TopRank Marketing Editor

Learn How to Connect Actions to Results Using Marketing Attribution

TopRank Marketing Editor
Digital Marketing, MarketingProfs B2B Forum

We’ve all been there. The big marketing campaign you spent months on just ended, it was a smashing success! Champagne was popped, there were pats on the back all around, life was good. But when the dust finally settles, you’re left staring a mountain of data square in there eyes, wondering if the marketing attribution you set up tells the real story.

Fortunately for you, during this year’s MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum, Dayna Rothman of BrightFunnel broke down how you as a savvy marketer can orchestrate the buyer journey and turn it into a science by properly leveraging data and analytics.

The “Marketing Holy Grail” is to turn the buyer journey into a science by sending the right message, to the right person, at the right time.

Learn How to Connect Actions to Results Using Marketing Attribution

#CMWorld Interview: Adele Revella Weighs In On Connecting B2B Content to Customers

TopRank Marketing Editor
Content Marketing, Content Marketing World

The 2017 Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs B2B content marketing research uncovered some fascinating insights this year. One of the most interesting aspects of this research was the techniques B2B marketers are leveraging to better understand their target audiences.

And the techniques they aren’t using.

When asked which techniques they used to better understand their target audience(s) for content marketing purposes, “Auditing Existing Buyer Data” didn’t even crack the top ten (at 24% of respondents). Now there’s a real head-scratcher.

So what were the top 3?

Website analysis (58%)
Keyword search (57%)
Employee feedback (50%)

While all of these techniques are wonderfully helpful, I’d gamble they aren’t giving B2B marketers the ammunition they need when it comes time to flesh out an editorial calendar.

#CMWorld Interview: Adele Revella Weighs In On Connecting B2B Content to Customers

Find Success By Putting Your Digital Advertising to the A/B Test

TopRank Marketing Editor
Digital Marketing, Online Advertising, Online Marketing

Digital-Advertising-AB-Test

Testing different variations is one of the quickest ways to learn, and Digital Advertising is no exception. When you begin talking about A/B testing, many of us get nervous and all sorts of possible catastrophes begin swimming around in our heads.

But the truth is, advertising is a quickly evolving tactic, and in order to gain momentum, testing has become a necessity. Whether your advertising is social, display, native or search, the key to better results and return on investment is testing.

To help you navigate the sometimes-confusing world of digital advertising testing, we’ve provided some helpful resources below.

What is A/B Testing?

An A/B Test is simply a test between two variants, a control and a variation, or as Google likes to call it, an experiment. Examples might include creating two different:

Find Success By Putting Your Digital Advertising to the A/B Test

PPC + SEO = A Winning Team for Search Marketing Success

TopRank Marketing Editor
Online Advertising, SEO

A winning team requires the proper line-up, teamwork and the ability to fill-in the performance gaps. A winning team for search requires the proper line-up of Paid and Organic strategies to ensure increased visibility and growth. Many B2B companies pigeonhole PPC as strictly a lead gen or a sales tactic but now is the time to go from tunnel vision to full spectrum search.

Why do we all need to start paying attention to organic and paid search integration? With the recent changes to Google’s SERP results page, many companies are starting to see organic visibility slide along with organic traffic as paid advertisers are garnering more real estate on the page. Google continues to push more algorithm updates and while they many not all be as impactful as RankBrain, Panda, or Penguin, SEO and organic rank is becoming increasingly difficult to manage.

PPC + SEO = A Winning Team for Search Marketing Success

3 SEO-Changing RankBrain Tips Marketers Can’t Ignore

TopRank Marketing Editor
Digital Marketing, Marketing PR Conferences

SEO-RankBrain-Tips

The way that marketers think about, talk about and implement SEO is constantly evolving. Blackhat SEO tactics that once were incredibly successful, no longer garner the results that they once did. Both search engines and online audiences have become much more sophisticated, forcing marketers to ditch the slimy SEO tactics and focus instead on providing real value.

According to TNW News, 47% of digital marketers name SEO as one of their most effective tactics, but 39% also identify it as one of the most difficult.

3 SEO-Changing RankBrain Tips Marketers Can’t Ignore

[eBook] Easy-as-Pie Guide to Content Planning: 3 Recipes for Success

TopRank Marketing Editor
Content Marketing, Digital Marketing

Easy_as_Pie-Cover

Ever been to a busy restaurant and waited what seemed like forever for your food to arrive? Or, bought a loaf of bread only to bring it home and realize it was stale? It’s not easy to run a restaurant, or churn out dozens of perfect pastries. Cooking up quality content isn’t easy either. Much like crafting a perfect pastry, creating content that inspires an audience to action takes great skill.

Truthfully, most content kitchens are facing big problems. According to Content Marketing Institute, a mere 30% of B2B marketers and 38% of B2C marketers feel their content marketing is effective. Which is why we partnered up with DivvyHQ and created an eBook to help content marketers take their content planning from messy to simple.

[eBook] Easy-as-Pie Guide to Content Planning: 3 Recipes for Success

Lee Odden Educates B2B Marketers on SEO for Content Marketing

TopRank Marketing Editor
B2B Marketing, Online Marketing, SEO

As content marketing professionals, most of us would consider SEO a highly technical domain. Best leave that to the real nerds, right? Wrong. Google, Bing and all the other search engines have significantly altered their algorithms in the past few years. And these changes continue to favor the highest quality content, often rewarding smart content marketers with first position rankings.

With a bit of SEO sweet sauce, your content marketing sandwich will taste much better to search engines, and users too. Below, I will explore 4 major themes from TopRank Marketing CEO, Lee Odden’s recent Content2Conversion talk on SEO for Content Marketers, including:

The State of SEO in 2016
Understanding Self-Directed Buyer Behavior
How to, “Be The Best Answer”
How to Create Smarter Integrated SEO Content for The Web

Lee Odden Educates B2B Marketers on SEO for Content Marketing

Content Marketing Lessons from Netflix: 5 Steps for Feeding the Content Beast From David Bruno

TopRank Marketing Editor
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

content-marketing-lessons-netflix

With more than 25 years of experience on the front lines of creative campaign development, David Bruno knows that, “content marketing” has been around for a long time, in one form or another.

During his Content2Conversion session, “Feeding the Content Beast” this past Wednesday, he artfully explained how content marketers can apply lessons from Netflix to their marketing.

Is Netflix “Content Marketing?”

Let’s back up. Many marketers wouldn’t consider Netflix a tale of content marketing success. Content marketing, they would argue, is meant to produce leads – and business results. Netflix is entertainment, not content marketing. Or, so the logic goes.

David argued (and I agree), that Netflix is a content marketing powerhouse. They mine user data, produce original content for a clearly-defined audience, and definitely drive profitable customer action. Consider the relationship between original content production, subscriber growth, and most importantly company profit:

Content Marketing Lessons from Netflix: 5 Steps for Feeding the Content Beast From David Bruno

Marketing Strategy Secret Sauce: Exploring Nasdaq’s Brand + Content Marketing Overhaul

TopRank Marketing Editor
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Digital Marketing

Nasdaq-Content

The financial sector is littered with marketing strategy failures. Don’t count Nasdaq them. First-time Content2Conversion speaker Jeremy Skule delivered a keynote that explored how Nasdaq used a combination of branding and content marketing to unlock an amazing marketing strategy (and results) for the brand. How did they do it? A well-timed one-two punch of brand overhaul and content marketing.

Below, I outline the secret sauce that made this amazing tale of B2B content marketing possible.

1. Using Vision, Voice & Visibility To Pivot the Brand

Just two years ago, Nasdaq was known primarily as a premium stock exchange listing brand. From a marketing perspective, the trouble was that less than 10% of company revenue came from their listing services. Nasdaq offered technology solutions, market performance tracking, market intelligence among many other services (which made up the other 90% of revenue).

Marketing Strategy Secret Sauce: Exploring Nasdaq’s Brand + Content Marketing Overhaul

The New Rules & Realities of Sales & Marketing

TopRank Marketing Editor
B2B Marketing, Marketing PR Conferences

“The biggest mistake I see with marketing is companies talk too much about their own products and services.”

As the author of 7 books, David Meerman Scott brings tremendous knowledge, real-world insights and infectious energy to the stage. As yesterday’s opening keynote at Content2Conversion in Scottsdale, David challenged the audience to set the bar higher with their content marketing efforts. In his own words, “B2B doesn’t have to stand for Be-Too-Boring.” I couldn’t agree more!

Below I share a few of Scott’s New Rules, including how the B2B buying process has changed, the importance of real-time engagement, and how content marketing just might land you on an Antarctic journey.

The New Rules & Realities of Sales & Marketing

Ignite Your B2B Content Marketing Effectiveness at #C2C16

TopRank Marketing Editor
B2B Marketing

B2B Content Marketing Tips from Content2Conversion

The opportunity to surround yourself with top content thought leaders and practitioners is one that you should always take. That’s just what we will be doing February 15 -17 at the 2016 B2B Content2Conversion conference in Scottsdale Arizona.

We’ll be packing our bags and leaving the cold Minnesota climate for warmer weather and three days filled with top-notch B2B content marketing education. But before we dig into that, lets review the current state of content marketing for B2B marketers and why conferences like this are so essential.

A recent Content Marketing Institute study revealed that a full 88% of B2B marketers have adopted some form of content marketing. Go a layer deeper in this same study and you’ll discover that 55% of these same folks are unsure what B2B content marketing effectiveness really looks like. Is it time to pump the brakes on content marketing? Or, are half of B2B marketers simply missing the mark?

Ignite Your B2B Content Marketing Effectiveness at #C2C16