound to our personal lives. Every day your interactions with coworkers, customers and other business contacts work towards building strong professional relationships today.

One of the larger investments that many organizations make today is in partnering with a digital marketing agency. The job of an agency is to understand who you are as a client and translate that message in a way that helps your brand better connect with target customers. Unfortunately, while 90% of agencies say they truly understand their client’s business, only 65% of clients agree.

7 Traits for Successful Digital Marketing Agency Client Relationships

How Does LinkedIn’s Jason Miller MAKE Marketing Magic? #MPB2B

Effective content creation requires more than setting goals, implementing a strategy and creating your assets. For content to really be great, your audience needs to see it. One of the most effective content promotion mechanisms is the use of social media.

MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute recently found that LinkedIn is the most effective social media platform for B2B marketers to distribute and promote content marketing assets. Instead of searching through countless websites looking for best practices, we’re taking you straight to the source.

We have partnered with MarketingProfs to bring you insights from some of the top speakers that will be presenting at MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum (October 20 – 23).

How Does LinkedIn’s Jason Miller MAKE Marketing Magic? #MPB2B

Online Marketing News: Facebook Gets The Signal, Auto-Converting Ads, Instagram Tops 400 Million

Anatomy Of A Perfect Checkout Page

How to Create the Perfect Checkout Page [Infographic] – 68% of all ecommerce visitors abandon their shopping carts – leaving $4 trillion of abandoned merchandize behind. But don’t despair – according to BI Intelligence, roughly 2.5 trillion (or 63%) of this is potentially recoverable. Check out this handy infographic to find out more. VWO

Facebook Launches Signal – Journalists use Signal to surface relevant trends, photos, videos and posts from Facebook and Instagram for use in their storytelling and reporting. This is an easy way to source and curate content from major public events across news, culture, entertainment, sports, and more. Journalists can then embed that curated content online and integrate it into their broadcasts. Facebook

Online Marketing News: Facebook Gets The Signal, Auto-Converting Ads, Instagram Tops 400 Million

18 Tools to Help Content Marketers With Blocking and Tackling SEO

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In order to scale any content marketing program, every marketer must be equipped with the right tools. Not only is it essential that you create quality content on a consistent basis, but it MUST be optimized in a way that enables you to be the best answer wherever your customers are searching.

A recent survey of over 200 B2B marketers found that 85% listed content marketing technologies as their current top priority. The following list of free and paid tools represents some of the core, “blocking and tackling” SEO tasks that content marketers can use to advance the findability of their work to better serve customers

18 Tools to Help Content Marketers With Blocking and Tackling SEO

Digital Marketing Spotlight: Rishi Dave, CMO at Dun & Bradstreet

Digital Marketing Spotlight

Marketing executives are more challenged than ever to create effective organizations and operations to succeed in an increasingly converged, content and inbound marketing world.

In this latest TopRank Marketing Digital Marketing Spotlight interview, Rishi Dave, CMO at Dun & Bradstreet, talks about the strategic responsibility differences of entering a CMO role, advice on creating an effective inbound marketing organization, the importance of content, the convergence of marketing and PR and whether senior executives should focus on their personal brand.

It’s been nearly two years since you moved from being Executive Director, Digital Marketing at Dell to your current role as CMO at Dun & Bradstreet. What are some of the changes you had to make in terms of your responsibilities, marketing organization and the change in industry?

Digital Marketing Spotlight: Rishi Dave, CMO at Dun & Bradstreet

7 Steps for Using Periscope to Better Engage Your Target Audience

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One of the most important jobs we have as marketers is to find a way to be the best answer for our customers, when and where they are looking. With so many new platforms to test on a consistent basis, it can be hard to move through the clutter and find ways to connect that will better engage your target audience.

Social media platforms provide new opportunities to resonate with your customers. Each time a new social media platform launches, there are the early adopters that explore how the platform works, test to see if it’s stable and then figure out how it can best be leveraged.

One of the biggest platform launches of 2015 was the live video streaming app, Periscope. As of August 2015, Periscope had a total of 10 million users, with over 40 years’ worth of video viewed every day.

7 Steps for Using Periscope to Better Engage Your Target Audience

Why It’s Time for More Participation in B2B Content Marketing

participation b2b marketing

B2B brands are answering the call to become publishers with a significant increase in content hubs exemplified by pioneers like American Express OPEN and Adobe’s CMO.com and others including:

Intel IQ
Think with Google
Dell’s Power More
GE’s World in Motion
SAP’s Digitalist Magazine

Content Hubs

While those are all great examples, there’s an important question: Can your business really afford to hire the kind of editorial team to create this quantity of quality content at the cadence of a business publication?

Many practical marketers will say no.

The trend towards brand publishing in combination with self directed buyers guiding their way through the sales process with content creates an interesting conflict between the need for an up level on quality content production with a corresponding increase in content creation resources.

Why It’s Time for More Participation in B2B Content Marketing

Online Marketing News: Instagram Ads Get Instagranular, Facebook Takes A Fifth, Snapchat Pay-To-Replay

Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing Work Better Together

Why Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing Work Better Together [Infographic] – A recent survey of business leaders showed that email and social media are the two channels most likely to see an increase in investment from business owners in 2015. Many businesses employ either email marketing, social media marketing or a combination of both, however many aren’t fully integrating the two together. Email marketing company Reachmail has put together a useful infographic that covers the benefits of integrating your social and email strategies together. Social Media Today

Instagram to Democratize Ad Products, Integrate Facebook Targeting Capabilities – Industry participants are excited about Instagram’s new ad formats as these capabilities make ads more targetable. It’s predicted that these changes will make the photo-and-social-sharing platform more appealing to advertisers than Twitter and Snapchat. ClickZ

Online Marketing News: Instagram Ads Get Instagranular, Facebook Takes A Fifth, Snapchat Pay-To-Replay

Win a Free Pass! Get Content Marketing Smart at MarketingProfs University in Minneapolis

MarketingProfs-University-Minneapolis

One of the biggest problems that many marketing organizations are facing today is creating quality content on a consistent basis. It can be a challenge to make sure every piece of content you produce is effective at helping to attract, engage and convert target customers.

In fact, according to research from Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, only 38% of B2B marketers state that their content marketing is effective. If you are one of the 62% of marketers that really need to improve content marketing performance, we have just the ticket. Literally!

Our friends at MarketingProfs are hosting a series of workshops focused on helping marketers reach content marketing success. From September 30 through October 2nd, these workshops will be held in Minneapolis.

Win a Free Pass! Get Content Marketing Smart at MarketingProfs University in Minneapolis

TopRank Marketing Top Takeaways & Speaker Quotes from Content Marketing World

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Content Marketing World is the largest content marketing conference in the world. To say that the team from TopRank Marketing was excited to attend, is putting it lightly. Lee Odden, Alexis Hall, Josh Nite and I made the journey to Cleveland to learn from some of the best and brightest content marketing minds in the industry.

In a perfect world we would have been able to attend every session, but we consumed, live blogged and shared all that we were physically able to do. Below are some of what we considered to be the top takeaways and best speaker quotes from Content Marketing World 2015.

Break the Cycle of Content Marketing Addiction: Turn Regular Content Into Extraordinary Success

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“Our content marketing success is not defined by the height of our peaks…it’s defined by the depth of our valleys.” – Andrew Davis

Andrew Davis the author of “Brandscaping: Unleashing the Power of Partnerships” has such an infectious energy that it is impossible not to sit up and listen when he is speaking. Last week, I had the pleasure of sitting front and center for Andrew’s presentation at Content Marketing World. Sadly, none of the Muppets from his previous work made a cameo, but this was by far one of my favorite sessions at the content rich conference.

According to Andrew, companies need to start rethinking the way that they “do” content marketing. This means breaking the cycle of content marketing addiction that plagues many of today’s marketers.

Break the Cycle of Content Marketing Addiction: Turn Regular Content Into Extraordinary Success