Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®

Remote Communication Opportunities For B2B Marketers

Lane Ellis
Lane Ellis on Mar 18th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Online Marketing Strategy

Woman at desk with multiple monitors working remotely image.

The challenges brought about by COVID-19 are multi-faceted and permeate the lives of B2B marketers on many levels, yet they also thankfully present new opportunities.

Remote work and online business communications are two of the major benefits modern B2B marketers can take advantage of now thanks to the technological advances the Internet and its 50-plus year history has made possible.

As a remote worker for the past 13 of my 36 years working in online communications, I’ll offer up a selection of tips to keep in mind as we all adjust to the numerous business changes brought about by COVID-19.

We’ll also look at how the present situation affects the issues of brand purpose and trust, resources and tools for newly-minted remote workers, social media best-practices during challenging times, and how we can learn from the challenges.


Remote Communication Opportunities For B2B Marketers

Top Brand Personalization Secrets From Scott Monty at #Pubcon 2018

Lane Ellis
Lane Ellis on Oct 19th, 2018
Online Marketing, Online Marketing Strategy, Pubcon

Scott Monty Speaking at Pubcon Photo by Lane R. Ellis
Scott Monty brought his nuanced and precisely-paced neoclassical style of marketing to Pubcon Pro Las Vegas 2018, leading off with a Longfellow poem — a refreshing non-technical respite from the buzzwords otherwise pouring forth from most presenters at the tech-savvy conference, as he delivered a mainstage address about social media, trust, and personalization.

Scott, who was a classics major, began by noting that much of human nature is constant all around the world, with people holding the same shared motivations, including many great human truths behind what we do that still apply today — perhaps more than ever.

We’re faced with a huge trust deficit, however, as confidence among us in general has plummeted, which Scott sees as a primary gap to be filled.


Top Brand Personalization Secrets From Scott Monty at #Pubcon 2018

Content Planning for the Win: 10 Expert Tips to Keep Your Audience Engaged Again & Again

Blank space: Great when it’s a Taylor Swift song (or a nifty 20’s-style cover of same), not awesome when it’s on your editorial calendar. You want to publish with a steady cadence to keep your audience satisfied. But you know that filler won’t do—it’s got to be quality and quantity.

Great content is no accident. It requires careful planning to provide the value and variety your audience craves. At TopRank Marketing, we create content for dozens of clients. That’s a lot of blank space to fill. But when it’s over, we know the high was worth the pain (sorry, now I have Taylor Swift stuck in my head for the rest of the day. Hopefully you do, too).

Here’s how to create a content plan that’s designed to excel.


Content Planning for the Win: 10 Expert Tips to Keep Your Audience Engaged Again & Again

9 Dos & Don’ts for Writing Compelling, Clickable Headlines to Draw in Your Audience

how-to-write-more-compelling-headlines

Well, hello there. I’m so glad you’ve stopped by the TopRank Marketing blog today. I’m pretty sure I know why you’re here — you’ve been searching high and low for the most adorable cat video of the day. Well, here it is:

Okay. Okay. Just kidding. But I really do know why you’re here. You’re looking for a little headline help. And regardless of how you found this blog post today, you believed something valuable, educational and actually on the topic of writing headlines (not cat videos) was waiting for you when you clicked—and that’s all thanks to the headline.

Headlines are arguably the most important aspect of any piece of content. It’s the first thing—and often the only thing—users will read. In fact, 8 out of 10 people read headlines, but just 2 out of 10 will actually continue reading the rest of the content, according to Copyblogger.


9 Dos & Don’ts for Writing Compelling, Clickable Headlines to Draw in Your Audience

Remarketing 101: The No-Brainer Paid Search Tactic

what-is-remarketing

As competition becomes increasingly fierce, B2B and B2C companies are all fighting for customers to read their content, and purchase their products or services. With so many options available to today’s consumers, many brands are searching for a way to stay top of mind with potential customers.

Ready for a staggering piece of information? According to Business Insider, there is over $4 trillion of merchandise that will be abandon in online carts this year, 63% of which is potentially recoverable.

One method of recovering the attention of potential customers that have left is to deploy a remarketing program. But what is remarketing really? This post is designed for someone who’s either in the dark when it comes to remarketing (sometimes referred to as retargeting) or is in the early stages of starting a program.


Remarketing 101: The No-Brainer Paid Search Tactic

Content Marketing with Interactive Tools: Pros, Cons, Examples & Best Practices

Interactive Tool as Content Marketing TacticAt first glance, interactive online tools may not seem like a content marketing tactic. But, when you consider their educational and entertainment value, interactive tools offer exactly the kind of ‘stickiness’ marketers and brands are looking for.

From the early days of collaborative online learning to sophisticated interactive tools that allow consumers to keep track of their calorie count and fitness level, today, numerous institutions, governments, news organizations and brands have incorporated interactive tools on their websites to further educate and engage their customers and constituents.

Why incorporate interactive tools as part of your content marketing mix? Because education is such a powerful and important fundamental to improving the customer experience. The ability to invest in effort and receive output contributes to a customer experience that can differentiate your brand. At the same time, useful interactive tools satisfy a need for your target audience. Ultimately, tools that enable user interaction and feedback can drive sales, increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.


Content Marketing with Interactive Tools: Pros, Cons, Examples & Best Practices

Maximizing Usability and Findability Among Multi-Screen Users

Web ArchitectureRemember the days of just watching TV? Or just working on your computer? How about finding what you needed from one source—like a book, phonebook, or one website? Those days are over. Completely.

Google released a study earlier this year that revealed 90% of people use multiple screens sequentially to accomplish their goals, using up to an average of 3 different screen combinations each day. The key takeaway from their study? Content needs to be optimized for all channels so brands don’t run the risk of losing conversions from any one channel.

This new initiative has posed several challenges to marketers on how to make their site findable, and usable, to multiscreen users in order to retain conversions. Bryson Meunier of Resolution Media and Shari Thurow of Omni Marketing Interactive shared a few best practices and tips on how to create the best website architecture to achieve excellent multiscreen experience.


Maximizing Usability and Findability Among Multi-Screen Users

Do Advertorials & Native Advertising Fit In Your Content Marketing Strategy?

Are advertorials a content marketing tactic?Where do advertorials, also know in politically correct terms as “native advertising”, fit into the content marketing toolkit?  To answer this question, we first have to understand what advertorials are – and also that the definition of content marketing itself is a hotly contested topic.

Adam Stetzer of HubShout, in his recent investigation into the purported Google penalization of Interflora for employing advertorial content, insists advertorials are NOT content marketing.

“Advertorials are advertisements, regardless of how you try to dress them up”, he says, “while content marketing is educational. Advertorials are biased; content marketing is free of any bias. The two may share a commercial motive, but are completely different and should be treated as separate entities”.


Do Advertorials & Native Advertising Fit In Your Content Marketing Strategy?

Real-Time Marketing Smarts: Companies Killing It with Off-the-Cuff Content

Real-time marketing examples for brandsReal-time social engagement is a great way for brands to stay top of mind, build their social audience and even influence the buying decisions of consumers. On-the-fly upsets to content plans and rapid response content creation are counterintuitive for most brands, though.

At TopRank, we coach brands on careful planning, implementation, measurement and ongoing improvement based on insights. But how can brands maintain quality and ensure thoughtful content if they’re expected to produce and launch it in minutes?

Perhaps the best known example of this strategy recently was Oreo’s infamous Superbowl tweet. They showed just how effective social listening is, when their “You can still dunk in the dark” branded image was retweeted over 16,000 times.


Real-Time Marketing Smarts: Companies Killing It with Off-the-Cuff Content

Social Content Relevance on Holidays: Baileys, Brennans & Tourism Ireland St Patrick’s Day Wins

Social media marketing wins holidays and special occasions.Brands often struggle to hit that elusive mix of creative, timely content relevant to their audience that still directly aligns with their brand. If you have something of a sense of humor, entertaining your audience isn’t that hard. Yet for your social content to be effective in marketing, at least a good portion must be relevant to your brand, as well. You know the deal, though; if you’re only talking about your brand or products, fans get bored with your self-promotion.

Special occasions and holidays offer marketers a great chance to get creative with their social content, to capture the attention of an increasingly attention-deficit audience.  Yet simply being an Irish company doesn’t make your product or service relevant on an Irish holiday. Being a Canadian, or American, company doesn’t guarantee relevance on holidays specific to North America, either.


Social Content Relevance on Holidays: Baileys, Brennans & Tourism Ireland St Patrick’s Day Wins

Remarketing & Retargeting Done Right and Wrong – 6 Do’s and Don’ts From SES Chicago

SES Tips for RetargetingLive from SES Chicago, I had a fantastic opportunity to learn about the ultra-hot online marketing area of remarketing / retargeting from Christopher Hansen and Marty Weintraub.  Remarketing can be extremely powerful, but is easy to get wrong, and the consequences can be costly both in terms of budget and brand image.

Below are 3 tips to make retargeting campaigns work for you, and 3 potential mistakes.

Retargeting Done Right

#1:  Identify Your Best Content

The key to effective retargeting is finding what is already working in your marketing strategy. Retargeting can be very effective at increasing the success of your content, but the content must be effective on its own in order to see a benefit from retargeting.


Remarketing & Retargeting Done Right and Wrong – 6 Do’s and Don’ts From SES Chicago

Integrated Marketing: What Does It Really Mean?

integrated marketingWe’ve always considered our online marketing agency “search plus” and by that I mean search is central and important, but accomplishing client marketing objectives requires a broader view than just optimizing web pages and digital assets. Of course if you follow us here or you’ve read Optimize, you know that.

As social and search technologies evolve along with changes in consumer behaviors, there’s a trend towards a convergence of disciplines. Mature, data driven digital marketers see where search fits in the scheme of things but many brand marketers and traditional search agencies are still a bit lost. I’ve seen brands view SEO solely as an afterthought and SEO agencies think search is the only way to market online.  These polarized perspectives are often driven more by self interest or limits in capabilities than knowing what will make the most impact for a business.


Integrated Marketing: What Does It Really Mean?