Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®

Archives for October 2016

7 Spookily Successful Digital Marketing Campaigns for Halloween

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Q: What’s the ratio of a pumpkin’s circumference to its diameter?
A: Pumpkin Pi

All jokes aside, Halloween presents a huge sales opportunity for B2C (and even some B2B) brands. In fact, Halloween is only second to Christmas as the most commercially successful holiday. And a recent survey found that Halloween spending is estimated to reach $8.4 billion dollars this year, the highest in survey history.

Depending on your line of business, this presents an enormous opportunity for marketing departments to help generate a ton of cash over a short amount of time. However, the bar is incredibly high and competition is stiff, which means that consumers are looking for clever, creative and memorable marketing campaigns. The seven spooktacular campaigns below made their mark this year.   


7 Spookily Successful Digital Marketing Campaigns for Halloween

Online Marketing News: The Art of Stealing, Twitter Closes Vine & Helpful Chat Bots

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How to Improve Blog Writing Through the Art of ‘Stealing’ [Infographic]
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, or at least that’s the rumor. So, how can you (legally and ethically) ‘steal’ the high-performance content mojo from a fellow writer to help improve your work? This infographic explains how. MarketingProfs

Important News about Vine
Twitter announced on Thursday that they’ll be discontinuing their Vine app. The platform, which just announced a round of layoffs last week, says they’ll be ‘doing this the right way’ by keeping the website online so users can continue to access their content. Vine on Medium


Online Marketing News: The Art of Stealing, Twitter Closes Vine & Helpful Chat Bots

20 Jokes Only a Marketer Could Love

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It’s well past time for marketers to get serious about comedy. The best way to connect with an audience is by authentically appealing to them on a human level. Adding humor to marketing is one of the most powerful ways to make that appeal.

Telling a joke does more than provide a moment’s diversion. When people share in a joke, it creates a sense of belonging. If you’ve ever sat around trading in-jokes with your friends, you know what I mean.

Humor can be a way to draw a circle around a group and pull them in—to say, “If you understand this joke, we’re in the same tribe. You get me and I get you.” That’s a powerful message to send to your potential customers. And it’s a good way to get the less relevant folks to opt out, too.


20 Jokes Only a Marketer Could Love

7 Tips for Making Your Brand More “Likeable” on Social Media

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For most brands and marketers, social media is an important and necessary component of their overall digital marketing strategy. Not only does social media help build brand awareness, but it also provides a conversational space for brands to engage their audience outside of their company website or brick and mortar stores or offices.

But let’s face it, competition for audience attention and engagement is stiff. With nearly all brands and marketers using social media, coupled with frequent platform changes to improve user experience, brands are fighting for organic visibility. In fact, 40% of marketers say social media marketing has gotten more difficult for them in the last 12 months, according to Social Media Examiner’s 2016 Industry Report.


7 Tips for Making Your Brand More “Likeable” on Social Media

MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum: The Most Magical Marketing Conference on Earth #MPB2B

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When I woke up on Monday morning, I was sad. The only thing I can think to compare it to is taking an amazing vacation in a warm sunny spot, and getting back home to blistery weather and cloudy skies. I had just spent a week with some of my amazing team members at the Disneyland of marketing conferences, the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum and it was time to get back to reality.

Ann Handley (or Mary Poppins for the sake of this blog post) and her team at MarketingProfs have created something truly magical. From the moment you walk in the door to the time you board your plane home, you feel like you’re surrounded by people that “get you” and experience the same B2B marketing struggles that you do. 


MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum: The Most Magical Marketing Conference on Earth #MPB2B

Insanely Effective Content Marketing with Limited Resources, Budget & Time

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Marketing departments typically have unlimited resources, astronomical budgets and more hours in the day than your average person. Wait, that doesn’t sound right.

If the statement above sounds right to you, congratulations!

For the rest of us trying to find a way to do more (quality and quantity) with less, this is a topic that is typically top of mind, every day.

In his presentation at MarketingProfs B2B Forum, Chris Moody, Content Marketing Leader at GE Digital helped ease the pain for B2B marketers. Chris shared insight into some concepts that can you do more with less, as well as some tips and tricks to get you on the right path.

What is the Current State of Marketing?

He opened with a quote from one of my favorite shows, Silicon Valley.


Insanely Effective Content Marketing with Limited Resources, Budget & Time

Think Like A Rockstar: How to Build An Owned Media Empire With Epic B2B Content Marketing

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True to form, LinkedIn’s Jason Miller rocked his presentation at the MarketingProf’s B2B Marketing forum by opening up with some inspirational words from The Clash:

If you don’t like the world, then change it.”

As Jason shared, the Clash changed the world, and so can today’s B2B marketers. But they’re facing some interesting challenges such as the fact that:

  • 60% of B2B content goes unused (Content Marketing Institute & MarketingProfs)
  • 44% of consumers consider ending a brand relationship because of irellevant promotions (Chief Marketing Officer Council)

How can marketers overcome these challenges? Below are a few ways that LinkedIn built their content empire.

Focus on Goals, Objectives, Strategy & Tactics

When starting down this journey, LinkedIn had a singular goal:


Think Like A Rockstar: How to Build An Owned Media Empire With Epic B2B Content Marketing

Can Marketers Really Generate Sales on Social Media?

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At last week’s MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum, Andrew Davis had the crowd roaring with laughter as he impersonated a marketer with a fresh piece of content.

“Let’s put it on the blog!” he exclaimed.

“Let’s put it on Facebook! And Twitter! And Pinterest! And Flickr! And Google+, for the two people still using it.”

It was funny, because for a lot of marketers, it’s true. Too many of us fall victim to the “spray and pray” approach to social media marketing. We push our content anywhere we can get it, and cross our fingers hoping one of these posts turn into an engagement, a new relationship, a sale. That’s why I was so excited to attend the session titled “How to Use Social Media to Generate Actual Sales”, led by social media gurus John Foley Jr. and Karen DeWolf of InterlinkOne.


Can Marketers Really Generate Sales on Social Media?

6 Truth Bombs Every B2B Marketer Needs to Hear About Creativity

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“Do you want to be creative?”

Jay Acunzo, founder, host and writer of Unthinkable.fm, asked marketers this question as he kicked off his session Unthinkable: Content Creativity For The Hopelessly Uncreative at MarketingProf’s B2B Marketing Forum last week in Boston.

Acunzo acknowledged the question was a bit silly. It’s like asking if you want more time in your day or more resources for your team. The answer is always an unequivocal “yes.”

But while this may seem like a weird question to ask marketers, it actually gets to the heart of the creative struggle we all feel: Of course we want to be creative; creativity is necessary and intertwined with everything we do. But we often find ourselves aspiring to be more creative than actually harnessing what’s already inside us as creators.


6 Truth Bombs Every B2B Marketer Needs to Hear About Creativity

Learn How to Turn Your B2B Content Marketing Into A Profit Center

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Unfortunately, marketing is often seen as a cost center within many B2B organizations. Whenever it comes time to cut budgets, you know that marketing is the first to take a hit. But what if there was a way to not only take a lead generation approach to content marketing, but also generate actual revenue in the process?

Last week at the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum, Content Marketing Institute Founder Joe Pulizzi shared some insider tips and secrets for companies that want to leverage their content to generate revenue.

When the godfather of content marketing has a session that describes how to profit from content creation, it’s a must-see. Why? Who better to speak on the subject than someone who has built a content media company from the ground up, with enormous success?


Learn How to Turn Your B2B Content Marketing Into A Profit Center

9 Sizzling Influencer Activation Tips from Lee Odden #MPB2B

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Influencer marketing is an incredibly hot topic in the marketing world—and it’s not hard to see why. Influencers add insight, credibility and authority to the content they help create, and they also have the potential to bring that content to a new audience.

But what makes someone influential? Is it popularity? Is it celebrity? Is it the fact that they have niche expertise? And how do you identify, activate and continue to build on your relationships with influencers?

During his Sexy Hot B2B Influencer Activation session at MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum, TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden delivered a presentation packed with actionable tips, tools and examples that answered all these questions and more.


9 Sizzling Influencer Activation Tips from Lee Odden #MPB2B

Online Marketing News: Google Has Changed, B2C Content Marketing and Video Ad Metrics

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How Google Search Has Changed in 2016 [Infographic]
As we all know, Google is no stranger to change. Keeping track of those changes and their connotations is an actual full time job. For example, MarketingProfs reports “Google’s search engine is displaying fewer organic results on it first page this year than it was last year, and it’s increasingly presenting different experiences for desktop and smartphone users.” MarketingProfs

[New Research] B2C Marketers Need to Give Content Marketing Time
Following their successful release of their B2B content marketing benchmarks report, Content Marketing Institute has shifted their research focus to B2C. What did they find? 60% of B2C marketers consider their organization’s approach to content marketing to be much more or somewhat more successful than it was just a year ago. Content Marketing Institute


Online Marketing News: Google Has Changed, B2C Content Marketing and Video Ad Metrics