The buzz around Content Marketing is hard to miss. In fact, a new study from eConsultancy reports that 90% of respondents believe content marketing will increase in importance in the coming year.

However, the same report shows that only 38% of companies have a content marketing strategy in place.

Why the disconnect? 73% of digital marketers agree that brands are becoming publishers and 64% believe content marketing is becoming its own discipline (we'd argue that it always has been). Yet no strategy to support the effort? That's nuts!

Content marketing stratey has to begin with an objective. Yet the survey shows that even when an objective is set, only 2 of the top 6 content marketing objectives are directly related to revenue (#4 - Increased Sales, #6 Generate Leads).

In our book, content marketing is all about sales revenue. While it's important to increase engagement, site traffic, and brand awareness those objectives must be tied to sales or why bother.

- What good is engagement if it doesn't generate a sales lead?
- Why measure site traffic if you aren't using your web site drive sales?
- What does it matter if the world knows your brand but everyone buys from your competitor?

Today's metrics driven marketing means that every activity can be followed from contact to lead to sales and beyond. Don't use content marketing to increase your SEO results, use your SEO results to increase sales!

If you're adding content marketing to your mix this year, and you should be, be sure you understand why. If you aren't building your content marketing strategy to drive sales, our results show that you won't stay with it. Why not? Well, because you aren't seeing any bottom line benefit!!

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!

Marketing starts by solving a customers need or meeting a desire.

If that’s the case, then why does so much marketing annoy the customer it is targeting? Frankly, why does so much marketing suck?

The Best Marketing Pulls in Happy Customers

Most marketing first cares about itself, it is built around brand building and selling products and services. And for that reason, short of the occasionally entertaining ad or commercial, most marketing does nothing to solve a customer’s needs.

Read your own brochures and ads. Does it spend most of the real estate talking about your products and services? Dollars to doughnuts, it does.

Smarter marketers have come to the realization that no one wants to buy a product or service.

People buy to fill a need or an aspiration. And if your marketing helps them understand how you can help them achieve that goal, your customers will love it!

So, how do you get customers to love your marketing?

1. Understand the problems your products and services solve.

Do you make the world’s greatest flashlight? Good for you. But why should anyone care? What is the problem that your great flashlight solves? Does being lighter make it ideal for backpackers? Does efficiency make it last longer between battery changes? What problem does your great flashlight solve that makes it a must-buy?

2. Help customers and prospects understand the problem and solution.

Your marketing needs to be relevant. It needs to add value. Which means it takes more than being clever or cute. It needs to approach your product or service from the perspective of your customer. And most importantly, your marketing needs to understand why your customer is looking for a solution in the first place! Don’t be the solution looking for a problem!

3. Be Find-able!

More and more the first place people search for a solution is online. When they search for the solution you offer, do they find you? You need to know the search terms your customers are using and be one the first sites that pops up when they’re searching. With research showing that up to 80% f a buying decision taking place before your sales team is engaged, you’re forever playing catch-up if you don’t fin a way to participate early in the cycle.

4. Engage!

The term, “engage” has almost become cliche, but if you aren’t around when the conversation is taking place, how are you ever going to be around to offer a solution? Don’t just shill for your company. Become an active participant in the community you serve. Online and in person. By being a valuable and credible resource, you’re voice will be much more highly respected when offering a solution. ON the other hand, if you only offer solutions without engaging, you risk being ignored for lack of credibility.

5. Be the Solution!

None of the above matters if your product or service is not the solution your customer wants. Use you marketing to help customers and prospects understand that you offer EXACTLY what they need. This means creating content describing your solution, proof of concept, and testimonial campaigns.

Be where your customers are and solve their needs and you are well down the road to having your marketing loved by prospects and customers!

One of the most difficult tasks of smaller or start-up business is going to head-to-head with bigger, established firms. They have a larger sales force, they have a larger ad budget, and well, they're bigger! A change of mindset can create marketing to compete with the big guys!

Answer this: Do you want to be everywhere you competition is? Or, do you want to be where your customers are? Chances are that those aren't the same places!

Larger established firms have a sales funnel that has likely been generated by traditional and expensive means: advertising, email blasts, cold-calling, etc. Because they've been around and can often count on a consistent stream of business, bigger companies can, without knowing it, shift into maintenance mode. Busy running in place to support a relatively flat growth curve because they've achieved a comfort level. Let the big guys continue to chase business - you need to turn this upside down and be where prospects are looking for solutions!

Theoretically, advertising can put your message where your prospects are. The question you need to ask, is are  your prospects there for your message, or are they there for the content surrounding your message? What if you could be assured that prospects seeing your message ARE there just for your message? You can be! And it's easy!

By taking advantage of technology, search, online networks and communities, you can reach prospects directly without paying an intermediary to rent the audience that is theirs not yours anyway! Using your industry expertise to create and use your own smart content flips marketing in your favor - not the big guys'!

A consistent flow of content that offers solutions to your prospects problems changes the value equation in your favor. While the big guys throw volley after volley of expensive advertising, you pick off prospects with targeted strategy of compelling content!

Your business doesn't need to be big or omnipresent to compete. It needs to be trustworthy and authentic in a way that bigger companies usually aren't or can't be.

Start by listing the top ten problems your services and products solve. Blog about those problems and solutions, create videos and webinars, too.  Get help optimizing your content to be found on search engines by people who are looking for exactly the solution you offer. Join social networks and groups frequented by those same people and offer up your expertise there, too.

Level the playing field by letting the big guys sell while your company becomes known as the solution provider!

Marketing ROI measurement is one of the most neglected pieces of the typical marketing program.

According to a recent eMarketer study, 33% of marketers are not measuring marketing ROI against financial metrics. While 58% are measuring metrics like Leads and Opportunities, they are not following through to sales. Even among those that are measuring ROI, 1/3 don't report the results to senior management.

And we wonder why it is so difficult to get marketing budgets increased?

In our view, marketing ROI and analytics are the most important part of a marketers job. As we learned early in our careers, if you can't measure it, why are you doing it?

Are you able to determine which of your marketing activities are most effective? Which are driving the most leads? Which are driving the most leads that are converting to sales? What is the length of time between first contact, lead conversion, and a sale? What are the different paths customers are taking with you during the purchase cycle? Are some paths more efficient than others?

Historically, marketing ROI has been difficult to measure. The reason is that traditional marketing is a one-way communications. Marketers present a message to a target audience, but have no way to measure the effectiveness of that message and what, if any, actions are being taken by the targeted customer base.

Sure, traditional media offers information about who is reading the magazine where you advertise, the audience size of a given radio program, or how many people attend a trade show. But there is no way to determine who exactly people are or what effect your presence is having on their purchase decisions.

One of the key advantages of an inbound marketing program is that every single activity can be measured and evaluated. Having a web site is the start. But typically, web site measurements are no different from with other media. Marketers measure the number of visitors, time spent on the site, number of pages viewed, etc. Unfortunately, none of this is data that can support further investment in the web site.

Inbound marketing analytics allows marketers to take marketing ROI measurement all the way through purchase.

Inbound marketers know which campaigns and keywords are driving traffic. How many leads that traffic is generating, and how many of those leads are converting to customers.

In very simple terms, an inbound marketing ROI report will look like this:

Monthly Inbound Marketing Expense      $5,000
Monthly Traffic Generated                       150,000
Monthly Leads Generated                        3,000 (at 2% conversion)
Monthly Revenue from Online Leads      $17,500
Inbound Marketing ROI                            350%

Traditional outbound marketing will never be able to supply the data for marketers to do these types of calculations. Inbound marketing provides all this data and more!

While there is no promise that every inbound activity is going to deliver results, ongoing measurement allows marketers to cut off poorly performing activities and make adjustments to increase your marketing ROI. That email newsletter that you blasted out last week without a tracking code - you'll never know if it delivered a profitable return or not!

Be sure your marketing efforts get recognized at the revenue level - where it matters! Inbound marketing will make sure it is!

 

Email open rates don't matter.

There, I said what you've known all along. Unless the goal of your email campaign is to get the reader to open your email, open rates are an empty metric.

Presumably the goal of your email marketing campaign s to get recipients tot take an action, right? You want them to fill out a form, view a video, do what you intended them to do.

Not only do open rates not address whether a desired action was taken, the open rate data itself is often flawed. Email programs that block images mis-report open rates. Many opens on mobile devices such as Blackberry devices do not report that the email was opened. Emails read in preview pains are not reported as opened. So, the data that many look at first - email open rates - not only doesn't measure what you want to measure, it doesn't even measure open rates properly!

It's interesting then that this recent report from Forrester Research shows that more marketers measure open rates (66%) than anything else when evaluating email marketing data. Our answer to this data that would seem counter to our premise is that if you are among the minority looking at more important metrics, chances are you are doing a better job setting measurable objectives that truly matter to your business.

We lump email open rates with "awareness." Some say Awareness is important because people won't buy your product if they aren't aware of you. We don't argue that, but still believe that awareness is meaningless if no one buys even if they are aware of you! Email marketing must have a more important objective!

What is the goal of your email campaign? Are you hosting a webinar? Have you released a new white paper? Are you looking to turn email and site traffic into business leads? Then your email marketing metrics need to be tied to these real business goals!

Design the email campaign so that it compels recipients not only to open it but also to click on your offer and take the desired action -- to visit or register at your site, buy a product, request information, join your mailing list, download games or white papers, whatever you want them to do -- and then make it easy to convert once they hit your site.

Having a strong email message isn't the last step in an email campaign that seeks to drive movement to a Web site for whatever purpose. You have to deliver them to a landing page that makes it easy for them to take the desired action.

A good landing page works in tandem with an effective email campaign. Your Web analytics solution should tell you what pages your site visitors are on and where they go after they leave your landing page. If the click rates for a campaign are strong, but your orders and conversion rate are low, then your visitors are hitting the landing page and then disappearing. The problem isn't your email marketing, it's your landing page!

It doesn't matter if everyone on your list opens your email, if none are taking the action you really want to measure. Move your email marketing beyond open rates and get your email marketing driving business goals!

Web Site SEO is the First Step to a Successful Web Effort

Even the least marketing savvy business executive acknowledges the need to develop a web site. In today's quickly changing world of online marketing. Fewer understand what a web site needs in order to get found and contribute ti a company's business success. A web site needs to be much more than a 21st century Yellow Pages ad!

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Having a web site can't be your goal. Having a web site that attracts visitors, educates them, and turns them into buyers should be!

Done properly, your seb site a stop along your buyer's journey from interest through education to trial and purchase. The abundance of free information on the internet means that the expertise your sales team used to use to open doors and start conversations is now being accessed online by prospects long before they are ready to acknowledge their interest or speak with a sales rep. An effective web site in 2012 needs to drive traffic, leads, and sales.

While most web site development is done to create eye candy and tell the company's story, we propose that while those are important elements, none of that matters until your prospects and customers can easily find you online. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the first step to a building a web site that makes a measurable beter contribution to your business.

SEO is generally broken into two categories: off-page and on-page. Off-page is SEO is about building links from other pages to yours. Search engines measure these "inbound links" from other credible sites to yours, the more links to your site, the more important your site must be and the higher your page rank will become.

On-page SEO is comprised of the content within your site. The use of keywords, headlines, sub-heads, internal links, images and other elements within your web site that will help it be found by search engines.

For more details on web site SEO, we offer this FREE guide, Learning SEO From the Experts. Download it here.

 

Social Media Marketing Doesn't Work for Most Companies.

As more and more businesses jump on the social media wagon, many are seeing a disappointing lack of results. Could it be that social media marketing isn't all it's cracked up to be? Or is it that most businesses have yet to grasp how to successfully use social media and/or don't know what to measure or how to measure it? Our money is on the latter.

Social Media Marketing Needs a Purpose

As with any business effort, social media marketing needs to be designed starting with the goal and working backwards. We see too many companies launching Facebook pages , Twitter accounts, and Pinterest pages without any idea of what they aim to gain from them other than the exposure. They count Likes, Views, and Retweets, but don't align those numbers with business activities.

What do you really want to measure? Revenue? Store traffic? Customer satisfaction? Sales leads? The length of sales cycle? Decide what will make your campaign a success and build your effort around those goals!

Social Media Marketing is Not a Stand-Alone Effort

Companies want social media to replace other efforts. While there may come a day where it can, we don't believe it's an either/or proposition, but a "both/and" one.  Social media is a great way to increase conversation with customers and prospects. It can even increase your exposure among the general public. But it will never replace your web site, your press releases, or your sales team.

Social media marketing should be designed to enhance your current efforts, not replace them. Social media marketing should be used to promote your web site content, drive links to your landing pages, show off your press efforts, and generally highlight the marketing efforts you'd be doing anyway. Social media marketing also helps create conversation that other media can't.

Don't fall into the trap of shilling for your company non-stop - nothing will get you ignored faster! Using your social media stream as an advertising venue is a major mistake made by the majority of social media marketers who aren't seeing the desired results. A good rule of thumb is to keep promotional messages to about 20% of your posts. That doesn't mean you can't talk about your business, you can, but don't be selling all the time.

Done right, social media has a multiplying effect on your other marketing efforts. It will help with branding, sales, traffic generation, lead builiding, but you need to combine it with your ongoing efforts.

Use Social Media Conversationally

You don't walk into a networking event or a cocktail party and immediately start to sell to the first person you approach, yet businesses who are unsuccessful with their social media marketing do exactly this online. It's important to remember that people don't want to be sold - they want to buy. And whether you influence their purchase or not, at the end of the day, the decision to purchase from you will theirs.

Know what's important to your customers. Address those issues before they ask you to. Be a source of information. Ask questions, provide answers. Stimulate thought and conversation. In these ways your prospects and customers will enjoy engaging with you. If every time they see you they know they're about to get a sales pitch, they'll soon be avoiding you. And who wouldn't, right?

Be Interesting

You don't need to come up with all your own subject matter for every post. Instead tap the many resources at your fingertips - the daily news, trending topics on Twitter, stories of interest in your community. Find topics your audience is already interested in contribute to the conversation.

This serves to make your posts more popular and will cause people to look for your posts out of interest.

Social Media Marketing, Done Right, Does and Will Work!

Social media marketing is still new for many companies. Keep at it! Focus on outcomes and build your efforts to drive those outcomes. Integrate with your other marketing efforts. Don't be shill. Work to be a source that people seek out. Do these things consistently, and social media marketing will pay off in spades!

 

The Domino Theory of Marketing

The idea of the Domino Theory is that taking a first step can set in place a series of events culminating in a big result. As dominoes placed on end knock each other in succession, all of the dominoes fall due to the energy transferred by each impact.

Like tipping over that first domino, one small act can set into motion a series of events that expands out into the world. It is possible in a topple of only a few dominoes to knock down a final domino that is many times greater than the mass of the first domino.

The Domino Theory applies to your marketing efforts. All it takes is one small strategic action to set big things in motion and align with the actions of others throughout your business.

What is the first action your business needs to take?

For most companies with whom we consult, the first action is a review of your web site. Does your site make an accountable contribution to your business? What is it you are counting when you evaluate your site? We offer a free web site evaluation that measures it from a marketing perspective. In addition to providing you with an honest evaluation of where your site stands today, our free report provides the action steps necessary to improve areas the report identifies as deficient.

Click HERE to provide us with your URL and that of up to three competitors and we'll have a report back to you within a day.

 
Your first step sets in motion the series of events that will have a profound impact on your marketing and lead generation.

Once you've made the determination that your web site can and should be more than a passive online brochure for your business, you begin to outline the steps necessary to make your site integral to your lead generation and sales processes.

Here are the typical steps towards having your dominoes aligned:

1. Develop a blogging program.

1. Do key word analysis.

1. Optimize your site and blog against those key words.

1. Promote your site content via social media, email marketing, and other events.

1. Capture leads on your site.

1. Nurture those leads through ongoing marketing and sales.

1. Convert leads into customers.

1. Measure and analyze at every step for continual improvement.

As with everything, it that first step that sets of motion for change and improvement in your business. The final impact that first step will have on your business will many times greater when you take advantage of the Domino Theory!!

 

Do you have a telephone strategy?

I'm sure most readers will respond with a, "Huh?" But think about it, you use your telephone every day in business.

• Do you have a strategy as to how you are using your phone to grow your business?

• How much time each day do you dedicate to it?

• How do you measure it's success?

• What's your telephone budget?

Safe to assume you don't have answers to these questions? Why is a lack of answers to these the same questions keeping you from making Social Media an integral part of your marketing efforts?

Marketing requires a presence in every venue where your customers are looking. Today that means social media and Internet marketing.

Facebook doesn't have a $100 billion valuation because bankers think people like pictures of kittens! Bankers know that Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Twitter and the like have changed the way smarter businesses are communicating with customers.

Many companies and brands have already become publishers int heir own right. And as quickly as that has happened, they are already moving to the next phase. With the barriers of distribution and audience acquisition taken care of at the platform level, brands are becoming always-on content providers.

And, while you likely can't, or won't, measure the success rate of you telephone strategy, the metrics are easily available for even the smallest companies to measure the success of their Internet marketing.

You dedicate uncounted time to prospecting, one customer at a time, on the telephone each day. No phone budget, no phone strategy, not measurement of telephone success. It' time to work on talking to a mass audience online.

As you build your audience, the return on investment of time grows exponentially. The better your messages resonate, the less you have to pay, and the more you naturally grow within the ecosystem.

Can you do this on the telephone?