5 Smart Ways to Build a Content Machine and Increase Revenue by up to 40%

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?

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.

Content and social media have become successful ways to get attention from future buyers.

On the web you are what you publish… What are you?

–David Meerman Scott

Original content builds you trust, customer loyalty and can position your business as trusted experts in your field.

Content 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.

There is no question content is king! And Remarkable and helpful content brings customers and business direct to your front door the smart and cost effective way, this is for sure!

New studies show that companies utilizing the content marketing strategy in a serious manor report an up to 2,000% lift in blog traffic and 40% boost in revenue!

Infographic: A Brief History of Content Marketing

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

An open minded communication culture and authenticity mixed with credibility beats any old school – yesteryear nonsense marketing and saves your business a truckload of marketing cash!

The great success of content marketing is the result of giving away valuable information – remarkable content for free to attract the RIGHT people to your business like a magnet in an ongoing and steady growing stream.

Content marketing works 100% for any industry and business!

Content marketing can also work for you to attract new customers to your business like a magnet is you are willing to do it right!

The best way to start content marketing for business is to start a corporate blog.

But how and where to get the ideas to write remarkable blog articles who drive visitors to your business?

Here are five ways you should use to get blog content ideas:

1. Set up Google Alerts with your industry keywords
2. Search Blog Directories for your industries topics
3. Subscribe to other industry related blogs and on articles there
4. Go through your customers email communication, especially service, product and support questions
5. Participate in industry related social media groups and forums

These five points will bring you a ton of content ides to write helpful articles for your recent and future customers.

And yes, this is additional work but it is worth every minute you invest in your content marketing.

By taking this challenge you can expect these advantages for your business:

– Blogging companies get up to 55% more Traffic
– Blogging companies get up to 97% more Inbound Links
– Blogging companies get up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines
– Blogging companies get up to 25x times more business leads

…and more LEADS mean more revenue! It’s up on you.

February 9, 2013

Lead Generation with Inbound Marketing and PPC Advertising done right!

In the past years Pay per click marketing has been a quick and easy solution for businesses to generate leads. But to do paid advertisements is no long-lasting and holistic marketing strategy to depend on!

When you do PPC than you generate leads as long as you pay. When you stop your PPC campaign then you will not generate leads anymore! As simple as that!

Nevertheless PPC are still a great vehicle to get the word out but only when they are incorporated within a smart and holistic marketing strategy.

The proven and successful inbound marketing strategy is a great way to generate high quality leads. Therefore inbound marketing is known as the “riskless” marketing strategy because of the activities done which are long lasting and bring an increasing stream of future customers to your offers.

Why is this inbound marketing such a great way to generate leads?

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

Inbound marketing includes Blogging, Social Media, Lead Conversion, Lead Nurturing and Closed-Loop Analysis.

How can Inbound Marketing help you?

A. It saves you up to 62% of your marketing budget
B. Makes you stand out of your competition
C. Helps to generate a massive amount of leads
D. Gets you up to 55% higher lead conversion rates
E. Increases your customers and sales

Example: The backbone of successful inbound marketing is the content creation strategy. To create outstanding in a corporate blog improves the trust, visibility and traffic to a business online. Published articles once done are literally online forever, are indexed through search engines and can be found from future customers.

The more articles you publish the more „digital outposts“which you build for your business and you get an increasing stream of future customers to your offers.

Businesses brand them self by creating and publishing original content. Businesses that create and publish remarkable content on the web and in social media:

• Establish thought leadership
• Elevate brand visibility and buzz
• Boosts SEO

Blogging has great advantages and here are the most important:

Blogging companies get up to…

1. …55% more Traffic
2. …97% more Inbound Links
3. …434% more indexed pages in search engines
4. …25x times more business leads

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

Infographic: The Rise Of Content Marketing

PCC can’t deliver such results!

But you can incorporate Pay per Click Marketing into your Inbound Marketing Strategy.

Some thought how you could use PPC to increase your visibility:

PPC drives you quick results and you can use it to bridge over the time until your content marketing starts to show effect.

To get a better idea of what your audience is looking for before they hit your website and to adjust you’re SEO, you could start a PPC campaign. Look at the initial keyword data in your Google AdWords account and see which keywords have the highest click through rate (CTR). So you get the most popular keywords and custom tailor your content and your next PPC advertising.

You should bid on your own corporate terms, for example your business name or the names of your products. So when a interested person is researching online for your business, products and services the chances are good even if you are not in the top five Google Search result they will find you through your PPC ads.

Especially for local businesses PPC is a great way to get a targeted location based positioning to attract locals to the business front door. Local businesses can do advertising for a very specific location and do bidding on keywords related to this location. So they get laser targeted traffic from people who are maybe living around the corner in the next street.

There is not only Google AdWords where PPC campaigns can be done to reach the buyer persona in a great way.

Businesses can also do PPC ads on Twitter, Facebook and for B2B on LinkedIn.

One more thing to keep in mind when doing paid adverting!

You should direct your traffic to dedicated landing pages to convert those prospects into leads.

Take care to prepare a great offer on your landing page to motivate those prospects to leave their contact to follow up with them later and to get them into the lead nurturing process to convert them to sales.

January 30, 2013February 4, 2013

Why Everybody Loves Infographics

What exactly are infographics?

Infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly.

Infographics can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system’s ability to see patterns and trends and this is what made them a powerful marketing tool for businesses.

Infographics are shared on the web, Twitter and Facebook more often than other content online.

Infographics are easy to understand, to consume and to share. On Twitter, LinkedIn und StumbleUpon Infographics get more retweets than other content.

Marketers love Infographics because they offer an easy and powerful viral marketing tool to spread the word about the company’s products and services.

B2C and B2B also love infographics as they explain sophisticated facts in a very easy understandable way.

“A picture is worth a thousand words”

The most popular Infographics are about business with about 12.7%, technology with about 10% and social media with about 9%.

As infographics are able to explain sophisticated topics in an easy way they are very popular for technology.

Infographic: The State of Infographics

What are your experiences with infographics? Tell me in the comment box below.

December 5, 2012

On the web you are what you publish… What are you?

Content and social media have become successful ways to get attention from future buyers.

Content creation, marketing and content distribution in social media are proven ways to make interested people aware of your business.

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.

When people want to buy products and services they turn to the web, to search engines like Google, Yahoo, social media and their friends and relatives to get information and recommendations about products and services.

Original content builds you trust, customer loyalty and can position your business as trusted experts in your field. It offers the so called value ad for customers

By publishing interesting and remarkable content other blogs, news sites and content curators will link to you which increases your Page Rank and improves your search engine visibility also!

So when you publish expert content on the web you will be recognized as an expert in your field.

On the web you are what you publish… Think a minute what do you publish on the web and in social media? … Exactly! That’s what you are on the web!

If you miss the opportunity which content marketing offers to you, your business will vanish in the dust.

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

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

October 12, 2012March 24, 2014

The ARTS + VIDEO COMMUNICATIONS

What is ‘The Arts’ ?

1.    The Arts is a group of disciplines, comprising many genres, endeavours or art forms, all united by their employment of the human creative impulse, to express and communicate through various art forms.
2.    New and additional genres are being added daily.
3.    Let us put them all in one box for ease of understanding. This may be contentious to some globally, who have different perceptions of The Arts.
4.    The many forms of expression create an adequate or enormous income for many players, but for others, sadly it must just be perceived as a pastime, due to lack of funds or infrastructures.
5.    The Arts are dying in many countries, which are not getting sufficient financial support from their governments or other and so it is time to seek other means of exposure and marketing platforms.

What do The Arts enable ?

1.    Imparting a message
2.    Telling a true story
3.    Education
4.    Imparting own gifts
5.    Creating mindset shifts
6.    Enabling interactive conversation
7.    Enabling enjoyment, laughter, sadness, joy etc
8.    Self expression
9.    Enabling escape from real life – and so on

Let’s look at some players in ‘The Arts’

MUSICIANS – all genres from jazz to rap
ARTISTS – all mediums, including sculptors, potters, etc
DANCERS – al genres, from ballet to hip hop
COMEDIANS
MAGICIANS
SINGERS – from OPERA to RAP – including producers, choreographers
FILM/THEATRE – actors, directors, writers, producers, choreographers
WRITERS/AUTHORS – all genres, including poets, fiction, non-fiction, biographies, etc

Players in ‘The Arts’ need to up their marketing game + would do well, by using the Social networking sites + incorporating VIDEO COMMUNICATIONS into their marketing mix

Adding VIDEO CONFERENCING / WEBINARS into the marketing mix :

More and more of The Arts genres are embracing this powerful technology as an adjunct marketing, training, collaboration, communication and exposure platform. Due to budget and time constraints, people cannot always travel far distances to attend an event/training etc..

DISTANCE Training/Workshops

Globally teaching, learning + rehearsing dance routines, orchestral music arrangements + scores, scripts etc in advance before show time
Creating a global environment for creative research across diverse disciplines, where all players can collaborate, experiment and enjoy artistic exchange and learning, exploring the boundaries of synthesizing art and technology
In this global environment, students can actively explore their creativity and develop, using their own creative gifts through active engagement, reflection and collaboration
More and more music teachers world wide are embracing this technology to teach pupils to play various instruments in remote areas

SHOWCASING

Virtual shows can be created in a global Video Meeting Room, where interested parties can participate in interactive sessions, with people interested in learning more about their particular genre of Art.

BOOK LAUNCHES

o Authors can save a fortune by hosting a virtual book tour.

o This can be co-marketed with e-commerce book companies, online communities and off-line bookstores, that want to drive traffic to their stores and sites.

MEDIA INTERVIEWS

o Invite reporters or editors to an online web interview.

o These web events can be conducted with the media, through relevant websites and e-commerce sites.

o Online web interviews enable interviewing all relevant journalists at once, with the promotion of their stories on Movie, TV, Radio, Theatre, Music, Dance, Arts etc.

o Webinars enable you to expose large groups of people at once to interviews with actors, singers, dancers, poets, playwrights, producers, choreographers, directors etc..

ART EXHIBITIONS

o Artists across all art form mediums, can use Video Conferencing to go global, communicate and show their art to the world.

o They could even stream a pre-recorded video on a virtual tour of their art from their own studio or gallery.

o Inviting a well known art expert as a guest speaker to a Webinar, who in their own rights, will attract numbers to the web event, would be an added bonus.

Adding VMail – The new EMAIL – into the marketing mix

What is a Vmail ?

o Video Email is simple to use, online, browser based technology, which enables you to create your own personal Vmails.

o Most technology platforms allow 20 minutes of talk time, which is more than adequate to impart your message.

o Additional videos may also be uploaded into the Vmail, e.g. a virtual tour of an Artist’s gallery or studio, a Singer or Dancer’s debut or demo, etc..

o No software downloads are necessary.

o Bandwidth is not compromised, as the VMail opens on the Internet.

o Most Vmail purveyors allow full integration into your social networks to share on Youtube or Facebook, etc..

WHY use VMAIL ?

Video Email is the new Email ! It is a perfect adjunct marketing tool to incorporate into your Video Communications suite –

Why ?

It’s Different
More powerful
More Personal
More Effective
Is Creative
Seeing is Believing
Has more Impact
Grabs the customer’s Attention
Enables you to literally look into your contact’s eyes and develop a relationship with that person, engaging them on a level that is simply not possible with a static text email
Enables your voice to resonate on a subliminal level
Static text emails, are easy to ignore, and at their best, give a customer only the vaguest notion of what your business or craft really values

Facts :

– Google loves Video !
– Cisco predict there will be a 10 fold increase in the use of Video over the next 5 years
– Internet Video traffic is now 40% of consumer internet
– People retain 10% of what they hear, but 50% of what they see
– Video is the single, most effective form of communication
– Additional creative marketing platforms are constantly being sought
– ‘Old school’ marketing is no longer effective

Heather de Wit considers herself to be an ‘out of the box’ thinker and is happy to share her knowledge on the merits of utilising Video Email and Conferencing/Webinars. Her experience as a sole Entrepreneur for over 20 years spans marketing, advertising and PR. She enjoys creative writing, singing at functions and is a self-taught artist.

Get in touch with heather :

Facebook
LinkedIn
SKYPE : heather.de.wit
Mobile +27824907143+27824907143
EMail: heather@boundless-activities.net

October 9, 2012

How Content Marketing helps to generate up to 40% more Revenue

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.

The customer chooses by himself through research on search engines like Google, with the help of friends, relatives and his social networks which product to buy and which not.

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?

Businesses who publish and share content on the web do not only increase the number of “digital outpost” but moreover increase their visibility and build trust with the future customers. Trust is the main motivation to buy. When your audience trusts you, then you they are willing to do business with you.

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.

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

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

With great content you position your business and the people of your business who create the content as trusted experts in your field. Content Marketing is great to build your online reputation.

Here are some marketing tips you can use right away.

Give away free content

Give away free content in form of a corporate blog where you write about topics your audience is most interested in. You can get great ideas for blog articles when you go through email and support requests. This will give you a ton of possible blog article topics.

You can also take a camera and explain a task, for example how to use one of your machines and what to take care of. Or you can use photos and testimonials of satisfied customers and publish them too.

You need to invest time/ money to produce content

To find the time to produce remarkable content is the most common problem business face. But as you need to spend time for your business you also need to understand that marketing and content creation is an important part of your lead generation. Therefore you need to set time free to produce remarkable content which will attract new customers to your business.

No matter if you do it by your own or you hire an Inbound Marketing Agency, content marketing is not free. You have the choice, do you want to invest your time or do you want to set a marketing budget and hire a professional Inbound Marketing Agency.

Give away GREAT content

Great content is valuable. It is worth reading and sharing it. Therefore you need to be specific with information which should benefit your future customers. Don’t be afraid to give away “secrets” because this kind of content attracts the most people. And be the end you are the professionals and the future customer will turn to you when he is ready to buy.

inbound marketing assessment us Will Technology Kill the Call Center?

September 18, 2012

Do You Want to Control Your Traffic and Lead Generation?

The traffic to your offers online decides about the value and the volume of your business leads.

Are you in control of your traffic and the volume of your business leads? Do you think you can be in control of your business leads and revenue?

I have a message for you: You can be in control of your business leads and revenue!

There is a way how you can increase qualified traffic, business leads and revenue. Content marketing!

Content marketing has become a powerful way to engage customer’s right where they stand.

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.

Businesses brand them self by creating and publishing original content. Businesses that create and publish remarkable content on the web and in social media:

• Establish thought leadership
• Elevate brand visibility and buzz
• Boosts SEO

Content marketing improves the search engine rank and the content has more chances to get shared on social networks, which also improves brand reach and direct more future customers to landing pages where they can convert to qualified leads.

By generating interesting and remarkable content other blogs, news sites will link to the businesses website and blog which increases the Page Rank and improves the search engine visibility.

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

Infographic: The Anatomy of Content Marketing

The best way for businesses to start with content marketing is blogging!

Companies who operate a corporate blog on frequent base get up to:

• 55% more Traffic than companies who do not blog
• 97% more Inbound Links than companies who do not blog
• 434% more indexed pages in search engines than companies who do not blog
• 25x times more business leads than companies who do not blog

September 12, 2012September 12, 2012

Original Content builds you Trust and Customer Loyalty

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 marketers see also brand building and buzz as a goal of their content creation 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.

Content marketing has become a powerful way to engage customer’s right where they stand.

But what is more powerful curated content or original content?

A business brands its self by creating and publishing original content on. It establishes thought leadership, elevates brand visibility and buzz and boosts its SEO by creating and publishing original content the web and in social media.

This improves the search engine rank and your content has more chances to get shared on social networks, which also improves brand reach and direct more future customers to your offers.

By generation interesting and remarkable content other blogs, news sites and content curators will link to you which increases your Page Rank and improves your search engine visibility also!

The biggest challenge for marketers when doing content creation is the time investment!

Research results show that 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.

Infographic: A Brief History of Content Marketing

September 6, 2012

7 Easy Steps on How to use Twitter to Reach Your Revenue Goals

New reports show that Twitter beats Facebook in US Mobile Ad Revenues This Year. This is a clear sign that Twitter users could be more engaged that Facebook users. New numbers also show that Photo- and Video-Sharing Popular on Twitter.

Here are some numbers to try to compare the effectiveness of Twitter and Facebook for marketing:

An average Facebook user has an average of 130 friends compared with a Twitter user and his average 300 Followers. Twitter users share 1.5 more times tweets than compared with Facebook users which share wall post messages 0.65 on average. Massages shared on Facebook reach 45k of people there on average compared with 105k reach on Twitter.

These numbers give you a small idea of marketing effectiveness of booth social media platforms.

How can you profit from Twitter’s great opportunity to reach your target audience and increase business leads, sales and profits without spending a truck load of ad money on Twitter?

Twitter is a great tool to do real time communication with your audience. Users expect companies to response quickly to their requests. The quick response and serious reaction to requests or events on which happen is an essential part to profit from Twitter communication which breaks out.

Customers often reach out to brands to learn more about new products and services. If a brand is able to publish important product and services related news exclusively to their Twitter network first, this would help to improve loyalty with their network. This can also result in an improvement of revenue in the long term.

4 Reasons why companies should leverage Twitter:

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

7 Steps how can you profit from Twitter?

1. Start a Twitter presence and complete your profile
2. Research for industry related Tweets, discussions and people. Follow those people
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 Twitter and ask for feedback and opinion for your publication
5. Build landing pages and offer Twitter exclusive and valuable content for download. So you generate laser target high quality industry related leads from Twitter
6. Measure your activities
7. Improve your activities and repeat

Infographic: Twitter Marketing

August 29, 2012March 24, 2014

Tips for New Content Marketers – an Interview with Joe Chernov

Recently, we posted a video with Eloqua’s Joe Chernov that discussed the various ways marketers miss the mark with content marketer.

As a follow-up to that, the folks at CRMSoftware.TV sent over another interview where Joe offers some advice to those just getting started with content marketing

You’ll have to watch the video to learn all of his tips, but we’ve highlighted our three favorites below.

— Develop “buzzword-free” writing skills. At the risk of offending the PR crowd, it is important for content marketers to know how to write in a non-PR way. What that means is ditching the buzzwords and using language that people can understand and ultimately connect to. This is an area where new graduates have a leg up. Their language hasn’t been corrupted by industry jargon, so they are more inclined to communicate ideas in a more straightforward way.

— Display good business judgement. Many young marketers pride themselves on their web savvy. They are on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+ and myriad other online networks. However, it is important to remember that your activity on those networks is a reflection of you as a professional. Joe suggests that you approach your activity with this mindset: “If Google is your resume, what does that say about you?”

— Keep it brief. An oft heard phrase is, “Brevity is the art of lingerie,” but it’s also the art of content. Joe addressed this somewhat in the last video, but it begs being mentioned again – keep it short and sweet! Just because you use 100 words to explain something doesn’t mean you should. It’s far more impressive to do it in 10. Content marketers should keep this in mind when creating content, remembering that today’s buyer consumes information at a much more rapid pace and doesn’t have time (or patience) to sit through a 10 page whitepaper.

For the rest of the tips, check out the video below.

Lauren joined Software Advice in 2010 as the CRM Market Manager. Currently, she is the Producer and Content Manager for CRMSoftware.TV, a new site designed to be like Hulu for CRM Software. She writes about various topics related to CRM software, and often reports live from major industry events. She has particular interest in marketing automation and social CRM, and her work has been featured in Forbes and The New York Times. When she isn’t covering the software industry, you can find her running at Town Lake with her dog, Sophie, and singing at local Austin venues. She is a graduate of the University of Texas with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

Get in touch with Lauren:

August 21, 2012August 21, 2012

How to Generate Business through Content Marketing

We live in a customer centric time powered through social media and the rules of marketing and PR has dramatically changed.

The customer chooses by himself through research on search engines like Google, with the help of friends, relatives and his social networks which product to buy and which not.

Then it counts what and if he can find your business on the web.

Marketers need to understand that most people do not go online to buy something. The primarily go online to research for products and services. This is valid for B2C and B2B!

Trust can only be build with a long term approach, because what you publish reflects what and who you are.

With great content you position your business and the people of your business who create the content as trusted experts in your field. Content Marketing is great to build your online reputation.

Here are some marketing tips you can use right away.

Give away free content

You need to invest time/ money to produce content

Give away GREAT content

Infographic: The Rise of Content Marketing

Six great reasons to consider content marketing to generate more business

Companies who operate a corporate blog on frequent base get …

…up to 55% more Traffic than companies who do not blog
…up to 97% more Inbound Links than companies who do not blog
…up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines than companies who do not blog
…up to 25x times more business leads than companies who do not blog

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

Every businesses which ignores these facts will vanish in the dust of today’s networked and quick economy and that’s good.

August 8, 2012March 24, 2014

The Keys to An Effective Content Strategy – an Interview with Joe Chernov

We are marketing in an age where content is king. As a result, more and more companies and marketing teams are increasing their content marketing efforts. But, not all content was created equal. How can you discover which content is going to convert the best? And what steps should you take to develop an effective content marketing strategy.

In this video, CRMSoftware.TV‘s Lauren Carlson sits down with content marketing guru Joe Chernov of Eloqua to discuss where some marketers are falling short when it comes to content.

They also highlight several tips for marketers who want to up their content game by creating a powerful and effective strategy.

Check out their discussion in the video below.

Get in touch with Lauren:

August 7, 2012August 7, 2012

How to Increase Backlinks and Customer Loyalty through Content Marketing

To 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.

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

In blurbs buyer personas analysis sheet from inBlurbs

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.

August 1, 2012August 1, 2012

Customers Demand Brands to Prove Themselves Trustworthy

Trust 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!

Reviews (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.

July 5, 2012March 24, 2014

5 Jobs for Tomorrow’s Marketing Team

If 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:

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. LinkedIn – Twitter – Google +