How to Increase Backlinks and Customer Loyalty through Content Marketing

content marketing, corporate blogging, whitepaper creation, ebook creation, social media content marketingTo get found online when future customers are looking for products and services is one of the major challenges businesses are facing today.

Millions of businesses competing for paying customers and it have become a difficult task for most of them to stand out of the crowd and to make future customers aware about their offers.

Businesses need to understand that future customers B2B and B2C primarily do not go online to buy something. First they go online for research. They research for products and services and if they found something of interest they research about information about the company. They ask friends, family and their social networks for recommendations and if they know the company the have recently found.

Did you asked yourself what future customers will find when they research your industry for products and services you also have to offer, will they find you or your competitor?

How many people hit your site and how many business leads do generate daily?

Targeted traffic is a result of many tasks which need to be done before you even get the chance to get found by future customers through Google, Yahoo of Bing search.

Actually the best way to increase visibility is content marketing. With content marketing businesses demonstrate thought leadership; prove themselves Trustworthy and Boosts SEO by increase Backlinks to their website.

 

Content marketing social media copywriting,content marketing, corporate blogging, whitepaper creation, ebook creation, social media content marketing

Remarkable and helpful content is also a great to build customer loyalty. It offers the so called value ad for customers.

The great success of content marketing is the result of giving away valuable information – remarkable content for free to attract people to your business like a magnet.

Companies utilizing content marketing strategy report an up to 2,000% lift in blog traffic and 40% boost in revenue.

This marketing system works 100% for any business!

Content marketing can also work for you to attract new customers to your business like a magnet.

To empower your content marketing start with a corporate blog!

Blogging companies get…

  • …up to 55% more Traffic
  • …up to 97% more Inbound Links
  • …up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines
  • …up to 25x times more business leads

 

The next steps of content creation are to craft further buyer persona oriented content like:

  • – Press releases
  • – Pictures
  • – Whitepapers
  • – How-to’s
  • – EBooks
  • – Video

 

 

Include a call to action in each of your content pieces. This ensures that the user exactly discovers what to do next.

Each of your content pieces is an outpost of your businesses which increases your visibility and improves trust and directs more future customers to your business.

The more content you publish on the web the more online outposts you get in exchange and your chances to get found increase. Other sites will find your content valuable and link back to it. People will share and comment on your content, which also will increase reach and visibility. You increase Backlinks and customer loyalty through content marketing. As simple as that.

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Customers Demand Brands to Prove Themselves Trustworthy

brand advocates, content creation service, Smart Inbound Marketing, social media lead generation, Win Customer LoyaltyTrust is a major factor when it comes to get new customers acquired.

Companies need to understand that they need be there before they ask for a sale. They need to establish themselves as an authority and trusted source in their industry.

 

About.com conducted a survey where they find out that 84% of said that brands must prove themselves trustworthy before they buy or interact in any other way!

how to overcome competitors in business,customer loyalty,benefits of facebook for businessReviews (customer generated content) are a way how brands can gain trust with future customers said 41% of the surveyed people.

This brings us to the most effective way how to gain customer trust before you ask for the sale.

Content marketing is a proven way to engage customers.

A seriously executed content marketing strategy can be responsible for 25x times more business leads and boosts your revenue by up to 40%!

One of the most popular channels to share content is social media. About 76% of marketers use a social network as the main channel for content distribution.

To share content in social media is not enough. Content creation and content marketing must be executed as a holistic strategy and have to be performed on regular basis to gain profitable results on the long term.

Companies utilizing content marketing strategy report an up to 2,000% lift in blog traffic and 40% boost in revenue.

How to start content marketing?

The best way to start content marketing for business is to start a corporate blog. Recent and future customers can interact this way with your business. You show expertise and offer valuable information to solve your audience’s problems. This gains trust.

Blogging has great advantages and here are the most important:

  • 1. Blogging companies get up to 55% more Traffic
  • 2. Blogging companies get up to 97% more Inbound Links
  • 3. Blogging companies get up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines
  • 4. Blogging companies get up to 25x times more business leads

 

All of this above builds trust and increases brand visibility. As a result this brings more interested people to the offers and can increase revenue in the long term.

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Is there NO Difference between B2B and B2C Communication?

b2b viral marketing,marketing tips for new business,small business b2b marketingOften I get asked how to communicate with B2B or B2C and where the differences are by attracting the right people.

There is a simple answer: There is no difference in communication.

But you should understand your audience and communicate in that way that your communication is worth for them to get noticed.

You should know who you want to attract to your offers. And when you know who your audience, your buyer personas are than you can create interesting and remarkable information for those people.

How to know what your “buyer personas” are interested in? Just ask them what they are interested in. You can do this in social media on Facebook LinkedIn and Twitter. You can also take a closer look to your email archive and the requests there. You should be able to put together an interesting catalogue of topics your “buyer personas” are interested in.

Now you are able to give valuable answers to these questions. An effective way to get the attention of your audience is to write this down as blog articles and to publish this content on the web and in social media. This should attract the right buyer personas to these articles and in the next steps lead them to dedicated landing pages and to your products and services.

 

Infographic: The Inbound Marketing Multiplier

Marketo-Inbound-Marketing-Multiplier

 

As you can see there is no difference in the doings to attract the right buyer personas. If you offer something of value you will attract a steady stream of fresh leads. You decide which they should be, B2B or B2C.

 

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Why marketers Increase their Social Media Marketing Budgets?

Social media is a great communication channel there is no question. Smart marketers use social media to offer great support, increase brand reach and to generate business leads, only to name some of the great opportunities which the social web offers.

Recent stats show that those marketers spend less than 20% of their marketing budgets on social media which includes the outreach to target audience on social sites, advertising and maintaining a social media presence.

No matter of the popularity this described budget size seems to be small compared with the power of the social web for businesses. Most marketers have or plan to increase their budgets for social media marketing by up to 25% in 2012.

The most known challenge is to measure social media ROI. For example marketers measure their social media success with click through rates and likes (Facebook).

A great way to measure the ROI of social media marketing is to drive interested audience to dedicated landing pages where they can request more information. This way is the most successful one to measure social media ROI in the long term.

Social Media Infographic

Social Media Marketing Budgets,generate business leads,ROI of social media marketing,

You can achieve a better social media ROI when you follow these four easy steps:

  • 1. Create remarkable content and publish it on the web and in social media
  • 2. Encourage the readers of your content with a call to action included in the footer of your content to request more information from you. For example a personal consultation, whitepaper or eBook
  • 3. Drive them to dedicated landing pages which give you the opportunity to cature those prospects as leads
  • 4. Nurture your leads and analyze time to deal, deal size and channel where your business is coming from

 

The more landing pages with different offers you publish the better. Your funnel becomes wider and wider which ensures you a steady growing stream of fresh and hot business leads.

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Eloqua Announces Chatter Integration

Eloqua revealed this week a new integration with social enterprise app innovator Chatter. The Salesforce.com-owned business network will automatically be integrated into Eloqua’s Marketing Automation (MA) platform free of charge.

The new “Chatter inside Eloqua” won’t be publicly available until next quarter, but I was granted a sneak peek earlier this week. Eloqua connected me with their product team who gave me a demo. In short, the upgrade forges a stronger collaboration channel between Marketing and Sales, as well as extends socialized enterprise value further in an organization. On a technical level, the integration enables teams to share a single Chatter stream. Also, data from Eloqua is synced with Chatter.

marketing automation,Chatter inside Eloqua,social enterprise app,Marketing Automation

One of the most interesting features I noted during the demo was the expert search function. The marketer in this scenario needed a subject matter expert to review a health-related email before sending it to a customer segment, so he typed “?Health” in the search field. Chatter responded with the profiles of individuals who previously worked with health-related campaigns, including the qualifications and success they had (such as “completed 36 email campaigns with that keyword” or “has the highest email open success rate for that term”).

He then contacted the selected expert, Jill Roberts, by simply typing “@JillRoberts” and his message into Chatter, which alerted her through her dashboard. Jill scanned the discussion thread for context into the campaign and caught a critical issue: “Docs would say patient, not customer,” she replied.

This entire interaction happened without one email and without ever leaving Eloqua. This integration increases collaboration without forcing employees to toggle between yet another business tool.

The integration also allows Eloqua to automatically push information into the Chatter news feed when various milestones are reached. For instance, in the demo scenario, Eloqua posted, “Good News! The Health Care Campaign has achieved a 15% better than average open rate.” In response, the marketer commented, just as you might on a link in Facebook, “Thanks @JillRoberts — I couldn’t have done it without you!”

Follow this link to read the entire news release: http://www.eloqua.com/news/press/Eloqua-Unveils-New-Chatter-inside-Eloqua.html

Research for this brief was provided by Software Advice.

About the author:

Ashley Furness 5 Jobs for Tomorrows Marketing Team Ashley Furness is a Market Analyst for research firm Software Advice. Her professional experience spans journalism, sales, advertising and SEO marketing. She’s a seasoned writer having produced copy for business journals, a sports magazine, daily deals advertising and industry blogs. She can be contacted at Ashleyfurness[@]softwareadvice.com, or by calling 512-582-2314512-582-2314. LinkedInTwitterGoogle +
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How to empower your Real Time Marketing and PR with Traditional Medias trust

Real Time Marketing and PR, Newsjacking,content marketing,To get the word out about your business, products and your services becomes an increasing challenge in today time.

More and more businesses focus on online marketing, social media marketing and online business lead generation. They all compete for the attention of their target audience.

The buyer also increasingly research for products and services on the web and in social media. He asks his network contacts, business partner, family and friends for their opinion and for recommendation about products, services and brands.

The development of mobile devices like smart phones, tablet pc and mobile apps give them all the power to research and to buy on the fly.

This is valid for business to consumer (b2c) and for business to business (b2b) related industries. Nobody can escape this buyer centric market when he wants to stay successful in the future.

But to make a person aware of your products and services they need to find you. You need to be there when and where they are looking. How to do that?

A great way to catch a customer attention is by publishing great content. Each piece of content is an outpost of your business on the web and can help to find you when your audience is looking in social media and on search engines.

Content creation is the most successful strategy to attract the right buyer persona to your offers.

As content creation is the most successful strategy to attract the right buyer persona it is increasingly used and the quality and competition for good content is growing.

The only thing what can help businesses to set them self  apart from their competition is to be and stay creative.

A recent research from Triton Digital found out that the most people still trust more Traditional Media like TV, Radio and newspaper than news and information from the internet and social media.

So it looks like that social media is obviously not the #1 news machine. What to do now?

A great way to show creativity in content marketing is to do Real Time Marketing and PR by Newsjacking.

Real Time Marketing and PR, Newsjacking,content marketing,

Newsjacking is the process by which you inject your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business. – David Meerman Scott

Regarding to David Meerman Scott the bestselling author the rules have changed. The traditional PR model—sticking closely to a preset script and campaign timeline—no longer works the way it used to. Public discourse now moves so fast and so dynamically that all it takes is a single afternoon to blast the wheels off someone’s laboriously crafted narrative.

And here we are!

I will not describe here how exactly to do Newsjacking. For this you should buy David Meerman Scott great book to learn the exact tasks.

But I will try to give you a small idea how Newsjacking can work for your business.

When you go through the daily media, like news on TV, radio, newspaper social media updates on Facebook, Twitter, etc. do you see sometimes news which grab your attention because they relate to your industry in any way?

Real Time Marketing and PR, Newsjacking,content marketing,

We learned that still most people trust traditional media. How would it be to get piggyback on breaking news and profit from the public excitement and the life of a news story to increase your businesses reach and awareness with future customers? 😉

So by using the reach and the trust of traditional media you can reach far more people with your message than before. But you need to be very quick!

There is no question Newsjacking is the most creative and one of the most effective ways to get attention, and the best on it, anybody can do it!

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How to Wipe Out your Business by Choosing the Wrong Color

choose business color,choose brand color, color of a business A recent study of Marketo brought out that a wrong chosen color for your business and logo can cost you the success in the long run.

The color of a business is the first impression a future customer will discover when he hits your offer. The study found out that the right product color can influence your target audience purchasing decisions by up to 80%. The right color can make or break a business!

To choose the right color is a process where you have to ask yourself how you want your business to be perceived out there?

You can go the quick and dirty way to choose a brand color but this can cost your business the success in the long run. Or you sit down and use the recent information (for example this below in the infographic) to choose your brand colors wisely.

Infographic: True Colors

choose business color,choose brand color, color of a business

Further important resources:

 

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5 Jobs for Tomorrow’s Marketing Team

marketing employment, marketing predictions, future of marketingIf you want to see the future of marketing, just take a look at recent job postings. Recruiters increasingly request such new generation skills as SEO, analytics, mobile, social media and content in lieu of mass media and direct mail acumen, for example.

At the same time, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects marketing payrolls to swell by at least 13 percent between 2010 and 2020. So what does this shift in desired skills mean for the industry? What new positions to experts expect will be created during that time period? This week, I asked more than 30 marketing and recruiting specialists what they see in the industry’s employment future.

Here are five of the most common new roles they envision.

“The industry needs to emulate, then stimulate, consumers’ nonlinear, multi-screen, in-control purchase behavior,” Protagonist Partner Tom Cotton said.

1. Cotton and others I interviewed see companies recruiting a Marketing Integration Planner in the future, or someone that would identify ways to deliver a single marketing message, campaign or branding effort across multiple digital channels. For example, using a pay-per-click advertising campaign to promote a viral video, or using SEO keyword analysis to help craft a press release.

Marketing consultant Jocelyn Saurini said “people don’t call directly in from an infomercial or click a banner and immediately buy items.” Instead, they search for reviews, interact with brands on social media and pay attention to trending topics in the industry. So marketing teams need to make sure they utilize every channel at once with a unified message.

2. Other experts I interviewed introduced this idea of a Crowdsourcing Specialist. This plays into the idea that companies can no longer dictate their brand identity to the customer. They need someone–in this case the Crowdsourcer–to monitor conversations happening on the Web about the brand and develop messaging that responds to customers’ voiced expectations.

That person would also use the crowd to promote and send out calls to action, such as inviting customers to compete to create the best video about the brand, and perhaps tying the theme to something trending on Twitter.

3. Marketing automation, browser history, on-demand advertising, Google analytics and other data gathering tools have armed marketers with more return on investment resources than ever before. For this reason, companies will look to one expert, a Vice President of Marketing Data Analytics possibly, to decide when, why and how marketing data should be tracked. Their goals would be to improve marketing performance and predictive modeling, and continually refine the company’s definition of the ideal customer.

This information would be shared with brand and campaign strategists who design promotions.

4. Also as a result of new data, companies have increasingly moved their marketing budget strategy from quarterly allotments for print, direct mail and media advertising to constantly-shifting spending from one channel to another. This could develop into a ROI and Marketing Budget Officer position, experts said. This person would constantly track ROI from all promotion channels and adjust spending based on those results.

5. “The idea is to get marketing tactics out there quickly, track results, then continue with ones that work and dump ones that don’t,” says crowdSPRING co-founder Mike Samson. “The idea is to try a bunch of things and learn through constant trial and error.”

6. Finally, content creation is likely one of the fasted growing skills in marketing teams today. Every expert I interviewed mentioned companies wanting to hone their content strategy. Eventually, this might be led by one Content Marketing Manager or Officer that would plan websites, blog, video, infographic, webinars, social media and other content vehicle development. The individual would decide how that content would be promoted and cross-promoted, then track its performance.

Three Ships Media CEO and founder Zach Clayton described it this way: “the people who are able to create a lot of value in the marketing organization of the future think in terms of content, not channels, and in terms of insight, not data.”

Research for this article as provided by softwareadvice.com/crm.

Photo courtesy of Victor1558.

About the author:

marketing employment, marketing predictions, future of marketingAshley Furness is a Market Analyst for research firm Software Advice. Her professional experience spans journalism, sales, advertising and SEO marketing. She’s a seasoned writer having produced copy for business journals, a sports magazine, daily deals advertising and industry blogs. She can be contacted at Ashleyfurness[@]softwareadvice.com, or by calling 512-582-2314512-582-2314. LinkedInTwitterGoogle +

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How to Build a Brand through Inbound Marketing

attract more customers, blogging, facebook social media, Flickr, FREE Traffic, Get found in social media, inbound marketing, internet marketing, lead generation social media, linkedin, social media marketing, social networks, twitter for marketingBusinesses are always interested to increase the reach of their brand to get in front of future customers.

Brand building can be a though thing if not done the right way. To build a brand a huge budget is not necessary but more the right strategy.

The past and the present (still for some) of marketing:

There are a lot of ways to inform future clients of a brand, like advertising, TV and radio spots, newspaper ads, snail mail, pay per click marketing, trade shows, etc. But the hook with most of those marketing ways is they are expensive, mostly not measurable and not long lasting. As soon you stop this paid advertising than your visibility decreases again.

There is a strategy which delivers guaranteed, long lasting and measurable results for a fraction of the costs of old school advertising.

The marketing strategy:

Inbound marketing offers you a smart strategic approach to be and most important to stay steps ahead of your competition.

The inbound marketing strategy focuses on getting found by customers when they research online for products and services your business also has to offer.

With inbound marketing businesses “earn” their way to the customer by publishing helpful information for example on a corporate blog, in social media and forums.

Inbound marketing includes: Content creation like blogging, video, photo, whitepapers, eBooks, podcasts, press releases, comments in social media and other blogs and forums, Social media two way communication, lead generation, lead conversion, lead nurturing and closed-loop analysis.

Summary what you can expect from inbound marketing:

  • A. Save up to 62% of your marketing budget in the long term
  • B. Make you stand out of your competition
  • C. Generate a massive amount of qualified and hot business leads
  • D. Improve your lead conversion rate by up to 55%
  • E. Increase your loyal customers and sales

 

Brain vs. Budget = Inbound Marketing

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Time frame for inbound marketing brand building?

As every doing in business inbound marketing also depends on what you put in. The more you do the better results you will get and expand your brand reach faster.

To establish a brand takes about 2-3 years, depending on product, service market and customer demand.

But the difference is, with inbound marketing you have an up to 62% lesser cost per lead and an up to 55% higher lead conversion rate. Which is a much lesser marketing investment than old fashioned advertising, and your doings are long lasting.

For example: Created content which you have published stays online as long you want it to be, attracts people which research online for products and services you also have to offer and still delivers qualified visitors to your lead capture – landing pages.

You do tasks like publishing a blog article–– one time and they deliver traffic to your lead capture – landing pages where you convert them to leads and later to paying customers.

By executing a serious inbound marketing strategy for your business you can set you apart from your competition, reach more future customers, improve your brands reach and visibility and become trusted industry source.

How much is inbound marketing?

Again, as every doing in business inbound marketing also depends on what you put in. The more you do the better results you will get, expand your brand reach and get more customers faster.

As inbound marketing is the most powerful marketing strategy in the marketing actually, it is also difficult to execute through its complexity without any professional help.

Moreover about 70% of businesses which try to execute an inbound marketing strategy without professional help fail within the first three months, remain 30% of business fail thereafter.

To start with inbound marketing for your business you should calculate $2,000 – $3,000 per month or maybe more. The size of your inbound marketing investment also depends on your goals and the pace you want to achieve results.

As we discussed brand building earlier you should take into account a minimum time frame of 18 months or more for your brand building, and this also depends on several factors like the market and competitive situation, your products and services only to name some of them.

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How to Win Customer Loyalty in Social Media with Smart Inbound Marketing

brand advocates, content creation service, Smart Inbound Marketing, social media lead generation, Win Customer LoyaltyMany marketers out there still think that a Facebook “like” is a proof of customer loyalty. Or when the do promotions and give coupons and freebies this will help to tie customers to their brand. But the “like” button is mostly clicked by expecting a reward to do so.

An increasing number of people who like a brand page are looking for valuable and helpful content.

COLLOQUY find out that promotions in the long run do not have an impact to customer experience!

Customer loyalty can be won and kept by encouraging them to spread the word about the brand they are satisfied with and help those customers to become brand advocates.

The today customer depends on his friends, family and social network when he is researching for new products and services on the web. Furthermore the today customer wants to be entertained and informed from brands and not overwhelmed with sales pitches.

Customers want brands to listen and to respond to their needs, wishes and complaint because this is what makes them feel understand.

The top five most popular things customers expects from a brand are:

  • 1. Providing a great 24/7 customer service
  • 2. Rewarding them for purchases, their feedback and referrals they bring in
  • 3. Sending them exclusive and relevant offers and specials
  • 4. Provide them with personalized products and services
  • 5. To know them when they visit or call a brand

 

How can you utilize those above information to set your business apart from your competition and to fulfill your customer’s needs?

Ask yourself, what will future customers find about me when they research for products and services on the web which I have to offer also?

When the above described customers ask friends and family for recommendations on products and services, will they recommend you or your competition?

As people go online to research, and customers want to be informed and entertained, what do you do to inform and/ or to entertain your existing and future customers.

In simple words, how do you separate your brand from the competition?

To separate your brand from your competition you need to understand that those above stated five points are your business advantage when used wisely. When you are able to improve these points than you will be always several steps ahead of your competition, but only as long as you do not stop improving what you do!

Inbound marketing offers you a strategic and smart approach to be and to stay several steps ahead of your competition.

Inbound marketing is the marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers when they research online for products and services your business also has to offer.

With inbound marketing businesses “earn” their way to the customer and his loyalty, by publishing helpful information on a blog, in social media and forums.

Inbound marketing includes: Content creation like blogging, video, photo, whitepapers, eBooks, podcasts, press releases, comments in social media and other blogs and forums, Social media two way communication, lead generation, lead conversion, lead nurturing and closed-loop analysis.

Infographic: Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing Rising, Inbound Marketing agency, Inbound Marketing services, Inbound Marketing software

Inbound marketing can help you to:

  • A. Save up to 62% of your marketing budget in the long term
  • B. Make you stand out of your competition
  • C. Generate a massive amount of qualified and hot business leads
  • D. Improve your lead conversion rate by up to 55%
  • E. Increase your loyal customers and sales

 

What do you think are you willing to take the effort by doing the above?

 

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Beware of DocStoc or the Reason why Slideshare is the Market Leader

document hosting sites, document sharing sites As many marketers and businesses I use Slideshare, DocStoc and other document hosting sites to upload content to make it available to different audiences.

For a couple of years now I used DocStoc to upload more than hundred documents for the reason of content marketing which in exchange brought me a small amount of interested visitors to our website and blog.

Today I went again to upload information to several document hosting sites and also on DocStoc. After I have done my upload successfully I discovered that only thirty documents are visible in my documents library.

I try to research what happen with the other documents which I have uploaded in the past years. Because all documents uploaded on other document hosting sites are still there, visible and deliver targeted traffic to our blog and website.

I was not able to find my remain articles so I decided to send an support request to DocStoc to clear what happen with my document where I have put time and effort to produce ant to upload to DocStoc.

Here is the email I have sent to DocStoc:

document hosting sites, document sharing sites

 

Several hours later I received a response mail from DocStoc:

document hosting sites, document sharing sites

Yes, you read it right. By the way you are able to read, obviously “Jane” from DocStoc was not…

DocStoc deleted my account!

Nobody asked them to do so. “Jane” from DocStoc didn’t answer my support request but deleted my work.

When I started out with document hosting sites, my first choice was the market leader Slideshare, which has been acquired from LinkedIn several weeks ago. After some research I discovered further document hosting sites and registered there to spread the inBlurbs content, like whitepapers, articles and press releases.

We use a paid Slideshare account which offers also a lead generation and analytics feature. As I used Slideshare and the other document hosting sites like issuu.com and scribd.com I never discovered any problems.

Marketing Tip: Ensure that sources where you invest time and effort to spread content are reliable to not waste your time.

Did you had the same experiences with DocStoc? Post them here in the comment section below.

——————————————————————————————-

UPDATE 06/22/12: DocStoc Restored my account. Thanks DocStoc.

document hosting sites, document sharing sites, business lead generation, content marketing

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How to Track and Follow Up on Social Brand Mentions

Social Media brand messageThe value o social media marketing has been discussed and questioned often in the past. This is mostly because to measure social media marketing results have been a though thing.

Customers are discussing companies and even criticizing brands online, whether or not these brands are active in the social space. TNS found in 2011, that 64% of consumers worldwide wrote about brands online and 52% said they did so to criticize a brand.

Still companies lag behind when it comes to track what customers are saying in social media about their brands and following up on that feedback.

In January 2012, a survey made from customer experience management software company Satmetrix where they survey over 1,000 B2B found out that only 27% of B2B companies that both tracked mentions and followed up on them. Compared to B2C companies (53%) both tracked mentions and followed up on them.

Social Brand Mentions, Track Brand Mentions,

Companies should track what are being said and following up on comments when it is appropriate.

Satmetrix found that the most popular process companies used was having a dedicated team that monitored and responded to customer feedback.

Tracking social media mentions is easy and there are a lot of free and paid tools to do so.

 

Infographic: Brand Story Telling

infographic_brand-storytelling

 

First you should register with more than one tool. Configure the tool with the necessary keywords, means your brand name, your and the names of your staff, product and services names, your competitor brands, names, products and so on.

As the second step you should take care of not oversee to the messages and alerts which come in. Monitor those alerts and take action if appropriate.

Time after time you will discover which of those tools you are using are the most useful for you and you will focus on them and leave the others behind you.

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5 Ways How To Gain A Huge Profit From Facebook Sponsored Stories

facebook marketingWe all heard about facebook ads. Rumors out there stated that paid ads in facebook do not work. And also there have been rumors that Facebook ad revenue decreases.

Ok, rumors are one thing and facts are another!

Marin Software an advertising management company proved that Facebook ads work. Especially Facebook’s new ad units, Sponsored Stories which work in a social context are doing very well for social media marketing.

The simple reason why firms are not successful with their Facebook marketing is they do not understand that people go online to research and not to buy thing. In the case of Facebook marketing the people go to Facebook to connect, exchange ideas and to communicate. They go to Facebook to discover new things (research).

Companies which do Facebook marketing do some major mistakes when performing paid campaigns.

One major mistake is they attract the Facebook user to click on their Facebook ad and lead him or her away from Facebook. This is a bad idea as the people on Facebook want to communicate and learn about new things on Facebook and they do not want to be led away.

To avoid this mistake companies which perform Facebook paid ad campaigns should be creative and lead these ad attracted visitors to their Facebook page, for example with an exclusive offer. This would for sure improve the marketing results.

Another major mistake when businesses do Facebook social media marketing is, they do not take the opportunity to communicate with those ads attracted new visitors of their Facebook pages. Social media is about communication and connection with people. It’s not about selling and sales pitches.

Businesses should take the time to communicate with their network and carefully listen to them. This can result in a massive revenue growth when done right.

Also a major mistake is to think, to be on Facebook as a brand is enough and the audience will follow. Why should they follow your business page on Facebook? Do you have something remarkable, valuable and interesting to share with your audience? Did you take this chance to build trust and position you as a professional resource there?

A great way how you can position your business and your brand in social media sites like Facebook is to publish and share remarkable, valuable and interesting content!

You can expand your brand reach very easy and quick by expanding the reach of your content through “Facebook Sponsored Stories”. So your content reaches wide more people and the best thing is it reaches the right people. The way of social targeting helps to reach the right persons and attract those future customers to a business page.

This way you build trust and brand awareness the smart way.

The success of “Sponsored Stories” is huge. An increasing number of advertisers are using this smart marketing way to expand the reach of their custom created content.

Infographic: A Brief Insight Into Facebook Marketing

Facebook Sponsored Stories, Facebook marketing, Facebook social media marketing

Here are five ways how you can make Facebook Sponsored Stories work for you:

1. Start a corporate blog and create and share content in social media like Facebook in which your audience is interested in

2. Create eBooks, whitepapers, how-to’s, etc. and offer a free download in exchange of the visitors contact information on a landing page. This way you generate targeted leads

3. Set this landing pages under Facebook apps, so the user never need to leave Facebook

4. Start “Facebook Sponsored Stories” and direct the ad link to one of your Facebook landing pages

5. Encourage your audience to give you feedback regarding your content. This way you start the conversation

 

How about you, did you use “Sponsored Stories” yet and how is your opinion?

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How Content Marketing Helps Demonstrate Thought Leadership and Boosts SEO

content marketing, corporate blogging, whitepaper creation, ebook creation, social media content marketingContent marketing has established as a powerful way to engage customers. An increasing number of B2C and B2B marketer are faced with the challenge to produce and publish buyer persona oriented interesting and remarkable content to attract customers to their products and services.

A seriously executed content marketing strategy can be responsible for 25x times more business leads and boosts your revenue by up to 40%!

In a March 2012 poll of more than 400 US marketers and agencies content curation services provider Curata found that 95% had curated content in some way over the past six months by sharing a link, blog post or other content type with their target audience.

Curata results also showed that 85% of those marketers focus their main objective of content creation to establishing a thought leadership, 80% of those marketer see also brand building and buzz as a goal of their content creation strategy.

Content marketing social media copywriting,content marketing, corporate blogging, whitepaper creation, ebook creation, social media content marketing

Main content marketing objectives of marketers are:

 

One of the most difficulties when doing content creation is the time investment. About 70% of marketers say they did not have enough time to devote to the process of content creation and content marketing. Also the marketers stated that is difficult for them to create original content to share with their audience.

Main content marketing challenges of marketers are:

  • Creating original content
  • • Having the time to do it
  • • Finding high quality content
  • • Allocate staff to do it
  • • Difficulty to measuring results
  • • Securing senior level buy-in
  • • Understanding how it fits in overall marketing strategy

 

The most popular channel to share content is social media. About 76% of marketers say they used a social network as the main channel for content distribution.

To share published content in social media is not enough. Content creation and content marketing as a holistic strategy must be performed on regular basis to gain measurable and profitable results on the long term.

Only those activities performed on a regular basis pave the way to get found online by an increasing number of future customers and keeping them coming back to company offers and information.

Infographic: The Rise of Content Marketing

content marketing, corporate blogging, whitepaper creation, ebook creation, social media content marketing

Companies utilizing content marketing strategy report an up to 2,000% lift in blog traffic and 40% boost in revenue.

How to jumpstart your content marketing?

The easiest way to jumpstart your content marketing is to start a corporate blog. Blogging has great advantages and here are the most important:

  • 1. Blogging companies get up to 55% more Traffic
  • 2. Blogging companies get up to 97% more Inbound Links
  • 3. Blogging companies get up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines
  • 4. Blogging companies get up to 25x times more business leads

 

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How to grow your revenue through Social Customer Support

social customer serviceA recent survey from Oracle found out that a growing number of customers are reaching out to companies for support through social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp and thought their corporate blog.

Those users expect companies to response quickly, in less than a day, to their requests. The quick response and serious reaction to requests or events which happen is an essential part to profit from the communication which breaks out. To wait hours to give comments or answers could cost the essential market and marketing advantage.

But customers do not only contact brands for support requests they also often reach out to them to learn more about new products and services. If a brand is able to publish important product and services related news exclusively to their network first this would help to improve loyalty with their network. This can also result in an improvement of revenue in the long term.

social media support

About one third of surveyed customers expect to reach a customer service representative or product expert when they reach out to a brand.

The possible benefits for companies who stick to serious social media communication can be huge. They can build a solid base  to build brand advocates who spread the word on their behalf.

One of the most successful ways to start the conversation is to publish interesting content on a blog and spread it to social networks where the target audience is around. Content marketing is the name of this strategy.

Companies which publish remarkable and buyer persona oriented content, means you should talk about topics your customer is interested in rather than abut topics you are interested in, show their expertise and build trust with their audience.

4 Reasons why companies should leverage social media:

  • • Increase brand awareness
  • • Humanize B2B companies
  • • Establish as thought leader
  • • Connecting with customers and prospects

 

Social Media has proven to be a great source of targeted high quality leads for B2C and B2B. An increasing number of marketers see lead generation as their greatest online marketing challenge.

 

Infographic: Social Customer Service

social media customer service

7 Steps how you can you profit from social media?

  • 1. Start a social media presence. Complete your profile there
  • 2. Research for industry related groups and people. Become a member and invite those people to your network
  • 3. Listen to their discussions. If you have something valuable to contribute than do it, otherwise go on listening
  • 4. Start a corporate blog. Write about topics your audience is interested in. Share your blog articles in social media and ask for feedback for your publication
  • 5. Build landing pages and offer exclusive and valuable content for download. So you generate laser target high quality industry related leads
  • 6. Measure your activities
  • 7. Improve your activities and repeat

 

Social customer support is your great chance to showcase the quality and dedication of your company. Use every request as an opportunity to make a WOW feeling with the person who reaches out to your company.

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