"I need results right away" We've all thought it, said it, and/or heard it. We get a logo designed, build a web site, create a slogan, buy business cards, and we're ready to roll. Some of us even start writing a blog, conversing in social media, work to generate leads. If only someone had told us from the outset that there is no marketing quick fix (sorry). To be successful, you need to put in the work.

My martial arts instructor loves to say, "If there were an easier way, I'd know it. I've looked, too. I'm afraid you're going to have to do the work."

So how come when I Google marketing secrets I get 86,500,000 results? Someone must know the secret. Right?

Listen closely my friend, I am about to share with you my marketing secret.

Do the work!

You know why that is such a powerful secret? Because most people won't do it.

By nature many of us prefer to spend our time looking for the short cut. Or maybe we're just too busy, we don't have time to do eveything, so we do some stuff, but not all of it. Maybe as much as we think we want to grow our businesses, we're really just satisfied with where we are. Maybe we're just tired. Who knows, but the truth is that growing your business is a lot of hard work!

Ask any successful business owner and the answer you'll likely get is that they put in long hours, 7-day weeks, sleepless nights. The same is true for your marketing efforts.

Marketing can't be set it and forget it. It can't be something you'll get to later when you have more time. Marketing has to be integrated into your daily business routine. It means budgeting, setting goals, timelines, processes, and measurement. It means nurturing, tweaking, evolving. It means marketing can't be an after thought.

Put in the work, and you'll see the results. Or, pay someone who has the marketing quick fix, sit back and see nothing happen. Unfortunately, just like your parents told you, there no shortcuts to success.

Returning to my martial arts instructor, it's common for losing competitors to ask him why they didn't win and what they can do better next time. The answer is a question, "Did you practice for at least 30-minutes every day for the past 6 weeks?" They generally look down at thier feet, say, "Thank you, sir," and move on. Some come back better prepared at the next tournament, but most just stop asking the question.

The marketing quick fix is just like that, a lot of hard work. If there were an easy way, I'd know it.

By developing and following a specific content marketing strategy, business-to-business (B2B) marketers will find more success in every aspect of their marketing. 

This is just one of the key takeaways from B2B Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends–North America released this week by Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs.

Some other highlights that caught our eye:

• 58% of businesses rate their content marketing as ineffective.
• 1/3 of even the most effective content marketers don't have a documented content marketing strategy (89% of the least effective companies don't either).
• 73% of B2B companies are producing more content marketing than this they did a year ago.
• Confidence in content marketing is growing.
• The depth and breadth of social media used by B2B companies is growing.
• But only LinkedIn is rated as effective by more than 50% of respondents
• LeadGen trails only Brand Awareness among B2B marketing goals.

There is much more meat to this study. We suggest you check it out here:

 

Where could you improve your content marketing? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

"Inbound doesn't work if I still need to do outbound marketing, too," said my frustrated client. "When are people going to start calling to hire me?"

True story.

 

A business associate had referred this client to us. He wanted to hire us today, and we made the mistake of not going through our typical vetting and goal setting process. We're confident in our abilities, took a look at his then current inbound marketing numbers and had no doubt we could improve upon them.

Within 3 months the following improvements were logged:

• Site traffic up 400% to over 3400 monthly visitors
• Inbound leads up 500% from 9 to 44 per month
• Lead nurturing list built to over 300 prospects
• Social media reach up 300% and Twitter followers doubled to over 1,000
• Landing page conversions at high as 40%
• Blog subscribers built from zero to 28
• Guest blogging in place at one of the highest trafficked sites in his market

And we were fired. 

So, what went wrong?

First, we made the mistake of not agreeing upon objectives and strategies to reach them. We were brought in as a middle reliever. We picked up the ball, and started making outs. What the customer really wanted, though, was a closer. 

We should have known when the client first asked, "How long before people start calling to hire me?" What we didn't know is that in our short three month tenure, the client wouldn't once research a prospect we'd generated and pick up the phone or craft a specific email to further sell his service.

Despite our suggestions, the client didn't get involved in targeted LinkedIn Groups, converse via Twitter, or become part of the Google+ Communities where we shared his content. His social media efforts, beyond content sharing, were anything but inbound!

This experience illustrates the disconnect and dissatisfaction that many have when it comes to Inbound Marketing. "If I do inbound marketing, why do I still need to sell?"

Inbound marketing is not a panacea. There is no "Easy Button." It requires a sales process to close the loop.

Bigger companies with dedicated sales teams understand this. Their salespeople champ at the bit to get thier hands on the latest leads because they know these leads have self-qualified based on the lead scoring criteria we've put in place.

Smaller companies that that have a sales culture also understand. They know there is no replacement for personal contact.

But for the company that thinks they can sit back and expect the phone to start ringing, there's no question, Inbound Marketing doesn't work.

It can be incredibly difficult to keep track on the ever-changing social media landscape. The Conversation Prism was first published by Brian Solis in 2008 to map social media sites showing their popularity and variety of uses.

For 2013 it has been updated showing new services being developed today, including enterprise social networks, social marketplaces, influence, quantified self, and service networking.

The takeaway to share with your management team?

Social media is not a fad and it's bigger than Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest!

 

 

Brand journalism stories cover your brand, competitors and niche—and include no marketing materials or messages. If you work in PR and marketing, pay attention. CEO Mark Ragan and head of Ragan Consulting Jim Ylisela take on this meaty topic.

eMarketer Webinar: Key Digital Trends, a Midyear Update from eMarketer

• The average US adult spends 5.4% of the day with print vs. 24.8% online
• Consumers still view ads in traditional media more favorably.
• More moving to online video viewing as they cut the cable.

View more below!

 

eMarketer Webinar: Key Digital Trends, a Midyear Update from eMarketer

Inbound marketing research supports what you already know - traditional marketing is getting more and more difficult to justify. HubSpot's 2013 State of Inbound Marketing report puts data behind your instincts.

The SlideShare file below is just a teaser. Domino Theory can put the ideas in this inbound marketing report to work for you! Take a look! Let us know what you think!

 

 

Download the entire report for FREE! Click below!
 

Visit most any web site and the first thing you will see is information about the company, it's products and services, and generally how great they are. This is what that company has determined is the most important information you need to know. It's all about them. But what about you, the customer? What about solving your problem?

Better web sites have flipped the typical content delivery on its head. On those sites, the first thing you see is information that will help the visitor solve key business problems. On the better sites, it's all about the customer! The good sites help solve your problem!

It starts with an important exercise determining who the customer is and what the customer's key business issues are. What problems can you and do you solve?

In marketing parlance, this is developing the "buyer persona." Knowing the answers to these questions allows you to design your marketing, including your web site, to answer key questions and solve key problems before you're asked to!

In our case, our customers are small to mid-size businesses that often have limited marketing experience and staffing. These businesses want to grow, they want to implement marketing plans, but they face two key problems:

1. They don't know have the internal bandwidth to address marketing.
2. They know where they want to end up, but don't know how to get there from their current position.

The goal of our web site is to serve as a resource for business owners and managers who want to educate themselves on SMB marketing. Whether they are looking to rethink their web site, email marketing, SEO, content strategies, lead generation or nurturing, up sell, increase client base, or any of the myriad of other marketing problems these managers face, our site is designed to help them to begin a process that will lead to achieving their goals.

But if we provide the answers, why would anyone pay for our services? Look back at the two key issues we know that SMB's are facing when addressing their marketing. If a company is intent on handling marketing internally, they were never a potential customer for us in the first place. But, if we can be a reference for them, maybe they will share our content with others who are potential clients for us.

If the company has reached a point where they understand that they aren't currently able to address marketing internally, the information we share shows a level of expertise that the typical sight doesn't. If the site is focused solely on the services we offer, how are we really different from any other company that offers similar services?

By becoming a resource, our goal is to establish a level of trust and expertise while our customer is early is early in their buying cycle. Research shows that 80%of the buying cycle happens before speaking to a sales rep.  We want to engage prospects during that early period when they are still defining their problem and solutions - before they are interested in speaking with anyone about the services they need. You should be, too!

We see this time and again with the companies we work with. They spend so much time and effort on their products and services, their focus is always on those. Your customers are looking for products and services they are looking for solutions - and you provide them!

It's an age-old axiom and one you probably use when selling in-person - move around to your customer's side of the desk to see your self from their perspective. If you haven't done this with your web site design, you've done nothing but create a 21st century yellow pages ad!

Is your site optimized for keywords? What about long tail keywords?

Don't know? Don't know what they are? 

This infographic from HitTail explains why this is so important!