Lee Odden

Just Getting Started with Influencer Marketing? 6 Things You Should Know

Lee Odden on Nov 1st, 2018     Influencer Marketing

Smarter Influencer Marketing
According to the World Federation of Advertisers, 65% of multinational brands will increase their influencer marketing spending in the next 12 months. Mediakix reports that influencer ad spending alone will increase from $5 billion to $10 billion in the next 5 years.

Clearly, more companies are moving into the world of influencer marketing. Recent research from Traackr and Brian Solis from Altimeter group offers evidence of this momentum with the number of companies moving from experimenting to implementing tactical influencer marketing programs increasing from 28% to 47%.

While there’s a lot of inertia towards influencer marketing, it’s still early days for many companies, especially in B2B industries. Fortunately, B2B influencer content is a speciality area for us and if you’re thinking about starting or evolving your business influencer engagement and content program, here are a few things to consider:


Just Getting Started with Influencer Marketing? 6 Things You Should Know
Leave a Comment
Caitlin Burgess

6 Scary Good Tips to Take Your Content Marketing ‘Beyond the Grave’

Caitlin Burgess on Oct 31st, 2018     Content Marketing

Save Your Content Marketing Campaign from the Digital Graveyard

After conjuring all the budget, talent, and creativity you can muster, the moment you release your content marketing campaign into the digital wild is devilishly satisfying. All your hard work comes alive right before your very eyes, and that’s certainly cause for celebration.

via GIPHY

But after the campaign lives its best life, what will its fate be?

Oftentimes, all that spooktastic work is retired to the content marketing graveyard. However, with the right mix of will and witchcraft, your campaigns can be saved from the digital depths of darkness and be given new life.

How? Below we offer several frightfully fantastic tips to take your content marketing campaign well beyond the grave.


6 Scary Good Tips to Take Your Content Marketing ‘Beyond the Grave’
Leave a Comment
Joshua Nite

20 More Dumb Jokes for Smart Marketers

Joshua Nite on Oct 30th, 2018     B2B Marketing

Dumb Marketing Jokes

A great pun is like a great digital marketing campaign: If you do it right, it will stick with people until they’re compelled to share it — even the simplest ones require a level of sophistication to make and to appreciate.

Every marketer I know is incredibly smart — whether it’s my team at TopRank Marketing, the influencers and thought leaders we work with, or the folks I’ve met at marketing conventions. Marketers are sharp, detail-oriented, intellectually rigorous, and susceptible to flattery.

So, if you’re a smart digital or content marketer, take a break from your challenging, rewarding work and enjoy these jokes. And remember: If your colleagues don’t laugh, they’re just not as sophisticated as you.


20 More Dumb Jokes for Smart Marketers
Leave a Comment
Lee Odden

B2B Influencer Marketing Interview: Martin Jones, Cox Communications

Lee Odden on Oct 29th, 2018     B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Martin Jones

I’ve known Martin Jones casually through marketing conferences for several years. Martin occupies that unique position of being someone who manages influencer marketing programs for his brand and is also an influencer himself.

In fact, it is through an influencer engagement for IBM that both Martin and I were involved with that I had a chance to get to know him in earnest. His climb at Cox Communications is a classic American success story and at the same time, Martin is incredibly humble and one of the nicest people in the industry.

In this interview, Martin shares his journey into working with influencers, tips on identifying, recruiting and managing relationships with influencers as well as insights on measurement and his thoughts towards the future.


B2B Influencer Marketing Interview: Martin Jones, Cox Communications
Leave a Comment
Lane Ellis

Digital Marketing News: Google’s Branded Search Reporting, Bing Connects With LinkedIn, & Facebook’s New Ad Dashboard

Lane Ellis on Oct 26th, 2018     Online Marketing News

2018 October 26 SEMrush News Image

23 Metrics to Measure Content Marketing Success [Infographic]
SEMrush takes a look at nearly two dozen metrics for measuring success in content marketing, by way of a new infographic looking at engagement and other factors. Social Media Today

Google My Business Insights adds branded search reporting
Google has added new features to its Google My Business Insights dashboard, allowing more robust analytics filtering, among other additions. Search Engine Land

Facebook Launches New Dashboard to Better Track Facebook Ad Performance
Facebook announced an update to its Attribution dashboard, with an array of feature additions aimed at making it easier to track ad performance. Leaving beta status, the new reports offer a variety of customer journey insights. Social Media Today


Digital Marketing News: Google’s Branded Search Reporting, Bing Connects With LinkedIn, & Facebook’s New Ad Dashboard
Leave a Comment
Lane Ellis

5 Powerful Messaging Tactics For 2019 And Beyond From Marketing Experts

Lane Ellis on Oct 25th, 2018     Content Marketing

Powerful redwood tree forest image.

Welcome to the third installment in our multi-part “Collective Wisdom” series of content marketing strategy articles. In this Pubcon-themed episode, you’ll learn powerful methods for creating engaging and bookmark-worthy messaging, featuring insight from some of the world’s top digital marketers who spoke at Pubcon Pro Las Vegas 2018.

Previously in “How to Boost Your Content Marketing Efforts By Planning Ahead,” we looked at implementing a smart and robust content planning strategy, while “The Art Of Crafting More Powerful Content: 5 Top Tactics from the Experts” began exploring five of the most fundamental content creation methods.

Now it’s time to focus on five additional smart tactics for creating engaging and powerful messaging to help you create a successful content marketing campaign.


5 Powerful Messaging Tactics For 2019 And Beyond From Marketing Experts
Leave a Comment
Lee Odden

From Basic to Advanced, the B2B Influencer Marketing Software You Need to Succeed

Lee Odden on Oct 24th, 2018     B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

B2B influencer marketing software

A hot topic for every marketer today is working with influencers. But how do you find the right influencers? How do you manage those relationships and how do you scale programs?

Basically, what tools do you need when it comes to B2B influencer marketing?

Here is a collection of social media and influencer marketing tools you might find useful whether you’re a B2B or a B2C marketer. But definitely if you work in B2B.

Outside of the promotional tools you might use for the content marketing that goes along with most influencer marketing programs, there are three general areas of opportunity to scale with technology when it comes to working with influencers.

1- Identification, qualification and recruiting


From Basic to Advanced, the B2B Influencer Marketing Software You Need to Succeed
Leave a Comment
Lee Odden

Pubcon Pro 2018 Search Marketing Conference Wrap-up

Lee Odden on Oct 23rd, 2018     Marketing PR Conferences, Pubcon

Chris Boggs, Barry Schwartz, Lee Odden, Brett Tabke, and Lane R. Ellis at Pubcon Las Vegas 2018

For those in the know and that go beyond clickbait headlines, Search Marketing delivers an incredible punch to a marketing mix. But it takes work, especially when you consider the hundreds of factors that go into ranking decisions for every one of the billion plus queries that Google tries to answer each month.

Part of that work is staying on top of search engine optimization and advertising best practices. For that, several members of the TopRank Marketing team recently attended the Pubcon Pro conference in Las Vegas.

After essentially getting my start in public speaking as a marketer at Pubcon many years ago, I have returned to the search marketing industry with my third speaking appearance in a row at a Pubcon event in the past 12 months.


Pubcon Pro 2018 Search Marketing Conference Wrap-up
Leave a Comment
Lane Ellis

You Have 8 Seconds – GO! Brand Messaging Secrets With Debra Jasper at #Pubcon 2018

Lane Ellis on Oct 22nd, 2018     Content Marketing, Pubcon

Debra Jasper Pubcon Las Vegas 2018 Keynote Photo By Lane R. Ellis

Debra Jasper, founder of Mindset Digital, practices what she preaches when it comes to delivering engaging messages in eight seconds or less, as she demonstrated during an energetic mile-a-minute “You Have 8 Seconds – GO! “ Pubcon Pro Las Vegas 2018 keynote address.

Before Debra took the stage, Pubcon founder Brett Tabke told the audience how one of her previous keynotes holds the record as the conference’s highest-rated, and her latest presentation showed no sign of letting go of that title.

Walking The Walk With 367 Slides

Debra’s keynote explored how to effectively get your message out in a world where today’s professional has just an eight-second attention span, and she hit the ground running, flying through some 367 visually interesting slides, nearly all featuring motion or video.


You Have 8 Seconds – GO! Brand Messaging Secrets With Debra Jasper at #Pubcon 2018
Leave a Comment
Lee Odden

Enterprise B2B Influencer Marketing Interview: Angela Lipscomb, SAS

Lee Odden on Oct 22nd, 2018     B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Angela Lipscomb

One of the great things about social media is connecting with other professionals and Angela Lipscomb and I have been connected on multiple networks for several years. I appreciate her relationship focus towards PR and influencer relations because so much of what is being done in the name of influencer marketing is transactional.  As I like to say, it’s the meaningful not the mechanical connections you make that contribute to success.

As the Influencer Relations Manager for SAS (business analytics software and services), Angela developed their first influencer program back when her role was in corporate communications. Her work there and on to media relations were ideal prep for her current influencer relations role to identify, engage and manage influencer relationships.


Enterprise B2B Influencer Marketing Interview: Angela Lipscomb, SAS
Leave a Comment
Lane Ellis

Top Brand Personalization Secrets From Scott Monty at #Pubcon 2018

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
Leave a Comment
Tiffani Allen

4 Reasons to Get AMP’d Up About Google AMP with Google’s Ben Morss

Tiffani Allen on Oct 19th, 2018     Pubcon, SEO

What’s up with Google AMP? That’s what a room full of marketers were determined to find out on Thursday’s Pubcon Pro session with Google’s Developer Advocate, Ben Morss. In his session, Ben outlined the current state of Google AMP, why marketers should care, and how it can work along with PWAs (progressive web apps) to deliver a seamless, fast and immersive experience.

Below are four top takeaways from Ben’s session:

 1. Speed = Money
There are real world consequences for bad user experience on your website. Some of the stats Ben included to illustrate exactly how include:

  • 53% of users abandon a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load according to a Doubleclick study of Google Analytics Data.

4 Reasons to Get AMP’d Up About Google AMP with Google’s Ben Morss
Leave a Comment