David and Goliath: How Small Players Beat Out the Big Banks
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in the National Mortgage Professional Magazine. We are re-posting it here because the advice has value for any small- or medium-sized business (a David) competing against giants in the same industry (the Goliaths, aka the Big Fish). With mega-banks continuing to dominate the mortgage industry, the smaller players […]
Persona: More Than A Movie
“Persona” is a term that’s gotten very popular in marketing in the last few years. In ancient Latin, the word meant “mask.” It may have evolved from the Etruscan personare (“to sound through”), which referring to the theatrical wooden mask in which the mouth was made to strengthen the sound of the voice.” In literature […]
Social Selling: Step Up Your Game
This, in many ways, is the problem social selling solves. It allows for a level of service and personality that cold calling precludes, for communications between brands and buyers that are nuanced and customizable, and tailored to specific interests, needs and industries.
Evergreen Content for Marketing Credibility and Staying Power
One key strategy in managing the costs (and stresses) of content marketing is making it scalable. One thoughtful white paper can become a series of blog posts, a webinar, a video, an infographic, an interactive quiz, or anything else you can think of. With a slow-burn schedule of rolling release dates and a full set […]
Interactive Content and Quizzes: An Overview
Editor’s note: Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Josh Haynam, the co-founder of Interact, a fast-growing platform for creating responsive quizzes that help you generate engagement and capture leads. Follow Josh on Twitter @JHaynam. In 2013, the most viewed articles for the New York Times, TIME, and National Geographic were not articles, but pieces […]
Content Syndication: 3 Key Techniques
With the rapid rise of content marketing, time-pressed marketers know they have to get the most leverage out of each piece of content they produce. It’s difficult at best for marketing teams to continually pump out a high volume of quality content, so it’s important that the man hours and the budget that gets poured […]
Duplicate Content, Curation, and – What’s a Rel=Canonical?
It’s a cold, hard world for a search engine. People ask you for guidance; you scan millions of pages for them, give them the best results you can find, and they never say thanks. You’re treated as a functionary, ignored until they need you again. (Sniff.) Still, it’s an engine-eat-engine world. You’ve got a job […]
5 Technologies Content Marketers Shouldn’t Ignore
If I were a betting woman, I’d wager a tall stack of black chips that you, dear Reader, are a content marketer. How’d I do? Odds are this baby gets a new pair of shoes (maybe two) because in today’s business world we’re all content marketers – creators, curators, and peddlers of what Webster’s defines […]
Bootstrap Buyer Persona Building in 4 Steps
“Buyer, Buyer, Buyer.” You can’t take to two steps in any direction in the marketing thought leadership landscape without hearing how important and central the buyer is, and how important it is to develop a “buyer centric” approach to demand generation. Why all the hullabaloo around the buyer? Well, because it’s true: Keeping the buyer […]
Find the Right Content Marketing Mix
As content marketing grows in popularity, marketers are discovering that – for all but the largest and best-funded marketing teams – it’s nearly impossible to publish only original, created content at the pace expected of today’s brands. Given this reality, many successful content marketers publish a mix of content they’ve created themselves, content they’re curating […]
Should You Hire a Journalist for Your Content Marketing Team?
In his recent book, Epic Content Marketing, Joe Pulizzi remarks that many of us marketers and our organizations are becoming – or have already become – publishers. Our business model is different from traditional publishers, but the goal of building an audience that likes and trusts our content is the same in many respects. And […]
Originality is Overrated. Do This Instead.
Editor’s note: Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Josh Haynam, the co-founder of Interact, a fast-growing platform for creating responsive quizzes that help you generate engagement and capture leads. Follow Josh on Twitter @jhaynam. Take a look at the following three names: Nikola Tesla Joseph Swan Thomas Edison Who discovered electricity? Who invented the […]
Marketing (Through the Eyes of an Intern) Video
It has been said that marketers often speak a language all their own, and that they tend towards jargon when everyday English would do. Looking at some of the content that gets circulated today, it’s hard not to agree. Asked by Ad Age to name the jargon they most wished to leave behind, marketing and […]
Digital Marketing Glossary, Part 3
Here’s the third and final installment of the Digital Marketing Glossary. Thanks for your comments; please suggest additional terms as you think of them. Paid media: Here, you pay (usually for time or space) to leverage a third-party channel. Tradeshows, outdoor advertising, pay-per-click ads on websites and search engines, newspapers, TV, radio, […]
Digital Marketing Glossary, Part 2
In the first installment of this series, I commented that I’d gotten “lead gen” and “demand gen” mixed up. Seems I am not alone, so before we leap off into the next group of definitions, a few more words are in order about “demand generation vs. lead generation.” In a recent post on Content Marketing […]
Digital Marketing Glossary, Part 1
Guilty as charged. I read not long ago that a lot of folks confuse or conflate “lead generation” with “demand generation.” Ummm, I reluctantly raise my hand on this one, as I discovered my ignorance when we began compiling this informal digital marketing glossary. Just as we talk about the importance of sales and marketing […]
6 Copy Starters for Emails & Letters
Copywriting – what you say and how you say it – is still one of the most important disciplines in marketing. Sometimes just getting started is the hardest part. The first sentence of copy is critical for grabbing attention. It sets the bait for hooking scanners – who become readers – who then turn into […]
Multiple or Single Calls to Action?
Read this to learn whether you should use multiple or single calls to action – as well as the appropriate time and channel for both.
5 Traits of Great Marketing Content
Eighty percent. That’s how many B2B buyers conduct their own research before ever engaging with a sales person. It’s daunting when you think about it: At any given moment, more than three-quarters of your potential customers are busily checking you out, making value judgments about your products and services in order to narrow their options […]